Volume 39, No. 6 – June 2026

Website: www.CivilWarRoundTablePalmBeach.org

The President’s Message:

 I did not get the President's Message before I went on vacation.  I do not think there was a meeting on June 10^th.  This is for the record.

Presentation May 13, 2026

Jeffrey Falkin presented USS Monitor.  The talk was most interesting as it went into the details of the ship while briefly describing the engagement. 

John Ericsson was the designer of the ship.  Born in 1803 in Sweden he had little formal education.  His folks were involved in mining.  He moved to England and was involved in building railroads and steam engines.  In the late 1840s Ericsson moved to New York City and became involved in designing and building ships.  He built a ship called Princeton with Commodore Robert F. Stockton. The ship was a success; however, Stockton built a cannon which exploded during a demonstration.  Several of the senior people in the administration were killed.  Ericsson submitted a plan for an ironclad ship to Napoleon III.

The best way to describe Ericsson, like a lot of other 19th century inventors, he was a “tinkerer.”  He felt good about what he was doing.  He developed engines, he developed a screw system, and so forth.  He died in 1889.  His great achievement was USS Monitor, which changed naval warfare forever.

At the beginning of the Civil War the U.S. government evacuated the Gosport Naval Yard, Norfolk Naval Yard.  At the time, USS Merrimack, a single-screw sloop, was in the dry dock.  They attempted to destroy it buy burning, but they only burned it down to the water line.  The hull was still usable.  Merrimack was not a good ship in the sense that it had a lot of mechanical problems.  That was the reason why it was in the dry dock.  The Confederacy decided to build an ironclad on the hull of Merrimack in June 1861.  CSS Virginia, as it was renamed, was commissioned in 1862.  This is a drawing of Virginia, as it was.  You'll note that the iron cladding was around the superstructure, but that the decks were wood.

The Union became aware of the Confederates' plan to build the ironclad.  Gideon Wells, Secretary of the Navy, created a board of three members called the “Iron Clads” in August of 1861, and they selected three designs to be built with the money that Congress appropriated to do so.  Iron Sides and Galena were both conventional wood ships with armored sides.  However, Monitor was unique and it was selected.  The reason it was selected was because it could be quickly built and at a relatively reasonable cost – $275,000.

Most of the ship was below the waterline.  Indeed, it was only 18 inches from the deck to the waterline.  That is called freeboard.  This low profile, obviously, gave it an opportunity to inflict a lot of damage while making it a hard target to hit.  I guess you could call it really a submarine in many respects.  Most of the ship was below the waterline.  The other unique feature was the turret, which could sweep 360 degrees, going completely around.  As a result, it was no longer necessary to turn a ship in order to deliver a broadside.  That was a huge change in the concept about naval warfare.  Prior to that, almost all the ships had cannons on the sides of the ships, “broadsides.”  They would have to turn the ship around in order to achieve broadside fire.  This is truly a unique and important development in naval warfare.

General Characteristics

Built: Continental Iron Works, Greenpoint Brooklyn

Ordered: October 4, 1861

Launched: January 30, 1862

Commissioned: February 1862

Dimensions: 179 ft long (LOA), 41 ft wide(beam) with 10 ft draft

Crew: 49 officers and enlisted men

Armament: 2 X 11in (280 mm) smoothbore Dahlgren cannons

Armor: Turret 8 in., Waterline belt 3.5 in. Deck 1 in., and Pilot house 9 in.

Sunk: December 31, 1862 in storm off Cape Hatteras

She was built at the Continental Ironworks in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  It really wasn't built all at one location.  The engines were built at another contractor.  The bottom of the ship was built someplace else.  It was all married together at Greenpoint.  Monitor was 179 feet long and was 41 feet wide.  There was a crew of 49, six officers and forty-three enlisted men.  All of the sailors were volunteers.  There were only had two guns, 11-inch smoothbore Dahlgren cannons.  They could only be fired one at a time. The turret had 8 inches of steel armor.  The water line steel armor belt was 3½” and the deck had 1” of armor.  The pilot house had a 9-inch steel cover.  If you look at the drawing, you'll see the smokestack and two vents to discharge the gases from the engine.  These were removed for battle.  The engines and boilers were below the waterline along with everything else.  The environment was very hot and crowded.

The rotation mechanism of the turret could be operated from within the turret itself.  There were metal shutters that would close when they were loading the cannonballs.  When I was looking into this, I found it interesting that they put a hole in each of the shutters so that the crew could load the cannon and use sponges on long poles that could poke outside of the turret.  The ceiling was made of iron rails, spaced apart to allow light into the turret, otherwise there was no way to see within the turret.

