The Stevens Battery was arguably the most technologically advanced warship of the mid-19th century. Conceptually, the ship was futuristic, with no masts or sails atop her sleek, stiletto-shaped iron hull. Well armed and armored, she was designed to be invulnerable to shot and shell as well as highly maneuverable and fast; the propeller-driven steamship had an estimated top speed of 20 knots. Despite these promises, however, the vessel sat uncompleted at her building site in Hoboken, New Jersey, from 1854 until 1881.
Had the battery been launched on schedule in the late 1850s, she would have been the United States' first armored iron-hulled warship. In the decades between her proposal and scrapping, there were three distinctly different versions of the Stevens Battery, each of which represented an effort to adapt the ship to the rapidly changing realities of naval technology.
The vessel was the brainchild of Robert L. and Edwin A. Stevens. Brilliant entrepreneurs, they possessed a passion for railroads and steamships. Such inclinations ran in the family. Their father, John Stevens, was an inventor and engineer who helped develop the propeller for marine propulsion and steamboat at the end of the 18th century. In 1814 his plans for a saucer-shaped, steam-powered harbor-defense ironclad were rejected by the government. Twenty-seven years later, on 13 August 1841, his sons submitted their own proposal for an armored ship, and in January 1842, the Navy Board of Commissioners approved it. Secretary of the Navy Abel P. Upshur was given authority to draw up a contract, the first government authorization for the making of such a warship.
A foreign-policy crisis had contributed to the approval of the Stevens Battery. In the summer of 1841, tensions resulting from U.S.-Canadian boundary disputes, combined with the killing of an American by a British national, all seemed to point to a third war between the United States and Great Britain. President John Tyler and Secretary Upshur argued that the American Navy should have at least half the number of warships as the British Navy. Congress and the President were of one mind on the matter—$8.5 million in naval expenditures afforded ample evidence of political support. The Stevens Battery was the most technologically ambitious part of this naval buildup.
The battery was intended to serve as an adjunct to the coastal fortifications of New York Harbor. When President Tyler approved the Stevens Battery Act in 1841, memories of the 1813 British raid on Hampton, Virginia, and the burning of Washington in 1814 were relatively fresh.
1844: The Original Battery
The program got off to an uneven start. The Stevens family estate in Hoboken was selected as the ship's construction site. There, a drydock had to be excavated from solid rock, and several very large pumps were needed to keep the area dry. Schedule delays began almost immediately. The ship was budgeted at $600,000, a figure based on the average cost of the frigates Missouri and Mississippi, built in the 1830s. They were only vaguely analogous to the battery. No model was truly appropriate, however, as the battery was almost completely unprecedented.
The 1844 version was to be 250 feet long with a 40-foot beam, and a 1,500-ton displacement. As for offensive power, plans called for the vessel to have six large-caliber muzzle-loading cannon mounted in open casemates. The cannon would be loaded from below, with gun crews located behind armor.
Survivability was central to the ship's design; she was intended to resist penetration by 64-pound shot (the heaviest then fired by any warship in the U.S. Navy). Much of the battery was to be covered in 4.5-inch-thick iron plate, reinforced by 14-inch-thick locust timber. The slope of the armored casemates would also help deflect projectiles. The ship's ability to survive shot and shell was to be complemented by her ability to evade enemy gunfire. Semisubmersible to the gunwales during action, the ship made a very small target. In addition, speed and maneuverability would afford some protection—her 900-horsepower engines would give this version of the ship an estimated top speed of 18 knots.
The ability of the Stevens Battery to survive a heavy pounding, however, was soon brought into question. Although on 17 February 1844 a 12-inch naval cannon—dubbed the "Peacemaker"—exploded on board the USS Princeton, others of its size and power would prove successful. John Ericsson's 12-inch wrought iron cannon "Oregon" safely completed its certification firings, sending a 225-pound projectile five miles. Such rounds could easily penetrate the 4.5-inch armor on the Stevens Battery.
