Before we talk about the hows and whys of the battle, we need to talk about the OTHER ironclad...the infamous 'Cheese Box on a Raft' as the USS Monitor was known.
The Monitor was the very first steam powered, armored warship equipped with a powered, enclosed, rotating gun turret. And she was built because of The Virginia.
Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy at the time, found out about the Virginia almost before the Merrimack’s gutted hull was towed into the graving dock at the former Gosport Navy yard and the source of his information provides us with another interesting little tidbit of historical-type trivia.
The conversion of The Merrimack to the ironclad ram Virginia was apparently one of the worst kept secrets in military history and by the time she was launched she was as highly anticipated by the general public in the Hampton Roads area as the premiere of the latest 'Twilight' installment would be today.
Security at military installations wasn’t anywhere near as tight back in the 1860s as it is today. It couldn't have been, because over a period of eight months or so a woman who was loyal to the U.S. Government made her way into Gosport numerous times and closely observed the Merrimack’s conversion into the Virginia, taking copious notes while she was there. AHH...but it gets better! After filling a couple of journals with notes and diagrams and such, she then, at great risk to herself, made her way across the Union lines to Washington in order to pass said information to the Secretary of the Navy. She made this trip, by the way, not just once but several times.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if you walked up to the main gate at, say, Norfolk Naval Base or Portsmouth Naval Shipyard today and mentioned to the SP on duty that you’d like to get some pics of their latest and preferably most secret vessels so you can send said pics to some…er…friends overseas, life would get real interesting for you real quick in a very memorable and unpleasant way!
Knowing about the Virginia and being able to do something about her were two entirely different things. Gideon Welles very likely freaked more than a little as he considered the havoc an ironclad could wreak upon a fleet of conventional wooden hulled warships. Upon finding out about the Virginia he wisely decided that the U S Navy needed an Ironclad to go up against her and as the old saying goes, meetings were held and committees were formed. In actuality, a 3 member board was formed and designs were solicited in northern newspapers. Several designs were submitted and two were selected. And neither of them was built to engage the Virginia.
The Monitor's building actually resulted from several instances of good timing, some political wrangling, and just a dash or so of good old fashioned luck. Cornelius Bushnell, one of the selected designers, took his plans (A iron armored but otherwise conventional broadside warship to be named The Galena) to a Swedish born engineer named John Ericsson for an evaluation of the design's stability...a good move considering she was to have an additional 400 tons of armor added to her when she was built.
Now Ericsson, unfortunately, was not held in high regard by The Navy due to a a fatal mishap that occurred in 1844 while testing a new type of gun aboard the U.S.S. Princeton. This mishap killed then President John Tyler's Secretary Of The Navy Thomas Gilmer and Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, and the fact that Ericsson actually had nothing to do with gun's explosion mattered little to the powers that be. He was declared Persona non gratis by the Navy, and this left Ericsson just as leery of The Navy as they were of him. This also left the Navy highly reluctant to accept anything Ericsson had designed.
Still, before Bushnell's visit, Ericsson had decided to put aside his feelings and wrote a letter directly to President Lincoln, describing a new and revolutionary vessel that would be superior to anything the Confederate Navy could put in the water. The letter, however, was intercepted, redirected, and rejected by the Navy's chief engineers, who were conservative in their ideas about warship design. That's conservative as in 'If it doesn't have a wooden hull, and can't carry a full suit of sails, it's not a warship'. Ericsson had lost the first round without even really making it to the fight. Enter John Bushnell and his visit.
Ericsson had a cardboard model of a very unique and unusual warship on display and Bushnell, intrigued, inquired about it.. The model was the design described in the letter that never made it to President Lincoln, and Ericsson had the plans for the ship available as well. Busnell took a look at the model and the plans and quickly realized that Erricson’s design…compact, lightweight, and very high tech for the time, complete with a revolutionary power plant and the very first revolving gun turret…was far superior to any of the other designs and in fact anything else in service on either side.
