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Section 2: Hampton Roads Enters the War (Study)
Hampton Roads enters the war
Early in the war, local troops seized Norfolk and threatened the Gosport Navy Yard. The commandant there, Captain Charles S. McCauley, gave orders to scuttle the ships in the yard and destroy its facilities. Nine ships were burned, among them the screw frigate USS Merrimack. One (the old frigate Cumberland) was towed away successfully. Merrimack burned only to the waterline, however, and her engines were more or less intact. The destruction of the navy yard was mostly ineffective; in particular, the large drydock there was relatively undamaged and soon could be restored. Without firing a shot, the advocates of secession had gained for the South its largest navy yard, as well as the hull and engines of what would be in time its most famous warship. They had also seized more than a thousand heavy guns, plus gun carriages and large quantities of gunpowder.
With Norfolk and its navy yard, the Confederacy controlled the southern side of Hampton Roads. To prevent Union warships from attacking the yard, the Confederates set up batteries at Sewell's Point and Craney Island, at the juncture of the Elizabeth River with the James. The Union retained possession of Fort Monroe, at Old Point Comfort on the Virginia Peninsula. They also held a small man-made island known as the Rip Raps, on the far side of the channel opposite Fort Monroe, and on this island they completed another fort, named Fort Wool. With Fort Monroe went control of the lower Peninsula as far as Newport News.
Forts Monroe and Wool gave the Union forces control of the entrance to Hampton Roads. To further the blockade, the Union Navy stationed some of its most powerful warships in the harbor. There, they were under the shelter of the shore-based guns of Fort Monroe and the batteries at Hampton and Newport News and out of the range of the guns at Sewell's Point and Craney Island. For most of the first year of the war, the Confederacy could do little to oppose or dislodge them.
Building ironclad warships
When steam propulsion began to be applied to warships, naval constructors renewed their interest in armor for their vessels. Experiments had been tried with armor during the Crimean war, just prior to the American Civil War, and the British and French navies had each built armored ships and were planning to build others. In 1860, the French Navy commissioned La Gloire, the world's first ocean-going ironclad warship. Great Britain followed a year later with HMS Warrior. The use of armor remained controversial, however, and the United States Navy was generally reluctant to embrace the new technology.
CSS Virginia
Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory was an early enthusiast for the advantages of armor. As he saw it, the Confederacy could not match the industrial North in numbers of ships at sea, so they would have to compete by building vessels that would be individually superior to those of the Union. Because of the limited manufacturing capabilities of the Confederacy, Mallory decided to rebuild the Merrimack as an ironclad vessel. During the rebuilding process, the plans were further modified to incorporate an iron ram fitted to the prow. Her offense in addition to the ram consisted of ten guns. The armor plating consisted of double plates, each two inches (51 mm) thick, backed by 24 inches (61 cm) of iron and pine. She was commissioned on February 17, bearing the name CSS Virginia.
USS Monitor
Intelligence that the Confederates were working to develop an ironclad caused consternation for the Union. On August 3, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles appointed a commission, the Ironclad Board, to choose among the designs that were submitted for consideration. The winning design, by far the most radical, was Swedish engineer and inventor John Ericsson's USS Monitor.
Ericsson's Monitor, which was built at Ericsson's yard on the East River in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, incorporated many new and striking design features, the most significant of which were her armor and weaponry. Ericsson outfitted Monitor with a turret. This was an important innovation: When fewer guns are needed, they can be made larger and more powerful. The Monitor’s turret contained two 11 inch (280 mm) diameter guns. Although the Monitor’s large guns could have been safely fired with a devastating 30 lb charge of gunpowder, only the standard 15 lb charge was used. This was the reason that the monitor’s guns could not penetrate the Merrimac’s armor.
The cylindrical turret was 20 feet (6.1 m) in diameter, nine feet (2.7 m) high, and covered with iron eight inches (200 mm) thick. It rotated on a central spindle, and was moved by a steam engine that could be controlled by one man. The deck was also heavily armored. A serious flaw in the design was the pilot house, a small structure forward of the turret on the main deck. Its presence meant that the guns could not fire directly forward, and it was isolated from other activities on the ship. Monitor was completed a few days before the Virginia but the Virginia was activated first.