Knox Your Block Off (2)

We have already seen how TFSmith's depiction of the ships engaged in the attack on Fort Knox does its best to play up their flaws. This fits his main objective of weakening the British, but in reality he needn't have bothered: in BROS the British are perfectly capable of making a complete pig's ear of any endeavour with even the most modern ships.


In this case, we are told that:

'Magicienne, in the lead, went aground on Odom Ledge, well within range of the Fort’s water battery. The flagship was vulnerable to the fort’s 8 inch Parrotts and howitzers, but it took most of the morning before hot shot and high explosive had reduced her to a wreck'

An attempt to flank the fort with gunboats also goes wrong:

'Stork grounded on the shoals south of Porcupine Island; as the British tried to pull the little gunboat off, the Americans, hidden by the tree line, dragged a single 12-pounder mountain howitzer to the heights above the river and fired high explosive shells into the gunboat until she was abandoned.'

This series of events is surprising (not least because the Union appear to have invented 'high explosive' shells instead of the gunpowder they should be using). To lose one ship to grounding is unfortunate; to lose two seems like carelessness. Fortunately, as always, TFSmith has an unimpeachable historical pedigree for these events:

‘Which is where the loss of Stork comes from; the Russians got her semi-sister Jasper in similar circumstances, except they captured her after she went aground with a charge by mounted Cossacks; I figured having the Maine militia take her with a mounted charge would be a little over the top.;)

Magicienne's loss is an espy of HMS Tiger off Odessa; same sort of problems in littoral warfare on coast of Maine, obviously’.

There are numerous problems with this. For a start, Jasper was not 'captured... with a charge by mounted Cossacks': the gunboat's crew held the Cossacks off with musketry and a howitzer, before setting fire the ship and transferring to Swallow. Four days later, the British returned, dispersed Russian infantry with shellfire, and reclaimed the gunboat's 68pdr and three captured Russian guns from the wreck.

Secondly, these two events took place over a year apart: Tiger grounded on 11 May 1854, Jasper on 23 July 1855. As Clowes explains, Jasper 'was the only craft that was lost during the whole of the Azof operations, although these did not cease until some time after the fall of Sebastopol.' Yet TFSmith has two identical incidents occur within a couple of hours of each other. Rather than showing that the Royal Navy couldn't deal with littoral warfare, losing so few ships despite a high operational tempo in largely uncharted waters should be a source of congratulation.

TFSmith also completely ignores the context of these two sinkings. Even Wikipedia explains that Tiger's grounding took place in poor weather that would have made navigation difficult:

'Tiger became separated from her consorts in thick fog. At around 6 a.m on the 12th she grounded on the shore about five miles south-west of Odessa. She fired guns to attract the attention of the other ships, without result.'

The grounding of Jasper took place in similarly exceptional circumstances, as Preston and Major's Send a Gunboat makes clear:

'Gunboats carried only one commissioned officer, the  lieutenant in command; being constantly on patrol in enemy waters meant that Hudson had been able to take only snatches of rest during the previous six days. Exhausted beyond endurance, he lay down that night on the deck next to the man at the tiller after giving the order: "Wake me at midnight or as soon as you see the lights." But he had forgotten to tell the helmsman that the course he was steering would run the ship aground if no alteration were made... It was just after midnight when Hudson was woken by the crash as his ship struck'

Here, it is not the middle of the night and the gunboat captain is clearly not tired beyond exhaustion: yet they crash nevertheless. Moreover, TFSmith also distorts the circumstances which led to Jasper being abandoned. Because Jasper was on her own, the 68pdr which could easily have dispersed their attackers had to be thrown overboard in the hope that lightening the ship would allow her to get off. Stork has other ships to provide fire support, or (unlike Tiger and Jasper) to help pull her off the shoals: nevertheless, she is abandoned.

This kind of distortion of the historical record should be nothing new to seasoned veterans of this blog. However, we are not done with the battle of Fort Knox; and the final distortions are exceptional even by the standards of BROS.