The shot hit — and bounced away. None penetrated the armor nor did they slow in any way her steady and ponderous approach.
“Steady,” Buchanan said to the coxswain, “steady.” The ironclad’s armor rang like a giant bell as the round shot struck and screamed away. “Hold her there — I want to hit the hull midship.”
Before the frigate’s guns could be loaded again the ram struck Cumberland with a tremendous crash, driving into her wooden hull and through it. Water gushed in through the immense opening and the ship commenced to sink — threatening to drag the ironclad down with her.
“Full speed astern!”
The threat was a real one and the Virginia’s forward deck was already under water. There was the constant crack of lead on iron as marksmen on the Cumberland fired their muskets at point-blank range. They were no more effective than the cannon had been.
But the Virginia had condemned herself. Her feeble engine could not drag her free of the sinking ship. Water was already flooding onto her deck, splashing through ventilation openings under her armor. The hope of the South was being destroyed in her first ship action.
But the strain on the ram was too much — it broke off and the ironclad was free. As the Virginia backed away the ocean poured through the gaping opening in the other ship’s hull. The attacker turned its attention toward the rest of the fleet.
But Cumberland did not strike her colors — nor did she stop firing. Because of this Virginia stayed beside her, firing steadily despite the solid shot that clanged impotently against her armor, fired until the Yankee warship was burning, sinking. Yet the surviving gun crews stayed at their stations, still firing. The crash of iron on steel sounded one last time before she sank.
Then the armorclad was into the Union fleet. During the attack on the Cumberland, Congress had set sail and with the aid of the tugboat, Zouave, had run ashore. Trapped there she was being pounded by the small Confederate gunboats. Now Virginia joined them in the attack. Crossing the frigate’s stern Virginia sent round after round through her frail wooden hull until it was ablaze from stem to stern.
Hot, exhausted, filthy — the crew of the ironclad still raised a victorious cheer as their ship turned toward the rest of the blockading fleet.
The steam-powered Minnesota could have escaped from the slow and ponderous attacker. Her commander and her crew did not see it that way. Using her greater mobility she circled the Virginia trying to press any advantage. There was none. Her cannonballs caused no damage, while her own wooden hull was penetrated again and again. By afternoon she was badly damaged and run aground. Only the turn of the tide saved her. Virginia had to stay in the deep channel or she would be aground as well.
“Break off the engagement,” Buchanan ordered, peering out at the setting sun and the turning tide. “Set course back to the river.”
As darkness began to fall the ironclad Confederate steamship, slightly damaged, with few wounded, chugged back into harbor. Buchanan and his crew celebrated, looking forward to the morning when they would bring their ship out again to destroy the beached Minnesota. And any other wooden ship of the Union navy. The fleet would be destroyed, the blockade lifted, the South saved.
Iron had triumphed over wood. Sail had given way to steam. Nor was this message lost to the world, for this battle had long been anticipated, the existence of the Virginia a badly-kept secret. There were French and British ships standing out to sea that had been waiting for this encounter. They had watched closely the events of the day and fully expected the total destruction of the blockading fleet in the morning.
This was a new kind of war at sea. The sun set on a day of Southern victory.
IRON OF THE NORTH
The same storm that had kept the Virginia in port had prevented the Monitor from leaving the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Days and weeks of frustrating delays had followed her launching in mid-February. Ericsson’s design was magnificent; her construction from keel to completion in 101 days was a mechanical miracle. It was the human factor that could not have been allowed for in the drawings.
The metal ship had a single-screw propeller that was turned by a powerful two-cylinder engine — also of Ericsson’s design. However the engineers who had fitted the propeller had made a single major mistake. They had assumed that the drive shaft rotated in one direction — when in fact it rotated the opposite way. So when the first sea tests were begun and her commander, Lieutenant John Worden, ordered half-speed ahead, the craft shuddered and went backward and slammed into the dock.
“What is happening?” he called down to Chief Engineer Alban Stimers. The engineer’s profane reply could luckily not be heard above the clank of machinery. This died away and Stimers went forward to the pilothouse and called up to Worden.
“No one ever seems to have asked if the propeller is left-handed or right-handed. When you want to go forward it goes into reverse.”
“Can a new propeller be fitted?”
“No. This was one was specially designed and made to order. I don’t know how long it would take to manufacture a new one, but I know it could not be done very quickly. And she would have to go back into drydock to have it replaced, which would take even more time.”
“Damnation! What about running the engine in reverse then? That would certainly make her go forward.”
Stimers shook his head gloomily, mopping his sopping face with a rag that only spread more grease across his skin. “We could. But we wouldn’t get more than two or three knots — not her design speed of seven.”
Worden climbed down from the armored pilothouse. “Why? I don’t understand.”
“Well you have to know something about engines to get the drift. You see each slide valve is driven by a loose eccentric which is shifted part way around to get into reverse. This gives the best result in one position — not the other.”
“The answer then?”
“The entire engine must be taken down and the eccentrics repositioned.”
