Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History

by Peter G. Tsouras

  Excitement ran through the officers and gun crews of both ships as the Kearsarge turned. Hardly had the Kearsarge come round before the Undaunted sheered, presented her starboard battery, and slowed her engines. At long range of about a mile, the British ship opened her full broadside, the shot cutting some of Kearsarge’s rigging and going over and alongside her. Immediately Winslow ordered more speed, but in less than two minutes Undaunted loaded and fired another broadside and followed it with a third but to little effect. Kearsarge was now within about nine hundred yards. So far, distance had prevented the rapid British broadsides from crippling the American.

  “Fire!” Kearsarge’s starboard battery erupted. The XI-inch 5-second-fused shells crashed into Undaunted’s waterline to explode inside. The Marines manning the 28-pounder rifle dropped a shell onto Undaunted’s quarterdeck while the crew of the small Dahlgren howitzer spewed shrapnel on the main deck. Kearsarge’s guns were firing at will, pumping more shells into the enemy’s waterline. Winslow sheered away, intending to break off the action and resume his course, but the Undaunted sent a powerful broadside into his ship. One of his 32-pounders was struck by two of the Undaunted’s 32-pound shot with a great resounding clang of metal on metal. A powder charge exploded in the crewman’s hands, upending the gun and sending it spinning through the crew, reducing them to bloody rag dolls.

  Kearsarge’s engines throbbed as the ship found its running legs. Undaunted was slow to follow and gradually fell behind. Winslow could only assume his guns had done their work. He was right. The XI-inch Dahlgren shells had blown jagged holes in Undaunted’s hull. Water was pouring through and began filling the hold. Her carpenters swarmed to plug them with canvas and wooden braces. The Marine gunners had wounded Undaunted as well. Their shells on the enemy’s quarterdeck had shattered the wheel and killed the captain. The ship’s executive officer assumed command and threw every effort into saving the ship.21

  Winslow breathed more easily as the enemy’s sail grew smaller and smaller. His relief was premature. The Undaunted had barely been lost to sight when the wounded ship was overtaken by the main pursuit squadron consisting of the frigates HMS Topaze and Dauntless and sloops Alert and Gannet. Undaunted gave them Kearsarge’s course, and they leapt in pursuit. They were under the command of the senior captain, John Welbore Sunderland Spencer of the Topaze.

  In two days the smoke from their funnels was visible from Kearsarge’s topsail. On the third day the ships were visible from the quarterdeck. On the fourth day it was clear that they had spread out to sweep the American into a closing net. Winslow drove his ship into a late summer storm that tossed it through heavy seas and driving rain. He changed course to the southeast as the storm moved in that direction. On the sixth day Kearsarge broke out of the storm into clear weather with none of his pursuers in sight. He resumed course for New York. On the eighth day four plumes of smoke again appeared behind him. This time the lookouts also spotted two plumes ahead of them. “I think company would be a good idea about now,” Winslow muttered to himself. If they were British, it was unlikely they had heard of Moelfre Bay so far out; if they were not British, he might be able to hide among them or use them as a decoy. He needed one more break; they were only four days’ sailing time from New York and the safety of its harbor forts. He did not think the invisible barrier of American maritime jurisdiction would stop them.

  By the morning of the ninth day, September 21, the two ships ahead of him were seen to be flying the St. Andrew’s cross, Russian naval colors. Kearsarge fired off a salute and hailed them. They were the Imperial Russian Navy screw frigates Aleksandr Nevksy and Peresvet. They were very impressive, large ships of a very American design, which was not surprising since Russia bought many ships from the United States and followed its shipbuilding advances. Large and well-armed, the 5,100-ton Nevsky carried fifty-one smoothbore guns, almost making her a ship of the line, and the Peresvet bore forty-four. All the guns in both ships were powerful 60-pounders, cast in Philadelphia, another sign of close Russo-American cooperation.22

  Adm. Stefan Lisovsky flew his pennant aboard the Nevsky, the flagship of the Russian Navy. The Czar had not sent such a ship lightly. Lisovsky greeted Winslow enthusiastically and invited him aboard. His eagerness to see the Americans was flavored by his curiosity to find out how they had acquired the visible battle damage. Perhaps they had encountered the infamous Alabama. In any case, it would be a good way to begin his goodwill visit to the United States.

