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

by Peter G. Tsouras

  THE BATTERY, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, 3:05 PM, OCTOBER 8, 1863

  It had not taken long for the word to spread through Charleston and its defenses that the British had arrived off the bar. The city emptied as people rushed down to the river and crowded the docks from the slave market all the way down to the Battery at the tip of the peninsula that held the city. The well connected found places in the balconies of the mansions that lined the Battery. From one of them, Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard had given the order to fire on Fort Sumter almost two and half years ago. That was the event that had triggered this grinding war. The little Louisiana Creole dandy ostentatiously chose the same balcony to watch the distant battle, though little more than smoke would be visible at the five- to six-mile distance. Now many were quick to hope that they might witness the end of that war from the same vantage. With him was Capt. Duncan Ingraham, the commander of the Charleston Naval Station. To his immense chagrin, he had nowhere else to be. The two Confederate ironclads under his command, Palmetto State and Chicora, were idled by engine repairs. Had that not been the case, nothing on this earth would have kept him from joining the upcoming battle.30

  The war had just about ruined Charleston. Hardly a blockade-runner got through Dahlgren’s ships anymore. The warehouses along the docks were crammed to the rafters with bales of cotton. The white brick warehouse at the end of East Ager Dock just south of the battery alone held thousands of bales of unrealized wealth as the paint peeled from its walls. Once the leading port for the export of the South’s “white gold,” Charleston’s economic life was near death; it was now plain shabby and its dwindling population increasingly threadbare and pinched.

  It had become an article of faith among the people of Charleston that the mere arrival of the Royal Navy would practically usher in the Second Coming. They had pinned such hopes on foreign intervention to save them from Lincoln’s remorselessness that hope became faith and faith a dream.

  CROSSING THE CHARLESTON BAR, 4:55 PM, OCTOBER 8, 1863

  Seymour crossed the bar on the afternoon tide just as Dahlgren expected. He came in two divisions line abreast. The first division was led by the Black Prince followed by ship of the line Sans Pareil; the big frigates Mersey and Phaeton; the corvettes Racoon, Challenger, and Cadmus; the sloop Bulldog; and the gunboat Alacrity. The armored frigate Resistance, captained by William Charles Chamberlain, led the second division, followed by ships of the line St. George and Donegal; the big frigates Shannon, Ariadne, and Melpomene; the corvette Jason; the sloops Desperate and Barracouta; and the gunboat Algerine.31

  Just as Dahlgren expected, Seymour was determined to break the American line in the spirit of Nelson. Once the line was broken, his weight of fire could be used to overwhelm the American ships one by one. While the big ships broke the line in two columns, he would envelop the Americans as well with his sloops and corvettes. But what had worked so well for Horatio Nelson in 1805 against demoralized French and Spanish ships at Trafalgar was not as applicable in 1863 against experienced American ships whose crews were as instinctively combative and jealous of victory as their British kin. It would be hard pounding then, and Seymour’s ships had the great advantage in numbers and overall weight of metal.32

  The Americans’ ironclads in the first line were steaming slowly at a right angle to the approaching British; the monitors were lucky to do five knots. The two British columns were aiming to cut right through the American line. Seymour signaled to break the American line fore and aft of the New Ironsides. At two thousand yards the forward pivot Armstrongs on their lead ships opened an accurate fire, striking the New Ironsides and the turrets on several monitors. Seymour had directed that priority of fire to the ironclads. The excellence of British guns and gunnery were immediately evident. Unfortunately, they were completely without effect as their shot barely dented the American armor. Within minutes the vent piece from the Black Prince’s Armstrong blew out, silencing the gun.

  As the range closed to eight hundred yards, the Dahlgrens opened up. The ironclads concentrated the fire of four XV-inch and twelve XI-inch Dahlgren guns on the Black Prince and Resistance in the lead. The Wabash and her sloops behind the ironclads fired over the decks of the low-slung monitors, with a broadside of another twenty-five IX-inch, one X-inch, and three XI-inch Dahlgrens as well as four 100- and 150-pounder Parrot rifles. The Wabash alone was a veritable spitfire. The huge frigate, at 4,650 tons, was larger than two of Seymour’s three ships of the line. It carried one X-inch and forty-two IX-inch Dahlgrens, one 150-pounder and two 100-pounder Parrot rifles, as well as a smaller 30-pounder rifle and one 12-pounder gun howitzer. Despite her wooden body, the Wabash contained a significant part of Dahlgren’s firepower that day.33

  The storm of American shells converged on the two lead British ships in a visible stream of black dots against the blue sky. Months of practice in bombarding the forts in Charleston Harbor had honed a precision accuracy in the ironclad gun crews.

