USS Monitor: A Cheesebox on a Raft

USS Monitor: A Cheesebox on a Raft

Few ships in American naval history have been so highly acclaimed as USS Monitor, a vessel that transformed naval warfare with its revolving turret. When Monitor, armed with only two cannons, fought the much more heavily armed CSS Virginia (constructed on the hull of USS Merrimac) to a draw on March 9, 1862, the world took note. In 1870 the British Admiralty built the turreted Captain. Decades later, in 1937, Winston Churchill wrote, ‘The combat of the Merrimac and the Monitormade the greatest change in the sea-fighting since cannon fire by gunpowder had been mounted on ships about four hundred years before.’

The revolutionary Monitor nearly didn’t get built. Controversy raged over engineer John Ericsson’s design, and Abraham Lincoln had to intercede on behalf of the ship.

After the Civil War’s outbreak in April 1861, shipyards in the North hummed and clanked with the efforts of thousands of workmen building 47 new wooden vessels ranging from 300 to more than 2,000 tons. There was no time to waste if the planned blockade of Southern ports was to be successful. Lincoln’s navy lagged far behind the Southern counterpart in accepting innovations. In May 1861, the Confederates raised the sunken frigate USS Merrimac — which had been burned to the waterline by retreating Union tars — and began converting it into a large ironclad gunboat, CSS Virginia, at the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Va.

In belated response, during an extra session of the U.S. Congress convened on July 4, 1861, at Lincoln’s recommendation, a report was submitted that noted the Confederacy was constructing an armored vessel. The paper recommended the construction of ‘one or more ironclad steamers or floating batteries, and to select a proper and competent board to inquire into and report in regard to a measure so important.’ A month later Congress authorized the creation of an ‘Ironclad Board of three skilful naval officers’ to decide on new warships and appropriated $1.5 million for armored vessels. On August 7, 1861, Gideon Welles, whom Lincoln had appointed secretary of the Navy in March 1861, advertised for proposals for ‘impregnable’ warships, related to the construction of ‘One or more ironclad steam vessels of war…for either sea or river service to be no less than ten or sixteen feet draught of water….The smaller draughts of water…will be preferred.’ A bit of orthodoxy crept into the request with the stipulations that such vessels were to be ‘rigged with two masts, with wire rope standing rigging, to navigate at sea….’

Enter John Ericsson
Swedish-born engineer John Ericsson was one of the designers who read Welles’ notice with particular interest. Ericsson was a child prodigy who had worked with his father designing canals in his native country as a teenager.

By his late teens, he was an engineer officer in the Swedish army. In 1826 he resigned that post and moved to England, where he devoted himself to building steam engines, many of which were radically different in design, but which also contained flaws that made them impractical.

At the urging of U.S. naval officer John Stockton, Ericsson moved to New York in 1839. Stockton was from a prominent, connected New Jersey family, and he helped get funds allocated to Ericsson for the development of a ship powered by an innovative screw propeller system, which was launched as USS Princeton in 1843.

Things got complicated, however, as the ship neared completion. Stockton and Ericsson bickered, and the officer began to do what he could to relegate the inventor to the background. Ericsson had designed a huge cannon with a 12-inch muzzle, mounted on a revolving platform, for Princeton. Jealous, Stockton copied the cannon on his own to try and claim credit for the design.

Stockton did not understand how to properly construct the breech-reinforcing pieces for his copy, however, and during an 1844 Potomac River demonstration run attended by President John Tyler’s secretary of state, Abel P. Upshur, and Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer and other dignitaries, Stockton’s gun exploded. Upshur, Gilmer and six others were killed.

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