  His curiosity spiked when he saw the young civilian with his arm in a sling being lowered into Kearsarge’s boat along with the captain’s party. He gave orders to prepare a more comfortable hoist for the wounded man to save him the pain of climbing up the ship’s ladder thrown over the side. As a special courtesy he was on the quarterdeck to receive his guests when they came aboard. When Winslow stepped aboard the boatswains’ whistles piped and an honor guard of Russian naval infantry presented arms. Winslow saluted the flag and the admiral who returned the salute and extended his hand. Winslow introduced his party, and Lisovsky introduced his officers. The admiral was clearly interested in young Adams, not only as private secretary of the American ambassador to the Court of St. James, but as the grandson and great-grandson of presidents. He came as close to royalty as Lisovsky would find in America. Adams was still in pain from his injury but laid on the charm. Lamson was more reserved, but Lisovksy sized him up quickly as a formidable officer. Winslow was gratified that the entire conversation was held in English, but came quickly to the point. The British ships were closing with every minute.

  There were gasps from the Russian officers as they listened to the account of Moelfre Bay and the sinking of two Royal Navy warships and the encounter with Undaunted. As shocking as the story was, the stock of the Americans had clearly soared. There was not a Russian naval officer who did not dream of avenging the Royal Navy’s humiliation of the Russian Imperial Navy in the Crimean War.

  Lisovsky was no less impressed, but he had other matters to consider. Lisovsky was a man of the world, and his life in the Russian Navy had exposed him to some of the seamier sides of that world. The Czar has chosen him for his sense of things beyond his naval duties. The enormity of the tale that Winslow unfolded stunned him. My God, he thought, I’m sailing into a war. His instructions had been clear: he was to take no part in the American Civil War on the part of the U.S. government, and he was to make no overt statement as to a Russo-American alliance directed against Britain and France. Such discussion was the duty of the Baron Stoeckel, the Czar’s ambassador in Washington. While in the United States, Lisovsky was to be guided by Stoeckel’s political instructions. However, and this was an enormous “however,” Lisovsky bore sealed orders that he was to open should the United States be attacked by any foreign power or should such a power openly side with the Confederacy.23

  Winslow was clearly in trouble. He was asking Lisovsky’s help to avoid the British. The admiral knew that a misstep could drag Russia into the inevitable war Moelfre Bay would ignite. Yet he had speculated long and hard on his sealed orders and what they might be. He knew he was a pawn in the greatest game of all as Winslow said, “I beg your assistance, sir. They will overhaul me in less time than it will take for me to reach the safety of New York.”

  Adams added, “My government would consider your assistance to be the ultimate proof of his Imperial Majesty’s regard for the United States. I am fully acquainted with the correspondence between our governments. I have been present at my father’s side when he and your ambassador in London have discussed the importance of a Russo-American common front in the face of British world hegemony. Your ambassador has stated in the clearest terms that those are the very objectives of his Imperial Majesty’s government as well. And now, sir, may I observe that the cause of our common interest will be upon us shortly.”

  Winslow suggested that the Russians would help greatly by staying between Kearsarge and her pursuers. Lisovsky thought quickly and smiled, “I think we can d
o better than that, Captain. I propose that you sail with my ships. I will escort you into port, as, shall we say, an exercise of the first law of the sea—to aid those in distress.” He gave a sidelong glance to Kearsarge. “Your gallant ship is obviously in danger of floundering from its wounds. We cannot leave you alone. His Imperial Majesty would never forgive me. Besides, my officers and I cannot wait to hear every detail of how you bearded the British lion in his own den.”24

  CHATHAM ARCH, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, 8:37 PM, SEPTEMBER 22, 1863

  Capt. John Hines thought about Col. George Grenfell’s description of the man to whom he had just been introduced, Lt. Col. Pitt Rivers, late assistant quartermaster of the British garrison of Ireland: “a man of fierce temper, not untinged with violence, of considerable energy and enthusiasm, unsociable with his peers, a domestic tyrant and yet approachable to his labourers, a dominant and aloof father in the grand… manner, though possessing a dry sense of humor.”25

  Rivers was a man of complete self-assurance, as befitted an Englishman among lesser beings. He was about thirty-six and in his prime. As master of ordnance at an early age, he had been instrumental in the trials that led to the adoption of the Enfield rifle for the British Army. In the grand Victorian style, he was also a world-class archaeologist. He was above all a fighting man, brevetted and mentioned in dispatches for distinguished service in the Crimea. He had come over to Canada with the wave of reinforcements during the crisis of the Trent Affair in late 1861. Six months later he had been ordered to Ireland, his chief duty to ferret out the Fenian conspiracies. Those conspiracies spanned the Atlantic now and had drawn him back to North America. Wolseley had had “additional duties” for him, the cause of his presence in this modest hotel in this modest provincial city.

