Battle of Hampton Roads

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Hampton Roads began on the morning of the 8th of March 1862, when a strange ironclad vessel steamed out of Confederate waters and into a harbor full of wooden warships. By nightfall, 250 Union sailors were dead, two ships had been sunk, and the most powerful navy in the Western Hemisphere had suffered its greatest single-day defeat since its founding. A third ship lay grounded and helpless, waiting to be finished off at dawn. In Washington, the Secretary of War told Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet that this new iron monster might shell the White House before the meeting ended.

  What had just happened was unlike anything the world had seen in modern naval warfare. And it was not yet over. Overnight, a second ironclad arrived, so small and low-slung that a Confederate sailor would later mock it as "a cheese on a raft." The next morning, these two experimental machines would circle each other for hours, neither able to land a decisive blow.

  The questions the battle raised echoed far beyond Hampton Roads. What would navies do with their fleets of wooden warships, now rendered obsolete in a single afternoon? Which side had actually won? And what became of the two ships themselves?

• 2. Why Hampton Roads Mattered

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  On the 19th of April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of Confederate ports, a move extended on April 27 to include Virginia and North Carolina after they passed ordinances of secession. The blockade was initiated at Hampton Roads on the 30th of April 1861, cutting Norfolk and Richmond off from international trade almost completely.

  Hampton Roads is a roadstead where the Elizabeth and Nansemond rivers meet the James River just before it flows into Chesapeake Bay. The geography meant that whoever controlled the waterway controlled access to Virginia's largest cities and its major industrial centers. The Union held Fort Monroe at Old Point Comfort and a small man-made island called the Rip Raps, where they completed a fortification named Fort Wool. Together these positions controlled the entrance to the roadstead.

  The Confederacy held the southern shore, including the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth, which fell to secessionists without a shot being fired. In the confusion of April 1861, the Union commandant there, Captain Charles S. McCauley, delayed acting on orders from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to move his ships north. When he finally ordered the yard scuttled and burned on April 20, the destruction was largely ineffective. The large drydock was nearly undamaged. More than a thousand heavy guns, gun carriages, and large quantities of gunpowder were seized. Among the burned ships was the screw frigate Merrimack, which burned only to the waterline, her engines more or less intact. The Confederacy had gained its largest navy yard and the hull of what would become its most famous warship.

• 3. Building CSS Virginia

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  Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory grasped early in 1861 that the South could never match the industrial North in numbers of ships. His answer was to build vessels that individually outclassed Union ones, and armor was the key. He assembled a team that included John M. Brooke, John L. Porter, and William P. Williamson to put that vision into practice.

  The problem was engines. When Mallory's men surveyed Southern factories, they found that building engines from scratch at the best available facility, the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, would take at least a year. Williamson proposed using the engines from the recently raised hulk of Merrimack, still lying in the Elizabeth River. His colleagues accepted and expanded the idea, proposing that the entire hull be adapted for an ironclad design. Porter drew up revised plans, which Mallory approved on the 11th of July 1861.

  The burned-out hull was towed into the very drydock the Union had failed to destroy. The finished ship carried ten guns: six 9-inch smooth-bore Dahlgrens, two 6.4-inch Brooke rifles, and two 7-inch Brooke rifles. Trials showed those rifles firing solid shot could pierce up to eight inches of armor plating. Because Virginia was expected to face only wooden ships, she was given explosive shells rather than armor-piercing shot. Her armor plating consisted of double plates, each two inches thick, backed by 24 inches of iron and pine. Construction delays, partly from the strains on the South's transportation system, pushed the launch date to the 3rd of February 1862. She was commissioned on February 17.

• 4. Building USS Monitor

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  When Union intelligence detected the Confederate ironclad project, Secretary Welles waited for Congress to convene before requesting permission to build armored vessels. Congress granted that permission on the 3rd of August 1861. Welles appointed a commission of three senior officers, called the Ironclad Board, to evaluate submissions. Captains Joseph Smith and Hiram Paulding and Commander Charles Henry Davis considered seventeen designs and selected three.

