Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (78 page)

At the cost of thirty-one casualties, the Union navy secured the finest natural harbor on the south Atlantic coast. More than that, the navy acquired a reputation of invincibility that depressed morale along the South's salt-water perimeter. The day after the capture of Port Royal, Robert E. Lee arrived in Savannah as the newly appointed commander of the south Atlantic coastal defenses. He regarded this assignment as "another forlorn hope expedition—worse than West Virginia." Lee recognized that sea power gave Yankees the option of striking when and where they pleased. "There are so many points to attack, and so little means to meet them on water," he sighed, "that there is but little rest."
²
Lee had little choice but to concentrate Confederate defenses at strategic points, yielding most of the coastline to the enemy. During the next

2
. Lee to Mildred Lee (his daughter), Nov. 15, 1861, in Robert E. Lee, Jr.,
Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee
(New York, 1904), 55; James M. Merrill,
The Rebel Shore: The Story of Union Sea Power in the Civil
War (Boston, 1957), 44.

few months, bluejackets seized several other harbors and ports as far south as St. Augustine, Florida. In April 1862, siege guns planted on an island at the mouth of the Savannah River battered down Fort Pulaski, giving the Federals control of the entrance to Savannah.

Another joint army-navy expedition—in which the army for once did most of the fighting—sealed off all harbors in North Carolina except Wilmington. This expedition launched the checkered career of Ambrose E. Burnside, a handsome, florid, personable Rhode Islander whose imposing muttonchop whiskers would contribute a new word to the language with an anagram (sideburns) of his name. After leading a brigade at Bull Run, Burnside had gone home to organize a division of soldiers accustomed to working around water and boats. They would need such skills, for their objective was to follow up the capture of Hatteras Inlet by gaining control of the North Carolina sounds. The Yankees' toughest foe in this enterprise turned out not to be the rebels, but the weather. Burnside's flotilla of makeshift gunboats, coal scows, and passenger steamboats carrying his 12,000 troops was scattered by a gale off Hatteras on January 13 that wrecked three of his vessels. Two more weeks of gale-force winds forced the expeditionary force to hunker down in misery just inside Hatteras Inlet. When the weather finally moderated, seasick soldiers welcomed the prospect of combat as a lesser evil.

Their first target was Roanoke Island, a swampy piece of land ten miles long, two miles wide, and rich in legend—a land where the memory of Virginia Dare and the inscrutable word "Croatan" marked the mysterious fate of England's first North American colony. Controlling the passage between Pamlico Sound and Albemarle Sound, Roanoke Island was the key to Richmond's back door. Commander of the 3,000 Confederate soldiers, four batteries with thirty-two guns, and seven one-gun gunboats defending the island was Henry A. Wise, the political general transferred here from his feuds with fellow Virginian John Floyd in West Virginia. Wise had learned enough about war to recognize the inadequacy of his "mosquito-fleet" gunboats, badly sited batteries, and poorly trained, outnumbered troops. He pleaded with Richmond for more men and more guns, but Richmond seemed strangely indifferent.

This indifference cost them dearly, for the Yankees were coming with power. On February 7–8, Burnside's sixteen gunboats mounting sixty-four guns drove off the mosquito fleet and neutralized the Confederate shore batteries while steamers towed landing boats through the surf and 7,500 soldiers waded ashore on Roanoke Island. There they plunged through "impenetrable" knee-deep swamps and smashed through rebel entrenchments, suffering only 264 casualties. For this price they captured the island's 2,675 defenders. General Wise escaped but his son, an infantry captain, was killed in the fighting. Next day Union gunboats destroyed the mosquito fleet and seized Elizabeth City on the mainland. During the next several weeks, Yankees captured all the North Carolina ports on the sounds, including New Berne and Beaufort with their rail connections to the interior and Beaufort's fine harbor, which became another base for the blockade fleet.

Here was amphibious warfare with style. It won a promotion to major general for Burnside. It raised northern morale and dampened southern spirits. The Confederate Congress set up a committee to investigate the Roanoke Island disaster. The hue and cry forced Judah Benjamin to resign as secretary of war (though Davis, who liked Benjamin, promptly appointed him secretary of state). By April 1862 every Atlantic coast harbor of importance except Charleston and Wilmington (N.C.) was in Union hands or closed to blockade runners. Because of this, and because of the increasing number of Union warships, the blockade tightened considerably during the first half of 1862. Moreover, southern hopes to breach the blockade with their (not so) secret weapon—the ironclad
C. S. S. Virginia
—had been dashed by the
U. S. S. Monitor
.

