Behold the fate of sublunary things
She armor wears, who once outspread her wings!
Before proceeding with the theme of this article, it would be well, perhaps, to apologize to Dr. Mackenzie for having paraphrased the verses written by him about the Dutch yacht Princess Mary. It was in this kingly craft that Prince William made his voyage from Holland to England near the end of the seventeenth century. In time she descended in scale from a royal pleasure craft to a British transport during the Crimean War, and then to coal carrier and as if to hide her shame, changed her name to the Betsy Cairns. The original verses run:
Behold the fate of sublunary things
She exports coal, who once imported kings.
The biography of ships, writing of them in a personified way, shows many curious phases of career and changes of physical aspect. For instance, the clipper ship Nightingale built to carry passengers in luxury to the exposition in London in the early fifties, was diverted very soon afterward because of the discovery of gold to the passenger and freighting trade to California. She then became a slave Hading vessel, flying the Brazilian flag, and after her capture by one of our naval vessels, she performed service on the blockade during the Civil War. Ultimately she was abandoned at sea in 1893 while under the Norwegian flag.
Changes in the physical aspect of ships are common. “Old Ironsides,” had she been a bit more staunch, in 1870, would have been converted into a steam frigate. This project was given serious consideration, but was abandoned because of lack of strength. In the World War, many an innocent looking “Q-Ship” disguised its deadly purpose with ordinary-looking deck houses, old rigs, and the like. Their gallant crews and officers resembled in every way the veriest tramps of the sea. No ship, not even the “razees” of the Civil War, ever underwent such a complete metamorphosis as did that fine steam frigate Merrimac after her capture and salvage by the Navy of the Confederate States. The steam frigate Merrimac, having been scuttled and burned by the naval forces on abandonment of the Norfolk Navy Yard, April 20, 1861, was converted by the Southern States Navy into an ironclad ram. After conversion she, too, had her name changed, and became the C.S.S. Virginia. The terrific combat in Hampton Roads, March 9, 1862, between the Merrimac (10 guns), in her new disguise as an armored vessel, and the little “cheese-box-on-a-raft,” Monitor (2 guns), has been pictured and written so many times it will form no part of this article. This engagement was but little more than two weeks old when Currier and Ives published a lithograph that depicted the event which revolutionized naval construction and soon brought “the present backbone” of our fleets into being.
Let us see now what Americans thought of our U. S. steam frigate Merrimac when she was launched and fitted out and what Englishmen said of her when she appeared in the Thames; before her white wings were singed and scorched by the flames of the Civil War, before she donned her beetle-like steel carapace and joined the enemy’s naval force. Her principal dimensions, battery, and engine power can be had almost anywhere but not so the account of her launching and visit to England which “created quite a flutter among the naval gentry of Great Britain.”
The launching of the U. S. steam frigate Merrimac was witnessed at the Navy Yard, Charlestown, Massachusetts, on June 14, 1855, “by at least 20,000 visitors” and took place from the first ship house built, at what today is known as the U. S. Navy Yard, Boston. An illustrated account of this event was published on July 14, 1855, in one of the leading pictorial weeklies of Boston.
It was a magnificent spectacle, and not an accident occurred to mar the pleasure of the multitude who gazed upon it. All the bridges, shores, wharves, shipping, housetops, from which a view of the scene could be obtained, were thronged with people, while hundreds of sail and rowboats, crowded to the utmost capacity, covered the water. Many hundreds of ladies and gentlemen were stationed on the line-of-battle ships Ohio and Vermont, the latter of which we remember seeing launched a few years since. As the time approached for the first rush of the leviathan into the element she is destined to ride for many years, we trust, the excitement was breathless, and a delay of some minutes seemed an age. All eyes were riveted on the dim-discerned hull. At last a universal shout of “Here she comes!” followed instantly by the crash of cannon, announced that she had left her cradle. With cheer on cheer, mingling with the roar of the guns, she glided forward to the water like a Naiad, and took her first bath. All anxiety as to her performance was immediately dispelled as she rode onward, light and graceful as a swan. Her exquisite symmetry and beautiful proportion rendered it too difficult to realize her size (4,000 tons), till the eye made a comparison with adjacent craft. The Merrimack is the first of a fleet of six steam frigates ordered to be built, and if the remainder of them are equal to her, we shall, at last, have something like a steam navy. The utmost alacrity has been displayed in building her, and the mechanics employed on her have reason to be proud of their handiwork. The model was furnished by Mr. Lenthall, chief of the bureau of construction, and she has been built under the superintendence of Como. Gregory, and by the direction of Mr. Delano, naval constructor of the Charlestown navy yard, and Mr. Melvin Simmons, master carpenter. The keel was laid one year since. She is now to be fitted for the service with the utmost despatch, and the only delay likely to occur will be in the casting of the guns, at Alger’s foundry—a very nice as well as tedious process. When the Merrimack and her sister steam frigates are once equipped and fairly afloat, bearing aloft the stars and stripes, we shall have no reason to be ashamed of our steam navy. This squadron will form a nucleus, at least, around which, in time of need, may be gathered, as circumstances warrant the addition, a formidable fleet of ships, independent of wind and tide.
