kevikens
2nd Lieutenant
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2013
- Location
- New Jersey
A little while back in an earlier thread on the monitor and the Virginia slugging it out I wrote and asked if anyone had any information on the Confederate Navy employing a steel shot to penetrate the iron armor of the Monitor. At the time that thread was up I wrote that I had heard or read something about that but had no source. Well. I found one in an old edition of the Civil War Times Illustrated magazine (February, 1986, p. 28). A Confederate Marine officer by the name of John Douglas Fowler wrote in a letter home about this. Present at Sewell's Point, he writes of improvements to the Virginia such as gratings on her port holes. He then writes of steel pointed shot having been taken on board, shot that are iron with steel points that are expected to do great execution where they strike. Apparently the Virginia, earlier in its initial encounter with the Monitor, having expected to fight wooden warships, was using exploding shell which fragmented on hitting the iron turret. The question is, had the Virginia been carrying this steel pointed shot that morning, would they indeed have done "great execution", destroying the Monitor, breaking the blockade, thwarting Little Mac's Peninsula Campaign and who knows what from there? Sometimes great kingdoms are lost for the want of a horseshoe. In this case it may have been the lack of a steel point.