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

by Peter G. Tsouras

  Gettysburg slowed as she took on more and more water, despite the heroic work of the men at the pumps and the carpenter’s futile caulking of the sprung seams. There was a perceptible list. The pivot gun fired its last shot before the list depressed it too far to sight, and Lamson watched its shell strike Liverpool square amidships, knocking a four-foot hole. It exploded inside, spewing debris out the hole. Smoke began to pour from the hole with orange tongues of fire darting through. Ammunition was exploding inside the gun deck. Fire began to gush out the gun ports. Gettysburg’s crewmen on deck stopped, mesmerized by the death of the frigate. They watched men jump overboard as the fire ran up the rigging and poured up through the hatches.

  The Liverpool seemed to heave amidships, her back arching, as a column of fire burst from her deck and shot upward. The shock wave pulsed out, followed by the deafening sound. The force of the explosion shuddered through the ship, and then blew outward. Liverpool simply disappeared in the blast of its own magazines. The sound was heard in Birkenhead and Liverpool sixty miles to the east, through the vales and valleys of northern Wales to the southwest, and west across the Irish Sea. That was only the functioning of physics. The political shock wave would surge around the world.

  UNITED STATES EMBASSY, LONDON, 4:11 AM, SEPTEMBER 5, 1863

  Charles Adams had spent a sleepless night. Russell’s note of the first had reached him only yesterday afternoon. He wrote in his diary, “I clearly foresee that a collision must now come. The prospect is dark for poor America.”13 In the meantime, Russell had done nothing to tell him of the decision to seize the rams. Adams dressed and sat at his desk to compose the most difficult letter of his life. He summed up the failures of the British government to stop the depredations originating from its shores and then delivered the ultimatum that Lincoln had ordered him to put before Russell and the cabinet. On his own initiative, he spelled it out with a final sentence of his own, “It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war.”14

  A few minutes after dispatching the note, John Bright was announced. Adams saw him immediately. One of America’s few friends in Parliament was always welcome, but the early hour indicated some crisis. Members of Parliament kept late hours, for the House met long into the night, but most were sound asleep by this hour. Bright was alert and visibly agitated, in contrast to his somber Quaker clothes.

  “Mr. Adams, I must hear from you how this calamity has happened. The House sits at noon. Terrible rumors are spreading all over London. I must be able to speak with some knowledge of events.”

  “Mr. Bright, I am at a loss. To what calamity do you refer?”

  Bright stared at him for a brief moment, incredulous. Then he said, “Do you mean to tell me you do not know of yesterday’s late afternoon’s battle in Moelfre Bay?”

  “I know nothing of this.”

  Bright sat down as if the weight of the world had crashed down on his shoulders. “I have been informed by a most reliable source that two British ships and two American ships fought a naval battle yesterday over one of the rams that had escaped to Moelfre Bay. There has been terrible loss of British life. HMS Liverpool and Goshawk went down with almost six hundred men.”

  The stunned look on Adams’s face was proof that the ambassador had not yet heard of the battle. “It must have been the Gettysburg. She was here to intercept the rams if they should escape as the Alabama did with the connivance of certain officials.”

  “Mr. Adams, the entire issue of the rams and the Alabama will drop by the wayside compared to a British warship sunk in British waters. When this knowledge becomes public, there will be such a cry for war that no government could withstand it.”

  “Then I must call on Lord Russell to explain what I can.”

  “Too late, I fear, too late.”15

  When Adams attempted to leave for Whitehall an hour later, he had to brave a crowd that had already gathered outside the embassy. The police moved the crowd back, but they could not prevent a brick from being thrown at his vehicle.

  Layard received Adams with great coldness and silence. Adams waited an hour in the anteroom before he was admitted to Russell’s office, where Layard took a chair as well.

  Russell wasted no time on pleasantries but waved Adams’s note and demanded an explanation, “Indeed, sir, this means war.”