Worden knew that time was growing short. The newspapers, both North and South, were filled with reports that the Southern ironclad was nearing completion. He had also had more specific intelligence reports that it would be a matter of weeks, possibly days, before the enemy ship came out to tackle the blockading fleet. Every day wasted was a day lost. But the propeller had to be put right. They were not going to backwater stern first into battle!
“Start on it at once.”
It was not until February 19 that ablebodied seamen and officers were mustered and Monitor was finally towed by a tug for the short trip from Greenpoint to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where the monster pair of guns were lowered into place. They were 11-inch smoothbore Dahlgren cannon capable of firing a solid shot weighing 166 pounds. Stores were loaded aboard as well, along with a supply of powder, shot, shell, grape and canister. The iron ship was going to war.
Though not quite yet.
Engineer Stimers had the responsibility of test-firing the guns, although he had never seen a recoil mechanism like theirs before. After the guns were fired the recoil ran them back along a metal track. When this happened the guns were slowed by friction plates that were clamped tightly to the track. But Stimers turned the friction recoil wheel the wrong way — loosening rather than tightening the clamps.
When the first gun was test-fired it flew back at great speed and was only stopped by the cascabel striking the interior of the turret. This sheared off several bolts that secured the bearings of the guide-rollers to the carriage. These were hard to get to and it took a long time to drill them out and replace them.
The human element again. Stimers was so upset by the incident that he made the same mistake with the second gun. Which had to be repaired in the same manner. Ericsson himself supervised the repairs, staring angrily at the shamed engineer, muttering darkly in Swedish until the job had been done to his satisfaction.
It wasn’t until February 26 that all the repairs had been made. The following morning at 7 A M., cold and dark and with a fierce sno
wstorm blowing, the Monitor let go her lines. Her destination Hampton Roads and the blockading Union fleet. The longshoremen headed for shelter and only John Ericsson and Thomas Fitch Roland, owner of the ironworks where the ship had been made, remained on the dock.
“At last,” Roland said. “Now the Ericsson battery will prove its worth. It is a wonderful machine that you have invented and it is a matter of great pride to me that we have completed it to everyone’s satisfaction.”
“It will do what it has been designed to do. You have my word on that.” Then he gasped. “But — what is happening?”
Monitor had turned her bow suddenly towards the bank of the narrow, choppy channel. A collision seemed certain — however just before she struck the bank the bow swung out — toward the other side. Slower and slower the iron ship continued, corkscrewing from side to side until she finally hit a flimsy dock, almost demolishing it, and stopped.
Ericsson was almost dancing with rage. “Get a tug,” he said through tight-clamped teeth. “Get her back to the dock.”
“I couldn’t hold her,” the abashed helmsman explained. “Once I turned the rudder to one side, I had to fight to get it back. Even with Lieutenant Worden helping me it was almost physically impossible to do. Then, once I got it over it would go to the other side and the same thing would happen.”
Ericsson insisted on making the examination himself, inspecting the tiller ropes and linkage to the rudder. Sailors relayed instructions from him to turn the wheel first one way, then the other. It was more than an hour before he emerged, trousers soaked from the bilges, filthy and grease-covered but unaware of it.
“The rudder is overbalanced,” he said “We must increase the purchase of the connecting linkage. Double it if needs be.”
It look less than a day to accomplish this. But three days later the Monitor was still tied up at her docking berth. The crew restless and upset. They knew that their craft had been designed to fight the Virginia, which was nearing completion according to the continual reports in the newspapers. Yet they could do nothing. A heavy storm was hitting the coast, great waves breaking on the shore. Monitor was designed for shoal water and rivers. Her low freeboard and shallow draft made her most unseaworthy even in a slight swell.
On March 6 there was a clear sky, a slight wind — and a smooth sea. It had been decided that, since the Monitor’s top speed was only seven knots, she would be towed to her destination. A heavy line was passed from the tug Seth Low and, accompanied by the steam gunboats Currituck and Sachem, Monitor finally headed out to sea.
The day passed easily enough and the crew were getting used to their new charge. They had boiled beef and potatoes for dinner and those off duty retired peacefully for the night. They did not get much sleep. The wind grew stronger, the seas heavier, and by morning the good weather had ended and a dreadful journey had begun.
Green seas broke right across the tiny ship, coming under the turret in waterfalls. The waves rolled right over the pilothouse, jetting in through the narrow eyeholes with such force that it knocked the helmsman off the wheel.
Even worse were the waves that passed over the vital blower pipes. These protruded above the deck, high enough to stay above the water in a normal sea for they supplied air to the steam engines deep in the hold below. Water inundated the blower engines, wetting the leather straps that turned them, stopping them from functioning. Without air the fires died; without blowers to pump it out the engineroom filled with poisonous, acid gas that nearly killed the men there.
The bravery of the crew was not in doubt. Volunteers entered the engineroom, at the risk of their own lives, and carried out the unconscious men. They were dragged out to the top of the turret in the fresh air. After some time they recovered — but the ship was still in great danger. With the fires damped, the engineroom was now filled with carbonic acid gas from the coal fumes. With no steam the bilge pumps were put out of action. The tow rope still held, pulling them through the crashing seas — but the ship was slowly filling with water. Hand pumps were tried but to no avail. The men fought the many leaks — and still the water rose. When each wave broke more water was forced in through the hawse pipe.
