The Confederate Naval Strategy

[caption id="attachment_2851" align="alignleft" width="319" caption="CSS Alabama"][/caption]

 

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

We have talked a little about relative advantages and disadvantages for the United States and the Confederate States at the beginning of the war. One of the most striking advantages for the United States was their Navy. In short, they had one and the Confederacy did not. True, the US Navy was small and dispersed, but in April 1861 they could at least muster a few ships into service against the Rebels. Further, the US had an established officer corps and a vast capacity to build a great fleet (which they did in short order). The Confederates did not and could never match the naval strength of the United States. They had no ships (at first), only a  handful of officers from the prewar Navy, and no merchant marine. So how does a nation prepare a naval strategy with such limited assets?

The Confederates used innovation, privateers, and commerce raiding - and put forth a pretty decent effort at that. The Rebel navy employed torpedoes (mines) to guard the entrances to their harbors, developed and utilized ironclad, ram, and submarine technology, and privateers and commerce raiders on the high seas pulled US ship off of blockade duty to deal with the Confederate nuisance.

[caption id="attachment_2856" align="alignright" width="220" caption="CSS Hunley"][/caption]

And while all of these things took their toll on the US Navy, in the end the Confederate strategy inflicted minimal damage on the overall United States war effort. The torpedoes (in at least one case) were "damned," ironclads and rams were underpowered (the Rebs had no capacity to build the big steam engines needed to power these heavier vessels) and not effective on the high seas, their one and only submarine, the CSS Hunley, inexplicably sank after sending its first victim to the bottom, privateers had nowhere really to sell their captured prizes, and commerce raiders like the CSS Alabama, while crippling to the US merchant marine, could not engage vessels from other countries - and the US had shifted much of its shipping to foreign bottoms.

There are a number of "might haves" in the story of the CS Naval strategy - ironclads under construction in Britain and Denmark that either never made it into Confederate hands or arrived too late to be of service makes for a good example. I guess we'll never know what would have happened if the Rebs had gotten their ships. Could they have broken the Union blockade? I tend not to speculate about such things.

Peace,

Keith

A Decisive Union Advantage?

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

A troubling, but common way to look at Union victory in the Civil War is to reflect from the vantage point of 1865. From there you can easily trace Union advantages and illustrate how victory seemed inevitable from the start. One of these great advantages: the United States had a navy ready to attack when the war broke out.

Or did they? In the film Gone With the Wind, Rhett Butler forecasts doom early on stating, "The Yankees are better equipped than we...they have a navy to bottle up our harbors and starve us to death." Well...eventually, the navy played an important part in Winfield Scott's "Anaconda Plan." It blockaded seacoast harbors and menaced cities and installations on Confederate rivers. But in the spring of 1861, the Unites States Navy was only a shadow of what it would become. Their upwards of 70 ships were either not serviceable or scattered around the world. In fact, when shots were finally fired in April 1861, only a handful of U.S. ships could be brought to bear on Confederate forces. What's more? in 1861, the U.S. Navy was a deep water fleet - and could not navigate along the rivers that were vital to the Confederacy.

So yes, having a navy was an advantage from the start. The Confederacy had none, and had to build one from scratch. But simply having a few ships ready for duty could hardly be called a decisive advantage. And so without the benefit of reflection, one might think of the U.S. Navy as enlisting only a slight advantage. Northern manufacturing capacity was the real clincher - the ability to build rapidly and commission a vast navy ultimately meant that the United States could put to sea a formidable fighting force in relatively short order...far more destructive than anything the Confederates could muster.

Peace,

Keith