Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  CHAPTER SIX: “WE CANNOT LOSE A FLEET”

  1. Sherman had been known as Uncle Billy until he suppressed the Copperhead revolt in Chicago where he earned his new epithet for summarily hanging hundreds of Copperheads captured bearing arms in civilian clothes.

  2. *Wars of the Rebellion and Foreign Intervention, Vol. XXX, Chap. 37 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1888), pp. 398, 610–616. The prisoners mentioned by Sherman were mostly from the British 1st Hamilton Brigade, which had strung out on the flank west from Chazy to Sciota. Wolseley’s couriers carrying the order to withdraw never arrived. The brigade’s right anchor had been overrun by Custer, and the rest had remained in its positions until forced to surrender after the battle, yielding 1,410 prisoners to add to the 207 prisoners taken at Sciota. Another 823 prisoners were taken, mostly wounded or stragglers who wandered away from their units looking for a warm house or campfire. In contrast, the British reported taking 1,888 American prisoners, mostly from Cobham’s Brigade destroyed at Prospect Hill and Candy’s Brigade driven into Fort Montgomery. Sherman reported 723 killed, 2,209 wounded, and 2,300 missing. The British reported 632 killed, 1,940 wounded, and 3,112 missing; however, many of the missing were killed or wounded left behind. Total U.S. losses were 5,222; total British losses were 5,144. The severest U.S. losses had been in Ruger’s Brigade (321 killed and wounded) as it attempted to storm the Chazy bridge and in Hecker’s Brigade (422 killed and wounded). The British reported severe losses in the Brigade of Guards as they cleared Champlain, 511 killed and wounded or 24 percent. As a percentage of forces committed U.S. losses were 9.6 percent; British losses were 16.2 percent.

  3. Peter G. Tsouras, A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc., 2010), pp. 111–13.

  4. “HMS Prince Albert (1864),” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_PrinceAlbert_(1864), accessed March 30, 2011. HMS Prince Albert measured 240 ft in length by 48 ft in the beam and was powered by a one shaft Humphreys Tennant Horizontal 2130 hp engine. She was protected by a 4.5 in. armored belt with 3.4 in. armor at the ends and the deck .75 to 1.2 in. She had four turrets, two each fore and aft of the smokestack with 10 in. of armor in the front and 5 in. on the side and rear. Unlike the American monitors, it had a much greater freeboard at 7 feet. Designed for coastal defense in shallow waters she had a deep draught of 20.5 ft.

  5. London Times, March 20, 1863.

  6. Discovery DVD Classics: Hunt for the USS Alligator: Navy’s First Sub (Discovery Communications LLC, 2007) De Villeroi walked off the job as chief engineer during the construction of the Alligator over severe disagreements with the Navy. *However, because of his unique engineering and scientific skills the Navy hired him to be the senior engineering advisor for the Shark class submarine. The immediate offer of American citizenship soothed his bruised feelings enough to accept the offer. Adolphus Meninger, The Life of Brutus de Villeroi: Creative Genius of the Submarine (New York: D. Appleton, 189), pp. 122–25.

  7. Mark K. Ragan, Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare in the Civil War (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), pp. 135, 176.

  8. Hunt for the USS Alligator. The boat was originally fitted out with paddles lining the side of the hull, but this eventually proved unsatisfactory because of the difficulty of going in reverse. The Navy redesigned the propulsion system by installing a propeller powered by the men on their cranks.

  9. Experiment had proved to de Villeroi that the air was purified by pumping it through lime water, but it was only later learned that the lime water served to scrub the carbon dioxide out of the air.

  10. *Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Rise of the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Fleet (Boston: Ripley & Sons, Publishers, 1912), p. 211. The names of the rest of the Shark class as delivered, remarkably close to Fox’s estimate, were the Dolphin, Whale, Barracuda, and Sea Monster.

  11. Peter G. Tsouras, A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2010), pp. 145–46.

  12. The New York press had been greatly surprised when the Russian Baltic squadron visited New York to learn that almost every Russian naval officer was fluent in English. That skill had its roots in the eighteenth century when large numbers of Royal Navy officers who had been on the beach at half pay had taken service with the Russian Imperial Navy. Their presence as teachers had been so powerful as to leave the King’s English as a second language in the wardrooms of the Russian fleet. A large number of those Royal Navy officers had been Scots.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: PHILOSOPHER GENERALS

  1. *Horace Porter, Grant in the Great War (Philadelphia: Acheson Publishers, 1883), p. 119. The medical orderly who had treated Grant immediately after his head wound was right in that it looked worse than it really was. Nevertheless, excruciating headaches had prevented Grant from intervening in the subsequent fighting at Chazy. He had only arrived back in Washington the day before.

