Shipbucket

Okay. Agree to disagree. Understand Colosseum that you have some fine practical and excellent points, just not historically irrefutable ones.

HEROES OFSPAIN III: Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón

If a man can be singled out in this era who was more ill-treated by his government than Charles Gordon of Great Britain, it would have to be this honorable, patriotic energetic and courageous Spanish officer. Rear Admiral Montojo in the RTL was assigned to the Philippines command at a time when neither Spain, nor the United States were on very good terms thanks to ongoing tensions in Cuba. Nevertheless, when Montojo arrived in Manila about January 12, 1898, to take charge of all Spanish naval forces in the western Pacific he had no idea at all that war with the United States was in the near future or even that it was a remote possibility.

When the USS Maine blew up February 15, 1898; of course Montojo changes his attitude. We can see from cables as early as the 20th of February, addressed to Madrid a chain of correspondence with the Ministry of the Marine, and with the Minister of the Marine and Montojo personally, that the Spanish admiral reports accurately on the conditions of his naval resources, complains to his superiors, about the lack of means locally available, objects to the transfer of two protected cruisers, his best warships from the Pacific back to Spain to beef up Cervera’s 1st Cruiser Squadron, and lambasts the training state, non-readiness, and incomplete manning by qualified personnel aboard his ships.

He even goes into exhaustive Spanish detail about the personal shortcomings, character deficiencies, and incompetencies he observes in the various colorful personalities he names, who he claims, impedes his efforts towards organizing a defense of the Philippines. What he writes about the Captain General and the governor specifically, is most impolitic and historically quite accurate. What their acceptance of bribes, their debauchery and drunkenness, their marital infidelities and their subsequent sale of Spanish sovereignty in the Philippines out to the highest bidder, has to do with naval preparedness in the Philippines is not quite necessarily strictly congruent, but the general tone in the cables; is that Montojo is on a doomed enterprise, the rat bastards currently in charge make money on anything and everything before the new owners come to take over the property (Germans or Americans in a bribery and naval race, as far as Montojo can tell.); and he, Montojo, wants out of it, but honor compels him to defend his post to the last extremity.

Take the question of mines (stationary torpedoes, Montojo names them.) Insofar as the Spanish navy has naval mines, these are a relatively effective type of mechanical actuated fused mine of the Bustamente design. It is not strictly a Hertz mine which is electrically actuated, but it is a horned contact mine. (Illustrations to be provided.)



Montojo has the technical means to construct the mines locally and fill them with explosives (not much harder than to fill the cast-iron shells his ships use for their bullets.) The bursting charges can be black powder or anything of as secondary explosive nature that will misbehave in the presence of a primary detonation picric acid charge or mercury fulminate based actuators. If the Confederate States of America could figure it out in 1863, then Lieutenant Bustamente’s (killed at Tenerife in this AU) infernal evil picric acid charged teardrop-shaped cable-moored engine of destruction (stored at Cavite) should work just fine if Montojo’s far too few ordnance engineers qualified for the work can charge the empty mine body cases stored up with something like maybe… Dynamite?

Where is that dynamite? Basillio Augustin (one of the two named individuals, the other rat being Fermín Jáudenes) sold the dynamite Madrid shipped out to the Philippines, as per Montojo’s request, to various civilian construction companies for a healthy kickback; Spanish naval dynamite stored near to Manila, being so much cheaper than imported English dynamite from Hong Kong. What the civilian construction companies were doing with the stuff is interesting, but building fortifications was not one of those construction projects they undertook.

As for the Spanish army in the Philippines? The Principle rat bastard there was Fermin Jaudenes, but the decay at the top he represents, it rolls downhill fast. Quite a sad story Well,… let Montojo write for himself;
I should point out that the battery mounted was on the island of El Fraile, and it was this battery which provided the only resistance to Dewey forcing the south channel between El Caduro and El Fraile at the entrance to Manila Bay.

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HERO OF THE REPUBLIC: George Dewey

Commodore George Dewey (not an admiral until after Manila Bay) is Theodore Roosevelt’s handpicked man for the Philippines Islands project. As early as April 1897, the word was out and traveling around through Washington DC in need-to-know jingoist Republican circles that the Philippine project was on and that all Roosevelt needed was an excuse to pull that trigger and a man willing to risk his career to take it on. Through Vermont’s Senator Redford Proctor (Think of him as a rat worse than Edward Stanton and serving in Congress, no less..) Roosevelt finds his man.

Now to be clear; in a navy historically and infamously filled with over-ambitious careerist officers who use political patronage and service politics to climb over each other’s back-stabbed professional corpses, Dewey is remarkable for his own ferocity in the political gamesmanship. Back in Mister Harrison’s Navy, he gives Winfield Scott Schley the sharp elbow and takes over the Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting. Never mind that Schley actually recommends Dewey. Schley is as reputation backstabbed on Dewey’s way up the promotion ladder as anyone else in “this man’s navy”, who is between Dewey and his goals. It is just his Navy way. Perhaps his guilty conscience (Dewey from his writings seems to have had one.) causes Dewey in 1901 to side with his old friend, Schley, at the court martial in the RTL. And again, the easygoing friendship between two officers who robustly professionally maul each other, to attain the same one position each man wants, is the US Navy way. It is a political and professional lesson Dewey carries with him and one Schley honors in return, but which seems to not have been recognized by the American civilians in command at the time or by that less than honorable man, Admiral Sampson. There are fixed rules and customs professional US naval officers keep clearly in mind. It is not based on personal hatred to step over the man ahead of you and it never should so become.