To further complicate matters, Robert's health failed in March 1845. Seeking rest and recovery, he left for Europe and remained in France for two critical years. For several years thereafter little or no work took place on the battery. Then in 1851, Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft ordered that work on the ship be halted because of her inadequate armor protection against guns of larger caliber than originally envisioned. Commodore Charles W. Skinner, chief of the Bureau of Construction, wrote the brothers to say that he intended sell off all the ship's materials. Undaunted, Edwin successfully appealed to Congress, and the program continued.
1854: Redesigned
Robert and Edwin radically redesigned the Stevens Battery, and between January 1854 and September 1855 they set about building a much larger version of the ship. She was now to be 420 feet long with a 53-foot beam and would displace 4,683 tons. During those 21 months, significant work was done on the vessel.
Although the iron plate was not yet mounted, its thickness was increased to 6?? inches to resist the impact of shot weighting 125 pounds. The armor belt would run from stem to stern sloped upward to the main deck from one foot below the waterline. Two 10-inch pivot-mounted rifles fore and aft and five 15-inch smoothbores were to be mounted atop an armored casemate. The larger guns were to fire 425-pound shells and be loaded from below deck.
In his 1862 report to Congress, Edwin Stevens would write of the 15-inchers:
Each gun is loaded with celerity by being pointed to a hole in the deck, protected by a shot-proof hood, below which is a steam cylinder, of which the piston-rod is the ramrod of the gun; and will be cooled so as to allow rapid firing without injury to the gun, by water automatically injected after each discharge.
The battery was also to be semisubmersible to the gunwales. Flying bulwarks were to be emplaced along the main deck to provide additional freeboard when cruising and not in combat. Eight engines, producing an estimated 8,600 horsepower, were to drive two propellers and yield a top speed of 20 knots. A small, 1,000-ton coal bunker would have constrained her cruising radius, as the ship's fuel consumption would have been prodigious. An original addition for crew comfort was a fan-powered ventilation system to keep the ship's interior relatively free of engine fumes and heat.
Work on the ship stopped with Robert Stevens' death in April 1856 and did not resume until 1859. The Navy was seemingly pleased to disassociate itself from the ship. The surviving brothers, Edwin and John C., offered in 1861 to complete the project at their own expense if the Navy would pay for the ship if it proved successful. A board of naval officers rejected the offer, giving the project an adverse report. The government had invested $500,000 in the ship, and the Stevens family had spent $228,435 of its own money. Nor was there an end in sight. Edwin Stevens would estimate in 1862 that $730,484 was needed to complete the ship.
1861: The Test Ship
When the Civil War began in April 1861, the Stevens Battery was seemingly a warship whose time had come. A newspaper reporter wrote in July of that year: "Mr. Stevens says that if the vessel was fitted out according to his plans, he would guarantee the capture of Sumter in a less number of hours than it took South Carolinians with their seventeen batteries." Undiscouraged by the Navy's rejection of his offer to complete the ship, Edwin decided to build a prototype that would exhibit the essential features of the battery. Such a ship, he reasoned, would persuade the Navy leadership to accept his offer.
Edwin purchased a 192-ton iron steamship built in 1844, and began her radical conversion. The reconfigured Naugatuck was 101 feet long with a 20-foot beam and drew 9 feet of water. Originally built with a single screw, Stevens gave her twin propellers, with which she could reach a top speed of approximately 11 knots. Highly maneuverable, the propellers could rotate in opposite directions and thereby turn the ship completely around in less than 90 seconds.
With her ironclad hull semisubmersible to nearly the main deck, the ship presented a minimal target for enemy gunners. During tests, her main weapon, a 100-pounder Parrott rifle, fired four projectiles in a little over two minutes. A steam-powered rammer below the ship's armored deck loaded the Parrott, thereby protecting the gun crew from enemy shot and shell. The ship's secondary armament consisted of two 12-pounder rifles.
The Naugatuck was completed in the fall of 1861. After a brief period with the Revenue Cutter Service, Stevens loaned her to the Navy. In May 1862, while serving in action with the ironclads Monitor and Galena on the James River, her main gun burst. The ship was disabled, but the gun crew was unharmed because of her armor protection. Edwin's attempt to showcase the Steven Battery's technologies evidently did not favorably impress the Navy. Soon thereafter the Naugatuck was transferred back to the Revenue Cutter Service, where she served as the E. A. Stevens.
