European Army

Since the British sent over 100,000 troops to the Crimea during the 11 months of active operations, this seems a little understated. A regular force of the size of the British Army of the East would be extremely threatening to the US.

Casualties
CorpsStrength on EmbarkationReinforcements ReceivedTotal StrengthDiedInvalidedPrisonersDesertersTotalStrength, 1st April 1856Errors (local enlistees, transfers etc.)
Cavalry Division 5,155 3,565 8,720 1,209 1,064 67 31 2,371 6,353 4
Guards 2,893 3,836 6,729 2,182 1,132 6 8 3,328 3,466 65
Line Infantry 42,243 27,322 69,565 15,426 11,404 284 204 27,318 42,112- 135
German Legion 3,747 6 3,753 39 41 - 79 159 3,896 302
Swiss Legion 2,161 - 2,161 6 - - 2 8 2,113- 40
Land Transport Corps 533 7,042 7,575 468 217 1 6 692 6,958 75
Royal Artillery 3,215 7,896 11,111 1,506 2,262 - - 3,768 7,343 -
Royal Sappers and Miners 406 1,333 1,739 261 188 - 4 453 1,286 -
SUM 60,353 51,000 111,353 21,097 16,308 358 334 38,097 73,527 271



If we ignore all those wars in India and elsewhere...



Do tell how the Russian hordes are going to walk across water and sink the Royal Navy...



Or to put it another way, the Egyptian Forts were all rubble and occupied by the British, who had systematically knocked out every fort and landed infantry to occupy them.

In the US the news was a shock. Alexandria was one of the most fortified cities on the planet. The coastal forts mounted 37 modern heavy rifles, 10 500 pounder smoothbores (15"), 194 smaller smoothbores (a mix of 10" and 6.5") and 36 mortars (6 of which were 15" and 10 were 20"). That it was taken so quickly showed there was nothing to stop the RN steaming into New York Harbour and taking possession of the city.




I wouldn't call US troops parade ground soldiers...
100,000 men require 300,000 pounds of rations per day times seven is 2,100,000 pounds of rations a week, 16,800,000 pounds of rations a month. That is 201,600,000 pounds of rations hauled across the Atlantic during a six month stay in New York. That & a lot of other obvious logistical obstacles such as hundreds of U.S. privateers descending on the R.N.'s supply ships mean that war on that scale involves more than just listing there names of ships or army units.

You can call the Egyptian forts anything you want, the Royal Navy at the time was deeply embarrassed by the poor results of the bombardment. Captain Fisher, for one, dedicated his career to improving the accuracy of R.N. gunfire as a result of that experience. You might want to read about the ineffectiveness of Royal Navy cannon fire in the second half of the 19th Century. Admiral Fisher & admiral Scott fought the hidebound traditionalists who defended the practice of laying guns by individual gunners. The use of range finding devices & coordinating all the guns of a line of battle ship from a control tower was revolutionary. Believe it or not, 15" guns were aimed by a man looking down the bore of the gun at the end of the 19th Century. It wasn't until the launch of HMS Dreadnaught in 1906 that gun laying using optics, telephonic communication & electrically triggerd all large caliber gunfire came together into one lethal package. That day in 1906, every line of battle ship in the world was obsolete. It is a fascinating story, I highly recommend it.

The opening phase of the Crimean War was a battle between the Russian & Turkish navies that resulted in a resounding Russian victory. Seven Turkish frigates were lost, effectively removing the Turkish navy from the war. The British participated in the fighting on the Crimean Peninsula. It would be useful to take a look at a map to understand just how small the battle space was.

Projecting naval power is not about getting there, it is about staying there. Blithely sailing into New York Harbor was not the challenge. As Lord Howe discovered, that was the easy part. I take it that you have never sailed down the East River or out through the Varazano Narrows. You might want to ask a sailer about what a trap New York Harbor would have been in the 1860's. The only British base capable of supporting such a move was in Halifax Nova Scotia. I am not sure that anybody who has not sailed in those waters can understand what that means. As the British admiralty said at the time, it was incapable of supporting any sizable force in North American waters. They knew what they were talking about & I, for one, accept their judgement.
 
@67th Tigers If I may? I thought he was referring to the British troops as parade ground soldiers. Could be mistaken of course. Maybe he will clarify.I
I think 67th was being flippant, though of course I can't be sure.

As to the bit about parade ground soldiers, it does rather indicate a lack of understanding about what the British Army actually taught its soldiers.

Drill (square-bashing, as it was sometimes called) was part of it, and the reason why drill matters in a period army is that this is a time when drilled movements matter. To be able to move fluidly from column to line, line to skirmish order, and so on is important in an army that seeks to act under control instead of being merely a sort of collection of armed folks - untrained troops are simply much less efficient.
In modern times, parade ground marching in close order drill is an anachronism performed for looks, much like formation flying. But that doesn't mean it wasn't useful at the time, and indeed Lee expressed his wish that his army had Prussian drill (I believe it was during Chancellorsville).

The whole point of drill is to create a situation where the movements are automatic. You hear "face right" and you don't need to think about where you'd fit best, because you already know your placement and role in the battalion.


But drill wasn't the only thing the British trained in. There was training in light infantry tactics as well (plenty of skirmishing - every single infantry regiment in the British Army was a light infantry regiment by now, meaning the whole battalion can skirmish and is trained to do it) and - and most importantly for the British Army in this period - there's musketry training.

It would perhaps help to explain the kind of thing the British did in musketry training, because it matters and they were sort of fanatic about it. It included:

- Training the men to judge distance - that is, to be able to tell for themselves by looking whether an enemy is 100 or 120 yards away, or for that matter 300 or 310 yards away. Rather cleverly, this was turned into a competition, and every man in the army was regularly practiced at it. (There are special instructions to ensure that the people who are training can't find out the answer by an error made by the instructor - it's always something the instructor knows but the men have to work out by skill).
- Training the men to set sights and align a rifle on target.
- Training in dry-firing a rifle, including with percussion caps. (The latter is intended to ensure that a soldier does not flinch at the sound of the hammer falling, or the crack of the percussion cap, and makes long range shooting more effective.)
- Training in how to aim. This includes the key concept that a man is told to present his weapon, but not to fire - he is expected to make that decision on his own, which means he can fire only when he is sure of his target. He is also trained not to fire if he is not sure of his target - to give up, take a breath and try again rather than fire a duff shot.
- Training in how to pull the trigger - specifically, don't. Press the trigger instead, slowly enough that the rifle remains in alignment for the whole process rather than being pulled off.
- Training with firing blanks.

Finally, after all of that, they do the actual musketry practice.

The saying at Hythe was "we teach a man to shoot without ball, and then we give him ball to prove he has learned". It certainly seems to have worked.
 
100,000 men require 300,000 pounds of rations per day times seven is 2,100,000 pounds of rations a week, 16,800,000 pounds of rations a month. That is 201,600,000 pounds of rations hauled across the Atlantic during a six month stay in New York. That & a lot of other obvious logistical obstacles such as hundreds of U.S. privateers descending on the R.N.'s supply ships mean that war on that scale involves more than just listing there names of ships or army units.

