Battle of the Hampton Roads - The Fury of Iron and Steam

It's Sunday March 9th 1862.

A spring dawn breaks over the Hampton Roads and the

scene is one of mild carnage.

Wreckage and debris still float in the water from

two ships that were sunk the previous day.

Three more are aground.

The architect of this minor massacre of Union warships

is steaming back out of port, intent on

finishing off one of the grounded

vessels and then turning its attention

to any survivors.

The plan is for the sun to set this day, on a seaway where the

Union blockade of the Confederacy has been broken.

But as the low angled shape

of the Confederate warship steams to

battle, its sailors spot something in the

water, near the grounded USS Minnesota .

Ideas of what it could be are varied

amongst the crew. It certainly wasn't

there yesterday. Some of them think it

might be a boiler that somehow has been

thrown overboard from the grounded steam

frigate in an attempt to lighten it.

One sailor jokes that whatever it is, it

looks like someone stuck a cheese on a

raft. But this battle cheese was

maneuvering to engage them and so the

guns of the CSS Virginia spoke. A shell

flew out, missed the relatively small

target and smashed into the helpless

Minnesota . With that the first ironclad

against ironclad engagement in history

had begun.

But how had all this come about in 1862?

Ironclads were still a very new thing and

whilst armored floating batteries had

been around for a few years, the two

premier navies in the world, the Royal

and French Navy's, had only just

introduced their ocean-going ironclads

to the world. Gloire , Warrior and Black

Prince , along with a number of others,

were just beginning to stretch their

legs in open sea. But the industry of the

United States was not anywhere near as

large nor anywhere near as advanced as

these two countries and apart from

anything else, this collection of former

British colonies was busily tearing

itself apart in a civil war. So where had

these ships come from?

As it turns out, the origins and design

of the two ships could not have been

more different if the designers had set

out purposely to try. Let's take a look

at both of them before we come back to

the developing gunfight of March the 9th.

It had all started in April 1861, almost

a year earlier, when the secession of a

number of states would split the USA in

two and herald the start of the U.S.

Civil War. One of the biggest items of

concern for what would rapidly become

the Union was the Gosport Navy Yard, now

known today as Norfolk Naval Shipyard in

Virginia. Anyone who's even vaguely

familiar with the US Navy nowadays, or to

be honest, throughout much of its 20th

century history, will immediately realize

that losing this base and all the ships

within it to an enemy would be a

catastrophic blow. And even back then the

yard was a key part of the US Navy's

infrastructure. At first there were

thoughts of trying to hold out, but

thanks to a rather clever ruse where a

loud train was brought in overnight

along nearby rail tracks, quietly sent

back, then brought back in again

repeatedly. The illusion of a huge number

of troops waiting in the darkness to

attack had been created and the orders

rapidly shifted to getting away with

whatever they could and destroying

everything else. One of the things that

needed to be shifted was the USS

Merrimack , a relatively new, large and

heavily armed steam frigate which

ironically was a sister ship of the USS

Minnesota , amongst others. But the

soon-to-be Confederates had been busy

elsewhere other than the rail track and

had sunk a number of boats in the

channel, blocking the exit. The ship

therefore was going nowhere.

Determined to prevent the capture of one

of the most powerful combat units in the

US Navy, the union officers set the ship

on fire before withdrawing. Thanks to the

strength of the ruse, Merrimack was about

the only thing they successfully

disposed of, with the incoming troops

capturing nearly 2,000 naval guns of

varying sizes and virtually the entire

Dockyard infrastructure intact.

The following month, the dockyards new

owners realized that the Merrimack had,

in fact, only burnt to the waterline. The

machinery and the underwater part of the

hull were intact although somewhat salty.

The wreck was therefore towed to the

base's only drydock at the time and it

was decided to convert what was left

into an ironclad. Fully stocked base or

not, the Confederacy knew that their Navy

was by far the smaller and could not

hope to challenge the Union Navy, which

retained the bulk of the strength of the

pre-war US Navy, in conventional open

combat. But at the same time there was

nowhere near the expertise, industry or

time available to turn out something

like the Warrior . So a smaller ironclad

of some sort would have to be devised. Two

officers submitted sketches of a

low-slung mastless casement ironclad. It

would never be able to go very far on

the machinery of the day, let alone

machinery that had been submerged for a

month in salt water, but when your

enemies are right next to you, this

didn't matter too much. It wouldn't have

to go looking for a fight, the fight had

come to them. The designs submitted by

John Mercer Brook was selected although

his competitor, John L Porter, was given

the task of turning the sketch design

into a detailed design as he was

actually the one who'd had the relevant

naval architecture training.

Responsibility for the work needed to

turn the wreck into a functioning

warship was shared out between the two

of them.

The final design called for the bulk of

the hull to remain underwater covered

fore-and-aft by a deck made up of two

layers of 2-inch plate armor which was

to stay at or below the waterline in a

typical engagement. In the center the

casement was built up in imitation of

the European style for floating

batteries, with a thick backing of wood -

24 inches of mixed oak and pine -

supporting more laminated armor - again

four inches thick but made up of a pair

of 2-inch thick plates - with the sides

angled at 36 degrees to allow enemy fire

to deflect off the armor as much as be

stopped by it. The choice of multiple

layers of thinner plate was due to the

inability of the available iron

mills to produce plates four inches

thick to the needed size and quality, or

in the case of some of the mills at all.

Unfortunately, one side effect of this

laminated approach was that the overall

effectiveness was not as great as a

single solid plate. In this case, the four

inch laminate armor being equivalent to

a single plate of between three point

two and three point six inches thick,

depending on a number of small variables

such as material quality and exact

distance between the plates. The ship

would be armed with a total of twelve guns,

ten of which were the main anti-shipping

battery. This comprised two seven-inch

Brooks rifled guns, one mounted fore and

the other aft, each with a choice of

three gun ports to fire from; one on the

centerline and one on each side angle of

45 degrees. Four more gun ports on each

side were occupied by three 9-inch

Dahlgren guns captured from the dockyard

and a single six point four inch Brooks

rifle on either side. The guns nearest

the ship's engines could fire heated

shot, courtesy of the boiler furnaces. And

finally, a pair of small twelve pound

guns were mounted high up on the

casement as anti boarding weapons. In

theory each gun port should have

had an iron plate for the protection of

the gun port when the guns weren't being

fired, but these were not installed until

later on in a ship's career.

The Merrimack had been in dock in part

to have its engines replaced and all the

extra weight being put on the converted