Ericsson's plans of the Monitor. The plans were originally submitted to a guy named Napoleon in 1854...ten years earlier. He also rejected the design. The monitor was an improved version of the same vessel.
Side detail of The Monitor
A modern model of the monitor...depicted post-battle as her smoke stack's been added, and cowls added to her ventilators. Awesome model...225 bucks from Cottage Industry Models, BTW, and the pic's courtesy of their site. 
Reproduction of the Monitor at the Monitor Center at the Mariners Museum. Pic courtesy of The Mariner's Museum
Bushnell wanted Ericsson to submit the design, but the lack of response to his letter, and his checkered past with The U.S Navy had made him reluctant to do so, therefore Bushnell asked for, and received, permission to submit the design himself.
Bushnell promptly submitted the design to the ironclad board, and they took one look and collectively danced in glee, grading it A++++, right? RIGHT??? Errrr...wrong.
Bushnell took the design to Welles, who was a close friend, and the two of them...knowing that the board would possibly be a problem...took the design to President Lincoln. They met with Lincoln on Sept 12th, and he was suitably impressed with the design. They then met with the Ironclad Board the next day, where The President openly backed it despite negative murmurs and a decidedly split opinion. In fact President Lincoln is said to have remarked about the design 'All I have to say is what the girl said when she stuck her foot in the stocking. It strikes me there's something in it.'
( Note here gang...some sources have Bushnell submitting the plans to the Ironclad Board, and being soundly rejected before the took the plans to Welles, and then to President Lincoln)
One of the board's members, having witnessed the disaster aboard the USS Princeton, was especially reluctant, and had to be persuaded by Ericsson himself, and then only after being shown irrefutable facts and figures. The board put it to a vote, and Welles took Ericsson aside and told him to go ahead and begin setting up to build the Monitor before a formal contract was offered.
The Monitor's construction was approved stipulating a money back clause if she was a failure, that she be provided with masts and sails, and that she be capable of 6 knots under sail and 8 knots under steam. The requirement for masts and sails somehow got...er...lost between the contract being awarded and construction beginning.
Stern shot of The Monitor under construction showing her rudder and screw. She was built at Continental Iron Works on The East River in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Ericsson was told to go ahead without formal contract in late September, The Monitor was officially ordered on Oct 4 1861, her keel was laid down on Oct 25th 1861, she was launched 118 days later on Jan 30, 1862 and commissioned on Feb 25, 1862. A grand total of around six months or so between the concept of ‘We Need An Ironclad Warship', with no specific design in mind, and The Monitor slipping down the ways.
Again, things have changed over the last century and a half, and this time not necessarily for the better. This day and time you’re hard pressed to get a new desk for your office in six months. Heck we spent about six months trying to get a door fixed at work ! But I digress! ;)
To meet the deadline, Ericsson subcontracted the work to eight foundries, the completed subassmeblies were then shipped to Continental Ironworks for assembly. Common today, revolutionary back in 1861!
Here's a list of the subcontractors and the assemblies they produced:
Delamater Iron Works of New York City; engines and boilers
assembly.
Clute Brothers and Company of Schenectady produced the donkey engine
to power the turret. (Believed to actually be an off-the-shelf engine for powering rolling mills)
Holdane and Company of New York City, Albany Iron Works of Troy, and H. Abbot and Son of Baltimore;
All rolled additional iron plate for the turret, as well as rivets, bars, and other structural members.
The Niagara Steam Forge of Buffalo, New York,; A pair of iron port stoppers.
Information on subcontractors from the archives of The Mariners Museum
As for the Monitor’s Vital Statistics:
Type: Ironclad Armored Turret Gunboat
Construction & configuration: Single deck flat bottom iron hull topped by an armored raft. Single engine, single screw.
