Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History (18 page)

The pilot began pointing out the individual docks as they passed, each filled with masts, and connected by Wapping Dock, which allowed ships to move within most of the dock system without having to exit and reenter the system through the river. Lamson’s ears pricked up when the pilot pointed out Albert Dock, where his quarry was in the last stages of fitting out. The pilot was explaining that the Albert Dock was used for only the most valuable cargoes, such as brandy, and that its seven and a half acres was surrounded by bonded, fire- and theft-proof warehouses of brick and iron. The docks were less than twenty years old but already becoming too small. Built for sailing ships, its entrance was too small for the new side-wheelers and difficult for the large, screw-propeller ships.
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“Captain!” Lamson turned to see Lieutenant Porter touching the brim of his cap. “The Royal Navy is coming down the river.”

“Prepare to present full honors, Mr. Porter.”

The crewmen who had been lounging by the railing were sent into a bustle of action by the executive officer’s shouted commands. In less than a minute the men had gone from a gaggle to neat lines on deck. As the first British ship came even with
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, Porter shouted, “Present arms!” The sailors’ hands shot to their caps, and the Marines presented arms. A keen eye would have noticed that the Spencer rifles they carried had no fittings for bayonets.

The first British ship was the wood screw frigate HMS
Liverpool
, dwarfing
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at two thousand six hundred and fifty-six tons.
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She was two hundred and thirty-five feet in length and fifty feet in the beam, not even three years old but already obsolete, some might say, in this new age of iron. She carried the standard armament of the Royal Navy. Pride of place was given to the breech-loading 110-pounder Armstrong gun, issued widely to the fleet in 1861; eight 8-inch rifles; four 70-pounders; eight 40-pounders; and eighteen 32-pounders.
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The Royal Navy had been so impressed with the Army’s tests of the Armstrong breech-loader that it had ordered almost two thousand guns of sizes that the manufacturer had not even designed, and later accepted them without trials.
Liverpool
was followed by the much smaller
Albacore
class wood screw gunboat HMS
Goshawk
with four guns. As the stern of
Goshawk
passed, Porter’s commands sent the crew back to work to prepare for docking.
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Aboard the British frigate, there was no perceptible change in the normal activities of the crew as it passed
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. The officers on the bridge ostentatiously looked the other way as if the American honors were their due and not worth their notice.

Liverpool
did not neglect the minimum customary honors that were owed to any warship of a recognized state. The British naval jack was dipped in salute. The U.S. Navy never returned such customary European honors on the principle that the Stars and Stripes bowed to no other flag. It was an irritation among other navies, especially where an irritation with the Americans was preferred.

When Porter dismissed the crew after
Goshawk
passed, there was a notable mutter as the men broke ranks. The snub had not gone unnoticed.
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Attention soon shifted to the marvel of the enclosed docking system, fascinating everyone from captain to cabin boy. The pilot directed them through Queen’s Basin and from there down a short channel into King’s Dock. Lamson was pleased at how well
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handled in such tight places.

No sooner had they docked than a civilian gentleman left his waiting carriage to wait for the gangplank to be lowered. As soon as it touched the stone pier, he dashed across it and said to the guard, “Permission to come aboard. I must speak to the captain immediately.”

Lamson shouted from the bridge, “Permission granted. Mr. Henderson, show our visitor to the bridge.” The man who climbed to the bridge was middle aged with a well-trimmed, graying beard and the serious look of New England about him. He exuded an alert competence.
He extended his hand introduced himself. “Good day, Captain. I am Thomas Haines Dudley, United States Consul in Liverpool. We had word that you had arrived and would be docking here this morning. We must speak privately.”

Once they were in Lamson’s private cabin, Dudley came right down to business. “Captain, I have been informed of your instructions; you have arrived not a moment too soon. I am convinced that the quarry has wind of Ambassador Adams’s presentations of evidence to the Foreign Office proving that the rams have been built for the Confederacy. Not a moment to lose, not a single moment, sir. They moved Number 294 across to the Albert Dock last week and fitted the two turrets on the 28th and 29th. Half of Liverpool was there to see the biggest cranes in the port lift those great cylinders. They’ve been working feverishly ever since to rush her to completion.”
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Lamson had looked forward to meeting the man who had sent such detailed reports on the rams, tracking their every stage of construction. He obviously had the trust of Seward and Fox. More important, he had the trust of Lincoln. Fox had explained that it was Dudley’s timely and critical support at the 1860 Republican convention that had secured Lincoln’s nomination. As a reward he had been offered the consulships in either Yokohama or Liverpool. Dudley had chosen the latter to be near expert medical care for a chronic illness. Whatever the illness was, it was not apparent in his urgent attitude now.

“Ambassador Adams had instructed me to inform you to report to him immediately upon your arrival. There is a train for London leaving this afternoon. I took the liberty of buying your ticket. I will escort you through your registration with the Custom House here and then see you off at the station.

“You must not lose a minute, literally a minute. As the warship of a belligerent, British law allows the
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only a forty-eight-hour stay in any British port to water and victual. That forty-eight hours begins when your papers are filed at the Custom House. You must get to London, see Adams, and take the next train back here. You will have just enough time. Thank God the British trains are so fast and dependable. They’ve built their tracks and grades with such care that there is almost never a derailment or delay. Unfortunately, that is something we cannot say at home.” Dudley did not wait for Lamson to comment but stood up and said, “Let’s go!”

Along the way to the Custom House, they were stopped in traffic by the open windows of a grog shop. The words of an enthusiastically rendered drinking song were clear.

