Ironclad Monitors 1863-1865

[Saphroneth]

Silly me. I thought the HMS Warrior was either an Armoured Masted Steam Frigate or just a big boat with big guns.

The navy list puts her as "S.Ship. Iron." (S designates screw, P would be paddle,

The Terror is listed as "Iron. S. Floating Battery."

Royal Oak, a wooden-hulled ironclad, is listed as "S. iron-cased ship".

The Prince Albert, a turret ship, is labelled as "S. Iron-cased cupola ship".


It would seem that at this point the RN didn't yet have a concept of designating armoured vessels unambiguously, since the few unarmoured iron-hulled ships are listed similarly to the Terror (with "Iron" before their ship type).

 

[USS ALASKA]

3. Why was a lone monitor sent to California? Did San Francisco really need that extra deterrent against Confederate raiders?

REBELS AT THE GATE: CIVIL WAR SAN FRANCISCO AND THE CONFEDERATE SEA-BORNE THREAT

Civil War Naval Papers | Naval War - At Sea & Along Inland Waterways

Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management Program PROJECT NUMBER (94-1704) USS Tecumseh Shipwreck: Management Plan W. Wilson West, Jr. 1996 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & INTRODUCTION Early on the morning of August 5, 1864, fourteen-wooden steam warships, lashed in pairs, followed four...

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HTHs,
USS ALASKA

 

[BartlbyAdams]

1865
Canonicus, Saugus, Mahopac, and Monadnock (all from the James River Flotilla) participated in the attacks on Fort Fisher.

Montauk shifted from Charleston to the Cape Fear River after the fall of Fort Fisher.

Patapsco was sunk at Charleston by a mine in January. Passiac, Nahant, Catskill, and Nantucket remained off Charleston until after its fall. They were joined by Canonicus, presumably as a replacement for Patapsco.

Milwaukee, Winnebago, Chickasaw, and Kickapoo blockaded Mobile and supported Canby's operations against it. They were joined by Osage. Milwaukee and Osage both fell victim to mines.

Neosho and Ozark remained on the Mississippi River or its tributaries.

Thank you for this post! These slides are from my presentation for my 3G-Grandfather and his Naval service from 1863-1870.

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

Incredible that Civil War monitors were kept around, even in mothballs, until the turn of the century.

 

[Saphroneth]

I wonder if that's the whole "hull numbers" thing. Who'd actually sign off on getting rid of them when it would make the US's official list of "ironclads" drop from dozens to none?

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

I wonder if that's the whole "hull numbers" thing. Who'd actually sign off on getting rid of them when it would make the US's official list of "ironclads" drop from dozens to none?

For about two decades after the end of the war, sure. But by the 1890s the US Navy was rolling out steel cruisers, battleships, and even monitors that completely outclassed anything leftover from the Civil War.

The old monitors were better than nothing, but even by that standard they were scrapped 10 years past the point of usefulness.

 

[Saphroneth]

For about two decades after the end of the war, sure. But by the 1890s the US Navy was rolling out steel cruisers, battleships, and even monitors that completely outclassed anything leftover from the Civil War.

The old monitors were better than nothing, but even by that standard they were scrapped 10 years past the point of usefulness.

Don't forget, the New Navy monitors were mostly still under construction until 1896 or so. But signing off on a blanket drop in hull numbers is a difficult thing for a navy to do.

I'm not saying the Monitors were useful, I'm saying that the impediment was probably social and political.

 

[Rhea Cole]

I have an important question. I don't really understand the warrior and it sister ships. I read somewhere that the vessel had an inner casement that protected the engines and the guns. It was like a second bulwork inside the outer Bulwork of the vessel itself. The weakness, I have read, was, the fore and aft ends of the vessel which were not protected viable work. Can somebody please addresses

You are correct. The steering gear in the stern was unarmed as was the vulnerable bow. A Monitor could have circled round & round raking her from stem & stern. Why this obvious vulnerability was not addressed is obscure. Everyone knew about it. Punch magazine lampooned by stating that no gentleman would be so rude as to do so.

 

[Saphroneth]

You are correct. The steering gear in the stern was unarmed as was the vulnerable bow. A Monitor could have circled round & round raking her from stem & stern. Why this obvious vulnerability was not addressed is obscure. Everyone knew about it. Punch magazine lampooned by stating that no gentleman would be so rude as to do so.

This is absolute nonsense. The bow has nothing of value - it's not armoured because the loss of the bow would barely impede the fighting capabilities of Warrior one jot and would not put her remotely at risk of sinking.

Both bow and stern ends of the fighting battery are armoured with bulkheads of equivalent armour to the sides of the ship. Raking would do nothing.

No Monitor was fast enough to "circle round and round" and attack Warrior from both stem and stern.

