Monday, February 6, 2023

Alfred Grant on the Construction of Ships for the Confederacy and the Union in Great Britain

  

In the summer of 1861, Jefferson Davis tested the neutrality of the British. He sent a naval officer, one James D. Bulloch (Secret Service of the Confederate States), to England for the object of procuring warships and naval supplies in the ports of Great Britain. Bullock procured eminent counsel, who submitted a series of propositions in interpretation of these laws. The law to be interpreted was the Act of Parliament of the 59th George III, chapter 69, entitled, in common parlance, the Foreign Enlistment Act. Its exact title was “an Act to Prevent the enlistment or engagement of His Majesty’s subjects to serve in foreign service, and the fitting out or equipping in his Majesty’s dominion of vessels for warlike purposes:’ and its seventh section provided that “if any person within the United Kingdom should equip, furnish, fit our, or arm, or attempt or endeavour to equip, furnish, etc. or procure to be equipped, etc, or should knowingly aid, assist, or be concerned with equipping, etc., with intent that such ship should be employed in the service of any foreign state, etc., as a transport or store ship, or with intent to cruise or commit hostilities against any state, etc. should be guilty of a misdemeanour.” These learned British lawyers advised him that it was no offence, under the act, for British subjects to fit out and equip a vessel outside of Her Majesty’s dominions, if it were not with a warlike intent against a friendly state to Great Britain; that the mere building of a ship within Her Majesty’s dominions by any person was no offence, under the act, no matter what might be the intent with which it was done. Furthermore, they drew the conclusion that “any shipbuilder may build any ship in Her Majesty’s dominions, provided he does not equip her purchasers done within Her Majesty’s dominions without his concurrence, or without Her Majesty’s dominions even with his concurrence.” Armed with this legal option from high authority, Mr. Bulloch found little difficulty on persuading the shipbuilders on the Mersey and Clyde to undertake the construction of war-vessels for the Confederate navy. In truth, there would have been little problem in convincing the British shipbuilders to agree to the construction of privateers for the Confederacy without such eminent legal authority. The history of Britain and British industry was ample proof that profits would control their decisions.

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By June 1862, there were plans already drawn, and contracts made with the Laird Brothers at Liverpool, for the building of two vessels far more dangerous than the Alabama to the Northern cause. These were the so-called Laird rams. They were to be two hundred and thirty feet long, have a beam of forty feet, be armoured with four and one-half inch iron plate to be provided with a “piercer” at the prow, about seven feet long and of great strength. This “piercer” would be three feet under the surface of the water. This was the distinguishing feature of the two ships; it was unusual construction, nearly impossible for us in an ordinary battle at sea, but highly dangerous to wooden ships maintaining a close blockade at Southern ports. (Alfred Grant, The American Civil War and the British Press [Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2000], 82-83)

 

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