  Black Prince staggered under the hail of 350- and 136-pound shells; her bow and forecastle disintegrated. The casemate armor that protected the gun decks did not extend around the bow or stern. The shells had ripped and torn her metal hull plates down to the water line, and she began to drink in the sea in great gulps as her powerful engines sped her forward toward New Ironsides. But watertight compartments, one of her design innovations, limited the amount of water gushing through the smashed bow that would have otherwise flooded the entire ship.

  Seymour’s flagship was about to experience the layered gunnery Dahlgren had instructed his captains to employ. As Black Prince and Resistance closed the distance with the enemy line, the American ships switched to solid shot to bear on the armored sides of the British ship. The large shot converged on both sides of the British ships. From within the 8-inch armored pilothouse on the New Ironsides, Admiral Dahlgren watched the huge shot arc over the sea or skip across the waves to ensure a crippling hull strike. It was the Atlanta all over again. The low-velocity Dahlgren shot ruptured the armor plates, detaching three-foot sections of the armor’s teak backing and inner metal skin in showers of wooden splinters and metal shards that wiped out whole gun sections. The concussion sent the shot flying from their racks within the casement. Here the design innovations of the Warrior class came to Black Prince’s aid. Her gun deck had been designed as a series of compartments with armored 4.5-inch bulkheads between them, limiting the damage done by each shot to single compartments.34

  By the time Black Prince broke the American line astern of New Ironsides, a third of her guns were out of action. The crews of the rest had not lost their nerve and fired accurately as she passed the American ship’s stern. The Royal Navy believed its 68-pounders were the only ordnance it had that would shatter armor plate but at no more than two hundred yards. Black Prince halved that distance, firing its starboard battery almost point-blank into New Ironsides, each surviving gun firing as it bore. The New Ironside’s unarmored stern crumpled under the impact, its rudder shot to pieces. But even at a hundred yards, the British shot just bounced off New Ironsides’s armored casemate. A subtle advantage to the American ship was its seventeen-degree outward slopping hull, which presented an angled instead of a flat surface to the British shot. Its armor had been forged rather than rolled, giving it even more strength than the usual plating. Coupled with the strength of the casemate, the angle deflected the British hits with wild, deep, echoing clangs. The monitor Catskill swung its turret to follow Black Prince and fired both of its guns into the larboard battery as the enemy passed, wrecking another fighting section.

  At almost the same time, Resistance cut across New Ironside’s bow, raking the latter as her guns bore. She then passed Wabash and fired into her stern. Resistance had suffered almost as much as Black Prince in its race to close with the enemy, and its crew now worked like men possessed to even the score. The fighting spirit of the island race was never keener as they worked the guns.

  Attempting to follow Resistance thr
ough the American line was St. George. Her wooden bow and forecastle simply disintegrated from the explosive power of the shells converging on it. Shells spread havoc down the quarterdeck, turning it into an abattoir of blood and shattered bodies, its captain dead and wheel shattered. In a moment this venerable ship of the line, with its three gun decks counting 120 pieces of ordnance, had been stunned. But she plunged on, her screws spinning and pulling to starboard in the absence of the wheel’s control. Her gun crews hauled away the dead and wounded and fought the fires that seemed to have ignited everywhere. The ship was now pulling unintentionally parallel to the American line, and for the first time she could fire back. The crews rushed to their larboard guns and fired as they bore. Her guns were accurate at this range, and the British gun crews, oblivious to the carnage on the quarterdeck, fought like demons, their famed gun drill taking charge, their motions fluid and powerful like the piston arms of powerful steam engine. Yet their skill and courage were wasted as the shot just bounced off the ironclads whose turrets had reversed to reload.35

