Decision at Sea

by Symonds, Craig L.

  If Buchanan envisioned such a scenario, it evaporated almost at once. When Parker’s vessel bumped alongside the Congress, Pendergrast offered him a ship’s cutlass; somewhat annoyed, Parker told him to go get his officer’s sword. Much more seriously, Federal soldiers of the 20th Indiana regiment on the nearby shore opened fire on Parker’s gunboat as it lay alongside the grounded Congress. Parker later claimed that while he was under fire from the soldiers on shore, three bullets passed through his clothes, his cap was shot off, and he was wounded in the knee. Outraged at this violation of the traditions of sea warfare, Parker insisted that Pendergrast order the soldiers to stop firing. But even if Pendergrast had been willing to do so, he had no authority over Army soldiers, who in any case were not impressed by the traditions of the sea, whatever they might be. When a Federal lieutenant ashore tried to stop the shooting, Brigadier General Joseph K. Mansfield overruled him. “I know the d——d ship has surrendered,” he growled, “but we haven’t.” Meanwhile on board the Congress, Pendergrast urged Parker to hoist a white flag to prevent his crew from being shot to pieces. Parker refused. He would be damned before he would surrender his ship to a gaggle of soldiers. He sheered off and steamed out of range.37

  Watching all this from the Virginia, Buchanan could not understand why his orders were not being carried out. The Congress was flying a white flag of surrender, yet the enemy continued to fire on officers who were attempting to take possession of a surrendered prize. Furious, he exclaimed to no one in particular: “That ship must be burned!” His young aide, Bob Minor, volunteered to take a ship’s boat over to the Congress and set it afire, and Buchanan agreed. Minor put out in the only ship’s boat that had not been destroyed in the fight, and, to make sure there was no misunderstanding, he raised a white flag of truce. But the boat was no sooner under way when more shots from shore drove it back, one of the shots wounding young Minor. Buchanan was now beside himself with fury. “She’s firing on our white flag!” he sputtered. From the exposed roof of the Virginia’s casemate, he put a rifle to his shoulder and fired a shot toward the offending infantry on shore. Unsurprisingly, they at once fired back, and soon Buchanan slumped to the deck, shot through the groin.* Very well—if the perfidious Yankees were going to ignore the rules of war, he decided, they must pay the consequences. Once he had been carried below, Buchanan tersely ordered the Virginia to reopen fire on the grounded and helpless Congress.38

  Each side felt the fury of violated honor. To the Confederates, the Yankees were the guilty party, since they had fired on a white flag while officers attempted to take possession of a lawful prize. To the Federals, the Confederates were at fault, since they now opened fire on a grounded vessel full of helpless men, a vessel that was flying not one but two white flags of surrender. This was where the time-honored traditions of the Age of Sail collided with the realities of total war in a mechanized age. For the rest of the war, and for decades afterward, each side would point an accusing finger at the other to charge that in Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862, the traditional rules of naval warfare—indeed, the very ideals of chivalry and humanity—were sacrificed to a new template of modern war: a mechanized war without rules, without restraint, without mercy, and without honor.

  The Virginia fired three deliberate rounds of “hot shot” into the grounded hull of the Congress. Iron shot was heated on grates in the ship’s furnace, rolled out into iron buckets, and carried up to the gun deck. There it was carefully loaded into the muzzles of guns that had been previously prepared to receive them by placing wads of wet hemp on top of the powder so that the heated shot would not prematurely ignite the charge. When the heated iron balls struck the dry, sun-baked wood of the Congress’s hull, they kindled the sailor’s worst enemy: fire. As the fire spread, small boats ferried the surviving crew of the Congress to shore as fast as they could. Those who could swim leaped over the side and struck out on their own. The dead, and many of the wounded, had to be left behind. Soon the Congress was burning briskly, the flames running up its rigging and lighting up the roadstead, and at last the firing ceased, though the Congress continued to burn through the twilight and into the evening. One hundred and ten of the ship’s 434 men had been killed outright, and another ten died that evening—more than 27 percent of the ship’s complement.39