George Dewey cannot be understood unless that salient feature of the man is clear. So when he sought out and attained command of the US Asiatic squadron, he did so, with his advancement in mind. He actually likes the man, Rear-Admiral Frederick G. McNair, who he replaces in command of the Asiatic Squadron. Yet he lets it be known upon his arrival, starting with his captains, and letting it trickle down to the rates that the reason he replaces McNair is because the lackadaisical Asiatic Squadron needs a more vigorous leader at the helm. There is some truth to that contention, especially as what has up to now been a comic stage opera gendarmerie collection of ships, poking around Pacific Rim ports by ones and twos, to show the flag, needs to whipsaw itself into shape to operate as a unified squadron.

That is the superficial state of affairs in the RTL, January 1st 1898 when Dewey finally hoists his flag aboard USS Olympia. Deeper just beneath the shiny smart peacetime gold and buff paintjobs of his five scattered ships, Dewey has more problems than just bringing his ships together to train and operate as a coherent unit in a system of fleet maneuvers. His command suffers from peacetime neglect under McNair’s lack of leadership. Complements are not even at the peacetime allotted crew strengths. Ammunition, which for an operational navy in that era, is unusual in that the shells are war-shot-loaded with genuine bursting charges and pyro filler, is nowhere near peacetime numerical allotments either, nor has what ammunition that is on hand been rotated, inspected and checked for storage deterioration in the magazines. Boilers in half the ships are overdue for routine scrubbing and cleaning, gunnery practice is an unheard of event, hull scraping is postponed to meet show the flag commitments; even the Marines have not had target practice with boat landing guns or their rifles in over a year.

The US Asiatic Squadron is a joke. The other European imperialist interloper comic opera navies operating along the China Station know it, which means the nervous Spaniards in Manila and hence Madrid know it.

That changes quickly. First, as long as a state of technical peace exists, Dewey has the authority to homeport his squadron, anywhere in his operating theater he wishes. (*Ever since the American Civil War, a tradition of regional commands [Departments for the American Army] and regions for the American Navy has been the norm, with the custom, that in peacetime, regional or department commanders ran their commands with a largely free hand administratively,). The US Navy does not own a port or harbor along the China coast. The US Shanghai concession does not include a naval base with all the stores and shore facilities that such a base confers upon the fleet it supports. That is a logistics advantage the Spaniards possess, if they the wit to use it.

The US has traditionally contracted with the local Chinese economy or gone to Japan for routine maintenance and supplies. In a squadron that does not expect much more than to steam its ships around and look good in harbor, that might be enough, but Dewey knows the fleet is going to be used and maybe soon. He must needs a port where he can bring the squadron together, work the squadron in a few steaming exercises, c ram in some gunnery drills and while performing these basic seamanship and warfare exercises, take care of the manning issues, bring ammunition up to allotments and tackle urgent fleet maintenance.

Of the choices he has to him, he can immediately discard any anchorages in French Indo-china. The hostility between the US and France over the interference in the US China trade has not passed and will not pass until US pressure kicks the French out of the South China Sea. That is something of a decade in the future. Dutch ports are too far away. The Germans recent concession at Tsingtsao is so new that the Germans are barely able to operate a raw anchorage. Russia is busy with Port Arthur, but going there would put the US on the outs with Japan, and that is something that Dewey is loath to do, since Nagasaki and Sasebo are good port stops for the Americans. Japanese ports might be an option, but British Royal Navy influence is rising in Japanese naval circles and there is the old saw about the runt pig being pushed away from the sow by the bigger members of the litter.

A British port? Now there is an option. The British of 1898 will sell you the rope to hang them with, if the price is right. Dewey has access to a fat US treasury and he has Roosevelt, currently pulling the wool over Navy Secretary John Long’s eyes. Yankee dollars buys berths, coal, provisions, a couple of fat British freighters, and those same Yankee dollars (backed by recruiting parties) can hire crew off the wharfs of the PacRim’s many disreputable colonial ports. “Join the US Navy” has been a trouble dodge for wharf rats and dock sweepings the world over since the US Navy was born. That navy has never looked hard at the man who enlists. If the man is trouble, that is what bosuns handle. And the 1898 Navy knows how to make sailors out of anybody, and I mean anybody.

Dewey has a firm grasp of the human factors problems in his fleet. Hong Kong, as happens, is ideally suited for his purposes, both from the manpower standpoint since the wharf rats will be English speakers, and from the maintenance angle, for it has a commercial shipping supply depot where ships can be worked upon for a price (even if they are foreign warships; being hull scraped, defouled, dirty boilers tended too, and steam plants worked upon. ), and there is nearby Chinese Mirs Bayon, about fifty kilometers north where the US Asiatic Squadron can cut holes in the water and shoot at targets. There is even empty coastline nearby where the Marines can march around and practice with their rifles and landing guns.

