The Story

Almost every American has heard of the Monitor and the Merrimack, though for most, their familiarity does not go much beyond recognizing the names. For those who know more, the story is often confused. Monitor and Merrimack were not the first ironclads, as many believe, they were not even the first American ironclads. Merrimack was not even named Merrimack, she was, more properly, the Confederate States Ship Virginia. What these ships were were the first two ironclads to fight one another, and their story is an astounding one.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, north and south both quickly realized the need to develop the latest technology in naval warfare, the ironclad ship. In a year-long scramble to finish first, in a race filled with intrigue and second guessing, blundering and genius, the two ships arrived on the field of battle within twelve hours of one another, with Monitor showing up six hours too late to prevent the worst blow the U.S. navy had ever suffered and would ever suffer until Pearl Harbor.

Reign of Iron is their story.

Author's Note

It was not my idea to do a book about the Monitor and Virginia. I had been working on the Civil War for a few years, writing Glory in the Name and its sequel, Thieves of Mercy, but it had not occurred to me to do a nonfiction book, least of all one about the ironclads. It was my agent, a font of inspiration and so much more, who broached the idea.

My first thought was that the world was swamped with books on the Monitor and Virginia, but a little research proved that that was not the case. The last major work on the ships was William C. Davis's well done but poorly named Duel Between the First Ironclads which was published in 1975. There have been other, perfunctory books published since, but the time was right, I felt, for a real in-depth look at the subject. Reign of Iron was born.

The work I had done for my Civil War novels had given me more than a passing acquaintance with the history of Monitor and the Merrimack (as a kid I had always wondered why the Confederates would name a ship Merrimack.  Now I knew - they didn't). Delving more into it, I was amazed by the story I found. The genius, the struggles, the doubts, the history of the men who created these ships, the murderous attack that Virginia made on the United States ships, the extraordinary four hour fight of ironclad against ironclad. It was one of those stories which would be unbelievable if it was written as fiction. Reign of Iron will prove to be the most detailed look ever at the history of these ships, in part because I could not bear to leave any of it out. If it is too much, I count on my readers to let me know.

Chapter One

Sink Before Surrender

Saturday, March 8, 1862, was a beautiful day in Virginia. A gale had blown itself out the night before, and behind it came clear, warm weather, a high pressure system on the tail of the storm. A day more like May than March, many people felt.

In Norfolk and Portsmouth, towns that faced one another across the Elizabeth River, excitement was spreading like fire, just as it had the year before, the days leading up to secession, the burning of the shipyard. The Confederate States Ship Virginia, an ironclad built on the burned out hull of the old U.S.S. Merrimack, was getting underway. There had been no announcement. In the interest of military security, the Gosport Naval Shipyard had been closed to visitors for months. Not even Virginia’s crew knew what they were doing.

There was no concealing her movements. Virginia was a monstrous vessel, two hundred and seventy five feet long. She was thirty-eight and a half feet on the beam, and though the crowds watching from the shore could not see this, she was burdened by a ponderous twenty-two feet of draft.

With black smoke rolling out of her tall stack she edged away from the dock, heading into the stream. Word spread fast, people rushed to the riverbank to see her go. They had been waiting eight months for this moment.

Most of Virginia was under water. Not only her massive hull, but also her after deck, the last fifty feet or so of the ship, which was six inches below the surface. All that the citizens watching could see was a wedge-shaped false bow, barely breaking the surface, and her ironclad shield, like a barn roof floating on the river, eight feet high. The lengths of plate iron running vertically along the shield gleamed black with the coat of tallow smeared on them to help enemy shot bounce off. On the forward flagstaff flew the red pennant of an admiral. On the ensign staff, the Confederate national flag, the "Stars and Bars."

The roof of the casement, the "shield deck", was mainly an iron grating to let air and light into the gundeck below. But still the gundeck was "badly ventilated, very uncomfortable..." and so gloomy that lanterns were needed the full length of the deck, even on a fine, sunny day such as the 8^th.

For that reason most of the Virginia’s crew were crowded on the shield deck, about sixteen feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet long. In keeping with traditions of the sailing navy - men before the mast and officers aft - the crew stood in front of the smoke stack, the officers aft of it, though the helm and pilot house were at the forward end of the casement.

Foremost of the officers was Franklin Buchanan, appointed admiral in command of the James River squadron just a few weeks before. Sixty-one years old, balding with a tussle of white hair ringing his head, Buchanan was a hard-driving disciplinarian, navy to the marrow, the "beau ideal of a naval officer of the old school, with his tall form, harsh features and clear piercing eyes." He was a man with a great deal on his mind.

Virginia had never been underway before. She was powered by the Merrimack’s old engines, engines which had been condemned by the United States Navy. Her engineer, H. Ashton Ramsay, had served aboard the ship while she was still the U.S.S. Merrimack, and he reported, "From my past and present experience with the engines of this vessel, I am of the opinion that they can not be relied upon. During a cruise of two years...they were continually breaking down, at times when least expected..."

Buchanan had quizzed Ramsay about the engines before getting underway. He asked about their reliability. He asked how they would endure the shock of Virginia ramming another vessel. He asked if they should first make a trial trip.

Ramsay answered as best as he could. "She will have to travel some ten miles down the river before we get to the Roads. If any trouble develops, I’ll report it. That will be sufficient trial trip."

But Buchanan had more than engines to worry about. The crew were new to the ship. Construction had been on-going until the very end - that very morning he had ordered workmen off the ship so she could get underway - and the men had had no chance to drill on board. They had never fired the guns. "The officers and crew were strangers to the ship and to each other," one of Virginia’s lieutenants wrote.

Many of the crew were strangers to ships of any description. The South had a chronic dearth of sailors, and Virginia’s men had been hustled from the army, or recruited among the yard workers or from local militia units. Scattered among them were a few veteran sailors, some survivors of the desperate battle for Albemarle Sound. "They proved to be as gallant and trusty a body of men as anyone could wish to command," recalled Midshipman Virginius Newton, "but what a contrast they made to a crew of trained jack tars!"