It was a terrible night, of exhaustion and seasickness. Few men had the strength to climb to the top of the turret and vomit over the side. Belowdecks, lit by the feeble oil lights, was a scene of crashing filthy water, floating debris, endless labor to save the ship.
It wasn’t until just before daylight that the storm blew itself out and the waves died down. The poisonous gas had dissipated during the night, so now the sodden ashes could be shoveled from the boilers and fresh fires lit. When the head of steam built up the blower engines began to turn. There was a spontaneous cheer throughout the ship as the first gouts of bilge water jetted over the side.
No one had slept. Cooking was impossible, so that those who could manage to eat had only cheese and crackers, with fresh water from the condenser to drink.
The second day was slightly better than the first, but the weary, wet men were not aware of the difference. Yet they were getting close to their destination. By four in the afternoon Fortress Monroe, the Union fort guarding the entrance to Hampton Roads, was in sight.
And clouds of billowing smoke as well. Dark streaks of cannon projectiles could be seen, exploding into white smoke. Lieutenant Worden climbed to the top of the turret for a better view.
“Might be a Secesh ship trying to run the blockade,” one of the sailors said; little hope in his voice. Worden shook his head in a silent no.
“Too much, too much firing from too many ships. The Virginia must be out and among the fleet. Iron against wood — they don’t have a chance.”
“That’s our job to take her on — that’s what we have to do!” one of the men shouted.
“We’ll never get there before dark,” a sailor said, looking up at the sky, then at the horizon.
“Then we will be there in the morning,” Lieutenant Worden said grimly. “If that ironclad is among our fleet, and she survives this day, she will surely be back in the morning. But when dawn breaks and Virginia appears, we are going to be there waiting for her. It will be iron against iron this time. Then those Rebels will know that they have been in a fight.”
Standing out to sea, at the mouth of Hampton Roads, the watching French and British were unaware of the small, black, ugly vessel that had dropped anchor after dark at Fortress Monroe, the Union bastion on the other side of the Roads. What they had witnessed that day when Virginia had attacked the Northern fleet had been more of a massacre than a battle. In the morning they expected more of the same.
But would it be different when the untested Monitor faced up to the battle-proven Virginia in the morning?
Monitor raised her anchor in the night and steamed out into Hampton Roads. The warm spring night was lit by the newly-risen moon — but far brighter was the glare from the burning Congress. Explosions racked her as loaded guns and powder magazines exploded. The crew of Monitor had been told of the day’s disastrous events; the reality was far more shocking than words could ever be. By ten o’clock she had stationed herself between the badly damaged Minnesota and the shore. Her crew waited sleepless throughout the night while steam tugs tried to free the stranded warship. Though stranded and vulnerable by daylight, Minnesota had not given up the fight. She took aboard more cannon balls and powder from the fort during the night.
At two in the morning the battleship was refloated — but soon grounded again. The Monitor approached her and dropped anchor. Worden sent Lieutenant Greene aboard to talk to her commander.
“Thank God that you have arrived,” Captain Van Brunt said, pointing to the still-burning Congress. “That will be us in the morning if we don’t get out of these shallows. Our guns can’t make a dent in that infernal contraption, though we will keep on trying.”
“Perhaps ours can. In any case we will station ourselves between your ship and the enemy. She will have to get by us to reach you and that will take
some doing.”
At a little after nine o’clock next morning the history of naval warfare changed forever. Modern warfare began. When the Virginia made her leisurely way toward the stranded Union warship, Monitor was placed squarely between the ironclad and her prey.
Aboard the Virginia the sailors cleared for action once again. But Lieutenant Jones was unhappy.
“What’s happening there?” he called out, his view restricted by the armored eyeslit. Midshipman Littlepage climbed up the armor to see better.
“The tugs are leaving. But there is a raft of some kind close to her. Something on it — as though they were taking her boilers and machinery ashore.”
“Nonsense! Not at this time.” He pulled himself up to see better and grimaced with anger. “Damnation! That’s no raft — and that is a monstrous gun turret. It must be Ericsson’s battery.”
It could not have come at a worse time. His plans to finish off the Minnesota then disperse the rest of the blockading fleet were in peril.
Virginia was determined to finish off the wounded ship. At the range of a mile she fired at the stranded ship and saw some of her shells strike home. But the small iron ship could not be long ignored. Puffing clouds of smoke it drove directly toward its larger opponent until it was just alongside. “Stop engines,” Worden ordered. “Commence firing.” The first gun crew heaved the swinging shield away from the gunport, ran the gun out and Greene pulled the lockstring. The gun boomed out, deafening the men, doing more harm inside the turret by its blast than it inflicted on its target. The cannon ball hit the other’s armor and bounced away.
The Virginia fired her broadside and the battle of iron against iron was begun.
The Monitor rode so low in the ocean that her decks were awash. All that could be seen above water, other than a small armored pilothouse, was her immense central turret. Both targets were almost impossible to hit. The few balls that hit their target merely ricocheted away.
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