A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [293]
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For all of Hotze’s genius at shaping public opinion, he failed to understand the gravity of the situation in Liverpool. “The Rams in the Mersey are more than ever the centers of attention. The efforts of the Government to insure their detention are really ludicrous,” he sneered to Benjamin. Bulloch, on the other hand, saw nothing amusing about the government’s actions. On October 8, Russell decided that Lairds could not be trusted, and he changed his detention order to outright seizure. The Duke of Argyll congratulated Russell and urged him not to regret defying the law officers: “They would never have advised you to do what you have so rightly done,” he wrote. “I say, three cheers for the House of Russell.”30 Palmerston agreed with Argyll that there “was no moral Doubt that [the rams] are intended for Confederate service.” Even the Queen became involved, telling Gladstone that the rams business should not be allowed “to endanger the Government.” Despite her concern, Gladstone thought “she did not appear to lean towards over-conciliation of the Federal Government.”31 James Bulloch insisted in his memoirs that he never intended the rams to sneak out of England. If that was so, Lairds had done him a disservice with their suspicious activity.
The task of guarding the rams was one of the least rewarding experiences of Captain Edward Inglefield’s career in the Royal Navy. He and his men were threatened wherever they went in Liverpool. An intelligent and empathetic officer, he realized that the anger directed toward them chiefly stemmed from a fear that the five hundred craftsmen working on the rams would lose their jobs, and he advised the Home Office to allow the work to continue until the ships were completed. Inglefield deliberately refrained from putting on a show of force: he moored his sloop at some distance from the rams, carried nothing more threatening than an umbrella, and ordered his men to remember that on this mission they were peace preservers, not war makers. It was a sensible but risky move. One ram looked primed to leave: “Her turrets are very nearly completed, and excepting stores she can be ready for sea almost any day,” he reported. “I have taken upon myself not to permit the boilers to be run up, or the fires laid even for presumed experimental purposes.”32
Bulloch was surprised that the government had seized the rams without first obtaining legal sanction or charges against Lairds. After a month went by without any sign of legal action, he began to wonder if the process was being deliberately drawn out in order to give the law officers more time to prepare their case. On October 28 “Historicus” attacked the rams in The Times (this was William Vernon Harcourt’s return to print after the death of his wife in April), condemning the Confederates’ illegal use of British shipyards and arguing for a determined response from the government. Bulloch realized that “Historicus” was preparing public opinion for the government’s clampdown on Confederate operations in England; whether or not the rams case went to court, the ships would never be allowed to leave. The following day brought more disappointing news. CSS Georgia had dropped anchor at Cherbourg in so dilapidated a state as to be on the verge of sinking.
The raider had destroyed nine ships during her six-month adventure. But according to Lieutenant James Morgan, the final weeks had resembled a gothic horror story, full of madness and savagery. Captain Maury had suffered a nervous breakdown near the Cape of Good Hope, and the enforcement of discipline had fallen to the charming but weak Lieutenant Evans. There were constant fights and several attempted mutinies: “things had gone from bad to worse than bad until one day some of the stokers discovered that a coal bunker was [all that] separated [them] from the spirit-room,” wrote Morgan;