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"IRRESISTIBLE MACHINES": INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION FOR THE 1861-1865

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

William Howard Roberts, M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 1999

Dissertation Committee: Approved by; John P. Guilmartin, Jr., Adviser

Mansel G. Blackford ______Adviser C. Mark Grimsley Oepart^ent of ^istory UMI Number: 9919905

Copyright 1999 by Roberts, Williaun Howard

All rights reserved.

UMI Microform 9919905 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48103 Copyright ® by William Howard Roberts 1999 ABSTRACT

The was shaped as much by the eco­ nomic and industrial resources of the combatants as by their political and strategic thinking. The Union's use of ­ clads in quantity was possible only because the navy mobi­ lized Northern industry to build them. This industrial mobilization, and the navy's evolution of a flexible, effec­ tive system to manage a acquisition program of unprece­ dented size, is the theme of this work.

To produce its offensive fleet of ironclads, the Union had to change its peacetime method of managing ship acquisi­ tion, but the experimental nature of ironclad technology complicated matters. The navy selected the type of ironclad for (quantity production based more upon political and public relations imperatives than upon suitability for the operational tasks at hand.

To build its fleet of monitors, the navy established a "project office" form of management practically independent of the existing navy administrative system. The office of the General Superintendent of Ironclads, under its de facto head Alban C. Stimers, provided desperately needed drive and

ii direction during the critical months of 1862 and 1863. The project office spearheaded the navy's deliberate attempt to broaden the naval industrial base by granting contracts for monitors to inland firms. Under intense , it learned to support a fleet of high-technology vessels while incorporating the lessons of combat in existing and in vessels under construction.

Meanwhile, the navy granted contracts for seagoing vessels to inland firms in a deliberate attempt to broaden its shipbuilding industrial base. The efforts of shipbuild­ ers in , Ohio, form the basis for an assessment of the expansion program.

Neither the broadened industrial base nor the advanced acquisition management system survived the return of peace.

The expansion shipyards failed to meet expectations during the war due to capital starvation and a navy philosophy that allowed design changes to flourish unchecked; when navy contracts evaporated after the war, so did the expansion yards. In shipbuilding management, Stimers' professional self-destruction discredited the embryonic project office system and drove the navy backwards in its management of ship acquisition. Dedicated to Peg, who persevered, to Judy, who wondered, to Dad and Ing, who supported, and to Mom, who didn't get to see.

IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Colonel Dan and Coomie Lee Stedham provided unfailing welcome and encouragement. Their gracious hospitality and Jenn Knotts' arduous service as "the au pair from Indiana" made it possible to conduct extensive archival research.

R. Kristin Weaver, Esq., provided cogent and pungent naval and literary criticism and assisted in clarifying legal points involved in post-Civil War claims litigation. Dr. Joe Guilmartin and Dr. Mark Grimsley patiently broadened my historical horizons. My graduate student colleagues in Dr. Guilmartin's history of technology semi­ nar, notably Katie Allison, Kelly Jordan, Eric Eklund and Elliot Meadows, refined this work by deflating several trial balloons with their less patient but no less penetrating questions. Dr. Mansel Blackford provided insightful com­ ments and research guidance that helped to place the experi­ ences of shipbuilders in the context of American business history.

Steven L. Wright of the Cincinnati Historical Society and M'Lissa Kesterman of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County helped tremendously with the "Cincinnati

V connection." Rebecca Livingston of the National Archives Military Records Branch, Leo J. Daugherty of the U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center, and Mark Hayes of the U.S. Naval

Historical Center provided essential leads and records.

Brent Sverdloff of Harvard Business School's Baker Library helped me decipher the arcana of the R. G. Dun records.

VI VITA

August 21, 1950 ...... B o m - Cleveland, Ohio

1973 ...... B. S., Institute of Technology

1992 ...... M. A. , Old Dominion University 1973-1994 ......

1994-1998 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate The Ohio State University

PUBLICATIONS 1. William H. Roberts. "That Imperfect Arm: Quantifying the ." International, no. 3, 1996. 2. William H. Roberts. "Thunder Mountain: The Ironclad Ram Dunderberg." Warship International, no. 4, 1993.

3. William H. Roberts. "The Neglected Ironclad: U.S.S. New Ironsides." Warship International, no. 2, 1989.

FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History (Military History)

vxi TABLE OF CONTENTS

A b s t r a c t ...... ii D e d i c a t i o n ...... iv

Acknowledgements ...... v V i t a ...... vii

List of T a b l e s ...... x

List of Figures ...... xi

Chapters 1. Introduction ...... 1

2. The Purposes Then Wanted: Builds a Navy ...... 7

3. I Have Shouldered This Fleet: and "Monitor mania" ...... 28 4. The General Inspector and the Passaic Project . . . 57

5. The Public Expect Other Work to Be Scattered: The Navy looks West ...... 97

6. The Builders Will All Be Backward: Mobilization on the Ohio River ...... 146

7. These Monitors Are Miserable Failures: Combat Lessons and Political Engineering ...... 178

8. It Would Cost a Million of Dollars: The Price of "Continuous Improvement" 217

9. The Progress of this Vessel Is Considerably Retarded: Western Monitors 1863-64 242

vixi 10. The Sudden Destruction of Bright Hopes: Downfall of the General Inspector ...... 2 90

11. Good for Fifty Years: Winding Down the Mobilization ...... 334

12. Conclusion: Additions, Alterations and Improvements 376 Appendices

Appendix A. Tabular Data for Harbor and River Monitors ...... 391

Appendix B. Historiographical and Bibliographical E s s a y ...... 3 92

Bibliography ...... 402

IX LIST OF TABLES

Table Page 4.1. Price/delivery options for Passaic class monitors . 81 5.1 Abstract of Offers made under Advertisement of Navy Department of August 16, 1862, for Iron Vessels for River and Harbor Defense . . 106

9.1. Composite Consumer Price Index 1860-1866 .... 255 9.2. Extracts from N. G. Thom's Record of Prices Paid by Miles Greenwood ...... 258 9.3. Wages from N. G. Thom's Record of Prices Paid by Miles Greenwood ...... 262 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

4.1. Monitor turret showing XV inch guns ...... 93

5.1. Tippecanoe class monitor Manavunk ...... 125

5.2. Map of Cincinnati, Ohio a r e a ...... 129

5.3. View of Cincinnati waterfront, ca. 1866 .... 131 5.4. Typical drawing for the harbor and program ...... 138 6.1. Side view of Tippecanoe class monitor...... 158

6.2. Cross-section of of Tippecanoe class monitor 173

7.1. DuPont's attack on Charleston ...... 202

7.2. Effect of bent s p i n d l e ...... 208 7.3. Bulging effect on base of turret a r m o r .... 209

7.4. Side view of turret and pilot house of USS Montauk (Passaic class) ...... 211

10.1. Tippecanoe class monitor Canonicus about 1907 . 333

11.1. Monitors at Cairo, , after the Civil War 360

XI CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

For thousands of years, drew their structure from "natural" materials and their propulsive energies from the "natural" sources of human muscles and the wind. Gun­ powder carved the first niche for chemical energy and ma­ chine-made materials, but successfully mounting and using aboard ship still required vast amounts of natural materials and muscle power. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, was beginning to change. The saw halting steps toward mechanized combat at sea, but not until the American Civil War did a navy conduct a cam­ paign based wholly on "non-natural" energies and materials-- a campaign fought from start to finish by seagoing machines. The Civil War was shaped as much by the economic and industrial resources of the combatants as by their political and strategic thinking. On the Union side, relatively well- developed industrial and financial apparatus allowed the creation not only of a blockading fleet of wooden vessels, but of a strategically offensive fleet of ironclads. In the

South, more modest means led to far more modest programs, 1 yielding a few ironclads for essentially defensive purposes and some unarmored to raid Union commerce. Little

has been written about the industrial mobilization that made

the Union's ironclad fleet possible or about the way mobili­ zation was managed. This industrial mobilization, and the

navy's evolution of a flexible, effective system to manage a

ship acquisition program of unprecedented size, is the theme of this work.

Although the longest-running and most consistently pursued naval campaign was the of the Confed­ eracy, the massive Federal ironclad program displays the broadly offensive orientation of Union Navy leaders and

shows that they, like army leaders, intended to carry the war to the enemy. The North, rich in industry and in

skilled manpower, was far better equipped to wage technolog­ ical warfare than the South; Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles intended to use Northern resources to the fullest. Assessing Welles' use of those resources requires examination of several areas. First, the physical and organizational magnitude of the problem meant that tradi­ tional navy shipbuilding management methods, ample for producing wooden ships in ones and twos, were hopelessly

inadequate for quantity production of ironclads. Recogniz­ ing this, the navy established the office of the General

Superintendent of Ironclads in City in 1862.

Secretary Welles gave the General Superintendent, Rear Francis H. Gregory, broad authority to manage the ironclad construction program practically independently of the navy's Bureau system. While autonomy eventually became counterproductive, this "project office" provided desper­ ately needed drive and direction during the critical months of 1862 and 1863. An examination of the "monitor bureau" and of the rise and fall of Alban C. Stimers, the General

Inspector of Ironclads, will illuminate the problems the navy faced and the forward-looking it chose.

A second area, closely related, was mobilization of the nation's industrial resources. The three ironclad vessels commenced in September 1861 were the first of almost sixty coastal and seagoing ironclads for which Welles contracted over the next eighteen months. Despite its economic and industrial might, the Union could not build all the iron­ clads it desired nor could it build more than a limited number at once. Besides ironclads for coastal and oceanic service, the Union Navy also had to provide armored and unarmored vessels for riverine service, unarmored vessels to blockade the Southern coast, and cruisers to chase Confeder­ ate commerce raiders. All these programs competed for the navy's industrial, personnel, and financial resources, while the navy as a whole competed with the airmy for the nation's resources. Union shipbuilders and ironworks were simply not prepared to execute such a massive expansion program. The navy tried almost every possible way to expand the nation's production of armored ships, but few such initia­ tives actually produced ships that were completed in time to fight. Shipbuilding materials and skilled labor were in short supply, and these twin scarcities fueled the inflation that bedeviled many poorly capitalized shipbuilding firms. In 1862, the navy began a deliberate attempt to broaden the

Union's naval industrial base, granting contracts for coast­ al ironclads to inland firms. The construction of Tippe­ canoe class monitors in Cincinnati, Ohio, provides material for a case study of this area. Union Navy ironclad construction shifted into high gear after the Battle of in March 1862. By early

1863 the first fruits of the building program were available and the navy could begin to use armored ships against the enemy in some strength. The objective chosen for this first ironclad campaign was Charleston, , which became the naval counterpart of "On to Richmond!" Because Charleston's defenses precluded an attack with wooden ships, ironclads, and more particularly the Passaic class monitors, were the centerpiece of the campaign.

Ironclad warfare, however, entailed far more than armored ships. Under intense pressure, the Federal naval establishment had to learn to support a high-technology fleet while developing an effective way to incorporate the lessons of combat both in existing ships and in vessels under construction. This effort provides a third major area for examination.

The key roles in the navy's Civil War ironclad program belong to two men. First was Assistant Secretary of the

Navy Gustavus Vasa Fox. Fox, the Navy Department's most ardent champion of the monitor design, was the driving behind the vast expansion of ironclad production. His refusal to acknowledge that "better is the enemy of good enough," however, made him the major reason why the navy's program of industrial expansion was only partially success­ ful. The constant design changes that Fox demanded caused delays that crippled the expansion program.

Second was Chief Engineer Alban Crocker Stimers, US Navy, a talented and hard-working naval engineer. Stimers supervised the construction of the original Monitor and became a "true believer"; his role in building the vessel and in her battle with the Confederate ironclad gained him Fox's confidence. As the de facto head of the navy office charged with designing and building coastal ironclads, Stimers oversaw the "monitor mania" of 1862-63.

His professional self-destruction through overwork, engi­ neering misjudgment and personal ambition discredited the embryonic "project office" system of the war years and drove the navy backwards in its management of ship acquisition.

In this connection, this study will examine the long-term impact of the navy's industrial mobilization and its iron­ clad building experiences.

The obstacles the navy encountered in its Civil War industrial expansion are cogently described by the following passage from a Comptroller General's report to the Congress of the United States:

There is little doubt that [the contractor] and the Navy substantially underestimated the problems in­ volved, including' -- starting a new facility, -- obtaining an adequate work force, -- designing ships 2,000 miles from the construc­ tion site by a completely new organiza­ tion. . . . All of the above problems are reflected in the schedule delays, the cost overruns, and the numerous changes in management.^

Although it precisely depicts the navy's experience in its Civil War industrial mobilization, the report was written more than a century later to describe the shipbuilding programs of the 1960s and early 1970s. Mobilization to support the acquisition of high-technology items in quantity has remained a challenging problem.

^The contractor was Litton Industries. United States Comptroller General, Report to the Congress : Outlook for Production on the Naw's LHA and DD-963 Shipbuilding Pro­ grams (B-163058), July 26, 1973, 1. CHAPTER 2

THE PURPOSES THEN WANTED:

GIDEON WELLES BUILDS A NAVY

In 1859 the French launched the world's first ironclad ship, the Gloire. and in 1860 the British countered with HMS Warrior. By the end of 1860 the two navies had a total of ten ironclads in hand, but the United States had little attention to spare for such developments. 's big event of 1860 was the presidential election, and Amer­ ica's focus was the crisis caused by Republican victory. As the crisis grew during the winter of 1860-1861, President

James Buchanan watched without acting or speaking against secession. Hoping to avoid confrontation, he forbade naval or military preparations that might alarm Southerners.

When took office as president on March 4, 1861, his goals differed from those of his predecessor in one critical element : Buchanan wanted to preserve the Union without war; Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union. Even within Lincoln's administration, however, reasonable men differed as to the policies he should follow to maintain the

Union. Buchanan had done nothing to prepare the navy for

7 conflict, but Lincoln's avowed policy of reconciliation and his urgent desire not to commit an overt act of war against

the new Confederacy was almost as big a handicap.* When war began in April, a combination of administrative inexperi­ ence, uncertainty, and the disloyalty and opportunism of some officers hobbled the Navy Department's ability to act.^ As an institution, the navy had to work out these difficul­

ties while conducting a naval expansion of a size never before attempted, using an administrative and legal frame­ work designed and attuned to the slow rhythms of the small peacetime establishment. Yet within six months after Fort

Sumter, the navy had recognized a need for armored vessels.

-Mark Grimsley's The Hard Hand of War: Union Militarv Policy toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865 (New York: Cam­ University Press, 1995) discusses the Federal policy of conciliation. In a more strictly naval example, the instructions issued to Charles F . McCauley, the Commandant of the Norfolk Navy Yard, directed certain acts but told him, "It is desirable that there should be no steps taken to give needless alarm. ..." Gideon Welles to McCauley, April 10, 1861, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (: Government Printing Office, 18 94-1922) (hereafter ORN; all references Series One unless noted), 4: 274.

^For example, David D. Porter and others sought to avoid commitment by obtaining orders to the Pacific Station. Selfishly using Secretary of State William H. Seward's influence with President Lincoln to circumvent the Navy Department and obtain command of USS Powhatan. Porter later crippled the navy's attempt to reinforce . Out- rightly disloyal, Samuel Barron's southern-oriented clique in the Navy Department hampered planning and execu­ tion and gave the new Confederacy valuable intelligence, and Captain V. M. Randolph obtained the surrender of the Pensa­ cola Navy Yard even before his resignation was accepted. William S. Dudley, Going South: U. S. N a w Officer Resigna­ tions & Dismissals on the Eve of the Civil War (Washington: Naval Historical Foundation, 1981) .

8 gained authority and appropriations to build them, obtained and evaluated proposals for them, and signed contracts to have them built. Urgency, first, last and always, colored every decision the Navy Department made in the first two years of the war.

In 1861, the Union's war aim was to restore Southern political responsiveness to the national government without losing support in the North. Northern officials, exposed for years to the idea of a " conspiracy, " generally agreed that a minority of Southerners had hood­ winked the rest into leaving the Union. The Union should therefore follow a mild policy designed to win back the

Southern majority. Economic isolation combined with a short ground campaign to take the Confederate capital at Richmond would cause Southern Unionists to rally to the old flag.

In this political climate, aging General formulated his plan to blockade the Confederate coast and advance along the . This strategy, known to detractors as the "," aimed to encourage the growth of Unionist sentiment by strangling the commerce upon which the South's economy depended. Such a blockade would also reduce the South's ability to export cotton to pay for military imports and disrupt Southern coastwise trade, especially in cotton and foodstuffs.^

^David George Surdam, "Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War" (Ph.D. disserta­ tion, University of Chicago, 1994), 4, 8-9, 13. As Theodore Under Scott's plan, the navy would blockade the coast, but Southern hydrography and technological advances made the project much easier to assign than to accomplish. Hydro- graphically, many rivers, bays, and inlets penetrated the

South's long, low-lying coast. Coastal irregularity and the limitations of visual surveillance meant the Union would need many ships to cover the blockaded area, and shallow water meant that blockading vessels would need shallow to patrol close enough to shore to be effective.

More importantly, the widespread use of steam propul­ sion meant that the blockade must also be based on steamers. Sailing ships and underpowered auxiliary steamers could not enforce a blockade against steam-propelled merchant ships. The prewar US Navy was manifestly unequal to the task, both in numbers and in types of ships.< Nevertheless, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of Southern ports on

April 19, 1861. At first a blockade that existed mostly on

Ropp has shown, Scott's "Anaconda" was "almost wholly a constrictor, " and it would be left to the navy and to local military to discover the Anaconda's ability "to strike as well as strangle." Theodore Ropp, "Anacondas Anyone?" Militarv Affairs 27 (Summer 1963), 71-76.

■*Welles listed the "condition of the navy on the 4th of March [1861] " in his annual report; forty-two commissioned vessels were scattered from New York to Japan, and twenty- nine more were laid up in navy yards. Eleven of the twenty- nine were lost at the Norfolk Navy Yard in April 1861. United States, Navy Department, Annual Report of the Secre­ tary of the N a w 1860-61 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1861), 9-13; Donald L. Canney, Lincoln's N a w . The Ships, Men and Organization. 1861-65 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998), 17.

10 paper, it became effective as rapidly as the navy could obtain ships to make it so.®

Lincoln and his advisors could be cautiously optimistic about a blockade, however, because the Southern transporta­ tion system was in many ways underdeveloped. If the North could interdict the coastal and riverine shipping so impor­ tant to the Southern economy, the South would be thrown back upon its very limited railroad system.® Insofar as overseas (import-export) trade was concerned, only seven Southern seaports had interstate rail connections to the interior, and materials brought in through the blockade would do only local good if they could not readily be moved where they were needed. These seven seaports became prime targets for the Union Navy since closing a few major ports would be easier and have more effect than blockading many lesser harbors.

®The argument that Lincoln should have closed Southern ports instead of declaring them blockaded is discussed and dismissed in Howard Jones, Union in Peril : The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill and London: University of Press, 1992), 49-51.

®Surdam, "Northern Naval Superiority," 8-9. During the 18 50s, the North had largely replaced its former river-based trading pattern, oriented north and south, with an east-west pattern based upon trunk line railroads.

’’Th e y were Norfolk, Virginia; Wilmington, North Caro­ lina; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, ; Pensa­ cola, ; Mobile, ; and , . Bern Anderson, By Sea and Bv River: The Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 15, states six, Norfolk being the exception; however, the Norfolk and Pe­ tersburg Railroad had interstate connections. "Mitchell's New Travellers Guide through the United States 1860," in

11 The task of implementing the blockade fell upon Secre­ tary of the Navy Gideon Welles. Welles immediately began to purchase and arm merchant steamers and enlist men to supple­ ment the ships and crews he had. Both actions had consider­ able historical precedent and could be begun without much discussion, but once they had been initiated, thought would be required as to what to do next. Welles took the first step in this direction on May 30, 1861, instructing the chiefs of the Navy Department bureaus to consider how to supply "the Blockading Squadrons, and especially that of the

Gulf." The bureau chiefs met the same day to begin grap­ pling with the problem.* Quickly determining that specially adapted steamers would be required for the purpose, the board of bureau chiefs recommended that supply ships sail from the North to the Gulf, then back by way of , Florida. A similar plan should be employed "for the squadron on this [Atlantic]

National Geographic Society, Historical Atlas of the United States (Washington: National Geographic Society, 1988), 197; United States War Department, An Atlas to Accompanv the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies 1861- 1865 (New York: Fairfax Press, 1978; reprint of Government Printing Office 1891-1895 edition), plate 137.

®The Navy Department's administrative organization had been established by law in 1842. It comprised five "bu­ reaus, " each responsible for a particular functional area of naval administration. They were the Bureaus of Yards and Docks; of Construction, Equipment and Repairs; of Provisions and Clothing; of Ordnance and Hydrography; and of Medicine and Surgery. The bureau chiefs (some civilians, some naval officers) reported directly to the Secretary of the Navy.

12 side."® More detailed supply recommendations, including proposals to modify the navy ration, followed over the next few days, but by June 1 the board's deliberations had al­ ready broadened to include shipbuilding policy and "mail clad steam floating batter[ies]," evidently as a result of discussion of the blockade problem in general.’®

These topics went beyond the board's instructions, but it was evident that blockaders would need more than provi­ sions and water. In the days of sail, that would almost have been enough, but the steam machinery that had revolu­ tionized blockade tactics and naval construction had also revolutionized naval logistics. To maintain their ships on station, the blockading squadrons would need not only provi­ sions, but and repairs. Similarly, although the bureau chiefs had passed over the difficulty by saying that the supply ships would distribute their cargoes at "the rendez­ vous of the Squadron," underway replenishment was many years in the future--clearly the "rendezvous" had to be more than a point on the open ocean.

®Welles to , May 30, 1861, in National Archives, Record Group 45, Office of Naval Records and Library, Entry 464, Subject File, U.S. Navy 1775-1910 (here­ after "NARG 45, Subject File"), CL--Mobilization and Demobi­ lization, Box 412, Minutes of Board of Bureau Chiefs on Subjects of Supplying Blockading Squadrons; minutes of meeting of May 30, 1861.

^®NARG 45, Subject File CL, Minutes of Board of Bureau Chiefs, minutes of meetings of May 31 and June 1, 1861.