Virginia was a "novelty in naval construction", her properties unknown, and she was still incomplete. There had been no time to fit the protective shutters over the gunports. The ship was riding too high in the water. The lower edge of her casement, which was supposed to be two feet under water, was only a few inches, leaving her lightly-armored waterline vulnerable.

The enemy had at least five major warships on station, protected by heavy shore batteries at Newport News and the guns of Fortress Monroe and Fort Wool.

Any commanding officer would have been excused for insisting on a sea trial, a shake down, a practice run before steaming into battle. Most of the men on board Virginia assumed that was what they were doing. Only a few knew the truth.

Buchanan was not going to wait. He was an aggressive fighting man with a bitter resentment of the United States Navy and he knew that the strategic situation would not allow for delay. Union General George McClellan was planning an attack on Richmond which he would launch from Fortress Monroe, transporting his troops by water from Washington. If Virginia ruled Hampton Roads, she could ruin his entire plan.

And, more ominously, there were indications that a Union ironclad would soon be ready for sea.

So Virginia steamed away, bound for battle on her maiden voyage. The wharves along the Elizabeth River, the banks, the rooftops, were crowded with people. They waved their hats and handkerchiefs and the ironclad’s crew doffed their hats in reply.

Some of Virginia’s men recalled the people on shore cheering loudly as the ironclad steamed past, shouting "Godspeed" as they headed down river. Most remembered a silent, somber crowd who watched and waved but did not cheer. The Confederacy had suffered many setbacks in the past months, after the jubilation of its victory at Manassas the summer before. A great deal of hope rested on the ship, but many believed she and her crew would not survive the day. The churches were jammed with people praying for the safety of the men, and the success of their mission.

As the Virginia passed Norfolk, the hands were piped to dinner. In the engine room, Ramsay nervously watched as the two horizontal, back acting engines turned under the pressure of the steam from the four huge Martin-type boilers. Everything seemed to be in order. He went back up to the shield deck.

"How fast is she going, do you think?" he asked one of the pilots.

The pilot looked at ths shore, estimated the speed. "Eight or nine knots an hour," he replied, a very optimistic guess. It took the ironclad an hour and a half to steam approximately seven miles to the mouth of the Elizabeth River, putting her speed at closer to five knots, which was still respectable, given that she was underpowered, unwieldy and stemming a flood tide. Ramsay and Beaufort’s captain, William H. Parker, would later agree that she averaged around seven knots, as good as she did under power as a sailing frigate.

The crew were not as impressed with her turn of speed. "If this is all the speed we can make," they whispered to one another, "we better get out and walk."

Dinner was a brief affair, and terminated by the drums beating to quarters. The men scrambled to clear the ship for action, the first time it had ever been done. It was no doubt a confused and disorganized exercise, compared to a well-drilled company of blue-water sailors on board a man-of-war in long commission.

The galley fires were extinguished, lashings on the guns cast off, rammers and swabs arranged for easy handling. The powder magazine was opened and cartridges were passed up to the gun crews and rammed down the gaping barrels. On top of the charges went 9-inch shells for the Dahlgren smoothbores in the broadside, 6.4-inch shells for the Brooke rifles amidships and 7-inch shells for the Brooke rifles in the bow and stern.

As the Virginia steamed past the Confederate batteries on Craney Island, the troops there lined the parapets and cheered wildly. By then there was a veritable parade of boats on the River, "everything that would float, from the Army tug-boat to the oysterman’s skiff" was loaded with spectators heading down to Craney Island to watch the action.

Buchanan ordered all hands topside. The shield deck was crowded with the three hundred and twenty or so members of the ship’s company, officers to starboard, enlisted men to port, waiting to hear what "Old Buck" would say.

Among those who recalled Buchanan’s words, there seems to be little consensus about what he said. Third Assistant Engineer E. Alex Jack recalled Buchanan assuring those who might have had doubts about his loyalty to the Confederacy that after that day there would be "no cause for any such unjust suspicions". Hardly words to inspire men to fight.

Another version had Buchanan saying, "The Confederacy expects every man to do his duty," but one hopes for a little more originality than that.

H. Ashton Ramsay’s version was probably closer to the truth. "Sailors, in a few moments you will have the long expected opportunity to show your devotion to our cause. Remember that you are about to strike for your country, for your homes, for your wives and your children."

Ramsay, worrying over his engines, had nearly missed dinner. The caterer sent word to him that he had better eat soon or he would miss his chance. He climbed down to the gun deck, struck by the looks of the men waiting at the guns, "pale and determined, standing straight and stiff, showing their nerves were wrought to a high degree of tension." They stood with rammers and sponges in hand, waiting for the battle to start. Ramsay had been so involved in the engine room that he had not until that moment considered the bloody fight in which they were about to engage.

Down in the wardroom he found several officers "daintily partaking of cold tongue and biscuit". At the far end of the room, Assistant Surgeon A.S. Garnett was laying out tourniquets, forceps, bone saws, all the tools of his work. Ramsay’s appetite disappeared. He settled for a taste of tongue and a cup of coffee.

Virginia was not going into battle alone. She was, in fact, the flagship of a squadron, the James River squadron. Three of the squadron’s six vessels were up the James River, waiting for Virginia to make her move. In company with the ironclad were the Raleigh and the Beaufort, both converted tug boats mounting 32-pounder guns on their bows. They were instructed to use their "best exertions to injure or destroy the enemy."

For the time being, they were more useful as tugs. As Virginia passed Craney Island, the water became so shallow that she could not steer well. Beaufort passed a hawser and took her in tow until they reached the deeper water abreast Sewell’s Point.

Hampton Roads is a wide expanse of water and from the shore looks perfectly navigable in any direction. But that is deceptive. Most of the Roads are mud banks and shallow places. Like a wagon stuck in the ruts of a road, the deep-draft Virginia was limited in where she could go. To get at the enemy she would have to travel a round-about course that would cover twice the distance of a direct line. There was no chance for the surprise Buchanan had originally hoped for.