Thus did the Merrimac, as she slid into the waters of Boston Harbor, show that the time had come when we could challenge the skill and ability of the shipbuilders of France and England and overtake them when necessary. Alas, however, she was destined to ride in her element but a few short years when Mars, the Great Wizard of War Imagination, stepped in and decreed—“Fold thy wings away forever. I must have new tools with which to ply my trade on the sea.”
The London Times wrote a “thundering editorial” on the Merrimac whose appearance in English waters made quite as great an impression as did the merchant clipper ship Great Republic, born of the brain and fashioned by the hand of Donald McKay. The comment on America’s steam frigate ran thus:
Those intelligent Yankees who would “whip creation know at least how to build a steam frigate. They have just sent us one to look at, the Merrimack, a screw steamer of 3,500 tons, 500 horse power, and carrying forty guns of the heaviest caliber. She is one of the six frigates recently built, and of the same class, or probably smaller, than the twelve recently laid down for building.’ The Merrimack, on her arrival, made for the neighborhood of Spithead, so as to give our dockyard and naval authorities an opportunity of inspecting the style of vessels which would have “chawed” _ up some of our eighty-fours on the West India station, had impolicy or accident precipitated us into a war. Now there are not many, if there are any, vessels in the British Navy, of the same class, a match for the Merrimack. The royal dockyards, if they are not behind the age in shipbuilding, are certainly not in advance of it. Our surveyors general seem to possess only the imitative talent of a Chinaman. They originate nothing. It is only when every private shipowner and every foreign power that owns a bumboat, has adopted a new discovery or improved an old one, that we take it up, content to follow in the rear, when we ought to lead the van. This is bad shipbuilding policy for a great naval power. If our navy afloat be Jaro-e or small, it should be the most powerful and efficient of its kind. We trust that the Merrimack may stimulate the energies of our present surveyor-general. He has just been made a K.C.B. for doing nothing he can boast of.; let him now set to work and promote such plans as will place our steam-frigate navy individually upon an equality with, if not pre-eminently over, the vessels of every other power. A recent writer in England, speaking of this country, remarks “the fact that there is such intense application of American ingenuity in the manufacture of fire-arms, proves, we think, that there is a strong tendency to military ambition in the American mind.” It is acknowledged that, during the war of 1812, the superior skill of the American gunners, their quickness in firing, and the accuracy with which they served their guns, was the secret of many a naval triumph over equal or superior forces. In the Revolutionary War the fatal accuracy of aim on the part of the Americans, and the larger number killed among the British, even when the American forces were inferior in number, illustrates the same thing. The American people have been called a nation of “sharpshooters, and justly, for from boyhood to manhood, not only in the West and South, but in New England, Americans handle guns and become practised shooters. If to this we add the superiority of Americans in the manufacture of fire-arms— a superiority acknowledged by the purchase of arms by foreign nations, and the adoption of our modes of manufacture and our improvements in England; and consider the extent to which the government and individuals are concerned in the manufacture of arms, while there is no impending war, but the prospect of permanent peace, there is reason for the remark quoted above, that there is in the American mind a taste for military affairs. Their ships of war always attract attention for the superiority of their architecture, their force and their management, their skill being seen not less in naval armaments, than in small arms designed for the hands of the people. The steam- frigate Merrimack is the smallest and most inferior of the six steam-frigates recently added to their navy, and yet it is admitted by our authorities that it is able to cope with any English steam- frigate or line-of-battle ship in the British Navy.