13 Unfortunately for the Fédérais, the few isolated South­ ern outposts remaining to them could not support a blockade. On the Gulf coast, the Union held Fort Pickens at Pensacola,

Florida, but the Confederates had captured the Pensacola Navy Yard and Fort Barrancas across the bay, so there were no repair facilities. Key West, Florida, remained in Union hands, but it also lacked repair facilities. Between Key

West and Hampton Roads, Virginia, Union ships had no place to go for supplies or storm avoidance; for major repairs, ships had to go to even farther north than Hampton Roads.

Without facilities close to the theater of operations, a blockade would require too many ships to be practicable. Secretary Welles recognized the broader nature of the blockade support problem, but he also recognized that the bureau chiefs, who already had full-time jobs, were not the men to address it. At the instigation of Professor Alexan­ der D. Bache, then Superintendent of the US Coast Survey, Welles decided to form a board or commission to combine all the information available to the government about the South­ ern coast. In addition to Bache himself, loaned from the

Treasury Department, the group included Major John G. Bar­ nard, US Army, and Charles H. Davis. Welles appointed Captain Samuel F . Du Pont as the senior member.’^

^^Samuel Novotny, "The Board of Strategy and Union Military Planning for Sea Operations Against the Southern Confederacy" (master's thesis, Old Dominion University, 1978), 3-4. Bache's suggestion involved an element of bureaucratic self-interest; the Coast Survey was under

14 The conference (also called the Blockade Strategy Board and the Committee of Conference), which Du Pont thought would involve a week of his time, convened on June 27, 1861, for what would become three months' work.*-^

Welles told Du Pont that the capture of "two or more points" on the Atlantic Coast was "imperative," as well as points on the Gulf of ." Du Pont was to "condense all information in the archives of the Government" and to report any that would bear on the "contemplated movement" to seize blockading bases on the Atlantic coast. The confer­ ence went well beyond that, however, again apparently at

Bache's instigation, to produce "mémoires" with broader

attack in Congress and Bache took full advantage of the war to demonstrate the agency's usefulness. Ibid., 4-5. The manuscript record of the body's deliberations indicates that the members referred to it as a "conference" rather than a "board," "committee," or "commission," e.g., "Journal of a ['Board of' lined out] Conference ['approved' lined out] summoned by request of the Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy" NARG 45, Subject File, ON--Operations, Box 453, Rough Drafts of Proceedings and Reports of the Blockade Strategy Board.

"Du Pont to Henry Winter Davis, June 1, 1861, in John D . Hayes, ed., : A Selection from his Civil War Letters (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press for The Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, 1969), vol. 1, The Mission 1860-1861. 75. The commission apparently superseded the board of bureau chiefs. The chiefs' meetings became weekly in late June and the minutes show decreasing discus­ sion. After two weeks with no discussion, the last minutes are dated July 30, 1861. NARG 45, Subject File OL, Minutes of Board of Bureau Chiefs.

"Welles to Du Pont, June 25, 1861, quoted in Novotny, "Board of Strategy," 9-10.

15 implications. While a detailed discussion is beyond the

scope of this document, it is evident that the conference's reports greatly influenced Union strategy. On August 3,

18 61, Welles told Du Pont that the "invasion and occupation of the seacoasts of the States in rebellion, as proposed by

the Navy Department," had been "accepted by the Government."

The War Department had agreed to an expedition, and Welles appointed Du Pont to command its navy component. The "Anaconda" became more than a constrictor because the navy- needed to support and tighten the blockade; the logistics of

steam caused the snake to develop fangs.

Unlike the Union, which had to advance and occupy the Confederacy to gain its ends, the South could win its inde­ pendence simply by outlasting the North. The Confederacy

thus faced naval challenges in 1861 that were the opposite of the Union's, i.e., to maintain its commerce and to pro­ tect its coast. The Confederates planned to meet these

^Du Pont to Sophie M. Du Pont, June 28, 1861, in Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 1: 85-86. The reports were later published. Three of the Atlantic Coast reports are in CRN: first report CRN 12: 195-98; third (erroneously labelled second) report, ibid., 198-201; fourth (erroneously labelled third) report; ibid., 201-206. The actual second report is published in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (here­ after OR), (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880- 1901), ser. 1, 53: 67-73. The three Gulf Coast reports are in ORN 16: 618-630, 651-55, and 680-81. The third Gulf Coast report, dated September 19, 1861, is the commission's final report. ^^Welles to Du Pont, August 3, 1861, ORN 12: 207.

16 challenges by fortifying their coastal regions and by send­ ing out privateers and raiders to attack Union commerce (thus diverting ships from the blockade), but Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory knew that the

Confederacy would eventually have to deal with the Union blockade of its ports.

For all his troubles. Secretary Welles enjoyed major advantages over Mallory: a functioning naval bureaucracy, a growing number of ships with an officer corps and a pool of mariners adequate to man them, and a large maritime and industrial base upon which to call. In his efforts to cir­ cumvent Welles' blockade, Mallory had to start from scratch in every area, from administrative organization to rope- walks, biscuit bakeries and shipyards. Beyond the 247 US Navy officers (exclusive of midshipmen) who "went south," he had a handful of seized revenue cutters and the resources of the inadequately destroyed Norfolk Navy Yard. The South's profound maritime weakness made a symmetrical force-on-force strategy impractical. Lacking the industrial and manpower resources to challenge the Union Navy with wooden steam­ ships, Mallory determined to place his faith in technology.

Invulnerability, he wrote, could make up for unequal num­ bers , and he supported the idea by approving a number of

17 plans to convert wooden ships into ironclad vessels. Con­ federate workmen began the first conversions in mid-1861.^®

The Confederacy's number one project, at least in terms of causing anxiety to Union officials, was the conversion of the scuttled USS Merrimack into the ironclad CSS Virginia. Workmen at the Gosport (Norfolk, Virginia) Navy Yard began the project in July 1861, and officials in

Washington received regular reports of their progress. The

Virginia project especially threatened the Fédérais because of Norfolk's location at the mouth of the .

Many persons feared that besides breaking the blockade of Norfolk, the ironclad might steam up the to threaten the Union capital at Washington, DC.^"^

By mid-1861, therefore, the Union clearly needed a vessel to counter the Confederate ironclads, and several unsolicited designs had already been submitted.^® On July

^®Mallory to C. M. Conrad, 10 May 1861, ORN ser. 2, 2; 69. William N. Still, Jr., Iron Afloat: The Storv of the Confederate Armorclads (Columbia: University of South Caro­ lina Press, 1985), 5-17, 19; James Phinney Baxter III, The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1933; reprinted Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968) , 229 .

’’Gideon Welles, Diarv of Gideon Welles Secretary of the N a w Under Lincoln and Johnson. Howard K. Beale, ed. (W. W. Norton: New York, 1960), 1: 65; Still, Iron Afloat. 5-17, 19; Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 229; George M. Brooke, Jr., John M. Brooke: Naval Scientist and Educator, (Charlottes­ ville: University Press of Virginia, 1980), 232-42.

^For a discussion of the designs submitted before Welles reported to Congress, Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 23 8- 45. As early as June 1, 1861, the bureau chiefs discussed, "1st whether iron-clad vessels are needed & 2nd, if so,

18 4, 1861, Welles advised the US Congress of the problem and asked Congress to approve a board to investigate the issue.

Lawmakers went beyond what Welles requested. On August 3,

1861, Congress authorized a board of Naval officers to inquire into armored ships and appropriated $1,500,000 to build "one or more armored or iron or steel-clad steamships or floating steam batteries.""'

The navy lost no time. In an advertisement of August

7, 1861, the navy requested proposals for "iron-clad steam vessels of war," of iron or of wood and iron combined, to draw from ten to sixteen feet of water. The advertisement stressed, "The smaller draught of water, compatible with other requisites, will be preferred. Welles appointed a board on August 8, 1861, to examine the proposals he expected to receive. The "Ironclad Board" consisted of Commodore Joseph Smith, Chief of the Bureau of which if any of the various plans known, or presented to the Dept, be selected, or approved for trial." NARG 45, Subject File OL, Minutes of Board of Bureau Chiefs. "US Congress, House, House Executive Document 69, Report of the Secretary of the Navy in Relation to Armored Vessels (hereafter Report . . . Armored Vessels), 38th Congress, 1st Session, 1864, 1-2. A board (i.e., a commit­ tee) of officers was frequently appointed to investigate a technical or administrative question or to apportion respon­ sibility for something. Although far from impervious to "command influence," boards were perceived to minimize favoritism and animosity. By incorporating collective input, this traditional US Navy administrative device re­ duced the chance of technical error while providing a modi­ cum of bureaucratic "cover" for decision-makers. ^°NARG 45, Subject File, AC--Construction of US Ships, Box 22, Advertisements.

19 Yards and Docks, Commodore and Commander

Charles H. Davis. Although the Board was formed to evaluate warship designs, there was no naval constructor among its

members; all the naval constructors were busy elsewhere and none was available to assist the Board. Two of the Board

members partially compensated for this lack by their ship­

yard experience. Paulding, sixty-three years old, had commanded the from 1851 to 1855, and

Smith, seventy-one, had been Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks since 1846. Davis, the youngest at fifty-four,

had been the secretary of the just-adjourned Committee of Conference, so he was well-informed of the strategic chal­

lenges the new ironclads would face.

The Ironclad Board faced challenges of its own, since ironclad technology was in its infancy. Clearly it was

possible Co build an ironclad ship--in Europe, both the

French and the British had built such vessels--but ironclads on the European model took a long time to build and drew far

^^Dumas Malone, ed. Dictionary of American Bioaraohv (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1961-64), s.v. "Davis, Charles Henry," "Paulding, Hiram," "Smith, Joseph." (Here­ after DAB.) James Wilson and , eds. Apple­ ton' s Cyclopaedia of American Biograohv (New York: D. Apple­ ton Sc Company, 1888), s.v. "Davis, Charles Henry," "Paul­ ding, Hiram." National Archives, Record Group 24, Records of the Bureau of Personnel, Records of Officers, s.v. "Smith, Joseph." Davis had replaced then-Commander John A. B. Dahlgren, inventor of the , on the board at the letter's request. Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 247.

20 too much water to be useful off the Southern coast.The Ironclad Board had to sift the proposals the navy received for a shallow-draft design that would be effective and could be built quickly.

The Board received seventeen proposals of widely vary­ ing form, practicality and degree of detail, ranging from William Norris' ninety-ton steam to Edward S. Ren- wick's 6520-ton behemoth. Some designs they promptly re­ jected- -even without a naval constructor to assist them, they could see the flaws in William Kingsley's theory that

18 inches of rubber covering would make shot bounce off his vessel. A few designers had not submitted enough detail to allow the Board to evaluate their proposals. Other designs would be too time-consuming or expensive to build, and still others came from men who had no experience in translating sketchbook fantasies into unforgiving wood and metal.As

^'The French Gloire. an iron-plated wooden ship, and the British Warrior, iron-hulled and iron-armored, each took twenty-nine months to complete. Gloire drew almost twenty- seven feet and Warrior drew twenty-six feet. Robert Gardi­ ner, ed., Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1979), 7, 286. ^^Congress appropriated only $1,500,000 for building ironclads, and some proposals would have invested two-thirds or more in a single ship. Shipbuilder Donald McKay of offered to build an ironclad for a round million dollars, and Edward S. Renwick wanted the whole million and a half for his "shot-proof vessel." National Archives, Record Group 19, Records of the Bureau of Ships, Plan File, Bureau of Ships (BuShips) Plan 80-11-3. The Board rejected other potentially feasible designs because, given the ur­ gency, the nation could not afford to subsidize a new builder's errors of inexperience. Designs such as William Perine's and John Westwood's were sketches, "created in the

21 the Board deliberated, its members were constantly aware of the consuming urgency and the high stakes involved.

The Board recommended that Welles build three of the proposed vessels. One of the three designs the Board ac­ cepted, which became USS Galena, was proposed by Cornelius

S. Bushnell. Galena had a conventional hull and broadside battery, covered with a system of interlocking armor strips.

Although it would carry a traditional sail rig, the proposal was undeniably novel, and the Board required Bushnell to guarantee the ship's and stabilityA second design, even more novel, was 's single-tur- reted, low- vessel. Ericsson's design, which became the Monitor, had unique advantages, including the shallowest draft and shortest estimated construction time of any technically acceptable proposal. Against it was its --its extremely low freeboard, turret-mounted guns, and total reliance on steam power. Although in hindsight one can ridicule the Board members for skepticism, the idea that they were reluctant to try anything new is contradicted

absence of the constraints of nature or physics." For further discussion of design processes in the context of armored vessels, David Brian McGee, "Floating Bodies, Naval Science: Science, Design and the Captain controversy, 1860- 1870" (Ph.D. Thesis, Institute for the History and Philoso­ phy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, On­ tario, , 1994), 24.

^'‘For details of Galena and her construction, Kurt Henry Hackemer, "From Peace to War: U.S. Naval Procurement, Private Enterprise, and the Integration of New Technology, 1850-1865," (Ph.D. diss., Texas A&M University, 1994) .

22 by their choice of two novel designs, Bushnell's and Erics­ son' s. The Board in fact took a flyer based on Erics­ son's engineering reputation and persuasiveness. One hun­ dred days to build an ironclad was exceptionally attrac­ tive . . . if. the ship worked.^®

The Board members saw what the Union Navy needed im­ mediately-- "vessels invulnerable to shot, of light draught of water"--but other factors clearly influenced their delib­ erations.^’ First and most important, they understood that the nation dared not stake everything on untried designs--if they failed, the consequences would be grave. The Board therefore took out insurance by choosing as its third vessel a fully rigged, high-freeboard ship with solid armor and a broadside battery, like those already built and tested in

Europe. The firm of Merrick & Sons based their

^®E.g., Stephen C. Thompson, "The Design and Construc­ tion of USS Monitor," Warship International 27, no. 3 (1990) : 222-42, where Thompson asserts that the choice of the New Ironsides design showed the conservatism of "old officers [who] valued the sailing ship as far superior to the steam vessel." Ibid., 224. Ericsson himself noted, however, "A more prompt and spirited is probably not on record . . . than that of the Navy Department as regards the Monitor." Ericsson to James Gordon Bennett, April 25, 1862, in Report . . . Armored Vessels, 14.

^®"As Mallory had felt he must gamble on ironclads, so Welles felt he must gamble on Ericsson." John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the N a w (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 368. Quick construction was the key factor in Welles' decision to build the Monitor. Thomp­ son, "Design and Construction," 224. ^’Report . . . Armored Vessels, 5, for their summary of these requirements.

23 design on successful French and British ironclads, and their proposal became USS New Ironsides. The cheap, shallow-draft Ericsson design offered a large potential payoff, while the

Merrick vessel traded higher cost and longer construction time for low technological risk and greater assurance of effectiveness.Bushnell's design was a compromise, nei­ ther so novel and quick to build as Ericsson's nor so con­ servative and time-consuming as Merricks'. The Board also worried about the ability of the chosen designs to fight in the open ocean. The navy expected the Confederates to use the Virginia to break the blockade in Hampton Roads, but beyond that immediate objective their intentions seemed less clear.Steadily multiplying rumors had the Confederate ironclad ascending the Potomac River to attack Washington, while others feared she would instead put to sea to attack seaboard cities such as New York. Sober minds clearly saw that she could not reach Washington with­ out going aground, but Union assessment of her seagoing capabilities was murky. Little could be said other than that the steam frigate Merrimack, from which Virginia was

^®Merricks' estimated $780,000 and nine months to build their ship, while Ericsson estimated $275,000 and 100 days for his. Both ships took longer and cost more than their builders estimated. ^^In fact, Mallory urged to attack , saying it would "eclipse all the glories of the combats of the sea" and be a blow from which the Union "could never recover." Mallory to Buchanan, March 7, 1862, ORN 6: 780-81.

24 converted, had been a seagoing vessel.^® The Board accord­ ingly made a secondary tradeoff: seagoing qualities and draft for risk of failure. In seagoing qualities, Merrick & Sons' high-freeboard but deeper draft broadside design was again the better-known quantity, while shallow draft favored the completely untried Ericsson and Bushnell designs.

Despite the compelling urgency, Welles had to balance the potential payoff of rapid construction against the risk of failure inherent in untried designs : he "needed the proven rather than the experimental."^^ Although both

Welles and the Ironclad Board foresaw a long-term threat from Europe, the immediate threat posed by the Virginia meant that the North desperately needed at least one combat effective armored ship. The Board's choice of designs showed keen awareness of that need.

In assessing the genesis of the Navy Department's ironclad program during the critical months of 1861, several elements must be taken into account. First, ironclads formed only one facet of the navy's effort; though the

^°The Merrimack class of screw were highly re­ garded for their seagoing qualities. John D. Alden, "Born Forty Years Too Soon," American Neptune, no. 4 (October 1962): 252-53. Welles stated he received reports that "she could not venture outside, and was to be used in Hampton Roads, and the river Chesapeake," but this part of his Diarv was written retrospectively rather than as events occurred. His low opinion of Virginia's seaworthiness may have been strengthened by hindsight. Welles, Diarv. 1: 65. ^’•Niven, Gideon Welles. 350.

25 stakes were very high, so were the stakes in other areas such as the blockade and the protection of commerce. Sec­ ond, the ironclad program suffered more than any other from technological uncertainty. Third, the improvisation that sustained the creation of the blockading fleet in its early days could not be applied to ironclads intended for coastal and oceanic operations; the navy could extemporize blockad­ ers by putting a few guns on more-or-less suitable merchant ships, but a successful ironclad would have to be built from the u p . ” In attempting to discharge his duties, Welles received constant criticism from public officials and private indi­ viduals alike. While he surely agreed in principle with the frustrated citizen who wrote, "Everything ought to be done instantly for our navy to get & remain ahead of the Rebels everywhere." the Secretary understood the constraints under which the navy operated.Between them, Welles and Fox did a generally excellent job of ensuring that the most impor­ tant projects received the highest priority while neglecting nothing vital. As Welles wrote later, "I was accused of not

^^Conversion projects enjoyed very modest success. The steam frigate Roanoke is the only "seagoing" Union example that comes readily to mind; razeed, armored and equipped with three Ericsson-style turrets, her poor stability and deep draft limited her to guardship duties.

^^Anonymous to Welles, no date (about 14 March 1862), NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, Miscellaneous Letters Re­ ceived by the Secretary of the Navy, roll 401, 13-20 March 1862, 31.

26 having a navy of formidable vessels. I had vessels for the purposes then wanted."^* In addition to the blockading fleet, those vessels would include serviceable ironclads.

^■‘Welles, Diarv. entry for July 24, 1865, 2: 341.

27 CHAPTER 3

I HAVE SHOULDERED THIS FLEET-.

GUSTAVUS POX AND «MONITOR MANIA"

The prevailing theme of the Union ironclad program was urgency, but urgency compounded by technological uncer­ tainty. Massively increasing production of a proven design would have been difficult enough, without the added handicap of having to design, test and build simultaneously. In

1861, ironclad warships represented "cutting edge" tech­ nology- -technology that had advanced far beyond science's ability to explain how it worked. Practice outstripped theory in every area from the ballistic properties of guns to the attachment of armor, yet warship design continued to advance despite the lack of sound theory. To understand how this occurred, we must look briefly at the larger question of how engineers advance knowledge in the absence of sound theory. The mechanism Walter G. Vincenti describes as

"variation-selection" will be the lens through which we examine the Ironclad Board's deliberations.^

■•Much of the material dealing with variation-selection is also contained in William H. Roberts, "The name of

28 Engineers advance knowledge, Vincent! postulates, through a process of "variation and selective retention." At times, engineers must go beyond the bounds of established knowledge to solve technological problems. When they do, they cannot predict the exact results--they may be able to calculate the limits within which their results will lie, but the range of results within those limits gives room for some designs to succeed and some to fail. In either case, the variations yield new technology, which must be tested by experiment or experience. Unsound technology is discarded; sound technology is retained to expand the body of knowl­ edge. In shortened terms, Vincenti calls this process "variation-selection.

Two important caveats are needed before further discussing Vincenti's model. First, Vincenti concentrates on what he calls "normal design," the improvement of an accepted tradition or its application under new or more

Ericsson : Political Engineering in the Union Ironclad Program 1861-1863," forthcoming (1999) in Journal of Mili- tarv History. Vincenti is an aeronautical engineer of wide experience (note 2 below) whose writings on technology distill and expand on the lessons of a long and successful career. His findings have found wide acceptance among historians of technology.

^Walter G. Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 48-49, 241-50. While superficially similar to "trial and error" tinkering, some variation-selection episodes result in "trial and success," and both successes and failures expand the general knowledge base.

29 stringent conditions. With minimal "accepted tradition," 1860s ironclads verged on Vincenti's "radical design," in which "the problem is to design something that will function well enough to warrant further development." Second, Vin­ centi' s essentially internalist model of engineering devel­ opment pays little attention to external influences on development. A successful variation-selection process must account for non-technical factors such as willingness to make long-term financial or industrial investments, wartime urgency, and the needs of the various constituencies in­ volved. Certainly this was the case with ironclads.

Design begins the variation-selection process. In mature technologies, the engineer can examine options through calculation (using pencil and paper in the 1860s, adding machines in the 1950s, computers in the 1990s) or model testing, but in experimental technologies, the lack of cumulative knowledge sharply limits the designer's ability to examine variations through analysis or experiment. Selec­ tion requires full-scale trial, both in tests dedicated to answering specific questions and in long-term routine use.

When the Civil War began in 1861, the variation-selec­ tion process for ironclad warships remained wide open. The Confederacy, poor in industrial and engineering resources, chose a cheap and simple model (the armored ram) to which it made minor variations. The Union's greater re-

30 sources allowed more design freedom, but with more options

came more complex interactions, both technical and non­ technical .

In theory, "pure" variation-selection should result in

a sequential program, in which ships would be built and

tested over time, with the test results being incorporated

in follow-on ships.^ Yet the difference between theory and

practice is greater in practice than in theory, and in this case wartime urgency made the practical difference. Given

that urgency, one would expect the navy to build and test simultaneously several competing variations (differing both in concept and in detail) in a "parallel development" pro­ gram before choosing a single design for large-scale produc­ tion. The Union ironclad building program did not follow this expected path.