  The first of the three to be completed was by far the most radical: Swedish engineer and inventor John Ericsson's Monitor, built at his yard on the East River in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Instead of the traditional arrangement of many guns of modest bore, Ericsson opted for only two guns of large caliber. He wanted 15-inch guns but had to settle for 11-inch Dahlgren guns when the larger size was unavailable. These were mounted in a cylindrical turret 20 feet in diameter and 9 feet high, covered with iron 8 inches thick. The entire turret rotated on a central spindle, powered by a steam engine one man could control.

  Ericsson was worried that using the full service charge of 30 pounds of black powder would risk an explosion inside the turret. He ordered that only 15 pounds be used. Trials later showed that the full charge would have pierced armor plate, a detail that would directly affect the outcome of the coming battle. One serious flaw was the pilot house, a small structure forward of the turret on the main deck, which prevented the guns from firing directly forward and was isolated from other ship operations. Despite the late start, Monitor was actually completed a few days before Virginia, though the Confederates activated their ship first.

• 5. March 8: The Wooden Fleet Falls

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  CSS Virginia steamed into Hampton Roads on the morning of the 8th of March 1862, accompanied by Raleigh and Beaufort from the Elizabeth River and joined by the James River Squadron at the roadstead. The Union had five warships in position, among them the sloop Cumberland and the frigate Congress anchored near Newport News, and the steam frigates Minnesota and Roanoke near Fort Monroe. Virginia headed directly for the Union squadron. The exchange began when the Union tug Zouave fired on the approaching vessel and Beaufort replied. This preliminary skirmishing had no effect.

  Virginia did not open fire until she was within easy range of Cumberland. Return fire from Cumberland and Congress bounced off the iron plates. Virginia then rammed Cumberland below the waterline, and she sank rapidly. According to Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan, Cumberland was "gallantly fighting her guns as long as they were above water." She took 121 seamen down with her; counting the wounded, total casualties reached nearly 150.

  The ramming nearly cost Virginia as well. Her bow ram became embedded in Cumberland's hull, and as Cumberland listed downward she almost pulled Virginia under. Virginia broke free, but her ram broke off in the process.

  Buchanan then turned on Congress. Her captain, Lieutenant Joseph B. Smith, having seen what happened to Cumberland, ordered his ship grounded in shallow water. After an hour of unequal combat, Congress surrendered. When Union batteries ashore then opened fire on Virginia, Buchanan ordered Congress fired upon with hot shot, cannonballs heated red-hot. Congress burned throughout the day, and near midnight flames reached her magazine. She exploded and sank stern first, with personnel losses of 110 killed or missing and another 26 wounded, ten of whom died within days.

  Buchanan himself was wounded during the action after he stood out onto the open top of Virginia, where a rifle shot pierced his left thigh. Virginia withdrew for the night, having killed roughly 250 enemy sailors while losing two of her own crew. The news from Hampton Roads caused panic in Washington, with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton telling Lincoln's Cabinet that Virginia might shell the White House before the meeting ended.

• 6. March 9: The Ironclads Meet

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  Command of Virginia on the second day fell to Lieutenant Catesby ap Roger Jones, who had directed much of the ship's conversion and had been disappointed not to be named her captain in the first place. Jones proved no less aggressive than the wounded Buchanan. While Congress was still burning and Virginia was being prepared for renewed battle, Monitor arrived in Hampton Roads, commanded by Lieutenant John L. Worden. His primary task was to protect the grounded Minnesota, and Monitor took up a position near her and waited. "All on board felt we had a friend that would stand by us in our hour of trial," wrote Captain Gershom Jacques Van Brunt, Minnesota's commander, in his official report the following day.

  At dawn on March 9, Virginia left her anchorage at Sewell's Point. When Jones first spotted Monitor, he believed the low craft to be a boiler being towed from Minnesota, not a warship. One Confederate sailor mocked it as "a cheese on a raft." The first shot of the engagement was fired by Virginia at Monitor; it flew past and struck Minnesota instead. Minnesota answered with a broadside.

  The two ironclads fought for hours at close range, neither able to overcome the other. Virginia's guns were loaded with shell rather than armor-piercing shot because Buchanan had not expected to face another ironclad. Monitor's Dahlgren guns were fired with only 15 pounds of powder, not the 30 pounds that tests later showed was both safe and effective. At 10 AM, Virginia ran aground. Monitor opened fire on her vulnerable adversary, but Virginia scraped free and rejoined the fight.