Having no traditions and few old-navy prejudices to overcome, the rebels got a head start into the new era of ironclad warships. In July 1861 they began grafting an armor-plated casemate onto the salvaged hull of the frigate
Merrimack
. Work began in July. The capacity of the Tredegar Iron Works was stretched to the limit to construct two layers of two-inch iron plate sufficient to protect a superstructure 178 feet long and 24 feet high above the waterline and one-inch plate covering the 264-foot hull down to three feet below the waterline. The superstructure sloped at an angle of 36° to give added protection by causing enemy shots to ricochet. The strange appearance of this craft, rechristened the
Virginia
, reminded observers of a barn floating with only its roof above water. The
Virginia
was armed with ten guns, four on each broadside plus fore and aft seven-inch pivot rifles. Attached to her prow was an iron ram to stave in the hulls of wooden warships. The principal defects of this otherwise formidable vessel were its unreliable engines and deep draft. Unable to build new engines of adequate horsepower, the rebels reconditioned the two old
Merrimack
engines that had been condemned by the prewar navy and slated for replacement. The weight of the Virginia's armor gave her a draft of twenty-two feet. This prevented operations in shallow water while her unseaworthiness prevented her from venturing into the open sea. The weak engines and ungainly design limited her speed to four or five knots and made her so unmaneuverable that a 180-degree turn took half an hour. Some of these problems would not become apparent until the
Virginia
was launched; in the meantime she inspired hope in the South and fear in the North.

This fear was the main factor in overcoming northern inertia on the ironclad question. With a conventional navy superior to anything the Confederates could construct, and preoccupied with the need to build up the blockade fleet, Secretary of the Navy Welles did not at first want to experiment with newfangled notions. But rumors of rebel activities caused Congress to force his hand with a law of August 3, 1861, directing the construction of three prototype ironclads. Welles set up a naval board to assess the dozens of proposals submitted by shipbuilders. The board accepted two, which resulted in the building of the
Galena
and the
New Ironsides
, ships of conventional design overlaid by iron plating.

No bid came from John Ericsson, the irascible genius of marine engineering who had contributed the screw propeller and several other innovations to ship design. Bitter about earlier feuds with the navy, Ericsson sulked in his New York office until a shipbuilder persuaded him to submit his radical design to the Navy Department. Ericsson's proposal incorporated several novel features. A wooden hull sheathed with thin iron plate would be overlaid by a flat deck 172 feet long with perpendicular sides extending below the waterline and protected by 4.5 inch armor plating. The propeller, anchor, and all vital machinery would be protected by this shell, which was designed to float with less than two feet of freeboard, giving the craft the appearance of a raft—and also presenting a small target to enemy fire. Sitting on the deck was Ericsson's most important innovation: a revolving turret encased in eight inches of armor and containing two eleven-inch guns. This turret, along with the shallow draft (11 feet), light displacement (1,200 tons, about one-fourth of the
Virginia's
displacement), and eight-knot speed would give Ericsson's ship maneuverability and versatility. She could almost literally dance around a heavier enemy and fire in any direction.

Lincoln and Welles were impressed by Ericsson's design. But would it float? More specifically, would it stay afloat in a heavy sea? Some members of the naval board were skeptical. They had never seen anything like this cheesebox on a raft. Ericsson appeared before the board and overcame their doubts with a bravura performance. They awarded him a contract, but ridicule of "Ericsson's folly" by senior navy officers caused Welles to hedge his bet: the ship must prove a "complete success" (whatever that meant) or its builders must refund every penny of the $275,000 the government agreed to pay for it. Ericsson was not concerned; he had confidence in his creation. He subcontracted the work to several firms to save time, and supervised almost every detail personally. Starting three months later than the South, northern industry launched Ericsson's ironclad on January 30, 1862, two weeks before the Confederates launched the
Virginia
. Doubters present at each launching predicted that these crazy craft would never float, but cheered the disproof of their predictions. Several more weeks were required to finish the fittings of both ships. Ericsson named his vessel
Monitor
(one who admonishes and corrects wrongdoers). There was no time for test runs to determine whether she fulfilled the terms of the contract; the
Monitor's
test would be trial by combat.