Piling up numbers like this is not actually helping your case, because it indicates that you're deeply impressed by raw numbers without actually considering what they mean.

For example, you've somehow taken the 300,000 pounds of rations a day number and multiplied it by 672 days to represent "a six month stay in New York" - somehow multiplying by eight to go from "weeks" to "months" and then by twelve to go from "one month" to "six months". But if we correct to the true number for a one month period of campaigning, which is 9 million lbs of rations for 100,000 men (300,000 x 30), and convert it to tons (4,000 tons) then that's roughly speaking 4-8 period supply ships a month.

This is not comically enormous, no matter how much you seem impressed by the raw numbers. It's functionally one convoy a month, and could be escorted by a single steam liner of the sort the British had dozens of and be rendered totally immune to raiding.

You can call the Egyptian forts anything you want, the Royal Navy at the time was deeply embarrassed by the poor results of the bombardment.

And you should perhaps compare it with the failed bombardments of Charleston to see that what the British (apparently - though you haven't given a citation) considered unimpressive was something the US Navy could not replicate.

The opening phase of the Crimean War was a battle between the Russian & Turkish navies that resulted in a resounding Russian victory. Seven Turkish frigates were lost, effectively removing the Turkish navy from the war. The British participated in the fighting on the Crimean Peninsula. It would be useful to take a look at a map to understand just how small the battle space was.

Well, yes, we're quite familiar with the geographical extent of the Crimean Peninsula. I'm not sure why this is exactly an issue.

Projecting naval power is not about getting there, it is about staying there. Blithely sailing into New York Harbor was not the challenge. As Lord Howe discovered, that was the easy part. I take it that you have never sailed down the East River or out through the Varazano Narrows. You might want to ask a sailer about what a trap New York Harbor would have been in the 1860's. The only British base capable of supporting such a move was in Halifax Nova Scotia. I am not sure that anybody who has not sailed in those waters can understand what that means.

Would you be able to elaborate why exactly steam ships would have trouble sailing out of the Narrows? It's not like New York was anything other than a major international port with millions of tons of shipping a year at this time...

As the British admiralty said at the time, it was incapable of supporting any sizable force in North American waters. They knew what they were talking about & I, for one, accept their judgement.
At this point you've cited the Admiralty twice as saying they could not support any sizable force in North American waters. I've asked you for a citation and you've not provided one; please provide one to that effect.

You may be interested to know that in 1861 Captain Washington looked at the requirements to blockade the Union, and concluded that it could be done; Admiral Milne uprated his estimate to allow for logistics, but his larger estimate was still entirely within the means of the Royal Navy.
 
But if we correct to the true number for a one month period of campaigning, which is 9 million lbs of rations for 100,000 men (300,000 x 30), and convert it to tons (4,000 tons) then that's roughly speaking 4-8 period supply ships a month.

My apologies - I must recant. This estimate of number of period supply ships may actually be high.

For cargo shipping, here's the tonnages of ships that (in most cases) were historically available on the North America to Britain run.
Where there's a slash, it's old measurement/new measurement; where it's GRT, it's GRT.

Admiral Kannaris: 927/764
Adriatic: 824/-
Ajax: 852/685
Arabia: 1123/1022, 2,393 GRT
Asia: 2226 GRT
Australasian: 2800 gross tons
Bahiana: 1530 gross tons
Bohemian: 2,108 GRT
Brenda: 298/299
Brunette: 618/481
Calcutta: 2250 GRT
Canada: 1834 GRT
Cleopatra: 1279 GRT
Edward Hawkins: 968 GRT
Egyptian: 1986/1690
Hibernian: 3008/1569
Imperador and Imperatriz: 1700 gross tons
Magdalena: 2,943 gross tons
Mauritius: 2135/1452
Melbourne: 1636/899
Niagara: 1,824 GRT
Parana: 2,900 gross tons
Parthenon: 876/701
Persia: 3,300 GRT, 1684 tons old measurement
Peru: 413/-
Spartan: 749/795
St Andrew: 1,432 GRT
Victoria: 783/-
Wisbeach: 670/528



The problem with these being volumetric measurements is that you can only really guess at what the ships could carry. As a baseline, the St Andrew, at 1,432 GRT, carried 1,200 tons of ammunition from Woolwich to Halifax; the Edward Hawkins, at 968 GRT, regularly delivered c.1,100 tons of coal on the much shorter journey from Newcastle to London.


As you can see, the Persia should have the ability to carry about 2,700 tons of supplies, the St. Andrew 1,200 tons, the Bohemian about 1,800 tons, and by themselves these three ships account for 5,800 tons of supply capacity.
Those three ships each making a back-and-forth run once a month provide nearly 150% of the ration supply required by an army of 100,000 AP; even allowing for overestimates in ship capacity, it's clearly doable if you include the rest of the named vessels. (And in 1863 the enormous Great Eastern is available, which rather renders the whole thing academic with a cargo capacity of considerably more than 8,000 tons at full load; that's two months of supply by herself.)


My apologies that this has wandered slightly off the topic of comparing the Army of the Potomac to the British Army. I think however it's a useful corrective to the idea that the logistical difficulties of supporting an army at oceanic range are insurmountable - if that wasn't already made clear by the (important) detail that in the Crimea it was the British who provided essentially all supplies for the whole Allied force besieging Sevastopol (who numbered around 200,000 at some points), at a distance roughly comparable to that from Britain to New York.


The final point to raise is that nobody would honestly believe me if I tried to claim that the Army of the Potomac can't be considered superior to the British army unless it can land, support and supply long-term an invasion army in Britain. This being the case, we should compare army against army, navy against navy, and armed forces against armed forces, not try to muddy a discussion of armies by bringing in the rest of the armed forces.
 
The United States has never, until recently, had a large professional army at the beginning of a war. We are civilian soldiers. We will always loose the first battles.........
 
The United States has never, until recently, had a large professional army at the beginning of a war. We are civilian soldiers. We will always loose the first battles.........
This is true, though it's not really a military strength of the United States. I would instead characterize it as a military weakness but an economic strength - the lack of expenditure on a standing army is a big savings, but the United States is vulnerable if someone can attack them with enough combat power that they do not have time to mobilize. It's not so much a concern in 1863, but in 1859 for example the US is startlingly vulnerable - someone once tracked down the positions of all US regulars in the middle of that year, and there were a few scattered companies east of the Mississippi. Basically nothing whatsoever to stop a hostile power landing a brigade of regulars and marching into the Capitol.

There were some quite startling polemics about the subject at the end of the 19th century, as part of the general trend of Invasion Literature; in other countries though the author at least needed some kind of plot device to neutralize the armed forces. In The Stricken Nation all Henry Grattan Donnelly really needed to do was to say that the United States had been attacked.



There now came to the American nation a terrible awakening from that dream of security in which it had indulged for years and years. It found itself vulnerable where it should have been invincible; weak where it should have been strong; powerless, when its strength should have been irresistible. Its coastline of 4,000 miles was undefended at any point by a single fortification capable of successfully resisting attack by modern warships capable of successfully resisting attack by modern warships carrying guns of the heaviest calibre. Its arsenals were useless for the manufacture of modern ordnance; its guns were of an obsolete pattern, and of no use; its navy, small as it was, was scattered; its vessels for harbour defence existed only on paper in plans filed at the Navy Department. Most of the powerful ironclads that might have served in the hour of need, vessels of the type of the monitors Puritan, Montinvant and others, were rotten hulks in League Island, Brooklyn, Pensacola, and Norfolk navy yards.