There is just one thing, Hong Kong cannot supply, (either RTL or AU), ammunition for US ship’s guns. British shells (They will sell them, the British sell ammunition to go with the Elswick cruisers the US Navy is about to buy, to keep those cruisers out of Spanish hands. Incidentally, the US Navy hated those boats, considering the guns supplied to be inferior and the steam plants to be second rate compared to US equipment. From this end of history, understanding what other foreign navies which used the type reported, I find that hard to believe.) do not fit US ordnance.

So shells, propellants and filler RTL have to come to Dewey from the United States. That’s 15,000 kilometers away to the Atlantic coast arsenals to make and 10,000 kilometers from the west coast naval depots. And no commercial shipper will carry a freighter load of the kind of ammunition (shells, filler and bag charges) that the RTL US Navy uses.

No wonder Commodore Dewey spends most of the first month in his scattered disorganized command, arranging for a shipment of ammunition to him from the US West Coast, by any means necessary, even if it means it will eventually come out piled up in pallets on the decks of the USS Baltimore.

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Can you imagine what Dewey's problems should be like with an AU fleet based on German type naval artillery?

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The AU version of the above situation.

During that RTL time of Mister Harrison's Navy when Dewey is in charge of the Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting, the US Navy introduces large scale electrification (searchlights, battery systems, electrolysis desalinization) their first automobile torpedoes and adopts wholesale modern breech loading cannons. There is not much to show what is going on inside the navy because frankly the Europeans are not paying too much attention to the modernization ruckus that started with those two maniacs, William C. Endicott (War Secretary) and William Collins Whitney (Navy Secretary) from the previous Grover Cleveland administration. One might regard Benjamin Harrison, and hence Dewey in charge of navy procurement, as a brief hiccup in the overall Grover Cleveland program. Endicott is the true father of all modern American artillery for he was the one who sent the technical missions to Europe to select the type of breech loading artillery the US would adopt. He chose French (a hideous mistake that took American gunsmiths a half century to correct, though American guns seem to have been better made than the original Schneider patterns.) and thus American guns of the RTL period used variants of the de Bang interrupted screw three point and four point articulated breech block system with shell and incremented bag charges and kinetic primer ignition at the breech. This makes for slow firing guns.

On the other hand, unlike the Europeans (Spain in this case) American bag charges are made out of expensive silk material and not wool. So explosions in the breech, a common fault with French made guns of the era when the rammers (four or five man on the ramrod) were over-enthusiastic was not an American problem. Blowback from leaky obturators was; as well as flame flash from the breech, so ready use ammunition has to be kept away from the guns.

The Germans use brass buttons with after charges and use bagged fore charges to solve the seal problem with their slide wedge breech block guns. They also train their rammers to march the shell and charges in by the count and not run it in to build up a dangerous static discharge during the ramming procedure. No kabooms, flame flash or breech block explosions from that quarter. You still have to be careful about metal on metal sparks, but the German designs are more idiot-proof than the French procedurally. The German designs in the larger calibers were also more quick firing.

It should be noted that one of the artillery experts who advises Endicott was William Sampson. It certainly is not Dewey or Schley. They want the German guns. They are nixed on the overall expense involved both in the guns', barbette design, and hoist arrangements in the ships. Nobody at the time knows how to make large brass shell casings or fit the shells to them as unit rounds. That is the reason for the complex German three step loading path process to the large bore guns as opposed to the two step French/English one.

Anyway, the AU choice between French and German ordnance, goes the other way. (The navy picks the guns and mines, not the army coast artillery.) And then the US solves the unit round problem (rounding the case and extrusion) for shells up to 30 cm. in diameter. (Unlike the British, this technology) becomes a US foundry manufacturing secret and it will take the Germans an additional 30 years to figure it out for themselves, figure this for about 1890.

This has interesting AU consequences for Mister Dewey.

For one thing, quick-firing medium caliber guns appear sooner, and rapid firing small bore guns appear later for the USN. There is no Mister Hotchkiss in France to create a company that sells machine Gatling cannon to the whole world. Nordenfelt battery guns become the norm instead for navies which want something to fight torpedo boats. This radically affects the USN where the Hotchkiss employed in the RTL was an American knockoff made by Driggs-Schroeder. The German equivalent is a Krupp rapid fire gun in the 3 and 3.5 in/30 caliber range that is not very good at hitting a torpedo boat. The US develops a 9 cm/30 or 40 gun as its own answer to the torpedo boat menace. And the torpedo boat is a menace. Among the world's navies, over 1000 torpedo boats have been built, with France, Italy, Russia and Japan being especially fond of the type. The AU presents the American backup solution of Hotchkiss machine guns and Gatling guns in addition to 9cm shell guns to drive off torpedo boats. However; Hotchkiss machine guns are new and rare, and Gatling guns lack the reach and punch of Nordenfelts. The AU American warships, at least the large lumbering ones, are very vulnerable to close in torpedo attack. (See USS Wyoming above.) Spaniards (Montojo) know this fact.

