Now that they were at sea, they discovered that living and working in the semisubmerged world of the Monitor was relatively comfortable—much more comfortable, one sailor wrote, than the receiving ship North Carolina had been. So far, it seemed, duty in an ironclad was not too bad. The only drawbacks seemed to be that the inside temperature was either too cold or, once the heat from the boilers was tapped, too hot, and the interior lighting was so dim below decks that it was difficult to see. Most compartments had small waterproof windows in the overhead to admit some natural light, but it remained dark in the narrow passageways, and when the ship was buttoned up for combat, it would be almost pitch black.26
The good weather did not last. On the second day out, the barometer dropped and the wind increased. Heavy waves washed over the Monitor’s flat deck, foaming and sloshing against the turret. The officers in their staterooms looked up through the glass windows to see green water overhead. Save for the turret, the ship was, in effect, under water. From the tug, only the Monitor’s turret was visible above the waves, and occasionally even that was obscured by the rolling seas. Those seas also affected the ship’s movement, especially under tow. Twenty-seven-year veteran that he was, Worden nevertheless felt the cold prickly sweat and rising nausea of seasickness. He had not fully recovered from his seven months in captivity, and the confined spaces, the hot-oil smell from the engine, and the motion of an iron ship under tow sent him rushing to the top of the turret, where the bracing wind and sea spray provided only partial relief.
Despite his personal misery, his own health was not Worden’s greatest worry. Ericsson had designed the Monitor’s turret so that it rested on a smooth brass ring embedded in the deck. He had calculated that the weight of the 120-ton turret would press so securely on this ring that it would create a perfect waterproof seal. But just prior to the vessel’s departure from New York, Stimers had placed a “plaited hemp rope” between the turret and the deck in order to provide what he thought would be a more secure seal. Now, as the weather worsened, water began to work its way through this hempen seal, and soon water was dripping—and then cascading—down into the berthing spaces. The men below were now not only seasick but soaked, and Worden allowed his fellow sufferers to join him atop the ship’s turret. There they lay flat on their backs atop the iron grating, shielded from the worst of the sea spray by a canvas tarpaulin.27
Then at 4:00 the ventilating fans in the engine room stopped working. So much water had sloshed down the blower pipes that the leather belts driving the blowers had stretched and lost their purchase on the pulleys. Smoke built up in the engine room, and sailors fought their way out coughing and wheezing. Rushing in to try to solve the problem, Stimers succumbed to the smoke and gas. He had to be dragged out unconscious and taken to the top of the now-crowded turret top. Without a fire in the boiler, the pumps would not work, and Worden ordered the crew to man the hand pumps. The men went to work with a will, but the hand pumps were not powerful enough to force water all the way from the bilge to the top of the turret, which was the ship’s only opening to the outside. Water began to build up below, and Worden ordered the ship’s flag to be hoisted upside down as a signal of distress. In such a sea, however, there was nothing the escorting gunboats could do. Eventually, only the easing of the storm saved the ship. That allowed the engineers to restart the engines and reengage the pumps.28
The next day was March 8—a fateful day in American naval history. At noon Worden sighted Cape Henry at the northern entrance to Chesapeake Bay, and a few hours later, as the land crept closer, those on board the Monitor began to hear “heavy firing in the distance,” which led to intense speculation. Some thought it was only the guns of Fort Monroe “at practice,” but Worden feared that the Merrimack had at last come out and that he was too late. He ordered the ship cleared for action and asked for maximum speed. In spite of his eagerness, however, the ship would not be hurried. “Our iron hull crept slowly on,” one officer wrote home, “& the monotonous clank, clank, clank of the engine betokened no increase of its speed.” It was evening by the time the Monitor and its escorts entered Chesapeake Bay, and full dark before it entered the roadstead. The towline was cast off and a pilot came on board. From him, Worden learned that the Merrimack had indeed come out that day, and that it had all but destroyed the Union fleet. Worden directed the pilot to put the Monitor alongside the Roanoke, the flagship of the Union squadron. Not until he was alongside did Worden learn the scope of the disaster that had been wrought that day by the rebel ironclad.29
Measured in terms of lives lost, the fighting in Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862, marked the worst defeat in the history of the United States Navy until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor eighty years later. Unlike that later attack, however, there had been no stealth in the assault by the CSS Virginia against the Union Navy’s wooden ships in Hampton Roads. Cheered on by a crowd of spectators lining the shore, Buchanan ordered the Virginia to steam boldly out of the Elizabeth River in the bright sunlight of a spring morning, black smoke billowing from its single stack, and head directly toward its quarry: the USS Cumberland and USS Congress, waiting at anchor off Newport News Point. Between them, those two Union vessels, both of them sailing ships, mounted a total of seventy guns to the Virginia’s ten, but such a comparison, pertinent in the days of Perry and Barclay, was largely irrelevant now.
