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Some Unfinished Civil War Business
Professor Theodore Ropp, Duke University.—Modern business keeps a sharp eye for annual models and significant anniversaries, though the record makers, it can now be reported, failed to smother Mozart in 1956. The great Civil War book industry, which has now clearly outdistanced even the French Napoleon mills, is getting ready for 1961. It will be supported by at least a dozen superspectaculars which will make The Ten Commandments and War and Peace as obsolete as the daguerreotype. What are naval historians doing about the great Civil War boom? At least they are not striking too soon. There is no danger of their suffering the fate of the once-flourishing Confederate cap and flag factories. Of course the latter may have been victims of technology. Even in 1957 there is no place for additional ornamentation on a Detroit juke box.
To be more specific and a bit more serious, there is still room for research in Civil War history. There is still no really good singlevolume history of that war, because research has hardly begun on a number of very important subjects. Only the biographies have been done, and most of the good naval biographies have been written by the faculty at Annapolis. In particular, an aspiring biographer might do well to reread R. S. West’s Gideon Welles, not so much for its expert handling of a wealth of material as for Professor West’s rare ability to recreate that atmosphere of uncertainty and suspense, that “fog of war” which is so essential to the understanding of the decisions of a great military leader. The same author’s Porter is almost as good, and Charles Lee Lewis’ Buchanan and Farragul are excellent. Father
Durkin’s new Mallory is one of the few outstanding naval biographies to come from a “civilian” university. A new life of John Ericsson is still badly needed. Admiral John D. Hayes is planning a new study of Admiral Luce.
In a broader sense, there is still much work to be done. The time has come to quit concentrating on soldiers and battles and to get on with the war. To be quite specific, nobody has yet written the story of the effects of sea power on the Confederacy, to expand and document Mahan’s two pages (43-44) in the Influence of Sea Power upon History.
“Had the South had a people as numerous as it was warlike, and a navy commensurate to its other resources as a sea power, the great extent of its sea-coast and its numerous inlets would have been elements of great strength. The people of the United States and the Government of that day justly prided themselves on the effectiveness of tfie blockade of the whole Southern coast. It was a great feat . . . but it would have been an impossible feat had the Southerners been more numerous, and a nation of seamen. . . . Those who recall how the blockade was maintained, and the class of ships that blockaded during a great part of the war, know that the plan, correct under the circumstances, could not have been carried out in the face of a real navy. . . . But as the Southern coast, from its extent and many inlets, might have been a source of strength, so, from those very characteristics, it became a fruitful source of injury. The great story of the opening of the Mississippi is but the most striking illustration of an action that was going on all over the South. At every breach of the sea frontier, war-ships were entering. The streams that had carried the wealth and supported the trade of the seceding States turned against them, and admitted their enemies to their hearts. Dismay, insecurity, paralysis, prevailed in regions that might, under happier auspices, have kept a nation alive through the most exhausting war. Never did sea power play
a greater or a more decisive part than in the contest which determined that the course of the world’s history would be modified by the existence of one great nation, instead of several rival States, in the North American continent.”
' Scharf’s History of the Confederate States Navy was published three years before Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power. There has been nothing comparable since. Little has been done to follow the paths broken by Professor E. Merton Coulter’s The Confederate States of America. How effective was the blockade? If it was effective, when did the pinch begin? Why were mid-nineteenth century economic controls so much less effective than those of the French revolutionaries? Who manned the blockading ships? How many of them were trained seamen and how many were farm boys? In fact, how big was the labor pool which manned the clippers? How many of them were foreigners? How many American sailors followed The Flight from the Flag (George W. Dalzell’s fine book, like Father Durkin’s work, was also published by Chapel Hill). How many of the men on the inland waterways were professionals? Where did they go when the river boats disappeared? To the Great Lakes? To the new homesteads? To the new railways? How many of the officers of the Civil War navies were Annapolis men? How many were from the merchant marine?