When the Alabama’s keel was laid,
Roll, Alabama, roll!
It was in the city of Birkenhead.
Roll, Alabama, roll!
They called her Number 292,
Roll, Alabama, roll!
In honor of the merchants of Liverpool.
Roll, Alabama, roll,
Rooooooll, Alabama, roll, Alabama, rooooooll
Rooooooll, Alabama, roll, Alabama, roll!

The carriage lurched forward as the traffic began to move. They could hear one last verse as they sped away.

To the western isles they made her run,
Roll, Alabama, roll!
To be fitted out with shot and gun.
Roll, Alabama, roll!
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Dudley ground his teeth. “Even in song, the popular sentiment of this country favors the rebels. They
should
be singing her praises; after all, her crew is made up, almost to the man, of former Royal Navy sailors. This country might as well be at war with us.

“No, Captain, I must correct myself. If they are war with us, it is only with their little finger. We must keep them from using both fists. I have been here over two years now, and I am aware of the industrial might of this country. No one will come well out of such a fight.”
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Bulloch prowled the dock as if his presence would speed the already desperate pace the Laird Brothers’ work crews were setting. The arrival of the
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in Liverpool, now docked barely a quarter mile away, had driven him from his normal behind-the-scenes station. His friends at the Custom House had reported immediately on Lamson’s presentation of his papers and keyed on the fact that he had stated his ship was to
replace the purpose-built sloop, USS
Kearsarge
, as the single American warship on the U.S. Navy’s English Channel Station. He had mentioned casually that every purpose-built warship was needed in American waters to close the noose tighter on Charleston and Wilmington. That only momentarily reassured Bulloch. He would feel better when
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actually left for the Channel Station, and given British rules on belligerents, that should be in two short days.
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Anything that was not absolutely essential to get the ship simply seaworthy enough to escape the harbor and cross the sea to the Azores had been abandoned. Bulloch had arranged for the last work to be completed in those islands before the guns and stores were fitted. He could feel the minutes slipping away as if they were grains of sand in his own life’s hourglass. This time he had avoided the last-minute commotion with the
Alabama’s
crew. The men that would take her out of the harbor were a skeleton crew, only enough men to run her trials at sea if anyone looked closely. The rest of the crew had already been quietly paid in advance and sent due west to wait in Moelfre Bay off Anglesey in Wales.

Bulloch’s presence had not escaped notice of Dudley’s horde of agents who buzzed around the Albert Dock. Not a bolt or mouse could enter or exit the dock without being noticed. John Laird had paid a gang of local toughs to clear them off, but Dudley had paid even more for a bigger gang. Club-wielding bobbies had more than once had to break up the street battles. It was no wonder that Bulloch was feeling besieged. He felt that he held the last hope of the Confederacy here in Albert Dock. The Confederate armies had suffered major defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and he realized it was only a matter of time before they wasted away. The South was consuming itself while the resources of the North only grew. The rams had to live up to their fearsome reputation in order to break the blockade and let new life flow into the Confederacy. The rams would then be free to trail the Confederate Navy’s coat up the entire Yankee coast all the way to Canada and back, destroying the North’s shipping and savaging their ports. He had no doubts because he had no more hopes but these. There was nothing he would not do to see that they lived.

Those hopes had flared when the Laird officer in charge of outfitting
North Carolina
—and that was what Bulloch called her now that her mighty turrets had been fitted—reported that the ship would be ready for sea trials on September 4.
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Lord John Russell sat in his office deep in thought as he realized that the diplomatic ground was shifting beneath him. His undersecretary, Layard, sat silently, waiting for him to speak.

The twin Union victories that summer at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had a dramatic and sobering effect on the pro-Confederate British establishment. Ambassador Adams had written his son, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., who was serving with the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, that the news had filled the London salons with “tears of anger mixed with grief.”
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Adams’s relentless pressure was supported by a flurry of affidavits and intelligence on the Confederate provenance of the rams. Its cumulative weight was having an effect, albeit a very reluctant one on Russell. In August, while on vacation in Scotland, Adams had informed the Duke of Argyll, the Secretary of State for War, that the French consul in Liverpool had denied that the rams were being built for the French. On his return he passed that information to Russell as well.

The British ambassador in Paris confirmed that Adams was telling the truth. Inquiries to Egypt also revealed that the previous ruler had ordered two ironclads from Bravay, but his successor had canceled the order in 1862. Despite this information, Russell responded in a letter dated September 1.

Her Majesty’s government are advised that the information contained in the depositions is in a great measure mere hearsay evidence and generally is not such as to show the intent or purpose necessary to make the building or fitting out of these vessels illegal under the Foreign Enlistment Act… Her Majesty’s government are advised that they cannot interfere in any way with these vessels.
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Yet on the same day that letter was written, Russell was convinced by Adams’s efforts that where there was all that smoke, there was probably a good fire. The message did not indicate that change of mind because Russell and the Crown’s legal authorities had become fixated on the letter of a badly written law, the Foreign Enlistment Act. It had been suggested in the cabinet that this recognizably flawed legislation be amended, but even that drew opposition from those determined not to give the appearance of succumbing to American pressure.

That change of mind made Layard decidedly uncomfortable. His friend Bulloch had begged for any indication that the government was about to act. Now it seemed that the manifest need to take action was gathering momentum.

Russell put the issue squarely, “Layard, so much suspicion attaches to the ironclad vessels at Birkenhead that they ought not to be allowed to go out of Liverpool until the suspicion about them is cleared up.”

“Then, do you still want to send Adams this letter?”

“Yes, indeed, but I will not give him the satisfaction of our taking precipitous action. I will not act until the Law Officers have supported such action.” He believed that they would, but pride forbade him keeping Adams abreast of changing perceptions.
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