Oh, the shame of it! Oh, the folly of it! Now began at every city and on every harbour the work which should have been begun and finished years before. Every gun foundry was ordered to work night and day to turn out the heaviest artillery possible; and at the Midvale Steel Works in Philadelphia, at Bethlehem, at Watervliet, and other points, orders were given for eight-hour shifts- three to the day. Thousands of men were at work on the fortifications of every city, and the entire engineer corps of the United States Army was found insufficient to supply the demand, while civil life afforded but few officers of practical training and experience.

There were a million men who could be put under arms; but there was no enemy for them to attack- no adversary that they could meet in a field of battle to repulse. Then the cry was raised for an invasion of Canada; but there were no modern rifles with which to arm the troops, and even in the matter of field artillery we were far behind any second-rate power in Europe. Troops were hurriedly sent from the interior to all the seaboard cities; but for what? Goliath was helpless and stationary with his club, while David advanced in leisurely security to smite the giant in the forehead with the missiles from his sling!
 
I'll also point out that it's the British Army, not the Royal Army. Regiments and components therein are Royal, but the whole is not.


The British Army is composed almost entirely of men who would be considered expert shots by US standards - and by that I mean "qualified for the US Sharpshooters" because the Sharpshooters went through much the same musketry training that was given to every British recruit. Even the cavalry and the gunners were taught to sharpshoot with their short Enfields, and it had become so much an obsession that around this time there are questions raised in Parliament as to whether the Irish Constabulary really need to be trained as battle sharpshooters...

British troops are long-service at this time, and a typical infantry battalion will probably have about 6-7 years' experience as the average per-man (with the most grizzled veterans having been in for up to 22 years - they enlisted for ten and could choose to enlist for another twelve, an option which 50% of those discharged took immediately and another 10% did within six months.) The effect of this on the quality of the drill is significant, and it also means that the fraction of men in any given battalion who have not been through multiple runs of the yearly musketry qualification course will be very low.

Importantly, the equipment is pretty standardized in most cases and there are full support arms. Some cavalry regiments were trialling breechloaders, but apart from that:

All artillery is Armstrong breech loading rifles, and the gunners have Enfields as personal weapons. Batteries are "fully manned" and have been for years, which means that rather than the prewar US situation where there were only a couple of dozen trained gun captains each battery comes with a full set of trained personnel (and is at 250 men per battery, so there's no need to draft in men from the infantry to help provide gun labour).
All infantry have the Enfield, rather than the kind of slightly chaotic mess that prevailed even as late as Gettysburg.
All cavalry is in practice trained to act as both shock troops and dragoons, plus being capable of the usual scouting and screening.
The logistics and engineering is handled by separate organizations (the Military Train and Royal Engineers) and so there's none of the usual concern with troops detached to the logistics.


I'll now digress to the Armstrong, because it has a bad reputation it does not deserve.

We should first point out that the reason the Armstrong was rejected was ultimately its tendency for breech blowouts in the larger calibres (the vent piece would blow - each gun carried two spares, it was a bit of safety equipment), but nobody seems to have ever died from an Armstrong gun having a vent piece burst; compare with the larger Parrotts, which were a bit more lethal.
The Armstrong, especially in field gun calibres, is a reliable, accurate, versatile and powerful artillery piece. Tests showed this as such:

Reliable -
"As regards the care of the gun I find no difficulty in keeping it in perfect order in all weathers and all circumstances" (Major Govan, RA)
"On one occasion his guns had very rough work indeed. They were sent out with a division of the army over a swamp, the very worst ground possible for artillery. The guns were in fact almost swallowed up, and were covered with mud when brought into action, but no impediment occurred." (Major Govan, RA)
"On two occasions vent-pieces were blown away; on the last occasion I happened to come up to the gun almost immediately after it had occurred... The traversing screw was jammed, but the gun was not otherwise injured, and with another vent-piece was again serviceable." (Major Hay, RA)
"As a preliminary measure, a new 12-pounder gun, No. 8, was left exposed to the weather without any protection, and untouched, ... [for] 45 days. It rained very constantly during this period... At the expiration of it, it was taken to the marshes, and fired without being cleaned or sponged." (Report from the Select Committee on Ordnance, 23 July 1863)


Accurate -
"The last gun made by Sir W. Armstrong and sent to be tried, was a 12-pounder. The following was the result:—Forty consecutive rounds were fired from the new 12-pounder field gun of 8 cwt., with theminimum charge of 11 lb. 8oz. of slow powder. Experiment shows that we have been wrong for some time in using powder of so quick a detonating nature for artillery practice, and especially for rifled cannon, which require slower powder than that suited to other arms. At seven degrees of elevation in five rounds, the range being from 2,465 to 2,495 yards, the difference in the range was 65 yards, and the greatest difference in width three yards. Then at eight degrees of elevation, the range reaching 2,797 yards, with 60 yards of difference between the five shots, and only one yard of difference in the width. Again, at nine degrees of elevation the range comes up to 3,000 yards and upwards, with 85 yards difference between the five shots, and three yards as the greatest difference in the width. In point of fact, almost all of these shots but three or four would have struck within a 9-feet target. The rapidity and accuracy with which small objects are hit at a great distance in the practice made at Shoeburyness, is something marvellous. "
(HC debates, Feb 1860)
"The 40-pounder we found answer exceedingly well, for coming out of the place we planted common shell, with pillar fuze, wherever we wished, at a range of 3,800 yards. "
- shipboard use on the Euryalus, as per the gunnery lieutenant on board that ship.

Versatile -
The Armstrong gun carries a standardized but expensive "segment" shell that can be fired in four different modes. It can be used with a time fuze as a shrapnel round, with a Pillar percussion fuze as a contact explosive, with a plug in the shell hole as a shot or bolt, and with nothing in the fuze hole as cannister (as it bursts instantly).
This is important as it means a battery can't be caught with the wrong type of ammunition. The fuzes are also reliable (which is a point of merit over American fuzes, which had something of a failure rate).
The Segment shell was less effective in any given role than what it replaced, but the versatility was useful (though the tradeoff was hotly debated).


Powerful -
In testing, the 12 pounder firing segment shell penetrated 4 feet of artificial earthwork or 3 feet 2 in of gravel clay in natural buttress. This proved to be capable of firing at a rifle pit, penetrating it and (with percussion shell) bursting inside. Mercer of the Royal Artillery, on his time in New Zealand:

'The guns were loaded and laid, and the gunners with lanyard in hand waited for the word from the officer, who was watching until some heads appeared above in that direction, or a puff of smoke revealed their presence, when the gun was instantly fired, and the shell, entering just below the crest of their pits, burst inside.