  The Virginia had suffered relatively little. Two men had been killed and a score wounded, though only Buchanan and Minor were wounded seriously. A few, such as Charles Dunbar, had been hit by musket balls aimed through the gunports by Marines on board the Cumberland; others had suffered concussions when shells crashed against the outside of the armor shield while they were leaning against it. The ship’s smokestack was riddled with holes, the anchor had been shot away, and the casemate was pocked with indentations, but otherwise the vessel was intact and ready to fight again. There were still two hours of daylight left and three more Union warships in the roadstead. But it had been a long day. The crew was exhausted, and the pilots were reluctant to maneuver the deep-draft Virginia in a confined roadstead with a falling tide and growing darkness. After exchanging long-range fire with the grounded Minnesota for about an hour, Jones, with Buchanan’s agreement, directed the Virginia to an anchorage off Sewall’s Point on the south side of the roadstead, from which point it could renew the attack the next day. After all, the Minnesota would still be there tomorrow.40

  The Congress was still burning at midnight, the flames reflecting dramatically off the inky waters of the roadstead, when the Monitor tied up alongside the Roanoke. As the new arrivals watched, the flames reached the ship’s magazine, and the USS Congress exploded in a giant fireball.

  The USS Congress, set ablaze by hot shot from the Virginia, burns briskly as the crew abandons ship. One hundred and twenty men died on board the Congress on March 8. (Ned Bradford, ed., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War)

  Dawn on March 9 revealed a scene of devastation. The Cumberland’s topmasts, with the blue commissioning pennant still flying, jutted above the surface of the water off Newport News Point, while nearby the blackened ribs of the Congress protruded from the sea, which was littered with bits and pieces of the ship’s wreckage. In addition, the Federals had lost two small transports and one schooner in the fighting, and most of the Federal ships that had survived were damaged. The Minnesota had been struck a dozen times and was fast aground on the seventeen-foot shoal; beyond it, more than halfway to Point Comfort, the St. Lawrence was also aground. Only the Roanoke found relative safety under the guns of Fort Monroe.

  News of the disaster in Hampton Roads had been telegraphed to Washington, where it provoked a state of near panic. Secretary of War Stanton in particular feared that the Merrimack (as he called it) would steam out of Hampton Roads to attack the cities of the eastern seaboard one by one, starting with Washington. During the emergency cabinet meeting that Lincoln called that morning, Stanton repeatedly jumped up from his chair and rushed over to the windows, looking downriver to see if the Merrimack was even then on its way to bombard Washington.41

  On board the Virginia, Buchanan knew that such a scenario was impossible. The Virginia was simply not seaworthy enough to survive in the open water of Chesapeake Bay, much less the Atlantic Ocean, and her draft was too deep to allow her to ascend the Potomac to Washington in any case. Still, he was determined to finish the job begun the day before by destroying the rest of the Union squadron in Hampton Roads, starting with the grounded Minnesota. That would not only clear the Federal Navy from the roadstead, it would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Federals to maintain their foothold on the Virginia coast at Fort Monroe. Indeed, though Buchanan could not have known it, his victory in Hampton Roads threatened to overturn the entire grand strategy of the Union Army commander, Major General George B. McClellan. That officer had been waiting all winter to transport his army to the Virginia peninsula by sea for a thrust at Richmond in a campaign that he hoped and believed would end the war. Now McClellan had to rethink his plans. “The performances of
the Merrimac,” he wrote, “places a new aspect on everything, & may very probably change my whole plan of campaign.” Just as Harrison’s campaign in 1813 had depended on the control of Lake Erie, so now did McClellan’s campaign depend on the control of Hampton Roads.42

  Alas for him, Buchanan’s wound was a serious one; the bullet that struck him down had grazed the femoral artery, and for a while it was feared that the sixty-one-year-old sea warrior would not survive. Clearly he could no longer exercise command of the Virginia, a duty that now fell to his executive officer, Catesby Jones. Even so, Buchanan was reluctant to abandon his command. The code of the sea, he believed, required him to stay on board and share victory or defeat with his officers and crew. Despite that, the ship’s surgeon convinced him that it was his duty to go ashore, if not for his own well-being, then because the captain’s cabin would be needed to treat others who might fall wounded in the renewed contest. Buchanan grudgingly agreed, and soon he and young Bob Minor were being rowed to the naval hospital in Norfolk.43