After the battle of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia in March 1862, the Union ironclad program had rapidly taken shape. While the Stevens Battery would seem to have been a logical addition, the Navy opposed spending any additional funds on the ship after a review board cited numerous deficiencies. On 17 July 1862, Congress voted to turn over all title and related rights in the Stevens Battery to the Stevens family. The unfinished ship would sit out the war in her dry dock.
1869: The Ram Battery
In 1868 Edwin Stevens died in Paris, France. He bequeathed both the Stevens Battery and $1 million with which to complete the ship to the state of New Jersey. Once again workmen crowded the Hoboken building site. Governor Theodore F. Randolph established an oversight commission for the Stevens Battery program, and controversial Civil War Major General George B. McClellan became the engineer in charge. Assisting him was former Navy Captain Isaac Newton.
McClellan's 1869 redesign of the Stevens Battery altered the fundamental reason for the ship's existence by turning her into a ram. With this, the ship had come full circle. In their original 13 August 1841 proposal, the brothers had offered to "construct a vessel whose principal means of offence should consist in her great strength, and the capability of resisting, without injury, a shock that would sink her opponent." McClelland may have been influenced by the 20 July 1866 naval Battle of Lissa in which the Austrian ironclad Erzherzog Ferdinand Max rammed and sunk the ironclad Italian warship Re d'Italia. This event had a profound influence on naval thinking, albeit thereafter few rams were actually used in combat.
In addition to an iron spur ram on the bow and beefed-up hull construction, the battery's existing machinery was replaced by ten large-diameter boilers and two Maudsley & Field vertical overhead-crosshead engines, yielding an estimated top speed of 15 knots. Dispensing with the casemate-mounted armament of previous designs, a revolving turret similar to that of the Monitor was planned. The weapons to be used were never designated.
By 1874, however, all money for the battery's completion was exhausted. McClellan estimated that an additional $450,000 was needed to launch the ship, despite the more than $2 million the Stevens family had spent. With Robert and Edwin both dead and no further family investment forthcoming, attempts were made to sell the ship. Prussia expressed interest, but nothing came of it. Between 1874 and 1875 most of the machinery was sold off, including her new engines, and in 1881 the ship was sold at public auction as scrap. Blasting was required to dismantle her armored hull.
The Stevens Battery program died with the ship. In 1841, Robert and Edwin Stevens had set out to build a warship impervious to shot and shell. The original design was outdated as more powerful cannon had been developed. The redesigned ship resulted in lengthy program delays. Most important, the Navy Department, steeped in sail technology, never fully embraced the steam-powered Stevens Battery. By 1869 the battery program was little more than a shell of what it once was, and that ended in 1881 with her scrapping. What she might have been afloat in an earlier day can only be imagined.
Sources:
Frank M. Bennett, The Steam Navy of the United States (Westport, CT: The Greenwood Press, 1972). Originally published in 1896.
Seigfried Breyer, Battleships and Battle Cruisers 1905-1970 (New York: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1973).
Geoffrey W. Clark, History of Stevens Institute of Technology (Jersey City, NJ: Jensen/Daniels Publishers, 2000).
William A. Degregorio, The Complete Book of Presidents (New York: Wings Books, 1993).
Robert Gardiner, ed., Steam, Steel, and Shellfire: The Steam Warship 1815-1905 (Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books, 2001).
Robert W. Love Jr., History of the U.S. Navy 1775-1941 (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992).
Paul H. Silverstone, Warships of the Civil War Navies (Naval Institute Press, 1989).
Harpers Weekly, 13 July 1861.
Jay W. Simson, Naval Strategies of the Civil War: Confederate Innovations and Federal Opportunism (Nashville, TN: Cumberland House Publishing, 2001).
Special Collections, Samuel C. Williams Library, Stevens Institute of Technology, Castle Point on Hudson, Hoboken, NJ.
Harold and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1966).
E. A. Stevens, The Stevens Battery: Memorial to Congress (1862).
Spencer Tucker, "The Stevens Ironclad Battery" American Neptune Vol. 51 (1991).