For the second thing, the earliest of the New Steel Navy ships will lack reliable torpedoes. First generation ships will be the types of ships Dewey finds in his little fleet. The flywheel propelled Howell Mark I is such a disaster that the first generation ships fitted to carry it, will have the complex cumbersome machinery to spin the torpedo up to speed removed, the tubes landed and the spaces left empty during the 1897 refit. It will be post war when the Pacific fleet ships will receive the Schwartkopfs. So Dewey's ships lack torpedoes of their own to finish off cripples, during the Battle of Manila Bay.

On the steam propulsion front; the RTL first generation UIW ships used conventional direct drive triple expansion engines. There is nothing different about steam engines in the AU except that Union Iron Works, unlike William Cramp and Sons, did not have ready access to Niclausse boilers, so the ships the US Navy's principle west coast ship builder produces will have imported British-made Bellevue boilers which are of the Yarrow type. And guess again what ships Dewey has? Ones made by Union Iron Works. The words "maintenance nightmare" and clogged tubes comes to mind. plus the noisy Union Iron Works (they make their own engines) VTE engines give off a historical flame spurt on occasion up the exhaust stack that will light up a ship like the Fourth of July at night. This is not good for sneak attacks.

One thinks the Spaniards might be aware of these technical problems.

On the plus side, the Americans decision to introduce an intermediate electric generator/motor step into their final drives means that to cut out a steam engine (then turbines and still later diesels) is a simple question of control at the electrical bus. American propulsion systems can be more distributed than the direct drive European ones, for a cost in mechanical efficiency.

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Measured in total... On the plus side of things, Dewey's AU ships will have reliable medium caliber rapid fire guns. The dangers of fire in the gunhouse and breech explosions will be markedly reduced. Spain will not have that assurance with her foreign designed and domestic copied artillery. Cartridge annealing and charge loading for Americans will be simplified, as the US makes and maintains its own ammunition and propellant stocks to match US built and designed guns. Again as a cost saving measure, Spain farms that work out to Italy and France. (See Cervera's letters to Bermejo concerning defective 5.5 in. shell ammunition for what that means.)

Since the US uses the fixed unit round principle for all but its largest artillery in this AU (there are some guns available larger than 25cm and 30cm/35, such as the experimental 33cm/35.), the magazine hoists and feed the gun processes are less cumbersome (and marginally safer) than even the French system making for mechanically simpler barbettes and citadel mounts in ships. On the other hand, Dewey will have some tired gun-monkeys when the shooting starts, as he will have to break off action periodically to allow the loaders and rammers a breather. Most of this 1898 feed the gun stuff aboard ships is still done by slippery hands, strong backs and weak minds. And US unit rounds for 15 cm guns are very heavy (120 kg for shell/bullet, cartridge case and propellant). Imagine what 20 cm unit rounds must weigh?

These are the specific facts the Spaniards will not know. And it will puzzle them in the coming battle.

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AND MORE WOES FOR THE FOES:

In this AU of Mister McKinley’s Navy, the “pacifist” McKinley stretches negotiations with Spain out. One suspects that there is some truth that McKinley sought some weasel room with the Chicane republican from Ohio in the RTL protesting his desire for peace and that Roosevelt’s faction and the yellow press newspapers were the pressures that backed that Janus into a corner, where he had no choice in the end, but let the people and their Congress decide the question of war.. Nice myths. Much debate among McKinley scholars, hinges around that RTL McKinley dog and pony show. It can be argued that McKinley and his gray eminence, Mark Hanna, as a team, actually set out to expand American imperial interests; that when the Maine exploded, they saw their opportunity and played fast and loose with diplomacy and the known facts to paint Spain as the villains and to create conditions for a cheap and easy victory over a supposed doddering decrepit European state.

This AU is built on the clues in the McKinley administration’s acts prior to the Maine Incident. The clues are somewhat plain. The modernization program in the navy that accelerates during the second half of the second Cleveland administration (three battleships and three armored cruisers laid down, more experiments with submarines, and attempts to develop an American version of the Whitehead torpedo.) practically gallop along in the first year of the McKinley presidency with five more powerful battleships appropriated, a Filibuster encouraged in Hawaii, a landing made upon ignored Wake Island and its all too prompt seizure, increased clandestine support to the Cuban renegados and banditos and their so-called revolution … the evidence is there that McKinley was after empire. If a final piece of intent is needed, it should be noted that a decade long negotiation with Great Britain over a Central American canal; which languishes over the British demand for non-fortification and joint sovereign ownership, is abruptly changed when the McKinley State Department insists on US singular sovereignty and sole control of the proposed canal. That is; the United States suddenly tells the British to go take a flying leap off the nearest Anglo diplomatic demarche and flame themselves. How the Marquis of Salisbury who is also the UK’s foreign secretary felt about it cannot be put into family friendly print, but it is absolutely clear that McKinley and John Hay are the ones who tell the Earl and his ambassador Paunceforte where to park it, not Teddy Roosevelt who merely reaps the benefits of the good works undertaken past pluperfect. One might almost date the end of the British Empire’s primacy to the Hay-Paunceforte treaty. Or one could cite the Boxer Rebellion as another McKinley clue. The Japanese had the most troops, but one notes that two veteran combat tested American regiments in the Philippine Islands; McKinley, without consulting Congress, immediately sends direct from the Philippines to China at a time when every American soldier in the islands was up to his ears in Illustrados and Moros who run amok. (The US contingent i as large as that of France. It should be pointed out, in an otherwise very bungled allied expedition, that the US forces [9th and 14th Regiment US Regular Army] are prominent in forcing the relief into the foreign compound and International Legation, with them actually fighting and holding open an assault lane for British follow up troops to enter after them, and that 5th Artillery USRA is the outfit that forces the gates to the Forbidden City open with gunfire to make it happen. The less one says about Russian and French efforts in that miserable exercise, the better. The US assault is actually carried out as a rescue of the Russians, who get themselves caught in a well-executed Chinese trap. The Japanese are not slack either, making their numbers count in those quarters where it matters at that point, with their units holding the flanks of the assault and keeping the line of passage clear of Chinese Boxers as the Americans and British advance into Beijing. Germans and Austrians wave their flags in that exercise, while Italy’s troops provide badly needed logistics support and local trains security back to Yang-sun.)

