The Monitor.
The hull of the Monitor, as it stood on the land, was in a way something like that of the common ferryboat. There was a smooth, rounded hull, 124 feet long, thirty-four wide, and about six feet deep, with a superstructure laid flat across the top of this hull and projecting out like a guard-rail on all sides.
It projected three feet and eight inches on each side, and twenty-five feet at each end. But this overhanging part was really a super-added hull; it was a flat-bottomed hull, 172 feet long, forty-one wide, and five feet deep, laid on top of the lower hull, and secured to it by a single row of rivets. As a whole, the Monitor was unlike any other hull ever built. And it is no disparagement of the genius of Ericsson to say that no sailorman could ever have dreamed of such a thing even when in a delirium from drink.
This hull was made of boiler-iron riveted to suitable frames, and the vertical sides of the overhang were protected by five one-inch iron plates bolted on and backed by heavy oak timbers. A heavy timber deck, supported on big wooden beams, was protected from a plunging fire by two layers of half-inch iron plates. On the centre of this hull rose a round turret, twenty feet in diameter inside and nine feet high, made of eight one-inch iron plates. It was supported on a pivot, to which an engine was geared so that it could be readily turned in either direction. Her deck was one foot above the water-line. She carried two eleven-inch smooth-bore guns, firing solid shot weighing from 170 to 180 pounds. Her speed was between four and five knots. A novel feature was the absence of smoke-stacks in action; they were taken apart and laid flat on deck, which gave an all-round fire abaft. The draught to the furnaces was maintained by powerful blowers. Forward of the turret stood a pilot-house made of iron logs, nine inches square, built up log-cabin fashion by notching and bolting the ends together. Her anchor was suspended in a well under the bow, the cable passing through a pipe beneath the deck to a winch further aft. The propeller was, of course, concealed under the overhang aft. In short, her machinery was altogether below the water-line, while her guns were placed as near the centre of gravity as could well be imagined, and were well protected. It is perhaps as well to say here as elsewhere that with such modifications as experience has suggested, the Monitor type is, in the opinion of many of the American captains who have commanded them, not only the best protected, but the most efficient and the safest style of coast-defence ships.
As the month of January, 1862, came on, the Confederates learned from their spies that the Monitor was rapidly nearing completion, and the number of men at work on the Merrimac was doubled. They had already been pushing the work as fast as daywork could do it, but with the added force, the Merrimac rapidly assumed the form where she might be placed in commission. The collecting of a crew proved a matter of some trouble, for the people of the South were all soldiers rather than seamen; but by visiting the various armies, Captain Buchanan was able to select a thoroughly good crew for the work—men who could fix the boilers, steer the ship, and work the guns to the best advantage. The fact that many of them did not know a royal halliard from futtock shroud was of no importance, for, like the latest of warships, the Merrimac had neither halliards nor shrouds. With the arrival of the crew the eagerness of the officers to try their ship increased. She had never steamed a mile in her new form—she had never steamed at all save only to turn her shaft at the dock to see whether the engines would work or not; but this did not matter. The men were fore and fit, and on Saturday, March 8th, they would show what the ship was good for.
A glance at the map shows that the waters of the James River come down from the northwest, those of the Nansemond come from the southwest, and those of the Elizabeth come up from the south to unite in Hampton Roads, and flow out to the northeast to empty into Chesapeake Bay. Old Point Comfort, with Fortress Monroe, guarded the north side of the mouth of Hampton Roads, but away south, on the route to Norfolk, was Sewell’s Point, where the Confederates had erected strong batteries that completely commanded the channel running south from Hampton Roads to Norfolk. Over on the northwest corner, so to speak, of Hampton Roads lay Newport News Point, which was held by the government; so the government ships were in the habit of anchoring along the northerly side of Hampton Roads all the way from Fortress Monroe to Newport News, a distance of seven miles. They were in plain sight of the Confederate batteries on Sewell’s Point, but far out of range, for it is a wide stretch of water.
Hampton Roads.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”
On the morning of March 8, 1862, the steam frigates St. Lawrence, Roanoke, and Minnesota were anchored at wide intervals, in the order named, in a line southwest from Fortress Monroe toward Newport News Point, while the sailing frigate Congress lay just east of Newport News Point, and the sailing sloop-of-war Cumberland lay just a little to the west of the point. It was a lovely day of the early spring. The ships swung easily to their cables; the small boats wabbled over the tiny waves as they tugged at the painters that held them fast to the wide-spread booms. The wash-clothes, on well-filled lines stretched in the rigging, fluttered in the gentle breeze. There was nothing to indicate that any officer had any care or thought of the ironclad ship that for months past the Confederates had been building at Norfolk. And as a matter of fact they did not give the ironclad a serious thought, for they were conservatives. What could a newfangled notion like this ironclad do, any way? Hadn’t Lord Howard Douglas and other good English authorities proved to the satisfaction of the experienced men of the world that a ship plated with iron would really prove more dangerous to her crew than to an enemy in the oft-approved frigates of the day? He had.