The Floating Edge
Of all the military branches, there was probably none better prepared for this conflict than the navies of the world. This is mainly due to the fact that there is little difference between war and peace for a sailor. Life aboard a ship goes on pretty much the same no matter what the state of affairs are on land. All of the daily routines continue and most are tedious and dull. Even naval exercises are, more or less, the same as real battles since the navies usually practice on each other. The only distinction between the two is the use of live ammunition. For this reason the sailors and admirals were probably far more eager to get into the fight than their comrades on land.
It is quite possible that had any of them read Admiral Mahan’s book then they might have realized that the fight would not be coming too soon. Mahan had studied the Napoleonic wars and believed that the lessons from the world war at the opening of the 19th century were just as relevant for the one at it’s closing. He had theorized that the navies of the world would posture, threaten, attempt to guard their sea lanes while threatening the enemies, and this would finally cumulate into a major sea battle that would decide who would have the upper hand from that day on.
What Mahan did not count on, in his book, was his book. It had been widely read by naval strategists and policy makers around the world. Many of Mahan’s fellow sailors, from other nations, had quietly agreed with him. In fact, Mahan’s book was probably the least well received in his own country where, the US Navy, was eagerly looking forward to an all out engagement with their Royal cousins in England. It was, however, taken to heart in the nation of his soon to be enemy, Germany, and his soon to be ally, France.
In the pre-war days, both France and Germany looked at the world situation and determined that England was their greatest rival. As such, they both made plans to deal with the superiority of the Royal Navy and Mahan’s book showed itself to be critical in their thinking. In Germany the plan had been forwarded by none other than Admiral Tirpitz, the man who helped start the war by seizing Kiaochow. By a twist of a fate he would get caught, at the outset of hostilities, on the other side of the planet and find that the navy he had spent his life preparing to fight was now his ally. The “Tirpitz Plan” would never come to fruition.
The French, on the other hand, had a very similar plan to deal with the British. They were in a far better position to do so as well. Not only did geography play into their schemes, but also, the French Navy had decades (the Germans had only started building up their fleet a few years before the war) to plan, build, and generally prepare. France had open access to both the Mediterranean and Atlantic. This was not even counting their well established colonial bases and coaling stations. Unlike the Germans, the French navy had a true global reach.
While it is very true that the majority of France’s capital battleships were old, and somewhat inadequate, in comparison to those of the Royal Navy, it is also true that they did not have to match the British on a ship to ship basis. France was putting it’s eggs in the cruiser basket. The most modern ships in her fleet, at the time, were heavy cruisers and while they could not fight toe to toe with a battleship they did not have to. The cruisers could easily outrun anything afloat that they could not outfight. Their primary targets were ships that could not shoot back, freighters.
The French admiralty was gambling big here. They were hoping that the presence of their big fleets, close to the English Channel, would be enough of a threat to the Royal Navy that it forced the British to reel in most of their fleet to protect the home islands. At the same time their cruiser squadrons would rampage through the sea lanes and disrupt Britain’s vital supply lines to India and Canada. The plan was sound except for a few fine points.
The first problem was that the French did not count on Anglo-German cooperation. The French strategy was always meant to be more of a bluff, a deterrent to war as opposed to an actual operational plan, and the German fleet would change the numbers on the board. The German fleet was small in comparison to both French and British navies but, they did have battleships and all of their vessels were of very modern design. The German presence in the Channel would be more than enough to make up for the inadequacies of the Royal Navy. It would also give the British some breathing room and allow them to bring their numbers to bare, elsewhere in the world. Even this problem paled in comparison to the biggest flaw in Frances high sea strategy. It was that the plan did not take into account the plans of France’s chief ally, the United States.
While the French were looking to avoid a battle, the Americans were all for it. The US had spent the last two decades building up a fleet that could rival that of the Royal Navy. In technology the US had a decided edge. The cutting edge battleships of the American Navy, the Connecticut class were superior in almost every way to that of the British Royal Sovereign’s. The one thing the British lead class had in it’s favor was simple numbers but, this was offset by a wider range of commitments by the Royal Navy. The US had the luxury of being able to choose the time and place of an engagement and hence would negate any numerical advantage the Royal Navy had.
The US Navy did have one sticking point with their freedom to roam. It was not defending their own coastline nor was it a threat from the Confederacy. It came from a basic need that resulted from their national war plans. In this, the US showed a complete break down in planning where every other aspect of what they did showed meticulous attention to detail. The reason for this was that the US Army and Navy did very little to communicate with each other.
As we will examine later, the US Army had big plans for Canada. A crucial part of this plan was to choke off any help the Canadians would get from Great Britain. Canada’s industrial infrastructure was limited in comparison to both Britain’s and the US. She had scant capacity to turn out war materials on her own. The Canadians would make great strides in doing so, however, no one had ever intended for Canada to have to fight alone.