  Acting Master Louis N. Stodder, leaning against the inside wall of Monitor's turret when it took a direct hit, was knocked unconscious and took an hour to regain consciousness, becoming the first man injured during the battle.

  The battle ended when a shell from Virginia struck Monitor's pilot house and exploded, driving fragments of paint and iron through the viewing slits into Worden's eyes and temporarily blinding him. Lieutenant Samuel Dana Greene took over as executive officer and returned Monitor to the fight. During the brief confusion, however, Virginia's crew believed their opponent had withdrawn. With Minnesota still grounded but beyond reach in the falling tide, and Virginia requiring extensive repairs, Jones ordered her back to Norfolk. When Monitor returned and found Virginia apparently quitting, Greene, under orders only to protect Minnesota, did not pursue. Each side interpreted the other's movements as retreat and claimed victory.

• 7. The End of Both Ships

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  Virginia spent almost a month in drydock after the battle undergoing repairs and modifications. When she emerged on April 4, command had passed to the 67-year-old Commodore Josiah Tattnall III because the Navy's rigid seniority system had worked against Jones's promotion. Monitor also saw a change in command; Greene was deemed too young to remain captain, replaced first by Lieutenant Thomas Oliver Selfridge Jr. and then, two days later, by Lieutenant William Nicholson Jeffers. Both ships spent the following weeks in posturing rather than fighting, each trying to goad the other into attacking in unfavorable waters.

  Virginia's end came from events ashore. Because the blockade remained unbroken, Norfolk had little strategic value, and plans were laid to move Virginia up the James River toward Richmond. Before preparations were complete, Confederate Army Major General Benjamin Huger abandoned Norfolk on May 9 without consulting the Navy. Virginia's draft was too great to allow her to pass up a river that in places was only 18 feet deep. Trapped, Tattnall decided to destroy his own ship rather than let her be captured. Virginia was towed to Craney Island in Portsmouth, her crew taken ashore, and then she was set afire. She burned through the day and into the following night, until before dawn her magazine exploded.

  Monitor did not survive the year either. On Christmas Day, 1862, she was ordered to Beaufort, North Carolina, for blockade duty there. While being towed down the coast under the command of her fourth captain, Commander John P. Bankhead, winds increased and waves grew. With no high sides to prevent flooding, Monitor took on water until it gained on the pumps and extinguished her engines. Sixteen men went down with her when she sank in the early hours of the 31st of December 1862-16 miles off Cape Hatteras at a depth of about 240 feet.

• 8. A World Changed Overnight

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  Great Britain and France, the preeminent naval powers, halted further construction of wooden-hulled ships after the battle. Although both nations had been engaged in an iron-clad arms race since the 1830s, the events at Hampton Roads made the transformation irreversible for navies worldwide. Russia, fearing the American Civil War might spill into Russian Alaska, launched ten sister ships as soon as Ericsson's plans reached St. Petersburg, in a wave that observers described as "Monitor mania."

  Monitor's rotating turret, carrying a small number of very heavy guns able to fire in any direction, became standard in warships of all types. Monitor herself became the prototype for an entire class of vessel that bore her name. The United States immediately began construction of ten more monitors based on Ericsson's larger original plan, and more than 20 additional monitors were built by the Union before the war ended. They played important roles in Civil War battles on the Mississippi and James rivers.

  Virginia's ramming of Cumberland impressed naval architects enough that rams were incorporated into warship hull designs for the rest of the century. The first purpose-built ram in the modern era was a French armored vessel whose guns were described as having "the sole function of preparing the way for the ram." This feature persisted in warship design almost to the outbreak of World War I.

  After resting undetected on the ocean floor for 111 years, Monitor's wreck was located in 1973 by a team of scientists. The site was declared a National Marine Sanctuary in 1987, the first shipwreck to receive that distinction. Artifacts including the turret, its two Dahlgren guns, an anchor, the steam engine, and the propeller were recovered and transported to the Mariners' Museum in Newport News. The USS Monitor Center at the Mariners' Museum officially opened on the 9th of March 2007, and the anchor of Virginia now sits on the lawn in front of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond.