Forty Mile

It can be said that on the Canadian Front, General Otter had outguessed his American enemy, General Shafter, in terms of strategy. This might certainly be true to a point but, one might consider that Otter was forced to face several political realities that Shafter was afforded the luxury of never having to deal with. Shafter’s basic plan shows his straight forward military thinking. His objectives were Quebec City, Montreal, and the Canadian capital of Ottawa. He simply chose the shortest distance and sent his troops in that direction. While it is true that these plans were drawn up well before Shafter became the top American soldier, you also have to remember that Shafter was not new to the General Staff and had helped draw up these pre-war plans. Once he relieved General Miles, Shafter never did anything to change them and, on many occasion, gave these plans his stamp of approval.

On the other side of the border, Otter was faced with any number of political problems that tempered his military plans. Even the British Governor General, Minto, knew these facts and this played greatly in deployments of military assets. It’s one reason why the British Army, and not Canadian troops, were largely deployed in the region of Quebec. The Foreign Office in London was not too terribly concerned about of a Francophone revolt but, they did not ignore the possibility either. It was judged that the British Army would be better suited to handle such a revolt should such an unlikely event occur. What puzzled both Minto and Otter, the most, was why the Americans never made any real attempts to alter the situation in Quebec.

The US government did try and foster assets in Quebec but, here is where the bureaucratic weaknesses of the US come in to play. These attempts to force a political victory in Quebec were handled by the US State Department and the US Military had almost no knowledge of it. If Shafter knew anything of this it certainly did not impact his plans nor did he even show any sign of trying to play divide and conquer with his enemies. The one man who did, finally, become aware of the entire picture, and pay it due attention was, none other than, President Roosevelt. He was furious with both Shafter and John Hay for not calling any of this to his attention and, do so, right from the start.

Roosevelt may very well have never learned of the State Department’s efforts in Quebec, had it not been for a couple of other events that happened all the way on the other side of the continent. The first was the formal surrender of Vancouver which, after much effort, was no longer defendable by virtue of the fact that they had completely run out of food. Civilians in Vancouver had been boiling and eating their shoes for some time. The ammunition situation was almost as bad and it reached a point where the situation was simply no longer tenable.

The surrender of the city was not so much of a surprise to anyone. If anything, Roosevelt had thought that it took longer than it should have. As such, it changed very little inside the Roosevelt Administration. What the loss of Vancouver did do was kick over an ant hill in Alaska, something that only a few select people inside the Russian colony were aware of. No one outside the territory was even remotely aware of the chain of events that had just been set in to motion. Up till that point, one of the key destinations of gold smugglers had been Vancouver. It was, in fact, the largest gold market of all of the glitter coming out of the Czar‘s domain. One would think that the capture of this city, by the US, would have been welcomed by men such as Wyatt Earp, who was, after all, an American. The exact opposite was true.

In the shady business of smuggling, there is only one allegiance and that is to the guy who pays the best prices. Since almost the start of the war, that guy had usually been a British banker. Vancouver had become the center of that world where, not only was a blind eye turned towards doing business with the enemy but, had been encouraged by the British Government. Buying Alaskan gold had become so important that Joseph Chamberlin got routine updates on it’s status. Then came the American army who laid siege to the city. That did not stop all of the gold transactions in Vancouver but, it did make the British look for alternate routes that were safer and, less expensive, since bribing US Army officers was now apart of doing business there. None of these alternate routes were ideal and all of them included any number passes over the Rocky Mountains, all of which were dangerous, slow, and only seasonably of value. Naturally, none of these qualities were much of a deterrent to smugglers such as Earp, Ulyanov, and Bullock. What was standing in the way of their literal pot of gold was each other.

What we do know of their dispute began over Earp’s use of certain passes that Bullock demanded a toll for. Bullock claimed that he had fronted the bill for scouting and setting up these routes, as well as maintaining them with provisions that Earp’s men had used without permission. At first it seems that Earp was willing to pay even if there was quite a bit of haggling over the timing and price of these payments. For reasons unknown, Ulyanov got involved and the situation not only got hopelessly complicated but, completely unworkable. Apparently, Earp lost any interest in the situation after that, tried to get back to business as usual, and ignored Bullock completely.

This is where the situation is somewhat murky and exactly who did what is not clear but, what we do know is that it happened in a Ketchikan Brothel. Brothers, Bat and Ed Masterson were very typical of many you were likely to find in Alaska. Their past is somewhat murky and they have been claimed to be both Canadian and US citizens. It does seem clear that they lived in both countries before finding their way to Alaska, mostly thanks to Earp, whom they were friends with. Bat Masterson in particular was one of Earp’s right hand men and he was well noted for keeping the peace between the various factions that, at this point, revolved around nationalities. It was helpful that Masterson could claim either country and switched his nationality as the situation warranted.

Not long after the dispute over the consumed supplies, several men, none of whom we have ever discovered the identities of, attacked the Masterson brothers at the Ketchikan Brothel that had the very generic name of La Chez Amie. There are many who have claimed this to be very suspicious seeing as how it is known that Bat Masterson was not a patron of such places. The more conspiratorial minded always say this was some secret meeting place but, what little evidence we do have suggests that Bartholomew, was simply waiting on his brother. The after math of the attacks seem to suggest this, since Ed Masterson was literally caught with his pants down, and stabbed to death while his brother Bat managed to shoot two of the six assailants, none of which were carrying guns and wisely chose to flee at that point.