Officially the Virginia was rated as a “ram.” A fifteen-hundred-pound cast iron prow had been bolted onto the ship’s bow just below the waterline, and though it protruded only a few feet from the ship’s stem, it made the ship itself, as well as its guns, a potentially lethal weapon. Buchanan’s plan was to steam his vessel directly at the Cumberland and drive that cast iron prow into the Cumberland’s wooden hull. He targeted that ship first because, although it had fewer guns than the Congress, the Cumberland’s guns were larger and included two ten-inch pivot guns. Buchanan feared (incorrectly, as it happened) that these guns might be rifled, and since large-caliber rifled guns were the only ones likely to prove capable of penetrating the Virginia’s iron shield, the Cumberland had to be dispatched first. The risk was that such a direct attack would enable the Cumberland to “cap the T” of the Virginia as it approached: that is, the Cumberland would be able to fire several broadsides at the Virginia during its lengthy transit, while the Virginia would be able to answer only with its one bow gun, a seven-inch Brooke-designed rifle.
The Virginia’s straining engines were able to propel the great ship through the water at only about five knots, so the men on both sides had plenty of time to consider the pending encounter. Whatever they felt internally, outwardly they displayed confidence and a grim determination. Men stood quietly at their posts, some out of a sense of duty, some out of patriotism, some simply because their pride would not let them do otherwise. On the Virginia, one officer noted “the pale and determined countenances of the gun crews as they stood motionless at their posts, with set lips unsmiling.” But in at least some cases—if not most—that stoic demeanor belied a deep apprehension. The third assistant engineer, Eugenius Jack, recalled that he felt “no little anxiety” and was “a little weak kneed” as the Virginia closed its foe. For most of the gunners and firemen on the Virginia, this would be their first combat on a ship of war. The majority of them had been recruited from army units nearby, and the slow journey down the Elizabeth River was their total seagoing experience. Jack no doubt spoke for many when he noted in his memoirs, “There are few men who do not feel some symptoms of fear when going into battle; pride has kept many a man’s face to the foe, when his heart would turn it away.”30
Similarly on the Cumberland, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, who commanded the ship’s first division, recalled that the men waited at their guns “cool, grim, silent, and determined.” If they were appalled by the grotesque iron-plated war machine steaming slowly toward them, they took comfort, as soldiers and sailors have done throughout the history of organized war, in the proximity of their messmates. That bond gav
e them a collective strength that masked their individual uncertainties. Selfridge wrote that they felt “the mutual dependence upon each other arising from long association.”31
What was unique about this engagement was not merely that it pitted steam against sail, or even iron against wood, but that it marked a confrontation between men on a ship and men in a ship. On the Union warships the sailors stood by their guns and sighted along the barrels much as Perry’s or Barclay’s men had done on Lake Erie. From the weather deck on the Cumberland or the Congress they had a clear view of the “thing” that was slowly approaching them. Inside the Virginia, on the other hand, most of the men had to guess at what was happening outside their iron shell. The gunners tried to peer out the narrow gunports, but the view was constricted, and the officers availed themselves of the privileges of rank to take all the best vantage points. Down below there was no view at all. In the darkened fireroom, E. A. Jack recalled that “the suspense was awful.” He