  Inside the turrets, the gunners felt the continuous concussive effect as a heavy vibrating hum. The turrets on the monitors Catskill and Nahant rotated back to fire at close range into St. George. Behind them, Wabash’s heavy Dahlgren battery added its fire. St. George seemed to fly apart in clouds of wooden splinters under the impact, huge holes smashed into her sides, her masts crashing down over the sides. Wasbash’s broadside battery kept the fire hot as the monitors rotated their turrets to reload. One by one, then by whole sections, St. George’s guns fell silent amid their dead and dying crews, blood washing the decks. As her engines took her out of the fight, she was more a floating wreck than a fighting ship.

  Black Prince now turned slowly hard to starboard to bring it broadside to broadside with the crippled American falling out of line. The Warrior class ship was especially difficult to steer with any precision given its small rudder, and the American ship had time to prepare for the next round. The little submersible tender was barely able to steam away from New Ironsides, its submersible boats nowhere in sight. Following Black Prince, ship of the line Sans Pareil also turned to starboard to sandwich New Ironsides and pound her to pieces between them. The American ship was now dead in the water as the battle split into two parts. The monitors ahead of Dahlgren’s flagship steamed on, engaging HMS Donegal and its following frigates, which were steaming into the same pulverizing hail of shells that had wrecked St. George.

  From behind Wabash, the ram Atlanta emerged to swing wide and come in against the British 2nd Division line. She bypassed HMS Donegal, which was engaging the American line to aim squarely at HMS Shannon. This huge British frigate was the namesake of the ship that had taken the USS Chesapeake in 1813 and with its fifty-one guns approached the size of a small ship of the line. Her gunnery was as good as her renowned ancestor’s, and she sent a stream of iron at the former Confederate ironclad that repeatedly struck her bow and sides. Atlanta steamed on, her smokestack shot away and her broadside guns useless at that angle of approach. Lieutenant Cromwell, barely used to the title of captain, was intent on closing with the enemy and put his reliance in the ironclad’s spar torpedo. The gunpowder-filled torpedo extended beyond the prow just under water, its barbed point invisible in the muddy water around the bar. Shannon’s broadside of fifteen 8-inch shell guns and ten 32-pounders poured their fire into the oncoming ram, but they burst or bounced off her plate.36 The frigate had only one gun, a 68-pounder that could hope to defeat even Atlanta’s inferior armor, and it had only one shot as it closed the last hundred yards. It was a direct hit that that knocked the top off the pilothouse and killed the young captain. It was too late for Shannon, however; Atlanta itself now was the weapon. She crashed into Shannon, driving the spar torpedo point deep through the ship’s copper bottom and pushing the ship out of line.

  Atlanta’s engineer ordered engines reversed, but the spar torpedo was sunk too deeply into Shannon, and the underpowered Confederate engines did not have the strength to pull it free. The torpedo man hesitated; his orders had been to connect the battery that would send the current into the explosive after the ship had disengaged. Shannon’s guns were firing at top speed at the immobilized ironclad. Atlanta’s bow gun was dismounted by a direct hit through its gun port. Now HMS Ariadne came up alongside to pound her with her broadside. Her expert gunners sent 68-pounder shot through Atlanta’s single broadside gun port, dismounting the gun and savaging the crew. The third frigate, Melpomene, came up as well to hammer Atlanta’s stern. The patches in her armor failed as shot penetrated the casemate, killing the torpedo man and wounding the engineer. The casemate was filled with smoke and screams as the armor plate rattled with shot and more shells exploded inside. The engineer crawled over to the torpedo man. Pushing the body off the battery, he made the connection. He fell back and counted—one, two, three—then the underwater force of the explosion surged back through Atlanta, pushing her back. Shannon shrieked as if in pain as the explosion ruptured her engine and broke her keel. An enormous hole sucked in the ocean. Almost immediately she started to list. She died fast, slipping beneath the water in minutes.37

  Many a man paused to stare at Shannon’s death. HRH Albert was not one of them. If anything his sharp tongue lashed the gawkers back to their duties aboard HMS Racoon as it led the smaller ships of the first division in the envelopment of the American right. His captain was so intent on the last ships in the American line that he did not notice the flotilla hugging the coast to the south. He had no idea the initiative had slipped from his fingers until an XV-inch shell landed amidships. The lookout that should have seen them was flung into the sea as the mast he was atop flew apart in a cloud of splinters. Another huge shell and then another arced toward the corvettes. Against wooden ships, Dahlgren’s shells smashed their way into the gun decks before exploding with such force to create shambles and a butcher’s yard.