  The only other man in the room was Col. George Grenfell St. Ledger, late of Her Majesty’s Army and a soldier of fortune. Grenfell was the sort of antagonist a novelist would have portrayed—“At sixty-two years of age he was still an impressive figure of romance. Slightly under six feet, with light blue eyes and shoulder-length white hair setting off a face darkened by the sandstorms of the Sahara and the winds of the Mediterranean, he had the personal appearance of a Brian de Bois-Gilbert in Ivanhoe,” as the Confederate cavalry general Basil Duke would say. An aristocratic black sheep, he had run off at an early age to join the French Chasseurs d’Afrique, fight against and then with the Moors against the French, scour Riffian pirates from the approaches to Gibralter, and join Garibaldi in his struggle for Italian independence. The lure of the American Civil War broke his only attempt at retired country life. Jefferson Davis had been glad to commission him a colonel and make him Bragg’s inspector general.26 With the Morgan fiasco still fresh, he had asked Grenfell for less conventional assistance. Grenfell had slipped through the Union states and into Canada, where he had made contact with Wolseley and laid Davis’s proposals before him.

  Wolseley had made the very clear point that Grenfell’s proposals could not possibly be contemplated by Her Majesty’s armed forces, but he was interested in a general, exploratory discussion of a completely unofficial kind. In the meantime, the news of Moelfre Bay and the Union disaster at Chickamauga had shifted the ground from under every party. It was a new game, with a new urgency redolent with opportunity.27

  WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., 9:05 AM, SEPTEMBER 24, 1863

  Nothing but bad news was coming from Chattanooga and the trapped Army of the Cumberland. Stanton had sent Charles Dana there to be his eyes and ears, and Dana was sending back a stream of encrypted messages emphasizing the increasingly hopeless nature of the situation and the failure of its commander.

  It was obvious to Stanton that Rosecrans needed reinforcements immediately. The XI Corps, especially, and the XII Corps of the Army of the Potomac could use a train ride now, he thought. The former was in especially bad odor among Meade’s men. That relief force needed a man who could command an independent small army. It also needed a man who was burning with the desire to retrieve a failed reputation. The name of Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker slipped into his mind. Hooker was on inactive status in New York. He was a superlative organizer and leader. No man was more suited by experience and ability to grasp this nettle. After Chancellorsville, he had much to prove.

  Stanton consulted Lincoln, who assented, commenting, “I expect Joe now knows the difference between where his headquarters and his hindquarters go.” The order went out that day. “Major General Hooker, U.S. Volunteers, will assume command of XI and XII Corps.”28

  NEW YORK HARBOR, 10:14 AM, SEPTEMBER 24, 1863

  Cannon fire echoed across the Verrazano Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn and up over the docks and streets of Manhatten Island. Word flew from mouth to mouth that the Confederate rams and the British were attacking New York. Work stopped as everyone in the great American metropolis rushed into the streets for news or climbed to the roofs to look into the harbor at the unfolding battle.

  Admiral Lisovsky had assumed too much on the prudence of the British admiral in pursuit of the Kearsarge when he offered to escort her to New York. The Admiralty’s orders were direct and ruthless—sink or capture the Kearsarge. “Pursue her to the ends of the earth and into any harbor in which she seeks refuge.” With the zeal and intrepidity of a young Nelson, that officer had caught up with Winslow and Lisovsky only hours from the Hudson’s mouth and immediately engaged when it became clear the Russians were trying to protect the American sloop. Lisovsky was surprised when the first British ranging shot plunged off the Nevsky’s larboard quarter, but he already has his crew at battle stations. Lisovsky wanted to avoid a decisive engagement and hold his ships in being as commerce raiders in case of war between Russia and Britain. Flee as he might, the British hung on his ships and Kearsarge, pursuing them with a hail of blows into the Hudson’s broad mouth and up the river. The British captains had never seen their crews handle their guns with such speed and precision, and this was in a navy second to none in the smooth and deadly efficiency of its gun drills. It was only a matter of time before the Royal Navy inflicted another humiliation on the Czar’s ships in desperation to take the Kearsarge.

