Act three, in which everyone is bargaining
“And Jesus entered the temple of God and drove out all those who sold and bought in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those who sold doves, and said to them: It is written, My house will be called the house of prayer; and you made it a den of robbers."
(Gospel of Matthew 21: 12-13)
No matter how the French tried to demonstrate their "innocence" to the whole world, they still did not manage to deceive the northerners, and they found out everything, and France had to sell both battleships in 1864. And, of course, not to the southerners, because this meant a war with the United States, but to some "third countries": one Denmark, and the other Prussia, which at that time were just at war with each other because of Schleswig-Goldstein. The ships came in handy for them. "Cheops" in Prussia was given the name "Prince Adalbert", and the Danes renamed "Sphinx" to "Starkodder" ("Strong Otter") - they had such a traditional name for a warship, wandering from one of them to another.
Why did they do this? And in order not to offend anyone and maintain good relations with both Denmark and Prussia. And whoever wins there is for all God's will! We are, they say, just traders. Someone sells wheat, and someone - warships. Moreover, since it was wartime, the French won almost 2.5 million francs for their battleship. And the Danes did not bargain, but they were very unhappy with the new ship: they considered the crew quarters to be cramped, the protection of the vehicles from water was unsatisfactory, and the thickness of the armor plates was completely insufficient. Well, when in June he finally went to sea, the complaints of the sailors were added to the complaints of the engineers. The Danish officers did not like sailing to Copenhagen on a ship cutting through the waves and from time to time hiding in them up to the masts.
In their reports, they demanded that the ship be returned to the French immediately. And they sent them by mail, from the parking lot in the nearest port! Moreover, the war with Prussia had already been lost, and Denmark, they say, does not need such a ship now. It turned out that the shipbuilder Henri Armand again received his ship and again offered it to the Confederates. And to confuse everyone, the French went for a trick: right in the sea, the battleship was redirected to a Swedish port and purely nominally sold to a private person who had Swedish citizenship. Therefore, the ship arrived in Copenhagen under the Swedish flag. Here he was climbed by the chief emissary of the Confederate fleet, flag officer Samuel Barron, who, on the contrary, really liked him. Therefore, Captain Thomas Jefferson Page was immediately summoned from England, who was to become the commander of this "wonderful ship".
"Kotetsu" on the roads in Copenhagen.
While the Sphinx was in Copenhagen, its services were paid for by the banker Rudolf Paggard, and negotiations with the Danish government went through an agent of Armand, a certain Baron de Riviera. The case was organized in such a way that it seemed that it was not possible to agree with the "Swede" on the redemption of the battleship, and then de Riviere again offered to buy the ship to the southerners. The Confederation, for the services rendered to her by de Riviera, paid him 350,000 francs and transferred another 80,000 to the banker Paggard. Well, the battleship went to sea with a crew recruited from the Danes and with a Danish captain of the merchant fleet, but … under the French flag and the completely ridiculous name "Olinda".
The sea met the ship with a storm. But he, however, did not drown, but managed to reach the coast of France. But it was dangerous to enter any port, as it was possible to attract the attention of the agents of the Northern States, who literally watched every ship that entered them. The solution was found this: to replace the crews directly at sea. The City of Richmond, a small ship owned by the Southerners, picked up a temporary Danish crew from the ship and brought on board its shift - sailors from the famous "Alabama" - a raider of the Southerners, which the northerners had recently sunk in the English Channel, as well as from "Florida" and some other marque that took refuge from the Unionist fleet in the British and French harbors. The Confederate flag immediately flew over the Sphinx, and Captain Page gave the ship a new name - "Stonewall" - in honor of the Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, nicknamed "The Stone Wall" and who fell from a stray bullet at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 18bZ of the year.
General Jackson
The second ship, the Cheops, was never received by the Confederates. The fact is that for little Prussia it was the most valuable acquisition. Therefore, so that the Confederates did not try to intercept him in neutral waters, the officers of the Prussian service, Captains Shau and McLean, were instructed to overtake him, together with the chief engineer of the Prussian Navy Jansen. The battleship, which received the name "Prince Adalbert", actively participated in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, but then instantly became obsolete, so it was scrapped already in 1878.