Besides strategy, geography, and technology, the navy

was constrained by money, industrial capacity, and time. Other programs competed with ironclads for the navy's re­ sources, while the navy had to compete for the nation's resources. Similarly, the navy had to choose designs under

intense pressure to produce serviceable ironclads in minimum time. Variation-selection accordingly appeared in the Union

-As an example of sequential development, the tried many variant ironclad designs--armored frigates, central battery ships, high- and low-freeboard turret ships, and breastwork monitors--before settling on a "standard predreadnought" in the 1890s. For a survey, Robert Gardi­ ner, ed.. Steam. Steel and Shellfire : The Steam Warship 1815-1905 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1992), 75-111.

31 ironclad program on three interacting levels. The first

(macro) level of variation-selection involved a tradeoff between seagoing and coastal ironclads, since no single design could accomplish both missions. The strategic situa­

tion drove this tradeoff, since the Union had to balance its

immediate need for coastal vessels to defeat the Confederacy

against the potential need for seagoing ironclads to counter the British and French.

The "intermediate" level of variation-selection in­ volved the choice of designs within each category, seagoing and coastal. In such a new technology, Vincenti notes, "the knowledge sought is that of a workable general configura­ tion. " The criteria for selection as "workable" differed between the seagoing and coastal categories, so different operational and technological imperatives drove the designs. For the seagoing category, the ability to fight on the open ocean was fundamental. Accordingly, freeboard (the vertical distance from the to the edge) was the cru­ cial variable. For the coastal and inshore category, the lightest possible draft (the depth of water required to

float the ship) was essential. Finally, each design in­ cluded a multitude of details, some of which show the ef­ fects of institutionalized technology and engineers' egos as well as technical judgment.

Comparing the Ironclad Board's work to Vincenti's empirical description, board members "winnowed" the

32 seventeen proposals they received to pick out those they thought most likely to succeed, applying both technological and non-technological criteria. Once the obviously unsuit­ able designs had been eliminated, the board could choose from those that had a chance of working.The board picked three dissimilar designs, thus initiating a parallel devel­ opment program to build and test multiple variations simul­ taneously, and construction of these three vessels (Monitor.

Galena, and New Ironsides) began in September and October 1861. Up to the autumn of 1861, then, the urgency-modified variation-selection model well describes the actual events. By mid-1862, however, the model and the facts diverged.

The navy made a near-total--even preemptive--commitment to

Ericsson's Monitor design, eventually ordering fifty-one coastal and seagoing ironclads based on it, compared to four of other basic designs. The Union's decision to build an entire fleet to a single revolutionary pattern--to place all the country's naval eggs in one Ericsson-designed basket-- was among the most curious of the war. Its reasons lie in the non-technical aspects of the design process.

modern review of the proposals indicates that the board chose well. With the addition of hindsight it is evident that the designs they found unsuitable were indeed unsuitable--either technologically unsound or too ambitious to meet the Union's needs.

33 The navy accepted Ericsson's proposal primarily because his vessel could be built quickly.^ His design showed a small, low-freeboard, shallow-draft vessel with and stem overhangs to protect anchor and . He specified thick armor to protect the ship against shot, but the need to limit draft, size and construction time kept him from using too much of it. Low freeboard and turret-mounted guns reduced the extent and of the armor and presented a very small target area, while the turret provided all-around fire and mechanical means to handle the guns.® The result, later named Monitor, would be built by a partnership com­ prised of Ericsson and three prominent businessmen.

Ericsson's partners in the Monitor project were John F. Winslow, Cornelius S. Bushnell, and John F. Griswold. In

^Ericsson listed the considerations that drove his design in John Ericsson, "The Building of the 'Monitor'," in The Opening Battles. vol. 1 of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, eds. Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (New York, 1956; reprint), 731-32. First among them, "The work on the Merrimac (sicl had progressed so far that no structure of large dimensions could possibly be completed in time to meet her." ^Ericsson originally intended to use two XV inch guns but they could not be built in time, so two XI inch guns were substituted. Thompson, "Design and Construction," 225- 26; Welles to John A. Dahlgren, 9 July 1863, Papers of Gideon Welles, Library of Congress microfilm edition (hereafter "Welles Papers"), Container 8, Letterbook May 23-September 30, 1863, no. 223 ; Spencer C. Tucker, Arming the Fleet : U.S. N a w Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1989), 218-21. The XI inch, weighing about eight tons, could be worked manu­ ally; the XV inch, at twenty-one tons, needed mechanical assistance. (In contemporary usage a Roman numeral came to designate a gun, an Arabic numeral a rifled gun.)

34 what Winslow later characterized as "a verbal agreement, and nothing more," Ericsson was to provide the engineering knowledge while the others provided the capital, and the four would split profit or loss equally."' Even more impor­ tant than capital, Ericsson's partners provided influence.

Winslow and Griswold were partners with Erastus Corning, a powerful member of Congress, in an iron, works. Both Winslow and Griswold were good friends of Secretary of State William

H. Seward, who gave them a "strong letter of introduction" to President Abraham Lincoln.® Winslow's biographer, Fran­ cis B. Wheeler, disparaged both Ericsson's and Bushnell's contributions in order to inflate those of Griswold and

Winslow, but there is no doubt that the group benefitted

’Francis B. Wheeler, John F. Winslow. LL.D. and the Monitor (Poughkeepsie, NY: n.p., 1893), 53-54. The agree­ ment may have initially been verbal, but William C. Davis states that the four men signed a formal contract September 27, 1861. William C. Davis, Duel Between the First Iron­ clads (2d ed.) (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994; reprint with new preface of 1975 edition) , 24. From a sheet of calculations dated February 11, 1862, Ericsson expected to receive about $20,000 as his share of the Monitor profit, plus $5,000 "Engineer & patent fee." Reel 4, John Ericsson Papers, American Swedish Historical Foundation Microfilm Edition (Philadelphia, PA: Rhistoric Publications, 1970) (hereafter "Ericsson Papers").

®Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 277-79; Thompson, "Design and Construction," 224; , The Life of John Ericsson (2 vols.) (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891), 1: 257-59. Griswold succeeded Corning in Congress, becoming a member of the Naval Affairs Committee. William N. Still, Jr., Monitor Builders : A Historical Study of the Principal Firms and Individuals Involved in the Construction of USS Monitor. (Washington: , 1988), 29. Corning was a "silent partner" in the Monitor enter­ prise because Federal law and Ericsson's contract prohibited members of Congress from benefitting from the contract.

35 greatly from "their connection with the men [Winslow and

Griswold] whose money, energy and business character were assurances to the Government."® In reality, Bushnell com­ manded influence and capital of his own; he was a good friend of Welles and of James E. English, a member of the

House naval committee, and his firm had the capital and facilities to build the Galena.

The navy's award of contracts for the three first- generation ironclads stimulated rather than stifled design improvement through variation-selection. Warship design is a series of compromises, and to gain his objectives, each designer had had to exaggerate some characteristics at the expense of others. Ericsson's design, for example, gave up freeboard, habitability for the crew, and room to operate and repair guns and machinery in pursuit of small size and a limited target area. For speedy construction, Ericsson specified armor comprised of thin plates laminated together

®Wheeler, John F. Winslow. 34. "In short, Messrs. Ericsson and Bushnell had the plans, without prevailing influence, business tact and financial means. . . . What­ ever supposed claim Captain Ericsson may have had as the inventor of the Monitor, in the adoption of his plans by the Government, he utterly failed, till Messrs. Griswold and Winslow took the matter into their own resolute hands. ..." Ibid., 34-35. For an anti-Griswold counter­ blast, Griswold Tracts, No. 1: Startling Expose. The Real Facts concerning John A. Griswold and the Building of the Monitor in [Pamphlets relating to the Presidential Election of 1868].

^For uncritical notes on Bushnell, William S. Wells, The Original United States Warship Monitor (2d ed.), (New Haven, CT: Cornelius S. Bushnell National Memorial Associa­ tion, 1906) .

36 that could be manufactured more quickly than thicker, more resistant plates. Since there was no "accepted" way to build ironclads and since the navy urgently needed shallow draft vessels to operate against the Confederacy, Ericsson's design quickly acquired competitors that shared its shallow draft but embodied different technological tradeoffs.

By November the Navy Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repairs had developed its own in-house design, sponsored by Chief Constructor John Lenthall, head of the Bureau, and Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, the Engineer in Chief of the Navy. " Benefitting from the results of the Ironclad

Board's inquiry, Lenthall and Isherwood produced a design for a wooden-hulled vessel slightly larger than Ericsson's. This "Bureau" design would have carried solid 4% inch side armor and two turrets each containing a single XI-inch gun; unlike the Monitor, it would have had twin screws.*^ With

“The Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repairs did not split into the Bureau of Construction and Repair and the Bureau of Steam Engineering until July 1862, but Isherwood was for practical purposes a bureau chief by mid-1861. For continuity's sake, I will refer to him as such. See Edward William Sloan III, Beniamin Franklin Isherwood Naval Engi­ neer: The Years as Engineer in Chief. 1861-1869 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1965), 28-29.

“The vessel would have been 216 feet long and 48 feet in , drawing about twelve feet. NARG 19, Plan File, BuShips Plan 142-10-14, "Specifications of the Iron Armature and Other Exterior Iron Work of a Steam Battery to be Con­ structed for the United States," and "Building Instructions for an Iron-Clad Steam Battery." Lenthall and Isherwood wrote that wooden hulls were "not a matter of choice," but "wooden vessels could have been obtained in the stipulated time, the iron ones could not." NARG 45, Office of Naval Records and Library, Microfilm Entry M518, Letters Received

37 this design in hand, on December 2, 1861, Secretary Welles'

sense of urgency led him to try to short-circuit the varia­ tion-selection process by asking Congress to authorize twenty ironclad vessels.

Early ironclad legislation left wide latitude to the

Navy Department--the August 1861 appropriation for $1.5

million for "armored or iron or steel-clad steamships"

specified only that "one or more" ships were to be built.

Similarly, the result of Welles' December proposal, intro­ duced as House Bill 153 on December 17, 1861, authorized "twenty iron-clad steam " without specifying any

particular type of vessel.Although the legislation did

not mandate a particular type, the navy made no secret of its intent to build "Bureau" ironclads, and the Department published the specifications for the "Bureau" design by

December 20, 1 8 6 1 .^ As far west as Ohio, the Cincinnati

Daily Commercial observed that the Navy Department was

by the Secretary of the Navy from Navy Department Bureaus, Reel 17, Lenthall, Isherwood, Edward Hartt and Daniel Martin to Welles, May 10, 1862.

^^Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy. 1860-61. 22. Twenty ironclads were to cost $12 million. As Baxter points out, clearly the Navy Department "was not skeptical of the merits of turreted ironclads." Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 284.

^For August 1861 legislation. Report . . . Armored Vessels. 1. For "twenty ironclads" legislation. Congressio­ nal Globe. 37th Congress, 2d Session, 123. '^NARG 19, Plan File, BuShips Plan 142-10-14, "Specifi­ cations of the Iron Armature ..." bears the handwritten date "Dec 20th 1861."

38 "sending out specifications, inviting proposals . . . for the construction of iron clad steam batteries. The Govern­ ment is very anxious that this class of war vessels should be immediately constructed."^®

The "Bureau" design and Welles' implicit proposal to build twenty copies of it caused great consternation to Ericsson and his partners. First, the navy specified single-gun turrets based on a design by Captain Cowper Coles, RN. The choice of the Coles turret was readily defensible on technical grounds and represented rational variation in the new technology, but Ericsson saw it as a slap at his engineering ability.” More importantly, the Ericsson group wanted contracts to build more vessels like the Monitor. A non-Ericsson design would have reduced their competitive advantage and their prospects for follow-on work.” Variation-selection and consuming national urgency thus collided head-on with commercial interest.

Complicating the picture, bad blood existed between

Ericsson and the navy's shipbuilding and engineering

^ Cincinnati Daily Commercial. January 1, 1862, 3.

”A central "spindle" shaft supported the weight of Ericsson's turret, while Coles' design carried the turret's weight on rollers around its periphery. Ericsson called Coles' turret an "abortive scheme." Ericsson to Welles, December 17, 1861, quoted in Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 277.

”Others certainly wanted the work; e.g., the Cramp shipbuilding firm, which proposed to build to the Bureau design in William Cramp and Sons to John Lenthall, January 8, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 61, Letters Received by the Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, 2: 54.

39 bureaus. Ericsson's dealings with the navy included the successful machinery for the navy's first screw steamer, USS

Princeton, in 1843, but in 1844 he was unhappily associated with an ordnance explosion aboard Princeton that killed eight people, including the Secretaries of State and of the

Navy. Captain Robert Stockton, who built the gun that burst, unjustly blamed Ericsson for the disaster and managed to prevent the government from paying Ericsson for his work. Ericsson did work with the navy after the Princeton affair, but doubts lingered on both sides. As Ericsson's very partisan biographer later noted, "with the bureaus he was no favorite. Ericsson's record of successful designs estab­ lished him as a competent engineer rather than a flash in the pan, but he had had some notable failures (for example, his "caloric" hot-air engine) and his impatience with those who disagreed with him was equally well established.For his part, Ericsson referred to Isherwood as a man "utterly devoid of constructive skill, not an engineer from the

^^Thompson, "Design and Construction," 224; Church, Life of John Ericsson. 1: 234. Lenthall and Isherwood saw Ericsson as a prima donna; see their testimony in , Report of the Joint Committee on the Con­ duct of the War at the Second Session. Thirtv-Eiahth Con­ gress (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1865), "Light Draught Monitors" (hereafter "Light Draught Monitors").

^°Du Pont, for example, saw Ericsson as a man of genius and honesty, "but he has a want. as the Scotch say: he never succeeded in anything in his life." Du Pont to Henry Winter Davis, May 3, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters, vol. 3, The Repulse 1863-1865. 77.

40 start," and called him "my persecutor for twenty years. This animosity intensified during the war.

The House acted quickly on Welles' request, passing the "twenty gunboat" legislation on December 19, 1861, two days after its introduction. The Senate received it on December

20 and referred it to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, chaired by Senator John P. Hale of . At the same time, the Ericsson group opened a broad campaign for more contracts. In the technical realm, Ericsson outlined his ideas for follow-on monitors in a December 23, 1861, letter to Welles. The letter, in part a defense of Erics­ son's ideas as opposed to those of Coles and the Bureaus, proposed to build six improved monitors for delivery by May 30, 1862.22 This technical shot across Isherwood's bow was quickly followed by a non-technical salvo.

On December 25, Corning wrote Welles that the navy should not take "hasty and immature action" on the twenty- ironclads proposal. "A few days delay may be far less important" than building overly expensive ships that would not produce the "very best result." Soon after, in early

^Ericsson to John Bourne, May 15, 1866, quoted in Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 72. Also, Ericsson to Fox, April 23, 1866, characterizes Isherwood as "one of the most unfair persons in the engineering profession." Reel 3, Ericsson Papers.

22Ericsson to Welles, December 23, 1861, reprinted in Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 358-60. The ships were to cost $325,000 apiece, compared to $275,000 for the original Monitor.

41 January 1862, Winslow visited the Navy Department. He wrote

Ericsson on January 6, "At least the Navy Department will not authorize more than one or two boats on the Isherwood plan till ours is put in proof. ..." If Ericsson's design succeeded, "I have a promise from the very highest source that we shall have all we want of the 20 to be built.

The apparent key to Winslow's confidence in early

January was his interview with Gustavus Fox, the Assistant

Secretary of the Navy. Fox, a complex character about whom little has been written, had by 1862 emerged as the de facto operational head of the navy. His forceful personality, seagoing experience and long-established friendships with serving navy officers quickly made him invaluable; Winslow, an outsider, found him to be "of controlling influence. His dynamism gained him the confidence of President Lincoln, but the same dynamism kept him from committing himself to the study, planning and follow-through needed for long-term

^Corning to Welles, reprinted in Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 278; Winslow to Ericsson, January 6, 1862, ibid., 279. Winslow wrote, "If the battery comes up to what we have promised . . . other plans and other contractors will be nowhere. Our 'prestige' will be hard for others to overcome." Winslow to Ericsson, January 10, 1862, quoted in Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 2.

^Winslow to Ericsson, January 10, 1862, quoted in Church, Life of John Ericsson. 1: 277-78. For more on Fox, see John D. Hayes, "Captain Fox--He is the Navy Department," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 91, no. 9 (Septem­ ber 1965), 65-67, and William J. Sullivan, "Gustavus Vasa Fox and Naval Administration," Ph.D. dissertation. Catholic University of America, 1977.

42 naval operations.^® Always in search of the "easy solu­ tion, " Fox was perpetually vulnerable to quickly developed enthusiasms.

The timing of Winslow's interview with Fox is sugges­ tive, since the progress of the "twenty ironclads" bill apparently depended upon it. The Naval Affairs Committee under Senator Hale had been studying the "twenty ironclads" bill since December 20, 1 8 6 1 . Winslow had his interview with Fox on January 6, 1862, and the bill was reported out of committee two days later. The bill ran into difficulties because Hale tried to use it to embarrass Welles over the money the Secretary's brother-in-law had made purchasing ships for the navy. The backhanded attempt to censure Welles failed the next day, January 9, but afterwards the

^Charles Oscar Paullin concurred with a contemporary officer's assessment that Fox was "more ready to plan, than laboriously to execute." Charles Oscar Paullin, "President Lincoln and the Navy," in United States Navy Department, Naval History Division, Civil War Naval Chronology. (Wash­ ington: Government Printing Office, 1971), VT-35. ^Although Christmas and New Year's Day intervened, after adjourning on December 20 the Senate was in session on December 23, 24, and 30, and on January 2, 6, and 7. Con­ gressional Globe. 37th Congress, 2d Session, 159, 174, 178, 181, 183, 199. ^"^Hale claimed that duty required the Committee to "express their dissatisfaction" with the navy's payments to George D. Morgan. Congressional Globe. 3 7th Congress, 2d Session, 219-21, 245-49. Welles may have been politically injudicious in granting Morgan a shipbroker's percentage instead of paying him a salary, but Morgan gave the navy quality ships at excellent prices, at a time when fraud and profiteering were rampant among those who sold merchant ships to the government.

43 bill disappeared again into the Naval Affairs Committee instead of coming to a Senate vote. The initial impulse for its delay may have been Hale's pique, but subsequent events indicate that Fox's conversion was insufficient reassurance for Winslow's associates.^®

The bill did not surface again until February 7, 1862, and the timing of its reappearance is suggestive. After nearly a month's delay, on February 3, Welles wrote to Hale. In his letter, the Secretary noted the House's prompt action and the importance of "as little delay as possible" in building the vessels. If the Senate did not approve of the policy, or if a different number of ships were to be built, the navy still needed a decision one way or the other. Welles closed by stressing the "extraordinary condition of the country" as the reason for inviting Hale's attention to a subject "which I had anticipated would receive the early action of the Senate."^®

In response, on February 5, Hale wrote to ask Welles, "What is the plan on which the Department proposes to build

[the twenty ironclads]?" Welles replied on February 7,

^Erastus Coming's biographer saw "good evidence that through timely action on the part of Corning and other political friends . . . the awarding of contracts for the additional ironclads was delayed until after the successful action of the Monitor." Irene D. Neu, Erastus Corning Merchant and Financier 1794-1872 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni­ versity Press, 1960), 55. ^®Welles to Hale, February 3, 1862, Welles Papers, Container 20, Correspondence January-February 1862.

44 stating that the Navy Department would not "confine itself exclusively to any particular plan yet offered; but proposes to avail itself of the experience which will be gained in the construction of those now going forward, one of which will be soon tested in actual conflict." Welles went on to mention Ericsson by name, observing that contractors had offered to build the Navy Department's design at prices ranging from $360,000 to $580,000. "Captain Ericsson . . . proposes to build six similar vessels, two to be delivered in four months and the other four in five months, at a cost of three hundred and twenty thousand dollars each. This clear acknowledgement that the Department had forsaken the Bureau design apparently broke the logjam. The

Senate approved the twenty ironclads on February 7, 1862, the same day that Welles replied to Hale. The extent to which Ericsson's backers had won their point was shown by Bushnell's February 26 letter to Ericsson, in which he wrote, "no plans, drawings, or anything of the kind have been made yet for the proposed twenty iron-clad vessels--in fact, I have it from the highest authority that everything depends upon the test of your battery, and that until after her trial nothing will be done.

^Welles to John P. Hale, February 7, 1862, NARG 45, Entry 5, Letters to Congress, vol. 11, labelled on spine "No. 13 Jan. 3, 1855 to May 12, 1862."

“Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 3. Baxter was merely "tempted to ask whether the political influence of Ericsson's partners had anything to do with the extraordi-

45 The navy advertised for bids for the "twenty ironclads" on February 20, 1862.^^ On March 8, the Virginia attacked the Federal blockaders in Hampton Roads. Destroying the wooden frigates Cumberland and Congress. she threw the North into . Even Cabinet officers (most visibly Secretary of War ) gave way to hysterical fear.” Moni­ tor arrived from New York late that day and fought Virginia to a draw on March 9, 1862, transmuting the North's fear nary delay. ..." Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 279. Others were more than tempted: Fox asserted that Hale "kept [the bill] in his pocket for two months after it passed the House," and Welles saw Hale as an influence peddler, writing later that information he received "confirms my long exist­ ing belief that Hale is corrupt, a rogue as well as a buf­ foon." Fox to Joseph S. Fay, November 25, 1862, Robert Means Thompson and Richard Wainwright, eds. Confidential Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox Assistant Secretary of the N a w 1861-1865. 2 vols., (Freeport, NY: Books for Li­ braries Press, reprint of 1918-19 ed.), (hereafter Thompson, Correspondence of Fox). 2: 455; Welles, Diary, entry for December 1863, 1: 483. The best his sympathetic biographer can say is that Hale's "feud with Welles clouded his eyes to the nation's welfare," and caused him to lose sight of "the Navy's pressing need for gunboats." He asserts that there is "only sketchy, circumstantial evidence" that Hale "col­ lected fees for using his influence at the Navy Department." Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Aboli­ tion (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1965), 202, 199. ” "Navy Department, February 20, 1862. The Navy De­ partment will, until the 24th of March next, receive propo­ sitions for the complete construction and equipment of iron­ clad vessels for river, harbor and coast defense. . . ." NARG 19, Entry 405, Proposals and Advertisements of Sales.