Length: 172 ft (52 m)
Beam: 41 ft 6 in (12.65 m)
Draft: 10 ft 6 in (3.20 m)
Boilers: 2 fire tube boilers, coal fired
Installed power: (1) 300 HP 2 cylinder horizontally opposed Vibrating-Lever steam engine
Propulsion: 4 blade Ericsson Screw propeller
Complement: 59 officers and men
Armament: 2 × 11 in (280 mm) Dahlgren guns ( Heaviest navel weapons available at that time), Dual-Mounted in a rotating iron turret powered by a separate donkey engine)
Armor: 8 inches consisting of 8 layers of 1 inch iron plate, overlapped seams.
The Monitor at Hampton Roads, with wooden frigates in the background. The canopy above the turret converted the turret into a sundeck of sorts...during the steamy VA summer this became the spot of choice for the officers. Drawing by Oscar Barros.
With the exception of her beam, she was much smaller than The Virginia as well as faster and far more nimble. The Virginia outgunned her, but The Monitor made up for this disadvantage with her heavy armor, maneuverability, nimble handling, and that pesky rotating gun turret
Let’s hit some interesting points about the Monitor’s turret. The turret was a shade over twenty feet in diameter with a height of nine feet, weighed in at about 120 tons and was held In place by gravity alone. It had to have been cramped inside the turret! The 11 inch Dahlgren gun's overall length was just shy of 13.5 feet, and they had a pretty decent recoil when fired, taken up by the track-mounted carriage, known officially as a 'Friction Carriage'. Also the muzzle loading Dahlgrens had to be run back into the turret to be reloaded. Eleven inch Dahlgrens had a crew of 7, which meant that there were 14 men inside the turret during battle. The gun crews reportedly didn’t use the gun port shutters provided to block the gun ports when the guns were being reloaded (More about those beasts in a minute!) but instead just turned the turret so the gun ports faced away from the Virginia to run the guns in for reloading. Once the gun to be fired was reloaded they rotated back around to fire. This slowed the rate of fire drastically though. It’s reported they could only get one shot off every five to eight minutes and with one source stating that she got off 41 shots during the course of the three and a half hour battle, that's just about right on the money... The Virginia had a higher rate of fire, but her shells couldn’t penetrate the Monitor’s armor. Of course The Monitor had the same problem penetrating the Virginia’ armor, but there's an interesting story about that too! We'll get to that a bit later, too!
Model of the turret with interior detail. There were 14 people inside the turret during the battle. My bet is it would have been just a shade crowded. The grated hatches outboard of the guns led down to the berthing spaces, shot and powder was also passed up through them during the battle.
Crew from The Mariner's Museum working at preserving the Monitor's turret. The turret's upside down...just as it was recovered...in this pic, Still trying to figure out how they got two gun crews in there during the battle! Pic courtesy of The Mariner's Museum
While the turret had a pretty rapid rate of turn, (Two full revolutions in one minute) no really effective braking system was provided to stop it at a specific point in that rotation. During the Battle of Hampton Roads her gun crew often fired ‘on the fly’ as the turret was rotating. This didn’t help accuracy a bit, but keep in mind this battle was fought at extremely close range, and The Virginia was a big target.
A system of iron shutters was installed to cover the gun ports and protect the turret and crew from incoming fire when the guns were run back for reloading (Remember these were muzzle loaders). The shutters were mounted in such a way that one gun port was always blocked, so her gun crew could not fire both guns at once. The theory was likely that one gun could be run out and fired while the crew of the other gun was reloading. The recoil would have slammed the just fired gun back, her crew would have swung the shutter over to cover their gun port and started reloading as the other gun was run out and fired. Loading was not the slowing factor...a good gun crew could be ready to roll again in something under two minutes and had the operation been something like that just described The Monitor's gun crews could have gotten off a shot every two to three minutes rather than every five to eight.