  Time was not on the Royal Navy’s side this morning. The guns on Forts Tompkins and Richmond on Staten Island began to join the fight with scores of heavy guns. Every warship or gunboat of the U.S. Navy in the harbor rushed to get up steam. Adding to the din of gunfire was the ringing of the church bells in alarm throughout Staten Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Jersey shore.29

  The British ships absorbed terrible punishment from the close-range fire of the forts without flinching in their pursuit. Passing through the Verrazano Narrows into the Upper Bay, the ships broke up into separate duels. The two British sloops drew the Russian frigates to give the HMS Dauntless and Topaze the opening to concentrate on the Kearsarge.30

  Winslow was desperate. He faced two heavier ships with skilled and determined captains who were trying to position themselves on his starboard and larboard and crush him with the weight of their broadsides. Two of his 32-pounders were already out of action, and the shells and splinters had thinned out the rest of his crew. Lamson’s men had rushed to replace every casualty, and their young captain had stepped in to replace the fallen executive officer. Smoke that the light breeze could barely move hung over the ships and was lit only by the tongues of flames that spit from the gun ports and main gun decks.

  Lamson stalked the quarterdeck, encouraging the gun crews, his face sprayed and his coat drenched with blood from a man whose head was carried off next to him. His hat had flown off with a splinter. Yet he moved with the easy grace of a leopard, sure and calm, a cigar trailing from the corner of his mouth, his eye never missing an opportunity or a danger. “Handsomely done, boys! Lay it on! Lay it on!” A shot dissolved the gunner, and Lamson snatched the firing cord as it whipped through the air. He gave it a yank to fire the percussion cap to spark the charge in the barrel. The XI-inch roared and bucked, sending its shell to explode on
Dauntless’s gun deck.

  Kearsarge’s crew was being savaged. How long could flesh and blood stand the pounding? Lamson glanced about and noticed a wounded man fight off an offer of help. “No, mate, stand to your post. Fight the ship!” He then crawled to a hatch to slide down the ladder. Two of the men at the XI-inch forward pivot had been sick with fever that morning, but they were manning the gun as if they had been the halest. More of Gettysburg’s crew, just below decks, was waiting to replace the fallen. He ran to the hatch and peered down into upturned expectant faces. “Mr. Henderson, take a gun crew to replace the Marines on the forecastle rifle. Tell the sergeant to report to me.” Bullets slammed into the deck around him from the Royal Marines in Dauntless’s rigging.

  Quarter Gunner Dempsey nudged another man in the direction of Lamson in the brief seconds of inaction between heaving their gun back along its lines before the gunner pulled the lanyard. “Did ya see? Did ya see? He don’t flinch or notice at all.”31

  Topaze’s captain concentrated the fire of his first division guns on Kearsarge’s quarterdeck, sweeping it clean of men and smashing the wheel. Another division directed its fire at the hull below the smokestack until a shot stabbed into the boilers. They exploded in a surge of superheated steam that spread scalding death into the black gang and engineers. Kearsarge’s screws spun to a halt. The ship was now barely drifting on the Hudson’s current. It was enough. Topaze and Dauntless closed on either side. Captain Spencer was determined to walk on Kearsarge’s wrecked deck in triumph as soon as its captain struck. He wanted to do it with all of New York as witness.

  Unknown to Spencer, he had already taken a good part of Albion’s revenge. John Winslow was dead on his own quarterdeck, cut in two by a 32-pounder shot. The ship was drifting, engines dead, masts shot through or hanging shattered over the side. Its hull was riddled and taking water, its decks were a ruin, half its guns out of operation, and the dead and dying strewn across the wreckage. The two heavier British frigates were closing, their guns tearing the guts out the ship, and they were taking everything the surviving Dahlgrens could throw. The senior officer aboard Kearsarge was now Lamson. From Dauntless an officer called through a megaphone, “Do you strike, Kearsarge? Do you strike?”