The U.S. Navy's Three Headed Monster-USS Roanoke

One perceived flaw in the design of the original USS Monitor was its lack of firepower. With only two XI-inch guns, many in the U.S. Navy felt the need to upgrade the design. Many engineers felt this could be solved by putting a bigger gun in the turret, or by adding a second turret. USS Monitor's original designer, John Ericsson, was not in favor of a second turret as he saw no need for it.  He also believed the turrets would get in the way of the line of fire.

USS Roanoke as a Merrimack-class steam frigate, 1855

John Lenthall, the Navy's long time chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, decided that two turrets were insufficient. Shortly after the Battle of Hampton Roads, Lenthall got the idea in his head that if the Confederacy could convert a ship like Merrimack into an ironclad, the U.S. Navy could do the same.

With the Secretary's approval, Lenthall sent shipyards and ironworks in New York City plans to convert Roanoke into an ironclad monitor-type warship with three turrets. Lenthall's design called for the turrets to be armored with single iron plates each twenty-two feet long, 4 1/2-inches thick, and weighing four tons. Each turret housed either XV-inch Dahlghrens or a 150-pounder Parrott Rifle. If that was not enough firepower, Lenthall wanted a "huge axe" on the bow of the ship in order to ram.

USS Roanoke underway in smooth seas as imagine by an artist.

The Common Council of New York City saw the ship and lobbied the Navy hard to assign the vessel as a harbor defense ship for New York harbor. As it usually did to local government requests, the Navy rejected the idea and pencil the ship in for fort suppression duty off of the coast of Charleston.

The conversion was a remarkable feat of American engineering. Iron forges in four different states provided the huge plates to the Novelty Iron Works in New York City. Each plate then had to be heated and bent to correct curvature. In all, workers placed 1,000 additional tons of armor.

 While she was a marvel of engineering, the brains at Scientific American magazine were skeptical of Lenthall's design. "If she makes nine knots, we shall be agreeably disappointed," they wrote. "As the Roanoke will sit very low in the water, we hope that proper arrangements will be made for ventilation on the main deck. The defects of the Galena and Monitor, so clearly pointed out in the Scientific American of last week, by an intelligent correspondent, will be reproduced in the Roanoke. [This will render] her very deficient as a 'sea boat,' unless this advice is heeded."

The advice was not taken. The Navy charged forward and Roanoke put to sea as the most powerful warship in the world. Sent to Hampton Roads, her captain quickly discovered what Scientific American writers predicted. Monitor-type ships in general did not have very good sea-keeping traits to begin with, and Roanoke had the worst of them all.

USS Roanoke tied up as she spent most of her career.

First, she lacked speed. Scientific American was hoping for nine knots. Captain Sanders, however, reported to Secretary Welles that the ship would not go more than five knots. He concluded that he could "not consider the Roanoke adapted to fighting a battle at sea, on account of her rolling render her guns unserviceable and exposing her to shot below her iron plating."

All Sanders could recommend was that the ship serve as a coastal defense vessel. Welles agreed, but did not assign the ship to New York City. Once the ship arrived in Hampton Roads, she remained there for the rest of the war.

USS Passaic-Bringing a Bigger Gun to the Fight




USS Passaic testing her XV-inch Dahlgren towards the Palisades.

When asked by a Congressional panel investigating the outcome of the Battle of Hampton Roads and the U.S. Navy response to future Confederate ironclads, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox simply replied, "build a bigger gun." Indeed, a bigger gun had been built: the XV-inch Dahlgren.  At the time, there was no platform to use it on.  Fortunately, engineer/inventor John Ericsson provided one. 

Inside Passaic's turret, the XV-inch gun is on the far side.

