The Yanks

By David O'Neil

Seeking to establish herself as a major sea-power, the fledging United States Navy chose three young naval officers to serve as diplomatic attachés whose tasks were to visit foreign countries to discover as much as possible about the ship-building capabilities of each country. Great Britain, Russia and France were the initial targets as the three countries were dominate in the art of sea warfare.

Young, eager and willing to learn, Lieutenants Alan Marshall Fisher-Wright, Alexander Gerald Berry and Templin Mathew Potts found that they had much more to learn about than mere ship-building, and the lessons of life that were not taught in the classroom could be quite painful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W & B Publishers
• Release date: Jun 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781635542370

David O'Neil

David is 79 years old. He lives in Scotland and has been writing for the past five years. He has had three guidebooks published and two more coming out through Argyll Publishing, located in the Highlands. He still guides tours through Scotland, when he is not writing or painting. He has sailed for decades and has a lifelong interest in the history of the navy. As a young man, he learned to fly aircraft in the RAF and spent 8 years as a Colonial police officer in what is now Malawi, Central Africa. Since that time, he worked in the Hi Fi industry and became a Business Consultant. David lives life to the fullest, he has yet to retire and truthfully, never intends to.

Book preview

Preface

The final military conflict between Great Brittan and her previous colonies which became the United States of America ended after thirty-two months of back and forth fighting with the two sides agreeing to an armistice and on December 24, 1914 signed the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium. In future conflicts, the two countries, previously bitter enemies, found themselves fighting side by side, shoulder to shoulder against common foes.

The fact that many of the habitants of the thirteen colonies were originally from the British Empire made reconciliation less difficult and led to numerous trade agreements between the two former opponents. In fact, it made it easier to look at both sides with lessened animosity.

It must be but a poor spirited American whose veins do not tingle with pride when he reads of the cruises and fights of the sea-captains, and their grim prowess, which kept the old Yankee flag floating over the waters of the Atlantic for three years, in the teeth of the mightiest naval power the world has ever seen. The Royal British Navy.

– Theodore Roosevelt

President of the United States of America

The Yanks

Book 1

The Diplomats

David O’Neil

W & B Publishers

USA

The Yanks: Book 1: The Diplomats © 2019. All rights reserved by Argus Enterprises Intl.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any informational storage retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

W & B Publishers

For information:

W & B Publishers

9001 Ridge Hill Street

Kernersville, NC 27284

www.a-argusbooks.com

ISBN: 9781635542370

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

Book Cover designed by Dubya

Dedication

This series is dedicated to those public servants, military and civilian alike, on either side of the waters, who keep us safe from our enemies foreign and domestic. May God bless.

Prologue

During that period of time between the end of the United State's War Between the States, or Civil War, and the onset of The Great War in 1914– also known as the War to End All Wars or as World War 1 – the United States military gradually deteriorated into a force in name only. The United States Navy, for example, consisted of slightly less than six thousand total personnel. The United States Army, which had a total of one million and thirty-five thousand men in uniform at the height of the Civil War, was now reduced to a meager authorized force of twenty-seven thousand, four hundred and forty-two.

The war-weary voters of the country had little or no interest in foreign affairs or in the costs of maintaining a strong military force and, in fact, further reductions would have been made had it not been for the demand for the United States Army to fight against the Native American tribes that were resisting the westward movement of the growing populace.

This malaise was especially devastating to the United States Navy, the primary force in defending the war-torn nation from foreign powers.

Congress—in agreement with the weary voters—found no justifiable incentive to budget funds to construct new warships and little rationalization to spend badly needed dollars to maintain and operate old, ineffective vessels.

Research to further advance the innovations in weaponry science and technology introduced during the Civil War received virtually no official encouragement from any of the elected officials.

In Great Britain, Europe and several other countries, however, the opposite situation prevailed. Bowing to the necessity of maintaining a powerful maritime presence, England, France, Germany, Russia and the Ottoman Empire were spending huge sums of money to construct newer, better and larger warships as a hedge against their neighbors.

The British Empire by virtue of its advanced ship-building capability, became the global hegemon (dominant power) and adopted the role of global policeman. The growth of British imperial strength was further underpinned by its leadership in developing the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing the British military to control and defend the Empire.

These maritime powers, particularly those that had stationed naval attaches in Washington during the U.S. Civil War, advanced the research ball, introducing their own ingenuity, and came up with many astonishing improvements in ship design as well as ship construction techniques, propulsion, and weapons. At the same time, new concepts for the employment and support of navies were developed.

Although the Congress of the United States would not authorize the U.S. Navy to compete with this maritime progress, a few of the Navy's more experienced officers could and did manage to observe the progress in anticipation of the time when new U.S. ships might be authorized.

***

Beginning a short time after the Civil War ended, it was suggested to ship's captains by the Secretary of Navy Richard W. Thompson—a practice that was to be continued and expanded by his successor Nathan Goff, Jr.—that while cruising to European ports the captains should use every effort to try to keep abreast of developments abroad. When Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox was sent on a voyage aboard the monitor Miantonomoh as emissary to Czar Alexander of Russia, then Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles instructed Fox to collect details on the important naval situations in the various countries of Europe that he would visit on his way to and from Russia. Fox was instructed to examine foreign methods of building, repairing, and laying up naval vessels and to compare new European naval vessels with those of the United States. Fox visited ports in England, France, Denmark, and Finland on his way to Russia observing naval efforts and procedures. On his return trip to the United States, he made stops in Sweden, Germany, France (for the second time) and various Mediterranean ports during the winter before arriving back in the U.S. in May 1867. Additional Naval officers were also sent individually and in groups by the various Navy bureaus to observe and prepare notes on the installations and techniques, reporting back to their individual unit after being debriefed by the Secretary of Navy himself or his most trusted assistant.

