Although more has been written about the U.S.S. Monitor than about I any other vessel in our naval history, the accounts which give in such great detail the story of her conception, building, maiden voyage (never omitting mention of the “tugboat Seth Low”), arrival in Hampton Roads, and drawn battle with the C.S.S. Virginia (ex-U.S.S. Merrimac) invariably fail altogether to mention, or at best skip over in a few terse words, the foundering of the historic little ironclad. In a recent book[1] about the Monitor less than three of 400 pages are devoted to her ill-fated last voyage. This would be understandable were there anything to “hush up,” but such was far from being the case. The Monitor went down off stormy Hatteras despite every seamanlike precaution possible under the circumstances, taken both by the Navy Department and by the able officers and resolute seamen who manned the craft.
Late in December, 1862, the Monitor was ordered to proceed from Fortress Monroe to join DuPont’s ironclad squadron concentrating against Charleston, S. C. It was recognized in Washington that the trip involved considerable danger to the ironclad, which in addition to the lack of seagoing attributes inseparable from low freeboard suffered from certain defects of her very own (eliminated in the improved monitors even then in commission) including flat bottom, demountable funnels and ventilator pipes, pilot-house exposed on foredeck, and roughly machined joint between deck and turret. Lack of reserve buoyancy combined with the readiness with which sea water could get into the craft had already very nearly resulted in her loss at sea on her maiden voyage from New York to the Virginia Capes. The armed steamer Rhode Island, Commander S. D. Trenchard, was assigned to escort the turret ship.
The captain of the Monitor, Commander J. P. Bankhead, having held his post only since October, the detail work of seeing the ironclad properly secured for sea devolved entirely upon her 22-year-old executive officer, Lieutenant S. Dana Greene. Under his supervision, oakum was packed into the water-line hawse pipe, the sight- slits of the pilot-house and under the turret, a temporary navigating bridge complete with wheel and breastwork of iron was rigged atop the turret, and other wise measures were taken.
Toward sundown on December 29 the two vessels steamed out by Cape Henry and set their courses southward, the ex-merchant ship, a side-wheeler, towing the Monitor with two 12 -inch hawsers to increase her speed. The weather at that time was fine, but there was every indication of approaching bad weather. It struck them about dawn and quickly raised such a sea that the packing began to wash out from under the turret. Commander Bankhead requested, by means of a message chalked on a blackboard and raised over the “bridge,” the side-wheeler to lie to until the sea quieted somewhat. In about an hour it was possible for the ships to steam ahead once more.
Early in the evening, just after the monitor Passaic had been sighted in the offing steaming toward the rendezvous of DuPont’s ironclad squadron, a heavy south-southwest gale struck the Monitor and Rhode Island. The turret ship, her deck continually swept by great seas that broke high over the pilot-house and turret, began to ship a good deal of water. The coal was wet, and boiler pressure dropped from the normal 80 pounds to a mere 20, in spite of the best efforts of the stokehold gang. The vessel was plunging heavily, and her flat bottom combined with the overhang of the armor raft repeatedly brought her up with such a shock that the captain feared the upper and lower parts of the hull would separate (he later officially ascribed the sinking of the Monitor to this mishap). The ship’s small pumps being unable to cope with the water pouring into the hull, the emergency centrifugal pump was started, steam for the purpose being taken off the main engine. The centrifugal pump, of special design and of great capacity, had been included by Ericsson in the Monitor’s mechanical layout with a special view to her peculiar lack of reserve buoyancy. It now proved to be the means of prolonging her life for several hours.
About one bell, thinking to ease the motion of his vessel, Bankhead had a lantern signal made to the Rhode Island asking her to lie to. Commander Trenchard complied in so far as he dared, but as the high-sided steamer with her heavy rig lost way in the storm much more quickly than did the low-lying, waterlogged ironclad, the Rhode Island could not stop her paddles without danger of being cut down by the turret ship. On several occasions the Monitor forged up so close to the side-wheeler that collision was narrowly avoided.
As her steam fell lower and lower and as the water which poured into the berth deck rose higher and higher despite the pumps, the Monitor struggled against her fate. Fearing that she would be towed under, Commander Bankhead signaled the escort to cast off the hawsers. When the Rhode Island attempted to do so she got both hawsers fouled in her wheel and came drifting down past the ironclad so close that Bankhead was able to inform Trenchard, by speaking trumpet, that there was no hope for the turret ship and that he was going to abandon her. The Rhode Island being now unable to cast off her end of the towlines, it was necessary to let go the Monitor's end. James Fenwick, quartergunner, started forward but was carried overboard to his death before he could reach the bow. Boatswain’s Mate John Stocking then made the attempt, only to meet with the same fate. Finally, Master L. N. Stodder succeeded in reaching the bitts, cutting the hawsers, and clambering safely back to the shelter of the turret.