While USS Monitor was a wonder of engineering, she did have flaws exposed during the Battle of Hampton Roads.  Ericsson sought to fix that with his next generation of "monitor"-type ironclads.  The first of the new generation of monitors was Passaic.  Named for the town of Passaic, New Jersey, the ship displaced 400 more tons than the original Monitor.  It housed a larger engineering plant and a wider hull for better sea keeping traits.  The pilot house was constructed on top of the turret, instead of the front like the Monitor.  With the bigger ship, workers placed one 42,000-pound XV-inch Dahlgren in the turret, along side one XI-inch Dahlgren.  Firing a 352-pound shell, the gun itself was one of the largest weapons ever deployed during the war. 

The new gun did have its problems.  The barrel was purposely built short to protect the muzzle from being exposed to enemy fire.  This led to the issue of smoke from each shot fired building up inside the turret.  To deal with this issue, Ericsson designed a special "smoke box" to protect the gunners.  While it worked, the box did slow down the rate of fire.

After launching at the Contential Iron Works (same builder as Monitor), Passasic steamed up the Hudson river to the Palisades cliffs, north of New York City, in early November 1862.  Here, to a booming echo up and down the river, gunners test-fired the monster XV-inch gun with increasing amounts of gunpowder (topping out at forty-five pounds of gunpowder per shooting) and shot.  Observers deemed each test a success, and determined Passaic was ready for action.  The Passaic soon set sail for Hampton Roads to join up with Monitor.  The Northern press boldly and brashly claimed that the Navy finally had its weapon against the forts of Charleston. 

Drawings of a Mad Man/Genius-John Ericsson's Monitor Concept

Ericsson first drew a traverse sketch of his idea and then drew over it with a long view. As one can see Ericsson "showed his work" by working out the math on top of the drawings.

While these look like sketches drawn by a mad man at 3 in the morning who had not been to bed in over 72 hours, these are actually inventor/designer/engineer John Ericsson's 1854 concept of a "monitor" type warship. After much political stalling, the Ironclad Board would formally endorse his design in 1861. The idea behind Monitor, however, had been shuffling around in Ericsson's head long before the outbreak of war.

A rough idea of his monitor's submerged propeller system.

According to a 1911 biography The Life Of John Ericsson, the Swedish-born engineer had the idea from early on  in his professional career.  Monitor, according to Ericsson, was not just a class warship, but rather a fundamental shift in the way architects should look at warship design.  He wrote "The monitor of 1854 was the visible part of my system, and its grand features were excluded from its published drawings and description...An impregnable and partially submerged instrument for destroying ships of war has been one of the hobbies of my life. I had the plan matured long before I left England. As for protecting war engines for naval purposes with iron, the idea is as old as my recollection."

Ericsson's "monitor system" not only was about designing ships with armored turrets, but also building them with a submerged screw propeller that was safe from hostile fire. In Ericsson's mind, the water surrounding a ship was just as important as any metallic armor protecting the exposed area.

Some Artistic Representations of John Ericsson in Washington, DC

John Ericsson’s design for the USS Monitor was crucial to the Union in the early years of the war and proved so important that it became the namesake of that style of ironclad warship. The United States Navy needed their own ironclad to go up against the CSS Virginia, and Swedish-born Ericsson—already a technological inventor and engineer of some renown—saved the day with his idea that seemed "the image of nothing in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the water under the earth."

Ericsson has a rightful though often forgotten place in American history and one of the best ways to reconnect with slightly obscure figures is to experience artistic representations of their person. A quick search reveals that the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC has at least twelve pieces of Ericsson-related art ranging from a marble sculpture to traditional oil on canvas to albumen silver print. Most of these portraits are viewable online and this portrait of Ericcson as well as this 1862 group portrait entitled Men of Progress are viewable in person in the National Portrait Gallery’s American Origins exhibit.

After seeing Ericsson’s portraits, don’t forget to visit the John Ericsson National Memorial, located in West Potomac Park, south of the Lincoln Memorial. Here a six-foot-five figure of Ericsson sits surrounded by figures representing “adventure,” “labor,” and “vision”—three qualities that Ericsson and the Civil War Navies truly exemplified.