Shortly after his sudden appointment as Chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering, James W King spent significant time in Europe investigating the progress that was being made in compound steam engine design. King collected considerable infor-mation about various naval appliances. In 1876, he was directed by the U.S. Senate—which had begun to become aware of efforts of foreign nations—to examine and report on ships of war and on the mercantile marine, marking the first official request of a naval officer by a branch of the U.S. government to engage in espionage.

***

As the disturbing reports that continued to arrive from overseas observers accumulated in the various Navy bureaus, and with little or no coordination between the bureaus of the information obtained, the Secretary of the Navy found it increasingly difficult to get unanimity in the opinions of the various bureau chiefs as to which developments in Europe were most important to the future needs of the U.S. Navy. Congressmen also were unhappy about the conflicting views and theories being presented to them by Navy spokes-men on the building specifications for new ships. To correct the situation and to provide an authoritative official source on what the new Navy should be, Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt created an advisory board to establish positions on new ship construction needs that could be uniformly voiced by the Secretary and the bureau chiefs.

The board began its work on 11 July 1881, but it needed factual, objective information upon which to base its advice to the Secretary. The events that led to the creation of that board had begun slightly less than a decade earlier.

CHAPTER 1

The White House

1600 Pennsylvanian Avenue

Washington, D.C.

08:00 EST

Wednesday, April 9, 1872

The President of the United States rested his thick, hairy arms on the armrests of the upright, high-backed oak chair that had been chosen to allow his back to rest. Having marched and ridden for most of his military career, his advancing age allowed the aches and pains to accumulate over the years, and while by no means feeble or invalided, he took ever chance to ease his massive body. The President was seated behind a large desk made of dark wood. The hard wooden chair matched the rest of the furniture in his work area, the largest office of the White House.

Not even the thick black beard nor the full head of black hair—both tinged with the slightest hint of grey—or the deep tan he had from exposure to the sun could hide the worry-lines of concern that criss-crossed his stern face. Almost absently, he removed the chewed-up cigar—one of the more ten thousand that had been sent to him as the voting public learned of his habit of smoking cigars—that was almost a permanent fixture that he was seldom without. Little did the public know that their president, Ulysses S. Grant smoked much less of the cigar than he chewed it, and the purpose of removing the cigar was to take another sip of Jack Daniels' Tennessee whiskey from the crystal glass. The whiskey was also another fixture that was almost always present. Still, neither the tobacco or the alcohol nor the caffeine in the coffee cup that was almost always near had caused even the slightest blemish on his perfectly white teeth that was often visible when he smiled. He sighed as he laid his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes for a long moment.

His reflections were disturbed by a knock on the door to the office, which swung open and revealed his personal aide, Charles Wentworth, a middle-aged man, a slightly pudgy, short man in a baggy, wrinkled suit, who had served as his aide-de-camp when he was the commanding general for the Union forces in the recent American Civil War. Although Wentworth was several years younger than the President, his hair—long and pulled into a knot at the nape of his neck—and his neatly-trimmed beard were both almost totally white.

Gen… er… President Grant, the people you had me summon are here. Wentworth stood aside and six men silently filed into the room.

These men were all members of the President's cabinet, including Schuler Colfax, his vice-president, who was under investigation in what was referred to as the Crédit Mobilier of America affair.

Colfax was a stocky individual, standing some five feet and eight inches, and like Grant sported a full beard, one year older than President Grant, Colfax was the youngest vice-president ever elected to the office. Teamed with Grant, the two were the youngest president-vice-president team in the history of the United States. Unlike Grant, Colfax's beard and hair were jet black, caused partially by the hair gel (Grant suspected bear fat) that had been applied liberally to keep the hair and beard in shape. His facial complexion was ruddy, his prominent bulb-shaped nose revealing the vice-president's tendency to over indulge in alcohol beverages, but never when working.

Next in line was Hamilton Fish, the Secretary of State, son of a wealthy New York family and previously the Governor of New York and a former New York Senator. Fish had been appointed to the office by Grant, who honored an agreement with Elihu B. Washburne that stated Washburne would serve only a few days and then be appointed Minister to France, a position that he preferred and a position enhanced by having served as Secretary of State. Like Grant and Colfax, Fish sported both a full beard and thick curly black hair, except he chose to allow the beard to grow bushy and short rather than longer and trim. He was quite short, no more than five feet and five inches, and very thin, almost emaciated. Still, he walked with a bounce in his step that indicated a surplus of energy.

The third man to enter was Secretary of the Treasury, George S, Boutwell. Boutwell had previously declined the position of Secretary of Interior. However, when Grant’s first choice for the office of Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander T. Stewart, was found ineligible, Boutwell reluctantly agreed to serve. He was a portly man, thick through his body and easily the largest man in the room, even heavier than the stocky President, weighing in the excess of three hundred pounds. Even so, he was agile, moving about the room quite easily. His complexion was white, almost chalky. Like the others, his hair and beard were full, but had begun turning grey as he approached his later years.

Fourth in line was William W. Belknap, Grant’s third Secretary of War after his first appointment, John A. Rawlings, a fellow general in the Union army, died in his first year as Secretary from an advanced case of tuberculoses. Grant’s second Secretary of War had been William T. Sherman,