'The following evidence has been given concerning the action of the Armstrong shell with the concussion fuze (i.e., percussion fuze) only:- Colour-Serjeant J. Morant, Royal Engineers, was at the head of the sap, and saw an Armstrong shell go through a rifle pit, about four feet of earth, and burst inside, and heard the enemy shout as in pain; he also observed that the shell from the Armstrong gun entered the rifle pits as soon or sooner than the report was heard, so that the natives had not time to get out of the way. Bomber J. Singer, No. 3 Battery, 12th Brigade RA, was at the head of the sap, and in the advance parallel with the Coehorn mortars, when he saw several shell from the Armstrong gun go through the enemy's rifle pits and burst inside. After the cessation of hostilities one of the natives told my sergeant-major that they were sometimes able to get out of the way of the mortar or large shells, but never out of the way of the shell (whether with time or concussion, or concussion fuze only) from the gun "all the same as the rifle," meaning the Armstrong guns, as the shell was amongst them as soon as they heard the report. These natives have designated the Armstrong shell "the quick shell".

'The different statements made both by those who were in the sap as well as by the natives themselves corroborate the observations taken from the battery, viz., that the Armstrong shell only entered the crest of the enemy's rifle pits and burst inside; whether there were few or many natives in the pit at the time cannot be ascertained.'

When the Armstrong started to use common shell instead of segment shell (in 1865) for the purpose of shelling, the bursting charge was 269 grams - which is compared to 167 grams for the 3" rifle. Obviously in 1863 they're using the segment shell instead, but it demonstrates that the Armstrong was not weaker than the 3" rifle for shelling purposes.

What is the distinction between British and Royal? What would make some of the army Royal and other parts, not?
 
What is the distinction between British and Royal? What would make some of the army Royal and other parts, not?
As far as I understand it, the reason for this is that the British Army as a whole claims some descent from the New Model Army of Cromwell, which (naturally) was not particularly concerned about being "royal" on account of how it was largely the creation of the man who would go on to be primarily responsible for deposing the monarchy and killing the King.
In practice the N.M.A was disbanded upon the Restoration, but significant elements of it were pretty much immediately reincorporated into the new English Army, and then upon the combination of the armies of England and Scotland at the Act of Union the new army was called the British Army rather than the Royal Army. (The extent to which the name choice was because until the Act of Union there were two armies - if not three - under the same monarch is hard to be sure about, as I understand it.)

Individual regiments and organizations, however, may claim descent from royal honours given either at their creation or later on. For example the senior regiment of infantry until 2006 (the 1st Foot) is the oldest surviving regiment and was originally part of the Scottish Army, and recieved the name His Majesty's Royal Regiment of Foot in the 1680s; it was renamed the 1st (Royal) Regiment of Foot in 1751, and the Royal Scots in 1921.

The regimental cohesiveness in the British Army is extremely strong because of these long histories and individual identity, and the 1st Foot remained in some sense "Royal" until it was incorporated into a composite regiment in 2006 (whereupon it became part of the Royal Regiment of Scotland; the royal still retained).

Similarly, the artillery and engineers are the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers (and rather wonderfully the Royal Artillery has just one battle honour, ubique, meaning "everywhere"), but not every regiment has a Royal connection. Picking three numbers at semi-random which happen not to have a royal connection:

The 66th Foot was the 66th (Berkshire) from 1756 to 1881, whereupon it was combined with a regiment named for Princess Charlotte of Wales.

The 20th was known as the East Devonshire, then renamed as the Lancashire Fusiliers, and did not take a royal connection until a merger in 1968.

The 55th was the Westmorland regiment of foot after 1782 and was amalgamated with the 34th (also not royally named) to form the Border Regiment in 1881.
 
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100,000 men require 300,000 pounds of rations per day times seven is 2,100,000 pounds of rations a week, 16,800,000 pounds of rations a month. That is 201,600,000 pounds of rations hauled across the Atlantic during a six month stay in New York.

Or, one medium sized ship feeds the whole force for 2-3 weeks.

That & a lot of other obvious logistical obstacles such as hundreds of U.S. privateers descending on the R.N.'s supply ships mean that war on that scale involves more than just listing there names of ships or army units.

It's not like the British have more than half the worlds shipping. Not like they supplied not only their own army, but the Turkish and most of the French army in the Crimea, which is further than NY from the UK BTW.

You can call the Egyptian forts anything you want, the Royal Navy at the time was deeply embarrassed by the poor results of the bombardment.

No, they looked and what worked and what didn't, and made adjustments. The fuses for example needed work as they recovered unburst shells. However, the actually shooting was extremely accurate.

Captain Fisher, for one, dedicated his career to improving the accuracy of R.N. gunfire as a result of that experience. You might want to read about the ineffectiveness of Royal Navy cannon fire in the second half of the 19th Century. Admiral Fisher & admiral Scott fought the hidebound traditionalists who defended the practice of laying guns by individual gunners.

In the late broadside era the whole of a broadside was controlled by one man, and the guns used a converger so that they all hit the same place. If walk on the deck of the Warrior you find strange marks by the gun positions - they're the backup convergence measurements.

In 1829 William Kennish proposed the idea of laying all the guns to converge and firing them simultaneously to get a tight group. It was immediately adopted. His "theodolite" evolved into the gun director. On the broadside ships the gunners still pulled their lanyards individually on a signal, but by the 1860's an electrical firing circuit was utilised and the gunnery officer aimed the guns from the director (with the gunners setting range and elevation individually), and fired them electrically. The system was named the "director firing", and the theodolite station became the director. The manual refers to using it as "firing by director". Ships still had these directors installed in the 1890's, with pre-dreadnoughts having a pair in the superstructure.

Of course, these could not cope with the extending ranges and so came into disuse, and were replaced by more advanced systems in the 1900's.

The use of range finding devices & coordinating all the guns of a line of battle ship from a control tower was revolutionary. Believe it or not, 15" guns were aimed by a man looking down the bore of the gun at the end of the 19th Century.

The only 15" guns around were in some antique US monitors. I have no problem believing they had no advanced fire controls.
 
While again it's slightly off the topic of gun comparison, I want to point out that there's an incident we have of what happened when the US Navy did a firing practice by then-current Royal Navy rules. This is after the Spanish-American War and just before dotter training takes off, so it's about as favourable a condition for the USN as you're going to get for them to show their stuff with their late 19th century and early 20th century gunnery practice.

They scored about a fifth of what the RN was scoring.


Or, one medium sized ship feeds the whole force for 2-3 weeks.
300,000 lbs is about 140 tons, so for 2 weeks it's about 2,000 tons; I wouldn't necessarily call that one medium-sized ship, but it's entirely doable. Based on how the RMS Persia could make the crossing two ways in three weeks, and China was the same speed but with considerably more cargo capacity, I suspect you'd need no more than those two vessels going back and forth to provide food indefinitely.
 
There are some basic problems with this argument, in fact there are three.

The first is that the army that the British faced in the American Revolution was not exclusively the American army - a lot of what the British faced was French - and the army in question was in fact largely dissolved shortly after the Revolution. The Continental Army no longer existed.

I don't know, this all kind of seems like a lot of reasons to explain why the Americans kept beating the British despite being inferior.