There is still no good study of Confederate coast defense and of the forts built after the Oregon scare of the 1840’s. For that matter, there are no studies of the role and tactics of the infantry, the artillery, the cavalry, and the engineers. Foreign observers were as interested in Civil War naval operations as they were in those on land. Who were those observers? What did they see? How were their observations interpreted? Both the Alabama and the Monitor had profound effects on European naval thought in the 1870’s and 1880’s. Why did the United States Navy cling to its doctrine of coast defense and cruiser warfare? Its decision made more sense than has often been assumed. It was more than a matter of sheer military and bureaucratic conservatism. In what specific ways was Mahan’s own doctrine a reaction against the specific doctrines held by the Navy in this period? Was there ever a conscious “Anaconda Plan”? What role did Norfolk play in the war? There is no recent study of the many attempts to take Wilmington or of the bloody battles for Fort Fisher, though (to quote from Potter’s excellent United Stales and World Sea Power) “the capture of Fort Fisher and the consequent sealing of the port of Wilmington completed the Anaconda, and may be said to have finished the Navy’s primary role in the war.” Admiral Hayes is working on Charleston, but there is no study of the Confederate defense and United States’ capture of New Orleans, “the greatest triumph, both in its military and in its political consequences, that the Union had won in more than a year of war.” We might go even farther. The loss of the Confederacy’s only major city was perhaps the Confederacy’s greatest single military disaster.
Even larger questions are still unanswered. How “modern” was the Civil War? Was it the first of the industrial wars of our own century? Or was it the last of the eighteenth century wars for North America, wars in which the command of the sea conferred tremendous advantages in both striking power and mobility? Are Civil War historians, too, afflicted with the disease of contemporaneity? The Battle of the Virginia Capes (September 5, 1781) was closer to the Battle of Hampton Roads (March 8, 1862) than the latter was to the Battle of the Philippine Sea (June 19-21, 1944). Not much closer, it must be admitted, but enough to give food for thought. Who, in short, has looked at the Second American Revolution in terms of the First, an approach that Mahan himself might have used? Instead of comparing Grant and Farragut with Lee, why not compare them with the Howe brothers? Who, incidentally, has compared the British campaigns of the Revolution with those of 1756— 63, or with those of Wellington? The key in each case, is the presence or absence of the command of the sea. The most profound work on sea power during the Civil War is by a Frenchman. Yet Admiral Lepotier’s Mer contre lerre, les lecons de Vhisloire (1861- 1865), a work finished in 1938, two years after his remarkable Les corsaires du sud el le pavilion ttoilb, but not published until 1945, is still unknown and untranslated.
Meeting The Jean Bart’s Commander
(See pages 1055, October, 1956, and 2120, February, 1957 Proceedings)
H. Kent Hewitt, Admiral usn (ret.).—• I was much interested in Captain Olch’s account of the “Jean Bart’s Escape to Safety” in the October issue of the Proceedings, particularly as I have good reason to know the Jean Bart very well, and also the man whose courage, initiative, and drive were responsible for that escape, a man who later became my very good friend, Vice Admiral Pierre-Jean Ronarc’h. Admiral Ronarc’h himself describes this operation in detail in his interesting book, L’Evasion du Jean Bart. (See review, page 218, February, 1954 Proceedings.)
When the Moroccan part of the torch operation was being planned, we knew that the Jean Bart was in Casablanca and that she had one completed quadruple turret armed with 380-mm. (15") guns. We did not know the state of her mobility, nor the condition of her armament. However, the new Massachusetts was included in Task Force 34 in order, in case of necessity, to contain the Jean Bart, and her sister ship, the partially completed Richelieu, known to be at Dakar. The landing site of Task Force 34’s Center Group, at Fedhala, was carefully chosen so as to be outside the range of the Jean Bart, as well as the fixed defenses of Casablanca.
In the early hostilities subsequent to the landings, the Jean Bart, which did not move from her dock, was hit several times by sixteen-inch projectiles from the Massachusetts, and was seriously damaged by aircraft bombs. From reports received from our planes, it was believed that the French battleship was out of action. Her one active turret, trained to seaward, had remained where it was since her gun action with the Massachusetts. So it was that, on the morning of November 10 (D-f-2), when we received a plane report that French light forces from Casablanca harbor were firing inshore on our troops, my flagship, the Augusta, promptly moved down the coast to engage, without too much concern about the range from the Jean Bart’s berth at the Mole du Commerce.
We had barely commenced firing on the French torpedo boats or frigates, when two large orange splashes rose close alongside the Augusta’s bridge, so close as to spray many of those on the flag bridge. The Augusta speeded up, zigged and zagged, and made smoke, eventually getting away, but not before being near-missed, uncomfortably close, by several more two-gun salvoes.