^^For Stanton's "almost frantic" reaction, Welles, Diary. 1: 62-65, and (from Dahlgren's point of view) Robert J. Schneller, A Quest for Glory: A Biography of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1996), 197-99; Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, Memoir of John A. Dahl­ gren Rear Admiral United States N a w (: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882), 358-61.

46 into euphoria. Monitor's Paymaster William F. Keeler noted the adoration given to ship and crew. Army troops at addressed them as "our saviours"; a young matron who visited the ship later in Washington, DC, insisted upon kissing the Xl-inch guns. All across the North the response was no less extreme.Ericsson's prestige soared.

Politically, the most important euphoriac was Fox. The Assistant Secretary, on hand to witness the battle, came away ardently enthusiastic about the monitor design. Wins­ low may have convinced Fox intellectually of the Monitor's merits, but Monitor's engagement with Virginia transformed conviction into adulation. In fairness to Fox, from his vantage point Monitor appeared as the answer to a prayer.

^‘‘Robert W. Daly, ed. , Aboard the USS Monitor-. 1862: The Letters of Acting Pavmaster William Frederick Keeler. U.S. N a w to his Wife. Anna (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1964), 42, 47, 53, 57, 65-66 inter alia. For de­ tails, Earl J. Hess, "Northern Response to the Ironclad: A Prospect for the Study of Military Technology," Civil War History 31 (1985): 126-43. Less positive notes, like the suggestion that such a conflict "cannot be said to be much of a success, one way or the other," were lost in the out­ pouring of sentiment. Congressman Abraham B. Olin (NY), Congressional Globe. 37th Congress, 2d Session, April 10, 1862, 1611. David Mindell notes, "Public imperatives of developing, selling, and deploying a complex technology gave new life to the heroic aspect of war by promoting the Moni­ tor and its crew, even as the technology reduced their status from warriors to operatives." David A. Mindell, "'The Clangor of That Blacksmith's Fray': Technology, War, and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor" Technology and Cul­ ture 36, no. 2 (April 1995): 268.

^^Fox gushed, "The Galena and Ironsides are the work of the blacksmith; the Monitor a piece of delicate, perfect mechanism. " Fox to Ericsson, August 5, 1862, Reel 4, Ericsson Papers.

47 Ericsson had, after all, produced the ship he promised, nearly on time and nearly within budget. Ericsson's ship had then been successfully tested in combat, and that suc­ cess scored a public relations triumph for the navy. In such an atmosphere Fox easily overlooked Monitor's faults and accepted uncritically the assessment of victory. After the , Fox was fully committed: he was a "monitor man, " and the monitors had gained what a contem­ porary called the "most potent countenance of the Navy

Department." Less than a week after Hampton Roads, the navy gave Ericsson a verbal order for six improved Monitors.

As Fox wrote later, "I have shouldered this fleet, and I doubt if any one can stand in the way provided we are suc­ cessful. . . .

Welles, too, jumped on the monitor bandwagon. He had been convinced from the first, he wrote, that the Monitor would succeed. Accordingly, he had recommended immediate

^®"Most potent countenance" from George E. Belknap, "Reminiscent of the Siege of Charleston." in Naval Actions and History 1799-1898 (Boston: Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1902), 188. "On March 14, 1862, Winslow reported to Corning : 'We have closed for 6 Boats on the plan of the Monitor for $400,000 each--they are to be a trifle larger in size--this will do.'" Neu, Erastus Corning. 55. (Note the price increase for an improved Monitor : from $325,000 in Ericsson's December 1861 estimate to $400,000 after Hampton Roads.) Church refers to the contract as verbal. Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 5-6. Converted to 1991 dollars, the price would be $6.1 million per ship and the total value of the contract over $3 6 million.

^''Fox to Ericsson, December 30, 1862, Unofficial, typescript, Gustavus V. Fox Papers, New-York Historical Society (hereafter "Fox Papers"), Box 3.

48 construction of twenty ironclad steamers. When the Senate delayed, Welles foresaw "the country would suffer" from inaction, and by appealing to the Senate, he obtained imme­ diate authorization of the ships.The Department's origi­ nal intention to build the twenty ships to the Bureau design rather than to Ericsson's was conveniently omitted.

In this light, the Battle of Hampton Roads validated the deal already worked out between the navy and the monitor group. As it did so, it foreclosed further variation-selec­ tion at the configuration level. The basic design of the ironclad fleet had been set, based on a single inconclusive action. The reasons were at least as much psychological and political as technical.

There was little effective counter-pressure for non­ monitor designs. Among the contractors for the first three ironclads, Bushnell might have pushed for his Galena design, but he was also a member of the Monitor syndicate. "From a purely financial standpoint," Kurt Hackemer writes, "it did not matter [to Bushnell and Winslow] which ship succeeded, as long as one of them did."^ The other first-generation ironclad builders, Merrick & Sons, were heavily committed to

Annual Report of the Secretary of the Naw. 1861-62. 31. ^^Hackemer, "From Peace to War," 213.

49 building New Ironsides. A f t e r unsuccessfully proposing to build a monitor to Ericsson's "improved" design, they joined shipbuilder William Cramp, who designed New Ironsides, to propose two improved New Ironsides designs.“* When these projects came to nothing, they wound up building monitors. Merricks appear to have been indifferent to what they built as long as they got contracts, while Ericsson seems to have had a deep emotional as well as financial investment in his design.

Merricks' colleague Cramp was far from indifferent. He later called the navy's on monitors the "MONI­ TOR craze," and alleged, "A combination, or 'ring,' was formed, with head-quarters in New York, to prevent the con­ struction of any type of iron-clad vessel except monitors."

An improved New Ironsides was not built, he wrote, because, "We were not in what was called the 'Monitor Ring' . . . being the authors of the 'New Ironsides' type, which the ring had determined to suppress." Cramp eventually built a

■•“The $780, 000 value of the New Ironsides contract was more than the Merrick firm's entire capital. After enjoying steady government work during the War, in April 1864 Merrick Sc Sons were worth $700,000. Vol. 135, p. 320, R. G . Dun Sc Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Univer­ sity Graduate School of Business Administration. ^^For proposal to build to what became the Passaic class design, Merrick & Sons to Fox, June 2, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm Entry M124, roll 409, 14.

50 light-draft monitor, but his shipyard was "ruled out of naval constrruction for a time.""*^

Some have questioned the existence of a New York

"ring," asserting, "of the 27 monitors contracted before 1863, 20 were built outside New York City.""*^ Although technically correct, this statement is misleading. First, monitors were built in places such as Jersey City, New Jer­ sey, and Greenpoint, New York. Although these places are politically distinct from New York City, they are part of the New York City metropolitan area and were considered to be so in the 1860s.“■* Second, some ships that were physi­ cally built outside the New York City area (e.g., at Wil­ mington, Delaware, and Chester, Pennsylvania) were subcon­ tracted to firms in those areas by Ericsson.Twenty-three pre-1863 monitors went to private contractors; of those.

''^Augustus C . Buell, The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott Co., 1906), 72, 81. Begin­ ning in the spring of 1863, Cramp built the hull of the light-draft monitor Yazoo under subcontract to Merrick & Sons.

43 still. Monitor Builders. 29. ■‘'‘Fo r example. Rear Admiral Francis H. Gregory, the elderly General Superintendent of Ironclads based in New York, frequently visited the ships under construction at Jersey City. Gregory to Welles, October 8, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 1235, Correspondence of the General Superintendent of Ironclads, 18: 56. Monitor herself was built at the Conti­ nental Iron Works at Greenpoint. ■*®See, e.g., Gregory's summery of monitors assigned to him as General Superintendent of Ironclads. Gregory to Chief Engineer Alban C. Stimers, May 23, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 18: 42.

51 fifteen were built in the New York City area or by out-of- area subcontractors working for Ericsson's group. Among the

first fourteen contracted monitors. New York's dominance is even more pronounced: all but two were built in the New York City area or by New York City prime contractors.’"

In fact, if the "Monitor Ring" had had its way, even

more of the vessels would have been subcontracted. Welles later noted in his diary that after the Battle of Hampton

Roads, "Winslow one of the associates was very importunate and persistent in the claim that he and those associated

with him should have the exclusive privilege of building all

that class of vessels {for the Government}." Welles told Winslow that even if it were allowable, Ericsson and his

associates did not have the capacity to build all the ves­ sels the navy would want. "He said they would sublet and

insisted they were entitled to this privilege as much as if

^Before 1863, the navy ordered twenty-seven monitors (excluding the Roanoke conversion) . Four were built in navy yards (including one in New York), leaving twenty-three for private firms. Builders in the New York metropolitan area built or subcontracted Monitor, eight of the ten Passaic class, Onondaga. Puritan, and Dictator, for twelve of the first fourteen vessels ; they added three of the nine Tippe­ canoe class for fifteen of the first twenty-three. Build­ ing/contract data from United States Navy, Naval History Division, Monitors of the U.S. N a w 1861-1937. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1969), 10-23. The two Passaic class contracts that went to Boston were the result of agitation by Massachusetts shipbuilders and their political allies, notably Governor John Allen. Barbara B. Tomblin, "From Sail to Steam: The Development of Steam Technology in the United States Navy, 1838-1865," (Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers The State University of -New Brunswick, 1988), 295.

52 they {had} procured a patent. The claim was preposterous, and I refused to recognize it, but they were allowed (given) contracts for several vessels.The monitor ring's grip slackened only with the Tippecanoe class, contracted for in autumn 1862.

While the monitor design dominated the Union's coastal ironclad program, the less numerous seagoing ironclads showed less homogeneity. Both Welles and the original Iron­ clad Board had foreseen the need to respond to European threats with ironclads designed for ocean work, and the navy began to build seagoing ironclads in July of 1 8 6 2 . '‘® With­ out going into detail, the inclusion of low and higher free­ board, monitor and non-monitor designs in the "seagoing" category shows more of the sort of "variation" predicted by the modified variation-selection model. Seagoing ironclads thus offer a counter-example to the monitor case and show the more divergent paths that "coastal" ironclads might have taken.For "coastal" vessels, however, the "selection"

■‘’Welles Diary, entry for July 25, 1868, 3: 413. Braces {} indicate later additions or changes by Welles. ■‘®0f the three first generation ironclads. New Iron­ sides could, if necessary, have fought another ironclad at sea. ■‘^These seagoing vessels (the monitors Dictator and Puritan and the casemated ironclad Dunderbera) were not finished in time to see combat because, as the threat from Europe diminished, so did the navy's sense of urgency and its support for expensive seagoing ironclads. For more about Dunderbera. William H. Roberts, "Thunder Mountain: The Ironclad Ram Dunderbera." Warship International. no. 4, 1993, 363-400.

53 portion of the variation-selection process had ended prema­ turely, terminated by administrative enthusiasm and politi­ cal pressure instead of by sound technological experience.

The monitor ring had used its Congressional allies and the impression it made on Fox to gain an almost insurmountable advantage for its chosen design.

The Navy Department advertised for proposals to build the "twenty ironclads" within two weeks after the Senate passed the authorization bill. The responses to the navy's advertisement show the reaction of would-be builders, whose proposals fell into two categories--monitor look-alikes and ships based on the "Bureau" design. The navy board formed to evaluate the proposals recommended combining the two designs, merging the monitor's iron hull and low freeboard with the Bureau design's thick iron plate, twin turrets and twin screws. Presuming that the "number of vessels of the

'Monitor' class [i.e., the ten Passaicsl recently contracted for . . . are sufficient to satisfy the immediate wants of the government," they recommended the navy prepare plans upon which "all who choose to compete" could bid. If fur­ ther delay were "inexpedient," they suggested, more vessels

"could be built of the improved 'Monitor' class." The rec­ ommendations for improvements fell on deaf ears ; the navy

54 had committed to monitors.®® The contracts let in the

spring of 1862 show the extent of monitor dominance. Erics­

son' s "improved monitors" of the Passaic class comprised ten of the ships, of which Ericsson's group built six.®* Moni­

tor variants with twin turrets included Onondaga (built by-

George Quintard of New York) and the four wooden-hulled navy yard-built ships of the Miantonomoh class. ®^ Merrimack's

sister ship, Roanoke. would be converted into a vessel that looked like a triple-turreted monitor with higher freeboard,

and even Keokuk, which had two stationary gun towers instead of revolving turrets, resembled the monitor design.®®

Once the navy had chosen a design, it moved quickly to procure it in quantity. After awarding six Passaics to

Ericsson the week after Hampton Roads, the navy issued

®°NARG 45, Microfilm entry M518, Lenthall, Isherwood, Hartt and Martin to Welles, May 10, 1862.

®®The final score for the Passaic class was Ericsson, six including two subcontracted to firms in Wilmington, Delaware, and Chester, Pennsylvania; other New York build­ ers, two; Boston builders, two. Naval History Division, Monitors. 10-12. Ericsson collected a fee for each ship, no matter who built it. ^Multiple turrets were anathema to Ericsson. Ericsson to Fox, August 5, 1863, Reel 3, Ericsson Papers. The Mian- tonomohs had retrogressive wood hulls (because navy yards had no facilities to build iron hulls), Ericsson turrets, and laminated armor. Donald L. Canney, The Old Steam N a w . vol. 2, The Ironclads. 1842-1885 (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1993), 65-66. ®®Keokuk was unsuccessful. Confederate guns at Char­ leston holed the ship repeatedly on April 7, 1863, and she sank on April 8. Keokuk. like Galena, was thus one of the "variations that when overtly tried do not in fact work." Vincenti, What Engineers Know. 246.

55 contracts for the remaining four within a few weeks. By summer all of the ships authorized by the "twenty ironclads" bill had been placed. Welles continued to request and Con­ gress continued to authorize more money for ironclads, but the Passaics marked the beginning of the navy's preparations to use ironclads offensively.^

^^Welles jointly addressed Senator Hale and Congressman Charles B. Sedgwick, chairmen respectively of the Senate and House naval committees, on March 25, 1862. In this letter he asked for $30,000,000 (including the $10,000,000 already appropriated) for building iron clad vessels and heavy ordnance, and for armoring existing vessels if required. Welles to Hale and Sedgwick, March 25, 1862, NARG 45, Entry 5, vol. 11, labelled on spine "No. 13 Jan. 3, 1855 to May 12, 1862." The navy actually received $13,000,000 through a supplemental appropriation enacted 17 April 1862. Congres­ sional Globe. 37th Congress, 2d Session, March 27, March 28, April 10, 1862, 1393-1403, 1418-31, 1608-12.

56 CHAPTER 4

THE GENERAL INSPECTOR AND THE PASSAIC PROJECT

The navy's enthusiasm for ironclads led to a construc­ tion program that dwarfed any previous shipbuilding effort.

Whatever the truth of the claim that the Monitor had in­ cluded at least forty "patentable contrivances," the novelty of the enterprise could not be doubted.^ The navy quickly discovered that its prewar apparatus for building ships could not cope with the twin challenges of wartime urgency and revolutionary technology. The wartime system that evolved marked the second major change in the navy's shipbuilding processes in as many decades. Ships of the sailing navy were built almost exclu­ sively in navy yards. Because yard managers were naval officers or civilian navy employees, the Navy Department and its bureaus had complete control of the process. Ships were usually built by ones and twos, to designs prepared or approved by the Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Re­ pair. Different yards received the same plans and

^Church, Life of John Ericsson. 1: 261.

57 specifications, but no one expected that every ship of a class would be identical--the vagaries of wood, a heteroge­ nous natural material, ensured uniqueness even in the ab­ sence of the natural human tendency to "improve" a design.^

Among the characteristics of the 1830s and 1840s ship acquisition system were long building times for small num­ bers of ships, government control of the process from design to finished product, and responsiveness to input from opera­ tors- -the line officers who would use the ships. All three of these factors encouraged the accretion of design changes.

It was as true then as now that most changes to ships in­ volve adding something--more of these, another of that, something the designer forgot, something else the prospec­ tive commanding officer saw "on my last ship"-- and that even when individual changes have little impact, in the aggregate their effect can be serious.^ Each ship design incorporates a reserve of buoyancy, in part to accommodate changes over the ship's life, but the amount of this "mar­ gin" and its more or less formal expression (frequently in

^Howard I. Chapelle, The History of the American Sail­ ing Naw: The Ships and Their Development (New York: Bonanza Books, 1949 (reprint)), 371-425. Information on design and construction practices is scattered amidst details of indi­ vidual designs.

^In a classic example, the new British royal yacht Victoria and Albert capsized in dock in 1900; a major reason was the accretion of heavy fixtures high in the vessel. Oscar Parkes, British : Warrior to Vanguard: A History of Design, Construction and Armament (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1970; first published 1956), 347-48.

58 tons ) vary widely.* With few exceptions, the navy's sailing vessels had enough margin to accommodate the changes applied to them.

The navy's ship acquisition process received a thorough shake-up in the 1850s with the introduction of steam propul­ sion. As Hackemer has shown, steam technology led to a loss of the navy's previous total control over its shipbuilding, and ultimately to a new system of administration designed to regain that control. By comparing the construction of the

"" frigate Merrimack of the 1854 program to the building of the first-generation ironclad Galena in 1861-62,

Hackemer notes deficiencies of the 1850s system, such as inflexibility and inability to deal with a large construc­ tion program, that handicapped the navy under wartime condi­ tions.^ Other weaknesses in the 1850s system, however, will be shown to have had an even more deleterious impact on the navy's Civil War ironclad programs.

‘‘Since the 1870s, designers have calculated both dis­ placement and stability margins. Prior to that, stability calculations were imprecise, in part because the relation­ ships between dynamic behavior and stability were not well understood. See [Edward J. Reed], "The Stability of the 'Captain,' 'Monarch,' and Some Other Iron-clads," Naval Science 1 (April-October 1872): 26-42; William H. White, A Manual of for use of Officers of the Roval Naw. Officers of the Mercantile Marine, Yachtsmen, Shipowners, and Shipbuilders (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1900), 99. An excellent short discussion may be found in David K. Brown, Warrior to : Warship Development 1860-1905 (London : Chatham Publishing, 1997), 23-24 ff.

^Hackemer, "From Peace to War," iii-iv.

59 The driving force in the 1850s shake-up was the navy's need to incorporate the new technology of steam propulsion. Because the navy yards lacked the facilities and personnel to design and build steam engines, the navy had to depend upon private contractors for its propulsion plants. By examining the Merrimack. a wooden steam vessel, Hackemer shows how the navy evolved a system to maximize the value of the only element that contractors understood: money. The government did this in two ways. First, contractors would receive progress payments (best considered as advances against the final contract price) at certain construction milestones. This would encourage timely fulfillment of the contract as well as relieve the contractor of some of the financial burden of building the machinery. Second, the contract included performance guarantees for the finished product. The navy would withhold its final payment until the propulsion plant performed successfully at sea.®

The "Young America" frigates, like earlier wooden ships built in navy yards, differed slightly from each other. The new technology aggravated the differences since the power plants were built by different contractors who employed different design and construction options."' Each hull had to be individually mated to its engines, , shafting and screw, since the six power plants were built by five

®Hackemer, "From Peace to War," 5-10.

"'Hackemer, "From Peace to War, " 39, 62-63

60 different machinery contractors.® For practical purposes, each ship/power plant combination was unique. The "Young

America" frigates showed the effectiveness of the new system of performance guarantees, since the engineering plants that resulted were sound if not outstanding. The navy learned a lesson: although it could not pressure civilian contractors the way it could direct its own shipyards, "recalcitrant contractors best understood the power of the purse."®

The lesson had been internalized by the time the iron­ clad construction program began. In the absence of any in- house ability to build ironclads, the navy had to depend upon contractors, and the contracts it reached incorporated many of the elements of the successful frigate program. The contracts for the first three ironclads were what would now be called "firm fixed price" contracts, in which the con­ tractor agreed to build a vessel as described in an attached set of specifications for a certain price. The navy would make progress payments to the contractor. When the assigned government inspector certified that $50,000 worth of work had been done, the navy would pay the contractor $37,500: the worth of the work less 25 percent (or $12,500), which

®Frank M. Bennett, The Steam Navy of the United States (: W. T. Nicholson Press, 1896; reprinted West­ port, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974), 141, 894-95.

®Hackemer, "From Peace to War," 260, 261-62.

61 the navy would withhold (or "reserve") until the ship had been satisfactorily tested.^"

To recap HacJcemer's conclusion, under the pressure of wartime urgency, the 1850s system could not protect the government from technical failure on the part of the con­ tractor. The government reserved 25 percent of the contract price until the ship had been tested at sea. By contract, the government had ninety days to make these tests. If the ship did not meet specifications, the navy could recover the money it had advanced, holding the ship as collateral. The government would then return the ship to the contractor. This method of protecting the government's interests from a contractor's technical failure presupposed that the government could test the ship in a timely manner. Hackemer has documented how the navy's inability to complete its testing prevented it from punishing Bushnell & Co. for Galena's faulty armor design. A similar situation oc­ curred with New Ironsides, since her trial speed of 6% knots was well below the nine knots for which the navy had con­ tracted. Merrick & Sons blamed the ship's low speed on the

’•“Merrick & Sons, the New Ironsides contractors, were financially very sound, but the contract was worth more than the firm's capital. For Galena, Hackemer, "From Peace to War," 158, 200.

’■’■National Archives, Record Group 71, Records of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, Entry 42, Contracts and Bonds 1861, 269-70.

’^Hackemer, "From Peace to War," 229.

62 weight added during construction, so Rear Admiral Smith told the ship's commanding officer to reduce his coal supply to offset the added weight. In New Ironsides' case the acqui­ sition system appeared to be working; the contractor had made a plausible argument and the navy would conduct a trial to see if the argument had merit.

