ABSTRACT
While on a smaller scale than the invasion of the Crimea the Aland operation also demonstrated the problems of alliance warfare. The cabinet decision of 28 June was made in haste and without strategic rationale; Graham later made a feeble attempt to justify it by reference to a possible Swedish alliance. 1 The British requested 6,000 men, Louis Napoleon added 10 guns and 50 horses; the guns were superfluous when the fleet already had several thousand heavier weapons in the Baltic. Milne organised transport, using British warships and merchant ships, steam and sail, under Commodore Frederick Grey. The warships Algiers and Hannibal steam 91s, St Vincent 102 and Royal William 120 sailing three-deckers with the steamers Termagant, Sphinx and Gladiator landed their lower-deck guns to embark troops. Graham was concerned they should return quickly, to join the reserve of 10 battleships he intended to assemble by September. The transports Belgravia, Edwin Fox, Herefordshire, Julia, Clifton and Colombo were under the command of Captain Henry Chads, son of the Rear-Admiral, aboard the ill-fated steamer Prince. The British presumed the French would embark from Cherbourg, their only deep-water harbour on the Channel coast, but the French claimed they could not, lacking a railway line to the arsenal. Clarendon and Graham accepted the alternative of Calais, while casting doubt on French good faith, and expressed reservations about embarking so many men in an open roadstead. 2 The troops would be victualled by the Admiralty, at the expense of the French War Ministry. Graham stressed that Napier was not to attempt the operation with his scratch force of seamen and marines, and instructed him to survey the islands and assist the transports, precautions he should have had the confidence to leave unmentioned. 3 Later the French increased their force to 9,000; Clarendon advised taking the extra men, as they were reported to be of poor quality. Napier complained there were too many for Aland and too few for anything else, particularly as he did not anticipate them wintering in the Baltic. Many of the French troops were raw recruits which, as Milne anticipated, encouraged cholera. 4