A month or two later, when I finally met Admiral Ronarc’h, he told me his side of the story. Promoted to Rear Admiral, he had been given command of the shore defenses of Casablanca, which included his old ship. He related how the turret had been jammed in train by a sixteen-inch hit in the barbette, how they had worked feverishly for thirty-six hours to clear it, and how he had then ordered that the turret be left “as was” to create the impression that it was still out of action. Then he told me how, when the Augusta came down the coast on the 10th, he sat up in the Jean Bart’s top, with their sole inadequate range finder, beckoning to us to “come a little closer.” “And,” said he, “you came.”
The sequel to this story occurred in Algiers, in April 1946, over three years later, when I entered that port flying my four- starred flag on the Missouri. Admiral Ronarc’h, by then a Vice Admiral, was the local “Prefet Maritime.” The war being over, salutes were in order. Therefore, after the exchange of national salutes, Admiral Ronarc’h, from his flagship, the cruiser Jeanne d’Arc, fired for me one of my first seventeen- gun salutes. When I greeted him as an old friend, upon the occasion of his official call, I remarked that I appreciated the salute of the Jeanne d’Arc much more than that of the Jean Bart. He grinned from ear to ear.
The Bombay Explosion
(See page 273, March, 1957 Proceedings)
Lieutenant Paul D. Hobson, R.N. (Ret.).—I was disturbed to read the article “The Bombay Explosion” by Lieutenant Edward F. Oliver because it is obvious that he was not an eyewitness of this disaster nor did he have access to a competent witness. The following account is based on my own personal recollection and on notes made at the time and shortly afterward from the accounts of other eyewitnesses, further amplified by information recently supplied to me by the Institute of Marine Engineers. I might also point out that in addition to the U. S. troops who were emptying the godowns in the path of the flames, Indian and British troops were emptying godowns that were actually on fire, and men from my own ship were among those who lost their lives in this undertaking.
On April 13, 1944, the Canadian- (not Clyde-) built and registered Fort Slikine, arrived in Bombay from Karachi. She had discharged the bulk of her cargo in Karachi, but still had about 1,200 long tons of explosive and incendiary on board. The remaining space had been filled in Karachi with cotton for the Bombay textile mills. Under war emergency procedure she berthed in the Victoria Dock and commenced to discharge at 0800 on April 14.
No. 4 lower hold was filled with cotton, with 280 tons of boxed TNT in the ’tween decks, and it was in this hold (not No. 2) that smoke was noticed at 1330 (not 1418). Hoses were already rigged on standing orders, and the port fire department was summoned. Unfortunately most of the ship’s officers and port officials were at lunch ashore, and the junior mate in charge wasted a lot of time getting in touch with them, while the firemen thought that they were dealing with just another cotton fire. At 1418 the general alarm was given, and all available fire equipment concentrated on the vessel. The top of the cotton was several feet below the ’tween decks containing the explosives, and it appears to have been decided that it would be safer to try to extinguish the fire rather than to try to unload the TNT boxes from the smoke-filled hold, especially as it would hardly have been possible to do both at once.
By about 1500 the water in the hold was approaching the ’tween decks head, and shortly afterwards the forward starboard shell plating began to glow red. A cutting torch was sent for, but there was again some delay as the dockyard repair gangs were on strike, and by the time a gang was rounded up with cutting equipment the plating was too hot to approach. (The British foreman of the welding gang was one of the very few survivors at the site of the explosion, landing after a flight of about fifty yards with only minor injuries, but naked except for one shoe and the waistband of his pants. He is the only source for the events immediately preceding the explosion.)
The fire department gave up the idea of trying to put the fire out, and concentrated on wetting down the TNT boxes. It is not known why no attempt was made to scuttle, but it may be assumed that if the hold was already full of water from the hoses over the burning cotton, nothing would be gained by filling the other hold from the sea and losing the use of the ship’s pumps.
All other vessels were warned, and none were abandoned. HMS Sussex—my own ship at the time—was in dry dock, and all except a skeleton crew were sent to assist the merchant ships in the harbor. A few of these got under way in time to escape major injury, and all had hoses rigged and pumps running. Naval crews had been detailed to assist these ships, and a few tugs whose crews were reluctant to approach the area of the fire were taken over. It is a little difficult to blame the crews concerned, as at least two of those commandeered vessels, including one manned from my own ship, vanished without trace.