At this point a war-induced snag appeared. When Smith ordered Captain Thomas Turner to run a light-ship trial, his letter found New Ironsides stationed at Hampton Roads to protect Union blockaders from Confederate ironclads. When

Turner tried to lighten the ship, he uncovered another technical failure: with weight removed and the ship's draft reduced, the armor did not protect the head of the rudder. New Ironsides could not leave station and dared not be caught unable to fight, so she could not be tested before the ninety days expired. Like the Galena's builders. New

Ironsides' builders escaped the financial consequences of technical failure because a system developed in peacetime could not respond to wartime conditions. Beyond Hackemer's analysis, the 1850s system failed in other ways. More important than protection from technical failure was the issue of changes to the contracts. New

Ironsides' contract bound the contractor to supply "any omissions in the specifications in regards to fixtures or

’■^For additional details, William H. Roberts, USS New Ironsides in the Civil War (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, forthcoming [1999]), chapter four.

63 fitments," and included a provision that permitted "slight modifications agreed upon by the contracting parties as the vessel progresses." It did not, however, provide any mecha­ nism for negotiating such changes.The lack stemmed from the nature of the 1850s acquisition system with which the navy entered the Civil War. In that system, the contractor built only the machinery, which was unlikely to change much between contract and delivery. Most changes affected the hull and fittings of the ship, which were built by the navy yard. Since the navy yard had no recourse but to do as it was told by the Navy Department, changes were in effect "invisible"--they might cause delays, but there were no repercussions outside the navy. The absence of a mechanism for processing contract changes was thus understandable: none had evolved because none had been needed.

Yet changes were inevitable, especially when dealing with new technologies. During the building of the New Ironsides. major changes included the substitution first of IX-inch and then of XI-inch guns for the original VIII-inch, the substitution of novel iron gun carriages for wooden ones, an increase in the crew from under two hundred to over four hundred men, the addition of armored bulkheads at each

•■‘Th e quoted clauses are from the contract for New Ironsides. found at NARG 71, Entry 42, 269-71. Galena's contract stated, "any immaterial Fsicl improvements which the said parties may agree to, as the vessel progresses, may be made without prejudice to principal points in this con­ tract." Hackemer, "From Peace to War," 158.

64 end of the gun deck, the addition of an armored pilot house, and the addition of armored shutters to protect the gun ports.Someone had to pay for this additional work. In the end, the navy and the contractor reached a compromise:

Merrick & Sons absorbed the items that the navy deemed to be omissions (such as the port shutters and pilot house) , and the navy paid for the items it considered to be changes.*® The issue of design changes and of their technical, finan­ cial and schedule implications would become tremendously important as the ironclad program grew during 1862 and 1863. A second additional area in which the 1850s system was deficient was its overemphasis on financial matters. During the construction of the first generation ironclads. Rear

Admiral Smith frequently emphasized the fiscal aspect of the contracts.His intent, as Hackemer has pointed out, was twofold: first, he wanted to get the government's money's worth, and second, withholding funds was practically the only leverage he had.’-® The navy's experience with the first generation ironclads (as with other shipbuilding and

’^Roberts, USS New Ironsides, chapters three and four. ’®On September 27, 1862, the navy paid $34,322.06 "by bill of extras allowed by agreement." NARG 71, Entry 48, Contract Ledger for Iron Glads 1861-62, 1: 11-12.

’"'The Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repairs was normally responsible for building navy ships, but Welles gave the responsibility for the first ironclads to Smith's Bureau of Yards and Docks, apparently because of Smith's connection with the Ironclad Board.

^®Hackemer, "From Peace to War," 200.

65 conversion efforts) , however, left an injurious but not entirely unjustified impression in the Navy Department.

Contractors complained from the beginning of the ironclad program that their contracts were less profitable than anticipated. Navy officials gave some credence to the contractors' problems, but mounting delays and increasing friction made them feel that most contractors were more interested in money than in fulfilling the terms of their contracts.^" Feeling that many contractors were no more scrupulous than they were forced to be, the navy adopted a wary, almost suspicious attitude, increased its inspection force and mandated strict enforcement of contract provi­ sions . The effect over time was to reinforce the lesson that withholding funds was the government's chief weapon and to inculcate the idea that many of the contractors' protests were ploys to increase their profits.

^Smith later wrote another contractor, "I see you ready to propose sundry modifications to your contract, all of which lessen the expense to you. When I make a contract, I like to adhere to it. ..." Smith to William H. Webb, August 8, 1862, NARG 45, Subject File AD--Ironclads, Box 51, typescript marked NWR vol. 2634 p. 367. Smith allowed the changes but insisted the savings be deducted from the price.

^°For example, a circular letter of January 1864 to inspectors of steam machinery noted "great damage" from poor materials and bad workmanship. "By the specifications you are entitled to demand the best materials that art can furnish, and a degree of workmanship which may be called perfect. It is impossible for the contractor to do more than comply with these specifications. ..." NARG 19, Entry 61, Box 2.

66 This brings to light the third major problem with the 1850s contracting system: its inability to deal with chang­

ing economic conditions. Firm fixed price contracts served adequately in times of unchanging prices, but by 1862 the

Union's economy was becoming less and less stable. As will be discussed in detail below, wages and prices had begun to rise, inflation had begun to show itself, and the Treasury

Department could not pay the navy's warrants promptly. It was, as Ericsson's biographer pointed out, "hazardous busi­ ness to estimate upon government work."^^ Contrary to the Navy Department's perception of shipbuilder profiteering, contractors were in fact hurting as they faced delays from their suppliers and poured more of their generally inade­ quate capital into their projects. The navy's reaction to contractor slowness was to withhold payments; the economic climate made withholding payments counterproductive.

Recognizing some of these problems, the navy had begun to modify its 1850s acquisition system even before it began

to build ironclads in quantity. The prewar system had been highly centralized, with the Navy Department's bureaus having the final say in all technical questions. This had been adequate when ships were being built in ones and twos, but broke down when ships were being built and converted in dozens. Welles' was decentralization.

^^Church, Life of John Ericsson. 1: 270

67 The navy's first move in this effort was in New York, where in July 1861 Captain Francis Hoyt Gregory was recalled to active duty from retirement and appointed to supervise the construction of gunboats.Gregory had little to do with ironclads at first, since all three first-generation ships were supervised by Rear Admiral Smith of the Bureau of

Yards and Docks. One may presume, however, that Gregory knew of the progress of the Monitor, and of the navy's representative. Chief Engineer Alban Crocker Stimers, with whom he had served in the steam frigate Merrimack.

Stimers, a native of Southfield, New York, was born June 5, 1827. Appointed a third assistant engineer on January 11, 1849, he rose rapidly and was promoted chief engineer on July 21, 1858.^“ When the Civil War began,

Stimers was a member of the board that examined engineer

^Date from Kenneth W. Munden and Henry Putney Beers, The Union: A Guide to Federal Archives Relating to the Civil War (Washington: National Archives and Records Administra­ tion, 1986 (republication of 1962 edition)), 484. Gregory discusses his appointment in "Light Draught Monitors," 73. He was promoted to Rear Admiral on July 16, 1862. Edward Callahan, ed., List of Officers of the Navy of the United States and of the Marine Corps from 1775 to 190 0 (New York: Haskell House, 1969; reprint of 1901 edition), s.v. "Greg­ ory, Francis H." ^^Dana M. Wegner, "Alban C . Stimers and the Office of the General Inspector of Ironclads, 1862-1864" (Master's thesis. State University of New York College at Oneonta, 1979), 5. Engineers progressed through the ranks of third, second and first assistant engineer to reach the rank of chief engineer. Under an 1859 law, chief engineers ranked with line commanders.

^■‘Wegner, Alban C. Stimers, 3-4.

68 candidates. On November 5, 1861, he was assigned to super­ vise the construction of the Monitor for the government.

This duty brought him into close association with John

Ericsson, in whom he gained great confidence, and gave him intimate knowledge of "Ericsson's battery." Accompanying the Monitor on her voyage to Hampton Roads in March, 1862, Stimers distinguished himself by almost single-handedly saving the ship from foundering.

During the Battle of Hampton Roads, Stimers operated Monitor's turret, then took command of the gunnery division when the Executive Officer left the turret to relieve the injured Commanding Officer. During the last part of the battle, Stimers, an engineer, was "the only officer in the turret," occupying an operational command position quite extraordinary for a non-line officer. He was one of only two officers mentioned by name in Fox's eyewitness reports of the battle, and Fox wrote afterward to Stimers, "I notice with pleasure that you are on hand this morning. . . . You must stay by the vessel and I rely greatly upon your skill and judgment."^® Such praise from so high an official was heady stuff for a staff officer who a line messmate once

^^Smith to Stimers, November 5, 1861, in Julia Stimers Durbrow, The Monitor and Alban C. Stimers (Orlando, FL: Ferris Printing Co., 1936), 1-2.

^®Samuel D. Greene, "In the 'Monitor' Turret," in John­ son and Buel, eds., The Opening Battles. 719-29. Fox to Welles, March 8, 1862, CRN 7: 6 and Fox to Ericsson, March 9, 1862, ibid., 7; Fox to Stimers, March 10, 1862, in Dur­ brow, The Monitor and Alban C. Stimers. 10.

69 called "smart but coarse -- and like all of his kind [engi­ neers] overbearing and disagreeable."^’

Stimers "stayed by" Monitor for several weeks, using his spare time to develop improvements to the Monitor de- sign.^® In late March, Fox asked Flag Officer Louis M.

Goldsborough to send Stimers to Washington to serve on the board reviewing ironclad proposals. Goldsborough's reply shows how high Stimers' was: "I cannot spare Stimers until after the affair of the Merrimac Fsicl comes off. . . . I know how much he is wanted in Washington, but

I know too that he is still more wanted here. He is a trump of the very first water. . . . Stimers himself wanted at first to stay, hoping for the "proud distinction of having assisted to destroy the formidable monster," but as it became clear that the Virginia would not come out, he found it more important that he was "daily losing the opportunity

^’J o h n S. Barnes, quoted in Wegner, Alban C. Stimers. 4 . 2®Stimers had been thinking about improvements for some time; in early February he wrote Fox that he "would like to assist at getting up the specifications" of follow-on ves­ sels. Stimers to Fox, February 3, 1862, Private, Fox Pa­ pers, Box 4. He wrote in mid-April, "I have my specifica­ tions completed now and the enemy has retreated to Norfolk." Stimers to Fox, April 14, 1862, ibid.

^®Fox to Goldsborough, March 24, 1862, Thompson, Corre- SDondence of Fox. 1: 252; Goldsborough to Fox, March 25, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 3.

70 of influencing the designs of the new Ericsson batteries." He returned to New York in mid- to late April 1862.^°

In New York, Stimers found "Ericsson's new plans so superior to anything I had expected" that he shelved his own.He reported upon his arrival to Rear Admiral Greg­ ory, who on May 7, 1862, was designated General Superinten­ dent of Ironclads and given responsibility for all the iron­ clads building under contract along the East Coast. Soon after, Stimers was specifically assigned by the Navy Depart­ ment to be General Inspector of Ironclads "for those on the plans of Capt. J. Ericsson, and one building here by Mr.

Whitney." Gregory advised Stimers of his appointment on May 23, 1862, laying down his duties in very broad terms.

^“Stimers to Fox, April 14, 1862, from Hampton Roads, Box 4. Stimers wrote from New York on April 24, indicating his return somewhat before that date.

^Stimers to Fox, April 24, Fox Papers, Box 4. For his part, Ericsson had seen Stimers' proposal, probably without Stimers' knowledge. He called Stimers' plans "utterly de­ fective, " with "not a redeeming feature in the whole produc­ tion, " and asked Fox not to require a formal report that would hurt Stimers. To prevent "serious injury to my excel­ lent friend," Ericsson wanted Fox to smooth over the issue by ordering Stimers to "devote his whole time to the super­ intendence of the 6 vessels we are now building." Ericsson to Fox, April 23, 1862, Private, typescript, ibid.. Box 3.

^^See acknowledgement, Gregory to Welles, May 10, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 18: 41.

^^Gregory to Stimers, May 23, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 18: 42. Stimers wrote Fox that he highly approved of centralizing superintendency in Gregory because it would leave him with more time to attend to details than if he himself had been made General Superintendent. Stimers to Fox, May 10, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4. Fox probably did not seriously consider Stimers for the higher post. The General

71 Gregory, however, knew that Stimers had the confidence of

the Navy Department and the ear of Assistant Secretary Fox; as he later described it, "there came an order stating, very

laconically, that Mr. Stimers would have charge of those vessels building on the Ericsson plan, and he took the

charge. Stimers characterized their respective roles:

Gregory "governing largely the personnel of the officers who

had to do with the construction; I as general inspector governing wholly the construction itself.

A similar decentralizing move was taking place in the

West. As the navy expanded its riverine role, Welles or­ dered Captain Joseph B. Hull to St. Louis, Missouri, to take charge of the navy's shipbuilding efforts on western waters,

including supervising the gunboats under construction at Mound City, Illinois, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh,

Superintendent needed "clout" to deal with high-ranking officers; as a line admiral, even on the retired list, Gregory had far more clout than Stimers, a staff officer whose relative rank equalled that of a commander.

34 Gregory testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 74.

^Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, and 19, 1873, National Archives, Record Group 123, Records of the Court of Claims, Entry 1, General Jurisdiction Case Files, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. Strictly speaking. Case 6326 is "Alexander Swift et al. V. US," dealing with the light-draft monitors Klamath and Yuma ; Case 6327 is "Alexander Swift and the Niles Works v. US, " dealing with the harbor and river monitors Catawba and Oneota. Because most of the principles, arguments and evidence were common to both cases, they were in practice commingled. For brevity, such items will be cited as "Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US."

72 Pennsylvania.^® The western supervisory office, however, never reached the level of influence that the New York office would attain.

When Stimers assumed his new duties in May of 1862, the

majority of his work involved the ships of the Passaic class, designed by Ericsson as "improved Monitors ." The Passaics were twenty-eight feet longer and three and a half

feet broader than the original Monitor; they displaced 1875

tons to the Monitor's 987 tons. They incorporated other

improvements : the pilot house had been moved to the top of the turret for better visibility and less interference with the guns; the turret itself would carry two XV-inch guns behind eleven inches of armor instead of the Monitor's two

XI-inch guns and eight inches of armor; they would be faster

and more seaworthy. The ten vessels of this class were the first fruits of the "twenty ironclads" bill for which Welles had waited so long.

^®Hull's orders were dated May 16, 1862; due to a mixup, he did not receive them until June 6, 1862. ORN 23: 141. Hull, like Gregory, had been called back from retire­ ment for this duty. He was promoted to Commodore on July 16, 1862. Callahan, List of Officers, s.v. "Hull, Joseph B." Pittsburgh is frequently seen as "Pittsburg" in Civil War-era documents; I have modernized the spelling throughout without further comment.

^Because the needed XV-inch guns could not be manufac­ tured in time, all the Passaics except Camanche received one XV-inch and either an XI-inch Dahlgren smoothbore or a 150- pounder Parrott . Naval History Division, Monitors. 10. For more details, Canney, Ironclads. 75-77.

73 Welles clearly wanted the "twenty ironclads" for offen­ sive action against the Confederacy. The navy built its first-generation ironclads explicitly in response to the

Confederate Navy's ironclad challenge; their origin and purpose were primarily defensive. The second generation, built under the "twenty ironclads" bill, went far beyond the need to counter a limited number of Confederate armored vessels. Welles openly declared his ambitious intentions for the ironclads even before the bill became law, telling

Senator Hale, "The end proposed for the gunboat class is to reduce all the fortified seaports of the enemy and open their harbors to the union armies. Ericsson had expressly considered action within range of shore batteries when he designed the original Monitor, but he appears to have considered such action to be inciden­ tal to the vessel's primary mission; he clearly optimized his design for combat against other ships. His philosophy involved placing the largest available weapons behind the

^Welles to John P. Hale, February 7, 1862, NARG 45, Entry 5, vol. 11. Schneller follows Rowena Reed in assert­ ing that the decision to capture Confederate seaports was motivated by the need to vindicate the monitors after they had "proved useless" for open sea operations, but Welles set out the navy's offensive plans before there were any moni­ tors to operate at sea or anywhere else. Robert J. Schnel­ ler, Jr. , "A Littoral Frustration: The Union Navy and the Siege of Charleston, 1863-1865." Naval War College Review 49, no. 1 (Winter 1996), 43. Church quoted a letter from Welles to Ericsson dated August 11, 1864, in which the Secretary asserted that the monitors' "primary object" was defense, but this appears to be hindsight motivated by "a specially virulent attack" on the Navy Department and the monitors. Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 100.

74 heaviest practicable armor, with the avowed purpose of winning a ship-to-ship action with a few crushing blows.

At the short ranges then in vogue for naval battles, reduc­ ing the rate of fire in return for the greater impact of a heavier projectile seemed like a good trade.In the euphoria following the Battle of Hampton Roads, no one stopped to consider whether it would be a good trade against non-seagoing adversaries.

Ericsson had begun to think about the Passaic design even before the Monitor was completed, since many of the characteristics mentioned in his December letter to Welles were incorporated in the "improved" ships. His biographer notes that he "commenced upon his working drawings as soon as the vessels were verbally agreed upon," but he worked closely with Fox and Stimers. The ships' characteristics

^®Ericsson, "Building of the Monitor," 732. "A single shot will sink a ship. . . ." Ericsson to Fox, April 10, 1863, Reel 3, Ericsson Papers. "[Ericsson] strove to com­ bine the maximum of offence and defence by reducing the area of the floating surface he was required to cover and the number of guns he was expected to protect; concentrating a given weight of metal in a few large pieces, and . . . enlarging the area of their fire. ..." Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 55.

■‘°Xl-inch weighed 135 pounds, while shot for the XV-inch weighed 400 pounds. (The Xl-inch was designed to fire shell. Shot, being heavier, would strain the gun, so it was not to be used without express permission from the commanding officer.) Navy Department, Bureau of Ordnance, Ordnance Instructions for the United States N a w (Washing­ ton: Government Printing Office, 1866), 3: xiv-xv. An Xl- inch solid shot weighed 187 pounds. NARG 45, Subject File AD, box 51, Stimers to Smith, February 6, 1862, typescript marked NWR 2602: 59.

75 remained under discussion into early April, 1862, when Fox reported that Ericsson was in Washington to consult "with our people and Chief Engineer Stimers of the 'Monitor.'

Modifications and improvements have been agreed upon by all parties which render the new vessels very superior to the

'Monitor.'"'*^ Clearly the navy and Ericsson did their best to incorporate the lessons of Hampton Roads in the follow-on ships; unfortunately, the relatively brief and indecisive action meant few lessons to learn in areas that would emerge as vital. As Captain Percival Drayton later wrote, "the experience gained from the Monitor is so small that it is almost like beginning de novo One important result of Ericsson's vastly increased prestige was the navy's insistence that other contractors use Ericsson's drawings instead of developing their own from general plans and specificationsThe underlying reason

''^The changes included increased size and speed, heavier guns, and heavier armor; Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 3 59-60. For drawings. Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 4. For consultation. Fox to J. Hayden, April 3, 1862, Thompson, Correspondence of Fox. 2: 285. Contracts for the six Erics- son-built vessels were signed March 31, 1862; NARG 19, Entry 235, Contracts for Construction of Naval Vessels 1861-1865, s.v. Passaic. A blank preprinted contract for the class is in NARG 45, Subject File AC--Construction, Box 22.

■'^Percival Drayton to Du Pont, November 24, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 293. Drayton was at that time prospective commanding officer of the Passaic. ■‘^"Captain Ericsson furnishes the working drawings for vessels similar to the Monitor." Fox to Harrison Loring, April 14, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm Entry M209, Miscellaneous Letters Sent by the Secretary of the Navy, 68: 63. Ericsson was to receive $4,000 (reduced from $20,000) per vessel for

76 may have been simply enthusiasm on Fox's part, but the move would give the navy the benefits of a production run of

identical units--increased output and decreased delivery

time. The procedure contained advantages and disadvantages

for both "lead" and "follow" shipyards. To the detriment of

the "lead" yards, Ericsson complained, other contractors

"worked from our matured plans, made castings from our

patterns and duplicated at the several forges our wrought iron work." Because the follow yards avoided expenses the

lead yards had to incur, they could gain preference from

suppliers by offering higher prices and could hire away the Ericsson group's best workmen.‘‘‘* The follow yards had complaints of their own. From

mid-1862 on, all shipyards were operating in a suppliers' market for materials that became more intense as the war

continued. Until they received Ericsson's drawings, they

could not place orders for needed materials. Although, as Ericsson's biographer stressed, "The drawing representing

the part of the machine requiring the most work appeared first and the others followed in their order," any signifi­

cant lag time meant markedly increased delay for the follow

furnishing the plans. Nelson Curtis to Welles, May 11, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm Entry M124, roll 407, 8. Ericsson furnished these drawings direct to the other builders rather than going through any government agency. Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 25, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case #7157, Miles Greenwood vs. the United States.

■‘■‘Ericsson to Welles, 5 February 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 433, 67.

77 yards. If follow yards did indeed offer higher prices to suppliers, those prices may merely have compensated for the disadvantage of being late into the market. Harrison Lor­ ing, a Boston builder, complained, "the first contractors in the market have a decided advantage in obtaining materials, " and because Ericsson was the designer, the Ericsson group always had that advantage.

In addition, there was a certain element of uneasiness in being forced to use someone else's plans. Church ob­ served that each of Ericsson's drawings went to separate shops or departments, "and no one knew what the completed structure was like until the several parts were assembled." That was all very well in the group's own establishments, but the follow yards had nothing beyond Ericsson's assurance that each part would indeed fit "in the others like hand to glove" and that the structure would work as designed. If the parts did not fit, the follow yard would be liable for whatever wastage and rework was required. Ericsson's vast self-confidence ("he did not find it necessary to examine his work after it had left the shop") and intolerance of

■‘^Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 5; Harrison Loring to Welles, February 10, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 398, 171. By mid-March the group had obtained all the iron needed for turret and side armor for six vessels. John A. Griswold to Welles, 19 March 1862, ibid., roll 401, 253.

78 criticism could not have diminished other shipbuilders' concerns.