  Adams asked to be informed of what Lord Russell knew. Russell sketched the broad outlines of the battle, concluding, “The Kearsarge, at least, had the decency to rescue the seventy-three survivors, mostly from Goshawk and set them ashore at Amlwch on Angelsey. The Kearsarge was last seen steaming southeast. Every ship within reach has been dispatched to take or sink her.”

  “Lord Russell, I assure you that my government gave no orders to attack ships of the Royal Navy. The captain of the Gettysburg had orders to intercept the rams should they escape from Liverpool.” He added emphasis to his next words, “as the Alabama did with the open connivance of members of your own government.”

  “By God, sir,” roared Russell. Adams had not suspected that such emotion lurked in so small a man. It had as much effect as rain on New England granite. “Do you mean that you blame Her Majesty’s government for what can only be described as an act of war?”

  “Indeed, I do, Lord Russell,” Adams said. “Your government has done everything in its power to wage war on my country short of firing directly upon us. The United States has been provoked beyond all measure and has responded as is the right of every nation—to pursue pirates into the ports or waters that shelter them.”

  “Her Majesty’s government determined to stop the departure of the rams and issued the appropriate orders.”

  “And with evident great success. You may recall the stream of communications with which I begged you for months to take such action. How, sir, am I to believe that when I received your note only yesterday that stated most firmly that no evidence existed sufficient to invoke the Foreign Enlistment Act.”

  Russell shot Layard a reproachful look. “Regrettably, the note was written shortly before our decision and unaccountably delayed.”

  “Then, sir, why did you not inform me at the earliest moment that you intended to stop the rams from sailing?”

  “We desired to gain the approval of the law officers of the Crown in such an important matter.”

  “Not good enough, Lord Russell, not good enough. Your private note that you were proceeding along these lines would have defused this situation at once. I could have sent word to Gettysburg to stand down. None of this would have happened had you heeded my government’s remonstrations earlier.”

  Having taken what he thought the moral high ground, Adams sought to be conciliatory. “Surely, Lord Russell, our governments can have the wisdom and patience to avoid war even at this late hour. These events can only be described as an accident, a terrible accident, but an accident all the same. A war would only multiply a thousand times the dead, and for what? An accident? Surely the fact that Kearsarge rescued all British seamen and set them ashore into the hands of British authorities and proper medical care indicates that no act of war was intended. I propose that a joint British-American commission be charged to examine this affair and report back to both governments. If that is not acceptable, I suggest a mediation by a disinterested state, such as Prussia.”16

  Russell intertwined his fingers as he said, “What is important, Mr. Adams, is that two British ships were attacked and sunk in British waters with the loss of six hundred British officers and men. I would expect your passport to be returned to you in short order. The cabinet meets in two hours.”

  A large crowd had gathered in front of Whitehall as news of the battle had spread throughout London. When it was revealed the American ambassador was meeting with Lord Russell, it became an angry mob. It took a strong detachment of mounted police to see Adams safely to the embassy.

  He immediately began to pen a report to Seward of his interview with Russell and the events as he knew them. Before he dipped hi
s pen in the inkwell, he paused for a moment to think of his son. “Henry, my boy. I sent you off hoping the experience would draw some strength out of you. And now you are gone with the Gettysburg. My boy, my poor boy… my poor country.”17

  USS KEARSARGE, RACING NORTH THROUGH THE IRISH SEA, 9:36 PM, SEPTEMBER 5, 1863

  Winslow had not left the bridge since he had put the British prisoners and wounded ashore. He had sailed southeast until he was sure there was no pursuit and then doubled back to sail north through the Irish Sea. Lamson joined him, having spent much of the late afternoon and evening with his twenty-eight wounded men whom the Kearsarge had rescued. Winslow was smoking a pipe as he walked the deck while the stars were coming out to twinkle over the great, unhappy waves of the Irish Sea. He paused to think that St. Patrick had been brought over these waters from Britain as a slave to a band of Gaelic pirates.