So, McKinley in the RTL is very much the jingo President before Theodore Roosevelt becomes the poster child for the term. In the AU, one accepts the evidence as given and runs with it, to wonder what if some other things in progress at the time are a little ahead or behind the RTL historic curve?

1. The Fenian Ram is an RTL working Holland submersible launched by the Fenian Society in 1880. Making practice attacks using dummy shells; the damned thing’s air cannon soon shows it is a most practical exercise in how to build an automobile torpedo launching submarine but not how to build a functioning underwater cannon firing one. Mister Chester Arthur’s Navy takes a look at the contraption and instantly recognizes that the dynamite shell proposed as the launch projectile is a perfect submarine self-immolator which meant they lose interest in a suicide attack weapon. However; that is because the US has no working automobile torpedo. It could have gone the other way, with a George Dewey or a Winfield Scott Schley. The lack of a torpedo and a fight to get a battleship program going through a hostile Congress are the RTL Fenian Ram kibosh. One thinks that Britain’s reluctance to sell license production rights to the Whitehead to the Americans (the Fenians were precursors to the IRA) might be another reason. But the British (or Robert Whitehead) somehow let the Germans acquire torpedo engineering diagrams. And there is the AU Endicott mission. They acquire Schwartzkopf torpedoes or at least the detailed drawings of the German torpedo. (A little espionage one thinks?) The Howell electric cable powered torpedo comes along as well. All of this development is AU pushed by the Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting. Who is head of that Bureau? George Dewey. Who becomes an AU fan of the submarine and Howell Mark II electric cable powered torpedo? George Dewey. That will take care of Admiral von Diederichs in short order to be soon described.

2. The 1896-1898 fleet modernization occurs. Central fire directors without range clocks or analog change of rate of motion calculators, or ballistics index tables still make sense in a confused era of line shot naval gunnery.. As illustrated previously, the Fiske Bushnell master telemeter is the heart of a notional 1895 era US central director system. The gunnery tables (courtesy of the UIS Army) provide the ballistics indexes. The thing missing is the analog calculators and the range rate clocks… otherwise known when you have human beings who can guess rate of motion change and predict lead by eye through large telescopic telemeters as trained master gunners. This is all well and good, but which ships are at the rear of the queue for the naval goodies that Mister Grover Cleveland’s navy have largessed upon it? It takes time to refit a ship, (about a half year for a new director to be built where the military pole mast was on a cruiser, normally. Omaha has her director (one [1]) installed, but Olympia at the beginning of January 1898 does not. She will have to go to San Francisco for the work (February). She’ll be ready by June as a rush job (3 months), but her crew won’t be trained to use it. Torpedo refit Olympia at the same time? Forget it. There is no time.

3. Ammunition and target practice. As previously mentioned, the navies of this era generally have de-rated practice shells because the era’s explosive filler deteriorates rapidly. The nitro powders the various European nations produce have been in service for about a decade and a half, and there have been enough wars and accidents to give the average competent navy a good idea of what works and what doesn’t. Even China and Japan understand the risks of storing live ordnance long term. So sawdust-filled shells are not necessarily a sign of peacetime naval corruption. Failing to fill with explosive filler during wartime is corruption, as Spain is about to discover. The USN, late to nitro powders, has opted for the expensive rotation of stored live ammunition stocks as a solution and a lot of gunnery practice with live shells. At least that is the fleet doctrine and another excuse for the yearly fleet problem (to get rid of the previous year’s ammunition.). The trouble here is that the USN does not want to keep large stocks of old shells in ship’s magazines. The AU USS Charleston was blown to smithereens with stuffed magazines. The Asiatic Squadron has 40% magazine capacity stored as a safety measure and that ammunition is deemed too old to be rated as safe thanks to Admiral McNair's general malfeasance as a commander who did not exercise due diligence in following doctrine. He wants to save his scarce operating funds and ammunition is one place where he trims his budget. No target shooting in over a year, again to save money, as an operating squadron to be spent on other things (admiral's parties) compounds the problem. When Dewey starts gunnery drills at Kirs Bayon, what little ammunition on hand the Asiatic fleet have, they will use up quickly. Resupply with fresh US-made shells for the US-made guns is at best a month away. Not even Dewey realizes this sober fact, until the fleet starts shelling Chinese beaches and his captains report their ammunition states. All of a sudden, the supposedly laughable Europeans (the British) with their cheaply made sawdust filled practice shells and their towed target sleds do not seem so foolish. The USN are still learning the tricks of the steel navy trade...

