Ironclads The Monitor and The Merrimac

It was the strangest of sights.

Two odd-looking vessels dueling, often at

point-blank range, in the waters of

Hampton Roads. One ship was called a

floating barn by one observer, the other

described as a tin can on a shingle.

Both vessels look nothing like the tall,

elegant sailing ships of the day and

neither seemed much like the other.

Yet, dissimilar though they were, the two

ships shared important characteristics.

Both were shielded by armor, clad in

iron by metal plates that deflected

the fire of enemy cannon.

They represented a new approach to naval

warfare, a new invincibility and a new era.

As their shots rang out, they

signaled not only combat but the end of

the age of wooden fighting ships and the

beginning of the age of iron.

The battle the two ships fought that

March day in 1862 was only one of many

naval engagements in the Civil War.

In an immediate sense, the cause for the

construction and deployment of ironclads

lay in that struggle. Recognizing

that the southern economy was highly

dependent on exports for revenues, and on

imports for supplies, the Union

strategists sent their small but superior

Navy to disrupt southern shipping by

attempting a blockade of Confederate ports.

The strategy of the blockade was

essentially to isolate the South

economically and militarily, to give the

federal forces a baseline for combined

operations from seaports that were held

into the interior of the south and

also in effect to draw a cordon

sanitaire through which neutrals could

not project either their own warships, or

indeed, ships constructed by the

Confederacy in their British or French

building yards.

Engineer named Williamson ...

Confederate leaders, too, recognize their

predicament and turn to ironclads as an

innovation that would threaten the Union

Navy of wooden ships, destroy the

blockade and eliminate the northern

Naval edge.

They had this huge hulk left

over after the burning of the Merrimack

the Norfolk Navy Yard.

Its machinery was reasonably intact.

They knew they wanted to break the

blockade of Hampton Roads. They didn't

have conventional weapons or warships

with which to do it and the notion of an

ironclad was sort of applying materials

at hand to the problem at hand.

An important influence was Confederate Navy

secretary Stephen Mallory, who was a

United States Senator before the war and

who had chaired the Senate's Naval

Affairs Committee. There he had learned

of the early French success with armor plating.

He was very much aware of

European developments, and Mallory faced a

serious problem. The Union had a navy, the

Confederate States didn't. So Mallory was

faced with a task of building a navy and

if he was going to be effective at it,

each one of his ships had to be able to

take on three, four, or five, whatever,

Union ships. So Mallory from the outset

wanted armor. He knew that armor could

sink the wooden ships of the United States Navy.

He knew that armor could raise a

blockade, if necessary and if they were

opposing wooden ships, and he also knew

the North was going to invest in armored vessels.

In the Crimean War, the French

had deployed three floating ironclad

batteries and forced the surrender of a

Russian fort on the Black Sea. After the

Crimean War, other innovations such as

steam engines and screw propellers were

increasingly incorporated in warship design.

The French built the steam frigate La Gloire ,

an ironclad wooden ship. The British

constructed the steam frigate Warrior ,

one of the first iron hulled armored ships.

Soon ironclads were in development in

many countries in Europe, but they

remained untested in battle. These ironclads

were developed in response to

improvements in naval artillery

technology. Powerful new cannon used

larger powder charges to fire exploding

shells and solid shot causing extensive

damage to wooden ships. Shielding ships

in iron was a technological reaction to

the improved cannon.

Ironclads were a

reaction to the introduction of rifle

guns. The innovation of a powerful gun

that could fire a shell at a wooden ship

needed some sort of defensive reaction.

What a shell

fired from a powerful rifled gun would

do, even at long range, is penetrate the

wooden ship and set it on fire. So in

order to counter that some sort of armor

was necessary.

Because the South had a limited

industrial capacity, Mallory and others

recognized that starting construction of

an ironclad from the keel up would be a

time-consuming use of limited resources.

An opportunity for a significant short

cut was presented when Union forces

abandoned the Gosport Navy Yard at

Portsmouth, Virginia, in April 1861.

Although the fleeing northern forces had

tried to burn everything, substantial

stores of weapons, ammunition and

supplies were recovered by the

Confederates. Also, there were the remains

of the USS Merrimack , a Union steam

frigate burned and sunk by the Federals

to keep it from falling into southern

hands. On May 30th, 1861, the charred

vessel was raised and work began to

convert her. The hull was cut down to the

waterline leaving the ship with a deep,

22 foot draft. The ship's engines were

overhauled, a gun deck constructed, and a

casement built with sloping sides to

deflect enemy cannon fire.

The heavy, 24 inch thick wooden casement

was armored with two layers of iron

plates, each 2 inches thick, extended 2

feet below the water line to protect

against ramming and low shots.

This is a

piece of armor plate from the

CSS Virginia , or more popularly known as

the Merrimack . It's 2 inches wide, 8 inches

long, and the Virginia

had 2 layers of this armor

plate, one running horizontally and the

other one running vertically, and in back

of the armor plate there was up to 48

inches of oak and that gave her a

tremendous amount of protection from

enemy shot and shell.

Ten cannon were installed in the casement

and a cast-iron ram was placed on her prow.

On February 17th, 1862, after delays and

manufacturing the needed iron plating,

the ship was commissioned the CSS

Virginia , a name forgotten by many who

continued to call the ship by her

popular name, Merrimack .

Command was given to Commodore Franklin

Buchanan, one of the most distinguished

officers in the United States Navy,

Buchanan was a founder of the U.S. Naval

Academy and its first superintendent.

When southern states seceded, he resigned

his commission and joined the

Confederate cause as commander of the

James River Fleet. For his flagship, he

chose the Merrimack .

A crew was recruited and supplies taken

on board. Finally, what was intended to be

a trial run was made on March 8th.

The Merrimack was slow and awkward, her

worn out engines were further damaged by

weeks of submersion, and it took half an

hour to turn the ship around.

The notoriously aggressive Buchanan made

directly for the Union fleet at Newport News.

As spectators watched in disbelief, the

Merrimack steamed toward the union 30

gun sailing frigate Cumberland , firing a

devastating broadside into the 50 gun

sailing frigate Congress along the way.

The Merrimack then rammed the starboard

bow of the Cumberland . The ironclad was

at first tangled in the Cumberland , but

then pulled free after her ram broke off.

One officer said the hole caused was

wide enough to drive in a horse and cart.

She sank to the bottom, her masts thrust

above the waves like tombstones.

Buchanan turned the Merrimac and made for

the Congress . Seeking refuge from the

deep drafted Merrimack , the Congress