In a brief five years, the frigate thus highly admired and greatly praised, was lying on the bottom at her berth at the Navy Yard, Norfolk, a scuttled ruin; no longer with tall and graceful spars; her beautiful white wings singed and burned, never to be spread again. But she was soon to rise again, not like a phoenix, for she did not reproduce her kind but in the far more formidable shape of an armored ram. She filled what the Confederate Secretary of the Navy characterized as “a possession of the first necessity,” to the states in rebellion. He had written to the Honorable C. M. Conrad, chairman of the Naval Committee of the Confederacy on May 8, 1861:
I regard the possession of an iron-armored ship as a matter of the first necessity. Such a vessel at this time could traverse the entire coast of the United States, prevent all blockades, and encounter, with a fair prospect of success their entire navy.
And well the C.S.S. Virginia might have done this had Ericsson’s Monitor not stepped into the forefront.
The frigate Merrimac was raised at an expense of $6,000, after which it was estimated she could be prepared to contend successfully against the enemy’s fleet at a cost of a trifle less than $173,000. The basis of this estimate was that of shielding her “with 3-inch iron placed at such an angle as to render her bullet-proof, and at the same time, arming her with the heaviest of guns, and fitting her with a spur for ramming.” Like a bee, she left it sticking in the side of her first victim, the U.S.S. Cumberland. When the affairs of the Navy Department of the Confederacy were investigated in 1863, Mr. E. C. Murray, a practical shipbuilder of the South, of twenty years’ experience, testified: “I furnished the plan of the Merimac, though by some Jeremy diddling, it is attributed to Lieutenant Brooke.”
It is not a matter of importance to weigh the merits of the claim of Mr. Murray against that of Commander John M. Brooke, C.S.N., to whom the first question asked upon mounting the witness stand, was: “Do you know anything about the origin of the ironclad Virginia?” Commander Brooke answered:
“Yes, Sir: I know of her origin because I was concerned in originating the ship.”
He then went on to say:
The Secretary and myself had conversed upon the subject of protecting ships with ironclading very frequently, and at last I proposed to him a plan. That was about early in June, 1861, just after the Secretary came here from Montgomery. He approved of the plan, and I asked him to send to Norfolk for some practical shipbuilder, to draw out a plan in detail. He sent for one, and one of the employees of the yard, whose position then I did not know, except that I knew he was not a regular constructor, was sent up. He said he knew nothing of drafting, and although he approved of the general plan, he could not make the drawing. This was what I wanted done chiefly. He was here a few days, and complained of being made sick by the water, and was therefore permitted to return to Norfolk. I then determined to go on with the drawing myself, but asked the Secretary to send for the naval constructor at Norfolk, and naval engineer, so that they might be consulted in relation to the vessel. They came up, and this constructor brought with him a model. I should have said that the name of the constructor was J. L. Porter. This model is now one of the models in the Secretary’s room. It consisted of a shield and hull, the extremities of the hull terminating with a shield, forming a sort of box or scow, upon which the shield was supported. The Secretary directed the constructor, Chief Engineer Williamson, and myself to meet him at my office here. We met there, and this model was examined by us all, and the form of the shield was approved. It was considered a good shield and for ordinary purposes, a good boat for harbor defense. The Secretary then called the attention of Mr. Porter and Mr. Williamson to the drawing, giving a general idea of the vessel I proposed. The difference between the model and my drawing consisted in the one I proposed having the ends prolonged and shaped like those of any fast vessel, and in order to protect them from the enemy they were to be submerged two feet under water, so that nothing was to be seen afloat but the shield itself. The object of having these parts of the vessel submerged was to gain speed and to have buoyancy without exposing the hull, and to avoid increasing the draft of water. Mr. Porter and Mr. Williamson, after looking at the drawing, approved of it, and the Secretary directed us to get up a vessel on that plan. Mr. Porter’s shield and the one I proposed were almost identical. Mr. Porter, being a draftsman, immediately drew a plan of such a vessel, of comparatively light draft. I think she was to draw something over eight feet of water. Mr. Williamson and myself went to look for engines. We went to the Tredegar Works and inquired there, but there were no suitable engines to be had. Mr. Porter completed the draft, and it is