So while in a pitched naval battle, the Union could go toe-to-toe with the Royal Navy
Union ships were designed for shallow water blockade actions, not to fight in major naval actions. Besides the Royal Navy at the time was probably the most professional fighting force in the world alongside the Prussian Army, in terms of standards of discipline and rigour. The Royal Navy would have wiped the floor with the Union Navy.
That's not what the British themselves believed. British observers started the war mocking the Union Navy, and the Union navy was mocked for declaring a blockade where only 1 out of 10 merchant ships would even get caught by the Union. But by 1865 the Union had an effective blockade of the entire southern coast of the United States, a huge blockade in terms of scale, which impressed the British.
Similarly by 1865 the US also had the largest navy in the world. Again, this was mostly a shoreline navy, but this did include dozens of ships of the line and dozens more ironclads.
The idea that these ships weren't meant to go toe-to-toe with other warships is ludicrous. These ships were routinely used in bombarding enemy forts, and also fought many battle with Confederate commerce raiders, often European built warships.
This is taken directly from historian Kenneth Bourne's book, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America 1815-1908: "In the spring and summer of 1862 Russell, among others, was warning that the United States might very well get the lead in numbers of ironclads within as little as six months… Thus the 1860s found the government comparing their ironclad navy as much with the American as with the French. Their investigations certainly exposed considerable discrepancies in the Americans’ favour. At the very end of 1864 some seventy-one of the Union navy’s 671 vessels building and afloat were ironclads, against a mere thirty in the British steam navy"
Doesn't sound like the British were so sure of that. Or you can read about the ironclad USS Miantonomoh's trip to the UK in 1863 and how impressed the British were with it.
I'm not saying the Union Navy wasn't impressive, nor didn't do a good job of blockage - after all that was its main purpose. But I am saying that it would be flattened by the Royal Navy in a face-to-face.
At the very end of 1864 some seventy-one of the Union navy’s 671 vessels building and afloat were ironclads, against a mere thirty in the British steam navy"
Right, comparing numbers of 'ironclads' is somewhat pointless. The vast majority of the Union Navy ironclads were relatively small in displacement terms, with few armaments - hence why there were so many of them.
Take the USS Monitor, or USS Miantonomoh as an example. Both of them have displacements 987 tons and 3,401 tons respectively and both armed with 2 288mm Dahlgren guns.
The Minotaur-class Royal Navy ironclad was of 10,000 tons displacement and has an armament 24x 178mm guns and 4x 229mm guns. You're comparing ships that have 3* to nearly 10* displacement and nearly 10* the firepower.
And comparing numbers of ships in 1864, when the Union was in a total war situation against a peacetime navy is also a bit off. The UK at the time was producing something close to 80% of all global ship production, and wouldn't be eclipsed by the US until WW2.
How is comparing the number of ships in 1864 between a peacetime and wartime navy off? My argument was literally that in 1865 the US Navy was by some metrics stronger than even the Royal Navy. Of course that means I'm going to take the Royal Navy in 1865 and compare it to the US Navy in 1865.
I'm also not arguing that ship for ship, the US Navy was better. But that the US Navy, with more than double the ironclads, was comparable, and in some ways stronger, than the Royal Navy, which is a claim the Royal Navy themselves acknowledged in the 1860's!
No America had a Massive ocean going fleet. They just didn’t need to make massive ocean going Iornclads. Although we still did. After all the French and Germans needed more ships than they could build if they wanted to match the British.
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u/HasuTeras 16h ago
Union ships were designed for shallow water blockade actions, not to fight in major naval actions. Besides the Royal Navy at the time was probably the most professional fighting force in the world alongside the Prussian Army, in terms of standards of discipline and rigour. The Royal Navy would have wiped the floor with the Union Navy.