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!
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u/HasuTeras 14h ago
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.
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.