A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy

by Thomas J. Cutler

  At last the awful silence was broken. Keeler could hear the “infernal howl” of Virginia’s shells as they passed over Monitor on their way to Minnesota. The speaking tube between the turret and the pilothouse was not working, so the ship’s executive officer, Lieutenant Samuel Greene, told Keeler to “ask the Captain if I shall fire.” Relaying through Daniel Toffey, the ship’s clerk, the question was passed, and Captain Worden’s reply was, “Tell Mr. Greene not to fire till I give the word.” He also told his executive officer “to be cool and deliberate, to take sure aim and not waste a shot.”

  Worden calmly passed his conning orders to Williams, who expertly spun the helm in response. He maneuvered Monitor toward Virginia, closing the range, “approaching her on her starboard bow, on a course nearly at right angles with her line of keel, saving my fire until near enough that every shot might take effect.” When Monitor was sufficiently close, Worden stopped the engine and gave the order to commence firing.

  Inside USS Monitor’s gun turret. Paymaster William Keeler noted that before the battle began: “The most profound silence reigned. If there had been a coward heart there, its throb would have been audible.” Naval Historical Center

  The executive officer “triced up the port, ran out the gun, and, taking deliberate aim, pulled the lockstring.” At that moment, naval warfare was indeed changed forever.

  The two ironclads went at each other with a determined fury. Monitor’s first shot struck her adversary at the waterline, and Virginia responded with a broadside that would have destroyed a wooden ship of the same size. To the great relief of Greene and the other Sailors inside the revolving cheese box, “the turret and other parts of the ship were heavily struck, but the shots did not penetrate; the tower was intact, and it continued to revolve.”

  The two ships spiraled about one another, trading shots for quite some time, with neither able to strike a fatal blow. Their suits of armor withstood the terrible punishment each was attempting to inflict upon the other. One witness on the nearby shore later remembered, “Gun after gun was fired by the Monitor which was returned with whole broadsides by the rebels with no more effect, apparently, than so many pebblestones thrown by a child.” Inside the ironclads, the shots striking the metal did not sound like pebblestones; the din inside both vessels was almost unbearable as striking shot reverberated throughout their echo-chamber hulls.

  Ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia dueling in Hampton Roads. Inside the ships, the din was almost unbearable as shot bounced off their armored sides. U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

  The spirals grew ever tighter until the two ships were next to each other, firing at point-blank range. And still the shots glanced off Monitor’s whirling turret and off Virginia’s sloping sides, causing no more than dents and the awful clatter. It was clear that each had met her match, yet neither was able to prevail.

  As the battle wore on indecisively, Williams continued working Monitor’s helm in response to Worden’s calm orders. At one point as they maneuvered around Virginia’s stern, Williams could see the enemy ship by looking over Worden’s shoulder through the forward window slit. He realized he was looking right into the muzzle of the Confederate’s stern gun just twenty yards away. Worden was saying to Williams, “Keep her with a very little port helm, a very little,” when, suddenly, there was a great flash and a thunderous crash as an enemy shell slammed into the pilothouse. Williams was thrown from the helm and found himself on his hands and knees. The top of the pilothouse was partially torn off, and the light that poured in from above momentarily blinded Williams. Miraculously, the young helmsman was not seriously injured. His captain, however, was less fortunate. Worden had taken much of the blast full in the face, and his eyes were filled with smoke and burning powder. He staggered back, his hands to his face, and cried: “My eyes. I am blind!” With blood pouring down his face, Worden was taken to his cabin.

  Trembling violently, his ears ringing from the concussion, Williams climbed to his feet and grasped the spokes of Monitor’s helm. To his relief, the ship responded when he moved the wheel. Locating Virginia through one of the slits, he steadied his ship and began maneuvering her into position as he had seen Worden doing. For a time, until the executive officer could get to the pilothouse and take command, Williams was in sole command of the ironclad’s movements.

