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Ironclads Collide

© Craig E. Hutchison

The Confederacy began the war with no navy at all. The man named to be the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen R. Mallory, was determined that the Confederacy should build a fleet of iron ships that could destroy wooden ships at will. By the fall of 1861, the steam frigate Merrimack, which had been scuttled by the Union when Norfolk was abandoned, had iron plates bolted onto her. When news of this ironclad reached the North, the assistant secretary of the Union Navy, Gustavus Fox exclaimed: "who is to prevent her dropping anchor in the Potomac . . . and throwing her hundred pound shells into [the White House] or battering down the halls of Congress?"

The Union leaders were frantic and they turned to John Ericsson, a Swedish-born inventor, to come up with a design that could match and defeat the Merrimack. Ericsson came up with one of the most unique designs in naval history. He designed a ship that would have only two guns compared to the Merrimack's ten guns. The guns were mounted on a revolving turret. Many of the naval officers were not convinced it would work, but President Lincoln was willing to take a chance. Ericsson called his creation the Monitor, it contained within its design forty seven patented devices.

Meanwhile, the Merrimack had rammed the Union frigate Cumberland which had been considered the most powerful conventional ship in the Union fleet up to that time. The Cumberland had fired on the Merrimack, but the cannon balls bounced off the iron sides and were of no use. After sinking the Cumberland, the Merrimack went on to get the Congress on fire and run the Minnesota aground. The next day, the Monitor arrived and the two ironclads hammered away at each other for four and a half hours. The Merrimack finally withdrew; it would be her only real fight. Two months later, she was blown up by the Confederacy as Union forces drove Confederates out of Norfolk. With much more in the way of resources, the Union had the capability to build more ships like the Monitor. This would not bode well for the Confederate Navy or the Confederate Army for that matter. But, one thing was certain, naval warfare would never be the same again, the wooden gunboat was obsolete. The Captain of the Minnesota, who lived to tell of the great battle between the ironclads, had an interesting story to tell: "Gun after gun was fired by the Monitor which was returned with whole broadsides from the rebels, with no more effect, apparently, than so many pebble stones thrown by a child . . . clearly establishing the fact that wooden vessels cannot contend successfully with ironclad ones, for never before was anything like it dreamed of by the greatest enthusiasm in maritime warfare."