could track the slow-motion approach of the Virginia toward its quarry only in his mind’s eye, and he knew that the battle had begun only when he heard “the dull reports of the enemies artillery, and an occasional sharp crack and tremor of the ship told that we had been struck.” But whether those shots striking the shield had penetrated to the gun deck, he did not know. Then he heard “the sharp reports of our own guns,” and soon afterward “there came a tremor throughout the ship and I was nearly thrown from the coal bucket upon which I was sitting.” The Virginia had rammed the Cumberland in its starboard side, punching its fifteen-hundred-pound ram deep within the wooden hull of its foe. Surely such a blow would be mortal, Jack thought. “The cracking and breaking of her timbers told full well how fatal to her that collision was.”32
The sounds and sensations that reached the men inside the Virginia only hinted at the destruction that was taking place aboard the Cumberland. While the shells from the Cumberland glanced harmlessly off the Virginia’s iron casemate, the Virginia’s bow rifle caused horrible execution on the deck of the Cumberland even before the fatal collision. The second shot fired by the Virginia exploded in the midst of a gun crew that was urgently reloading the Cumberland’s forward ten-inch pivot. The explosion dismounted the gun and killed every man in its crew except the gun captain, who lost both of his arms.
On board the Virginia, the gun crews reloaded. Lieutenant Charles Simms, captain of the bow gun, called out, “Sponge!” and the sponge man, Charles Dunbar, leaped over the breeching tackle and thrust his head out through the gunport to obey. A U.S. Marine on the Cumberland who had been watching the gunport for just such an opportunity squeezed his trigger, and Dunbar fell back into the Virginia shot through the head.33
When the Virginia’s iron prow struck the Cumberland, men on both ships were knocked from their feet. Water poured in through the gaping hole in the Cumberland’s side. Even then, with the ship literally sinking beneath them and the dead and dying all about, the men on the Cumberland dragged the dead to the unengaged side of the ship and returned to their guns, loading and firing as fast as they could. Because the forward magazine had flooded, powder and shell had to be manhandled from the after magazine, but the guns kept firing. Nevertheless, it was clear that the Cumberland was mortally wounded. A junior officer recalled, “The once clean and beautiful deck was slippery with blood, blackened with powder and looked like a slaughter house.” Even as the gunners continued to work the big guns, the ship began to settle beneath them.34
The CSS Virginia drives its iron prow deep into the starboard bow of the USS Cumberland in this line drawing, first published by Century magazine at the end of the nineteenth century. The Virginia’s rampage on March 8, 1862, marked the worst defeat for the U.S. Navy until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor some eighty years later. (Ned Bradford, ed., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War)
The men on the Virginia had little time to savor their victory. For a few anxious moments it seemed likely that the Cumberland would take her assassin down with her. The Virginia’s ram had plunged so deeply into the Cumberland that, although Buchanan had immediately ordered all astern, the ironclad remained embedded in the side of its sinking victim. Water began to rush through the Virginia’s forward gunports into the casemate, and the deck of the big ironclad canted forward alarmingly. The two ships began to settle in tandem until the James River current swung the Virginia’s stern slowly to starboard, and the resulting torque on the ship’s ram caused a section of it to break off. With that, the Virginia was able to extricate itself from its mortally wounded foe and back away.