  Winslow was middle aged and had grown up with the Navy. If he had ever had the dash of Lamson, it had left him with his youth in the routine of decades of a peacetime navy. He was a solid man who knew his business and did not shrink from a fight. He had been “exiled” to the Channel Station after an impolite reference to the President in public. He was enjoying the momentary pleasure of considering how that would compare to his sloop sinking a British frigate. No U.S. naval officer in combat against the rebellion had sent such a ship to the bottom. Of course, he would give young Lamson all his due in beating the hell out of the frigate before Kearsarge came to the rescue.

  Winslow thanked God that his own losses had been only one dead and twelve wounded. Eleven of Lamson’s men had gone to the bottom with Gettysburg, and he had lost thirty-nine of ninety-six men. “How are your wounded, Captain?” he greeted Lamson, still according him the honorary title though he no longer had a ship and would revert to the permanent rank of lieutenant.18

  “Doing well, thank you. Your surgeon is a man of rare talent, Captain. And you are a man of rare timing. I had determined to keep fighting until she went under rather than strike when the Kearsarge arrived out of nowhere.”

  “You can thank Ambassador Adams for that,” Winslow puffed on his pipe and leaned over the side. “Speaking of the ambassador, how is his son doing?”

  “The surgeon thinks he shall recover. He received a ball clean through the shoulder, courtesy of the Royal Marines. He will be able to dine out on it for the rest of his life. I owe him mine. He pushed me aside to take the ball aimed for me. I hadn’t thought he had it in him.”

  Winslow tucked that away in his mind and turned to the matter at hand. “We shall be home in a week if we can avoid the entire damned Royal Navy, which I am sure is after us as we speak. There will be hell to pay, Captain. You realize that we have real naval war on us now, don’t you? It’s just not blockade duty or river gunboats or pounding away at forts, but a navy war with the greatest Navy in the world.”

  Lamson did not appear dismayed.

  Winslow just shook his head and muttered to himself, “Hell to pay, hell to pay.”19

  9.

  Pursuit Into the Upper Bay

  NEW YORK HARBOR, NEW YORK, 12:35 PM, SEPTEMBER 11, 1863

  Oslyabya is not a word that slips easily from the tongue of an English speaker. The crowds of New Yorkers that rushed to the docks to see the newly arrived Russian steam frigate of that name truly mangled it. None of them knew the ancient glory of its name, that of a monk who fought in the Russian shield wall at the battle of Kulikovo Fields in 1380, the first Russian victory over the dreaded Tatars, and their first step toward empire. None of that ancient symbolism mattered to the people who filled the docks where the frigate was tied up. It was the Russian Empire, the might it represented, and the friendship its presence meant that thrilled them.

  It was fixed in the American mind that the only friend of the Union among the great powers of Europe was Russia. The arrival of this ship with the news that she was only the advance of a powerful squadron of the Baltic Fleet sped along the telegraph lines throughout the North. The timing of the Olsyabya’s arrival could not have been better. The twin victories of summer, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, had been so full of promise for a speedy collapse of the rebellion, but those expectations had petered out as the exhausted armies maneuvered to no effect throughout the late summer. Northern morale had sunk. It was on this tinder of faded hopes that news of the Oslyabya’s arrival fell like a spark.1

  The North went wild with excitement. The press, desperate for good news, fed the public perception that the Russians had come to show support for the harried Union and that the natural alliance of Russia and America was soon to be officially cemented. Neither the U.S. government nor the Russians did anything to dispel this notion, though their public statements confined themselves to traditional goodwill. It was too good for Northern morale and even better as an unspoken warning to Britain and France. The New York Herald editorialized:

  Should the Russian empire and the American republic form an offensive and defensive alliance they would necessarily preponderate and rule throughout the world. Our enemies should beware how they drive us to the cementing of a compact the existence of which would be the end of all opposing power and influence.2

  The crowds that were welcomed aboard the Russian frigate as visitors found their expectations of the Russians realized. Almost every Russian officer could speak English well, the legacy of the fact that on-the-shore British naval officers, largely Scots, had officered much of the Russian Navy as it grew into a professional force in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The tall young women of New York, of English and German stock, were a bit taken aback, though, by the relatively short stature of most Russian officers.3 A ball was immediately thrown for the ship’s officers, who caused an unexpected reaction among the throngs of tall New York belles.