There was also another factor at work and it was not on the minds of either the US Army or Navy, although, it would decisively lend itself in winning the Armies case for the deployment of the Atlantic Fleet. It was the US policy makers, the politicians, who understood all to well that Britain relied heavily on Canadian wheat in order to feed it’s exploding population. If you severed that supply line then Britain would face starvation. Since a ship that stops an out going freighter, full of wheat, can just as easily stop an in bound one, with a hold of guns, the debate over what to do with the US Atlantic fleet became academic. The Canadian coast would have to be blockaded.
Needless to say, the commander of the American Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Sampson, had his hands full with that task alone. He would not be afforded the luxury of mobility that Mahan had in the Pacific. Sampson would also find out that blockades, in this modern age, were not as easy as they had once been. This was mostly thanks to the torpedo boat. These small, maneuverable, and cheap vessels packed a punch that could destroy the mightiest vessels in any fleet. They were also a favorite of the other big concern that Sampson had, the Confederate Navy.
Secretary Bulloch had been running that particular institution, like it was his own personal fiefdom, for almost a generation. Bulloch had been in on the ground floor, of the CSN, right from the start. He had began his career as a purchasing agent, in Liverpool, during the American 61. He was almost entirely responsible for the most famous of Confederate ships of the line, the CSS Alabama. That ship had been sunk, off the coast of France, during that conflict but, in 1898 there was another ship by the same name.
There were three battleships of the Alabama class. They were the Alabama, Shenandoah, and Virginia. Respectively these ships had formerly been the HMS Collingwood, Howe, and Rodney. They belonged to a class that the British had come to call the Admiral. I say intended because the British had never actually thought the Collingwood would be the forerunner of other vessels. The design, of this accidental class, had proved successful and one could easily argue that these vessels were the forerunner of modern battleships. To modern eyes they looked like what you would expect when someone says the name.
The Confederates had only just purchased the Rodney, aka CSS Virginia, less than a year before the war and she was still in a Galveston ship yard, undergoing a complete modernization, when the war broke out. She would not be available for duty for several months to come. The Alabama and Shenandoah had been in the CS Navy, and completely refitted, for just over two years before the war. Alabama was stationed in Mobile while Shenandoah was in Galveston at the out break of hostilities.
The CS Navy did have a fourth battleship that was waiting to be in it’s arsenal. In November of 1898 she was only half completed and it was estimated she still had a year or more before she could launch. This vessel was the CSS Texas, of a new class of the same name, and a new breed of fighting vessel as well. She would eventually change the design of all battleships.
Bulloch (actually it would be more accurate to say the people he surrounded himself with) had a fetish for new and revolutionary gadgets. This is quite understandable when you consider that the Confederate Navy was born in an atmosphere that compelled it’s founders to look for a technological edge to offset their enemies numerical superiority. The CSS Texas was all of that as well as being the first Confederate battleship to be produced at home.
Even when the war broke out the admirals around the world were well aware of the inherit inferiority of all battleship designs of the time. Their multitude of armaments, all of different calibers, made the act of estimating the range to target a nightmare. One splash in the water looked the same as another. The only way to get the range to target was to fire one round short, one long, and then split the difference in distance. Different caliber guns have different flight characteristics so the same figures will not work for different sized guns. The solution to this problem is obvious. You make all of your guns the same size.
The CSS Texas was designed to compensate for the weakness by going with the only guns that Bulloch saw as really making a difference. As he saw it, the big ones were all that mattered so that’s all Texas would have. Those guns would also be bigger than what most of the other ships had. Originally Texas was supposed to have eight of them (four forward and four aft mounted two each in four separate turrets) but, design concerns and budget restrictions eventually whittled that number down to four guns and two turrets (one forward and one aft). After she was launched the Texas would be able to outfight any vessel in the world but, only if the Confederates could get her launched.
Ultimately, and Bulloch was quite aware of this, even the Texas would not offset the US Navy’s numerical superiority. Fortunately for the Confederacy their battleships did not have to act alone. The CS Navy was designed entirely around the idea of operating in conjunction with the Royal Navy. If it had not been for Longstreet’s reforms, and ambitions, then it is entirely possible the CS Navy would have never even had battleships since they were of little use beyond gunboat diplomacy.
The Confederate Navy’s chief goal was much like that of their principal European enemy. They had to be enough of a threat to the US Navy in order to keep it close to home while at the same time disrupting US sea lanes abroad. For this job the CS Navy was more than adequately prepared. While her battleships may have been of British origin her cruisers were entirely domestically produced. The Charleston Class were built, ironically, using mostly French technology. They were largely a product of the 1880’s and the CS had employed many French engineers in their design and production (At the time the French were exporting this technology to anyone with cash and this was primarily Japan and the Confederacy).
