The Armored Ship
The Civil War ironclad CSS Virginia, formerly the USS Merrimack was not the first ironclad warship as is so often and wrongly believed. Nor was its nemesis USS Monitor. The first ironclad warship in the world was the French battleship Gloire, launched in 1859. That action prompted the British to begin building ironclad ships, and in early 1861 the British Admiralty decided to become an all iron hulled and steam driven Navy, which would make all wooden hulled navies in the world obsolete. The United States Navy was also in the planning stages for ironclads when the Confederates captured the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
Virginia was not even the first ironclad in the Confederate Navy, nor the first to see combat. Those distinctions belong to CSS Manassas. Manassas was a former steam powered ice breaker captured by a Confederate privateer and converted to an ironclad ram in Algiers, Louisiana. The ship had a rounded superstructure, giving it an appearance resembling a turtle, which helped deflect shots which struck its iron plates. In October 1861 Manassas became the first ironclad warship in the world to engage in combat when it rammed USS Richmond. damaging both vessels, neither fatally. Manassas later was involved in the actions at Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip.
When CSS Virginia appeared the US Navy was not surprised by the Confederate ironclad, as some believe, its construction from the hull of USS Merrimack had been monitored by Union spies. USS Monitor was known to be on its way from Brooklyn, where it was built. In fact, had it not been for Monitor’s commanding officer’s mishandling of the ship in heavy seas on its voyage from Brooklyn, the ship would have arrived in Hampton Roads before Virginia’s initial sortie from its lair in the Elizabeth River, and the famous first battle between ironclad warships would have occurred a day earlier. As it was, Monitor arrived in the evening after Virginia had wreaked havoc on the Union blockade on March 8, 1862.
When Virginia returned to Hampton Roads the following day, it was the Confederates who were surprised, for there had never been seen before on a naval vessel what Monitor presented – a steam powered rotating turret (though the British had experimented with a prototype). Monitor could present its guns in any direction, without having to change the direction of the ship’s heading, a first in naval warfare. As Virginia approached the two ships pounded each other in what was undoubtedly a loud engagement, but a mostly ineffective one. Neither ship could do much damage to the other. After Monitor was forced to retire for repairs Virginia withdrew up the Elizabeth River.
Twice more, on April 11 and on May 8, 1862, CSS Virginia and USS Monitor exchanged shots at each other from long range, but neither ship forced another lengthy engagement. Monitor’s main purpose was the defense of the wooden hulled blockading squadron, not the destruction of the more heavily armed Confederate ironclad. The battle between them changed naval design and strategy, not because of their iron sides, but because of Monitor’s turret. The US Navy built another sixty ships along the general design of USS Monitor, which was lost at sea on the night of December 31, 1862.