  By this time, the two iron contestants had fought for several hours, with neither ship suffering disabling damage. No one had been killed on either ship; only Worden was seriously injured. Virginia had fought a battle with enemy ships the day before; Monitor had fought a battle with the forces of nature that day as well. The result was that the men in both ships were exhausted. The two vessels had expended great amounts of coal and ammunition. It was time for this undecided but historic battle to end. Virginia headed for Sewell’s Point and Monitor returned to her anchorage.

  Aftermath

  Both sides would claim victory in this first clash of the ironclads. In truth, it was, by most objective assessments, a draw. Northerners could rightfully claim that Monitor had prevented Virginia from succeeding in her mission to destroy Minnesota and the other Union ships in Hampton Roads, and there certainly was a measure of victory in that. George Geer wrote a short letter to his wife after the battle that reveals maddeningly little about the battle itself—telling her she can read about it in the newspapers—but he makes it clear how the Union leadership felt about the outcome: “Our ship is crowded with Generals and Officers of all grades both army and Navy. They are wild with joy and say if any of us come to the Fort we can have all we want free, as we have saved 100s of lives and millions of property to [sic] the Government.”

  Circumstances would prevent these two ships from having a rematch. Virginia would survive just another two months. On 11 May, with Norfolk about to fall to Union forces, Confederate Sailors destroyed her to keep her from falling into enemy hands. Monitor lasted until the end of that same year, when she was lost in a storm off Cape Hatteras on New Year’s Eve as she headed south to participate in blockade operations. Fourteen men were lost as she succumbed to twenty-foot waves and high winds.

  George Geer and Peter Williams were still part of Monitor’s crew when she went to the bottom of the Atlantic, but they were not among those lost. Geer left the Navy several years later, eventually using his skills as an engineer to make a good living in civilian life. Quartermaster Williams remained in the Navy and was eventually promoted to acting master’s mate. For his courageous performance as Monitor’s helmsman, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

  Lieutenant John Worden recovered from his wounds and commanded another ironclad in action the following year. When President Lincoln heard that Worden was recuperating in a friend’s home in Washington, the president hurried to the house. Worden, his eyes still bandaged, heard Lincoln’s voice, and said, “Mr. President, you do me great honor by this visit.” Lincoln paused a moment, then said, “Sir, I am the one who is honored.”

  Although those two ships would never fight one another again, on that day in April 1862 the age of the ironclad had dawned. Many more ships would fight in the Civil War with steam-powered engines, forced-air ventilation, revolving turrets, and other new inventions. These vessels would soon take control of the seas away from the beautiful wooden sailing ships with their webs of lines and clusters of billowing canvas. By the time America would fight her next major war—the Spanish-American War just thirty-six years later—the two major engagements of that clash would be fought by cruisers and battleships made of steel slugging it out with breech-loading, rifled guns in rotating turrets. The day Monitor fought Virginia (ex-Merrimack) marked the beginning of a revolution and the end of an era.

  Below

  The duel of the ironclads was not all that was new to naval warfare during the American Civil War. Two years after the historic battle in Hampton Roads, on the night of 17 February 1864, USS Housatonic, a steam-powered sloop, was positioned about five miles southeast of Fort Sumter at Charleston, So
uth Carolina, as part of the Federal blockade of the Confederacy. It was a clear night, bathed in bright moonlight, and the seas were calm. Thus, it was no surprise when one of Housatonic’s lookouts spotted something in the water that “looked like a log.” Flotsam in these waters was not unusual, but an object moving toward his ship faster than the prevailing current was something worth the lookout’s attention. After sounding the alarm, the lookout and several other Sailors opened fire with small arms, but to no effect. The “log” made contact with the ship’s starboard side and a large explosion ripped off Houstonic’s starboard quarter. Although just five Union Sailors were killed, the ship was fatally wounded, and she quickly went to the bottom.

