This was all news to Wolseley. The British services had had an excellent record of cooperation compared to any other country, but knowledge of the other service was not something an officer concerned himself with. “You don’t mean the Americans have the advantage over the Royal Navy?”
“It is not as simple as that. Our purpose-built wooden and iron-hulled ships outnumber and outclass most of their American counterparts. We would have no trouble sweeping the American Navy from the seas. But, you must understand, that in a war with the Americans we cannot simply control the seas in order to win. They could easily be self-sufficient. No, we would need to break the blockade of the Southern ports and then go after them in their own harbors. And there is where we found these swarms of turreted monitors armed with Admiral Dahlgren’s fearsome XV-inch guns.”
“I seem to recall that the Dahlgren guns on the Monitor failed to breach the armor of the broadside ironclad Virginia,” Wolseley said.
“True, but the Monitor carried only Dahlgren’s XI-inch guns, not the XV-inch guns being fitted now on every new ship. The monitors at Charleston now each have one of their two guns a XV-inch. Moreover, at Hampton Roads, the Monitor only used 50 percent of the proof charge, meaning the maximum powder charge the guns were rated as being able to take. According to our sources, that deficiency has been corrected. In combat the Americans will use nearly 100 percent of the proof charge. American tests on armor similar to the Virginia’s found that not only the XV- but the XI-inch projectiles would go right through her plate.”
Hancock led him into the shade of the garden pergola and motioned him to the bench. “Damned tricky equation a war with the Americans, trickier than they think back home. I wonder if anyone in London reads my reports.”
Wolseley was trying to sort out the implications of Hancock’s review. “I understood that we were absolutely convinced during the Trent Affair that we could have crushed the Americans. Have the monitors upset that assumption so completely?”
“You must remember that in December 1861, the Americans had just embarked on this ruinous war. Their Navy was small-barely ninety ships, or one-tenth the size of the Royal Navy. Their admittedly fine harbor forts were in many cases unmanned and ungunned. We would have crushed them in one blow, I believe.
“But with the declaration of the blockade, the American Navy began to grow like Jack’s magic beans. In four months, they had doubled the number of ships; in ten months they had grown sixfold. Mr. Welles was quoted, in speaking of one of the new ships rushed to completion, that its keel had been growing in a forest three months ago. Many of these new ships were gunboats or were converted merchantmen, but the point is that they did the job. Moreover, their crews have learned their jobs. The Americans have always been good sailors and when given even odds have embarrassed the Royal Navy too many times for me to consider-not at all like fighting the French. It is the American ability to organize and produce that worries me, Wolseley.”
It occurred to Wolseley that the Army had had a similar experience with this American talent. During the Crimean War, when the production of the new Enfield rifled musket could not meet the war demand, the British Army had to swallow its pride and send an ordnance delegation to the United States. They toured the War Department’s Springfield Arsenal and observed the “American method” of mass production. The Army immediately put in an order for comparable American-made machinery to completely reequip the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield. They also hired an American to manage the factory. The Royal Small Arms Factory had been transformed by its American additions into the pride of British manufacturing. The production of the superb Enfield rifle was more than sufficient to completely equip the British Army and its territorial forces as well as sell hundreds of thousands to both the Confederacy and the Union before the latter’s production increase by this time made imports unnecessary.9
“There’s more, Wolseley. Are you aware that Adm. Sir Alexander Milne developed a war plan against the United States during the Trent Affair? He proposed to break the Union blockade at two points. Charleston, of course, would be the main effort, with a secondary effort to open a port such as Galveston, Texas. He also proposed to counterblockade the ports of the North and to sail up the Chesapeake Bay and attack Washington itself. At that time, we could have easily done it. I understand Admiral Milne says that today he would find such a plan most risky.”
“But, Hancock, given the neutrality of Her Majesty’s government, the risk of war seems highly unlikely, does it not?”
“Not as unlikely as you think. London does not understand the deep anger the North feels toward Great Britain. British commerce keeps the Confederacy alive through our blockade-runners. Our Foreign Enlistment Act is so flimsy that British shipyards have produced a squadron of commerce raiders that is ruining the American merchant navy and whaling fleet with disastrous effects in the ports and businesses of the North. The press feeds the public’s anger. Too many Americans already feel that we are secretly at war with them now. Adding constant insult to injury is our open partiality for the South. Such articles as yours in Blackwood’s, I must say, Wolseley, are exactly what feeds anti-British sentiment. I cannot count the number of Americans of consequence who have angrily asked me to explain the advocacy of Her Majesty’s Assistant Quartermaster General of Canada for British alliance with the Confederacy.”
Before Wolseley had time to come to his own defense, Hancock exclaimed, “It’s frightfully hot even here in the shade. Let’s go indoors. Besides, I have something to show you that may be of interest.”
4½ STREET, S.E., WASHINGTON, D.C., 11:15 PM, AUGUST 7, 1863
The carriage had only a few blocks to go as it trundled out of the Navy Yard gate. Lincoln explained that the object of their visit was a gallant young soldier-Col. Ulric Dahlgren, son of the admiral, who was recuperating at his father’s home. Ulric had lost his leg while pursuing Lee after Gettysburg. Sharpe looked forward to the visit. Young Dahlgren and he had been appointed on the same order to Hooker’s headquarters. It was a small headquarters, and the two were easily drawn to each other. Captain Dahlgren had been a twenty-one-year-old, handsome, lithe, blond beau sabreur, with a taste for daring forays into the enemy, and Sharpe had been the homely looking colonel with a master’s touch for intelligence. It was this relationship that had led to the incredible raid that captured Jeff Davis’s dispatches to Lee on July 2 at Gettysburg. Sergeant Cline had brought the information of the courier’s route and timing, and Sharpe had organized the raid with Dahlgren in command. It had been the stuff of legend as Dahlgren led his band of fifteen men into a surprise attack on the courier escort and a passing Confederate wagon train in the middle of Greencastle. It was Cline who had seized the couriers with a cocked pistol at their heads. Dahlgren immediately rode the thirty miles for Meade’s headquarters at Gettysburg and arrived at midnight to put the dispatches into Meade’s hands. They were wired to Washington the next day; their content exposed the strategic weakness of the Confederacy in detail. Meade asked Dahlgren how he could reward him, and the young man said to give him a hundred men and send him out again. He had his wish. As he harried Lee’s rear as it crossed the mountains, a bullet had shattered his foot. The wound went bad, and the leg below the knee had to be taken off.