Monitor versus Merrimac and Armor Piercing shot

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kevikens

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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.
 
I think the real answer here is that the US Navy produced a total of 29 monitor class ships during the war (see here for full list). Of the 29 ships, 23 survived the war and six were lost. Of those lost two USS Monitor, USS Weehawken were lost due to weather. The other four: USS Milwaukee, USS Osage, USS Patapsco, USS Tecumseh all were lost due to striking a mine. Not a single ship was lost due to shelling.

I suspect that the Confederates on both land and sea used everything they had to damage these ships and had no success. While it may have been more successful as this was the one battle that was really fought toe to toe (so to speak) I suspect that the inability to sink any monitors from shells means that for its day the Monitor (and her successors) had little to fear from artillery shot.
 
I think the real answer here is that the US Navy produced a total of 29 monitor class ships during the war (see here for full list). Of the 29 ships, 23 survived the war and six were lost. Of those lost two USS Monitor, USS Weehawken were lost due to weather. The other four: USS Milwaukee, USS Osage, USS Patapsco, USS Tecumseh all were lost due to striking a mine. Not a single ship was lost due to shelling.

I suspect that the Confederates on both land and sea used everything they had to damage these ships and had no success. While it may have been more successful as this was the one battle that was really fought toe to toe (so to speak) I suspect that the inability to sink any monitors from shells means that for its day the Monitor (and her successors) had little to fear from artillery shot.
I understand that the forts around Fort Sumter, Charleston, did "great execution" on some of the monitors in the summer of 1863, one, I understand, came close to foundering that day, going under the day after the encounter. Do you happen to know if the Confederate artillery was using steel pointed shot that day , or just the more conventional solid shot?
 
Sorry, no, don't have the answer. Just thinking that the CSA/CSS had lots of other opportunities and never succeeded. I would not have been surprised that the Virginia would have had a greater impact than the original battle, but perhaps not as much as they would have thought.

Perhaps @Mark F. Jenkins can answer the question on shells.
 
I understand that the forts around Fort Sumter, Charleston, did "great execution" on some of the monitors in the summer of 1863, one, I understand, came close to foundering that day, going under the day after the encounter. Do you happen to know if the Confederate artillery was using steel pointed shot that day , or just the more conventional solid shot?

You're probably referring to USS Keokuk, which was not a monitor but rather an experimental ironclad with two stationary gun 'towers' (and piloted, incidentally, by Robert Smalls of Planter fame, so she was able to maneuver closest to Sumter-- but her armor [an odd assembly of iron plates alternating with wood] couldn't stand up to the defensive fire at that range).

I can't say for sure that no steel-pointed shot were used, but given the expense of production of those, I'd wager the vast majority were conventional shot.

USS_Keokuk_h59546.jpg
 
Thanks for the info @Mark F. Jenkins. I was not familiar with the USS Keokuk. Learn something new everyday around here. :wink:

What an odd ship and such a bad record. Commissioned in March and sunk in April, not even a month of service. Seems like a poor design to have stationary gun towers. Seems like they would have had to rotate the cannon on the interior and then raise an opening to fire, but would have been restricted to just a few aiming positions compared to the monitor class ships.

The most interesting part of it seemed to be the ability to adjust the amount of ship above the waterline via the flooding spaces. Sort of a semi-submersible, or at least as much as was possible in the era.

Did they make any others or was this the only experiment of this class?

Usskeokuk.jpg
 
Only one.

Her primary weakness, apart from the limited train of her guns and her very-exposed anchors, was her armor, which alternated "plates" of wood and iron edge-on, standing out from the sides, covered over by a thin plate. As John Rodgers said once of the Galena, "We demonstrated that she is not shot-proof."

(Her two 11-inch Dahlgrens were recovered by industrious Confederates, and one of them sits in Battery Park to this day. Even worse, her codebook was recovered as well, enabling the defenders to read the Union naval codes for a while.)
 
Did the USN ever equip its ironclads with these steel pointed solid shot to go up against Confederate ironclads (or have them in case we wound up at war with Britain)? What about after the war when the USN might have to contend with steel hulled and armored vessels? Were they normally (or occasionally) a part of the ammunition on board ship or with Army coastal artillery units?
 