While French financial and material support was very important to the American cause in the revolution, I don't think it's accurate to say "a lot of what the British faced was French." France didn't even officially join the war until 1778 and they didn't land significant troops in America until 1781, two years before the end of the war, by which time the British were certainly not winning. An estimated 25,000-70,000 Americans died in the American Revolution compared to just 2,000 French soldiers in America; that gives an idea of how much more numerous the Americans were. The British were mostly fighting Americans, while the Americans were mostly fighting British and German auxiliaries.

Even before any French intervention and even "Valley Forge," the Americans inflicted Pyrrhic casualties at Bunker Hill in 1775, defeated the British at Trenton and Princeton in 1776, and captured a British army at Saratoga in 1777. Yes, they lost a lot of battles too like Long Island, Fort Washington, Brandywine, Germantown, but the British still retreated from the Philadelphia campaign in 1778 and the Americans followed them and won the war. No war is fair. The Americans had the advantage of greater numbers and fighting in their own land where they could rely on a mostly friendly population, while the British even after winning many battlefield victories couldn't make headway into the American interior and were confined to port cities like New York and Charleston and Yorktown for most of the war because of that. Same could be said for the War of 1812.

But the Americans gave the British a serious run for their money and won huge victories even before any French support or European training, and they wouldn't have won two wars against Britain without that. Training isn't always the most important thing. Union soldiers were generally considered to be better trained and disciplined and equipped then their Confederate counterparts, and yet most would agree that Confederates soldiers on average fought harder and better.

If one's army is better, one does not start a war by a surprise attack, get two years to do your work without major enemy reinforcements, and end the process with your capital city on fire and no gained territory.

I don't think the American army was better. I just think it was at least evenly matched or on par with the British. Yes, the Americans failed in both their invasions of Canada in 1812 and in 1775 but the British equally failed in their invasions of the US in the 1770s-1780s and 1810s. The attacker is always at a disadvantage in warfare and it takes serious superiority for an attacker to win against fortified opposition. Neither the Americans nor British had that kind of military superiority over each other.

The third is that you have assumed that the Americans have got better and the British have remained static.
In fact the British have got much, much better - every man in the British Army has training as a sharpshooter, an essentially randomly picked collection of battalions proved capable of putting out effective rifle fire against an enemy artillery battery at 800 yards at Inkerman, and their battle hit rate is about 1 Minie ball hit out of 16-18 fired in fog (compare at Gettysburg where the hit rate is about 1 in 200 in clear weather) while British artillery is much better than American equivalents as regards accuracy at range (plus bursting charge, for the 20 pounder position guns).

Meanwhile the Americans haven't got much better. There simply has not been the time to train all the officers in what to train all the men - unlike the Continetal Army there has been no Valley Forge moment - and even in weapons and equipment not all troops have Springfields by the time of Gettysburg. Ditto for the artillery (gun captain training was lacking) and the cavalry (it takes years to make good cavalry, years the British squadrons have had and the AotP ones haven't really) and while most of the infantry does have Springfield rifles the training to actually use them effectively is totally lacking.

Well I'm not an expert on Inkerman but there are plenty of examples of long range marksmanship from the Civil War. Take the Confederates picking off Union artillerymen on Little Round Top over a thousand yards away, including Vincent, Weed, and Hazlett, all on July 2. And these weren't special sharpshooter regiments either. Just the 2nd and 17th Georgia Infantry who were the first to occupy the area.

Again, training isn't always the most important thing. The Confederates were less well trained and yet often better soldiers. As for cavalry, its importance in a traditional role was fading by the time of the Civil War. The most effective Civil War cavalry commanders used it in a more irregular way like Forrest and Mosby as well as Stuart and Sheridan and Buford at many times. Napoleonic style cavalry charges had been unfavorable since the French failure at Waterloo in 1815 and famously the British Light Brigade in 1854. I'm not saying the British didn't have good cavalry, but I think like the Americans they would have had to change and adapt to more irregular tactics in a full scale war as both the Confederacy and Union had by the end of the war.
 
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The British didn't do to that well at Isandlwana against the Zulu, and they didn't do very well at Colenso against the Boer. I know it wasn't in 1863 but all a good army needs to be destroyed is one bad commanding general.

There was also the disastrous Retreat from Kabul in 1842 in which 4,500 British troops were massacred by Afghan tribesmen. Of course, there were a lot of factors that went into that like incompetent leadership, winter, lack of supplies, but it happened.
 
captured a British army at Saratoga in 1777
I was wondering if that one was going to come up.

The events at Saratoga deserve a bit of elaboration, because the terms on which the surrender was negotiated involved the army being shipped home to Britain (whereupon they would be eligible to relieve garrison troops, and fight again upon being exchanged). Instead after they had stacked arms the deal was changed and they were kept in prison camps for years; if they'd known the fate which was actually awaiting them, it's by no means certain they would have surrendered.


don't think the Americans were better. I just think they were at least even matched with or on par with British. Yes, the Americans failed in their invasion of Canada in 1812 and in 1775 but the British equally failed in their invasions of the US in the 1770s-1780s and 1810s. The attacker is always at a disadvantage in warfare and it takes serious superiority for an attacker to win against fortified opposition. Neither the Americans nor British had that kind of military superiority over each other.
The problem with looking at the 1810s here is that for almost the whole of the War of 1812 the British are singularly distracted by the war with Napoleon; the Americans are undistracted, and yet they don't actually achieve much in terms of permanent progress.

In June 1812 there are 8 infantry battalions present: three more are sent during the course of 1812, and eight in 1813. At the start of 1814 there are 67 battalions in Wellington's Peninsular army.

Certainly one can argue that the Americans and British didn't have that kind of military superiority in the War of 1812, but since the British were fighting a "war on the cheap" with the minimum commitment possible then that does say something about the War of 1812.

It's not really relevant to 1862, though, because as of 1862 the British do have a decisive advantage in effective fire at range.

Well I'm not an expert on Inkerman but there are plenty of examples of examples of long range marksmanship from the Civil War. Take the Confederates picking off Union artillerymen on Little Round Top over a thousand yards away, including Vincent, Weed, and Hazlett, all on July 2. And these weren't special sharpshooter regiments either. Just the 2nd and 17th Georgia Infantry who were the first to occupy the area.

Is it actually verified that those men were picked off at that range? Weed and Hazlett's causes of death are given as "possibly a sharpshooter in the Devil's Den" and Vincent was hit in the thigh and the groin during the time the 20th Maine seemed to be yielding to enemy pressure (i.e. in fairly close combat); none of these look like shots of over a thousand yards, though I'm not exactly an expert on those deaths. (From the peak of Little Round Top to the Devil's Den is on the order of 500-600 yards, by the looks of it.)

What you definitely don't see, though, is long range rifle fire at Gettysburg as a whole from line regiments (especially Union, but Confederate as well). You have plenty of opportunities for long ranged fire where it doesn't come up - take Pickett's Charge, where Pickett's men come into view at 600 yards and most of the defenders reserve fire until just over 100 yards. That's a third of a mile of distance wasted for opening fire at smoothbore range, and if Pickett's men had had the ability to sharpshoot at 600 yards they could have set up on the ridge at that range and shot down the Union defenders.


Napoleonic style cavalry charges had been unfavorable since the French failure at Waterloo in 1815 and famously the Light Brigade in 1854.