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For more information on George Brayton and what he did:

here.

It was a single two cylinder Brayton unit that powered the Fenian Ram

Scale it all up.

MORE WOES FOR THE FOES: on the other side.

In the AU version of events Admiral Montojo has three additional months to get ready for the Dewy attack which comes around the end of July, beginning of August. (The Paris peace talks drag on and on as the US Army keeps postponing their opening operations planned for Cuba and the Canary Islands. to avoid the known Yellow Fever season. They will not be entirely successful.)

This gives Admiral Montojo some options, he never had in the RTL. And options for Montojo, when one estimates the Spaniard’s situation and considers those options must be viewed realistically for this AU to be at all viable. In the strictest sense, Spain is not able to send him what the nation does not have. No more ships are available, no additional trained personnel (Aside from the excellent Tercios, which being mostly Spanish army light infantry, have little or no bearing on the naval war to come. Trained artillery gunners, fortification engineers and a Captain general who cares about his office’s responsibilities and who will make the army cooperate with the Armada, would be helpful: but alas; the modern guns the nonexistent gunners would use are sorely lacking, the engineers who would need tools are also not available, and as for someone to replace the rat bastard Basillio Augustin? It just cannot happen under the inept and politically emasculated current Sagasta government. If Montojo has any options at all, those options, he can employ, are local. And they are not good.

Here’s why.

1. The rebellion which has been ongoing for about 10 years would have been far more effective against the Spanish occupancy if the rebels had access to a local native industrial base in the islands. When the Filipinos have to import basic items such as tool steels, blacksmithing tools and GUNPOWDER, this rebellion is going nowhere. The Americans will have a more active ten year war on their hands post conquest, but then it will take the Americans about ten years to learn all the smuggling routes and wipe the gunrunners out. So… the local iron/steel industry is virtually nonexistent. If a gear part for the local Chinese hemp factory breaks, it takes a week for a new part to arrive from Hong Kong. Notwithstanding, that the Chinese on Luzon could help' that Filipino persecuted Chinese immigrant minority community is sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the winner in this contest of arms (Spain or the US or the Tagalogs.). Can you imagine the problems, the Spanish cruiser, Castilla, poses with her stern shaft seals ruptured, her boilers clogged with burnt coal soot ash residue and her hull requiring extensive carpentry (Fortunate for Montojo, the Filipinos were and are adroit ship’s carpenters)? Metalworking required for warships, above the basic manufacture level is for pipe repair and crude small forge welding of existing broken parts, and is impossible outside Cavite naval yard and coaling station, where Spain has established a small naval arsenal and naval workshop to support her fleet. Given three months and much incentive, the naturally reluctant native Filipino metal-smiths therein employed at that yard can repair much of the cruiser Castilla’s wear and tear. They might even be able to put the engine plant back into service from the existing broken crank shaft and leaky boiler tubes on hand as parts patches and remedies from scrap on hand. One wonders if the Castilla can be coffer dammed and that concrete plugged shaft seal taken apart and given a new lead slip collar? It could happen, but it would take a miracle.

2. And let us not forget, that the Reina Cristina is in rather sad shape herself. She needs to be defouled, her boilers scraped and her steam plant overhauled. Same for the other future American practice target, the cruiser Reina Regenta. For this AU, the Reina Regenta is not assumed foundered' due to Captain Francisco Sanz de Andino’s unfortunate seamanship skills and poor nautical choices he makes during his transit from Cadiz to Cartagena. (How is he supposed to know about the sudden tropical squall that pops up near Gibraltar? Irrelevant that factoid is actually. The actual RTL fault for the foundering lies with her British hired designers and builders who miscalculate the metacentric roll and the total volume required for the float bubble for strengthdeck burden carried. The ship is too top heavy. They even manage to get the Plimsoll line wrong when they mark her for full load displacement. So hull geometry has to be badly off too. Wrong cross sectioning?)

3. Naval mines are a weaker navy’s best friend. How hard can it be to make a naval mine? Not very' if you know how to make beer barrel bombs and can ferment explosives from sugar (Nitroglycerin anybody?). What does one mean about fermenting explosives? In the Philippine Islands? The Philippines has a hefty sugar industry, lots of barrel makers, and potash. Instant naval mine; if you know how. The only problem is where to find the blasting caps,(Make those from nitro glycol because there is no mercury fulminate), how to build the batteries, (Confederates used tin and old glass jars and lemons) and design a working fuse train. You need some chemists, a decent mechanical engineer (1) one each, expendable assemblers, and the raw materials, (Mercury imported, chorine, or nitro glycol). Expect some (many) accidents, but beer keg mines and easily refurbished Bustamantes (About 10 of those unlaid mines were captured in the Cavite arsenal by the USN RTL post Battle of Manila Bay) and it seems that Montojo, given time can manufacture a lot of improvised mines (His technicians made about 30 in the brief time they had.) and put up one heck of a fight. That assumes that those mines are properly laid, though. Need specialist experts for the mine-laying. Russia? How about France?