  After bidding Godspeed to Buchanan, Jones made a quick inspection of the Virginia, rowing around the anchored vessel in the ship’s one surviving boat. There were a number of dramatic dents in the ship’s armor but none that threatened the integrity of the shield. Apparently this inspection failed to reveal to Jones that most of the ship’s bow ram had broken off after the collision with the Cumberland. The flanges of the ram remained bolted to the hull, and Jones concluded that the ram itself had merely been twisted out of shape rather than sundered. Back on board, he ordered the engineers to get up steam. There was work to be done.

  Like Buchanan, Jones was a veteran of the prewar U.S. Navy, though his twenty-five years of service were only about half that of his predecessor. If Buchanan was a sailor of the old school, Jones was a member of the new class of “scientific officers.” He had spent much of his career in the Hydrography Office and in the Bureau of Ordnance, where he had been an assistant to John A. Dahlgren, the man who had designed the big guns inside the Monitor’s turret. In that respect Jones had more in common with John Worden, who had spent much of his career in the Naval Observatory, than he did with the old sea dog Franklin Buchanan. Thus, two men of science, each in command of a warship on the cutting edge of naval technology, represented a new generation of naval officers, grounded in engineering, metallurgy, and ordnance, as they squared off against one another in the confined waters of Hampton Roads.

  Unaware as yet of the Monitor’s presence, Jones ordered the Virginia to get under way at about 7:00 A.M. He directed it first toward the northeast in the general direction of Fort Monroe until it reached the main ship channel. Then he ordered the helm over, and the great ship swung to port and began to close on the Minnesota, approaching the grounded frigate from its stern, where only a few of its guns could be brought to bear. During the approach, Jones stood atop the Virginia’s casemate with the ship’s gunnery officer, Hunter Davidson. Off to the south he could see dozens of small craft filled with the curious who had come out to witness what they were sure would be the final destruction of the Federal fleet. Many of them waved hats or handkerchiefs as tokens of support. To the north was the looming presence of Fort Monroe, its ramparts lined with equally curious, though far less confident, spectators wearing Union blue.

  After the Virginia turned into the ship channel, Jones focused his attention on the grounded Minnesota. He could see a few tugs around her apparently trying to pull her off the shoal into deep water, but as the morning fog lifted and the range closed, he noted that there was something else there, too. He could not quite make it out. It appeared to be a large water tank on a raft, though it seemed unlikely that the Minnesota was taking on fresh water. Perhaps the Minnesota’s boiler had been removed for repair, though that, too, seemed unlikely. Davidson ventured the hopeful notion that it was a raft and that the Minnesota’s crew was abandoning ship. Whatever it was, it was screening the Minnesota from the Virginia. Only when it moved away under its own power did Jones realize that this was the Ericsson Battery that he had heard of, and that this day’s fighting might be somewhat different from that of the day before.44

  For his part, Worden knew exactly what the Virginia was from the moment it materialized out of the morning fog. The previous night, after hearing a detailed report of the day’s slaughter from John Marston, captain of the Roanoke, Worden had been astonished to be handed an order from Welles dated three days before directing him “to proceed immediately to Washington with his vessel.” But Marston also had in hand another telegram from Welles authorizing him to use his “best judgment” about the disposition of the vessels in Hampton Roads, and after discussing the situation, Marston and Worden decided that the Monitor should stay. An hour before midnight Worden conned the Monitor from the Roanoke to the grounded and wounded Minnesota. On board the Minnesota, the news that the Union ironclad had come alongside produced a surge of hope. But most of those who peered over the railing to look down at the odd little craft relapsed into despondency. Much smaller than the Virginia to begin with, its profile was such that with only the twenty-one-foot-wide turret showing above the water, it seemed a pitiable little vessel by comparison. Although the Minnesota’s captain, Gersham Van Brunt, later insisted that the Monitor’s arrival led all on board to feel that “we had a friend that would stand by us in our hour of trial,” at the time he sustained little hope that this ludicrous little vessel could do anything to prevent the Merrimack from completing its campaign of destruction.45