As Virginia passed Sewell’s Point, the men could see the enemy on either beam. To the east, Fortress Monroe and the men-of-war under its guns, Roanoke, commanded by Captain John Marston, senior captain present, with forty guns, Minnesota, with forty-eight guns, Brandywine and St. Lawrence, both fifty gun sailing frigates. To the west, blockading the entrance to the James River, the sailing ships Congress, fifty guns, and Cumberland, thirty. Buchanan had already made up his mind on his initial attack. He turned the Virginia west.

Bent on to halyard on the forward flagstaff, ready to hoist, was the signal flag Number One. Buchanan had pre-arranged it with the other captains of the squadron. Number one hoisted below his pennant meant "Sink before you surrender."

"That Thing is A-comin..."

The Union ships Congress and Cumberland had been waiting a long time, at least since November of the previous year, for the day the Confederate ironclad would come out. They had spent the winter at anchor off Newport News, at the mouth of the James River, their time occupied by shipboard routine, drills, boredom and misery.

It was no secret that the Confederates were building an ironclad on the raised hulk of the Merrimack. Rumors of her imminent appearance had surfaced so often that it was a standing joke on board the ships. But joke or not, a high level of vigilance was always maintained. Regular sea watches were kept, with one watch always standing by or sleeping at the guns, and not the more relaxed system of anchor watch. Covered in blankets and pea-jackets, the gun crews would often wake to find themselves under a layer of snow.

No hammocks were allowed on the gun deck, so that time would not be wasted getting them down in case of a fight. The guns were always loaded, and at sunset they were cast off and primed. No lights were shown above the waterline and fires were not allowed on board, making the cold winter even more miserable. But the ironclad did not appear.

Still, by early March, the United States Navy had concluded that the ships in Hampton Roads were too vulnerable to attack by the ironclad and decided to move a number of them to Washington. Navy secretary Gideon Welles telegraphed instructions to John Marston, senior captain:

Gustavus Fox, assistant secretary of the navy, began organizing steam tugs to tow the sailing ships up the river, then headed for Hampton Roads to make the arrangements himself. Gideon Welles telegraphed Marston again, instructing him not to move any ships until Fox arrived. The day he sent those orders was March 8.

The beautiful early spring weather was a godsend to the men on blockade duty, particularly after the wicked storm which had just blown through. The ships were riding at an easy anchor, spring lines rigged to allow them to swing their broadsides in whatever direction they chose. The sails were loosened off to dry.

The morning watch on Saturdays was wash day, and the crews of Congress and Cumberland had taken advantage of the fine weather to perform that chore. Laundry lines were run up between the main mast and the mizzen and clothes hung out to dry, white clothes to starboard, blue to port, per navy tradition. The ships’ boats were in the water and tied to the lower studdingsail booms.

It was as close to a lazy, carefree day as the men would get. There was a relaxed attitude on board, particularly on board Congress, which, in just a few days’ time, was to be sent north, relieved of the tedium of blockade duty at anchor. It was the navy’s intention to replace both ships soon. In the age of steam, sailing vessels were of little use on blockade.

The surgeon on board the Congress, Edward Shippen, took advantage of the fine weather to stroll along the poop deck, watching the gulls fighting for dinner scraps and exchanging words with Erie Kemp, the officer on deck. Congress had been on station in Brazil before being called back to the United States at the outbreak of the war. For Shippen, the cold winter they had endured at the mouth of the James was an unpleasant contrast to the previous winter "in the land of bananas and cocoanuts."

Few of the officers from that time were left, and almost none of the crew. On the 13^th of January, 300 of Congress’s men had been paid off and discharged. To make up for the loss, troops from the 99^th New York Infantry, the Union Coast Guard, had been stationed on the ship. For a month and a half they had drilled at the great guns and waited for the alleged ironclad to come out.

It was around twenty minutes before one o’clock in the afternoon when Shippen noticed the quartermaster and Kemp staring intently east toward the Norfolk Channel. The quartermaster turned to Shippen, handed him a telescope. "I wish you would take the glass and have a look over there, sir," he said, "I believe that thing is a-comin’ down at last."

Shippen looked through the glass. "There was a huge black roof, with a smoke-stack emerging from it," he recalled, "creeping down towards Sewell’s Point."

Sewell’s Point hid the Virginia from the sight of the ships at Fortress Monroe, but not from Newport News. The officers on board Congress gathered aft to watch the ironclad’s approach.

It was not long before Virginia reached Hampton Roads and turned west toward the James River channel. Congress and Cumberland wasted no time in reacting. Drums beat to quarters. The laundry came down from aloft on a run, the boats were let loose from the booms and the sails furled. The magazines were opened and powder monkeys ran cartridges up to their guns. Powder and solid shot were rammed home. And then there was nothing more to do but wait.

To make the wait even more maddening, the Virginia was soon lost to sight from the two ships, disappearing behind a bluff at Newport News Point. For more than an hour and a half, the ships’ companies waited, the men "standing at their guns for the last time; cool, grim, silent and determined Yankee seamen, the embodiment of power, grit and confidence."

They might well be confident. They were among the best trained, most experienced men-of-war’s men in the world, the equal of any navy of any nation. Their ship was armed with a powerful battery, which they could serve with speed and accuracy.

But in the history of naval combat, no wooden ship of war had ever fought a vessel the likes of Virginia. The Yankee sailors were confident because they had no idea what they were up against.

Iron Versus Wood

On board the Virginia, they could see the effect their appearance was having on the blockading fleet. They saw the wash on board Congress and Cumberland come sailing down, the boats cast off, sails furled, all the evidence of ships clearing for action. The smaller vessels going about their business on the Roads "scattered like chickens at the approach of a hovering hawk." Smoke began to pour from the stacks of Minnesota and Roanoke as their engineers flung combustibles on the fires to get a head up steam.

