The First Battle of Ironclads: Monitor and Virginia, 1862
The first battle between ironclads was fought between Monitor and Virginia at Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862.
The first battle between ironclads was fought between Monitor and Virginia at Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862. During the American Civil War the Union's USS Monitor and the Confederacy's CSS Virginia fought for about three hours at this Virginia anchorage, and neither could sink the other.[1] The road to that fight began nine years earlier on the Black Sea, in the harbour of Sinop.
Sinop and the Explosive Shell
On 30 November 1853 Admiral Nakhimov's Russian fleet attacked the Ottoman squadron in Sinop harbour. The Russians had six ships of the line, two frigates and three steamers, and Osman Pasha had seven frigates, three corvettes and two steamers. The Russian ships fired explosive shells from Paixhans guns, the first use of these guns in a sea battle, and the shells set the wooden hulls on fire. About 2,700 of the 4,200 sailors in the harbour died, while the Russians lost 37 men and no ships. Only the steamer Taif got away, reaching Istanbul with the news on 2 December.[3]
The battle helped push Britain and France into the Crimean War. It also showed navies that a wooden hull could not stand up to this kind of shell, and they turned towards armour.[3]
La Gloire and Warrior
France moved first. La Gloire, designed by the naval architect Henri Dupuy de Lôme, was laid down in March 1858 and launched at Toulon on 24 November 1859. He had wanted an iron hull, but a shortage of iron meant a wooden hull faced with 120 millimetre iron plates.[5]
The news caused an invasion scare in Britain, whose navy had nothing to match her.[5][6] The answer was HMS Warrior, launched at Blackwall in London on 29 December 1860. Her hull was iron throughout, since iron was lighter than a wooden hull of the same size and left more capacity for guns, armour and engines. Behind 114 millimetres of wrought iron sat 457 millimetres of teak. She is still at Portsmouth as a museum ship.[6]
None of these ships had yet been tried against another ironclad. That test came far from Europe, in the American war.
The Blockade and the Burning of Merrimack
War broke out in April 1861, and on the 19th President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of Southern ports. Hampton Roads, where the James and Elizabeth rivers open into Chesapeake Bay, was a key part of it. The next day the Union commandant Charles McCauley ordered Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk burned. At least nine ships went up, among them the steam frigate USS Merrimack. Her hull survived below the waterline and so did her engines.[1]
Stephen Mallory, the Confederate Navy Secretary, had no strong fleet and could not match Northern industry, so he put his faith in armour. Tredegar Iron Works would need at least a year for new engines, which led to the decision to use Merrimack's. The design was accepted on 11 July 1861. John Porter and John Brooke drew a sloping casemate covered in two layers of 2-inch iron plate. She had ten guns and an iron ram on the bow. She was launched on 3 February 1862 and commissioned as CSS Virginia on 17 February. The North went on calling her Merrimack, which is why both names turn up in the sources.[1]
Ericsson and the Northern Reply
When word of the work reached the North it responded. Congress gave Navy Secretary Gideon Welles authority for armoured vessels on 3 August 1861, and a three-man Ironclad Board examined 17 designs.[1]
The strangest proposal came from John Ericsson. Born in Värmland, Sweden, on 31 July 1803, he had worked as a surveyor in the Swedish army and moved to England in 1826. In 1829 he entered the locomotive Novelty in the Rainhill Trials and lost to the Stephensons' Rocket, and later went to America. There he designed USS Princeton. In 1844 a gun commissioned by Robert Stockton burst on board and killed the Secretaries of State and the Navy. Stockton blamed Ericsson and blocked his payment.[7] That left Ericsson on bad terms with the Navy.
