The Great War: American Front is a alternate-history scenario created by SF/historical-fiction author Harry Turtledove. The concept is an alternate timeline where the Confederate States of America were assisted by England and France during the Civil War and managed to remain independent. The result is a reduced United States with enemies to the south and also the north (British-owned Canada) and a much more turbulent history. By the time of World War I the United States, countering the CSA's alliance with England, France, and Russia, has itself allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary. In Turtledove's scenario the entanglement of alliances causes all powers to be drawn into a Great War even more bloody than the historical World War I, for it involves an American Frontscriptthe USA fighting against the CSA and British forces in Canada as well as on the high seas against the Royal Navy and its allies in the Atlantic and Pacific.
Because of the tension between the British and the USA in this scenario, the Canadian border is armed and the Great Lakes a potential theater of naval warfare. Great Lakes battleships are not as large as first class battleships on the oceans, but instead are similar to the coast-defense ships of the Scandinavian navies at the time. The ships below represent my take on this interesting concept (although obviously I much prefer the real-world undefended border between the USA and Canada).
History: In the war of 1812, Lake Erie was the scene of a naval battle between ships of friagte size and smaller, and by the end of the war ships of the line were being built on Lake Ontario by both sides. Peace left such ships without a purpose, and the British/French intervention in the American Civil War caught the Union Navy unprepared. In the years after the Civil War armistice, the United States defended its Great Lakes ports with old monitors, and the British navy constructed similar low-hulled coast defense ships and gunboats. After the great storm in 1873 that sank the monitor USS Etlah on Lake Superior, and amid rising tensions due to repeated Confederate expansion efforts (supported by the British), the United States decided to introduce the first true coast defense battleships to the Lakes, the 2800-ton "Freedom" class. Unfortunately these were only slowly constructed and lay incomplete during the 1881 war when the Royal Navy's gunboats and small ironclads bombarded Rochester, Cleveland, Erie, and other cities with near impunity. Although they had easily overwhelmed the decrepit US Navy, the British anticipated a more vigorous arms race and began building the 3400-ton Windsor class in 1884. In 1891, in response to the more formidable USS Harrison [BD-5] which was equipped with a new type of breech-loading 8-inch gun the British mounted 9.2-inch guns on the HMS York. Sister-ships of the York were built outside of the lakes to defend Halifax and Vancouver and one was sold to the Confederate navy as a model for its coast-defense battleships CSS Norfolk and CSS Florida. The US Navy "Preble" class increased the armament to 10-inch guns, and these ships (organized with the earlier ships and supporting cruisers and gunboats into separate squadrons in each of the lakes except for Lake Michigan) gave the USA an edge in numbers as well as firepower. Although the British continued to build Great Lakes Battleships, their numbers were spread thin between four of the lakes, and they were forced to rely to a greater extent on unconventional methods of warfare to solve the warship gap on the lakes. The ships below represent the most modern Great Lakes Battleships that were ready or under construction at the time of the Great War.
When war came, it was thought that the struggle on the Great Lakes would be quickly decided by the guns of these battleships. However, neither side had anticipated the impact of new weapons technologies on the usefulness of such ships. The USS O.H.Perry [BD-12] and the USS Farragut [BD-9] were mined on the same day in Lake Ontario while headed to Toronto on separate routes, while a third ship, the USS John Paul Jones [BD-11], struck a mine in Lake Huron. The carnage on both sides did not abate: the HMS Alberta was mined in Lake Erie approaching Cleveland, exploding with the loss of her entire crew, and the newly-completed USS Decatur [BD-15] was also sunk, and is suspected of having been torpedoed by the Canadian coastal submarine 'Tory-3' (which disappeared without a trace on its first mission). Other losses in the first weeks of the war included the older protected cruiser USS Lansing, which was torpedoed by the Tory-4 while supporting the bloody US assault on British troops on Pelee island, and had to be run aground near Pelee point to become a total loss, the unprotected cruiser USS Fort Wayne (sunk by an unidentified submarine in Lake Superior), the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Vindictive sunk by an American submarine in the St. Lawrence Channel, and the incomplete USS Lake Erie (BD-17, officially named after the 1813 battle) which was sunk in shallow water by two torpedos from the small destroyer HMS Barclay.
Although the USS Lake Erie would be raised and repaired and currently-building ships quickly completed, the heavy losses showed the vulnerability of the battleships, while extensive minefields and the mutual destruction of both sides' Sault Ste. Marie ("soo") locks limited movement on the lakes (although the American locks were repaired within a year). As the Union forces moved into Ontario (causing the British to also sabotage the Welland Canal, isolating the inner lakes from Lake Ontario for the rest of the naval war) the surviving Great Lakes battleships proved useful in a shore-bombardment role, but not without risk; the USS Harrison was torpedoed by an underwater battery at Port Elgin, and a few days later the British-Canadian 'coastal armored cruiser' HMS Hudson was the first major vessel sunk by an aerial bomb. The Humphreys-class USS Lake Champlain [BD-18] was disabled by Confederate sabotage midway through the war but was eventually repaired. The only actual confrontation between Great Lakes battleships happened late in the war when the refurbished USS Lake Erie, supported by the small protected cruisers Elyria and Green Bay, pounded the older HMS York into a wreck in Georgian Bay and then chased down and sank the protected cruiser HMS Nipissing.
By the end of the war, the few remaining British ships were immobilized as defensive fortresses to support the hard-pressed army in the trenches of Ontario; one of the battleships stationed for the entire war in Lake Ontario, the HMS Athabaska, was repeatedly attacked near Toronto by air and mini-submarine but survived in poor condition to be surrendered, while the HMS Winnipeg was sunk by the torpedo boat USS Elliott in Lake Superior and several other battered ships were scuttled as the war ended.
Although the Great Lakes battleships ended up with a reputation as a poor use of money and manpower, when adequately escorted they proved pivotal for establishing control of the coastlines and narrow channels, and their bombardment capability would never be matched. The courage of the crews of the Great Lakes ships on both sides should also be noted. The Humphreys class battleships were maintained by the United States after the war, to support the many new destroyers and gunboats built during the conflict, although most of the earlier ships, plus the surrendered or salvaged British vessels, were scrapped.
- More Battleships of the Great War
- General info on Harry Turtledove's Great War series
- The Great War alliances: England, CSA, France, and Russia, joined by Japan and Argentina, vs. Germany, USA, and Austria-Hungary, joined by the Ottoman Turks, Chile, and eventually Brazil and other nations.
