Winslow thanked God that his own losses had been only one dead and twelve wounded. Eleven of Lamson’s men had gone to the bottom with Gettysburg, and he had lost thirty-nine of ninety-six men. “How are your wounded, Captain?” he greeted Lamson, still according him the honorary title though he no longer had a ship and would revert to the permanent rank of lieutenant.
“Doing well, thank you. Your surgeon is a man of rare talent, Captain. And you are a man of rare timing. I had determined to keep fighting until she went under rather than strike when the Kearsarge arrived out of nowhere.”
“You can thank Ambassador Adams for that,” Winslow puffed on his pipe and leaned over the side. “Speaking of the ambassador, how is his son doing?”
“The surgeon thinks he shall recover. He received a ball clean through the shoulder, courtesy of the Royal Marines. He will be able to dine out on it for the rest of his life. I owe him mine. He pushed me aside to take the ball aimed for me. I hadn’t thought he had it in him.”
Winslow tucked that away in his mind and turned to the matter at hand. “We shall be home in a week if we can avoid the entire damned Royal Navy, which I am sure is after us as we speak. There will be hell to pay, Captain. You realize that we have real naval war on us now, don’t you? It’s just not blockade duty or river gunboats or pounding away at forts, but a navy war with the greatest Navy in the world.”
Lamson did not appear dismayed.
Winslow just shook his head and muttered to himself, “Hell to pay, hell to pay.”
9
NEW YORK HARBOR, NEW YORK, 12:35 PM, SEPTEMBER 11, 1863
Oslyabya is not a word that slips easily from the tongue of an English speaker. The crowds of New Yorkers that rushed to the docks to see the newly arrived Russian steam frigate of that name truly mangled it. None of them knew the ancient glory of its name, that of a monk who fought in the Russian shield wall at the battle of Kulikovo Fields in 1380, the first Russian victory over the dreaded Tatars, and their first step toward empire. None of that ancient symbolism mattered to the people who filled the docks where the frigate was tied up. It was the Russian Empire, the might it represented, and the friendship its presence meant that thrilled them.
It was fixed in the American mind that the only friend of the Union among the great powers of Europe was Russia. The arrival of this ship with the news that she was only the advance of a powerful squadron of the Baltic Fleet sped along the telegraph lines throughout the North. The timing of the Olsyabya’s arrival could not have been better. The twin victories of summer, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, had been so full of promise for a speedy collapse of the rebellion, but those expectations had petered out as the exhausted armies maneuvered to no effect throughout the late summer. Northern morale had sunk. It was on this tinder of faded hopes that news of the Oslyabya’s arrival fell like a spark.
The North went wild with excitement. The press, desperate for good news, fed the public perception that the Russians had come to show support for the harried Union and that the natural alliance of Russia and America was soon to be officially cemented. Neither the U.S. government nor the Russians did anything to dispel this notion, though their public statements confined themselves to traditional goodwill. It was too good for Northern morale and even better as an unspoken warning to Britain and France. The New York Herald editorialized: Should the Russian empire and the American republic form an offensive and defensive alliance they would necessarily preponderate and rule throughout the world. Our enemies should beware how they drive us to the cementing of a compact the existence of which would be the end of all opposing power and influence.
The crowds that were welcomed aboard the Russian frigate as visitors found their expectations of the Russians realized. Almost every Russian officer could speak English well, the legacy of the fact that on-the-shore British naval officers, largely Scots, had officered much of the Russian Navy as it grew into a professional force in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The tall young women of New York, of English and German stock, were a bit taken aback, though, by the relatively short stature of most Russian officers.3 A ball was immediately thrown for the ship’s officers, who caused an unexpected reaction among the throngs of tall New York belles.Alas! for the Russians. It is known, or should be, that these Slavic heroes are not the very largest of the human race-that they are small men in fact-and what is to become of small men in such a jam? Early in the night-indeed, very soon after the dance began-we saw several of them in the embrace of grand nebulous masses of muslin and crinoline, whisked hither and thither as if in terrible torment-their eyes aglare-their hair blown out-and all their persons expressive of the most desperate energy, doubtless in an endeavor to escape. What became of them we cannot tell.
Another novelty was Protestant America’s first encounter with the Orthodox Church in the form of Oslyabya’s chaplain, whom the press described as “an eminent theologian.” The service aboard ship was reported with an open-mindedness rarely found for Roman Catholicism in America at that time.
There was nothing about the Russians that did not find favor with the press and public alike. The dockyard pickpockets and thieves declared Russian sailors off-limits in a burst of patriotic fervor. The streetwalkers were even rumored to offer an occasional service gratis. “It is a noticeable fact that even the sharpers, who so fall foul of strangers, have kept themselves off these ‘Roo-shans.’”
It was in the midst of the excitement over the Russians that the Liverpool packet Aurora arrived on September 17. She was the first fast packet to race across the Atlantic since the battle of Moelfre Bay. Word of the battle spread throughout the city and was immediately wired to Washington. Eight hours later, the news was in Richmond as well.
The North went wild with excitement. The church bells rang from Maine to Wisconsin as they had for Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Pent-up anger at British connivance with the Confederacy exploded in cheers and adulation for the Kearsarge and Gettysburg, mixed with anxiety for the safety of Winslow’s ship. The newspapers carried by Aurora trumpeted the fact that the entire Royal Navy had been set in pursuit of Kearsarge. In the South, the news spread just as fast, and the church bells would have rung with even greater joy had they not all already been melted down for cannon.
THE WHITE HOUSE, 3:30 PM, SEPTEMBER 18, 1863
The mood in the White House shared none of the public’s exuberance. Two days later, another ship arrived with Ambassador Adams’s enciphered reports of the battle as well his dealings with Russell. The ship also carried the British papers. They all screamed for war.
Seward briefed Lincoln and the cabinet on the events of Moelfre Bay. He concluded, “The British have brought this upon themselves. They hid behind the Foreign Enlistment Act, a tissue of neutrality so pathetic that it made them the arsenal and storehouse of the rebellion. The entire attitude of the British government has been one of unremitting hostility. In demanding an unattainable level of proof that the rams, not to mention the other pirates built in British yards, were intended for use by the Confederacy, they hoped to hide behind a fiction of legality. I swear, Mr. President, that had Adams presented proof written with the finger of God Himself, the British would have referred it to a Lucifer in a powdered wig to rule upon its authenticity.