The Monitor Class Ironclads: At the Dawn of Industrialized Warfare

By Gary Q. Johnson, CCWRT

Presentation to CCWRT on 21 January 2010, Summarized by Mike Rhein

Photography by Shane Gamble

©Cincinnati CWRT, 2010

USS Monitor, 1862. US Naval Historical Center Photograph NH58757

Imagine peering out from the CSS Virginia in the early dawn hours of March 9, 1862 at Hampton Roads, Virginia to see a strange-looking vessel bearing down on you. So odd it was that one Confederate sailor thought it appeared to be a raft transporting a boiler to shore for repairs. A cannon shot from this “boiler” dispelled all doubts at that moment when the United States’ first ironclad ship, the USS Monitor, charged from the area of the grounded USS Minnesota to engage an iron-plated ship, the CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack, previously a traditional wooden battleship) which had been rebuilt by the Confederates the previous year.

Our January speaker, Gary Johnson, in his presentation entitled “The Monitor Class Ironclads at the Dawn of Industrialized Warfare,” delivered a well-researched program, highlighted by a detailed power-point illustration in which he emphasized the impact of iron ships changing traditional naval warfare forever on that fateful day of March 9, 1862. The Monitor’s inventor, John Ericsson, was described as “the engineer of the century,” credited with earlier inventions such as a screw propeller (1836) and a novelty steam engine (1829). The Swedish inventor from New York, in a meeting with Secretary Welles, Cornelius Bushnell (a friend of Ericsson’s) and President Abraham Lincoln in Sept. 1861, according to Mr. Johnson, proclaimed, “I can build this (a monitor) in 90 days.” The Monitor would be ready just in time to arrive at Hampton Roads on the evening of March 8, 1862, the day before the epic confrontation. Mr. Johnson described in great detail the dimensions of the Monitor: 179 feet long with a 41-foot-long beam, a 10-and-a half foot draft with a displacement of 987 tons, its 120-ton turret being nine feet high at a 20-foot diameter, containing two Dahlgren guns. The chief disadvantage of the turret’s design, according to Mr. Johnson, was that, in the action of rotating, it “could not be stopped precisely.” The turret was covered with eight one-inch layers of rolled iron.

He added that the Monitor contained two boilers (25 psi) and two piston bilge pumps, noting that the “boiler tubes leaked often.” The ship’s galley could be as hot as 160 degrees; consequently meals usually were “cooked topside.” Crew berths were in a 25 X 40 foot space, 45 men in hammocks contending with 90 to 100 degree temperatures below the decks. Mr. Johnson quoted one Monitor sailor, William Keeler, describing the vessel as “our submarine cellar” and “Hell is an icehouse inside this ship.” The speaker referred to such other issues as “wet feet in water leaks, poor boiler draft, constant machinery noise.” He described a battle problem with the Monitor in terms of the commander in the pilot house (in front of the turret) not being able to communicate with the turret’s gun crew which “had no direction or bearing.”

Our speaker, a former submarine officer for five years, described that epic battle during which “they circle each other, point blank range.” The confrontation would last about three to four hours. The Monitor fired 41 shots of which 21 struck the CSS Virginia. The Virginia fired 100 shots, 21 hitting the Monitor. Mr. Johnson noted that none of the Monitor’s crew was killed, three being injured while two died and 19 sustained wounds. Both ships incurred numerous dents, the Merrimack’s ram having broken off from the previous day’s ramming of the USS Cumberland which sank.

Mr. Johnson asked a pertinent question about that historic battle: “Who won?” His conclusion was that it was a “ship-to-ship draw.” Nevertheless, the Monitor, in the North’s view, became an “icon of success.” The Ironclad Board, established by the U.S. Navy in August, 1861 under the leadership of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles pushed for more ironclad construction. Even inland river ports were utilized (besides the usual ocean-side navy yards) to construct ironclads, including sites such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati (three were built here during the war) and Mound City, Illinois.

The monitor-style ship was not suitable for ocean sailing due to its low draft. Mr. Johnson said that there was “anxiety from lack of seaworthiness.” However, for all of its defects, there was still enough faith in the monitor type such that, as the war wore on, improvements were made. He described various classes of monitors built during the Civil War: the Passaic Class (1335 tons with 15-inch guns), Canonicus Class (2100 tons) and Casco Class (light draft), adding that the Swift-Niles Shipyard in Cincinnati produced three Canonicus Class monitors (the Catawba, Oneonta and Tippecanoe). There were even double-turreted monitors (2592 tons, 226 feet long with four Dahlgren guns). Monitors, Mr. Johnson noted, were utilized in the 1864-65 Mississippi River campaign, the Chesapeake Bay/James River operations and in the Mobile Bay, Alabama, Fort McAllister, Georgia battles of 1864, the Siege of Charleston in 1863-65, and the Fort Fisher, North Carolina battle in 1865.

The Monitor was sunk off Cape Hatteras on Dec. 31, 1862 during a fierce storm. Mr. Johnson said it sunk 240 feet to the ocean floor during which the turret was separated from the hull. It was first discovered in 1973, later the turret and engine parts to be raised in Aug., 2002. He said the recovered items are being “conserved in tanks of water” at the USS Monitor Center. Mr. Johnson, in detailing the postwar monitor development, emphasized that there was “no major iron ship construction until the 1880’s” and “not modernized until the 1890’s,” adding that the “last Civil War monitor was scrapped in 1908. A highlight after the excellent program was the viewing of the display of a wooden model version of the USS Monitor, constructed in exquisite detail by ship model builder Harry Schmidt, a guest at the CCWRT meeting.

Model builder Harry Schmidt

Replica of the USS Monitor at the Mariners' Museum, Newport News VA. Used with permission. http://www.mariner.org/uss-monitor-center/uss-imonitori-center

Gary's bibliography on Monitor Class Ironclads is available here.

Cincinnati Daily Gazette article on Launch of USS Catawba on 13 April 1864 here. Cincinnati Daily Commercial article on Launch of USS Catawba here. (Courtesy of Anne Shepherd, Cincinnati Historical Society Library.)

Cincinnati Daily Gazette and Cincinnati Daily Commercial articles on Launch of USS Oneonta on 21 May 1864 here. (Courtesy of Anne Shepherd, Cincinnati Historical Society Library.)

Cincinnati Daily Gazette and Cincinnati Daily Commercial articles on Launch of USS Tippecanoe on 22 December 1864 here. (Courtesy of Anne Shepherd, Cincinnati Historical Society Library.)