Despite the increased size of the Passaics relative to the Monitor. Ericsson agreed to build four of them in four months and the other two in five months. Charles H. Secor, the other New York builder, offered to build one in four months for the same $400,000 as Ericsson, while Harrison

Loring of Boston was offered two vessels at $400,000 each, one to be completed in four months and one in five months.'*"' Loring balked, attempting to alter the contract terms by eliminating the clauses that dealt with timely completion, but the navy held firm."*® Loring next offered to build one

Church, Life of John Ericsson. 2: 5. Interchangeable parts were not common at this time, and interchangability was generally achieved through the use of a complicated and expensive system of inspection gauges and fixtures. David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 27, 41-46. ^Fox to Chas. H. Secor, April 14, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 68: 67; Fox to Harrison Loring, April 17, 1862, ibid., 82. The tenth vessel of the Passaic class was the Camanche. built by Donohue, Ryan and Secor in Jersey City for service on the West Coast. Peter Donohue and J. T. Ryan joined the Secor firm in this endeavor, but Donohue and Ryan had little involvement in the East Coast portion of the work. Donohue owned an ironworks in California, where the ship was reassembled. Ryan "is not supposed to have much means, but knows how to engineer a Contract thro[ugh] Con­ gress." R. G. Dun, New York 380: 8 s.v. Donohue, Ryan & Secor. See also Thomas F . Prendergast, Forgotten Pioneers : Irish Leaders in Early California (San Francisco : Trade Pressroom, 1942), 183-88.

“®Loring to Fox, April 17, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 404, 174; Loring to Fox, April 18, 1862, ibid., 206; Fox to Loring, April 18, 1862, NARG 45, Micro-

79 ship in five months for $400,000. The navy declined, ob­ serving, "as time is the most important object, it would not be just to the public service to allow you to select the longest time at the same price.Loring had apparently overplayed his hand. On April 29, Welles offered one vessel to Loring and one vessel to his Boston competitor. Nelson Curtis of the Atlantic Works, with a "menu" of options

(Table 4.1) that balanced cost and time. Curtis accepted one vessel on April 28, apparently at the four month price, and Loring chose the 4M month, $393,000 option on May 5,

1862.^° His was the last to be commenced of the nine Pas­ saic class vessels intended for the eastern theater. The four or five months allotted to build these moni­ tors was extremely optimistic, and there was absolutely no

film entry M209, 68: 86.

^Loring to Welles, April 22, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 405, 52; Fox to Loring, April 23, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 68: 113; Loring to Fox, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 405, 103.

^“Curtis to Fox, May 2, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 406, 7; Loring to Welles, May 5, 1862, ibid. 111. ^Because the tenth vessel, Camanche. was to be as­ signed to California, Ericsson modified her design to reduce long-term maintenance. The ship was assembled at Secor's yard in Jersey City, then disassembled and sent around Cape Horn for reassembly in San Francisco. Camanche was delayed by her unique construction, by her status as a source of repair parts for the rest of her class, and by the transport ship's sinking at the pier in San Francisco. The last of the Passaics commissioned (in May 1865), she survived until 1899. Unless specifically noted, references herein to the Passaic class cover only the nine ships that saw wartime service on the East Coast.

80 slack in the schedule. Part of Alban Stimers' new job was to hold the contractors to their commitments, but to meet those commitments they had to order material immediately and to do that, they needed information: drawings, materials lists, specifications. Ericsson, trying to supervise six monitors while producing the detail drawings for the entire class, was despite his talents overburdened.

Time in months Price offered (from 5/1/62) 4 $400,000 4X $393,000 5 $386,000 5M $370,000 6 $350,000 6% $300,000

Table 4.1. Price/delivery options for Passaic class moni­ tors. (Welles to Nelson Curtis, April 29, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 68: 141.)

Stimers later asserted that the navy expected him to pick up some of the slack by designing some vessels himself. When he arrived in May, however, he could not do so. First, he quickly found his hands full as General Inspector.

Additionally, "Captain Ericsson had some feeling on the subject. He did not like that any other than himself should

81 design monitors. Yet clearly someone had to design monitors. Besides the detail design for the Passaic class, the navy wanted at least two more classes of the vessels.

When Secretary Welles asked Congress in March 1862 for more money for ironclads, he also laid out how it would be spent. Besides the Passaics and the riverine fleet, the navy would build monitors "for harbor defence and to operate upon the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, which shall be as far as possible invulnerable, each armed with 15

inch guns." To counter the threat from the British and French, he proposed "to attempt an ocean steamer possessed of the same sailing and armoured properties, armed with guns of 20 inches calibre." Unofficially, Fox told a correspon­ dent, "Government will build as many iron clad vessels in the next year as the country can produce."" Ericsson had already begun work on the "ocean

steamers," seagoing monitors over twice the size of the

Passaics, and had provided their specifications to the Navy

Department by late May 1862. In late June Welles gave Ericsson permission to build two such vessels, one with a

"Stimers testimony, "Light-Draught Monitors," 92. It is unclear whether Stimers in 1865 had learned of the opin­ ion Ericsson expressed of his design in late April 1862 (note 31 above). ^^Welles to John P. Hale, Chairman, Naval Committee, U.S. Senate, and Charles B. Sedgwick, Chairman, Naval Com­ mittee, House of Representatives, March 25, 1862, NARG 45, Entry 5, vol. 11. Fox to J. Hayden, April 3, 1862, Thomp­ son, Correspondence of Fox. 2: 286.

82 single turret and the other with two turrets, and Ericsson provided the plans within ten days.^“ These ships, which would become Dictator and Puritan, were the inventor's pets and he lavished effort upon them; even with his remarkable capacity for work, Ericsson was nearing his limit.

The growing number of monitors steadily increased

Stimers' inspection duties. The majority of the effort fell upon his resident inspectors, who lived near the ships they supervised and visited them at least daily. Some of these inspectors were naval engineers whom Stimers had had de­ tailed to the Inspectorate; others were civilians with more or less engineering training and experience who were hired to serve in the same capacity. The inspectors ensured that the contractors did not deviate from the specifications and that they used only good materials and workmanship. In addition to certifying and forwarding the contractors' bills

^‘‘Welles to Ericsson, May 23, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 68: 273, asks for more information to evaluate Ericsson's plans. Welles to Ericsson, June 23, 1862, Welles Papers, Reel 5, Container 7, Letterbook June 21-October 4, 1862, 107; Ericsson to Welles, July 2, 1862, NARG 45, Micro­ film entry M124, roll 412, 36.

^Isherwood testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 116. For civilians, e.g., Welles to Thomas M. Griffith, January 2, 1863, and Welles to Thomas J. Griffin, April 18, 1863, appointing the men Assistant Inspectors at $5.00 per day. NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 68: 57, 208. Stimers wrote in 1863, "before recommending any of the Assistant Inspec­ tors for appointment, I bargained with them with regard to compensation. . . in each case the understanding was for a fixed residence." Stimers to Gregory, September 28, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, Letters Received from Superintendents Outside of Navy Yards.

83 for progress payments, the inspectors reported every week or every two weeks to Stimers, advising him of the progress of their assigned vessels. Stimers consolidated these reports and forwarded them to Gregory, who in turn forwarded them to the Navy Department. Each vessel also had an assistant inspector of machinery, who reported to Stimers through one of Stimers' direct subordinates.s* Stimers made frequent inspection trips up and down the eastern seaboard, keeping an eye on both the contractors and the local inspectors. In the summer of 1862, Stimers' biggest headache was the Passaic class vessels, and as the summer advanced the pressure to complete them increased. The Navy Department was eager to take the offensive, and proposals to attack Wilmington, North Carolina, or Charleston, South Carolina, were in the air. Naval firepower from wooden ships had taken Hatteras Inlet and Port Royal, but wooden ships could not resist the sort of defensive that guarded

^The reports of the local inspectors may be found in NARG 19, Entry 64, and NARG 19, Entry 68, Reports Received from Superintendents Outside of Navy Yards; the reports of the local inspectors of machinery in NARG 19, Entry 974 and 975, Reports of Inspectors of Machinery for Ironclad Steam­ ers. Most reports were bi-weekly; weekly reporting was reserved for the "hot ships" of the moment. ®’Fox mentioned both objectives as early as June 3, 1862, when he wrote Du Pont, "I pray you give us Charleston if possible, but in any event, the Dept relies upon your judgment. We should be inclined to skip Fort Caswell [at Wilmington, North Carolina] if you consider it imperative, for the Fall of Charleston is the fall of Satan's Kingdom." Fox to Du Pont, June 3, 1862, Thompson, Correspondence of Fox. 1: 128.

84 Wilmington and Charleston. To engage strong fortifications, ironclads were needed. An action in mid-May 1862 compli­ cated navy planning, however: Monitor and Galena attacked

Confederate earthworks at Drewry's Bluff on the .

The Confederates scarcely harmed Monitor, but Galena was riddled. (Her commanding officer, John Rodgers, wrote, "We demonstrated that she is not shot-proof.") Neither ship did much damage to the Confederates in return.Like the

Battle of Hampton Roads, the drawn battle suggested that the defensively excellent monitor design might not be corre­ spondingly potent offensively. To attack forts success­ fully, a number of ironclads would be needed.

Since Confederate fire had knocked Galena out of the picture, those ironclads would be the original Monitor, the New Ironsides, and the Passaic class monitors. The first four Passaics were due to be finished on July 31, 1862. By the end of August, all nine east coast ships should have ben completed, but Passaic herself, the most advanced, did not even take to the water until August 30. By early August Fox knew the ships were far behind schedule; he forecast that

®®Report of Commander Rodgers, 16 May 1862, ORN 7: 357. Goldsborough noted that because of the damage there was "little or no chance" of Galena being used against Fort Caswell. Goldsborough to Fox, June 16, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 3 .

85 the first could not be completed before October 1.®® To speed up the ships. Fox applied ever-increasing pressure.

The contractors tried their best, but labor and materi­ als shortages were beginning to bite. In response to Fox's question about the feasibility of night or Sunday work,

Ericsson wrote that his group partners were already working extended hours, "taking as much night work out of our men as they can bear during this warm season." Unfortunately, he noted, the shipyards could not work two shifts: "Such is the pressure produced by the Government work that we cannot fill up our day gangs much less work the double system. In early September, Fox told Stimers to add a carrot to the stick of penalties for late delivery, writing, "Give us two monitors and the Ironsides, and we will make Jeff Davis unhappy . . . Every effort should be used to hurry up two or three of these vessels for Charleston. Spare no ex­ pense." On September 15, he told Stimers, "If money will hurry the boats, we will give it," and on September 25 he urged "every exertion possible, at any expense" to complete the ships. The Navy Department wanted five monitors and

^®Fox to Rear Admiral Samuel F . Du Pont, August 5, 1862, Thompson, Correspondence of Fox, 1: 144. ®°Fox to Ericsson, August 5, 1862, Reel 4, Ericsson Papers; Ericsson to Fox, August 6, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 415, 155.

®^Gregory to Lenthall, June 18, 1866, with enclosures, NARG 19, Entry 64, 11: 9. For Fox quotations. Fox to Sti­ mers, September 5, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 5; Fox to Stimers, September 15, 1862, Unofficial, ibid.; Fox to Stimers,

86 the Keokuk in Hampton Roads on November 15; Welles himself told Gregory to have the monitors completed "by November at farthest."®^ By the first week in October, all the contrac­ tors were working days, nights and Sundays."

By this time, however, changes to work-in-progress had become a problem. Changes during construction result from the natural desire to make the vessel the best she can be. Yet each change involves a tradeoff, since each disrupts the efficient construction of the ship to some degree. At some point the design must be "frozen"--changes must stop--if the ship is to be finished." With vessels as novel as the monitors, designed and built in such haste, omissions were bound to occur and improvements were certain to suggest themselves. The navy's rudimentary mechanism for dealing with construction changes broke down under the stress.

September 25, 1862, Unofficial, ibid. Gregory stated in his June 18, 1866, letter that he had not known that Stimers had authority to pay overtime, but Stimers' letter of October 4, 1862, is endorsed, "Respectfully submitted F. H. Gregory," in Gregory's hand. (Mentioning overtime in this October 4 letter was a misstep by Stimers. Fox promptly cautioned him, "All my letters to you are unofficial and you must not use them in your official dispatches." Fox to Stimers, October 8, 1862, Unofficial, ibid.) ®^Fox to Stimers, September 27, 1862, Private, Box 5. Welles, Diary, entry for September 26, 1862, 1: 153.

"Stimers to Gregory, October 4, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 974, 1: 11.

"The same is true of repairs; a saying at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in the 1970s was that shipyard repair periods were never finished, they just ended.

87 The contracts for the Passaic class included a provi­ sion for making changes, in unsophisticated language similar to that applied to the first-generation ironclads. Improve­ ments "suggested by either party, and agreed upon, shall be adopted as the work progresses. All the modifications recommended and adopted" by the contractors would be war­ ranted "to prove successful improvements, with any other improvements the parties to this contract may agree upon." A later clause reiterated that improvements "suggested and employed" by the contractor would be guaranteed "to work successfully. While this language seemed to protect the government's interests, it in fact failed to address several important issues. The most obvious was the question of who would pay for modifications "agreed upon" by the government and the con­ tractor. The New Ironsides settlement, in which the con­ tractors were paid additional money "by bill of extras allowed by agreement," shows what was apparently intended, but that contract was not finally settled until November

1862, long after the Passaic class contracts were made.®®

For the seagoing monitors, "Ericsson was obliged to proceed

®®Blank form contract for Passaic class, NARG 45, Subject File AC--Construction, Box 22. The "with any other improvements" language could readily be construed to mean that if the contractor agreed to a modification proposed by the government, the contractor warranted its success.

®®NARG 71, Entry 48, 1: 11-12; Roberts, USS New Iron­ sides . chapter four.

88 under a general promise from the proper authorities that he should be compensated for his extra work," and Welles as­ sured him in April 1862 of the Navy Department's "interest and disposition to act in a liberal spirit towards you" with regard to changes on the Passaics .

A more vexing question, and one that grew in importance along with the monitor program, was that of pricing the modifications. The least sophisticated pricing model would cover the labor and material cost of doing new or revised work. This conformed to then-current pricing practices in the closely related machine tool industry, in which, "Calcu­ lations included labor, materials, and outlays for subcon­ tracting. . . but ignored overhead, power, and deprecia­ tion. A more comprehensive but equally unsophisticated

^’'Church, Life of John Ericsson, 2: 10; Welles to Ericsson, April 22, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 68: 108. ^®Philip Scranton, Endless Novelty : Specialtv Produc­ tion and American Industrialization, 1865-1925. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 45-46. Machine shop cost accounting may have advanced farther than Scranton thinks. In 1877, Cornelius Delamater testified about the "long practice in machine shops": "We add 25 per cent to the actual pay roll and actual cost of all the materials that we buy. . . . We add 25 per cent to cover the cost of the use of the establishment; that is, the expenses of the princi­ pals, which are a proper charge, their clerk hire, their rent, use of steam-engine, rent of tools, wear and tear of tools, etc." Deposition of Cornelius H. Delamater, July 30, 1877, in Court of Claims 6327 Alexander Swift et al v. U.S., NARG 19, Entry 186, Papers Relating to Claims in Connection with the Construction of Civil War Vessels, 1862-1865, s.v. Catawba. Detailed cost accounting, introduced in the most advanced firms of the railroad industry in the 1850s, spread at an uneven pace into other industries. Mansel G . Black­ ford and K. Austin Kerr, Business Enterprise in American

89 model would include the labor cost of ripping out the old work and the labor and material involved in removing and replacing items that were in the way (interferences). The most complex model would include indirect costs : not only the "labor, power, and depreciation" mentioned above, but also the increased cost to the contractor due to the delay and disruption incident to the work. This model would also involve extension of the end date of the contract so that the contractor would not be penalized for late delivery. At least at first, the government paid only for the new work and did not formally extend the end date.

Another issue that would assume great importance was the question of changes on which the government and the contractor did not agree. How would the system react to what in modern terms is a "unilateral" change? It was apparently understood that the government could compel the contractor to make such a change. The extent to which the government would then be liable for incidental claims (be­ yond the direct cost of the change itself) was unclear. Perhaps the largest and most disruptive change in the Passaics involved increasing the size and power of their ordnance. The Monitor's XI-inch guns did some damage to

Virginia, but Fox wanted decisive results ; the XI-inch, he opined, was "entirely inadequate" against armored vessels. Seeing an army XV-inch at Fort Monroe shortly

History (2d ed.) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 157-59.

90 after the Monitor-Virginia battle, he decided that the navy must also have XV-inch guns. He directed Captain John A. Dahlgren, the navy's premier ordnance expert and then com­ mandant of the Washington Navy Yard, to design them.®®

Dahlgren undertook the design, but reluctantly; he did not like following in Thomas Rodman's footsteps and the project's accelerated timetable meant that he could not subject the new gun to the rigorous testing that was his trademark. He did not put his heart into the project, instead carefully laying the groundwork to dissociate him­ self from the design in case it failed.Numerous techni­ cal problems bedeviled the XV-inch program, stemming from its new-to-the-navy technology and its accelerated develop­ ment, and production started very slowly. The first piece, slated for testing at the Washington Navy Yard, had not arrived by the end of September 1862; two others were then on their way to New York.^^ Ericsson was to have completed six monitors, carrying twelve of the guns, by that time.

®®Schneller, Quest for Glory. 202-203. Fox told Dahl­ gren, "We must have more of these boats with fifteen inch guns and you must go ahead with your furnaces at once to make them to stand solid shot." Telegram, Fox to Dahlgren, March II, 1862, Library of Congress, Papers of John A. Dahlgren, Box 5, Folder "General Correspondence 1862."

^Schneller describes Dahlgren's reluctant development of the XV-inch in Schneller, Quest for Glory. 203-209, 218- 23 . ^Fox to Ericsson, September 27, 1862, Reel 4, Ericsson Papers. The late delivery of XV-inch guns forced builders to fit each ship with one XV-inch and one smaller gun.

91 For Ericsson the change in was critical. He had designed the Passaics' gunports for XI-inch Dahlgren (or perhaps for the projected XIII-inch Dahl­ gren, which did not appear until 1864) . Although he re­ ceived copies of the plans for the XV-inch when Dahlgren designed it in April, he failed to redesign the gunports. When the time came to place the guns into the turrets, the muzzles would not fit through the ports (Figure 4.1 below).

A disadvantage of concurrent production of multiple identi­ cal units is that if something is wrong with one, the same thing is wrong with the rest. The monitors, situated at the intersection between two technologically risky development programs, were preparing to receive not-yet-built guns of untested design that they would not be able to fire.

Other changes were smaller but equally vexatious. Percival Drayton, a highly respected naval officer, was ordered in late September to the Passaic as her prospective commanding officer. He immediately began to find deficien­ cies that Ericsson, a non-seagoing type for all his marine engineering experience, had overlooked. Besides the gunport problem, for which Ericsson was "adopting a kind of stuffing box, " Drayton noted that if not for his input, "we should have had no compass or any means of being towed. . . . there would have been no possible means of clearing the anchor.

’^Tucker, Arming the Fleet, 220-21; Schneller, Quest for Glory. 208, 218-20.

92 il

Figure 4.1. Monitor turret showing XV inch guns, with the Passaic class mounting on left and the Tippecanoe class (here called Tecumseh class) mounting on right. Note the smoke box, shortened barrel and muzzle ring required for firing Passaic's gun through the small gun port (from US Navy Ordnance Regulations 1866, facing page 108) .

93 "Ericsson, he wrote, "ignores every single thing but impene­ trability, and that only in the turret.

After a series of unsuccessful gunnery experiments,

Drayton wrote, "All the reports you may have seen in the papers about the trials having been quite successful are mere interested lies, written for glorification of civilians and injury of the Navy. ..." More pleased with his ship once his suggested modifications had been made, he believed "when the Navy get fairly hold of them, we will suggest many

improvements, beyond mere engineers and mechanics.Each improvement added to the time and expense of building the vessel.

For his part, Ericsson complained of the engineering

ignorance of seagoing officers. Calling Drayton "only a seaman," he asserted with regard to the Passaic's speed that Drayton "evidently does not understand the question which is

’^Drayton to Du Pont, November 8, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters, 2: 279-81. Ericsson claimed that enlarging the gunports would weaken the turret excessively; this refusal to back down from his original design may also be a reflec­ tion of the character that Du Pont later described as "a man of genius but uncontrollable enthusias." "pigheaded but honest." Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, in Journal Letter 29, January 16-24, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 372; Du Pont to William Whetten, March 17, 1863, ibid., 2: 489-93. Drayton noted that a small gunport had advantages and recom­ mended trying the "smoke box" system, observing sensibly that it would be easier to enlarge the gunports afterward if needed than to enlarge them first and have to reduce their size later. Drayton to Fox, November 16, 1862, Thompson, Correspondence of Fox. 2: 440.

’'‘Drayton to Du Pont, November 24, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters, 292-93.

94 purely one of engineering. ..." Attacking the tactical opinions of another monitor captain, Ericsson noted that naval officers were "now handling not ships but floating fighting machines and that however eminent their seamanship, they cannot afford to disregard the advice of the engi­ neer."”'^ Ericsson inveighed against "useless articles and contrivances which are absolutely dangerous and in the way, " writing, "Much useless weight was put into the Passaic against my remonstrance to please her Commander."’®

Both points of view had elements of validity. Stimers, an engineer with seagoing experience, summed up the impact on the ships when he wrote, "The fact that each little detail, of which such great numbers are required to perfect a sea-going vessel, must in nearly all cases be designed and often the term invented is more correct, adds materially to the time of getting these vessels away from the ship yards. When we get one quite complete in all her appointments the others will follow rapidly."”'”'

’^Ericsson to Fox, 29 December 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 42 9, 104; Ericsson to Welles, 2 9 March 1863, ibid., roll 438, 127. Privately, Ericsson told Fox, "I am more and more surprised at the course of this officer [Drayton] who seems bent on prejudicing everybody against the vessel under his command." Ericsson to Fox, December 30, 1862, Private, Fox Papers, Box 3.

”'®"Contrivances" Ericsson to Fox, December 21, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 3; "much useless weight" Ericsson to Fox, December 30, 1862, Private, ibid.

”'”'Stimers to Gregory, November 8, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 65, Reports Received from Superintendents Outside of Navy Yards, 2: 217.

95 Stimers' prediction appeared to have been borne out. Passaic. the class leader, was commissioned November 25,

1862, her XV-inch problems solved or at least ameliorated."'®

Two ships followed in December 1862, two in January 1863 and three more in February 1863 . The Navy Department maintained the pressure, but the General Inspector could not concen­ trate solely on expediting the Passaics. In the summer of

1862, he had added another class of monitors to his growing responsibilities.