  The “log” had been CSS Hunley. With her 90-pound spar torpedo, she had earned the distinction of being the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. It would prove to be a costly victory for the history makers, however; for reasons not entirely clear, Hunley disappeared on her way back from the attack, taking her entire crew of nine to their deaths.

  Hunley’s brave crew were not the only casualties. Other crews had paid the ultimate price while testing the strange new vessel; even her designer, H. L. Hunley, was lost on one of these test dives.

  Essentially a converted boiler about forty feet long and four feet wide, she was powered by a hand crank that turned a screw propeller when manned by most of her crew. Ballast tanks at either end of the vessel provided buoyancy and permitted her to submerge. Weights attached to her underside could be detached from the inside if necessary. She could stay submerged for about half an hour before needing to come up to replenish air through breathing tubes. The crew used a burning candle to warn when oxygen was running out.

  This primitive technology was just a little more sophisticated than that used in an earlier submarine built during the American Revolution a century earlier. Named the Turtle, she was a one-man submarine that looked like an upright egg and used a foot pedal to flood the bilges in order to submerge. A hand pump could eject the water to bring the sub back up. Like Hunley, she relied on a hand crank for propulsion and had detachable weights. Unlike the Confederate version, Turtle did not have a very effective means of weapon delivery. She carried a keg of powder that was to be attached to the underside of an enemy vessel and subsequently detonated by a timing device.

  Ezra Lee, a sergeant in Washington’s Continental Army, volunteered to take Turtle out in New York harbor to attack the anchored British flagship. He successfully maneuvered the submarine into position but was unable to attach the powder keg before being discovered by the enemy. Pursued by an enemy boat, Lee cut the keg loose as he withdrew. It exploded spectacularly but harmlessly among the ships in the anchorage. Although Turtle was unable to attack the Royal Navy successfully, many of the British ships hoisted their anchors and moved farther downstream as a result of Lee’s attempt.

  From those early ventures beneath the sea came one of the most formidable weapons in the history of warfare. Before the nineteenth century had come to a close, John Holland had designed a workable submarine, and by 1900 the U.S. Navy had its first, appropriately named USS Holland. Before the beginning of World War I, the Navy had twenty-five subs in service. Because these early craft were so small, they were called “boats” rather than ships, and the term has stuck to this day, even though USS Louisville, the submarine who first fired a Tomahawk missile into Iraq, is 360 feet long and displaces more than seven thousand tons. Submarines nearly changed the outcome of World War I, and they played a vital role in the U.S. victory in the Pacific during World War II. Nuclear-powered submarines were likewise key components of the U.S. victory in the Cold War, though none ever fired a shot.

  Today, submarines continue to be a principal component of America’s nuclear deterrence strategy, while expanding their roles in tactical missile attack and support of Special Forces operations. They are manned by Sailors who routinely descend into regions once considered off-limits to mankind. Like the surface above, the undersea regions of the world are now the dominion of the U.S. Navy because of Sailors who dared to go into the unknown.

  Design drawings of Turtle, the first operational submarine. She attacked a British ship in New York harbor during the American Revolution. U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

  Above

  In March 1898, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Secretary of the Navy John D. Long about some experiments that were being conducted with a device he called an “aerodrome.” He informed Long that “the machine has worked,” and then advised, “It seems to me worthwhile for this government to try whether [or not] it will work on a large enough scale to be of use in the event of war.” The Navy and the Army formed a board to investigate the matter and concluded there was merit in Roosevelt’s suggestion. The Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair, on the other hand, concluded that the “apparatus,” as they called it, “pertain[ed] strictly to the land service and not to the Navy.” How wrong they were!

  Although these lighter-than-air aerodromes would never play a major role in naval warfare, other flying machines, pioneered by the likes of the Wright brothers, would prove that earlier board’s decision to be a bit hasty. Later members of that same Navy board gave this new idea the chances it needed, once again changing naval warfare forever.