By 1600 the TNT cases were reported on fire by the fire department communicator, and the firemen and crew were ordered to evacuate. It is not known whether this order ever got through to most of the men, because at 1607 (as attested by the clock in the Port Trust Tower), the stern of the Fort Stikine blew up. The resulting shock was felt up to twenty miles away, but the “blast of hot air” reported by Lieutenant Oliver’s unnamed plowman informant was certainly not detectable at a very much closer range. The Jalapadma, which had been moored ahead of the Fort Stikine, had its moorings cut and drifted alongside the blazing remains of that vessel. Burning oil and debris cut hoses and caused heavy casualties among the fire parties standing by on the other ships. At 1627 the rest of the explosives aboard, about 1,000 tons, also blew up. The first explosion was minor in comparison to this. The column was over 1,000 feet to its mushroom top, as estimated by explosion experts in the area, the Jalapadma had her poop deckhouse and gun blown 200 yards into the town, while one of the Fort Stikine’s boilers was visible at an altitude of about 100 feet flying out to sea. The remains of the Jalapadma were blown up onto the jetty, as was an Indian Navy corvette which wound up fifty feet inshore leaning against a building. This seems to have been the result of a wave, as casualties on board were few and the vessel was eventually salvaged. Twenty-four ships caught fire, or had their existing fires intensified, as well as all the buildings in the area. The SS General Van Den Heyden was cut almost in two by a section of tail shafting from the J alapadma which had fallen across it from a great height. The coupling bolts had sheared off flush with the flange face, and were still in place when the shaft was removed. According to the Institute of Marine Engineers record, which does not list the ships lost by name, fifteen vessels were total losses. One of these was used as the foundation for a landing stage, one was blown to pieces, and the J alapadma was cut up on the wharf. The others were scrapped in local yards.
(Editor’s Note: We sent the above comment to the original article’s author, Lieutenant E. F. Oliver, USCG, whose detailed rebuttal follows.)
After reading Lieutenant Hobson’s lengthy discourse, my first thought is that after waiting thirteen long years for the Lieutenant or one of his competent eyewitnesses to tell the story, I despaired of ever seeing it in print and decided to write it myself.
I deplore the inference that my sources of information and/or my reporting was incompetent. This incident was extremely difficult to research. Not only were most of the eyewitnesses to the events immediately preceding the explosion killed, but also the entire affair was cloaked with secrecy to prevent the enemy from gaining any useful information. To my knowledge no official report has been made since the war.
While admittedly there are a few inaccuracies in my article, such as the fact that the ship was built in Canada instead of England, it does not follow per se that my sources of information were not competent.
A good illustration of the difficulty in research is pointed up in the Lieutenant’s comment. He docuinented his version of the incident by citing as reference the Institute of Marine Engineers; then, a few paragraphs on, he stated that their report did not contain the names of the ships which were lost or damaged. It will be noted that my article was replete with this information.
I mention this point concerning the names of the ships as it well illustrates the fact that while there may be some inaccuracies, the important facts were comprehensive and exact in my article.
Now, concerning the point the Lieutenant raises concerning the exact time the fire started. He is apparently unaware that the official board of inquiry made a finding of fact that the first knowledge of the fire was at 1418 hours; this is the time I used in. my article. He will also be interested to know that two naval officers testified before the board of inquiry that they had been aboard the ship at noon and that it was on fire then. Their testimony contradicts the Lieutenant’s version of 1330 hours.
It should be mentioned that I purposely used the board of inquiry’s findings, even though there was some question as to the exact time, since I did not wish my article to speculate on this point.
No, I was not an eyewitness to the explosion although I am very familiar with Bombay having been there many times in the merchant marine. I was serving in the SS Mariposa at the time, and she departed Bombay approximately one hour before the explosion. I was on watch at the time and heard the blast at sea; everyone on the bridge thought at first an escort had dropped a depth charge; later we learned what had happened.
I received a letter from another eyewitness, an officer in the Royal Indian Navy at the time, and he commented thusly: “It would be interesting to know whether you were in Bombay at the time . . . , although your presence may possibly be inferred from the accuracy of your graphic description of the fire following on the explosions . . . .”
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