Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

THE “MERRIMAC” BEFORE CONVERSION.

THE “MERRIMAC” AS CONVERTED INTO AN IRONCLAD.

From Photographs supplied by the U.S. Navy Department.

The next that was heard of the Merrimac was that when the Federals found it necessary to burn certain stores and ships which could not be removed beyond reach of the Confederates after the American War began, she was one of those set on fire and then sunk. The Confederates, being short of ships—indeed, they seem to have been short of everything except enthusiasm and a belief in their cause—raised her to see what could be done with her. All her upper works had been destroyed, and her hull somewhat damaged, but she was held to be sound enough to be worth fitting out afresh. Accordingly, to meet Commander Brooke’s design, she was cut down to the water-line, and given a superstructure in the shape of an ugly, squat rectangular deck-house with sloping sides, and was referred to afterwards by her northern opponents as a floating barn. The over-all deck length of this casemate was about 170 feet. Its sloping walls were framed of pine twenty inches thick, upon which oak planking four inches thick was laid, and outside this two sets of iron plates, formed by rolling out railway rails, were laid, the first horizontally and the outermost vertically. Both sets of plates were fastened on by bolts 1⅜ inches thick, passing through to the back of the timber. The sides sloped considerably, according to some writers 35 degrees, while others put the inclination at 45 degrees. The intention was that any shot striking her should only inflict a glancing blow and ricochet harmlessly. For the same reason the ends of the casemate were given a similar angle, but instead of being straight like the sides, were semi-circular, or almost so. The top of the structure was covered by an iron grating, which served the double purpose of permitting the ventilation of the interior and keeping out missiles. This grating measured about 20 feet by 120 feet. Her armament consisted of two 7-inch rifle guns mounted on pivots so that they could be fired through any of the ports in the sides of the casemate, a 6-inch rifled gun on either broadside, and three 9-inch smooth-bore Dahlgren guns. Altogether she had fourteen gunports. To add to her effectiveness, an iron ram was affixed to the bow. Her stern lay very little above the water, but the highest point of the bow was about two feet above the sea. Her conning tower, a cone three feet high and protected by four inches of armour, was placed beyond the forward end of the casemate. Her funnel was unprotected. Though supposed to be renamed the Virginia, she never lost her old name of Merrimac.

Against the wooden ships in Hampton Roads she was invulnerable. Even at point-blank range their broadsides did not suffice to stop her. This was her trial trip, and her engines, patched up after their experiences in the fire and at the bottom of the harbour, could only get her along at about four miles an hour, and her crew had never been afloat in her before. Nevertheless her commander, Franklin Buchanan, combined the trial trip with active service, and attacked the northern ships with a determination which carried consternation to the North. The wooden Cumberland was blown up and the Congress sunk, the latter as the result of an application of the ram, which, however, injured the ramming vessel so much that the future effectiveness of her ram was greatly reduced. Buchanan was so badly wounded in this engagement that he was unable to command the Merrimac in her duel the next day with the Monitor.

The Monitor, designed by Ericsson, was built under very arbitrary conditions. When it became known that the Merrimac was under construction, President Lincoln advertised for something to meet her on equal terms, and Ericsson tendered. He pointed out that the armour plates of the Gloire or Warrior would be useless against the heavy 12-inch wrought-iron gun he had brought out in 1840, in connection with Colonel Robert Stockton, and as he pledged himself that he could complete in a hundred days a steam vessel carrying two of such guns placed in a turret which should be armour-plated and proof against the heaviest guns the Confederates could place in the Merrimac, his tender was accepted. Ericsson was hampered in his work by the interference of the government officials, hardly any of whom understood his plans, but all of whom thought themselves competent to improve upon them. Considering the limitations under which his undertaking had to be accomplished, the Monitor was a remarkable vessel in every respect. He had to draw out his plans to scale, have all the parts designed, see that everything was made as he designed it, and supervise the construction of the ship and engines, and the whole of this work had to be done within a stated time. The adventure, for such it unquestionably was, was hailed throughout the length and breadth of America as the work of a madman. Like all innovations destined to play an important part in the world’s history, it was greeted with derision and abuse. There were a few people on both sides of the Atlantic who recognised the importance of the change in naval construction which Ericsson’s ship inaugurated. These were they who had profited by the lessons of the armoured gunboats or floating batteries employed by the French and English in the Crimean War. They saw that if small but powerfully armed ships could effectively attack powerful shore batteries, and by reason of their shape could never receive a direct blow but only glancing shots, a vessel carrying a circular fort which also could not receive a direct blow must be superior to any vessel afloat, especially if its fort or turret were so heavily armoured as to be proof against the heaviest ordnance to whose fire it should be subjected. Moreover, if the hull were made to offer the least possible mark to an enemy, the difficulty of striking the vessel to sink it would be greatly increased. The form of the vessel was such that if it were used as a ram the weight behind the ram would be in a horizontal plane with the ram at the point of contact, and greater injury would thereby be inflicted upon the side of an opposing vessel than were there a greater amount of weight above the horizontal plane.

These considerations were ably supported by Admiral Porter, of the United States Navy, who was well aware of the value of such a means of attack even if the propelling engines could not give the ship a speed of more than four or five miles an hour. The gallant admiral himself was the butt of no slight amount of ridicule by his emphatic declaration that the Monitor “is the strongest floating vessel in the world and can whip anything afloat.” The vessel was built of iron, and can best be described as a shallow, oblong box, with sloping sides, having upon it a pointed, flat, shallow box or raft with a stumpy, circular tower or turret amidships. This box or upper part projected a considerable distance all round above the lower part, and especially so at the stern; and had not the whole vessel been very strongly constructed, the fearful blows which the under-part of the projection received from the sea as it rose and fell on the waves on its passage from New York to Hampton Roads would have driven the two parts asunder.