  A little more than forty years after the initial Wright brothers’ flight, the Battle of Midway would prove to be the decisive turning point in the largest war the world had ever seen, and the entire engagement was decided by fleets that never laid eyes on one another—except from the air. Instead of Roosevelt’s “aerodromes,” the flying machines at Midway were dive-bombers, fighter aircraft, and torpedo bombers, and they were launched from ships far out at sea. Naval air had become the predominant weapon for war at sea in just a few decades.

  Conservative impediments were overcome by larger events and by the vision and courage of some Sailors who sensed that a revolution was upon them and who decided their only choice was to join or get out of the way. One such Sailor was Captain Washington Irving Chambers. Noting in 1910 that the Germans—who were rapidly becoming a world power—were planning to launch an airplane from a ship, he decided that the U.S. Navy should make the attempt first. Unable to get funding from the Navy Department, he persuaded a wealthy publisher to contribute one thousand dollars to the project. He then persuaded a pilot by the name of Eugene Ely to make the attempt. On 14 November, Ely took off from a specially constructed platform that had been erected on the bow of cruiser Birmingham—then anchored in Hampton Roads, Virginia—and then landed near a row of beach houses on shore.

  Two months later, on 18 January 1911, Ely again piloted an aircraft for the Navy, but this time he successfully landed on a platform that had been erected on the afterdeck of USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay. An hour later, he took off again and landed safely ashore. Besides the primitive aircraft he was flying, Ely depended upon a series of lines attached to sandbags as the arresting gear to facilitate his landing on the ship, and he used a bicycle inner tube wrapped around his waist as a life preserver. Rudimentary as it might have been, this experiment proved the viability of aircraft carrier operations and marked the beginning of the most sweeping change to naval warfare that had ever occurred.

  Innovative and courageous Sailors from seamen to admirals carried forth the work that Ely had started. Over a relatively short period of time, the primitive experiments on Birmingham and Pennsylvania were transformed into a powerful instrument of naval warfare, conducted with astounding efficiency and reliability despite the great dangers involved. Those who have ever witnessed flight operations on an American aircraft carrier are consistently awed by the precise choreography of so many people doing so many things with such powerful machines amidst so much noise and surrounded by so much potential death and destruction. From the aircraft handlers in their yellow shirts to the refueling teams in purple, from the red-shirted ordnance loaders to the pilots in g-suits, and so on, it is a ballet of sorts, in which the
performers are artists in their prime, and every successful performance deserves a standing ovation.

  Many Sailors paid with their lives for this boldness, but their sacrifices have given the Navy another powerful arm to project its power over the seas and into the littoral regions of the earth. Whether striking targets in the once-forbidden regions of mountainous Afghanistan or flying deterrent patrols in the airspace between Communist China and Taiwan, U.S. naval aircraft play a vital role in both war and diplomacy: putting muscle behind words and ideals and applying measured force, when necessary, to protect America’s interests in virtually any corner of the world.

  Beyond

  One Sailor’s adventure into the unknown began rather ignominiously, yet ended in glory. He had served in the destroyer Cogswell during World War II and then entered flight school after the war, earning his wings in 1947. A gifted aviator, he attended Navy Test Pilot School, subsequently helping the Navy develop an in-flight refueling system and conducting early trials on the first angled carrier deck. He later flew test flights in the F3H Demon, F8U Crusader, F4D Skyray, F11F Tigercat, and the F5D Skylancer. But all of these contributions would pale in light of his historic flight on 5 May 1961.

  Strapped into his aircraft waiting for launch after several delays, he suddenly realized that he had a problem. Speaking into his radio headset, he reported, “Man, I’ve got to pee!”

  “You what?” came the response.

  “You heard me. I’ve got to pee.”

  Alan Shepard was sitting atop a Redstone rocket, strapped into a space capsule named Freedom 7, waiting to make history by being the first American to go into outer space, when he realized that despite all the scientific innovations and technological wonders that had gone into preparing for this moment, no one had thought of this need.