In general, everything in this story happened the same as always: for someone there is war, heroism and glory, but for someone all this is nothing more than a very convenient way of personal enrichment. Interestingly, the "Prince Adalbert" hull was built so poorly that it leaked all the time due to poor fit of the casing sheets. Because of this, he was given the nickname "lame prince" (since Prince Adalbert himself was also lame!).
"Prince Adalbert" on the high seas
Act four, in which "Stonewall" plows the vastness of the oceans and for some reason never shoots at anyone.
“And where is it
a snail has crawled out today
Under such rain ?!"
(Issa)
Stonewall had to travel 5,000 miles to get to the Mississippi and there to defeat the Union fleet. But the intelligence of the northerners worked very well. They knew where and when he would go. The two battleships of the Union "Niagara" and "Sacramento" were supposed to intercept him in neutral waters, but, having met him on the high seas, they did not dare to engage with him, but followed him at a respectful distance. In Lisbon, where the battleship of the Southerners went to replenish coal supplies, all three ships met on the same roadstead! When going to sea, Captain Page even waved his hat to the squadron commander Thomas Craven - his old friend, with whom he served in the West Indies on the schooner Erie. But Stonewall itself, on its way to the New World, met a federal merchant clipper, did not attack him, and let him go without causing harm.
"Prince Adalbert" - graphic diagram. Stonewall looked the same.
That was the real test for the captain and crew of Stonewall, as it crossed the stormy Atlantic and the obstacles posed by the supply of coal and food by European colonial officials who did not want to quarrel with Washington over a single ship. But, despite all the obstacles, the ship still managed to reach Cuba on May 5, 1865.
Monitor "Dictator"
Monitor "Miantonomo". Painting by Oscar Parks.
However, a squadron of northerners from the battleships "Monadnock", "Canon" and "Dictator" was already waiting for him at the island. The monitors were armed with Dahlgren's 380-mm muzzle-loading guns, the Stonewall had a ram and was more maneuverable than the shallow-draft northerners, but again there was no battle,since the ship's crew learned of the surrender of General Lee's army and the defeat of the Confederacy. However, Page did not want to surrender to the enemy and handed over his battleship … to the governor of Cuba as a gift to the Spanish queen so that she would decide the fate of the ship!
Model of the battleship "Prince Adalbert" as of 1865. As can be clearly seen on the model, two of the three guns were located in a round armored wheelhouse with four embrasures. The sides around the tower were reclined during firing. That is, the artillery power of the ship was not that great. He could not shoot directly at the stern. However, all the shortcomings were redeemed by an extremely powerful ram!
The Cuban governor gave the captain $ 16,000 in salary to the crew. Surprisingly, most of the Stonewall crew chose to stay in Cuba. Many scattered across Latin America, where the newly independent Spanish colonies fought both with each other and with the former metropolis, and where their military experience was in demand. By the way, many Confederates fled to Cuba, and even the US consul on this island was not just anyone, but the nephew of General Robert Lee himself - Major General Fitzhag Lee, who used to command the 7th Corps of the Confederate Army, but … forgiven by the victorious northerners. From April to early summer, the battleship Stonewall spent in the port of Havana, where the federal monitor Monadnock "looked after" it. But in July 1865 the Spaniards decided to return the ship to the United States, and in October, under the escort of another former Confederate ship, the battleship Hornet, Stonewall sailed north.
Confederate battleship Galena following a battle with Confederate forces at Druris Bluff on the James River, Virginia, circa 1862.
And it is not known how much more time he would have spent at the pier of the Washington dockyard Neville Yard, useless and forgotten by everyone, if at the same time another civil war broke out on the other side of the world, in which the former rebel battleship had a chance to take the most active participation. But for this, "Stonewall" had to change its flag again. Now the fifth Stars and Stripes USA flag has been replaced by the sixth and now the last one - a golden Japanese chrysanthemum on a sky-blue field. He had a long way to go: from the east coast of the United States around Cape Horn to Japan. And this path he had to go …