The turret ship now fell off into the trough of the seas, but was promptly brought up by her anchor, which was let go with the full scope of chain. The main engine was secured and all steam put on the pumps. It was now about five bells. The sky now cleared and the moon and stars came out, but the weather did not moderate. More to keep heart in the men than for any practical purpose, the pounding of the vessel sloshing most of the water out of the buckets before they could be passed from the berth deck up through the top of the turret, the crew of the Monitor was set to bailing.
The small pumps were drowned, then the main pump. The water rose to the furnace grates and the fires went out in a hiss of steam. The crew gathered in and on the turret. Everyone knew that there was no possible chance for the ship and very little for the men. Parting gifts and messages were exchanged.
The Rhode Island had now drifted about a mile to leeward, still disabled and rolling in the trough. Trenchard managed, however, to get two boats into the water, one commanded by Lieutenant D. R. Browne and the other by Ensign A. O. Taylor, and these pulled for the foundering Monitor to rescue her crew. Browne’s boat arrived first, but there was some time lost in persuading anyone to go into it, some of the Monitor's men being unwilling to be the first to leave the ship while others were afraid to trust themselves on the wave- swept deck. Eventually, however, 15 men were induced to leave the turret and make the try; 12 of them reached the boat.
In somewhat the same manner the second boat was filled and started off to the Rhode Island. The officers waited for the third—and, as it turned out, the last— boat. Commander Bankhead, thinking to be the last man to leave the Monitor, went into the turret to see if all hands had left and finding no one there got down onto the upper deck and made his way to the rail, where several men were standing and trying to pull in the boat that was lying along the weather side. The oarsmen, fearing to be washed up onto the deck, were backing water hard. The officers in the boat, including Lieutenant Greene, were shouting to find out if the captain were on board.
In the effort to get the boat close enough to the deck for them to get into her, the men at the rail had to exert all their strength on the painter. During the struggle one of them was washed away. At length, however, they succeeded. Commander Bankhead then ordered the two surviving seamen to jump into the boat, but they refused to precede him. Without waste of words, the seamen, one of whom was F. B. Butts and the other supposedly (according to Butts’ account) Thomas Joice, bundled the captain into the small craft. Before they could follow, Lieutenant Greene shouted, “Cut the painter! Cut the painter!” This was immediately done, and the boat shot away so quickly that Butts and Joice had to jump for the gunwale, whence they were safely hauled in. As the boat pulled clear, several men ran to the turret rail and shouted to be taken off. They had apparently been on the berth
deck trying to collect a few belongings during the captain’s last inspection. The small boat being already more than safely loaded, it was wisely decided to leave them for the fourth rescue boat.
Although clear of the sinking ironclad, the officers and men in the small boat were in no less danger than before. Getting out of the Monitor was simple compared with the problem of getting into the Rhode Island. The side-wheeler, still disabled, rolled so heavily in the trough that it was impossible to hook the boat on the falls or even to make a line fast to her. One instant the boat would be down almost to the very keel of the steamer, in danger of being caught under a descending paddle; the next she would be above the rail. Furthermore, she was continually whisked from one end of the vessel to the other. Lines were flung down to the men in the boat, but these had no bights in the ends and the Monitor's men were mostly “steamboat” sailors untrained in the fine nautical art of climbing a rope. To make matters worse, most of the lines had not been secured inboard!
On one of the swoops to the bow, Ensign Atwater sprang for the cathead while Seaman Butts seized the rigging of the bowsprit. The boat being snatched from under them, both were left suspended by their hands above the water. Their cries for aid being unheard on deck, they gradually lost strength and dropped. The officer plunged into the sea and drowned, but Butts fell into the boat which at that instant was providentially swept forward again.
Eventually, Commander Bankhead managed to make the men on deck understand that they must cast bowlines in the lines. This being done, the Monitor survivors were hauled on board without further difficulty.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Browne and his boat’s crew had shoved off on their second trip across the raging sea toward the red and white lanterns that marked the location of the Monitor. They never reached her.
For, just as the bells of every town and city of America were ringing in the decisive Civil War year of 1863, the watchers on the deck of the Rhode Island saw the lights extinguished. The Monitor had gurgled to the bottom of the sea.