Beaufort, coming astern of Virginia, fired first from long range, but her shot fell short. For this action - opening fire before the flagship - and others, Buchanan would report that William Harwar Parker was "unfit for command."

Buchanan held his fire until he was less than a mile away. It was 2:10 pm. The tide had turned and the Congress, the nearest of the two ships, had swung stern to the approaching enemy. Only her after guns would bear, so the gunners opened fire with those. The solid shot struck the front of Virginia’s casement and bounced away, like "water from a duck’s back."

With those opening shots, all of the Union firepower in the theater opened up on Virginia, a massive barrage. The Congress, the Cumberland, the shore batteries, the small Union gunboats all poured fire into the ironclad, creating "a veritable storm of shells which must have sunk any ship then afloat." Over one hundred heavy guns were concentrating their fire on Virginia, but the Confederate ironclad steamed through the hail of iron like it was a summer rain storm.

Congress was the closer ship, but Buchanan had his eyes on Cumberland. In terms of the number of guns, Congress was the better armed, but she had mostly old 32-pounders in her broadside, while Cumberland had 9-inch shell guns and 11-inch pivot guns at the bow and stern, these latter of particular concern to the Confederates.

Virginia’s first shot came from the 7-inch Brooke rifle in the bow. Lt. Charles Simms, hunched over the gun, trained it on Cumberland, stepped aside and jerked the lanyard. The shell tore through the Cumberland’s bulwark and exploded on the after pivot gun, killing and wounding ten men on the gun crew.

Buchanan called Ramsay back to the pilot house, reiterated his intention of ramming the Cumberland. He ordered Ramsay to back the engines as soon as he felt the concussion, not to wait for orders. Ramsay acknowledged the instructions and returned to the twilight world of the engine room.

On the gundeck, Lt. Eggleston was peering out of the midships gunport. He was in charge of the two "hot shot" guns, the guns designated to fire solid shot, heated red-hot in the furnaces below. With the limited view through the gunport he could see only water and the distant shore. Then suddenly, Congress was there, only one hundred yards away, filling the port.

Congress fired, her entire broadside, "the flash of thirty-five guns", nearly a thousand pounds of iron slamming into Virginia at point blank range. To Eggleston’s relief, none of the shot came in through the gunports.

The noise inside the iron casement was terrible. But when the men expressed concern, Lt. Simms shut them up, telling them, "be quiet, men, I have received as heavy a fire in open air." And that was the difference. Every shot that Congress fired had bounced off the shield and done no damage at all. Ironclad technology had passed its first test.

"A Slaughter-Pen"

On board Congress, they watched with dismay as their powerful broadside pelted off Virginia’s thick hide, "rattled from the sloping armor like hail upon a roof." Then it was their turn to receive fire.

Virginia let off a full broadside as she passed, three 9-inch Dahlgrens and a 6.4-inch Brooke rifle, all loaded with explosive shell. The effect was murderous, turning the gun deck into a "slaughter-pen." An eight-inch gun was dismounted, its crew wiped out, killed or wounded. Shippen was stunned by the carnage around him, "lopped off arms and legs and bleeding, blackened bodies scattered by the shells, while blood and brains actually dripped from the beams."

He saw one man skewered by a wood splinter as thick as his wrist, but splinters, the old nemesis of sailors aboard wooden men-of-war, now paled in comparison to the butchery doled out by exploding ordnance. There were few wounded men - the shells were killing them outright. Ernie Kemp lay by the wheel with both legs shot off, calling with his last breath for the men to stand by the ship.

Virginia delivered her broadside and steamed on past, making for her intended target. On Cumberland they stood silently at their guns, watching with horror the beating that Congress received, but they did not lose heart. The destruction "caused us neither surprise nor shaken confidence in our own powers," Cumberland’s lieutenant Thomas Selfridge recalled, "since the Congress’s armament could fire nothing to compare with the solid shot of 80 pounds which we could deliver." They still had no sense for the near-invincibility of Virginia’s wood and iron casement.

But as Virginia approached, Cumberland could not bring any guns to bear. The ebbing tide had swung them "athwart the stream", broadside to the current, and Virginia was approaching from the bow. The only gun that would bear was the forward pivot, but if they fired that they would have blown their own head rigging away.

Cumberland’s captain, Commander William Radford, was on board U.S.S. Roanoke, seven miles away, sitting on a court of enquiry, leaving first officer Lieutenant George U. Morris in command. Morris ordered hands to take up on the spring line to swing the ship broadside to her attacker. On the spar deck, the men heaved at the capstan. But the tide had swung the ship in such a way that the spring line was running parallel to the keel and hauling it would not make the vessel turn. The big guns they were counting on to destroy the Confederate ironclad would not even bear.

Virginia lay about three hundred yards off Cumberland’s starboard bow, blasting the Union ship with her broadsides and bow gun. The first shot tore through Cumberland’s hammock netting, killing and wounding nine marines. The screams and groans of the wounded were something new to the men on board, most of whom had never before been in combat.

Lt. Simms aimed Virginia’s bow gun. Having fired the gun that wiped out Cumberland’s after pivot gun’s crew, he now did the same to the men on the forward pivot. The blast from the "murderous 7-inch rifle burst among the crew as they were running the gun out...literally destroying the whole crew except for the powder boy, and disabling the gun for the remainder of the action". The gun captain, training the gun with a handspike, had both arms taken off at the shoulders.

Virginia poured the shot into Cumberland and Cumberland was all but helpless to hit back. "[W]e could reply only by extreme train with the few guns..." Selfridge wrote. "It was a situation to shake the highest courage and the best discipline, but our crew never faltered."

The Cumberland’s gun crews stood at their guns, firing as they could, while Virginia tore ship and men apart. The dead were flung over to the port side of the deck, the wounded carried down below, piling up too fast for the surgeon to keep up. As men were killed at the guns, others stepped up to take their place, as they had been trained to do.