I'm not sure what you mean by their being unfavourable, because in the first case the French attacks at Waterloo failed because they were made against unbroken and very steady infantry who were able to form square - Ney was launching a pursuit attack before the pursuit phase of the battle had begun. The British Union and Household brigades earlier in the day had completely wrecked a French corps because they launched at the right time, and it took French cavalry to drive off the British.

In the second case, the Light Brigade's charge actually went home - it reached the guns it charged against - and the Heavy Brigade had earlier that same day charged several times their own number of Russian troops successfully. The question with the Light Brigade is whether they were launched at a worthwhile target, not whether the charge could get home, because even when sent down a valley stuffed with artillery they still reached their targets.

In the third case, there were charges in the Civil War which succeeded - Five Forks is one example. They come late in the war because the issue is cavalry training.

And in the fourth case, there's von Bredow's "death ride", which was actually extremely cost effective. It's about 380 or so cavalry troopers for massive disruption to the French corps they hit for at least an hour - it doesn't take much time to think of situations where being able to trade 400 friendly casualties for an enemy disrupted like that mid-battle is worthwhile. And that one was against long range breechloading infantry rifles!


There was also the disastrous Retreat from Kabul in 1842 in which 4,500 British troops were massacred by Afghan tribesmen. Of course, there were a lot of factors that went into that like incompetent leadership, winter, lack of supplies, but it happened.
Again, this is one of those things where the reason there are examples there to bring up is because the British were doing a lot of things over the course of several decades. If you had someone as incompetent as Elphinstone in that respect in charge of a position of comparable importance in the Union army in 1842, he'd have been in charge of roughly one infantry regiment (if that) and barring a very unlikely circumstance we'd never have noticed.
 
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I was wondering if that one was going to come up.

The events at Saratoga deserve a bit of elaboration, because the terms on which the surrender was negotiated involved the army being shipped home to Britain (whereupon they would be eligible to relieve garrison troops, and fight again upon being exchanged). Instead after they had stacked arms the deal was changed and they were kept in prison camps for years; if they'd known the fate which was actually awaiting them, it's by no means certain they would have surrendered.

If they hadn't surrendered when they did, it would have been a disaster either way even if some part of the army managed to retreat all the way back to New York city. It ruined Burgoyne's military career and he never held active command again, and he knew that would happen but saw it as his only choice. The British were thoroughly outmaneuvered, outnumbered and outfought. It wasn't a perfectly fair fight on a flat battlefield with equal numbers and both sides fighting to the death, but no war is ever like that so I think it's as good an example as any.

It's not really relevant to 1862, though, because as of 1862 the British do have a decisive advantage in effective fire at range.

Are you talking about artillery or just saying that British soldiers were way better shots on average? Because I really don't think that's the case or would have been if Britain and the US had to fight a full scale war in the 1860s (and consequently the British would have to quickly raise millions of troops who couldn't be given the best training, like the US had to do in the Civil War).

Is it actually verified that those men were picked off at that range? Weed and Hazlett's causes of death are given as "possibly a sharpshooter in the Devil's Den" and Vincent was hit in the thigh and the groin during the time the 20th Maine seemed to be yielding to enemy pressure (i.e. in fairly close combat); none of these look like shots of over a thousand yards, though I'm not exactly an expert on those deaths. (From the peak of Little Round Top to the Devil's Den is on the order of 500-600 yards, by the looks of it.)

What you definitely don't see, though, is long range rifle fire at Gettysburg as a whole from line regiments (especially Union, but Confederate as well). You have plenty of opportunities for long ranged fire where it doesn't come up - take Pickett's Charge, where Pickett's men come into view at 600 yards and most of the defenders reserve fire until just over 100 yards. That's a third of a mile of distance wasted for opening fire at smoothbore range, and if Pickett's men had had the ability to sharpshoot at 600 yards they could have set up on the ridge at that range and shot down the Union defenders.

You're right that Vincent might not have been killed from Devil's Den but according to accounts the artillery on Little Round Top came under heavy and accurate sniper fire from Devil's Den after the Confederate attack was repulsed. Weed was mortally wounded along with others, and as he lay in the rocks he called over Hazlett to speak to him who was then shot in the head, both evidently from Devil's Den.

I'm aware most Civil War fire fights were at much closer ranges. I've assumed that was partly a cultural relic, partly because soldiers were ill trained, and partly because of inherent practicalities in the smoke and chaos of battle. I would be extremely surprised if it was common for fire fights in the Crimean War to be as much as 800 yards away and still be accurate as you say. Can you recommend a source that talks about this?

I'm not sure what you mean by their being unfavourable, because in the first case the French attacks at Waterloo failed because they were made against unbroken and very steady infantry who were able to form square - Ney was launching a pursuit attack before the pursuit phase of the battle had begun. The British Union and Household brigades earlier in the day had completely wrecked a French corps because they launched at the right time, and it took French cavalry to drive off the British.

In the second case, the Light Brigade's charge actually went home - it reached the guns it charged against - and the Heavy Brigade had earlier that same day charged several times their own number of Russian troops successfully. The question with the Light Brigade is whether they were launched at a worthwhile target, not whether the charge could get home, because even when sent down a valley stuffed with artillery they still reached their targets.

In the third case, there were charges in the Civil War which succeeded - Five Forks is one example. They come late in the war because the issue is cavalry training.

And in the fourth case, there's von Bredow's "death ride", which was actually extremely cost effective. It's about 380 or so cavalry troopers for massive disruption to the French corps they hit for at least an hour - it doesn't take much time to think of situations where being able to trade 400 friendly casualties for an enemy disrupted like that mid-battle is worthwhile. And that one was against long range breechloading infantry rifles!

Yeah I agree with all that, I'm just saying cavalry's importance was fading in traditional roles. Glorious cavalry charges worked sometimes (even as late WWI) but that era was coming to an end. The Light Brigade reached the guns but took 40% casualties. In the Civil War, cavalrymen on both sides did fight dismounted more often than not, especially late in the war. They were more like dragoons and used revolvers and carbines a lot more often than sabers (though of course sabers were used on occasion). I just think if the British cavalry found themselves in a full scale drawn out war they would probably have had to adapt along similar lines. Though of course, sometimes the British could be resistant to adaption like in WWI for example where they continued using cavalry with ultimately costly results longer than the other major powers which largely abandoned it very quickly.
 
Again, this is one of those things where the reason there are examples there to bring up is because the British were doing a lot of things over the course of several decades. If you had someone as incompetent as Elphinstone in that respect in charge of a position of comparable importance in the Union army in 1842, he'd have been in charge of roughly one infantry regiment (if that) and barring a very unlikely circumstance we'd never have noticed.

An infantry regiment in the Civil War usually started with about 1,000 men on paper and in the field it could be less than half that. Elphinstone had 4,500 troops under his command during the retreat in 7 infantry and cavalry regiments. He was a major general in the British army but that would make him at least a brigadier general even in Civil War standards, and proportionally the British army was much smaller in India so he was a major commander and it was considered a huge loss. The governor of India had a stroke when he heard about it.

There are many more examples of incompetent British commanders from the Crimean War to the Zulu wars to WWI. The British were certainly no less susceptible to it than Americans when they had people like Burnside and Bragg in command.
 