  Albert scanned the shore but could see only the faintest shapes close to the water. He scampered up the rigging to give height to his glasses. “By God,” he muttered to himself, “more of those damned monitors.” They were the three monitors whose repairs had been rushed forward at Port Royal, and they were slowly moving toward the corvettes. The second monitor shell to strike Racoon stove a great hole in her hull. The third killed the captain and sent Albert in a bloody heap on the shattered deck. Fires broke out to feed on the mass of new kindling, and the ship began to list strongly. Strong hands lifted the prince down into a boat. Despised or not, he was still Victoria’s son, and Racoon’s tars would not have it said they left her boy to die.38

  On the other flank the British envelopment had run into Dahlgren’s swarm of gunboats, which were rapidly closing on the main fight. There HMS Resistance had picked out USS Wabash for its duel as the largest American ship after New Ironsides. The two were pounding away at only fifty yards, the side of each ship spitting tongues of fire. Resistance’s heavy nineteen-gun broadside battery had a target it was designed for, a traditional wooden warship. Her gun crews were rapid and accurate. Big chunks of Wabash’s side and deck were smashed, but her own broadside battery of seven XI-inch Dahlgrens and a 150-pounder Parrot gun were just as destructive to the armored hull of the enemy. So close were the ships that Wabash’s shot was breaking through the ruptured armor and followed by a shell to explode inside the gun deck.

  In effect they had canceled each other out, but the fighting would go on until they had reduced each other to wrecks. Meanwhile, the American sloops Pawnee and Housatonic closely engaged Resistance’s other side. Her gun crews had been so winnowed that there were few to man the guns on that side as the sloops concentrated on holing her below the water line. Shot after shot had so dislodged and torn the armor plates and shattered the teak behind them that water began to fill compartment after compartment.

  The center of the battle swirled around the two armored flagships as Black Prince finally came alongside New Ironsides again. Seymour had seen the shot bounce off
New Ironsides and was determined to lay himself alongside, where his gunners could fire through the enemy’s gun ports. Black Prince’s Captain knew his business and was getting everything from his ship and crew that they had to give. It was bruising and bloody work, for the American captain also knew his job. Wainwright would have to earn this victory the hard way.

  Nevertheless, Wainwright knew he had the advantage. As damaged as his flagship was she still had complete maneuverability while the Ironsides was dead in the water. Huge projectiles sailed back and forth between the two ships, smashing through plate and wooden backing as Black Prince steamed past slowly, so close as to sometimes grind its casemate against the American’s. At this distance, New Ironsides’s gun crews switched to shell, set at point-blank range with all three lead fuse settings torn off. They not only tore through the armor and backing but ignited the splintered wood as well. Here and there guns went silent as the crews rushed to fight the fires. Black Prince was answering slowly to the helm with her flooded bow acting as a dead weight. Turning about, Wainwright was engaged by the sloops Canandaigua and Powhatan but, he shook off their fire to reengage New Ironsides.

  Admiral Seymour would have her. And in his single-mindedness, he tried to step into Wainwright’s shoes and forgot the rest of his squadron. He had wounded New Ironsides, and now he was in for the kill. His spirit would have soared if he knew how close he was. His 68-pounders had battered New Ironsides’s pilothouse so severely that a chunk of metal had detached from the inner wall and struck Dahlgren a great gash in the thigh, sending him crashing into the bulkhead in a spray of blood. Rowan was first at his side to staunch the bleeding. It was a nasty wound. The deck pooled with the old man’s bright blood. When at last it ebbed, Dahlgren lay ashen on the deck. Rowan ordered him carried below, but the older man gasped as three seamen lifted him. His hand clutched at the captain’s coat. “Rowan, keep pounding. We can stand it longer than they can. Pound ’em. My guns won’t let you down.”39