History 269 The Civil War and Reconstruction
Navies of the Union and Confederacy (part 2)

In 1861 Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen R. Mallory sent Lt. James D. Bullock to England to secretly enlist the resources of private investors and shipbuilders.  To get around British neutrality, ships built in England were purchased unarmed, then armed and commissioned into the Confederate navy.  One such English-built steamer was the CSS Alabama, commanded by captain Raphael Semmes.  The Alabama seriously crippled the U.S. merchant marine, destroying over sixty vessels in the North Atlantic, until it was sunk by the USS Kearsarge near the French port of Cherbourg on June 19, 1864.  The Confederacy eventually acquired or built more than 130 vessels, including 37 iron rams (although only 22 of the ironclads were put to use because the South lacked the industrial facilities to manufacture adequate engines).  The South also constructed several “torpedo boats” and the first submarine, the HL Hunley.  The Confederate Congress also approved $2 million dollars for the purchase of European steam-powered ironclads.  While this plan failed, the U.S. commander of the Gosport Navy Yard near Norfolk hastily abandoned the large shipyard in April 1861, ordering the dock, arms and munitions burned and the six ships scuttled, but Confederates managed to salvage a steam frigate, the Merrimack.

The Merrimack was converted to an ironclad with ten heavy guns and an iron ram.  The armor-plated casement had sloped sides to deflect enemy fire  while most of the ship remained beneath the waterline.  Rechristened the CSS Virginia, it attacked five Union ships in Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862, sinking two and running three others aground, while cannonballs harmlessly ricocheted off its 4-inch thick iron plates.  When it returned to finish off its prey the next morning, a newly commissioned Union ironclad was waiting.  In October 1861 the U.S. navy completed its first ironclad gunboat, the St. Louis, used on the Mississippi River.  The USS Monitor (photo at left) was designed and built for the U.S. navy by John Ericsson and officially commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on February 25, 1862.  The Monitor was a low-lying ironclad with a revolving turret mounting two heavy guns.  Initially derided as a “tin can on a shingle,” it became the prototype for over fifty more Federal ironclads (thereafter called monitors).  On March 9, the Monitor and Virginia fought for over three hours in Hampton Roads in the most famous naval battle of the war.  (Captain John Lorimer Worden was in command of the Monitor; Captain Franklin Buchanan was the Virginia's skipper.)  Both ironclads sustained over two dozen direct hits with no serious damage.  The battle ended in a stand-off when the Virginia, taking on water and running low on fuel, withdrew.  The faster and more maneuverable Monitor had effectively neutralized the Virginia as a threat to the Union navy.  When Norfolk fell into Union control in May 1862 the Virginia was scuttled. Continued