Lakes a-Mercy! (1)

The problems with TFSmith's treatment of the war on the Great Lakes have been touched on briefly, but we will consider them in greater detail in this post (and, based on current expectations, a follow-up).

Colley-wobbles

TFSmith is very keen on 'the realities of time and distance,' as he terms them (here, here, here, here, here, and here). As we are starting to learn, however, he does not always accurately reflect these realities himself. For instance:

Burnished Rows of Steel, chapter 1 part 1 (December 1861)

“Especially with a fire-eater and student of war like yourself in charge, Colley, eh what?” interjected the colonel. “I mean, Pope, here he is at Staff College, half-way through what is supposed to be a two year course in five months,

Lieutenant General Sir William Francis Butler, The life of Sir George Pomeroy-Colley:

'quitting the Cape in January 1862, [he] arrived in England at the end of February to enter the Staff College in March, one month after the usual time of entrance.'

TFSmith's usual excuse when errors of this kind are detected is to argue that his POD is in August 1861. This does just give Colley five months in which he could have attended the Staff College. Unfortunately, as he only took the examination to enter Staff College in September 1861, it implies that Colley teleported from South Africa to Britain and was admitted to the College without sitting any exams part-way through a year.

Of course, even if TFSmith had done enough research to find out when Colley had joined the Staff College, he would probably still have ensured that Colley would have made it to the battlefield. After all, Colley was 'an illustrative case study of the state of British Army professional training and education in the Victorian Era' and 'an exemplar of the professional British Army officer corps' (c.f. here and here).

On My Unbanning

Apologies for the silence over the past few weeks. Needless to say, I'm very grateful for everybody who spoke out in my support. I'm also extremely thankful to Ian for acknowledging that the original decision to ban me was incorrect and reinstating me.

Unfortunately, right around the same time, a pretty sizeable project landed on my desk at work. Although it's not keeping me as busy as it was, I might be pressed for time to contribute to this site over the next month or so. However, even if I can't spare the time for the really sizeable projects, there are some smaller ones that I should be able to write up and post.

As both a thank you for the support, and an apology for the lack of communication, I thought I'd post some of my detailed research for others to use. I've talked previously about my lists of ship positions, so here they are:

Royal Navy ship positions as at 5 January 1862

Union Navy ship positions as at 26 January 1862

The dates may seem arbitrary, but they're intended to be a little before the Cabinet confirmation of the decision to go to war (in the case of the Royal Navy) and the news arriving in America (in the case of the Union). Where it's possible to do so, I've extended the timeframe to allow for the delay in notifying some of the more distant stations.

As you can tell, these have focused on ship positions rather than the minutiae of armament and captains. They're very much a work in progress, but there's enough information present in them already to make them useful. Perhaps most importantly, it's almost all based on the kind of evidence that TFSmith dismisses as worthless. I hope you find it as useful as I have.

West Pointless

We have seen previously that TFSmith likes West Point, to the extent of staffing the Union army with West Point graduates who happpened to be insane, or who publicly expressed regret that McClellan had not led a military coup to overthrow the Lincoln administration and rescind the Emancipation Proclamation. How far does this admiration for military education go? Let's find out.

Mississippi Burning (1)

In chapter 4 part 1, the USS Mississippi engages a British squadron. I intend to do a fuller post to explore the problems with this battle, but in the meantime I have a request for your assistance. I simply can't make head or tail of what's going on: can you help?

On My Banning

This isn't a personal blog, but I thought it best to provide a quick explanation of the current situation. Long story short: I recently got banned from AH.com. The reasons given for this were:

• I was the sock-puppet of a banned member
• I created an offsite blog in collaboration with neoConfederate banned members in order to nitpick the work of others
• I constantly attack people who disagree with me
• I was dragging threads off-topic

In response, I argued that:

• I am not the sock-puppet of a banned member
• None of the three contributors to this blog were banned, and none (to my knowledge) are neoConfederates
• We confirmed with Ian the Admin that it was acceptable to create this blog before creating it
• In a year on the site I had a single kick, received just under a month ago.
• Since that kick, I had not spoken to the member who felt that I was being unduly harsh to them. I have also pre-emptively disengaged from many other members with whom I am well aware that I disagree.
• I did not think that my contributions were particularly off-topic given that the posts before mine had been discussing Woodrow Wilson's presidency and the motivations behind unrestricted submarine warfare.

The admins conceded these points, but at the moment it doesn't seem that they intend to reverse my ban. Understandably, this leaves me somewhat nonplussed. I didn't contribute to the site's donation drive because I thought soliciting money from members was inconsistent with the site's 'my house, my rules' moderation policy. However, I don't get any pleasure from being proved right in this way.

I don't intend to make this a long, self-justifying screed, but I do feel the need to respond to one point made in the thread after my departure. Galveston Bay claimed that ' It would not be hard for me to find numerous examples of sarcastic mean spirited posts directed specifically at me and others in any thread on this topic going back at least 3 years made by him.' I suspect it would be remarkably difficult to find three years of such posts, as I only joined the site on 6 June 2016. My join date appears in the header of every single post I have made, so I struggle to explain his confusion on this point.

Unfortunately, there isn't any advice I can give to those who wish to avoid my fate (other than 'don't talk about the Trent Affair'). I do, however, wish you all the best of luck in your continued interactions on the board. Normal service will now be resumed.

Naval Gazing (2)

Having thoroughly - perhaps too thoroughly - considered TFSmith's usage of sources, we will now learn some of the mistakes they lead him to make in the positioning of ships.