  Once alongside the Minnesota, Worden made sure that everything was ready for battle, and having done that, there was nothing to do but wait. He did not sleep—it was already 2:00 A.M., and dawn was less than four hours away. Instead, he remained atop the turret with his twenty-one-year-old executive officer, Samuel Greene, discussing the forthcoming battle and watching for the appearance of the rebel ironclad. The hands were ordered to sleep by their battle stations, though (as one recalled) “no one slept.” Indeed, few, if any, had slept at all since leaving New York three days before. Several times during the night, false alarms kept the crew of the Monitor on edge, until finally just past dawn, as the fog lifted, they could make out the dark blur of the rebel ironclad off Sewell’s Point. Only when the Virginia made its turn into the ship channel and began to close the Minnesota did Worden order his own vessel to get under way. As the lines were cast off, Van Brunt shouted across to Worden: “If I cannot lighten my ship off [the shoal] I shall destroy her.”

  “I will stand by you to the last,” Worden called back.

  Morosely, Van Brunt replied: “No Sir, you cannot help me.”46

  As had been the case the day before, the shoreline was lined with spectators. The local geography conspired to turn the roadstead into a natural amphitheater, and the weather cooperated as well: the fog lifted like a curtain going up, and the sun shone down to light the stage. Most of the spectators on both sides expected the Virginia to continue its track of destruction. Even after the spectators became aware of the presence of the Monitor, they (like Van Brunt) had trouble believing that it would make much of a difference.

  Worden’s plan was to close to point-blank range before opening with his two eleven-inch guns. Climbing down from the roof of the turret, he watched as the gun crew hoisted a 165-pound shot into the muzzle of one of the big Dahlgren guns. “Send them that with our compliments, my lads,” he told them. Then, leaving the management of the big guns to his young executive officer, he climbed down through the hatch into the ship’s semisubmerged hull and went forward to take his position in the pilothouse, a small boxlike projection forward of the turret. There he directed the helmsman to steer a course to close the approaching enemy ironclad.47

  Worden’s battle station was unique for a ship’s commanding officer. Confined within a tiny space only thirty-two inches wide and forty-two inches front to back—a space he shared with both the pilot and the helmsman—he had a letterbox view of the world, since his only window was a narrow slit only seve
n-eighths of an inch wide. Moreover, because Worden had to peer through nine inches of armor, his vertical field of vision was so limited he could not even see the bow of his own ship. Unlike Perry, who had walked his open quarterdeck with the wind in his hair, and unlike Buchanan (and now Jones), who could walk the length of the Virginia’s 170-foot-long gundeck, Worden was a virtual prisoner in his little metal box.48

  Most of his crew shared that sense of confinement. “Everybody was shut in,” one officer recalled. As they went into battle for the first time, the men inside the Monitor, like those inside the Virginia, had a strange sense of isolation and detachment. With the hatches closed tightly over the glass windows in the deck, only “a few straggling rays of light found their way from the top of the tower [turret] to the depths below,” the ship’s paymaster, William F. Keeler, recalled. In the half-light provided by the lanterns, it was also profoundly silent but for the steady clanking of the engines. The fact that the ship’s hull was already submerged and that it was made of iron impressed all on board with the notion that a breech anywhere in the ship’s armor would send them all immediately to the bottom with little chance to escape. Just as E. A. Jack had done on the Virginia, Keeler examined his emotions as his vessel steamed forward into battle. “I experienced a peculiar sensation,” he wrote later to his wife. “I do not think it was fear, but it was different from anything I ever knew before. We were enclosed in what we supposed to be impenetrable armour—we knew that a powerful foe was about to meet us—ours was an untried experiment & our enemy’s first fire might make it a coffin for us all.” And like Jack, Keeler was conscious of being strangely separated from the real world outside the ironclad where the sun was shining. “We knew not how soon the attack would commence, or from what direction it would come.” And then, again echoing Jack, he wrote: “The suspense was awful.”49