Force Multipliers

   By the spring of 1900, the war had been dragging on for almost two years and many nations were becoming desperate to find a solution to the quagmire they found themselves in. As had been the case during peace, many nations turned to technology to solve their problems. The results of these efforts would be both strange and mixed. Many of these projects had been in the works before the war even started and quite a few more would be born of conflict. The lasting effect of many of these would resonate for the better part of the coming century while others would simply vanish with a whimper. The one thing that is most certainly true of all of these technologies was that those who invented and used them were completely unaware of how. It would be a learning curve of trial and error and the full effectiveness for most of these weapon systems would be far less than their potential.
One man who inadvertently saw the ground floor for many of these new technologies was not an inventor, an engineer, nor would he even be remembered in history as such. In 1900 he was a young ensign in the navy of Franz Joseph, the Hapsburg emperor of Austria Hungary. This young naval officer found much of what he saw so unremarkable that he never bothered to mention any of it in his private diary. Strangely enough, he did write about these things, extensively, in letters to his sister. This was a fortunate turn of events since his personal papers have been long since lost and we only have second hand sources to tell us what was there. On the other hand, his sister saved all of his wartime correspondence and it both survived and, has since, become public. The story it tells is very interesting.
Strangely enough, Georg  Johannes Ritter Von Trapp would be most remembered as a singer and stage performer. Until the family of his older sister, Hede Von Trapp, released his letters, very little was known of Trapp’s wartime exploits beyond official reports. Both Johannes and Hede were long since dead by this time. It would seem that Von Trapp’s connection to the new technologies, that emerged in this era, began before the war and was indirect at best. Still, this connection would open many doors for the man that went well beyond his station and rank.
Not long before the war, Johannes married a young lady by the name of Agatha Whitehead. Her grandfather had been instrumental in shaping the war before it started. Robert Whitehead was an English engineer that had opened up a business in the city of Rijeka. At the time it was the center of naval activity for the Austro-Hungarian Navy and this was a perfect place for Whitehead because his bread and butter was the manufacture of his invention, the self propelled torpedo. This weapon changed naval warfare in very profound ways and even during the war, the weapon still bore his name. Most naval officers still called the lethal ship killers, “the Whitehead.”
Johannes had met Agatha while he was attending the naval academy which was also located in Rijeka. They married shortly after he graduated and the war began not long after that. Johannes had very little to do with his wife’s family business but the association most certainly did not hurt his career. His first assignment was as a gunnery officer aboard the SMS Maria Theresa. She was an armored cruiser and one of the newest and most advanced ships in the Hapsburg navy. Because of this, Johannes would find himself caught up in any number of events and actions that would resonate for many years to come.
The first place that Johannes found himself was in China. While his nation was at war with Russia and France, at the time they were still not at war with the United States. For this reason, the Theresa was allowed to dock in the US controlled port of Tientsin to assist in the evacuation of civilians from Peking. All of them had been rescued, by the US General Custer, from the clutch’s of the Kansu Warriors but, many belonged to nations that were now belligerents. The Theresa, along with several Spanish, Italian, and other neutral transports were allowed to remove the refugees as per the deal between Admiral Mahan and the British Minister to Japan.
It was while he was in Tientsin that Johannes came in contact with an American couple by the name of Herbert and Lou Hoover. While Von Trapp never mentioned this, even in his letters, the Hoovers did. They were taken by Trapp’s singing abilities which they first heard in a Tientsin hotel that was currently serving as their residence. A small social group had formed there, during the evacuations, and they spent several evenings with Von Trapp as he, and a few others, demonstrated their musical skills to pass the time.
The SMS Maria Theresa, and Von Trapp, were present at the battle of the Yellow Sea. The Austrian cruiser never fired a single shot during the entire battle. She was tempered by her orders not to fire on US flagged vessels and the bulk of enemy forces were American. Theresa did try and engage some of the Russian vessels in the enemy fleet but, could never find one to shoot at. Apparently, the Americans were well aware of Theresa’s orders since they most obviously ignored the vessel. Theresa’s bad luck would continue for over a year. She spent most of her time patrolling for both enemy merchants and raiders. She would claim to come very close in locating and engaging a French cruiser force, in the Caribbean Sea, in early January of 1900. It was later discovered, only after the war, that Austrian Intelligence had been completely wrong and the force was a phantom, a deliberate bit of misinformation planted by the French “ Office of Statistics” in Paris.
A few months later, the SMS Maria Theresa, would finally get her wish and become engaged in an all out slugfest. It was mid March and she had been sent south with a small force of allied vessels to eliminate the possible threat posed by the Argentine Navy. This boiled down to one vessel in particular, the ARA Garibaldi. She was a very new heavy cruiser, built in Italy on French based technology, and considered a serious threat to allied merchant shipping in the region. This was a fact that the Argentine government was most certainly aware of since Garibaldi had put to sea the very day that Buenos Aries declared war on Britain. She had orders to proceed to the Ivory coast of Africa where she would join several French cruisers who had been causing serious trouble in the region for some time.
Theresa had been deployed to the area when it became obvious that Argentina was going to declare war. There was a delay of several days before Brazil would enter the conflict and, technically speaking, even Austria was not at war with Argentina since they had only declared war on Great Britain. Unfortunately for the Garibaldi and her escorts, they were not aware of Maria Theresa’s orders. She was to consider a declaration of war on any member of the alliance as a declaration on all. Besides a pair of British gunboats, she was the only vessel in the region that could protect the Falklands.
The Garibaldi, and her escort of three corvettes, had no idea the ship was hostile when Theresa approached. She opened fire at close range and scored multiple hits on the Argentinean cruiser. The corvettes were obviously as shocked as their cruiser since they were very slow to react. By the time they did the British gunboats had come out of Theresa’s shadow and engaged with torpedo’s. It was a very lopsided victory for the allies. One of Garibaldi’s escorts was completely destroyed, literally blown out of the water, and another seriously damaged. The other fled without ever firing back.
The Garibaldi was down but not out. She did try and fight back but, the Austrian crew proved to be far better trained and ready. In less than an hour they had pounded the Argentine’s into submission. Garibaldi was suffering from fires that were raging out of control. Her boilers were out of action and her magazines were intentionally flooded in order to prevent the fire from exploding the ship. She had also failed to land a single hit on her attackers. Her captain struck his colors, ordered his crew to abandon ship, and then he requested aid from his attackers to help evacuate the sick and wounded. After his crew was off, he scuttled his vessel at sea and, like the captains of old, he went down with his ship.
SMS Maria Theresa’s victory was not widely reported in the press. It seems that the allied leaders were not that interested in reminding their people that the war had expanded to South America. This did not mean that the victory went completely unnoticed and the SMS Maria Theresa did gain one enthusiastic fan and he was an important one because he was an Emperor. It was none other than Maximilian I of Mexico. Being a native Austrian, a Hapsburg, and also a former officer in the Austrian Navy it seems only natural that Maximilian would celebrate the victory. He invited Theresa to pay a courtesy call and her officers found themselves in Mexico City where they were wined and dined by the Mexican elite.
It was during the visit, of the Theresa’s officers, that the Confederacy and Mexico were finalizing their plans for the offensive against the United States. There were far more Confederate officers in Mexico City than was normal. One of these recently arrived Confederate Officers was also a Naval Officer even if he had never seen a single day of duty aboard a ship. He was an engineer, an inventor, and a noted eccentric by the name of Lieutenant Commander Astin Greene. At this point, Greene had spent his entire war in either Mobile (the home of the Confederate Navy), Montgomery (the home of the Confederate Steel Industry), or Norfolk (the home of one of many of Greene’s pet projects). He was eager to take a trip to Mexico and get out of his usual routine. He was also quite eager to explain and promote his new project that had, ironically, originated in Mexico.
It was during this time that Greene had become aware of Von Trapp. There seems to have been two reasons why, although, only one has ever been confirmed for certain. The first and known reason was because of who Von Trapp was married too. The Whitehead Torpedo was instrumental in one of Greene’s projects and he snapped at a chance to talk to the boy. The other reason seems to have been a bit more personal, in that, both Greene and Von Trapp shared the friendship of a certain couple, Herbert and Lou Hoover.