now in my office. Mr. Williamson subsequently stated that the engines of the Merrimack could be repaired, and made available, but that they could not be used well in any other vessel unless she had equal draft of water, or nearly equal. Mr. Williamson proposed to put the shield on the Merrimack. Mr. Porter and myself thought the draft too great, but were, nevertheless, of opinion that it was the best thing that could be done with our means; and Mr. Porter was ordered by the Secretary to Norfolk to make a plan of the vessel, in accordance with the plan which we had approved, and which I mentioned before as having been submitted to the Secretary. Mr. Porter did so. He sent up drawings which were of the same general description as those he made before in accordance with my suggestion. Mr. Porter was directed to perform all the duties of constructor in connection with the alteration of this ship, Mr. Williamson was directed to attend to the engines, and I was directed to attend to having iron prepared in Richmond for her; and the work was then prosecuted with all the energy possible, in my opinion. It was a difficult matter to get iron from Richmond to Norfolk, there being over 700 tons of iron sent down in the course of her construction.
After the vessel was launched, Mr. Porter stated to me that he had accidentally omitted in his calculation some weights which were on board the ship, in consequence of which she did not draw as much water when launched as he anticipated. I suppose that is about all that is required in connection with that ship. The secretary was constantly urging on the parties at the yard to hasten the construction of the vessel. He was of the opinion that vessels of that description would be the most efficient and the most formidable in the world for the purpose for which she was intended.
I wonder what has become of the model of the C.S.S. Virginia that one time graced the office of Secretary Mallory!
A plan for the proposed shield for the Merrimac was built and tested as the testimony of Commander Brooke shows:
We constructed first a target from a plan proposed for the Merrimack’s shield. The wood was about twenty-four inches thick; the iron three inches thick, consisting of one-inch plates three deep; the surface target was inclined at an angle of about thirty degrees with the horizon. At a distance of about 300 yards, eight-inch solid shot, with a charge of ten pounds of powder, penetrated the iron and entered five inches into the wood; and this was the case with several shots—some seven or eight. It was then thought proper to increase the thickness to four inches. A new target was constructed, of which the plates were two inches thick, forming two layers. Eight-inch shot, with ten-pound charges and nine-inch shells, weighing about seventy pounds, with ten-pound charges, were fired against the target. The outer plates were shattered, the inner were cracked, but the wood was not visible through the cracks in the plating. The original plan contemplated the first plating described, but this experiment indicated the necessity of increasing the thickness to four inches—which was done. The eleven-inch shot of the Monitor would have penetrated the shield of the first description, I think, very readily; but it did not penetrate the four-inch shield in the battle. These were the experiments. I might mention in that connection that I was assisted in making the experiment by Lieutenant Catesby Jones, who was perfectly conversant with everything that relates to ordnance.
The novelty of the hull consisted in submerging the ends, but no experiment was made to determine how it would serve. Four of her guns were rifles, made at the Tredegar Works in Richmond, under Commander Brooke’s direction. He says also:
The remainder of her battery were nine-inch shell guns. The rifle guns were intended to throw bolts as well as shells, but owing to the fact that the enemy had no ironclad afloat at the time she first went out, and there being a great pressure upon the works for projectiles of other kinds proper to use against wooden vessels, she was not furnished with bolts. If she had been, the experiment made here with guns of the same caliber show that the turret of the Monitor would have been penetrated by them. Everything connected with the ship, except the old hull, was novel, so far as practical application was concerned, and the difficulties were overcome as they presented themselves by consultation, reflection, and study.
The work of reconstructing the U. S. steam frigate Merrimac as an ironclad ram was commenced on June 23, 1861, and completed, within a day or two of the time she went to Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862. The C.S.S. Virginia by the Confederate order, was destroyed at 5:00 a.m., May 11, 1862, with the idea of obstructing the James River. A third of a century later a similar expedient was attempted by a son of the South in the Spanish-American War at Santiago with a vessel bearing this same name.