He sent his plan to Lincoln on 29 August 1861, and the Navy's engineers rejected it. The man who reopened the matter was Cornelius Bushnell, a Connecticut businessman, who went to consult Ericsson about his own armoured design, Galena. He saw Ericsson's model and took it to Welles. He saw Lincoln on 12 September, and the next day the president went with him to the Board. One member, Charles Davis, distrusted Ericsson because of the Princeton affair. Ericsson came and defended the design, and Davis gave way.[2][8]
The $275,000 contract was signed on 4 October 1861. Continental Iron Works in Brooklyn started the hull on 25 October, launched her on 30 January 1862, and she was commissioned on 25 February. Monitor was 54.6 metres long and 12.6 metres wide and drew only 3.2 metres, with a deck almost level with the sea. Amidships was a revolving turret 6.1 metres across, weighing about 160 tons with its guns, an idea credited to Theodore Timby. Inside were two 11-inch Dahlgrens. Her crew numbered 49. People who saw her compared her to a cheese box on a raft.[2][8]
She left New York on 6 March under tow from the tug Seth Low. John Worden, her commander, had packed the base of the turret with oakum, and the sea washed it out. Water came in through the turret gap, funnels and hatches, the boiler fires nearly went out, fumes filled the engine room, and then the steering ropes jammed. She still reached Hampton Roads at about 9 p.m. on 8 March.[2]
The Attack of 8 March
Virginia had come out a few hours before Monitor arrived, under Franklin Buchanan. She made first for the anchored USS Cumberland and rammed her. Cumberland sank with 121 men, and Virginia's ram broke off in her side.[1][9] Then she turned on USS Congress. The grounded ship took about an hour of fire and surrendered, her commander Joseph Smith dead. Buchanan was shot in the left thigh by fire from the shore. Congress was set ablaze with hot shot and blew up near midnight. The Union lost more than 250 killed and missing that day, about 110 of them from Congress. Virginia lost two men.[1]
USS Minnesota, Roanoke and Brandywine ran aground coming to help. Minnesota was next, but it was getting dark, the tide was falling, and Virginia drew too much water to get close. She left it for the morning and withdrew to Sewell's Point, with Catesby ap Roger Jones now in command. During the night Monitor came alongside Minnesota.[1]
The Duel of 9 March
In the morning Virginia came to finish Minnesota and found beside her a craft almost level with the water, with a revolving turret on top. Worden moved in between them and the two ships fired at close range, for about three hours according to Wikipedia and more than four according to the American Battlefield Trust.[1][8] Shot glanced off both. Virginia's guns had only explosive shell, and Monitor's were loaded with the standard 15-pound charge, so neither could penetrate the other.[1]
About 10 o'clock Virginia grounded for a time and got off again. A shell hit Monitor's pilothouse and blinded Worden. Executive officer Samuel Dana Greene took over, and the ship drew off into the shallows for a time. Virginia went back to port believing Monitor had quit, and Greene did not pursue. Both sides claimed victory.[1] Historians mostly call it a draw. Over the two days the Union lost 261 killed and 108 wounded, and the Confederates 7 killed and 17 wounded. The blockade held, so the strategic gain stayed with the North.[1]
The End of Both Ships
Neither ship saw out the year. The Confederate army left Norfolk on 9 May. Virginia's new commander, Josiah Tattnall, could not take her up the James to Richmond because she drew too much, and had her burned off Craney Island on 11 May 1862.[1] Monitor foundered in heavy seas off Cape Hatteras under tow on 31 December 1862, with the loss of 16 men.[1][2]
Her wreck was found on 27 August 1973. The turret was raised in August 2002 and taken to the Mariners' Museum in Virginia, and the remains of two sailors found in it were buried at Arlington on 8 March 2013.[2][10] Ericsson died in New York on 8 March 1889 and was buried at Filipstad in Sweden.[7]
What the Navies Took From It
Britain and France halted further wooden-hulled construction and others followed. The Union immediately ordered ten Passaic-class ships and built more than 20 additional monitors by the end of the war, and Russia launched ten similar vessels. The turret brought in the idea of a few heavy guns that could fire in any direction.[1]
The ram was the wrong lesson. Naval architects who saw Cumberland go down began putting rams on new ships, and the practice lasted almost until the First World War.[1] The result was seen off Tripoli on 22 June 1893. During a manoeuvre ordered by Admiral George Tryon, the ram of HMS Camperdown opened the side of HMS Victoria. She capsized about 13 minutes later and 358 men died, Tryon among them. The court martial put the collision down to his order. The wreck was found in 2004.[4]
Steam and iron tied the warship to the coaling port. The fuel sums that started with the first steamships across the Atlantic were now a navy's sums as well, and fuel logistics stayed part of sea power from then on.
Frequently asked questions
What was the first battle of ironclads?
The first battle between ironclads was fought between Monitor and Virginia at Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862.
What was the first ironclad warship?
The first ocean-going ironclad warship was the French La Gloire, launched in 1859. Britain's HMS Warrior, launched in 1860, had an iron hull throughout.
Who won the battle between Monitor and Virginia?
Historians mostly call it a draw, because neither ship could sink the other. The blockade held, so the strategic gain stayed with the North.
Sources
- Wikipedia. Battle of Hampton Roads.
- Wikipedia. USS Monitor.
- Wikipedia. Battle of Sinop.
- Wikipedia. Sinking of HMS Victoria.
- Wikipedia. French Ironclad Gloire.
- Wikipedia. HMS Warrior (1860).
- Wikipedia. John Ericsson.
- American Battlefield Trust. USS Monitor: A Cheesebox on a Raft.
- Wikipedia. CSS Virginia.
- NOAA. Remains of USS Monitor Sailors Interred at Arlington National Cemetery, 8 March 2013.