  2. Lamon, Ward Hill, edited by Bob O’Connor, The Life of Abraham Lincoln as President: A Personal Account by Lincoln’s Bodyguard (Conshohocken, PA: Mount Claire Press, 2010), p.455.

  3. Peter G. Tsouras, A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2010), Chapter 2.

  4. A Rainbow of Blood. X Corps was evacuated from the siege of Charleston after the defeat of the Royal Navy’s attack with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron and was disembarked in Norfolk where it came under the command of the Army of the James commanded by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler.

  5. Wikipedia accessed 5 April 2011.

  6. “The Wild Geese Today—Erin’s Far Flung Exiles;” http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iK3AFg9kya4J:www.thewildgeese.com/pages/kelly.html+%22Colonel+Patrick+Kelly%22&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com, accessed 6 May 2011.

  7. Phoenix Park, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Park, accessed 17 July 2011.

  8. James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn (1811–1875), was noted by the Times to be the only peer to hold peerages in England, Scotland, and Ireland. He was a Conservative politician with experience in Ireland as the Lord Lieutenant of Donegal and the natural pick for that office by both Lord Derby and Disreali.

  9. Phoenix Park.

  10. T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), pp. 277, 288.

  11. Stiles, pp. 246–48.

  12. http://www.starbacks.ca/Pentagon/1503/70sigsqn.html, and http://www.essex-yeomanry.org.uk/in-the-news/69-military-units-of-essex-4.html., accessed 11 Mar 2011. “In 1830 the West Essex Yeomanry Cavalry was raised to help the civil powers cope with the widespread agitation in Essex caused by the proposed Reform Bill,” and specifically to protect the gunpowder mills at Waltham Abbey and the ordnance factory at Enfield Lock. “In the 1850’s this Regiment expanded to comprise three cavalry and two artillery troops and a band.”

  13. David Pam, The Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield & Its Workers (Published by author, 1993), p. 61.

  14. *Sir Robert Wilson, Soldiering for the Queen: The Crimea, The Mutiny, and the American War (London: Blackthorne & Son, Ltd, 1872), p. 311. Wilson had won a rare commission on merit in an infantry regiment, the 100th Foot, at a time when commissions were purchased. He won his Victoria Cross (VC) at Inkerman in the Crimea and transferred to the 9th Lancers in India just in time for the Great Mutiny; his wounds forced his retirement. In his autobiography Wilson alludes to these rumors of loot from the sack of Dehli as pure invention, though fails to account for his sudden ample means after his retirement, made all the more curious by his lower middle class origins.

  15. Pam, pp. 50–56.

  16. Pam, pp. 60–65.

  17. J. Tuff, Notices of Enfield (J.H. Meyrs, Publishers, 1858), pp. 204–06.

  18. Pam, p. 45.

  19. The body of King Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon king of England slain by an arrow in the eye at the battle of Hastings in 1066, is buried outside Waltham Abby.

  20. Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abby; http://www.royalgunpowdermills.com/about.htm; ac
cessed 7 March 2011.

  21. Frederick Abel, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Abel, accessed 17 July 2011.

  22. Sherman’s hairpins was the name given by the troops to the twisting of rails heated red hot over a fire of ties around a telegraph pole. This rendered the rail useless; it could not be straightened but had to be melted down again, a process the South simply did not have the resources before British intervention.

  23. Edmond Dédé’s parents had emigrated from Haiti like so many mulattos who had supported the French. His father served as the militia bandmaster. Edmond was a violin prodigy and studied under gifted teachers, white and black. Hostility forced him to study in Mexico and after a short return to the city, emigrated to France where he successfully auditioned at the Paris Conservatoire in 1857 where he studied. He led the orchestra at the Theatre l’Alacazar for twenty-seven years.

  24. John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860–1880 (Chicago, 1973), p. 10.

  25. Harold Holzer, ed., Lincoln As I Knew Him: Gossip, Tributes & Revelations from His Best Friends and Worst Enemies (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1999), pp. 117–18.

  26. Hozler, pp. 120–21. Dr. Thomas Arnold was a legendary British headmaster.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: VAE VICTIS

  1. St. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Patras in Achaea (Greece) Rimsky. The name Andrew in Greek means manly. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Navy, now the navy of the Russian Federation, readopted the St. Andrew’s cross ensign of the old Imperial Russian Navy in 1992. The last review of the Soviet naval ensign was witnessed by this author on Navy Davy with the Black Sea Fleet in July 1992. The St. Andrew’s Cross flag is also the national flag of Scotland adopted in the sixteenth century, although the cross is in white on a blue saltire, the reverse of the Russian Andreyevsky ensign.

  2. Stiles, pp. 202, 257. Both Northern Star and Ariel were ships belonging to Cornelius Vanderbilt, and like the SS Vanderbilt herself were considered some of the fastest and soundest ships afloat.

  3. Traditionally the Russians have referred to their soldiers afloat as naval infantry instead of marines as in most other navies.

  4. Edwin Fishel, The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), pp. 527–28.

  5. Rose Greenhow was a famous Confederate spy operating in Washington during the early part of the war.

  6. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union, pp. 306–10, 531.

  7. Peter F. Stevens, The Voyage of the Catalpa: A Perilous Journey and Six Irish Rebels’ Escape to Freedom (New York: Carroll & Graff, Publishers, 2002), p. 5.

  8. Brennus was the leader of the Senones, a Celtic people who had conquered northern Itlay and went on to defeat the Romans at the battle of Allia in 387 BC and saked Rome itself, except for the Capitoline Hill, which held out. The Romans attempted to pay off Brennus for one thousand pounds of gold. According to Livy, the Romans disputed the weights the Celts used to weigh the gold whereupon during a Brennus threw his sword onto the scales and uttered the famous words “Vae victis!”

  9. A cavalry regiment at this time was organized into ten companies of eighty men (at full strength). Any multicompany detachment was termed a battalion. The terms company and battalion would in later years be replaced by troop and squadron in U.S. Army terminology.

  10. C.D. Yonge, History of the British Navy from the Earliest Time to the Present Day, Vol. III (London: Richard Bently, 1866), pp. 206, 206, 472.

  11. http://www.enotes.com/topic/List_of_Russian_steam_frigates, accessed 29 April 2011; Russian ships and guns: Bogatyr 18 (2,200 tons), Kalevala 19 (1,800 tons), Rynda 11 (8,00 tons), Gaidamak 7 (1,050 tons), and Abrek 5 (1,070 tons).

  12. *Edward Lyon Haythornthwaite, British Operations in California in the Great War, Vol. I, Clearing the Seas (London: Bidwell & Sons, 1877), p. 172. British ships at Esquimalt at this time included HMS Alert 17 (sloop, 1045 tons), HMS Charybidis 21 (corvette, 2,267 tons), and Albacore class gunboats (284 tons) HMS Forward 2 and Grappler 2. The only British regiment in the area was the 99th Foot hurriedly transferred from China at the outbreak of the war.

  13. The tonnage of the Russian squadron was 6,920 tons, the British squadron 3,877.

  14. Peter G. Tsouras, The Book of Military Quotations (London: Greenhill Books, 2005), p. 27. Nelson, 3 May 1797, letter during the battle of Bastian.

  15. Russian Naval Infantry were the equivalent of U.S. and Royal Marines. They wore a distinctive white-and-blue-stripped undershirt under their blouses.

  16. *John C. Wilton, The Battle of San Juan de Fuca (London: William Slaughter, Publisher, 1910), pp. 211–12. Besides HMS Hastings 50, the squadron consisted of HMS Curacoa 23 (frigate), HMS Esk 21 (Corvette), and HMS Miranda 15 (sloop). All five Russian ships were taken with only the loss of gunboat Forward.

  CHAPTER NINE: GENERAL GRANT’S ARMY OF INVASION

  1. William A. Tidwell, April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995), p.65.

  2. Glasgow (41st Foot), Manchester (14th Hussars).

  3. Birmingham (1st and 2nd Dragoons), Sheffield (1/8th Foot), York (16th Lancers).

  4. The Royal Powder Mills at Waltham Abbey were only twelve miles north of London at this time.

  5. *Everett P. Norton, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Ulrich Dahlgren (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippencott & Co., 1910), pp. 229–35.

  6. *Nigel Simonton, “The Battle for Enfield Lock,” British Historical Review, vol. XI, p. 89, September 1979.

  7. “Shooting leave” was the British military euphemism for going on an intelligence collection mission in the guise of a private hunting trip.

  8. *William Frederick Johnson, RM (ret), The Rifle Volunteer Corps in the American War (London: Southwick & Stimson, Publishers, 1987), p. 122. Five RVCs totaling 1,807 men eventually took up positions to guard Buckingham Palace: 1st, 7th, and 20th London RVCs, 23rd Middlesex, and remarkably the 1st Nottingham, or Robin Hood RVCs. In appreciation for their service, each unit was allowed to add “Royal” to its name, for example, the 1st Royal Robin Hood RVC. It was an honor the mention of which would get you expelled from any mess in the Brigade of Guards.

  9. Peter G. Tsouras, The Greenhill Dictionary of Military Quotations (London: Greenhill Books, 2001), p. 314.

  10. *John William Greenhouse, The Russian Raid: Terror in the Irish Sea, 1864 (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1927), p. 197.

  CHAPTER TEN: “OLD SOLDIERS OF THE QUEEN”

  1. Richard A. Sauers, Gettysburg: The Meade-Sickles Controversty (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003), p. 57.

  2. On April 1, 1864, the major armies and independent corps of the United States were: Army of the Hudson (VI, XI, XII Corps) (Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman); Army of the Potomac (I, II, III, V Corps) (Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade); Army of the Cumberland (IV, XVII, XX, XXI Corps) (Maj. Gen. George Thomas); Army of the James (X, XVIII Corps) (Maj. Gen. Baldy Smith); Army of the Mississippi (XIX Corps, XXIII, Corps d’Afrique) (William B. Franklin); IX Corps (Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles).

  3. Wright had been captured riding too far ahead of his corps’ first division after it had crossed the Kennebunk River and was captured at the onset of the battle by Hope Grant’s cavalry. The ensuing battle of Kennebunk saw Wright’s First Division cut off by the destruction of the river bridge, and most of it was captured, killed, or wounded in the subsequent fighting. Most of the prisoners had been exchanged for the like number of British and Canadian prisoners taken at the battle of Clavarck. Wright’s capture in leading from the front not only did not take away from his reputation as an aggressive and skilled commander but instead reinforced it

  4. Robert M. Grosvenor, ed., “The Old Soldiers of the King,” Songs of Rebels and Redcoats (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1972) lyrics on record sleeve. This song was originally composed during the American Revolution and was adapted in the Great War; references to the king we
re changed to the queen, from Lexington to Clavarack, and from Princeton to New York.

  5. * Edward Dupree, Decision at Ponchatoula (New Orleans: St. Louis Press, 1989), p. 201.

  6. At this time, the steam engines of ships were not efficient enough to gain enough sustained power to sail exclusively on the coal they could carry. The wind was used whenever possible to spare the coal. So the traditional sails were still a vital part of the steamship’s power of locomotion.

  7. *Pryce Lewis, A Spy in Babylon (New York: St. Edmund Press, 1895), pp. 232–35. Lewis reveals that Sharpe depleted the U.S. Treasury’s store of gold sovereigns for this operation under the direct authorization of President Lincoln.

  8. These were the 12th Lancers from Hounslow in the London area, nicknamed the “Supple Twelfth.”

  9. The 63rd New York and 116th Pennsylvania Regiments were left to garrison Dublin. The three regiments on the field also left a few companies in the garrison. On that day, Meagher had about 4,300 men on the field.

  10. The Curragh Brigade consisted of the 2/12th, 84th, and 86th Foot, and the attached 17th Royal Engineer Company; the ad hoc cavalry brigade numbered the 15th Hussars and 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards. The British force numbered slightly over five thousand men.

  11. *The charge of the Royal Dragoon Guards at Tallaght was immortalized in a sensational painting by Lady Butler, who would paint a similar painting of the charge of the Scots Grays at Waterloo.

  12. At the Battle of the Boyne just outside the town of Drogheda on Ireland’s east coast on July 12, 1690, the Protestant King William defeated the Catholic King James II, whom he had deposed in 1688. The two armies faced each other across the Boyne River; William’s professional army crushed James’s army of mostly raw recruits. The battle helped ensure the continuation of Protestant supremacy in Ireland.