4. But then again all the items (1-3) depend on item (5).

5. Those trained technicians and experts. For example: people in Spain’s navy (the Armada), who can actually ferment explosives safely, design fuses and build safe mechanical fail systems are so rare, that you can historically name HIM. Joaquin Bustamante. In the RTL, the Bustamente mines were not refurbished in the field properly. The explosives experts and armorers who knew how to safely disassemble that mine, refurbish and repack it properly, did not exist in sufficient numbers. And besides that fault, the local authorities, who were supposed to be responsible for these measures, (commander of the Cavite arsenal), might be up to his ears personally handling the installation of those Ordunez guns at El Fraile that Montojo told him to install. How many partially trained armorers does Montojo have in his fleet? At least (5) five (all ship’s captains.) by count. Enough to do the work it seems. That means these men went to England or France to an armaments school to learn how to unpack a shell’s explosive fill and refresh the shell’s contents without blowing themselves up… in theory. A shell is simple compared to an 1898 torpedo or mine. Can one of them learn how to refurbish a Bustamante mine, some of the English mines Montojo has, or the notional AU keg bombs? Maybe. OJT is a rotten way to learn principles an d procedures. Then the poor guy has to write those procedures down, and then he has to teach others (senior rates, i.e. technical ordnance specialists how he did it. All with decaying live ordnance? Remember that the Armada usually has this kind of work contracted out to (foreign) civilian companies like Ansaldo, Schneider and Skoda. Yeah… expect many accidents. It can be done, but people are going to DIE (as in the case of (3) doing it. The Spanish are brave enough. And determined Spaniards are a fearsome thing to encounter. Why else would one call them “Heroes of Spain?” (Note, that the USN does it in-house then and now. Learn by doing. And they have accidents, too. But they are willing to eat their losses to train armorers in the hundreds, both RTL and in this AU. This will factor later.)

6. And then there is the spar-torpedo boat option. Montojo has three whole months, courageous to the point of lunacy (untrained) naval rates, and all those wooden inter-coastal shallow draft steamers flitting about the Philippine Islands; carrying hemp, beer and sugar cane from the outlying islands to the Manila markets. Suiicide ram attacks, wherein a small crew of bravos pilots an explosive laden launch or steamer at a US cruiser (which has notoriously poor antitorpedo boat defenses or so Montojo believes), with the crews jumping off the boat into the water just before it hits that American ship; is something that conventional-thinking Dewey certainly will not expect. But based on Spanish traditions of personal honor, individual courage and that quality of personal military élan (Audace, tourjours l'audace!) which is not uniquely French (USS Cole) and military shrewdness; one can extrapolate that if Montojo could do it, and if he is desperate enough, he will do it. It is something George Dewey should anticipate as he prepares correctly for much of everything else he expects in the RTL or at least successfully adapts to the circumstances discovered. Will he adapt to this AU possibility?

Kriegspiel will reveal the results shortly.

It is supposed to look like a disguised motor launch, so that it can sneak up on its victim.

Please note that the crew of six men was expected to lash down the controls, including the tiller/helm; and jump off the stern at least 5 boat lengths from the target and swim for it. If successful, it was presumed the survivors would be plucked out of the water by the Americans or if close enough, could swim to the nearest friendly shore. Experience with American Civil War Davids suggests the USN will kill any survivors fished out of the water immediately without trial, but what Montojo does not tell the "volunteers" should not bother him or them as with a tonne of gunpowder or nitro going off, the "volunteers" will not survive the shockwave anyway.

It is what it is. The idiots who punched a hole in the USS Cole thought they could swim for it. The expert who prepared the boat bomb did not tell them that they would be killed within 100 meters of the blast and almost certainly disintegrated within 20 meters whether in the boat or the water. The shockwave was that powerful.

That hull metal on the USS Cole was the difference. One is frankly surprised (actually shocked) that a 1/3 tonne of explosive going off that close did not snap her in two and kill and injure more of the crew with the concussive force. American ships are toughly built.

The two types of protected cruisers present at this AU Battle of Manila Bay.

The ships are notionally constructed by the Union Iron Works shipyards at San Francisco, California (1888-1891)

DOWN TO THE WIRE:

In case one wonders about the titles to these sections, there is a reason for the titles. In this section we will discuss an often overlooked factor in military discussions; technological prowess.

Take the matter of wires. Wire drawing and insulation is such an overlooked detail. Whether copper or steel, it is a skill that few national industrial bases bother to develop. Why? It is so esoteric, trivial and expensive to develop for a small country, who can buy their wires cheaply from Great Britain or from Germany. Why should Spain bother?

Then comes the day when Spain needs 100 miles of insulated underwater-rated electrical messenger cable (especially Admiral Montojo as he tries to defend the Philippine Islands) and suddenly Britain, for ”neutrality reasons” decides she does not want to sell such wire to go along with the already Spanish paid and purchased Hawkins mines she holds up at Hong Kong?