One of the things which was also interesting is that because of the small space in the turret, they used a compressor system to break the recoil so that the cannon would not go all the way back to run into the back of the turret.  There was a braking system which used the wood center rails to suppress the recoil using a screw system.  A wheel on the side of the cannon was used to screw the cannon in place.  Erickson was very concerned about the possibility of a significant recoil.  He convinced the government only to use 15 pounds of powder per shot rather than what they wanted to use which was 25 pounds.  This limited the effectiveness of the cannon fire in the battle with Virginia.

On January 30^th, 1862, the ship was commissioned.  Lieutenant Warden was designated commander.  The ship left the Brooklyn Navy Yard fully provisioned on March 6^th to head south.  It was a difficult passage.  There were several storms.  The ship obviously, because of the low water line, had a lot of difficulty.  It became almost swamped on several occasions.  Monitor had to be towed by another ship back into the security of a coastal port.  But the ship went along the coastline of New Jersey then around the Delmarva Peninsula and finally on March 8^th at about nine o'clock in the evening arrived at Hampton Roads.

I am sure you are aware the Union strategy was to blockade the Confederate ports (the “Anaconda” strategy). The Union blockade of Hampton Roads ran from Fort Monroe on the north down to the southern shore of the James River.  On the first day, Virginia sallied forth on March 8^th at approximately 3 PM.  One has to recognize that Virginia, as well as Monitor, moved very slowly.  Top speed was 5 knots, which is about 5.75 miles per hour.  These guys were really going slow!  As matter of fact, Virginia left port at about 8 o'clock in the morning, and just got into position to attack in the afternoon.  On the first day, USS Congress, a wooden steam frigate, engaged with some initial broadsides, trying to impact Virginia with little or no success.  The cannonballs bounced off Virginia. Virginia then turned its attention to USS Cumberland, another frigate.  She proceeded to run at and ram Cumberland and caused it to sink.  Both Cumberland and Congress, were built about the same time, about 1841 - 1842.  They had traditional broadsides with about 50 guns each.  They were obviously wooden ships, sailing ships, for the most part.  After sinking Cumberland, Virginia went back to Congress, which had purposely run aground, and bombarded the ship with what was called “hot shot.”  This was solid cannon balls heated up until they glowed red.  Then they fired this shot at Congress to cause the target to catch on fire.  The victim continued to burn through the night, and around midnight it actually exploded.  Minnesota, which was coming to aid the two ships ran aground and was bombarded as a stationary target by Virginia.  Virginia withdraws, as it becomes dark, and obviously Monitor arrives.

Virginia headed the next day, March 9^th, for Minnesota to complete its destruction.  But Monitor, which had arrived the night before, stayed in front of Minnesota, and started to exchange fire with Virginia.  Thus began the epic duel between Monitor and Virginia.  All of this happened at very close range.  The illustration shows how they went back and forth and around and maneuvered, each one trading off cannon fire with the other.  Virginia at some point attempted to ram Monitor without success.  Monitor tries to damage Virginia's propellers, also without success.  Almost at the conclusion of this go-around, a shell from the Virginia explodes at the wheelhouse, and Lieutenant Warden is injured.  At that point Virginia takes off and heads back to the Elizabeth River.  Both sides claim victory.  But the Confederacy fails to lift the blockade.  The presence of the Monitor assures this could not be done.

The importance of this dual is the impact on naval construction.  The battle spelled the end of the naval wooden sailing ship.  Naval ships would all be “iron-clad.”  The Union, as well as the Confederates, both built iron-clad ships.  And, as you know, there's a whole series of monitors which were modeled on Monitor.  Turrets were being used to mount guns rather than broadsides.

Monitor was to be towed to Beaufort, South Carolina, to join the blockade there.  While being towed in high seas on December 31^st USS Monitor sank off Cape Hatteras, NC.  The wreck was located in the 1940s.  Interest developed in the 1970s about raising the ship or raising a portion of it.  At that point, the anchor was recovered.  In 1990s, the Navy undertook the raising of the turret, all 120 tons.  This occurred in 2002.  When the ship sank, the turret turned over.  The turret was not attached to the ship, but was, in order to turn, mounted on a circular brass base called a barbette.  Two cannons were still in the turret when it was raised.  The turret is today undergoing restoration at the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia.