Decision at Sea

by Symonds, Craig L.

  The Virginia fired first. At about 8:30 Lieutenant Simms pulled the lanyard on the Virginia’s seven-inch Brooke rifle in the bow and sent a shell not at the Monitor but toward the grounded Minnesota, more than a mile and a half away. The first shot passed through the Minnesota’s rigging; the second exploded inside the tug Dragon, which lay alongside. The Monitor’s guns remained silent. Worden was determined to get as close as possible before firing. Communication between the gun turret and the pilothouse had to take place by messenger, and Greene passed a message to Worden asking if he could open fire. “Tell Mr. Greene not to fire until I give the word,” was Worden’s calm reply. As the Virginia continued to fire on the hapless Minnesota, Worden ran the Monitor to within a mere fifty yards of the Virginia before stopping its engines and giving the order: “Commence firing!” Greene pulled the lanyard, and a 165-pound wrought iron ball, propelled by fifteen pounds of black power, smashed into the side of the Virginia’s casemate with what one of the Virginia’s officers called “a resounding wham.” The Virginia shuddered from the concussion, but its armored walls remained intact. Now it was the Virginia’s turn, as shells from its nine-inch Dahlgrens and seven-inch rifles struck flush on the face of the Monitor’s turret.50

  Up to that moment no one (besides the ever-confident Ericsson) was sure if the eight layers of one-inch iron plate on the Monitor’s turret would repel shot effectively or if the concussion of a well-aimed shot would knock the turret off its spindle. Inside the crowded turret, Greene and the twenty-one others both felt and heard the jarring impact, and they could see the bulge that one shell made in the turret’s wall. Alarmed, Greene pointed out the bulge to the chief engineer, Alban Stimers. Stimers was technically a passenger on the Monitor, since his role was to assess the fighting capabilities of the new vessel for the Navy. Moreover, engineers were outside the regular chain of command in the Civil War Navy, and although the twenty-one-year-old Greene was the ship’s executive officer, the thirty-four-year-old Stimers was not overly impressed by that fact. Almost like a schoolmaster instructing a particularly slow student, he asked Greene if the shot had come through the armor.

  “No,” Greene replied, “but it made a big dent.”

  “A big dent!” Stimers exclaimed. “Of course it made a big dent—that is just what we expected. What do you care about that so long as it keeps out the shot?”

  Despite Stimers’s irreverent tone, Greene took comfort from the answer. “Oh, it’s all right then,” he replied. With that, the men handling the guns in the turret breathed out, and their sense of confidence rose perceptibly.51

  As soon as it was evident that his guns had little effect on the Monitor, Jones decided to ignore it and concentrate his fire on the grounded Minnesota. But the pilots on the Virginia insisted that they were unable to take him any closer to the Minnesota for fear of running aground, and, in any case, Worden kept interposing his little craft between the Virginia and its prey. Both ironclads had trouble elevating their guns, and as a result they fired by ricochet: the shells skipping across the water like stones across a pond, kicking up great geysers at each ricochet en route to the target. With the Monitor in his line of fire, Jones had little choice but to accept battle with the interloper.

  The ships circled each other, firing as fast as the gunners could load. The Virginia fired faster and with more guns, but the Monitor’s guns not only were larger, they also fired solid shot, which was better devised for punching through armor plate. Because Confederate authorities had expected to meet only wooden warships, the Virginia had mostly shells in her magazine. Inside both ships, the air filled with smoke and the nearly constant sound of guns firing, of shot and shell smashing against unyielding iron plate, and shouted orders. On the Virginia, the orders became a mantra: “Sponge. Load. Fire.” Rivulets of sweat ran down the backs of the gunners, making tracks through the black powder grime, as they executed these orders inside their casemate, unable to see or evaluate the effect of their labor. “Powder smoke filled the entire ship,” recalled one officer, “so that we could see but a short distance and its acrid fumes made breathing difficult.” Another described the scene more poetically: “The noise of the crackling, roaring fires, escaping steam, and the loud labored pulsations of the engines, together with the roar of battle above and the thud and vibrations of the huge masses of iron which were hurled against us, produced a scene and sound to be compared only with the poet’s picture of the lower regions.”52

  The two ironclads target each other at point-blank range during the height of the battle on March 9. Note the square pilothouse on the bow of the Monitor, where John Worden watched the battle through his narrow slit. The Virginia’s deck is depicted as being awash in this drawing, though the reduction in its draft after firing off tons of heavy ordnance later exposed its deck and rendered it vulnerable to a well-aimed shot at the waterline. (Ned Bradford, ed., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War)

  On the Monitor, the loading of the twin Dahlgrens required a lengthy process. First the turret had to be rotated away from the foe to protect the gun crew, then the guns had to be swabbed out, and a sack containing a premeasured fifteen pounds of black powder had to be loaded and rammed home. Then the 165-pound shot had to be hoisted to the muzzle and seated home against the powder. The gunnery officer fixed a primer filled with fulminate of mercury over the vent as the turret rotated back to face the foe. When the enemy target rotated back into view, the gunner pulled the lanyard, tripping a hammer down on the primer and exploding the black powder. The two big Dahlgrens could not be fired simultaneously because the heavy iron gunport shields on the turret both swung inward, toward each other, instead of off to the sides, and there was insufficient space between the gunports to accommodate both of them at once. These factors dramatically reduced the Monitor’s rate of fire, but if it fired less frequently, each shot was more than twice the weight of the shells coming from the Virginia. A few of these 165-pound shots dented the Virginia’s armor plate so badly that the twenty-four-inch wooden backing cracked and bent inward, throwing splinters across the deck. The Confederates feared that repeated such blows on a single spot would eventually break down the ship’s shield. But the gears on the Monitor’s turret engine had rusted during the trip down from New York, and it proved almost impossible to stop the turret exactly on target. Instead, Greene had to fire the guns on the fly as the turret swept past the target.53

  Another missed opportunity on the Monitor was the regulation that limited the gunners to using no more than fifteen pounds of powder per charge. Afterward, tests made it evident that if Worden had increased the charge to twenty-five or thirty pounds, the shot from his eleven-inch guns would almost certainly have penetrated the Virginia’s casemate. But the guns on the Monitor had never been proofed beyond fifteen pounds, and Worden knew that if one of his guns exploded from being overloaded, it would not only instantly kill everyone inside the turret but disable and perhaps destroy his own vessel. In such a case the Virginia would have its way with the rest of the Union forces in the roadstead.54

  While Worden maneuvered the Monitor from the pilothouse based on his tiny letterbox view of the world, Greene and the gunners in the turret did not have even that restricted view. With the ship constantly maneuvering and the turret continually rotating, it did not take long for the men in the turret to lose their bearings entirely. “How does the Virginia bear?” Greene would call out to one of the messengers, and soon the answer came back, shouted up through the hatch: “On the starboard beam,” or “On the port quarter.” But Greene had no idea where the starboard beam was. White markings had been painted on the hull below the turret to indicate port and starboard, but they became obscured almost immediately once the fighting started. All he could do was continue to load the big guns as fast as he could and fire them whenever the Virginia’s armored walls came into view through the gun ports. It was a particularly detached and impersonal sort of warfare. The officers and men who fed the Monitor’s engines in the darkened ar
eas below decks, those who controlled its movements, and those who worked its guns each operated in discrete confined spaces cut off not only from one another but from the world generally.55

  This panoramic view of the Battle of Hampton Roads shows how the contestants dueled in a kind of natural amphitheater with the troops on shore and the sailors on the ships in the foreground hanging on the outcome. (U.S. Army)

  After more than an hour, it became evident that the Virginia’s smaller guns, firing mainly shell, were unlikely to overcome the Monitor’s heavy iron armor. When Jones noted that one of his gun crews had stopped firing, he asked its officer, Lieutenant John Eggleston, why his crew was standing at ease. “Why, our powder is very precious,” Eggleston answered. “After two hours of incessant firing I find that I can do her [the Monitor] about as much damage by snapping my thumb at her every two minutes and a half.”56 Accepting this reality, Jones decided to try to ram the Monitor, unaware that most of the Virginia’s ram was still inside the Cumberland.

  Maneuvering the unwieldy Virginia with its twenty-two-foot draft in the confined spaces of Hampton Roads was difficult in the best of circumstances, and while trying to find sea room to make a run at the Monitor, Jones and everyone else on board felt it when the big ship suddenly lurched to a halt. It had run fast aground. Under the circumstances this was more than bad luck; it could very well be fatal. The Virginia could not maneuver to bring its guns to bear, and with its lighter draft the Monitor could take a position on her quarter and pound her at close range with round after round. Jones had to get his ship back into deep water. He ordered his chief engineer, Ashton Ramsay, to give him full power. The engines strained and the ship’s huge two-bladed propeller churned up the mud furiously, but the vessel did not move. Jones then ordered Ramsay to tie down the safety valves and let the steam pressure build up past the limits of both safety and prudence until finally with a shudder the Virginia pushed itself into deep water.57

  This brush with disaster did not deter Jones from his determination to ram the little Monitor, and somehow he managed to get the much larger Virginia into ramming position. He drove his ship into the side of the Union ironclad, striking it a glancing blow that knocked the men inside the Monitor off their feet, but the blow had struck the Monitor’s five-foot-thick armor belt, and as a result it did more damage to the stern of the Virginia than it did to the Monitor. Ramsay reported that the collision had started a leak forward, and only now did Jones realize that at least part of the Virginia’s ram was gone. The pumps could handle the leak, Ramsay told him, but it was clear that ramming was not a viable tactic. The gunnery duel continued.

  On board the Virginia, Lieutenant Davidson ordered some of the gunners to arm themselves with Springfield rifles and try to aim shots in through the Monitor’s gunports as the two vessels passed. One young enlisted man named Richard Curtis positioned himself accordingly and peered out a gunport, only to see the mouth of an eleven-inch Dahlgren gun “looking me squarely in the face.” His companion yelled, “Look out Curtis!” and the two men ducked back just as the gun fired, barely missing the open gunport in the Virginia.58

  Soon the supply of ammunition began to run down on both ships. This dangerously affected the trim of the Virginia. Each broadside from four nine-inch Dahlgren guns lightened the ship by more than 350 pounds. In an hour, the Virginia shot away more than seven thousand pounds. Combined with the shot and shell it had fired away the day before, plus the loss of its fifteen-hundred-pound ram, the Virginia was now more than five tons lighter than it had been when it began its maiden voyage the day before. Since its armored shield extended only a few inches below the waterline, there was a real threat that as the Virginia became lighter its vulnerable lower hull might become exposed.

  On the Monitor, the expenditure of ammunition was less critical—its armor belt extended several feet below the waterline. But once the ready ammunition in the turret had been expended, more had to be brought up from below, and the only communication between the gun turret and the lower hull was through a single hatch. In order to bring up more ammunition, it was necessary to freeze the turret in place so that the access hatch in the floor of the turret lined up with the one in the ship’s deck. During this evolution, the ship would not be able to fire its guns, and Worden ordered the Monitor to steam off toward Fort Monroe into shallow water, where the Virginia could not follow. While the crew manhandled the powder and shot up from the ship’s magazine—which Greene described as “a slow and tedious operation”—Worden left his post in the pilothouse and, making his way up through the turret, climbed out onto the exposed deck to inspect the damage done by the enemy’s shells. He was gratified, and no doubt relieved, to see that the only evidence of the severe pounding it had received was a number of perfectly smooth dents in the turret’s armor plate.59

  The moment the Monitor steamed away to replenish its ammunition, Jones returned his attention to the Minnesota. The distance—still over a mile—was great, but the Virginia’s marksmanship was excellent. The first shot hit the Minnesota amidships, passed through the engineers’ berthing spaces, and exploded in the boatswains’ mess, igniting some stored gunpowder and setting the ship on fire. In return, Van Brunt ordered a full broadside, a storm of shot and shell that he later claimed “would have blown out of the water any timber-built ship in the world,” but which had no more effect on the Virginia than “so many pebblestones thrown by a child.” Once again Van Brunt worried that his command would be destroyed. After consulting with his officers, he made preparations to abandon ship and destroy it to prevent it from being taken by the rebels.60

  His concern was premature. Within less than twenty minutes, the Monitor was back in the fight, once again interposing itself between the Virginia and the Minnesota. The captains on both ships each sought to find a weakness in the other. The Monitor had not been built as a ram, but Worden nonetheless decided to try to ram his prow into the stern of the Virginia, hoping to disable its rudder. For his part, Jones considered boarding, and volunteers talked about jamming a wedge between the Monitor’s turret and its deck or throwing hand grenades through the roof of the turret, which, like the overhead on the Virginia, was composed of railroad rails spaced a few inches apart. Such bold efforts proved impossible to execute, however, and Jones told his gunners to concentrate their fire on the Monitor’s small pilothouse, where Worden watched the fight through his narrow viewing slit.61

  Soon afterward, the fight reached a decisive moment when a shell from one of the Virginia’s guns exploded square on the face of the pilothouse while Worden was looking out through the slit. A “flash of light” lit up the tiny pilothouse and filled it with smoke. Worden staggered backward, his hands to his face. “My eyes,” he cried out. “I am blind.”62

  The ship’s paymaster and surgeon manhandled Worden down from the pilothouse and laid him on the deck of the passageway. The paymaster remembered that “blood was running from his face which was blackened with powder.” The wound was not fatal, but clearly Worden could no longer exercise command. He sent for Greene and formally relinquished command to him. “Do what you think best,” he told him. “I cannot see, but do not mind me. Save the Minnesota if you can.”63

  Greene had never been in combat before, and his first decision was an instinctive one. He ordered the helm over and took the Monitor out of the fight. For the second time that morning, the Union ironclad steamed off into shoal water. But once Greene had an opportunity to assess the situation and talk with the other officers, it was clear that his duty was to renew the fight. Leaving the direction of the guns in the turret to Stimers, he took up his new post in the pilothouse. The shell that had blinded Worden had bent one of the pilothouse’s four iron posts, but the little structure was still standing. From it, Greene ordered the helmsman to take the Monitor back into the fray. From the moment Worden was wounded to the moment the Monitor returned to the fight, about half an hour had passed.64

  On board the Virginia there was celebration when
the Monitor withdrew from the fight, and Jones at once turned his attention back to the Minnesota. But it was now nearly noon, and the tide was on the ebb. The pilots told Jones they could not get the ship any closer to the Minnesota than it already was; in fact, they warned that the falling tide might make it impossible for the Virginia to get back over the bar at the mouth of the Elizabeth River, stranding her in the roadstead with no access to repair facilities, ammunition, or fuel. In addition, there was the fact that the Virginia’s lightened draft had increased her vulnerability by exposing her lightly armored hull below the waterline. Resupplying the ship with coal and ordnance would not only make her more battleworthy but also increase the draft, restoring the ship’s armor protection. After consulting with his officers, Jones decided to return to port. Just as the Monitor was returning to the fight, the Virginia steamed slowly back to the Elizabeth River to receive a hero’s welcome.

  Astonishingly, despite the hours of close combat and the tons of ordnance the two vessels had hurled at each other, no one had been killed in this epic confrontation. Both sides claimed victory. Confederates noted that the Monitor had retired from the scene of combat first; Unionists insisted that when the Monitor returned to the fight, it was the Virginia that fled. The argument lasted beyond the war and into the postwar years. “If the Monitor was a victor,” a survivor of the Virginia’s crew asked rhetorically fifty years later, “what prevented her from pursuing the Merrimack and destroying her?”65 He and others pointed out that the Virginia subsequently reappeared at the mouth of the Elizabeth River, challenging the Monitor to renew the combat, but that the Monitor ignored her and remained by the wooden vessels of the squadron. The reason for this was that the Lincoln administration was simply unwilling to risk the Monitor in another round.