As often happens, things didn't work out that way in practice. First, remember again how cramped it was inside the turret, and how big those eleven inch Dahlgrens were. Further defeating the just described theory, the shutters proved to be, to put it bluntly, a bitch. They were heavy, cumbersome, slow to operate, had a tendency to jam, and generally caused problems whenever used. Thus the reason her gun crews generally rotated the turret away from the Virginia in order to reload. What they did likely do is alternate which gun was firing...after about ten shots they had to allow the barrel to cool for several minutes, so one gun was likely fired ten or so times, the gun port shutter pulled across, opening the other gun port, and the second gun took over. Repeat as necessary.
The turret had to be jacked up about an inch and a half or so in order to rotate. The turret was mounted on a 'Y' shaped support truss on the forward side of the Monitor's central bulkhead. The turret shaft was situated in the center of this 'Y' and was lifted using a sliding wedge that was moved by turning a nut on a threaded shaft with a big wrench. (Make that really big wrench!!) This was not a one, or even two or three, man operation.
Backing the nut up when ready to lower the turret didn't slide the wedge out, due to the turret's weight on the wedge...all it did was back the nut off along the threaded rod. The wedge had to be knocked back into the 'Lowered' position with a sledge hammer to lower the turret for travel.
The turret was turned with what's often referred to as two separate donkey engines, but was actually a two cylinder donkey engine arranged in a 'V-twin' configuration. This engine turned a crankshaft that in turn spun 4 gears, the final one actually mounted on the turret's central shaft. This engine is believed to have been an off-the-shelf rolling mill engine. Control of the turret's rotation was achieved through an intricate linkage to the throttle and reversing lever for the engine, located in the turret. The turret engine was actually mounted on the overhead (Marine parlance for ceiling) of the galley, which was almost directly below the turret.
This link:
http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=66949&sid=da8f8c544a3238e8685a1a03bd31ae6d
will take you to a thread in a ship modeling forum that describes both the machinery for turning the turret, and the jacking mechanism in intricate detail, with detail drawings.
Now some more little factoids about The Monitor.
The Monitor was one of the first warships designed and built with steam as her sole means of propulsion. She used an extremely efficient screw (Propeller) also designed by Ericsson rather than a paddle wheel and as noted above, a specification for masts and sails was conveniently ignored when she was built. She became one of the first steam powered vessels ever without mast and sails as a secondary means of propulsion...a distinction she of course shared with her soon-to-be rival.
Her engine was an extremely innovative, compact and powerful design for her day, utilizing a two cylinder ‘Reverse Boxer’ design. The two cylinders were horizontally opposed, likely making it the first ‘Boxer’ type engine of any kind, but the connecting rods operated outwards on the vibrating beams that gave the engine its name and converted the twin pistons’ horizontal motion to the prop shaft’s rotational motion. The engine produced 300 HP.
Model of the Monitor's engine. To give an idea of scale, the hand wheel lower mid frame, which was the reversing wheel, would have been 28" in diameter on the actual engine. The digital readout guage above and to the left of the reverse wheel is the engine's hour register, which monitored the number of hours the engine was in use. I didn't even know they had digital read out (Mechanical movement, yes, but still digital readout) guages in the mid 1800s!
Click the link for a YouTube video of an accurate (And seriously cool) model of an operating scale model (The model pictured above) of the Monitor’s engine.
The actual engine was retrieved from the Monitor’s wreck, off of the NC coast, and presently resides in The Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Va where it's under preservation and ultimately, restoration.
The Monitor's engine as it appeared when recovered from the wreck site. Courtesy The Mariners Museum
The Monitor was armored with eight inches of armor though the technology of the time didn’t allow for casting of iron plates that thick. Her armor actually consisted of eight layers of 1 inch iron plate,. Her armored deck (Actually a wood framed, armored 'raft') extended well outwards beyond and completely protected her lightweight 5/8 inch thick iron hull. Also significant, she only had 18 inches of free board (Distance between the deck and the water) giving her a very small target profile. The only protrusions above her deck were her turret, a demountable smoke stack, and her pilothouse.