Finally Virginia’s bearing shifted and more of Cumberland’s guns would bear. The first gun division had lost all of its first and second gun captains. Lt. Selfridge, in command of the first division, went from gun to gun, a box of cannon primers in his pocket, firing the each gun as it was loaded and run out.

The devastation on board Cumberland was horrible, shells and splinters cutting the men down where they stood, the deck running with blood. Their vaunted eighty-pound shot was useless against the ironclad. But it was not Buchanan’s intention to waste precious ammunition destroying the Union ship.

Virginia turned bow-on toward Cumberland, her engines making turns for full speed ahead. Richard Curtis, part of Lt. Simms’ division on the bow gun, stared out the gunport at the frigate looming in front of them. Cumberland’s starboard side was "lined with officers and men with rifles and boarding pikes, all ready to repel us, thinking we intended to board her..."

Curtis had only a glimpse of the Cumberland’s men before Virginia’s iron ram slammed into the frigate’s hull, right on the starboard bow, just under the starboard forechains, with enough force to open up a hole "wide enough to drive in a horse and cart."

Heavy wooden spars had been arranged around Cumberland’s bow to ward off floating explosives, but Virginia smashed those like matchwood, the "sound of crashing timbers was distinctly heard above the din of battle." From thirty feet away, Simms fired his bow gun into the packed men at Cumberland’s rail.

On Virginia’s gun deck, the collision was hardly felt. "The shock to us on striking was slight," Catsby Jones, recalled. Others said the blow was "hardly perceptible," or "as if the ship had struck ground." The flag lieutenant, Robert Minor, rushed along the gun deck waving his hat and shouting, "We’ve sunk the Cumberland!" In the dim-lit casement, choked with smoke, their view limited to the small gunports, most men aboard did not know what was going on.

Buchanan did not forget the engine room signals. In the last instant he feared they would hit Cumberland too hard, perhaps inextricably wedge themselves in the Union ship’s side. As the Virginia raced down on Cumberland, seconds before impact, he rang up two gongs, the signal to stop engines, followed immediately by three gongs, full astern. And then the ship struck.

The impact was felt more strongly in the engine room. E. A. Jack felt a tremor run through the ship, and "was nearly thrown from the coal bucket upon which I was sitting." Ramsay recalled "an ominous pause, then a crash, shaking us all off our feet."

Cumberland rolled over hard with the impact. "I could hardly believe my senses when I saw the masts of the Cumberland begin to sway wildly," one witness recalled. As she rolled, she came down on Virginia’s iron ram, embedded in her side. In the engine room, Ramsay felt the bow being pushed down as the engines pounded in reverse, struggling to free the ironclad from the dying ship.

On Cumberland’s deck, Lt. Selfridge understood what was happening. "As the Cumberland commenced to sink, the Merrimac was also carried down until her forward deck was underwater." Cumberland was going down, and if Virginia did not free herself from her victim’s side, she would be dragged down with her.

Chapter Two

It is very important that you should say exactly the day the Monitor can be at Hampton Roads.

Gustavus Vasa Fox

to

John Ericsson

Forty hours before C.S.S. Virginia began her rampage through the Union fleet, the only ship in the Western Hemisphere that might have stopped her was on the verge of sinking into the North Atlantic.

On March 3^rd, the ironclad U.S.S. Monitor got underway from the Brooklyn Navy yard to test a new arrangement of her steering gear, the last serious obstacle before she could steam south for Hampton Roads. The steering proved satisfactory, but for two days following the test the ship was kept dockside by foul weather. It was the same storm, sweeping the Atlantic coast, that had kept Buchanan and Virginia in Portsmouth, chaffing at the bit.

Monitor’s crew spent a miserable time at the dock, the cold rain hammering down on the iron deck and the choppy water of the East River sweeping over the vessel. The ironclad’s captain, John L. Worden, invited some of the shipyard’s officers to dinner on board the ship, but even that was ruined when the wardroom steward managed to get drunk by dipping into the champagne and brandy meant for the officer’s table.

In the tiny ship, the anchor well was made to double as a brig, and it was there that the unhappy steward was placed in irons.

Mechanics from the navy yard were struggling to finish last minute repairs, working around the clock, just as they were doing on board Virginia in Portsmouth. Since the middle of February, the telegram wires between Washington, Fortress Monroe and New York had been hot with messages asking when Monitor would be underway and with ever-changing orders for where she should go.

Finally, on March 6^th, the work was done and the weather moderate enough for Monitor to put to sea. At 10:30 pm, the morning clear and cold, she slipped her dock lines and steamed down the river toward Sandy Hook and the Atlantic Ocean.

In company with the ironclad, hovering like watchful parents, were the wooden screw steamers Currituck and Sachem, both ex-merchant vessel purchased during the navy’s frenzy of acquisition in the Fall of 1861. Also part of the small convoy was the steam tug Seth Low.

At 4:00 pm, with the weather still favorable, Monitor crossed the bar of New York Harbor and stood out into the open ocean, one of only two times in her career she would leave the coast astern. Worden dismissed the pilot and sent with him a note for Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, informing him of their having left New York harbor. "In order to reach Hampton Roads as speedily as possible," he wrote, "whilst the fine weather lasts, I have been taken in tow by the tug."

For the moment, it was fine weather indeed, particularly given the capricious nature of the North Atlantic at that time of year. The wind was light from the west and the seas so smooth that not a drop of water came over the deck, despite Monitor’s mere eighteen inches of freeboard.

In the wardroom, the officers enjoyed a convivial meal. Worden had suffered a relapse of the fever he contracted while a prisoner of war in Montgomery and was able to eat nothing but cod liver oil. But despite his ill health and limited diet he entertained the officers with tales from his midshipman days.

As the sun was going down, the ship’s paymaster, William Keeler, climbed up on the top of the turret to enjoy the evening. The moon was shining down on the smooth water, and a smattering of sails could be seen along the horizon. Just to seaward, keeping their station, the Monitor’s escorts, the gunboats Currituck and Sachem, steamed along, their green starboard running lights gleaming in the gathering dark. It was a perfect evening, and Keeler was feeling buoyant when he finally went below.

