At midday on November 8th 1861 the USS San Jacinto stopped and boarded the British mail steamer, RMS Trent. A party of American marines then boarded the British vessel and removed from it two Confederate diplomats on their way to Europe to court British and French support for the Confederate cause in the recently erupted American Civil War. This event sparked a massive diplomatic crisis and brought London and Washington the nearest to war they had been since 1812 and frankly, the nearest to war they would ever be again. With the two nations so close to conflict, all of a sudden the dilapidated defences of Britain’s North American colonies were made plain for all to see and a flurry of activity was instigated in London to quickly bolster the seemingly undefended British North American colonies before an American invasion came. 

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