If we're talking complete and utter disasters Major-General Arthur St Clair managed to lose a quarter of the entire US Army in one day, against a numerically equal enemy. An action curiously little remarked upon in the annals of American History.
At least the British had the decency to be outnumbered by the Afghans and Zulus.
 
Are you talking about artillery or just saying that British soldiers were way better shots on average? Because I really don't think that's the case or would have been if Britain and the US had to fight a full scale war in the 1860s (and consequently the British would have to quickly raise millions of troops who couldn't be given the best training, like the US had to do in the Civil War).
Artillery and infantry. The British gave intensive sharpshooter training to every single man in their infantry force; they also gave similar though less intensive training to their militia (114,000 in 1863) and volunteers (163,000 in 1863).
There's already a pool of nearly 300,000 musketry-trained battle casualty replacements in Britain; besides which, the training process doesn't take long if you know how. The problem is that (as per numerous sources, such as Paddy Griffith) there was not musketry training in the Civil War - certainly not across the whole army - and musketry at long range is a skill you need to be taught.

There's nothing I'd find unexpected about the idea that a few men in some regiments were effective sharpshooters by pre-war training, natural ability or wartime programs - we certainly know that some Whitworths got handed out - but training ordinary line infantry universally in long-range musketry is something that only really comes up for Cleburne's men (he got hold of a copy of the Hythe musketry manual).

Griffith and Nosworthy:

“There does appear to have been a serious lack of target practice in the armies of both sides, and we find that when it did occur most diarists regarded it as a highly exceptional event.” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, p. 87
24th Michigan: “It was sent to the front within a very few weeks of its formation in July 1862, and in its only recorded target practice during that time three men were wounded and one died of a heart attack… the regiment’s next target practice came some four months later… After this we learn of a resumption over a year later” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, pp. 87-8
13th Massachusetts “formed in August 1861, it... held its first target practice… only in the spring of 1864... its nearest approach to formal target practice had been an exercise in estimating ranges up to five hundred yards” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, p. 88
“35th Massachusetts in 1862, despite being armed with Enfields considered that 300 yards was out of range of the enemy” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, p. 148
5th Connecticut: “About a hundred yards away, the broad side of a barn proved to be too much of a temptation. The men fired a volley at the harmless foe. The men were sadly disappointed when they checked the results of their seemingly fearsome fire. Only four bullets [of forty] had found their way to the building, though it was 20 feet long and 15 feet wide. Of these, only a single bullet hole was within the height of a line of infantrymen.” Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the American Civil War (London: Constable, 2005), p. 145
“There is little in the literature to suggest that the average Civil War infantry regiment even began to judge distances or set sights accurately for battle. On the contrary, there are many references to officers telling their men simply to aim low” Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, p. 88
“At Drewey’s Bluff, Virginia (May 13, 1864), I. Hermann, a Confederate infantryman, noticed the execution Union bullets were inflicting on a tall pine just within the rebel breastworks. Though the two firing lines had been only a hundred yards apart, Hermann noticed bark, needles and cones being knocked down the entire height of the tree down to the top of the breastworks. Hermann concluded that even though thousands of shots were fired in a high parabolic trajectory into the upper regions of the tree, thousands more were fired even higher and escaped any sort of visual detection.” Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage, p. 581


We certainly know that in 1864 this problem hadn't been solved in the Army of the Potomac. Before the Overland a circular is issued to make sure all men know how to load and fire their weapons:

'Circular, Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, April 19 1864
To familiarize the men in the use of their arms an additional expenditure of 10 rounds of small-arm ammunition per man is hereby authorized... Every man should be made to load and fire his musket under the personal supervision of a company officer. It is believed there are men in this army who have been in numerous actions without ever firing their guns, and it is known that muskets taken on the battle-fields have been found filled nearly to the muzzle with cartridges...
By order of Major-General Meade
Chas. E. Pease,
Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General'


It didn't take, however, or new units weren't held to the same standard. In November 1864 Warren complained of the 5th Corps:

'The command... consisted, first, of the First Division... 4,707 strong, of which 1,247 were ignorant of the manual, and 2,803 had never fired off a musket. Second, of the Second Division... 4,704 strong, of which 104 were ignorant of the manual, and 812 had never fired off a musket. Third, of two brigades of the Third Division... of which 298 were ignorant of the manual and 298 had never fired off a musket.'

It seems self evident to me that if you have a Union formation in the Army of the Potomac in late 1864 where about a third of them have never fired a musket, it is unlikely that the Union army had institutionalized musketry and marksmanship training.

The British Army, on the other hand, did. Everyone went through the training course yearly, and a recruit would fire 110 rounds ball while a trained soldier would fire 90 (plus blanks and percussion caps for snapping practice). The militia got roughly 40 and 20 respectively for a new and a trained man.

There is significant evidence that, for the great majority of line infantry formations in the Union army, there was no musketry training out past "point blank" range (100-150 yards), if that. The exceptions are the same sort of thing you'd get from the Rifle formations in Wellington's day - specialized troops in small numbers.


Yeah I agree with all that, I'm just saying cavalry's importance was fading in traditional roles. Glorious cavalry charges worked sometimes (even as late WWI) but that era was coming to an end. The Light Brigade reached the guns but took 40% casualties. In the Civil War, cavalrymen on both sides did fight dismounted more often than not, especially late in the war. They were more like dragoons and used revolvers and carbines a lot more often than sabers (though of course sabers were used on occasion). I just think if the British cavalry found themselves in a full scale drawn out war they would probably have had to adapt along similar lines.

Except that in the Civil War in 1864-5 Union cavalry started using increasing amounts of their strength in sabre squadrons, which was something the Confederates couldn't match. At Five Forks they even overrun infantry in works.

What this means is that Union cavalrymen became more effective when they determined based on battle experience that the saber was a worthwhile weapon. The sabre was not yet obsolete in trained hands.

This is not to say that the British did not train their cavalry as dragoons - they certainly did, and (as you might have guessed by this point) they trained them in range estimation, musketry and marksmanship as well. The point is that they had multiple options (mounted action, particularly useful against enemy cavalry or disordered infantry, plus dismounted action) and that evidence from the latter part of the Civil War indicates that for mounted action the sabre is superior.

Of course, there's also the issue of scouting and screening, and for that (especially when faced with enemy cavalry - that is, penetrating an enemy screen or driving off enemy scouting squadrons) the mounted charge is quite useful!


An infantry regiment in the Civil War usually started with about 1,000 men on paper and in the field it could be less than half that. Elphinstone had 4,500 troops under his command during the retreat in 7 infantry and cavalry regiments. He was a major general in the British army but that would make him at least a brigadier general even in Civil War standards, and proportionally the British army was much smaller in India so he was a major commander and it was considered a huge loss. The governor of India had a stroke when he heard about it.

I said in proportion; in 1842 the British Army had 103 line battalions of King's infantry (of which 22 were in India), plus six European battalions of Company in India and on the order of 100-150 regular native infantry units, plus native cavalry and irregulars. In total there were 276,000 troops in India in 1842, of which Elphinstone commanded 4,500; this makes him in command of 1/60 of the army, which means that (with the 1842 US army having 14 regiments in it) he'd be roughly the fourth in command of a regiment.