The little convoy steamed on through the night, Monitor making five knots at the end of a four hundred foot towing hawser, stretching from the aft bitts of the Seth Low. The ironclad’s motion in the water was easy and stable, thanks to her wide beam and lack of any weight higher than the turret, nine feet above the deck. Chief Engineer Alban Stimers, who had come along as a volunteer, claimed, "I never saw a vessel more buoyant or less shocked in a heavy sea... There has not been sufficient movement to disturb a wine glass setting on the table."

Even Samuel Greene, the twenty-two year old executive officer, who, after sailing in her, did not consider Monitor "a seagoing vessel", admitted that her "roll was very easy and slow, and not at all deep. She pitched very little, and with no strain whatever. She is buoyant, but not very lively."

By 3:00 am the four vessels had covered ninety miles, with Absecon Light and Atlantic City off their starboard quarters. The two gunboats maintained their station to seaward of Monitor. The weather was still clear and cold, with moderate seas.

Then things started to get rough.

By dawn on the morning of the 7^th, the wind had veered around to the northwest and strengthened and the seas were building. Keeler woke to the feel of the vessel working harder in the seaway. Through his decklight he could see green water rushing over the deck above, as Monitor dipped her low sides into the waves.

It is axiomatic at sea that one never knows where the ship’s problems are until the first rough weather hits, and that principle was amply demonstrated on board Monitor. Once the seas began breaking over the flat deck the ship started leaking in a dozen places. Water came in around the deck lights and it poured down around the imperfectly sealed hatches. Worse, it rushed in all around the base of the turret, a leak sixty-three feet long.

John Ericsson, the brilliant engineer who created Monitor, had designed the turret to rest on a bronze ring on the deck. The weight of the turret on the smooth, soft metal was intended to form a watertight seal. But the sailors at the navy yard did not believe that the joint would be watertight. They resorted to the shipwright’s ancient method of sealing leaks - inserting old rope as caulking.

In this instance, a plaited, or braided, rope was laid around the circumference of the turret, between the turret and the bronze ring. "As might have been supposed," Ericsson wrote later, "the rough and uneven hemp rope did not form a perfect joint..." The frigid sea came in "like a water fall" and flooded out the berthing deck, directly under the turret, and poured into the engine room aft. All hands were soaked and miserable, and some, including Worden and the surgeon, Daniel Logue, were seasick.

With the seas rushing over the deck, the roof of the turret was the only place topside one could go. The seasick men retreated there for fresh air, one of the best remedies for mal de mer. Off the port side, Keeler observed the two gunboats still on station but making heavy weather of it, rolling hard, much harder than the stable Monitor. The ironclad had become "wet & very disagreeable", but she was not yet in danger.

Hell and High Water

All morning long the wind continued to build to gale force and the seas continued to mount. Where earlier the deck was just awash, now the waves were breaking over the ship as if she was a rock on the shore. Only the nine foot tall turret stayed above the surface as the seas made a clean sweep fore and aft. Cresting waves hit the pilot house and burst into the air, arching "over the Tower in most beautiful curves." The water slammed into the sides of the pilot house and shot through the eye slots with such force that it spun the helmsman around.

As the waves built, the sea found Monitor’s greatest Achilles’s heel. Just behind the turret were two square holes in the deck which served as smoke stacks, and behind those, two more for air intakes that supplied the forced air ventilation for the living spaces and the draft for the boiler fires. Like everything on Monitor’s deck, they were designed to be flush with the deck when the vessel was cleared for action. Realizing that there was a chance that water would come over the deck, Ericsson had provided square stacks that could be fitted over the openings. The smoke stacks were six feet high, the stacks on the air intakes four.

But Ericsson was not a sailor and he did not comprehend how high the seas could get. Worden did, and he objected to the size of the stacks, telling Ericsson they were too short. Ericsson disagreed and resented Worden’s objections, just as he resented any insinuation that anything he did was less than perfect. At last Worden gave in, telling Ericsson, "You build your vessel and I will sail her."

But Worden was not the only one who recognized the problem. Alban Stimers, now a passenger on board the ironclad, was the navy’s superintendent of construction for the Monitor while she was being built. He was a skilled engineer, a friend and follower of John Ericsson and he also spotted potential trouble. "The cause of the difficulty was that the air pipes that were to keep the water out of our blowers were not high enough," he wrote. "If Captain Ericsson had made them as high as I wanted them (same height as the turret) we would have suffered little inconvenience..."

Stimers brought this to Ericsson’s attention, many times, but Ericsson would not listen. "[H]e was very obstinate," Stimers wrote, "and insisted that four feet was high enough."

It was not. Water poured down the stacks, setting off a chain reaction of failures. Directly under the air intake openings in the deck were blowers. The blowers forced air into the fires in the boilers driving the engine and provided fresh air for the entire below deck ventilation system. The water soaked the belts which drove the blowers, causing them to slip, then stretch and break. As the blowers failed, the fires in the boilers began to die for lack of air. As the fires went out, the steam pressure dropped off - the very pressure that was needed to drive the bilge pumps that kept the ship from sinking.

Water also cascaded down the smoke stacks and vaporized in the intense heat of the fireboxes. The blasts of steam in the fireboxes forced poisonous gases, "hydrogen and carbonic acid" out through the furnace and ash pan doors. Steam, smoke and toxic gas filled the engine room where the black gang was struggling to fix the blowers. The engine room could not be cleared of the gas without the blowers to force it out.

Monitor had two blowers. When the belt on the first one broke, the ship’s engineer, Isaac Newton, leapt to repair it before the air in the engine room became untenable. He had almost managed to get a new belt in place when the second blower gave out.

Newton knew he needed help. He reported to Alban Stimers and Stimers raced to the engine room. With the assistance of the other engineers and firemen, Stimers concentrated on the first blower which had a new belt nearly in place. But it was no good, he could not get the blower operating, and the space was filling with toxic gas. One by one the men began to collapse at their stations, overcome. Stimers ordered everyone out of the engine room.