The fall out here was that Earp blamed Bullock for the attack on his friend and assumed it was over the recent dispute. At this point, Earp decided to take the supply cabins in the region that had come to be known as “the Golden Hump.” This name could have been because of the high altitudes of this particular route or, maybe, it was a sexual euphemism. Any way you look at it, Ed Masterson’s final hump was about to get one faction or another screwed if the situation was not resolved. This is where Vladimir Ulyanov looks very suspicious. Instead of playing peacemaker, as was usually the case, he backed Earp.

A few days after the Masterson attack, when it was clear the Russian Army would do nothing about it, Earp personally led a small group of his men to a local saloon that was a favorite meeting hall for Bullock’s men. They walked right in the door, caught the patrons completely off guard, and proceeded to shoot anyone that got in front of their sights. Three men were killed, seventeen wounded, and what seemed to enrage people even more was how many bottles of liquor were destroyed in the very one sided fight. Because of this, Earp did not win any friends in Ketchikan but, it was even worse for Bullock.

Seth Bullock got the message loud and clear. He was not in town when it happened and some point to this fact as Earp sending a peace feeler along with his forty-five caliber bullets. If that were true, and it is somewhat plausible, then Bullock rejected the message. He fled to the Canadian side of the border and eventually wound up in Dawson City, Canada. His final stop is important because this was, at the time, a heavily fortified military outpost. The town had only been laid down less than a year before the war and, was meant to be a forward settlement for exploiting the gold finds. When the war broke out it quickly became an army town, mostly garrisoned with Canadian Militia and RCC troopers. These were who Bullock was seeking.

While later accounts of the Battle of Forty Mile portray an invading Russo-American Army being repelled by a valiant red jacketed detachment of outnumbered Canadian Cavalry, the real battle was nothing of the sort. Just like with Roosevelt in Mexico, there were no cavalry charges at this battle and, even more important, no horses. There were also no red jackets or uniforms of any sort even if it is true that the RCC was a regular military formation. What is also equally true was that none of the men from the Canadian military, who followed Bullock back up the Yukon River, in small boats, did so in any official capacity. Most of them had been paid in gold, from Bullock’s own personal supplies, and had essentially become mercenaries. The fact that they discarded their uniforms is ample evidence of this. What also helped Bullock was that he had friends in Dawson City, many of whom had a stake in his control of the Forty Mile gold route so he had little trouble with the local political leadership or the military command structure, when he borrowed their soldiers.

Unlike many actions in this particular theater, we actually know exactly where this battle happened, thanks to the work of archeologists some four decades later. Earp and Ulyanov had heard about Bullock’s flight to Dawson and deduced his intentions of seizing absolute control the vital pass just a few miles up from the junction of the Yukon and Forty Mile river’s. They quickly assembled their own little army and tried to beat Bullock to the prize. Bullock won the race and held the high ground when Earp and Ulyanov arrived as expected. Bullock had known they were coming all along. It seems as if that was the point.

It is true that the Canadians (or Bullock’s) soldiers were out numbered, although, not as much as we have been led to believe. The truth of it, as laid out by the archeology, mainly by finding buried piles of spent shell casings, is that both sides were relatively evenly matched. What gave the Canadians the advantage seems to be two fold. One was that they had a unity of command and all spoke the same language. Earp’s forces did not and were being led by two commanders (Earp and Ulyanov) who disagreed with each other at nearly every instance. Their troops were also both Russian and American and neither of these factions appeared to really want to talk to each other, let alone try. The second reason was that while the hard living smugglers and miners have a reputation as good fighters, this type of brawler rarely does very well against disciplined soldiers. Most of Bullock’s force was just that.

From what we know of journal entries, the battle probably lasted a few hours on one single day. When the Alaskans were unable to dislodge the Canadians, they decided to give up and go home. We do not have a good count on casualties but, they seemed to have been rather light. The best estimate is that less than ten people were killed, on both sides, combined.

The fall out, from this battle, for Earp and Bullock was nearly non-existent. Less than a month later, Earp paid Bullock his money and the gold smuggling went right back to business as usual. The same cannot be said of the relationship between Earp and Ulyanov. Many point to their disagreements in this “campaign” as being the seeds of the eventual war that would erupt around these two larger than life personalities. While they both did eventually mend fences with Bullock the fight did place Bullock as the undisputed master of the gold trade. Apparently, Earp and Ulyanov blamed the other for this fact.

It was what happened far away from Forty Mile that is the most important. The further one got from the “battle of Forty Mile” the larger the tales of the battle also got. The facts that they were getting in Ottawa, London, Moscow, and Washington hardly resembled what really happened. Getting any concrete information was near impossible and I think that Czar Nicholas might have been somewhat angered if he had ever found out that his military intelligence was coming from drunks in saloons, recounting their heroics in a battle they were not even really at. While some doubt this is the case it can easily be proven. Russian Officers collected over seven hundred interviews from participants in the battle. This is somewhat problematic when you consider that both sides, combined, had less than three hundred men.

At this point the reality made no difference at all because several critical factors were coming to a head elsewhere. Forty Mile alerted several belligerents about a front that, while being important, had not only been ignored but, had largely been forgotten. It caused Czar Nicholas to realize he had to regain a firm control of his territory and this would lead to a course of near disaster for the Romanov Dynasty. It made Roosevelt suddenly realize that this front even existed, which led to his discovery of US State Department activities in Quebec. The most important result of all was, inside Canada itself. For a war weary nation that was on the verge of collapse, a group of criminal thugs, along a distant border, had been a shot of adrenalin. Seth Bullock, a man who barely considered himself Canadian, suddenly became a national hero. The timing, of all this, could not have been more critical and, dare I say, more opportune?