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| On August 3, 1861 the United States Navy’s
Ironclad Board placed ads in Northern Newspapers inviting designers to
submit their plans for the construction of ironclad warships. In
a letter to Abraham Lincoln dated August 29, 1861 John Ericsson offered
to build a vessel, “…that within ten weeks after commencing the structure
I would engage to be ready to take up position under the Rebel guns at
Norfolk…” Ericsson was a Swedish-American inventor that designed
the Union Monitor nicknamed “cheese box on a raft.’
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| The Confederate Merrimack or Merrimac was
originally a wooden frigate. Federal troops fled the ship when they
evacuated the Naval yard at Portsmouth, Virginia in 1861. Confederate
forces raised it, and then covered the ship with iron plates. They
renamed the ship Virginia, although I’ll be using Merrimack by which it
is better known.
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| On March 6, 1862 the Monitor was delayed
by a storm. Two days later on March 8, 1862 naval history was made.
The first Confederate ironclad steamed down the Elizabeth River into Hampton
Roads to attack the U.S. blockade. The Merrimack first headed toward
a twenty-four-gun wooden hulled steam-sailing slope, Cumberland.
After ramming and sinking the Cumberland the Merrimack headed for the Congress,
a fifty-gun frigate. An awestruck Union officer watched the fight
as the Merrimack fired “shot and shell into her with terrific effect, while
the shot form the Congress glanced from her iron-plated sloping sides without
doing any apparent injury.” After the first day the Confederates
were leading 2-0 proving iron superior to wood. |
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| On March 9, 1862 as the Merrimack arrived
for day two of fighting, it found a Union ship called the Monitor waiting
for it. The Confederate ironclad carried more guns than the Monitor,
but it was slow, clumsy, and prone to engine trouble. The Union Monitor
was the faster and more maneuverable ironclad, but it lacked the Rebel
vessel’s brutish size and power. Lieutenant S. Dana Greene, an officer
aboard the Monitor described the first exchange of gunfire: “The turrets
and other parts were heavily struck, but the shots did not penetrate; the
tower was intact, and it continued to revolve. |
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| After four hours of fighting, neither ironclad
seriously damaged the other in their one day of fighting. The Merrimack
had prevented McClellan from using the James River, the best route to Richmond.
The Monitor had prevented the Confederates hopes of breaking the Union
blockade. |
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| On May 11, 1862 a little before five in
the morning at Craney Island the Merrimack was ordered to be blown up.
To be kept from Union hands, the Merrimack was filled with 16,000 pounds
of black powder in the ship’s magazine. A forty-foot section of the
ship’s casemate was discovered lying over 200 yards away from the wreck.
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| The Monitor was found 15 miles south of
Cape Hatteras off the coast of North Carolina. It sank while being
towed during a storm.
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