Alerted to the situation, Lt. Greene led a gang of seamen aft to the engine room, where he was greeted by a shocking scene, the engine room choked with gas, smoke and steam, the engineers, firemen and coal passers collapsing in heaps on the iron deck plates, "apparently as dead as men ever were."

Greene led his crew into the hellish place and began dragging the unconscious black gang out through the oval door from the engine room to the berthing deck. Soon the sailors, too, were gagging, choking, their heads swimming, as they struggled to get the dying engineers to fresh air.

Stimers remained in the engine room. He had to get just one blower on line. If he could do that, then Monitor would live.

But he could not. Try as he might, he could not get the blower to work, and the gas was starting to overwhelm him, too. His knees were weak and he could no longer think straight. Finally, on the verge of collapse, he staggered through the bulkhead door to the berthing deck.

William Keeler was up on the turret, watching, transfixed, as Monitor worked in the big seas, rolling her lee side under, then coming up again, shedding water "like Niagra Falls." Green water rolled over the deck, breaking against the pilot house and turret, completely submerging the hull so it looked as if the ship would be buried by the sea. The gunboats were still on station, rolling so hard that they dipped the muzzles of their guns in the water. The four vessels were near the Delaware/Maryland border, ten miles off shore. Fenwick Island Light - the starting point of the Mason-Dixon Line - was bearing west by south.

Around four o’clock in the afternoon, Keeler decided to go below. As he climbed down through the small hatch he met an engineer coming up, "pale, black, wet & staggering along gasping for breath." The engineer asked Keeler for brandy, and Keeler agreed to get him some. The paymaster dove below, right into the nightmare on the lower deck.

While the solid iron door in the bulkhead between the engine room and berthing deck was closed, the smoke and gas was confined to the after part of the ship. Once the black gang began to evacuate, and the door was flung open, the entire ship was filled with the deadly fumes. Keeler went below just as Greene’s men were hauling the last of the engineering department out of the engine room and up the turret hatch. By now the sailors were "stifled with the gas", nearly as bad off as the engineers.

Keeler could see that the smoke and gas was billowing out of the engine room door, which was still hanging open. Choking and suffocating, he staggered over to the door to shut it, but one of the sailors still below told him that there might be one man left behind.

Keeler charged into the engine room, stepping over heaps of coal and ash, and found the man, unconscious and lying on the floor plates. Keeler and a sailor who had followed him in dragged the engineer out and shut the engine room door. They wrestled the half choked man up the ladder to the turret, and then up another ladder to the roof of the turret, the only place now where the crew could find breathable air. By the time they pulled him topside, the engineer was nearly dead.

Night was coming on and all of Monitor’s crew was huddled on top of the turret. An umbrella-like awning covered the turret and a piece of canvas was rigged to windward across the awning stanchions to minimize the spray coming on board. The ensign was run up the staff inverted, a universal distress signal, in hopes that the Currituck and Sachem would see them. But the gunboats were fighting their own battle and would have been of little use in that wild sea.

As Greene put it, "times looked rather blue..."

The Old Tank

Stimers had just managed to make it to the roof of the turret, where he found "three engineers and several firemen senseless." He sprawled out flat, gasping for air.

Soon after, Isaac Newton recovered enough to regain his sense of duty, "though not enough to use his best judgement..." Newton decided that he had to go back to the engine room. Stimers, though he outranked Newton, had no official position on board Monitor and could not stop him. Newton lunged into the smoke and gas again, rigging a hose to wet down the fires, which would presumably quench them and put a stop the deadly gas.

He got no further than attaching the nozzle to the hose before he was once again overcome. He staggered to the engine room door and made it onto the berthing deck before he collapsed. Fortunately, a fireman saw him go down and dragged him topside again. For fifteen minutes the surgeon worked on him, until he slowly began to revive, though "his case looked doubtful for several hours..."

With the blowers off line, the fires in the boilers’ fireboxes began to die and the steam pressure dropped off. The turns on the propellor slowed to a near stop and the pumps would not work.

Lt. Greene led a gang of men below. With the fires going out, the smoke and gas had likely dissipated, as the sailors were able to remain below while they tried to find some way of keeping the ship afloat.

The water was deep and rising fast. Greene ordered the hand pumps rigged on the berthing deck. There were only two scuttles through which the discharge hoses could be passed. One was in the deck, forward, which clearly could not be opened. The other was through the turret, more than seventeen feet above the berthing deck.

The hoses were run up though the turret but the hand pumps could not generate enough force to lift the water that high. The only option left was to bail, but that was pointless. It would take far to long to hand the buckets up through the turret to be dumped over the side. There was nothing more that they could do.

The only thing in Monitor’s favor was the direction of the wind, which was off shore, allowing them to approach the coastline with less fear of being driven on to the beach. By late afternoon, they managed to hail the tug, four hundred feet ahead, and signal to them to tow the Monitor closer in to the land, where they hoped to find calmer water.

For several hours the Seth Low towed the disabled ironclad toward the Maryland shore, hard steaming for the small tug. During that time Stimers, on the roof of the turret, dispatched men in intervals to race down to the engine room and perform a given task, then get topside again before they passed out. With all of the engineers disabled, he had to rely on the firemen to perform the engineering duties, but in that way he managed to make progress in setting the blowers to rights.

It was around 8:00 pm when the Seth Low finally towed the Monitor into calmer water near shore and the engineers could go back in the engine room. Able to breath, and with no more water coming down the blower pipes, they soon had the fires going again. Steam was applied to the engine and pumps and the ship was freed of the water she had taken on. With the crisis seemingly over, and the systems back on line, the Monitor was under way once more.

By the time the ventilators had blown all of the toxic fumes out from the ship’s interior, it was full dark. The men stumbled below and dined on crackers and cheese and water. Monitor continued on her course, south southwest, making five knots through now calm seas.