The Rhode Island, thanks to a nervy fireman who clambered into the wave- soused paddle box to chop away the hawsers, cleared her wheel at last. She steamed in circles around the spot where the ironclad had gone down, seeking for possible survivors and also for her own boat and crew. New Year’s Day was well advanced when the bow of the steamer was sadly turned toward Cape Henry, to take home the sad news of the loss of the Monitor with four officers and twelve men. The boat’s crew of the Rhode Island was also reported lost; public grief over the disaster was somewhat relieved about a week later when news came that Mr. Browne and his stout oarsmen had been picked up by a passing vessel after they had drifted in their frail craft for more days than were comfortable.
Had the loss of the Monitor been unavoidable? Many thought not. Inventor Ericsson, when he heard the news, was bitter. He ridiculed the theory of Bank- head and his officers that the hard pounding had forced the armor unit and the flotation unit of the hull apart, and declared that in his opinion the foundering was owing to the fact that caulking had been rammed under the turret. Had this not been done, claimed the Monitor's inventor, the rim of the turret and the bronze ring in which it revolved on the deck would have formed a watertight joint. He grudgingly absolved Commander Bankhead of blame on the ground that he had not been long enough in the vessel to have been able to master all her peculiarities. He as grudgingly excused Lieutenant Greene, on the basis of his extreme youth and complete lack of executive experience prior to joining the Monitor. Bitterly Ericsson expressed his opinion that a more mature second-in-command would have brought the turret ship safely to Charleston.
The general opinion (after the event) among the Rhode Island's officers seems to have been that when the ironclad began to labor the convoy should, instead of continuing head to the seas, have put about and run. And many a newspaper editor, armchair admiral extraordinary, roundly scolded everyone from Lincoln and Welles down for having sent the ship to sea.
These criticisms are not difficult to refute. There was a war to be won, and the strategy of the moment required the presence of the Monitor at a certain place and without delay. She was given a suitable escort, and that was the only concession that could be made to the weather. The same considerations would no doubt have impelled Commanders Bankhead and Trenchard, as military officers, to have maintained way toward their destination even against their better judgment as seamen. Under the circumstances it would appear that even from the seamanship viewpoint they did well to steam into the weather as the relative anatomies of the Monitor and Rhode Island were such as would have made it extremely hazardous for the side-wheeler to have trusted herself to leeward of the ironclad.
As for the conduct of Mr. Greene, that officer had been in the Monitor continually since before she was even launched, and had had more practical experience in monitor seamanship than any other officer in the world. Surely Greene was more fitted to decide what should and what should not be done to safeguard the Monitor than was the non-seagoing engineer who designed her.
Although John Ericsson will be remembered chiefly for his contributions to nautical science, he was never at any time himself a seaman (even his title of captain was a military, not a nautical, one) and it seems likely that as a landsman he failed to recognize the fact that a ship is a flexible structure when he theorized about watertight joints between moving metal surfaces. Such a joint, precisely fitted with the ship at rest on the ways or in still water, would no longer be perfect when the vessel worked in a seaway. In the case of the original monitor even theoretical perfection could hardly have been attained, as the various members were fabricated in a number of shops and only assembled in the shipyard, a method of construction not conducive to the most highly finished workmanship. It is evident that it was no more than sensible and proper for Mr. Greene to have attempted to seal the joint by the use of elastic caulking material.
Although the Monitor's hull was certainly filled at least in considerable part by water entering under the turret, the theory of her own officers that a fatal leak was opened by the tearing apart of the upper and lower hulls cannot be dismissed casually, despite the emphatic opinion of Ericsson. Any vessel carrying such a load as the armor and guns of the Monitor and suffering as she did in a seaway would have been badly strained and would have sheared rivets and started plates, even if of normal form. The Monitor's flat bottom and long and broad overhangs certainly contributed to the disaster.
A review of the facts indicates that the loss of the Monitor was due entirely to an unfortunate combination of strategical circumstances, weather conditions, and structural crudities resulting from her hasty construction. The first of these considerations was not under the control of anyone who had directly to do with the vessel, the second was beyond the control of anybody. As for the third, had the Monitor been a more perfect structure she would not have been completed in time to be in Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862.
Somewhere in that graveyard of shipping off Cape Hatteras the rusted members of the Monitor lie mingled with the bones of many another gallant vessel, most of whom had vastly more claim to seaworthiness than she. Her career afloat lasted just eleven months and one day, but in that brief period of less than a year she influenced naval science more than has any other ship ever built and won for herself a place in the affections of the nation not second even to that occupied by “Old Ironsides” herself.