Transformational Technology and the Light Draft Monitors

Chapter 6 Without Experience or Precedent: Transformational Technology and the Light Draft Monitors

William Roberts

Within a year after the Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862, the US Navy was building dozens of ironclads based on John Ericsson’s Monitor concept, including light draft vessels able to attack the Confederacy along its rivers. The light draft monitor program began in October 1862, when Ericsson sent the Navy a design for simple, cheap ships, and offered to build some in three months. Instead of accepting Ericsson’s simple design, the Navy chose to “im- prove” the ships by repeatedly adding capability and complexity. The “im- provements” delayed the urgently needed ships by sixteen months, and added so much weight that when completed they would not float. A promising program had become the “light draft fiasco.” This examination of the light draft program found the causes of its failure in three key areas: transformational thinking, technological ambition, and concurrent development and production. Transformational thinking stressed a new technology’s disruptive effects and minimized its drawbacks, devaluing experience and seeing a future in which all that was past would be swept away. The sec- ond factor, technological ambition, was the human urge to maximize capability through incremental improvement. Although each improvement individually has little impact on completion, their cumulative effect was profound. The third element was concurrent development and production, in which the urgent de- sire to obtain an advanced capability prompted developers to start building the product before the design was fully developed. These three elements, which brought the light draft monitor program to grief, also illuminate current Navy programs such as the Littoral Combat Ship (lcs) and the Gerald R. Ford (cvn 78) class aircraft carriers.

1 Light-draft Origins

Gustavus Vasa Fox, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was the most influential proponent of transformational thinking. Fox witnessed the Battle of Hampton

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Roads in March 1862 and came away a true-believer in the new Monitor ironclad and in its inventor, Ericsson. Based on the original Monitor’s extreme- ly limited combat experience, Fox endorsed a grandiose program that included monitors of “20 feet [draft] for [operations against] foreign nations; 10 feet for coast defence and harbor work; 6 feet for rivers.”1 Fox’s over-enthusiasm for monitors supported Andrew Gordon’s analysis of how theory took over when experience was lacking. New technology, Gordon found, helped to discredit empirical doctrine, and the adherents of the new technology would be the most evangelizing rationalists. The monitors’ allure was enhanced by the at- tractions of an alternative force structure: By harnessing new technology, the monitors offered the opportunity for the Navy to prevail in the specific strate- gic context it faced, and to save money as well.2 The Monitor bandwagon shifted into high gear after Hampton Roads, and, by mid-1862, Ericsson was fully occupied designing and building the Passaic- class coastal monitors as well as two large ocean-going monitors.3 Fox, who thought of Ericsson as a genius, pressed him to square the circle: that is, to design a heavily armed, strongly armored monitor with a draft of only four feet. That request was not technically possible, and in mid-September 1862, Erics- son quit trying. When he learned of this issue, Fox wrote, “Tell him to take six feet. He can have it easy. Our series are not complete without them.”4 The ad- ditional two feet of draft made the difference, and, by early October, Ericsson was able to send his design to the Navy. Ericsson knew shipbuilding much better than Fox did, and his light draft design (Illustration 6.1) showed it. His ship was “a plain, oval tank with a flat bottom and upright sides”, surrounded by a timber “raft” to give “stability and impregnability.” This austere vessel minimized the need for iron and machin- ery, and, thus, minimized the stress it placed on shipbuilding and marine

1 Gustavus V. Fox to John Ericsson, September 27, 1862, John Ericsson Papers, American Swed- ish Historical Foundation Microfilm Edition (Philadelphia: Historic Publications, 1970), Reel 4. Fox to Ericsson, August 5, 1862, Ericsson Papers, Reel 4. Fox to Ericsson, August 8, 1862, Naval History Society Collection—Gustavus Fox Papers, MS 439, courtesy of the New-York Historical Society (hereafter “Fox Papers”), Box 3. 2 Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 579. Alternative force structure: Steven Wills, The Perils of Al- ternative Force Structure, http://cimsec.org/perils-alternative-force-structure/28259 accessed October 6, 2016. 3 William H. Roberts, “‘The Name of Ericsson:’ Political Engineering in the Union Ironclad Pro- gram, 1861–1863,” Journal of Military History 63 (October 1999): 823–844. 4 Alban C. Stimers to Fox, September 17, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4; Fox to Stimers, September 20, 1862, Unofficial, ibid., Box 5.