The stern has the steering gear, yes - which runs through the bilges! Good luck hitting it, you can't see it, and for a wooden warship to lose steering due to damage to the stern usually involved so many holes shot in the stern that the stern collapsed. This is not a major vulnerability.

So the reason why "this obvious vulnerability was not addressed" is not obscure - which I can only assume means "I haven't bothered to research this". Instead, the Admiralty was fully aware of the actual defensibility of their ships and specifically concluded that ships with iron hulls did not need a complete waterline belt in this period. (Wooden hulled ships did.)

 

[DoctorKingSchultz]

She was the introduction to battleship type ironclads - both Britain and France had had actual coastal attack ironclads since the Crimean War.




I'm not sure you could even describe the USN as the most powerful even if we restrict the theatre of war to the US coastline. By 1865 the RN had some very seriously tasty designs and was introducing RML guns that could go through Monitor turrets in one shot.

Reminds me. any thread at least touching on the HMS Prince Albert and HMS Royal Sovereign built and launched while the Civil War raged on would be of interest, in design if nothing else - tetra-turret ships, I find them among the most interesting designs!

HMS Royal Sovereign, by Lionel Smythe in the Illustrated London News, May 14th, 1864 of Royal Sovereign after her conversion into a turret ship that year. Volume 64/1, Page 480.

 

[DoctorKingSchultz]

This is absolute nonsense. The bow has nothing of value - it's not armoured because the loss of the bow would barely impede the fighting capabilities of Warrior one jot and would not put her remotely at risk of sinking.

Both bow and stern ends of the fighting battery are armoured with bulkheads of equivalent armour to the sides of the ship. Raking would do nothing.

No Monitor was fast enough to "circle round and round" and attack Warrior from both stem and stern.

The stern has the steering gear, yes - which runs through the bilges! Good luck hitting it, you can't see it, and for a wooden warship to lose steering due to damage to the stern usually involved so many holes shot in the stern that the stern collapsed. This is not a major vulnerability.

So the reason why "this obvious vulnerability was not addressed" is not obscure - which I can only assume means "I haven't bothered to research this". Instead, the Admiralty was fully aware of the actual defensibility of their ships and specifically concluded that ships with iron hulls did not need a complete waterline belt in this period. (Wooden hulled ships did.)

I'm getting a bit dizzy reading this thread. I could swear the whole conversation about the unarmored areas around the bow and stern of the Warrior have been discussed, debated and explained between the same people at least twice!

 

[USS ALASKA]

Twice?!?

Cheers!
USS ALASKA

 

[Saphroneth]

I'm getting a bit dizzy reading this thread. I could swear the whole conversation about the unarmored areas around the bow and stern of the Warrior have been discussed, debated and explained between the same people at least twice!

I rather suspect that Rhea has me on ignore, but even before that happened I'd said it to them on at least one known occasion...

 

[DoctorKingSchultz]

I will say that the USN's massive increase in size is impressive - it's genuinely very difficult to rapidly expand a navy to the extent that the USN did, and going down blind alleys like the Casco class is the sort of thing you expect when a nation without much experience in such matters is doing things very quickly under war emergency conditions.

It's just that that doesn't make it the strongest navy in the world. It might well mean that it had the most ships on its navy list and the most guns claimed afloat, but as I once found when looking into it this is because the navy list includes ships that were merely planned and in some cases never started, let alone finished.


What the USN actually did during the ACW is that it proved itself able to rise to the challenge of expanding by a manpower factor of ~ten (from 8,000 to about 84,000) in four years without falling apart. This is, in and of itself, impressive.

What it did not do during the ACW is build the most powerful navy in the world in those four years. It takes longer than that to grow capabilities and it takes sustained funding over a longer period of time than that to build a base of reserve manpower and ships; the Royal Navy in 1862 had a peacetime strength in manpower terms about 10% less than the USN's wartime maximum manpower (78,000), and in addition had 22,400 men in some form of pension, reserve or volunteer establishment which could be called into the navy in the event of war. And purpose-built steam warships, already built and waiting in reserve, for all of them to sail in.


That's the difference between the USN (a force which at full wartime strength consisted mostly of suitable civilian ships and gunboats built quickly for the war, manned by men who had been trained since the start of hostilities) and the RN (a force which could without any further enlistment of men not already accounted for field a fleet larger than the USN in manpower and consisting entirely of purpose-built warships, including literally dozens of the capital ships which take years to build).

Really got to agree.. USN underwent something like what, 42 vessels in 1860 to 671 by the war's end? Staggering increase in size.

 

[Saphroneth]

Reminds me. any thread at least touching on the HMS Prince Albert and HMS Royal Sovereign built and launched while the Civil War raged on would be of interest, in design if nothing else - tetra-turret ships, I find them among the most interesting designs!

I tend to view them as being basically testbeds, to examine the pros and cons of putting a turret onto a full sized warship, with a design goal that meant they were nevertheless useful in their role (as coastal defence ships, so not having masts is no concern).

Really got to agree.. USN underwent something like what, 42 vessels in 1860 to 671 by the war's end? Staggering increase in size.

Careful, the 671 number is the entire Navy List and includes at least 93 ships under construction, many of which were never finished (the ships under construction including, actually, 20% of the listed guns of the US Navy and a staggering 30% of the tonnage.)

 

[DoctorKingSchultz]

I tend to view them as being basically testbeds, to examine the pros and cons of putting a turret onto a full sized warship, with a design goal that meant they were nevertheless useful in their role (as coastal defence ships, so not having masts is no concern).


Careful, the 671 number is the entire Navy List and includes at least 93 ships under construction, many of which were never finished (the ships under construction including, actually, 20% of the listed guns of the US Navy and a staggering 30% of the tonnage.)

I had that fact in mind, but was not aware quite the number still under construction... still, a huge increase if only counting complete vessels fit to serve.

 

[Saphroneth]

I had that fact in mind, but was not aware quite the number still under construction... still, a huge increase if only counting complete vessels fit to serve.

Quite - though "fit to serve" might also be a term to be careful of! Some of those ships will be recieving ships or storeships supporting the blockades.

The best metric I think is that the USN expanded in manpower by about a factor of ten, which is pretty impressive (even if not all of that manpower was necessarily tested for quality and I suspect some degredation in the gunnery average probably took place - most of the blockade ships don't need good gunnery, their role is stopping blockade runners and for that you need very few guns.)

 

[DoctorKingSchultz]

Quite - though "fit to serve" might also be a term to be careful of! Some of those ships will be recieving ships or storeships supporting the blockades.

The best metric I think is that the USN expanded in manpower by about a factor of ten, which is pretty impressive (even if not all of that manpower was necessarily tested for quality and I suspect some degredation in the gunnery average probably took place - most of the blockade ships don't need good gunnery, their role is stopping blockade runners and for that you need very few guns.)

"even if not all of that manpower was necessarily tested for quality-" My mind instantly moving towards the Casco-class, which I still remember my shock at when reading about for the first time.

 

[Saphroneth]

"even if not all of that manpower was necessarily tested for quality-" My mind instantly moving towards the Casco-class, which I still remember my shock at when reading about for the first time.

Not really the sort of thing I mean, of course - I mostly mean that by way of example the only actual qualification required to be a gun-captain in the USN was good eyesight, while in the RN you had to do a qualification course including both small-arms and firing of cannon to demonstrate competence.

 

[USS ALASKA]

Reminds me. any thread at least touching on the HMS Prince Albert and HMS Royal Sovereign built and launched while the Civil War raged on would be of interest, in design if nothing else - tetra-turret ships, I find them among the most interesting designs!

Politics, Technology and Policy-Making, 1859-1865: Palmerston, Gladstone and the Management of the Ironclad Naval Race
Andrew Lambert

Civil War Naval Papers | Naval War - At Sea & Along Inland Waterways

JOURNAL ARTICLE Blue Water, Brown Water, and Confederate Disloyalty: The Peculiar and Personal Naval Conflict in South Florida during the Civil War Irvin D. S. Winsboro and William B. Mack The Florida Historical Quarterly Vol. 90, No. 1 (Summer 2011), pp. 34-60 (27 pages) Florida Historical...

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"Seagoing purposes indispensable to the defence of this country:" Policy Pitfalls of Great Britain's Early Ironclads
Howard J. Fuller

Civil War Naval Papers | Naval War - At Sea & Along Inland Waterways

A lot of the manpower shortages existed due to the armament industry, Trafalgar being one that drew on the available resource pool. Lubliner. I never realized that the Battle of Trafalgar had such far-reaching impacts. Lord Nelson would have been proud. :wink: Cheers, USS ALASKA

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Clad in Iron: Assessing the Comparative Strategic and Tactical Strengths of British and Union Ironclad Programs of the Civil War Era 1861-1862
Howard J. Fuller

Civil War Naval Papers | Naval War - At Sea & Along Inland Waterways

Journal Article "The Clangor of That Blacksmith's Fray": Technology, War, and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor David A. Mindell Technology and Culture Vol. 36, No. 2 (Apr., 1995), pp. 242-270 The Johns Hopkins University Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/3106372 Full article at above link...

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The Great Race: Innovation and Counter-Innovation at Sea, 1840-1890
Jan S. Breemer

Civil War Naval Papers | Naval War - At Sea & Along Inland Waterways

A paper to go with the author of posts #78, 129, and 156... International Journal of Naval History The Warrior's Influence Abroad: The American Civil War October 10, 2013 Howard J. Fuller University of Wolverhampton Quite simply, the Warrior altered the course of the American Civil War. This...

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The above should get you started...

HTHs,
USS ALASKA