![]() The freeboard, made to reduce waves washing over the deck, was only 18-inches high and proved ineffective to the point that sea duty could be a crew hazard. This deck was fitted to the bottom hull like that of a raft. 05-inch flat iron plate bolted to iron beams. The hull was constructed in two parts: the upper deck with. The turret was protected by eight layers of one-inch curved iron plate. She was a small, flat, armored-hulled ship with a hat box-looking revolving gun turret. To this point, there was nothing like the USS Monitor on the seas - the vessel alone contained some forty-seven patentable inventions. ![]() Sitting American President Abraham Lincoln, however, overruled them all and Welles funded the three designs with work to begin immediately. Still, many other Navy professionals disapproved of the unconventional design. Welles spoke to Ericsson in support of his all-iron design and was told "the sea would ride over her and she would live in it like a duck". Many of the shipbuilding firms of the time were still tied to wood construction and canvas rigging. Ericson refused because he understood that warship building was currently undergoing a revolution of sorts, doing away with masts and sails in favor of self-propulsion. One of the board members suggested to Ericsson that he add masts and sails as additional propulsion. The board members, themselves a collection of shipbuilders and engineers, were unsure about the radical design submitted by Ericsson for the blueprint represented no other ship built up to that point in history. He was known as a difficult man to deal with but he gained respect by being the recorded inventor of the screw propeller. Ericsson maintained a history with the Navy Department, feeling that he had been cheated out of payment for work completed in the past. Three were chosen: a casemate design like the French Gloire, eventually to become the USS New Ironsides a small armored gunboat to be named the USS Galena and a turreted ironclad to become the USS Monitor, this design brought forth by one John Ericsson. Secretary Welles charged the board to review ironclad plans and propose to the Navy Department the most promising of these designs. ![]() Secretary Welles, an accomplished politician, was able to acquire the funding for building Northern ironclads within days and then created the "Ironclad Board" to oversee construction. Then Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, confessed his fears that the reborn Merrimack would break through the imposed blockade at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and then steam up the Potomac River to shell the White House itself. Designed by Swedish-American immigrant John Ericsson and built in a steelyard in Brooklyn, New York, in 1861, the ship had an innovative gun turret, the first of its kind to revolve.Northern spies reported to the US War Department that the Merrimack was being rebuilt as an ironclad. In its day, the Monitor was a state-of-the-art vessel. More than a century after it sank, the shipwreck became entangled in the politics of marine conservation and, in an unlikely twist, has ended up serving as a test bed for a new way to save the seas. But that wasn’t the final chapter of its story. ![]() If things had ended there, the Monitor would only be remembered by military historians. It took on water and, before long, came to a sorry end at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. One evening, as darkness fell, sleet and snow blew in sideways and the ship rode a rollercoaster of 9-metre-high waves. But events were about to take a less festive turn.Ī few days after the meal, the ship set out to join a military expedition down the east coast. On the menu was turkey, mashed potatoes, plum pudding and fruitcake – rare treats for the sailors who had spent months subsisting on mostly crackers and salted pork. ON Christmas Day 1862, during the height of the US civil war, the crew of the ironclad warship the USS Monitor sat down to a decadent dinner. ![]()
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