  Alas! for the Russians. It is known, or should be, that these Slavic heroes are not the very largest of the human race—that they are small men in fact—and what is to become of small men in such a jam? Early in the night—indeed, very soon after the dance began—we saw several of them in the embrace of grand nebulous masses of muslin and crinoline, whisked hither and thither as if in terrible torment—their eyes aglare—their hair blown out—and all their persons expressive of the most desperate energy, doubtless in an endeavor to escape. What became of them we cannot tell.4

  Another novelty was Protestant America’s first encounter with the Orthodox Church in the form of Oslyabya’s chaplain, whom the press described as “an eminent theologian.” The service aboard ship was reported with an open-mindedness rarely found for Roman Catholicism in America at that time.5

  There was nothing about the Russians that did not find favor with the press and public alike. The dockyard pickpockets and thieves declared Russian sailors off-limits in a burst of patriotic fervor. The streetwalkers were even rumored to offer an occasional service gratis. “It is a noticeable fact that even the sharpers, who so fall foul of strangers, have kept themselves off these ‘Roo-shans.’”6

  It was in the midst of the excitement over the Russians that the Liverpool packet Aurora arrived on September 17. She was the first fast packet to race across the Atlantic since the battle of Moelfre Bay. Word of the battle spread throughout the city and was immediately wired to Washington. Eight hours later, the news was in Richmond as well.

  The North went wild with excitement. The church bells rang from Maine to Wisconsin as they had for Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Pent-up anger at British connivance with the Confederacy exploded in cheers and adulation for the Kearsarge and Gettysburg, mixed with anxiety for the safety of Winslow’s ship. The newspapers carried by Aurora trumpeted the fact that the entire Royal Navy had been set in pursuit of Kearsarge. In the South, the news spread just as fast, and the church bells would have rung with even greater joy had they not all already been melted down for cannon.7

  THE WHITE HOUSE, 3:30 PM, SEPTEMBER 18, 1863

  The mood in the White House shared none of the public’s exuberance. Two days later
, another ship arrived with Ambassador Adams’s enciphered reports of the battle as well his dealings with Russell. The ship also carried the British papers. They all screamed for war.

  Seward briefed Lincoln and the cabinet on the events of Moelfre Bay. He concluded, “The British have brought this upon themselves. They hid behind the Foreign Enlistment Act, a tissue of neutrality so pathetic that it made them the arsenal and storehouse of the rebellion. The entire attitude of the British government has been one of unremitting hostility. In demanding an unattainable level of proof that the rams, not to mention the other pirates built in British yards, were intended for use by the Confederacy, they hoped to hide behind a fiction of legality. I swear, Mr. President, that had Adams presented proof written with the finger of God Himself, the British would have referred it to a Lucifer in a powdered wig to rule upon its authenticity.

  “Most outrageously, Adams informs me that after the battle, Russell claimed that they had decided to seize the rams. Yet, just as with the Alabama, Laird Brothers and their rebel associates were forewarned in time to attempt to slip the most completed ram out of Liverpool. It was only because Dudley was able to warn Gettysburg was Lamson able to go off in pursuit. As further proof of British collusion to help the ram escape, they dispatched Liverpool to protect her.

  “Adams further informs me that it is unsafe for an American to be recognized on the streets of London. The flag has been repeatedly torn off the embassy’s flagpole and burned. American merchants are making preparations to flee to neutral European ports. The debates in the House of Commons have been near hysterical in their demands for war. Most ominously, Adams reports that there has been a frenzy of preparation in both the Army and Navy.”8