The pilot house was one of her few design flaws. Her gun crew couldn’t fire directly across her own bow due to the location of the pilothouse and the low mounting of the guns in the turret…inattention to aim and the turret’s position, or bad timing during a shoot-on-the-fly evolution could result in blowing her own pilothouse, and her own pilot, away. (A situation that likely didn't fill the Monitor's helmsman with an overabundance of confidence.) Happily her gun crews were well trained and highly competent, and her pilot house and pilot remained intact throughout her short career.
Her low free board, while an advantage tactically, reduced her sea keeping abilities in the open ocean to just about zilch. If any sea at all was running it would wash over her deck and into any opening it could find. This would be a huge factor in her loss.
Another big drawback was her ventilation, or lack there-of. Temperatures below decks could easily rise to 120 degrees in her crew quarters, 150 or so in her engine room. She was not known as a comfortable ship.
While she might have been an oven below decks, at least she was a well appointed oven, for her officers at any rate.. Her hull was divided into fore and aft sections by a bulkhead just about amidships (And directly below her turret). The crew and officer quarters were forward of the bulkhead, her galley and machinery spaces aft. The Captains stateroom and cabin were in the forward-most section of the crew spaces and was lavishly appointed. The Captain had the largest living area and one additional perk. His cabin contained one of the four flushing toilets on board the Monitor...some of the first on any warship and the very first ones designed to flush even though the toilets were located below the waterline.
The eight officer's cabins were arranged off of the Wardroom and were well appointed but tiny...4 of them were about 6' x4', 4 others...against the inner plates of the hull...were about 8x6...but the curve of the hull ate up a lot of that space.
The Wardroom was the dining/meeting/socializing space for the officers and was about 9' by 15', with an oak table and oak chairs dominating the center of the space, the doors to the officer's cabins on either side, and the dispensary and spirit lockers on one end.
A hatchway in a wooden bulkhead on the after end of the wardroom led to the crew's berthing spaces...no where near as well appointed as 'Officers' Country'. The rest of the crew...48 strong...slept in hammocks slung from demountable wooden poles in a space measuring about 27' x 18'. No privacy either, as the passageway between the crew and machinery spaces went right through the middle of the berth deck, and the ladders leading to both the turret and the upper deck were located there as well. OH...did I mention that the powder and shot/shell magazines were also located off of the berth deck?
The crew and Officers' quarters of the Monitor featured a hardwood deck, carpeting, white painted wooden bulkheads (That's walls to you landlubbers, lol) with wainscoting, oak and black walnut furnishings, and all washbasins, shaving mugs, coffee mugs, etc were fine white ware with 'U.S.S. Monitor' inscribed on them in gilt lettering. (Yeah...I'd give just about anything for an original 'Monitor' coffee mug!)
With the exception of a couple of portholes in the overhead of the Captain's stateroom (Obviously closed off with iron shutters during battle), all lighting below decks was artificial lighting using kerosene lanterns for the most part, and all bulkheads were painted white to reflect the light. The crew's and officer's quarters were ventilated via belt driven blowers in the stern that drew air in from the outside and directed it through ducts below the deck. Adjustable floor registers delivered the air to the various crew spaces. Despite a fairly revolutionary ventilation system for the time, it wasn't enough to counteract the Monitor's tendency to become an oven in the summer...Anyone who's experienced Summer in Virginia knows that in mid July, the blowers would be pulling in hot, muggy air and distributing IT throughout the already hot spaces below decks. During the winter, though, the crew spaces were likely nice and toasty...Radiators using hot water from one of the boilers heated the crew quarters.
A pair of oval hatchways in the central bulkhead provided access to the machinery spaces. The galley was located just aft of the central bulkhead and just forward of the boilers. A big iron stove backed up to the boilers and pots, pans and other cooking utensils were stored on shelves or racks. The machinery for rotating the turret was overhead, the jacking mechanism for the turret was located on the central bulkhead, and the 'Heads' (Toilets) for the officers and crew were located on either side of the galley...a pair of them on the starboard side for the crew, and another on the port side for the officers. These were the first toilets designed to be flushed while located beneath the waterline of a ship, as already mentioned. The fire hazards created by coal fired boilers and stoves led to iron decks in the machinery spaces, and these decks were constructed using something else fairly new...A diamond pattern cast iron floor plate. Yep, that's right...one of the first uses of tread plate.