I know you're talking about 1862 or so, but this is sort of my point; if you bring in examples from outside the Civil War years to demonstrate British incompetence, the problem that starts to arise is that the British have formations doing things constantly for the whole 19th century (so incompetence gets exposed more easily) while someone as fallible and as proportionately important as Elphinstone in the US army in the same year might well not end up tested at all.

I'm not arguing that the British didn't have incompetent officers, certainly - or that the US had more than their share of them. I'm simply saying that the evidence is not sufficient to suggest that the British had more than their share of them, and that consequently we should stick to the idea that they did not.


There are many more examples of incompetent British commanders from the Crimean War to the Zulu wars to WWI. The British were certainly no less susceptible to it than Americans when they had people like Burnside and Bragg in command.

I'd say Banks is the closer comparison.

It might be an interesting exercise to try and pair off examples of incompetence and try and work out how many years of British incompetence we need to equate to the four years of high-intensity fighting in the Civil War; it's probably not helpful though.
 
If we're talking complete and utter disasters Major-General Arthur St Clair managed to lose a quarter of the entire US Army in one day, against a numerically equal enemy. An action curiously little remarked upon in the annals of American History.
At least the British had the decency to be outnumbered by the Afghans and Zulus.
Battalion massacres happen; the more varied the situations your troops are going into, the more likely it's going to happen because that increases the chance of encountering an unexpected situation.



To me though it seems as though part of this thread is wandering away from topics like "Would you consider the average 1863 AoP soldier to be the equivalent of a professional European soldier?" and into things like "Would the British be able to win a solo fight against the Union fought in America, if the Union gets to build up to their 1863 strength first?" which is obviously rather moving the goalposts somewhat.

What I think might be useful is to consider the impact of combined arms, as this was a component of contemporary professional training. Obviously there are certain things that infantry can do to better protect themselves against enemy cavalry (form square), or artillery (form two-deep line, shake out into skirmish order, lie down, retreat into dead ground), or infantry (take cover, fight with fire) - but what combined arms means is exploiting that these things are not the same things.

If there is effective shock cavalry around, infantry has to maintain a denser formation so that it can form square if need be - and squares were formed during the Civil War, so this did happen. But if there is also enemy infantry and artillery around, then there is no one formation that is the superior choice - anything that counters the cavalry is vulnerable to the other two, and vice versa. This came up at Waterloo, and also elsewhere in the Napoleonic wars - cavalry's presence forces enemy infantry to form square, and then the artillery and infantry can overwhelm them with fire, or if the enemy infantry is distracted or does not notice the cavalry until too late then they can be destroyed in moments.
 
The British Army, on the other hand, did. Everyone went through the training course yearly, and a recruit would fire 110 rounds ball while a trained soldier would fire 90 (plus blanks and percussion caps for snapping practice). The militia got roughly 40 and 20 respectively for a new and a trained man.

Well those are good sources you have for marksmanship generally not being good for common soldiers in the Civil War but I'd like to read more about British training in comparison. It sounds like they were trained once a year. That's certainly better than nothing but it doesn't sound great either. You mentioned before that the British were able to put out accurate rifle fire against artillery at Inkerman 800 yards away and had a 1/18 hit ratio in the fog. Where are those accounts and statistics from? What were the typical engagement distances in the Crimean War like at Alma? I'll have to research this.
 
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Well those are good sources you have for marksmanship generally not being good for common soldiers in the Civil War but I'd like to read more about British training in comparison. It sounds like they were trained once a year. That's certainly better than nothing but it doesn't sound great either.
There's a bit of an issue of terminology here; they shot a yearly course. Range estimation etc. was something that was done a certain amount in drills, and then they used the actual practice shots to prove that they had learned (it was in the nature of an examination). They were quite exacting about the whole thing, recording the results of all shots and posting league tables (which sparked competition), and the amount of practice shots fired by each man each year was quite competitive with the number of shots fired by the Prussians after their training reforms (British shots 90 per year, Prussian 110); notably both included firing on targets of unknown distance.

In the Hythe method the actual shooting was merely the culmination of a quite deep process of learning, where someone was supposed to be able to judge distance at a glance, set sights, bring the rifle up and press the trigger at the appropriate moment. Interestingly they actually preferred to teach people who'd never held a gun before instead of someone who was a shooter but hadn't gone through the Hythe training method - that avoided having to unlearn bad habits.

The contemporary opinion was that two or three times through the annual qualification course (18 days for a recruit, 12 days after that) rendered troops "wonderfully efficient".





You mentioned before that the British were able to put out accurate rifle fire against artillery at Inkerman 800 yards away and had a 1/18 hit ratio in the fog. Where are those accounts and statistics from?
That they were putting out effective rifle fire against the artillery batteries is derived from the account of Todleben, where he mentions his artillery on the Shell Hill being hit by rifle fire:

"Notwithstanding the range, which was particularly great for light artillery, our guns caused considerable damage to the English artillery. But these injuries very imperfectly compensated the enormous losses which the enemy's riflemen inflicted on the Russian artillery."
He calls the fire "very violent and very accurate", and says that "it was more the fire of rifled small arms than that of the artillery of the enemy which reached our artillerymen, of whom the greater part were killed or wounded".

The distance of 800 yards is measured on the map, from the position of the Light Division (who shook out into skirmish order, set their sights to 800 yards and engaged the Russian batteries) to the position of the Shell Hill.



The hit statistics are based on Minie rounds issued to replace those fired (176,000, which roughly matches those fired though not quite) and the number of recorded wounds in Russian hospitals caused by minie balls (which may exclude some light wounds and does exclude the dead). If we assume no fatal or light wounds were caused by British minie balls and that the issuance equals the number fired, then it's 1 in 22 hits for the whole battle.

Since the number of men in the battle was considerably more than 5,000, and since at only 5,000 men firing it would have been less than 40 rounds per man, we can thus reasonably determine that most of the 660 British soldiers who died (and who did not need their ammunition replenished) would have had their pouches more than half full. If these rounds were fully reclaimed by individual infantrymen and then resupply was performed, the total number of rounds fired would be on the order of 176,000 + (660 times basic load), or to a first approximation about 210,000 rounds fired; if the rounds were recovered by the ordnance services and then issued they'd be included in the resupply issuance.

If the wounded to killed outcome from Minie balls at Inkerman was about 70% of those being hit survived, then total hits is about 11,300.

These two details give the hit rate as somewhere from 1 in 15.5 (11,300 hit by 176,000 minie balls, no reclaimed rounds, no minor wounds and 70% of those hit surviving) to 1 in 26 (7,900 hit by 210,000 minie balls, all rounds reclaimed, no minor wounds and all those hit surviving). 1 in 18 to 1 in 20 is a reasonable middle ground approximation.

As for the fog, Inkerman was a foggy battle (though the fog did burn off later; if this affected the outcome and meant that British firing was less accurate during the fog, it only ups the accuracy they must have achieved later).



Something I should point out about this, by the way, is that in the Crimean War the Hythe system was still in the process of being set up - Hythe was only founded in 1853 and the first detachments arrived there in April 1854. The examples from the Crimea should be considered a minimum.
 
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