The Price of Entry(port)

TFSmith has his fictitious naval historian Irene Musicant deliver a large fraction of the exposition on the blockade. In spite of the heavy repetition employed in these sections, it is nevertheless clear that he must have written much of it - which opens up interesting questions.

Wrecked with inconsistency

In the timeline Burnished Rows of Steel, a number of ships suffer navigational failures and are lost accidentally. However, essentially all of them are British; this is at odds with the real historical record.

Mississippi Burning (2)

In BROS (chapter 4, part 1), the twenty-year old paddle frigate USS Mississippi encounters a British squadron consisting of the four-year-old screw battleship HMS Edgar (89), the five-year-old screw sloop HMS Racoon (22), and the six-year-old ironclad HMS Terror (16). As we already know, Edgar, Racoon and Terror should not be where they are. However, this is in many respects a minor problem, compared to what we discover when we examine the events of the battle in detail.

Rebel without a corps

With TFSmith having already deleted large numbers of British troops, as well as increasing the number of Union troops over the historical amount, it should not be surprising he also tweaks the numbers of the third major combatant - the Confederacy.

The readers are invited to guess which way this one went.

Nom De Guerre

We have discussed many times before the problems with the author's penultimate "Battle of Berthierville" but here I shall touch on very briefly, why the name itself doesn't actually make any sense.

For starters, think of any civil war battle (for that matter any battle) you know of. The name itself is very descriptive of the location it takes place at, or at the very least describes what and where it is. In the Civil War both sides had different naming conventions. The North usually named battles after the closest town, while the South named them after the local river or landmark. Hence you have the Battle of Antietam also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, or Bull Run vs Manassas. They at least describe roughly where the battle took place.

The Battle of Berthierville though, seems to take place anywhere but Berthierville.

Missing Man Formation

During the battle of Berthierville (which has still not been entirely explored) we have several descriptions of the number of troops present at various smaller engagements. We also have a description of the number of troops present for the whole battle.

However, when this is more closely examined, it transpires that there is something important missing.

Caught One Handed

One Hand Behind The Back


TFSmith is fond of the idea that the Union fought the Civil War with "one hand behind its back", a phrase coined by Shelby Foote and repeated by TFSmith something in the vicinity of thirty times in the marginalia.

Examining what Shelby Foote actually meant, however, makes it clear that TFSmith does not understand what was meant - certainly not in the context of the Trent War.