A narrow passage on either side of the Monitor's big Martin boilers led back to the engine room (When I say narrow I mean narrow. The passageways were about 2 feet wide, with hot boilers on one side and the coal bunkers on the other). The fire room...where the fireboxes for the boilers were stoked by firemen, and where the pressure gauges for the boilers and engine were monitored...was located in the forward portion of the engine room, and the engine itself was located on a raised platform, accessed by a short, starboard side stairway.
The after portion of the engine room also contained the two big blowers that provided forced draft to the boilers and ventilation to the ship as well as the small steam engines that ran them, the condenser, feed pumps,and the main bilge pump. Temps in this area of the ship were known to approach 150 degrees in the Summer.
For more on the layout of The Monitor, head over to
This is the companion site to an excellent documentary on the Monitor and includes a virtual tour of the ship (You need the latest Apple Quicktime to view it) as well as detailed descriptions of the various interior compartments.
The Monitor was commissioned on Feb 25, 1862, and her crew took her out on a couple of shakedown cruises to work any kinks out and prove the The Navy that she would indeed float and maneuver. They didn't take much time for the shakedown...She was taken under tow from New York to Hampton Roads on March 6th, and obviously had calm weather for the entire trip (See above RE: Low free board and High Seas). She arrived in Hampton Roads on March 9th.
And that arrival had to be one of the all-time examples of good timing and luck in history. Cause ya see, The Virginia was having her way with the blockade fleet…
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Links and Notes and stuff:
First off, there is far more information on the Monitor than the Virginia..She was more technologically advanced, was around a little longer, her wreck's still accessible, her turret and engines are being preserved for restoration, and she belonged to the winning side. Had I used all the info I found on her (And I'm STILL finding info on her even as I type this) this post would have been two or three times longer than it is. Also, a good bit of the info is contradictory, and some of it is down right inaccurate. I tried to cull the latter before I posted.
There are scores of sites about the U S S Monitor and I'll list some of the better sites here for those who want to find out more about her.
The first two were already noted but bear relisting:
http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=66949&sid=da8f8c544a3238e8685a1a03bd31ae6d
Thread on a ship modeling forum detailing the turret rotating and jacking mechanisms.
This is the companion site to an excellent documentary on the Monitor and includes a virtual tour of the ship (You need the latest Apple Quicktime to view it) as well as detailed descriptions of the various interior compartments. Also contains a firsthand account of the battle.
http://www.brooklynonline.com/waterfront/work/monitor.html
A Brooklyn History page devoted to the Monitor's construction...good info and a bunch more links at the end of the article. A couple of the links are devoted to multiple topics, so you have to scroll a bit to reach the bits about the Monitor
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-m/monitor.htm
Some pics and images of the Monitor
http://www.flickr.com/photos/divemasterking2000/sets/72157605714378030/with/1368317361/
A 'Flickr' image set of both the Monitor reproduction at the Mariner's museum in Newport News, Va as well as a few shots inside the recovered original turret and some Monitor artifacts
And as a note...if you're ever anywhere even close to The Mariners' Museum, you've got to visit it!
There are literally scores of sites and hundreds of images of the Monitor on-line...I've barely scratched the surface. Hope everyone enjoys, and please comment. Any corrections, additions, etc, please feel free.
A certain battle, and the events leading up to it next!
There are literally scores of sites and hundreds of images of the Monitor on-line...I've barely scratched the surface. Hope everyone enjoys, and please comment. Any corrections, additions, etc, please feel free.
A certain battle, and the events leading up to it next!
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