The Americans have been building suspension b ridges like crazy. They have also run their submarine messenger cable from San Francisco to Pearl, Hawaii, to Anchorage Alaska (where the US Army is learning how to build a railroad in the tundra.), more messenger cable to the recently established telegraph and coaling station at Apia Samoa; and to Sasebo and Nagasaki, Japan where the American navy leases docks, a fleet anchorage space, and consular offices where the US controlled telegraph stations are located. It is an expensive part of the UDS Navy’s operations and procurement budget. At first the American bought fragile sulfur contaminated British steel wrapped wire in hawser form and insulated copper wire insulated in cork and creosote wrap, but as American cable needs grow into the thousands of miles, it occurs to the Washington politicians, that Britain can simply stop selling them wire in case British interests conflict with American needs. The New York money interests reach the same conclusions. Wire extrusion processes are developed. Rubber and insulated waterproof paper and glue wrapping machines are invented. British cable making methods are studied, emulated, or American modified and improved to fit the new American cable-making technical base. Wire to lay submarine cable, as in copper: or to serve in the place of hawser rope, as in the case of the much superior no kink, flexible multi-strand steel hawser marine cable is not a problem for the Americans.

That means Bushnell pancake mines (named after David Bushnell’s company which makes them and the inventor who designed the first infernal machines at Washington’s insistence in 1778.) work.

It also means the US Navy has a recent bitter history with naval mines.

To summarize the USN doctrine (Developed by Admiral Farragut after the Battle of New Orleans, and employed at the Battle of Mobile Bay, paired boat parties go out from the warships equipped with drag cables and grapples to fish for mines. (Lieutenant John Crittenden Watson developed these minefield mapping methods.) . Hooked mines are dragged up and cut loose and drilled and sunk or the interruptor safety circuit sabotaged or the command wire cut as encountered. Also in use are paravanes (USS Hartford and Marine sharpshooters at Mobile Bay) who use aimed rifle and Gatling gun fire to disable mines cut loose and adrift now afloat to either blow them up or sink them .

Dewey knows about mines. His bureau when he was head of it, during Mister Arthur’s Navy, procures mines for attack and studies methods against them an enemy might use to clear American mines. Of particular emphasis is the espionage Americans conduct at HMS Vernon to discover how the Hawkins automatic anchor cable length adjuster works on British mines. The Americans find it does not work, because at high tide the mine is pulled to too deep, and if laid at low tide (British doctrine), the floating mine anchor cable can slip through the hoist brake and bob to the surface where it can be seen and shot. The Bushnell pancake mine has a side drift feature that employs sinkers and floats that hold the mine at more or less constant neutral buoyancy depth whatever the tide levels are. This has to be manually adjusted at time of placement as well as the length of anchor hawser employed. It makes for slow mine laying and dangerous mine clearing for the USN. Snagging a USN pancake mine with a grapple causes the interrupter safety to trigger and the mine explodes. Para-vaning or a swimmer/diver in the water with a delayed action limpet (called Watson charge in the USN) is the only “safe” way to clear it.

Bustamante mines will be a breeze (relatively speaking) for the American mine-clearing parties on the SS Manuel Aguinas, a “Filipino-Chinese Sari Sari” tramp inter-coastal small steamer that plies the route from Davao to Manila to Dagupan and thence to Hong Kong. (Operated by “Chinese Charlie” Luiz Almorado Chuen, the small tramp sail and steam cargo ship operates as one of the several dozen Filipino-Chinese mestizo-owned ships that ply the manila hemp quadrangle trade. To put it bluntly, Chinese Charlie is an ONI agent. He is born in Juarez, Mexico in 1869 to a Filipino mother and Chinese-American father and for five years now, he spies on the Spaniards in Manila, Aguinaldo’s Filipinos in northern Luzon, and the Sulu Sultan in the Sulu Sea [more on that reprehensible man later] and makes a tidy profit as a gunrunner and luxury goods smuggler. That rat bastard, Emilio Brasillo, thinks Chinese Charlie is one of his “Filipino agents”. ) The shallow draft freighter makes her slow dangerous passages into Manila harbor at night with a ship’s boat and a local pilot to guide her through the Spanish minefields like so many other sanctioned traders (read approved smugglers) do. And who makes up to date maps of the constantly changing safe lanes from his perch atop the pilot house as he telemeters the guide boat in relation to the coastal landmarks? (such as the new Joanna battery emplacement, a prominent feature on El Fraile island?) It is the SS Manuel Aguinas that smuggles in 50 miles of “British-made” submarine messenger wire, purchased on the Hong Kong Chinese black market, by patriotic Chinese Charlie. Now one understands why Dewey has no qualms about Spanish mines or why “wire” is so important to his own plans.

One of the "revenue cutters" present at Manila Bay that August 1,1898 in this AU.

A note on minesweeping. The USN has not developed the Ooropesa float or the Usbourne/Burney paravane. (Royal Navy and Bristol Aircraft respectively.) Weighted underwater glider sleds are not part of the repertoire either in 1898. Weighted saw cutter wire drags (a US invention) is. So to be practical in the AU about it, the same methods Lieutenant Watson used in 1864, will be in use in 1898. The only difference is that the USS McCullough, the USS Lake Champlain, and the USS McIntosh will have a better Watson charge than he had. This is towed into place against the surfaced mine by a floating cable Y yoke strung between two boats system, allowing the small ship's boats to row (presumably) a safe distance from the mine to be exploded.