These ships, utilizing British bases, were deployed in squadrons sized formations around the world. At home, there were the escorts for each of the battleships and that included the Virginia and Texas who were not yet seaworthy. The Confederates maintained a European squadron that operated primarily in the Mediterranean and at the time of the war was based out of Cyprus where it was participating in the Turkish blockade. There was one in the Indian Ocean that operated from an Island called Diego Garcia that was a coaling station leased from the British. Finally, there was the Pacific Squadron that primarily operated out of Hong Kong but, had been known to range as far west as the British protectorate, the Sandwich Islands (modern day Hawaii).
These ships were like their French counterparts as in they could outrun anything they could not shoot it out with. That made them the perfect commerce raider but, they lacked the substantial punch that was required to defend the extremely long Confederate coast line. Since the battleships were numerically inferior to do the job it would seem the CS Navy was unable to fulfill the primary duty of any national Navy. This was only an illusion.
Due to the successful blockade of the Confederate coastline, during the American 61, it is safe to say that the average citizen of the CSA had something of a paranoia about this. This was an ever constant political fact that Bulloch had to contend with. Fortunately for the CSN, the technology to do the job came about, at the right time, in the form of what was commonly coming to be called the torpedo. Small Confederate boats could easily keep the harbors open while using this weapon and, when it became clear that this self propelled torpedo was a viable, and quite lethal, weapon then the Confederates would begin trying to figure out how to use it on everything they had. It would be a man named Holland who would convince Bulloch to not only submerge his projectile, but, the ship that fired it as well.
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Any threat of war between Britain and the US, as a direct result of the American Civil War, ended with the Fennian Raids. There was a chance of war but, it wasn't from the US side of the border. I think it had a lot more to do with little things like Britain allowing Confederate raiders to mount operations from Canada, and even more important, the British selling the Confederates commerce raiders. The Fennian Raids were most likely the retaliation for these things but that pretty much ended it. Policy shifts from both Washington and London clearly demonstrate that everybody just wanted to forget about it after that.
There were many calls in Britain to get involved on the side of the Confederates. Two things kept that from happening. The first were the Russians who made it clear they were ready to join the US if that happened. The second was that while much is made of Confederate sympathizers in Britain, the US had some equally strong supporters. US victories on the battlefields is what finally allowed that faction to win in London. I don't think there was much concern about defending Canada after that because the border was largely demilitarized in that period. The US also became the black bag guys for Britain so there is no signs of any animosity beyond the usual crap. When it came to business the US and England played ball more times than not. Not exactly a sign that anybody was expecting an invasion.
If the Confederacy had won that would have been a very different story. If the British had to garrison the country then hell yeah they would have a lot more say in what was going on there. You have to remember something, in the real world, by the late 1880's, when Britain's population exploded, wheat from Canada became a strategic issue for the British. They could not have afforded to allow Canada to be overrun by anybody. Canada was that important. Having a hostile neighbor to the south would change everything. There would have to be a real military system in place. The British would have to maintain a sizable garrison and not for the purposes of colonial policing either, which was the case in the rest of the empire. A Confederate victory in the war would have had a major impact on Canada.
Also were still talking the pre-Dreadnaught era for ship design in your world or has this been accelerated well?
Hmm, my reply got eaten. Oh well this is a second one in case the first one shows up.
I never said Canada wasn't granted Dominion Status. I said the British maintained more control than what really happened.
As for the dreadnaught thing, This chapter pretty much answers that but, there is more to come on that subject.
Where would they have increased control? In the real world (RW) all Canadian laws had to be passed by the British Parliament. All foreign policy Canada could have done had to have the British seal of approval and the British Government appointed Governor General could shut down Parliament and call for new elections anytime he wanted. Assuming amalgamation of the colonies still occurred any further control would have actually been step backwards as far as the level of democratic freedom the colonies actually enjoyed. So I therefore doubt the colonies would have gone for it dominion status in the first place.
Further you do know the main reason why Britain wanted Canadian to become a Dominion (its still up for debate weather we left or were killed out) was the very real fear that the US was going to invade Canada, and Britain didn't want to pay for the countries defenses? The nightmare scenario ran something like; with a 500,000 strong veteran army the US decides to invade Canada in the hopes that a war against an outside foe would help unite the US.
The British thought it was much better idea to unite the eastern colonies (British Columbia, Newfoundland, and Rupert's Land not being part of the original deal and PEI opting out ) into a single country and have them pay for their own defense.
Honestly I think your making things harder for yourself. Let Canadian History unfold as it did in the RW in your alternative timeline. RW Canadian History during the era is already centred largely on fears of American invasion, which is what you want. In your timeline you have to explain what happened to Rupert's Land, BC and you lose the North West Mounted Police (which were only called a police force so that the US wouldn't get angry about Canada sending soldiers out kick out a bunch of American squatters) and the Canadian transcontinental railway (which was built to keep good and people flowing east/west instead of North/South.
No I never said Canada was not granted Dominion Status. I said the British retained more control than what really happened.
As for the Dreadnaught thing, I already started covering that in the story. There is more to come about ships and the navy.