Captain Worden had had little sleep in the past thirty-six hours, and that, combined with the vestiges of fever and the diet of cod liver oil left him nearly dead on his feet. Lt. Greene offered to take the watch from 8:00 to midnight and Worden agreed, retiring to his cabin for a blessed four hour’s sleep.

Greene passed the watch on the Monitor’s turret, steaming along through ideal conditions with "smooth sea, clear sky, the moon out and the old tank going along fine and six knots very nicely." When the change of watch came up at midnight, Greene felt that conditions were so good that there was no need for Worden to turn out. Greene offered to let Worden sleep, the executive officer agreeing to lay down with his clothes on - all standing, as it is called - so that he could be called out instantly if there was a problem. Worden agreed, and the men went to their respective cabins to rest.

No sooner had he laid down, then Greene was rocketed out of bed by the most "dismal, awful sound" he had ever heard, a sound that would make the din of battle sound like music. It resembled the "death groans of twenty men."

Greene rushed from his cabin and Worden did as well. Monitor had passed over shoal water and once again found herself in steep, rough seas, this time coming bow-on. In the forward end of Monitor’s deck there was a round anchor well, the top of which was covered with two-inch plate iron. As the bow slammed down into the head seas, the air in the anchor well was compressed. It’s only outlet was through the hawse pipe, which ran from the after end of the anchor well to the interior of the ship and allowed the anchor chain to come on board. The effect was like blowing a giant horn right into the wardroom.

Since the hawse pipe was mere inches above the waterline, more than just air was coming in. With every wave that came up under the bow, the sea water came jetting in "in a perfect stream." Greene claimed that the water came in with such force that it ran over the wardroom table, thirty feet away, before flowing aft to the berth deck.

Worden and Greene struggled in the freezing water to plug the hawse pipe (Ericsson claimed it was a "gross oversight on the part of the executive officer" that it was not plugged before they left the harbor, and he had a point). They managed to get the pipe at least partially blocked, but by then the water was coming down the blower pipes again, threatening the blowers, as the nightmare of that afternoon repeated itself.

From the top of the turret they tried to hail the Seth Low but being down wind of the tug they could not be heard, nor could they be seen in the dark. It was a dismal, bleak moment, and the exhausted men began to despair of living to see the sunrise.

Once again the seas were making a clean sweep over Monitor’s decks. Anxiously, Greene sent for continuous reports on the state of the blowers. Every time the firemen answered the same - the blowers were going slowly, but they could not be kept going much longer unless the water stopped coming down the pipes.

Around one o’clock in the morning, with the Monitor pitching hard into the head seas, the tiller ropes came off the steering wheel and jammed themselves into a great tangled mess. As the Seth Low blithely towed the ship along, Monitor began to veer wildly side to side, out of control. The officers felt certain the hawser would part under that incredible strain, and then Monitor, her engine barely turning, her steering gear disabled, would be at the mercy of the sea. But the hawser was new, and it held.

The sailors struggled with the tiller ropes but they could not get them rigged again. Finally they turned out Alban Stimers who managed to get the ropes back on the wheel and working. The helmsman now had control of the rudder, and was able to keep the vessel from sheering off, but the seas were still breaking across the deck and pouring down the blower pipes.

By 3:00 am the seas had gone down a bit, though significant water was still coming on board. Greene continued to ask for reports. "The never failing answer from the Engine Room," he wrote, "‘Blowers going slowly, but can’t go much longer.’"

It was a bleak time on board the ironclad as the men once again found themselves in great jeopardy with nothing they could do. This time, their hopelessness was no doubt augmented by the dark and their own exhaustion. Samuel Greene described the time from 4:00 am until dawn as "certainly the longest hour and a half I have ever spent." He felt as if the sun had stopped in China and would never come back to their stretch of the North Atlantic.

Hampton Roads

Greene’s fears notwithstanding, the sun finally broke the horizon to the east and the men on Monitor’s turret were able to signal the Seth Low that they needed to head more inshore. For the second time in ten hours the tug pulled the ironclad into calmer waters. By 8:00 o’clock in the morning the danger was passed, thought he seas continued to roll over Monitor’s deck, coming in around the tower and hatches, and preserving the high level of misery felt by the men below.

By 1:00 pm they were once again in "fine clear weather" with Smith Island lights, just north of Cape Charles and the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay bearing southwest by west and eleven miles distant. At 2:30 the much abused hawser finally parted, but with the weather moderated they had no difficulty in bending on a fresh one.

Around 4:00 pm the little convoy was steaming past Cape Henry, the southern point marking the entrance to the Bay and the route to Hampton Roads. Far off, they could hear the muted sound of gunfire. Gray clouds of gun smoke hung over the low shoreline in the distance. Something was happening. They did not know what, but they could guess.

Worden ordered the Monitor cleared for action. She was "stripped of her sea rig" meaning that the pipes on the smoke stack and blower intakes were removed, iron deadlights placed over the decklights, and the awning removed from the top of the turret. The turret was keyed up so that it could revolve freely and the useless plaited rope removed. The massive iron round shot was hoisted up into the turret.

As the Monitor steamed closer to Hampton Roads the men could now see the streak and burst of shells in the air. The sound of gunfire was louder. Curiosity, anxiety and fear mounted.

By 7:00 pm the Monitor was twelve miles from Fortress Monroe. The flash of bursting shells was vivid in the fading light. A pilot boat came out to meet the arriving vessel.

The pilot who came on board was full of news. He described the devastation that Virginia had wrought that day. He told the stunned men about the sinking of the Cumberland, the Congress set on fire, Minnesota grounded and awaiting her destruction at the hands of the invulnerable Confederate ironclad. A strange mood settled over the ship - anger, sadness, a desire for vengeance, a desperate longing to get into the fight.

The Monitor’s crew was exhausted. They had come about as close to sinking as they could come but they had lived. They were fifty-one hours out of New York City, and they were six hours too late.