The Cumberland continued to settle, more swiftly now as tons of water rushed in through the gaping wound in its side, though the men on board continued to serve the guns as long as they were above water. With the decks awash, the sailors finally abandoned their guns; those who could swim plunged into the water on the landward side and made their way to shore as best they could. Only now did it become evident that carrying the wounded below decks had been a terrible error. There was no time to bring them back up to the weather deck, and dozens of wounded men drowned below decks as the Cumberland settled bow first, its stern rising briefly before the ship settled on the bottom of Hampton Roads, the tips of its masts still showing above the surface with the vessel’s commissioning pennant still flying.* On Perry’s Lawrence back in 1813, some 96 of the 159 men on board had been killed or wounded, but “only” 22 of them had been killed outright. On the Cumberland, more than five times as many were killed: 121 out of 376. Ashore, Lieutenant Selfridge looked back aghast at the scene of disaster. That night, he admitted in his memoirs, he “sobbed like a child.”35
Buchanan was not done yet. Sea warrior that he was, his goal was to destroy the entire Federal squadron, and the Congress was next. Because the James River current had pushed the Virginia’s stern downstream, its bow was now pointing upriver. Buchanan therefore had to conn his balky vessel upriver to gain sea room before executing a slow 180-degree turn to port to reenter Hampton Roads. The Virginia was so heavy and unmanageable that it took nearly forty minutes, with its keel scraping bottom most of the way, to execute the turn. At first the sailors watching from the Congress thought the Virginia was fleeing upriver, and they began to cheer, but the cheers died on their lips as the heavy ironclad continued its slow turn to port and then steadied on a course directly toward them.
The destruction of the Cumberland had uncorked the blockade of the James River, allowing the gunboats of the Confederate James River squadron to steam downriver and join the fight, though they made little difference. A Federal shell fired from the shore ripped through the boiler of the CSS Patrick Henry early in the battle, scalding four men to death and sending it out of the fight. The single gun on the CSS Raleigh slipped from its carriage and became useless. But if these conventional warships proved easy meat for the Federal gunners, every sailor on the Congress had witnessed the Virginia’s destruction of the Cumberland, and they could no longer doubt the seriousness of the menace it represented.
There were actually two captains on board the Congress that day, both of them named Smith. Lieutenant William Smith had been formally detached from command, though he remained on board as a volunteer while effective command was executed by Lieutenant Joseph Smith Jr. The two men were no relation to each other, though the latter, coincidentally, was the son of the Joseph Smith who had chaired Welles’s Ironclad Board. Having witnessed the Virginia’s easy conquest of the Cumberland, he saw at once that his own ship had no hope of standing up to the rebel ironclad, and he ordered the anchor slipped, raised the jib, and steered his vessel into shoal water, where the Merrimack (as the Federals continued to call it) could not follow.
Aground on the seventeen-foot shoal, the Congress was safe from ramming, but not from the Virginia’s guns. Buchanan carefully maneuvered his ship so that he could hammer away at the Congress from a distance of less than two hundred yards, close enough to ensure efficient and devastating fire. Hard aground, the Congress could not maneuver to bring its br
oadside to bear, and it could employ only its two stern guns. Those two guns fired away defiantly but uselessly, until the stern of the Congress was so utterly wrecked by the Virginia’s constant pounding that they could no longer be served. The Congress was now helpless, a passive target absorbing punishment. Scores died, including young Joe Smith Jr., who was virtually decapitated by a shell fragment. It was evident that surrender was the only humane and sensible option, and the burden of that decision fell on the ship’s executive officer, Lieutenant Austin Pendergrast. A few minutes before 4:00, the Congress’s flag fluttered down.36
The guns ceased firing, and a strange silence settled over the roadstead. Buchanan and most of the Virginia’s officers left the acrid casemate and climbed up to stand on the upper deck. From there, Buchanan ordered Lieutenant William H. Parker in the gunboat Beaufort to go alongside the Congress and accept its formal surrender. He instructed Parker to bring the officers and the wounded aboard the Virginia and allow the able-bodied men to escape to shore. Then he was to set the Congress afire. Fifty-year veteran that he was, Buchanan was a sailor of the old school. At this moment he very likely envisioned a scene similar to the one that had taken place aboard the Lawrence in 1813, when British officers in full dress uniform had come on board to offer their swords to Perry. Perhaps afterward Buchanan would invite the captain of the Congress to accompany him to his cabin for a glass of sherry. It was even possible that Buchanan’s brother might join them, for McKean Buchanan had remained loyal to the Union, and Franklin Buchanan knew that his brother was serving on the Congress as that ship’s paymaster.
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