Not surprised that this was the only one. When I was reading about the plate armor it did remind me of the Galena. Both of these ships on paper probably looked like a superior design. Guess there was only one way to find out. It does show the variety that the USN had in experiments with the monitor class, USS New Ironsides, USS Galena, and USS Keokuk. All of the CSN ironclad ships seemed to follow a similar sloped deck deck design. I suspect most of that was from limited construction capability in the South.

Did they ever take the hull design to raise/lower the waterline and use it on a conventional monitor? Seems like that would have been ideal to overcome some of the issues of seaworthiness that affected ships with such a low waterline when at sea.
 
I thought this would be an good place to post some photos of one of my favorite monuments, to a man involved in both the most successful and one of the least successful of the Union ironclads. It's the Cornelius Bushnell monument in Monitor Sqare in New Haven CT. Bushnell was, of course, the builder of Galena (but not it's designer) but
bushnell monument.jpg
bushnell monument2.jpg
was also a key figure in getting the original Monitor built. He encouraged Ericsson to go after a contract, helped finance it, and, most important, helped locate the materials so she could be built quickly. It's a monument to Bushnell, but it's not surprising that Ericsson's face is front-and-center alongside Bushnell's.
 
Understand in 1861 we are talking about mild steel and not hard steel. Hard steel was very expensive and used only in very limited areas. Hard steel was not available until the Eureka Iron Works in Wyandotte Michigan began using the Bassemer process in 1864. The first real armor-piercing shot was the Palliser shot and was not used until the post Civil War era. Pointed shells were available during the Civil War but were usually made of wrought iron. We need to find an expert to tell us what mild steel shot was available during the Civil War.

I am sure there were tests done during the Civil War to judge how much armor different shot could pierce. I would guess that most shot would lose velocity fairly quickly and would only pierce armor at relatively chose range.
 
The South seemed to prefer rifled guns (up to seven inch Brookes) firing shells/bolts while the North seemed to favor smoothbores of large (up to 15 inches) bores firing heavy balls with larger loads of powder as a propellant.
 
The South seemed to prefer rifled guns (up to seven inch Brookes) firing shells/bolts while the North seemed to favor smoothbores of large (up to 15 inches) bores firing heavy balls with larger loads of powder as a propellant.
So do any tests or battlefield experience indicate which was superior to piercing or fragmenting iron armor?
 
So do any tests or battlefield experience indicate which was superior to piercing or fragmenting iron armor?
It depends on what you were going for, think icepick versus a hammer. The best example that I can think of in support of the North's ideas was the fact that at relatively short range (and without the Confederate ship being able to fire back) a Union Monitor firing a 15" ball was able to penetrate 6 inches of armor and twenty four inches of wooden backing in the capture of the C.S.S. Atlanta. A rifled projectile tended to concentrate it's force in a relatively small area. Either way, being inside of an armored vessel when hit by either a smoothbore shot or rifled shot must have been a severe test of a man's nerve.
 
Hard steel was available before the Bassemer process came to America, but was only used for limited things such as swords, tools and such. The issue was that before the Bassemer process, harden steel was so expensive that its use was limited. Until the first iron clad ship was made, there was no need for armor piecing shot.
 
The engagement between Atlanta and the monitors was at the time and is still, often quoted as an example of the power of the 15" smoothbore. Unfortunately Atlanta's armour was not the 4" (2 x 2") over 24" timber quoted. The excellent article in Warship International on her construction shows that the Union examination of her after capture showed that not only was some of the iron brittle, but the inner horizontal layer was composed of alternating strips of iron and timber. Thus the actual thickness was 2" and in effectiveness probably much less. In addition the casemate slope of 30 degrees was partially negated by the ships list when she went aground.
In the case of CSS Tennessee, USS Manhattan was within 50 yards range , not surprising she achieved a penetration.

Brooke had steel point shot prepared and aboard Virginia after the battle with Monitor. Although her two 7" rifles were conversions of 9" gun blocks, there is little doubt that they would have put the Monitor in mortal danger if a subsequent engagement had been at the same range.

At Charleston the 10",8" and 7" rifles were firing flat head bolts, which give a wracking effect rather than penetration, although at a closer range, the shots would have penetrated a monitor turret. In particular the two Brooke triple banded 7" guns were most effective along with a the two 10" rifled columbiads. The two triple banded Brookes were intended for CSS Charleston, but were "obtained" by General Beauregard for his defences. It is fair to say that these two guns were, at the time, the best of their type in the world.
 
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