"'®The system used in the Passaic class involved short­ ening and turning down the muzzle of the gun and installing a muzzle extension ring cut to match the curve of the tur­ ret. When the gun was run out for firing, this ring in turn fit into a "smoke box" attached to the inside of the turret to confine the blast and smoke (Figure 4.1 above). The box had an elongated slot cut in its inboard side to allow for elevating the gun, and a "sliding plate" that fitted over the slot behind the muzzle so that smoke and concussion did not escape from the elongated slot. Stimers to Gregory, November 15, 1862, and November 22, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 65, 2: 23 9, 262 give the history and status of the smoke box modification. The later Tippecanoe class monitors had larger ports, allowing the muzzles of their longer guns to protrude from the turret and eliminating the need for the smoke bo x .

96 CHAPTER 5

THE PUBLIC EXPECT OTHER WORK TO BE SCATTERED;

THE NAVY LOOKS WEST

The "harbor and river monitors" took their name from Secretary Welles' letter of March 1862, in which he advised the Navy Department's intent to build monitors "for harbor defence and to operate upon the Atlantic coast and in the

Gulf of Mexico." The design for which the navy contracted in August 1862 underwent drastic modifications that dramati­ cally slowed the ships' construction and increased their costs. In addition, the navy's desire to increase ironclad production led it to award contracts for these technically complex vessels to firms with little or no shipbuilding experience. The harbor and river monitors engendered a shipbuilding expansion program of unprecedented magnitude and complexity, a program unequalled until the twentieth century. They also captured the difficulty of managing such a program of expansion simultaneously with a program of technological development. With shipyards in changes, the harbor and river monitors' contracted six months building time extended to over three years in the

97 expansion yards and averaged twenty-one months even in established yards.

The Passaics were hardly underway when the navy began planning the new class of monitors. Fox expected that

Ericsson would design them, but the inventor was already overloaded with building six Passaics. developing numerous changes to that design, and designing Dictator and Puritan.~

Ericsson could not do justice to his two big "pets," the

Passaics . and the harbor and river monitors all at once.

Stimers' answer to the problem was to establish an office in New York, near Ericsson's own, where he placed a junior engineer and some draftsmen. Ericsson would produce a "general plan" and Stimers' draftsmen would fill in the details and submit each drawing to Ericsson for approval before it was issued. For the harbor and river class,

Ericsson "drew up a general plan and submitted a general description, " and Stimers consulted with Ericsson and Fox to develop the specifications, including "the changes upon which we all agreed.

-Fox asked Ericsson about "the new Monitors, to be built on the Atlantic or Western waters; will you help by furnishing drawings . . .? I am most anxious to see Moni­ tors on the Mississippi. . . ." Fox to Ericsson, August 5, 1862, Reel 4, Ericsson Papers.

^Stimers testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 92, 95; Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 25, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. In this deposition, Stimers clearly states that the genesis of the drafting bureau was the harbor and river monitor program. In a related deposition, he notes that he "volunteered" to estab­ lish the office. Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11,

98 Stimers discussed many of those changes with Fox. Fox emphasized speed, writing that he blamed himself for not insisting upon a nine-knot speed for the Passaics . Ericsson told Stimers in April that he could design a twelve-knot monitor, a statement Fox took as the basis for the harbor and river monitors. In correspondence between Fox and Sti­ mers, the class was at times called the "fast monitors. With an adequate "general plan" in hand, the navy advertised for the ships on August 14, 1862. Fox's desire to build in the West had crystallized; he wrote, "every shop capable of doing the work, shall have one, both here and on the western waters.

While Stimers' draftsmen were to develop working plans for the class based on Ericsson's "general plan," they had not had time to do so when the navy advertised for the ships. Would-be builders had little beyond the "general plan" and specifications to examine, and many sent their representatives to Washington or New York to get enough

18, 19, 1873, ibid.. Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

^Nine knots: Fox to Stimers, April 23, 1862, Fox Pa­ pers, Box 5. Ericsson's willingness : Stimers to Fox, April 24, ibid.. Box 4. "Fast" monitors : e.g.. Fox to Stimers, September 27, 1862, Private, ibid.; Fox to Stimers, October 7, 1862, ibid.

■‘"Iron Vessels for River and Harbor Defense, " August 14, 1862, in NARG 19, Entry 405. Stimers apparently wanted to let the contracts by invitation, but Fox reminded him of the legal requirement to advertise, writing, "We must adver­ tise by law: there is no help for it, but we can confine the work to bona fide workers." Fox to Stimers, August 13, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 5.

99 information to bid.® Thomas F. Secor wrote Welles on August

16 to request "particulars in full," especially "the differ­ ence between those referred to & the Monitors building here in New York." Charles H. Secor was told to consult directly with Ericsson, but when he visited Lenthall and Fox, he saw

"about the Navy Department" at least three other builders' representatives.® A week in New York and an informal con­ ference with Lenthall and Fox (informal enough that Fox "sat on the arm of the chair with his feet on the seat") still left one firm's agent with very little information.''

Under these circumstances, the contractors had to take the navy's advertisement at face value. It explicitly related the new vessels to the Passaics. requesting bids for

®E.g., Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29 and 30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9 and 10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US; Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, ibid. US Attorney John S. Blair later asserted that Thom's testimony displayed "a bad mem­ ory, combined with a strong desire to fortify the plaintiff at every point," but this claim should be considered in light of the fact that the defendants' counsel was trying hard to discredit the plaintiff's "star witness." Brief for Defendants filed December 16, 1878, ibid.. Case 7157, Green­ wood V. US, 10. Allowing for the passage of years, for the adversary nature of the American legal system, and for the difference in point of view between the contractors and the government, 1 find Thom's testimony to be reasonably well corroborated by the other evidence.

® T. F. Secor to Welles, August 16, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 416, 160. Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. ’Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29 and 30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9 and 10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry I, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

100 "vessels of iron for river and harbor defence, similar to those building in New York, having a single revolving tur­ ret." Builders thus expected a vessel very like the Passaic class, and their conversations with Stimers, Lenthall,

Ericsson and Fox apparently reinforced this idea. In addi­ tion, the preprinted contract gave the new ships' dimensions and stated that they were "upon the general plan of vessels now building." Although the dimensions indicated that they would be somewhat longer than the Passaics (23 5 feet long vice 2 00 feet for the earlier ships), they would have the same forty-six foot beam and twelve foot six inch depth.® The specifications shown to the bidders and the infor­ mation upon which they made their offers were considerably closer to the Passaics than to what eventually emerged as part of the contracts. At least three builders claimed that the precontract information they were given did not match what was eventually furnished.® A court-ordered report

®Blank contract for harbor and river monitors, NARG 45, Subject File AC--Construction, Box 22. ^Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 2 9 and 30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9 and 10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US; Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, ibid.; Claimants' Request for Find­ ings, filed January 28, 1892, ibid.. Case 16834, John N. Snowdon v. US. Thom noted that he received in Lenthall's office an estimate that 1,322,905 pounds of iron would be required, less than half the amount (2,948,000 pounds) actually used. Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, May 28, 1875, ibid.. Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. Chief Engineer Charles H. Loring, the navy inspector for the Cincinnati vessels, understood "entirely informal[ly]" that the vessels had been enlarged from the specifications the contractors had seen. Deposition of Charles H. Loring, NARG 123, Entry

101 supports that assertion, and another report by a board of naval officers explicitly agrees that there were three sets of specifications: the "original specifications," closely resembling the Passaic class, upon which the contractors based their bids; the "modified specifications" furnished to contractors in October 1862, and the "revised specifica­ tions," formally issued in May 1863.^° The issue of "speci­ fication growth" will be addressed below, but the navy does not appear to have modified the bid specifications in a deliberate attempt to cheat contractors.

The would-be builders made every effort to obtain the best possible information upon which to estimate costs and schedules. They did so under considerable pressure--the navy wanted answers by August 21, although it was willing to extend the deadline to August 28 "for parties offering from west of the mountains"--but the navy's haste to let the

1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. The Snowdons' name is fre­ quently spelled "Snowden"; since John N. signed his name as "Snowdon" I have regularized the spelling to that through­ out .

'■“Report of Aaron H. Crag in and Isaac Newton, Special Commissioners Appointed by the Court, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6327, Alexander Swift v. US; "Report of the Board Consisting of Naval Constructor Philip Hichborn, USN, and Chief Engineer Harrie Webster, USN," NARG 19, Entry 188, Report of a Board of Naval Officers in the Case of the Monitor Manavunk. December 12, 1892. Stimers told Fox in mid-September (well after the bidding had closed) that "I made the change in the specifications" calling for two inches of deck armor and "I am having written into them" the lists of necessary equipment to be furnished. Stimers to Fox, September 12, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4.

102 contracts did not materially affect the bidding. Even if the contractors had been able to spend months on their bids, the information they needed simply did not yet exist.

The fifteen firms that bid for what became the Tippe­ canoe class included several who were familiar with the business of building monitors. Harrison Loring of Bos­ ton's City Point Works was building the Nahant and his hometown competitor. Nelson Curtis of the Atlantic Works, was building the Nantucket. Harlan and Hollingsworth of

Wilmington, Delaware, was building the Patapsco under Erics­ son' s subcontract, and Secor and Company of New York had the Weehawken and Camanche. All were Passaic class ships.

Ericsson's own group apparently did not bid on the class.” Two reasons may be adduced. First, most group members had plenty of work. Cornelius Delamater's Delamater

Iron Works was building the machinery for the Passaic class vessels Passaic. Catskill and Montauk, and both the hull and the machinery for Ericsson's "pet" Dictator. Thomas F . Row­ land's was building the hulls for

“Advertisement for "Iron Vessels for River and Harbor Defense," August 14, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 405.

“The "harbor and river monitors" are known by various class names, including Canonicus (the first of the class to be launched), Sauous (the first to be commissioned) and Tecumseh (the first to be sunk) . Most contemporary docu­ ments refer to them as the Tippecanoe class. ^^Abstract of Offers made under Advertisement of Navy Department of August 16 [sic], 1862, for Iron Vessels for River and Harbor Defense, NARG 19, Entry 186, Envelope 620, Proposals.

103 Passaic. Catskill and Montauk and the hull of the Puritan.

as well as the hull of the double-turret monitor Onondaga under subcontract for George W. Quintard. Second, the

political pressure from other builders and their allies had

become intolerable, as Fox wrote to Ericsson, "Your associ­

ates have nearly five millions worth of work, and the public

whom we serve expect other work to be scattered.

Among the fifteen firms seeking that soon-to-be scat­

tered work were seven from west of the Alleghenies. There

were three major reasons for the navy to cast its net so far from the shipbuilding centers of the East Coast. First, as Fox's letter indicates, there was a political need to

"spread the wealth" of government contracting. Second, many perceived that the areas along the Ohio and Mississippi

River valleys showed questionable loyalty, related in part

to a perceived Southern economic orientation; increased prosperity would lead to increased loyalty. Third and most importantly. East Coast shipyards and engine manufacturing firms were stretched to the breaking point with naval new

construction and repairs ; if the navy were to build the

ironclads it wanted, it would have to broaden its industrial base. In examining these issues, the following analysis will concentrate on Cincinnati, with some attention to

Pittsburgh.

^Fox to Ericsson, August 5, 1862, Reel 4, Ericsson Papers.

104 Agitation for government contracts had surfaced early in the West. The Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce memorial­ ized Congress in November 1861, stressing the advantages of

Cincinnati for war work: central location, good transporta­ tion, natural resources, ample power, and skilled labor.

The Cincinnati Daily Commercial reviewed the published memorial at length, reiterating the advantages and adding its own catalog of reasons why the government should not

"permit a state of affairs to exist, that seems to imply a partiality toward the East" when "no point in the Missis­ sippi Valley" could compare with Cincinnati in its potential arms output. Manufacturers such as Miles Greenwood had produced arms "on State and corporation orders," the Commer­ cial reported. "Here are the establishments, with the machinery and workmen and material all rusting for want of the employment which would, in its results, conserve the safety and restore the dignity of the nation."’-® Greenwood himself wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, a former governor of Ohio, to ask Chase's support for an armory in Cincinnati. Greenwood offered to "take hold of

The Memorial of the Chamber of Commerce. ..." Cincinnati Dailv Commercial. January 9, 1862, 2. One of Greenwood's twelve-pounders is among the guns of the State- house Battery, on display at the Ohio State Capitol in Columbus. 105 FIRM LOCATION # SHIPS PRICE TIME

Harlan & Hollingsworth Wilmington, DE 1 525,000 6 mos

Jas. Harrison St. Louis, MO 2 675,000 ea 9 and 11 mos

Thomas Stack New York, NY 1 650,000

Secor St Co. New York, NY 2 481,000 ea 4% and 5H mos

Geifse 6 McCoy Wellsville, OH 1 670,000 9 mos

Geifse & McCoy Wellsville, OH 2 622,500 ea 9 and 12 mos

Miles Greenwood Cincinnati, OH 2 485,000 ea 5 and 6 2/3 mos

Geo. C. Bester Peoria, IL 1 500,000 6 mos

Snowdon & Mason Pittsburgh, PA 1 or more 472,500 ea 6 mos

Atlantic Works Boston, MA 1 640,000 7 mos o Harrison Loring Boston, MA 2 490.000 6 mos 480.000 7 mos

Pennsylvania Iron Wks Chester, PA 1 595,000 7 mos

Wilcox & Whiting Kane's Point, NJ 3 540.000 6 mos "opp. Phila" 530.000 8 mos 520.000 10 mos

William Ferine New York, NY 1 480,000 5 mos

Niles Works/ Cincinnati, OH 2 450.000 5 mos Alexander Swift 450.000 6 mos

S. S. Ashcroft Cincinnati, OH 1 457,000 7 mos

Table 5.1. Abstract of Offers made under Advertisement of Navy Department of August 16, 1862, for Iron Vessels for River and Harbor Defense (From NARG 19, Entry 186). this matter in the right way" if the government would ad­ vance the money.

Later in January 1862, the Commercial deplored "the stoppage of army work here, " reporting that the mayor of Cincinnati had visited Washington to impress upon President

Lincoln, Secretary of War Stanton, and Chase "the importance of continuing the employment of persons here." The offi­ cials assured Mayor George Hatch that contracts would not be curtailed. The economic issue appeared to tie into the issue of loyalty to the Union. In analyzing Republican economic policies during the Civil War, Heather Cox Richardson ad­ dresses tensions between the Northeast and the West and between city and country, but especially significant to the western ironclad program were the differences between Upper Northwest and Lower Northwest. New Englanders settled most of the Upper Northwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and northern Illinois and Indiana) and the region displayed strong New sympathies. The Lower Northwest, compris­ ing the portions of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa that

^Greenwood to Chase, October 25, 1861, Salmon P. Chase Papers, Microfilm Edition (Frederick, MD: University Publi­ cations of America, 1987), reel 17, frames 0885-0887.

^"'"Removal of Government Work from Cincinnati." Cincin­ nati Dailv Commercial. January 20, 1862, 2. Chase advised them on January 22, 1862, that he had presented Cincinnati's claims and would continue to do so. John Niven, ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers vol. 1, Journals. 1829-1872 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1993), 328.

107 lay in the Ohio and Missouri River valleys, was aligned toward the South rather than to the East. This Southern orientation, Richardson asserts, led both to quarrels over national policy and to frequent threats to secede, threats that were taken seriously by many Republicans.^®

The role of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as commer­ cial arteries enhanced this perceived Southern orientation, which extended at least as far east as Pittsburgh. In

September 1861, engine builder John Snowdon of Brownsville, Pennsylvania had, "Gone by the board owing to Southern paper coming back unpaid." In the 1850s, Cincinnati's Niles Works depended upon Southern orders : "Their principal bus [iness] is with the South--castings boilers &c also for rolling mills & pig iron machinery." In April 1862 they were re­ ported to be "hard up," with business "v[er]y slack for some time past on a/c [account] of the southern trade being entirely stopped & have a g [oo] d deal shut up South, "i*

^Heather Cox Richardson, The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 13-15. Ohio's Senator John Sherman advised Chase that if the war were not pressed "with energy we will have civil war among us in 90 days." Sherman to Chase, August 3, 1862, in Niven, Salmon P. Chase Papers, vol. 3, Correspondence 1858-April 1863. 240-41.

^®R. G. Dun, Pennsylvania 66 (Fayette County 1): 576B, s.v. John Snowdon & Sons; Ohio 79 (Cincinnati 2) : 271, s.v. Niles Works.

108 Many firms were in similar straits, helping to make opening the Mississippi to trade a Federal objective

Other authorities differ with Richardson's assessment.

Charles R. Wilson's analysis of Cincinnati in 1860-61, for example, shows that the perceived biological, social and economic ties that bound Cincinnati (and Southern Ohio generally) to the South did not in fact exist: the city was western, not Southern. The increased availability of rail­ road connections in the 1850s had already begun to swing Cincinnati's economic compass from south to east, and the value of the city's commerce was rapidly being overtaken by its manufactures. The economic panic that gripped Cincin­ nati early in the war reflected the same difficulty experi­ enced by other Northern cities rather than a city-specific loss of Southern markets.Yet this work is retrospective, the view from a few decades' distance; the key element here is contemporary perception. Early in the Civil War, the threat of disunion and a "Northwest Confederacy" was taken

^°For a discussion of the political and economic ef­ fects of Confederate control of the lower Mississippi, Surdam, "Northern Naval Superiority," 202-213. Surdam's counterfactual argument brings the effects of Union naval superiority into sharp relief, but even he concludes that the Confederacy would have required "extraordinary foresight and skill" to overcome Union naval advantages.

^Charles R. Wilson, "Cincinnati a Southern Outpost in 1860-1861?" Mississippi Valiev Historical Review, vol. 24, no. 4 (March 1938), 473-482. For more on opposition to the war, including economically based opposition, William G. Carleton, "Civil War Dissidence in the North: The Perspec­ tive of a Century," South Atlantic Quarterly vol. 65, no. 3 (Summer 1966), 390-402.

109 quite seriously.Anything that might reduce the threat by favorably influencing the populace was worth trying.

The most important reason for extending monitor produc­

tion to western yards, however, was the condition of the shipyards on the eastern seaboard. All were jammed, crowded

to capacity and beyond. Any establishment that might possi­

bly build a ship's engine was under contract to do so. In

July 1862 Fox had noted that the machinery for manufacturing

marine engines limited the number of ironclads the navy could build, writing that "iron boats" were being put in

hand "as fast as contracts for engines shall be made."

August brought the complaint, "The engine builders are where we fail, every establishment that can make an engine is at work but skilled labor is high, scarce and independent." In December he wrote, "there is no work shop in the country

capable of making steam machinery or iron plates and hulls

Samuel P. Du Pont, for example, agreed with a guest that "if a separation takes place that the South will carry off the border states. . . . in ten years the Northwest will follow. ..." Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, in Journal Letter 21, December 21-23, 1862, 2: 312. Steven Z. Starr discusses "second thoughts about the war" in the Old Northwest in "Was There a Northwest Conspiracy?" Filson Club History Quarterly vol. 38, no. 4 (October 1964): 323-41. Representative Cincinnati items asserting the danger of such a "Northwest Confederation" include "The Cincinnati Mob," Cincinnati Dailv Commercial July 21, 1862, 2; "The Imminent Danger--A Speck of Rebellion in Indiana, ibid., October 9, 1862, 2; "A Union with Left Out," ibid., December 30, 1862, 2; "The Politics of the War--The Possibilities of Peace--The Propositions of the Rebels," ibid., January 14, 1863, 2 ; "The North-West Question," ibid., March 12, 1863, 2.

110 that is not in full blast with Naval orders. Representa­ tive articles noted, "'Night and day' is still the watchword of the workmen at the navy yard." "The demand for ship carpenters in New York is very great at present." At

Greenpoint, "as many hands as can be conveniently employed on [iron war-vessels], are working incessantly." "Mr. Row­ land's yard is so crowded . . . that there is no room for anything else there at present."^* Shipbuilder William H. Webb, just commencing the seagoing ironclad Dunderberg. wrote in August 1862 that the prices asked by New York engine builders were "truly fabulous.The only place left to go was w e s t .

^^Fox to J. G. Barnard, July 23, 1862, Thompson, Corre- spondence of Fox. 2: 329; Fox to Du Pont, ibid., 1: 144; Fox to George D. Morgan, December 18, 1862, ibid., 2: 471; for more, Holbrook Fitz John Porter, "The Delamater Iron Works-- The Cradle of the Modern Navy," in Transactions of the So- cietv of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. 26 (1918): 12-13; Robert J. Browning, Jr., Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron in the Civil War (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 150-57. Tomblin asserts that ready availability of navy specifica­ tions and drawings allowed "even small firms" to take on machinery work, but the small firms' spotty record shows that drawings or no, capital and tools were essential to timely delivery. Tomblin, "From Sail to Steam," 355.

^■‘"The , " Cincinnati Daily Commer­ cial . July 25, 1862, 1 (reprinted from New York Commercial Advertiser); ibid., August 8, 1862, 3; "Our New Iron-Clads," ibid., July 28, 1862, 1 (reprinted from New York Post); "Navy," ibid., September 4, 1862, 3 (reprinted from New York Tribune) .

^^Webb complained that the engine builders were full with navy orders, leaving him "in the worst fix of my busi­ ness life." Webb to Joseph Smith, August 7, 1862, NARG 71, Entry 5, Miscellaneous Letters Received, June 2-November 27, 1862: 106.

Ill Western industry had already produced gunboats for the navy at places such as Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Caronde- let, Missouri. Some were converted from river steamers and some were built for the purpose, but during 1861 even the vessels purpose-built as gunboats were constructed of wood with iron armor.Because shallow draft was vital for river navigation, riverboats tended to be built lightly and cheaply, with inefficient engines that took full advantage of the almost inexhaustible supplies of fuel and fresh water.Heavy ships, built entirely of iron, were even more of a novelty on the western rivers than they were on the Atlantic coast.

