As the result of these experiments a number of New York capitalists supplied the necessary money to construct a large steamship, the paddle-wheels of which were operated by caloric engines designed by Ericsson. The vessel was named after the inventor and was a most novel and radical departure from any vessel up to that time designed. Her cost exceeded half a million dollars: an investment which showed the high esteem in which her designer was held. The Ericsson was launched in September, 1852, and made her trial trip on January 4, 1853. Never had so strong or fine a ship been built; the newspapers of the day were filled with praise, and her designer received from every quarter the most extravagant congratulations for the mechanical marvel which he had created.
But unexpected disaster destroyed in a few seconds the product of these months of thought and energy. Within a few weeks of her launching the Ericsson encountered a tornado, and capsized and sank a few miles off New York Light. Although she was believed by many to mark the end of the use of steam-power and the beginning of a new era of hot-air dynamics, it is now recognized that this invention reached its maximum development in the Ericsson; and it is in connection with a later and far greater invention that history has accorded recognition to the designer’s great mechanical genius.
Long before Ericsson left England he had thought out the plans for a strange kind of vessel, protected with iron, which would be able to fight and defeat any warship of any size. In 1854, the year in which he perfected the plan for his new type of warship, the navies of all the great nations were composed, in large part, of huge wooden vessels, usually sailing-ships, but a few combining sails and steam. For a number of years the use of iron-plating, or armor, on the sides of battleships had been discussed, and in 1845 R. L. Stevens, an American engineer, actually began the construction of a vessel, or “floating battery,” encased in metal.
To France however, probably belongs the credit for the construction of the first ironclads, consisting of these floating batteries, the Lave, Devastation, and Tonnante, protected by 4.25-inch iron plates, which were used during the Crimean War. The following year France began the construction of four ironclad steam frigates, and England immediately followed, with the construction of a number of similar vessels.
But the warship of John Ericsson in no way resembled the huge ironclads of France or England. With characteristic disregard for precedent he designed a ship which rested so low in the water that only about three feet of its sides would be exposed. The sides and deck were protected by heavy plates of iron, and in the centre of the deck was a circular heavily armored turret which revolved in either direction and contained powerful guns. These vessels, or monitors, as Ericsson named them, were to be propelled by steam. The particular advantages of the type were that so little of the craft showed above the water that it afforded an exceedingly small target to an enemy; that the heavy plating protected it from hostile shot, and the revolving target enabled the crew to fire in any direction without manœuvring the vessel, while such shot as might strike the turret would glance harmlessly from its circular side.
During the Crimean War Ericsson offered the plans for this remarkable vessel to the French Emperor; but they were politely declined as impractical in much the same way in which, some years earlier, the British Admiralty had declined to consider the screw-propeller as little more than an amusing experiment.
When war was declared in 1861 between the Northern States and the Confederate States of the South, Ericsson was fifty-eight years old. In this national calamity in which brother was armed against brother, and the fate of the country seemed hanging by a thread, Ericsson unhesitatingly cast himself with those who sought the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery from the United States. Never before had his adopted country needed so vitally his tremendous services. With superb health derived from a normal life of conservative habits, and a brain trained by long years of engineering experiment, Ericsson found himself ready and able to meet the call for his greatest service to the nation.
The United States navy at the beginning of the war was composed entirely of wooden vessels. Early in 1861 the Confederates began the construction of a floating battery heavily armored with iron. For this purpose the old United States frigate Merrimac, which had been burned and sunk in the Norfolk Navy Yard, was raised, and the work of encasing her with armor plates was begun.
Meanwhile, in the North, Congress had called for proposals for ironclad steam vessels, and less than a month later, Ericsson addressed to President Lincoln a letter in which he offered to submit the plans of a monitor, and described the advantages of its unique design. On September 13, Ericsson went to Washington and personally laid before the Navy Department his plans and received a contract to proceed with the construction of the Monitor.
The keel was laid on October 25, and on January 30, she slid down the ways into the water. A month later she was commissioned. The Monitor was 172 feet in length and displaced 776 tons. In the centre of her low flat deck was the revolving turret, twenty feet in diameter, protected by eight inches of iron-plating. Two heavy guns were mounted in the turret. The vessel was operated entirely by steam-engines, placed well below the water-line, which propelled a screw beneath the overhanging stern.