USS Monitor  "Radical Ship Design"  February 25, 1862 - December 30, 1962

She was 172 feet long and 41.5 feet wide, very small for a U.S. warship, and she carried only two guns, but the strange-looking USS Monitor changed naval warfare forever. The English and French had each built and ironclad gunboat, the Confederates were known to be building one, but those were nothing like the radical new ship designed by Swedish-born inventor John Ericsson.

The Monitor looked like a large raft with a squat tin can sitting in the middle. The raft was actually a flat wooden deck that sat 18 inches above the water and was covered with two layers of half-inch iron plates. The deck, and its ironclad sides, which extended three feet below the water, protected the smaller 122' X 34' flat-bottomed hull that housed the engine and crew. The tin can on top was actually a nine-foot-high revolving turret, 20 feet in diameter, with eight-inch-thick iron walls that contained two powerful 11-inch Dahlgren guns. On the deck, 55 feet forward of the turret, sat a small cube-shaped pilothouse with 12-inch-thick iron walls from which the captain and helmsman directed the ship. The Monitor had only a 10.5-foot draft and was ideal for operating in rivers and shallow coastal areas.

Ericsson built the ship at a cost of only $275,000 and in just 118 days, a testament to his abilities to organize and direct the prodigious Northern industrial strength. On January 30, 1862, the Monitor left her dry dock at the Continental Iron Works in Brooklyn and slipped into the East River for her maiden voyage. Powered by a stream-engine-driven four-bladed propeller, the Monitor could make six knots and, because of her small size, was fairly maneuverable. On February 25, the ship was commissioned, and Lt. John L. Worden was given command. On March 6, the Monitor left New York Harbor with her crew of 57 sailors and headed south for blockade duty off the Confederate coast.

Fascinating Fact:  John Ericsson invented the first screw propeller and designed the U.S. Navy's first steam-powered ship, the USS Princeton, completed in 1844.


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