On March 8 the
Virginia
steamed out from Norfolk on what her crew assumed was a test run. But this too was to be the real thing. Five Union ships mounting a total of 219 guns guarded the mouth of the James River at Hampton Roads: the
Minnesota, Roanoke, St. Lawrence, Congress
, and
Cumberland
. The last three were sailing ships—pride of the navy in the 1840s but already made obsolescent by steam. The first two were steam frigates (the
Roanoke
was disabled by a broken shaft), pride of the navy in 1862. But the fighting this day would make them obsolescent as well. Rumors that the
Merrimack
(as the Federals continued to call the
Virginia)
was coming out had circulated for weeks. Today she came, heading first for the twenty-four-gun
Cumberland
, sending several shells into her side before ramming and tearing a seven-foot hole in her hull that sent her to the bottom. While this was happening, the
Cumberland
and
Congress
fired numerous broadsides at the
Virginia
, which "struck and glanced off," in the words of a northern observer, "having no more effect than peas from a pop-gun."
³
This was not quite accurate; before the day was over two of the
Virginia's
guns were knocked out, every fitting on deck and part of her smokestack were shot away, her ram was wrenched off by the collision with the
Cumberland
, two of her crew were killed and several were wounded. But none of the ninety-eight shots that struck her penetrated the armor or did any disabling damage.

After sinking the
Cumberland
, the
Virginia
went after the fifty-gun
Congress
, raking the helpless vessel with broadsides which started fires that eventually reached the powder magazine and blew her up. The

3
. William C. Davis,
Duel between the First Ironclads
(Garden City, N.Y., 1975), 89.

Minnesota
having run aground in an effort to help her sister ships, the
Virginia
turned her attention to this flagship of the fleet that had captured Hatteras Inlet the previous August. But the
Virginia's
deep draft prevented her from closing with the
Minnesota
as night came on. The rebels left the
Minnesota
and the other ships for the morrow, and called it a day.

And what a day—the worst in the eighty-six-year history of the U. S. navy. The
Virginia
sank two proud ships within a few hours—a feat no other enemy would accomplish until 1941. At least 240 bluejackets had been killed, including the captain of the
Congress
—more than the navy suffered on any other day of the war. The whole Union fleet at Hampton Roads—still the main blockade base—was threatened with destruction. A taste of panic flavored the telegrams to Washington that night. The cabinet met in emergency session next morning. Secretary of the Navy Welles tried to calm Secretary of War Stanton's nerves with news that the
Monitor
was on its way from Brooklyn to Hampton Roads to confront the
Virginia
. But would she get there in time? And even if she did, was this two-gun "tin can on a shingle" any match for the rebel monster?

She did, and she was. The
Monitor
had arrived alongside the
Minnesota
the night before, her crew exhausted from fighting a storm that had almost sunk them on the way from Brooklyn. The prospect of fighting the
Virginia
, however, started their adrenalin pulsing again. When the Confederate ship steamed out on the morning of March 9 to finish off the Federal fleet, her crew spied a strange craft next to the
Minnesota
. "We thought at first it was a raft on which one of the
Minnesota's
boilers was being taken to shore for repairs," said a
Virginia
midshipman. But the boiler ran out a gun and fired. A
Monitor
crewman described the
Virginia's
response: "You can see surprise in a ship just as you can see it in a man, and there was surprise all over the Merrimac." The rebels turned their attention from the stranded
Minnesota
to this strange vessel that began circling the sluggish
Virginia
"like a fice dog" and hurling 175-pound shot from her eleven-inch guns. For two hours the ironclads slugged it out. Neither could punch through the other's armor, though the
Monitor's
heavy shot cracked the
Virginia's
outside plate at several places. At one point the southern ship grounded. As the shallower-draft
Monitor
closed in, many aboard the
Virginia
thought they were finished. But she broke loose and continued the fight, trying without success to ram the
Monitor
. By this time the
Virginia's
wheezy engines were barely functioning, and one of her lieutenants found her "as unwieldly as Noah's Ark." The
Monitor
in turn tried to ram the
Virginia's
stern to disable her rudder or propeller, but just missed. Soon after this a shell from the
Virginia
struck the
Monitor's
pilot house, wounding her captain. The Union ship stopped fighting briefly; the
Virginia
, in danger of running aground again, steamed back toward Norfolk. Each crew thought they had won the battle, but in truth it was a draw. The exhausted men on both sides ceased fighting—almost, it seemed, by mutual consent.
⁴