Cincinnati nominally had a boatbuilding industry upon which to base ironclad construction, but it was neither large nor healthy. In 1859, Charles Cist recorded that the city contained three " yards." Observing, "The building of has been declining here for years,"

^®Canney, Ironclads. 3 5-45, discusses conversions; 47- 55, 95-118 discusses purpose-built vessels. See also James M. Merrill, "Union Shipbuilding on Western Rivers During the Civil War," Smithsonian Journal of History vol. 3 (Winter 1968-69), 17-44, which concentrates on vessels built for riverine work.

^‘'For engineering, Canney, Ironclads. 35-36. See also Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt, American Steamships on the Atlantic (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1981). Riverboat machinery was less complex than that for seagoing vessels; for example, because of the readily available fresh water, most riverboat engines were non-condensing. Fox wrote Ericsson, "The western people never could use the condensing engine and we don't want high pressure. ..." Fox to Erics­ son, August 8, 1862, typescript. Fox Papers, Box 3.

112 he noted that "repairing and refitting" was the yards' major occupation. Four hundred men generated $400,000 worth of b u s i n e s s . According to the census of 1860, Hamilton

County, Ohio (Cincinnati) could claim eleven ship and boat building businesses, with a total product of $265,214.

Employment seems to have declined since Cist wrote a year earlier; only 232 hands worked in those eleven yards, fewer than those who made window and door sashes and well below the number who brewed beer for their livelihood.

In other areas that would be vital to iron shipbuild­ ing, Cincinnati fared significantly better. The city har­ bored a number of men skilled in the metal trades, including

151 who worked in smithies, 62 making bolts, 112 brass founders, 20 who made railroad car wheels, 21 coppersmiths, 1544 ironworkers, and 1414 who made "machinery, steam en­ gines, &c." Across the river in Cincinnati's Kentucky suburbs of Newport and Covington, another hundred men made iron. Clearly the city did possess the skilled labor of which the Commercial boasted.2° The agglomeration of

^Charles Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1859. (Cincinnati: n.pub., 1859), 332. ^United States, Interior Department, Census Office, Manufactures of the United States in 1860. Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington: Govern­ ment Printing Office, 1865), 453-56. Neither Kenton County (Covington, Kentucky) nor Campbell County (Newport, Ken­ tucky) reported any ship or boat building firms in 1860.

^“Census Office, Manufactures (Eighth Census). 453-56, 171.

113 specialist firms made urban Cincinnati a highly favorable environment for custom production.

In May 1861, then-Commander John Rodgers had purchased three wooden side-wheel riverboats, which Cincinnati's Marine Railway and Drydock Company had converted into the gunboats Tyler, Conestoga and Lexington for use on the

Mississippi River and its tributaries. When the army de­ cided late in 1861 to build ironclad gunboats from the keel up, they were designed in Cincinnati by Naval Constructor Samuel Book, and Rodgers received the responsibility of supervising their construction." The seven vessels that resulted, known eventually as the "City" class, were all built by James B. Eads of St. Louis. Eads' offer was the lowest and carried the c[uickest delivery date, but as a disappointed rival pointed out, Eads "had no timber, no machinery, and no boat yard." Eads' connections with Attor­ ney General Edward Bates, also of St. Louis, and the argu­ ment that St. Louis desperately needed the business, over­ came this minor difficulty and trumped the political pres­ sure applied by other firms. Although Eads build his ships in Carondelet and Mound City, Illinois, his subcontracting

"Scranton, Endless Noveltv. 18-19. John K. Brown notes the importance of such an urban industrial district to the growth of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in the 1860s. John K. Brown, The Baldwin Locomotive Works 1831-1915: A Studv in American Industrial Practice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 37-38. "Merrill, "Union Shipbuilding, 17-18.

114 and supply network stretched at least as far as Pittsburgh, where Hartupee & Co. built engines for him. The iron armor for his vessels came from three firms, including Alexander Swift and Company of Cincinnati."

The next group of purpose-built river gunboats, autho­ rized in April 1862, included both wood- and iron-hulled ironclads. The iron-hulled Marietta and Sanduskv were to be built by Tomlinson and Hartupee of Pittsburgh, while six more iron-hulled ships were put in hand at St. Louis and the wooden-hulled Ozark was to be built at Mound City. Southern

Ohio received a share of this work, as the wooden-hulled Chillicothe. Indianola. and Tuscumbia were built by Joseph

Brown of Cincinnati. Excepting Brown's vessels, during the year ending September 1, 1862, Cincinnati firms built only four steamboats aggregating 654 tons.^"*

The iron-hulled riverine ironclads were nowhere near as complex and heavy as their seagoing counterparts. The

Marietta class, for example, was somewhat broader than the Tippecanoe class but much shorter and much shallower.

Marietta and Sanduskv were to carry turrets with 6 inch

^^Merrill, "Union Shipbuilding," 19-20.

"Thanks to a maze of subcontract relationships, it is sometimes difficult to tell just where a vessel was built and who was responsible. For example, the iron-hulled Chickasaw appears at first glance to be a Cincinnati prod­ uct, but in fact her hull was built at Carondelet and her machinery in St. Louis. Naval History Division, Monitors, 35-37. "Annual Statement of the Commerce of Cincinnati for the Commercial Year ending Aug. 31, '62," Cincinnati Dailv Commercial. 2.

115 armor and their sides were protected by 1% inch plate.

Eads' Milwaukee class, about as long but broader and much shallower than the Tippecanoe class, had 8 inch turret armor (equal to the original Monitor) but side armor only 3 inches thick. Because the riverine service demanded that everything else be subordinate to shallow draft, all of these vessels had relatively light construction and broad, scow-like hulls that disqualified them for oceanic opera­ tions even in a coastal environment.

As early as March 1862, however, the navy had begun to explore the possibility of building seagoing ironclads in the west.For their part, Cincinnati contractors had also been exploring possibilities, albeit with little initial success. Miles Greenwood, who had already begun manufactur­ ing cannon and army gun carriages, sought drawings from which to build navy gun carriages in September 1861.^

Swift and Company, their interest piqued by the armor they had rolled for Eads, asked the Navy Department in June of 1862 for specifications for gunboats, probably referring to the river ironclads authorized in April 1862. Swift, how­ ever, was rebuffed, since "parties proposing will present

^^Fox to , March 7, 1862, Thompson, Correspondence of Fox. 2: 42.

^Welles to Nathaniel G. Thom, September 21, 1861, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 65: 451. Thom was Greenwood's superintendent; Welles referred him to then-Captain Andrew H. Foote, newly appointed to command the western flotilla.

116 their own plans, specifications, and models. When wooden vessels were contemplated. Swift and Greenwood, with no shipbuilding experience, did not stand out from other com­ petitors .

Miles Greenwood was the better-known of the two busi­ nessmen. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1807, Green­ wood moved with his family to Cincinnati in 1817. At the age of eighteen, he joined Robert Owen's utopian New Har­ mony, Indiana, community for two years before moving to Pittsburgh to work in an iron foundry. In autumn 1828 he returned to Harmony and opened his own foundry, but it soon closed and he returned to Cincinnati, again employed in iron founding. About 1832 he opened his own foundry, which by

1850 employed over three hundred men. Five hundred worked there in 1859, and soon after the start of the Civil War seven hundred hands were making bronze cannon and gun car­ riages and caissons, as well as converting forty thousand flintlock to rifled percussion-cap pieces. The

"machine department" made steam engines, planing and saw mills, hydraulic presses, mill machinery, and printing presses. Other divisions of the firm made simple consumer products like stoves, hinges, and radiators.^®

^Welles to Alexander Swift & Co., June 11, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entiry M2G9, 68: 376, answering Swift & Co. to Welles, June 7, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 409, 141. ^Western Biographical Publishing Company, The Bio­ graphical Cyclopaedia and Portrait Gallery with an Histori-

117 Greenwood was the sort of "'practical' manufacturer" who Philip Scranton characterized as having "risen from the

shop floor to ownership yet retained [his] direct engagement with the tangled complexities of production." Insofar as can be ascertained, his firm was a sole proprietorship.

Different divisions of Greenwood's firm specialized vari­ ously in "custom" production, which Scranton categorizes as

the manufacture of goods "individually crafted for a pur­ chaser, made singly to discrete specifications"; "batch" production, in which producers made their products "in lots of varied size, often on the basis of aggregated advance orders"; and "bulk" production, which used "swift but rela­ tively simple technologies and lower-skill workers" to produce "staple goods in large quantities" with a "fairly stable product array. About Alexander Swift less is known. Born in September

1313 on a farm near Cincinnati, he found farming uncongenial cal Sketch of the State of Ohio, (Cincinnati: Western Bio­ graphical Publishing Company, 1884), 2: 469-70; Cist, Sketches and Statistics. 278-79.

^®Scranton, Endless Noveltv. 10. Thomas Heinrich agrees with the characterization of mid-19th century ship­ builders as specialty producers, predominantly run by expe­ rienced owner-managers who tailored production to fit or­ ders. Key elements were "flexible technology, skilled labor, and rapid response to markets." Thomas R. Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas : Philadelphia Shipbuilding in the Acre of Industrial Capitalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 3-4, 86. Without Greenwood's accounts we cannot be certain which mode was most important to his business, but descriptions of the firm stress items that would fall into the "batch" or "bulk" categories.

118 and chose another trade. Unlike Greenwood, Swift had not come up from the shop floor, or at least not from the ma­ chine shop floor--formerly a tanner, he and partner Seth Evans had purchased a rolling mill "at a bargain" in 1857.

Both were considered "excell [en] t men tho not experienced in th[ei]r line." To compensate, they hired experienced iron men to manage the concern: Henry Westwood as Superintendent and Gustavus Ricker as chief clerk. Like Greenwood's firm. Swift's was unincorporated. The partners had invested some

$20, 000 to purchase the mill; by early 1863, Swift & Co. was worth at least $100, 000.

Swift's principal business was iron making, carried on across the river from Cincinnati in the Kentucky suburb of

Newport. The works produced various sizes and shapes of iron, such as the armor plates they made in 1861 for James

Eads, but their bar, sheet, and plate products were all made from a very few basic varieties of the metal. They thus straddled the boundary between "batch" producers and "bulk" producers: while many of their employees were men of consid­ erable skill, many others were merely laborers, and although they finished iron in many different shapes and sizes, the material itself differed little from order to order. Swift

■‘“"Obituary: Alexander Swift, the Veteran Citizen, Passes Away Quietly," Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. May 24, 1891, 5; R. G. Dun, Ohio 79 (Cincinnati 2): 268; Kentucky 6 (Campbell County) : 175; Ohio 82 (Cincinnati 5), 71. For Ricker, Ohio 78 (Cincinnati 1) : 167; Ohio 79 (Cincinnati 2) : 81. For Westwood, Ohio 81 (Cincinnati 4) : 63.

119 & Co., primarily iron manufacturers, did not have the exper­ tise with machinery they would need to take on something as complex as an ironclad. Swift turned to the Niles Works to supply the deficiency.

Niles Works, run by Henry A. Jones and Charles W.

Smith, employed some three hundred men in 1856 and about the same in 1859. Judged by the credit rating firm of R. G. Dun to "carry on every branch of their bus[iness] managed v[ery] judiciously by men who thoroughly understand it," they possessed "1st rate cr[edit]." In November 1860 they were capitalized at about $260,000."

Niles Works operated both a foundry and a machine shop, making "iron and brass castings of every description; boil­ ers, heavy forgings, tyre-lathes, boring mills, planing machines, etc., etc., made to order" as well as castings and machinery for rolling mills, marine engines, cotton seed oil presses, saw mills and blast furnaces. They specialized in the Southern trade, taking full advantage of their Ohio River location: "Every article required in Louisiana or

Mississippi, can be furnished to the planter by these works more cheaply than by the Philadelphia founderies [sic], for the reason that it is delivered at once on the spot wanted, thereby saving the delay and expense incident to its recep­ tion via New Orleans.

“^R. G. Dun, Ohio 79 (Cincinnati 2) : 271.

“^Cist, Sketches and Statistics. 288-89.

120 Because "Their principal bus[iness] is with the South-- castings boilers &c also for rolling mills & pig iron ma­ chinery, " Niles Works was among the firms hard-hit by the outbreak of war. After weathering a period during which

"like the bal[ance] of the trade" they were "hard up," by

April 1862 they were "all right & easy in a financial point of view. The variety of their products and their manu­ facture "to order" rather than for stock places Niles Works squarely in the category of "custom" manufacturers. Their experience with "one-off" manufacturing probably helped

Swift's firm to develop its shipbuilding organization.

Although they had been rebuffed over the spring 1862 gunboats. Swifts did not give up. Their horizon was evi­ dently beyond the banks of the Ohio, since they inquired in June whether navy wanted vessels for coast or river use, and they appear to have had contacts within the Navy Department, since they knew that harbor and river monitors would be the next class procured.In July, Swifts' wrote the Navy

Department, "We have the capacity to make some Gun Boats, and would be glad to have a contract for the Western Waters or the coast. Say wood or iron--would prefer iron. We

‘‘^R. G. Dun, Ohio 79 (Cincinnati 2) : 271. ‘‘‘‘Sw i f t & Co. to Welles, June 7, 1862, NARG 45, Micro­ film entry M124, roll 409, 141. Greenwood's superintendent, Thom, went to New York City to discuss shipbuilding tools and methods on August 11, three days before the navy adver­ tised for the ships. Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

121 will make two or [blurred] Monitors at Eastern [price?] for the Harbor and Coast Survace [sic] or for the Mississippi

River." Swifts stressed that they owned an iron rolling mill and had already engaged the Niles Works, "the largest machine shop in the West," to assist. Welles replied that the navy had contracted for as many monitors as it then required, but the Swift/Niles partnership united areas of expertise (iron work and machinery construction) that made it quite attractive.'*^ When the navy decided to build moni­ tors in the West, firms already corresponding with the Navy

Department would come most naturally to mind. For their part, Cincinnati manufacturers were on the lookout for business, and when the Tippecanoe class provided an opening. Swift and Greenwood responded promptly.'*® It was evident to both firms that the navy placed a high value on speed of construction, and each firm showcased its par­ ticular advantages in that line. Greenwood's proposal, signed by superintendent Nathaniel G. Thom, stressed that firm's war work: "The well known character of our establish­ ment for promptness and energy and the interest we have

'*®Alexander Swift & Co. to Welles, July 11, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 413, 1; Welles to Alexander Swift, July 17, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 69: 5.

have not located the navy's August 14, 1862, adver­ tisement in a Cincinnati paper, but a short article in the Commercial noted, "The Navy Department has advertised for proposals for the construction of vessels of iron for river and harbor defence similar to those building in New York. ..." "Iron Vessels for River and Harbor Defence," Cincinnati Dailv Commercial. August 15, 1862, 3.

122 taken in putting down the present rebellion will I doubt not be a significant guarantee that the work will be pushed forward with the utmost vigor and rapidity." Swift's pro­ posal, signed by his secretary Gustavus Ricker and Niles Works' Charles Smith, accentuated their partnership: "One of our parties are large rollers of iron & that consequently we are independent of the delays experienced by contractors not having this facility--further we have associated with us in this enterprise the Proprietors of an extensive Locomotive works whereby we will receive such assistance as will enable us to execute the work with as much dispatch as that of any establishment in the country.

The Swift/Niles consortium and Miles Greenwood received the Tippecanoe class contracts they sought. Other success­ ful bidders included Snowdon and Mason of Pittsburgh, Harri­ son Loring of Boston, William Perine of New York, and Secor

■‘’N A R G 19, Entry 186, Envelope 620, Offers . . . for Iron Vessels. Neither firm seems to have approached Ohio politicians. Realizing the dangers of speculation based on the absence of evidence, the papers and diaries of Chase, a former governor of Ohio, contain no communications from Swift and only one from Greenwood, which refers to building an armory. Senator 's papers are also devoid of communications about ironclads, and Cincinnati's Demo­ cratic Congressman George Pendleton would have been a poor choice for those seeking influence with a Republican admin­ istration. The papers of Ohio Senator John Sherman remain to be reviewed, but I find no indication in the correspon­ dence of the Navy Department, of Welles, or of Fox that direct political pressure influenced the award of the harbor and river monitor contracts.

123 and Company of New York.'*® The contracts required the contractors to deliver their ships within six months from

September 1, 1862. Since the navy wanted ships posthaste, besides the six month deadline each contract included a penalty of $500 per day for late delivery and a bonus of

$500 per day for early completion.'*® These provisions differed from the contracts for wooden gunboats that were awarded at about the same time; the contracts for the wooden ships contained no incentive clause and the penalty for late delivery was proportionately less relative to the value of the contract.

Clearly none of the parties fully considered the prob­ lems of expanding ironclad production into western areas where iron shipbuilding was virtually unknown. Building heavy ships on western waters involved significant

■*®Contractors from Naval History Division, Monitors. 2 0-23. Perine had no shipyard; the ship awarded to him was built by the new corporate entity of Perine, Secor & Co. R. G. Dun noted the Secors' affairs were "so mixed up" that it was difficult to state the exact financial situation of each partner. R. G. Dun, New York 380: 8.

*®Blank contract for harbor and river monitors, NARG 45, Subject File AC--Construction, Box 22; Petition filed October 21, 1890, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16834, Snowdon v. US.

®°The monitor contracts called for a penalty of $500 per day on a contract of $460,000, or about 0.11 per cent per day; the gunboat contracts for a penalty of $50 per day on a contract of $75,000, or about 0.067 percent per day. For the contract for the wooden double-ender gunboat Iosco. US Congress, Certain War Vessels Built in 1862-1865. Senate Report 1942, 57th Congress, 1st Session, 20-22. In addi­ tion, the reservation on the Iosco was only 20 percent as compared to the monitors' 25 percent.

124 Figure 5.1. The Tippecanoe class monitor Manavnnk ( from an engraving in Harpers Weekly. 1866; Naval Historical Center photograph NH 2902). uncertainties and considerable startup expenses, which were not incorporated into the contracts for the Tippecanoe class vessels. The contractors apparently did not ask for and the navy certainly did not offer any compensation for the in­ creased risk and expense the western shipyards faced. At the least, the potential effects of river levels, scarcity of skilled labor, and need to establish new facilities should have been considered.

Once they had won their contracts, the successful bidders sought to begin work immediately. Two challenges stood in their way. First, both established shipyards and

^^The navy did require Greenwood (and presumably the other contractors) to furnish "satisfactory evidence" that the vessel could indeed be delivered in Cairo, Illinois. Lenthall to Greenwood, August 30, 1862, quoted in Findings of Fact Filed by the Court, January 13, 1879, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

125 expansion yards needed detailed information about the ships so that they could order the materials they needed. Second,

for the expansion yards, was the effort required to estab­ lish the physical facilities needed to build ships.

Obtaining detailed information about the ships was each

shipbuilder's top priority, because without it he could not order material. Prompt ordering was vital for three major

reasons. First was the lead time required to obtain the

material, which varied depending upon the items involved.

Plate and angle iron were relatively easy to get, while forgings had to be made to order. Castings, especially large castings, took even longer than forgings, since each casting required its own full-size wooden pattern and mould.

Second, a delay of a few days in ordering material

could make weeks of difference in its delivery. Most iron­ works, machine shops and foundries operated on the basis of "first in, first out." Even in the best of times, there would be "a week or two's delay before getting the material

after the order is made. " In a competitive market, where several contractors each sought similar or identical mate­ rial, being first was crucial: the earliest contractor in the queue might receive his initial delivery in a week; the

second would not get anything until some weeks later when the first order was finished. Without precise information.

^Deposition of Theodore Allen, July 25, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

126 however, being first could backfire. If a contractor or­ dered the wrong material, he would have to reorder; besides going to the foot of the priority list, he might be stuck with a shipyard full of iron that he could use only with great difficulty and expense, if at all

Third, as more contractors entered the market, the demand for material increased and with it the price. To assure themselves of the best price, shipbuilders had to order early.

Deferring for the moment the issue of detailed informa­ tion, the second challenge was unique to the expansion yards' "inexperienced" status : none had the physical plant and tools needed to build the ships for which they had contracted. In Cincinnati, Greenwood solved his problem straightforwardly by contracting with John Litherbury to rent Litherbury's existing shipyard at the foot of Fulton

Street, about a mile from Greenwood's shops. Litherbury had converted a steamboat into the gunboat Lexington earlier in the war, then supervised the construction of the four City

^^The situation was similar to that caused by changes. Snowdon and Mason's superintendent noted that "we would have iron ordered and in the yard, and the changes it [sic] rendered it useless for that purpose so we had to dispose of it. At other times it was in an advanced state of comple­ tion but had to be thrown away. ..." Deposition of Joseph S. Kirk, May 30, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v . US. ^■*See, e.g., Harlan and Hollingsworth to Fox, October 4, 1862, in which they note that mills were "filled up" with orders and would only accept further orders "at increased rates." NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 421, 105.

127 class gunboats that James Eads built at Carondelet. The advantage of this arrangement was that Greenwood obtained a prepared site with minimum delay; the disadvantage was that the shipyard he obtained was organized and arranged to build wooden ships . Greenwood planned to get his iron from the firm of Phillips & Son of Covington, less than two miles from Litherbury's shipyard by water (Figure 5.2 below) Even with a shipyard site in hand. Greenwood needed tools. Besides the general-purpose tools common to any large machine shop enterprise, iron shipbuilding required special­ ized tools. In addition to facilities for bending beams and plates, heavy-duty shears and punches were required to cut inch-thick armor plate to size and to punch rivet holes in it. While the job could be done without it, the specialized machinery more than paid for itself in time and money : a man could punch eighteen to twenty holes a minute in the shop but in drilling by hand on site, "we would not get more than 15 or 20 holes drilled per day. Greenwood's

^^Naval History Division, Monitors. 23. ’^Deposition of Alexander Swift, November 10-11, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US; Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, ibid. ^’Deposition of Isaac Winn, October 5, 18 91, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US.

128 ŒiW III ""Il III'.II: ri il K %

LITHERBURVS MARINE RY^W

GREENWOOD'S JJf'BL]

NILES WORKS

CINCINNATI SWIFT/NILES

SWIFT'S MILL COVINGTON

PHILLIPS' Approximate Scale in Miles

Figure 5.2. Hap of Cincinnati, Ohio, area showing locations of monitor contractors' shipyards and iron­ works (adapted from Gilbert & Hickenlooper’s Map for Williams' Cincinnati Guide. 1866).

129 superintendent, Thom, had begun to investigate tools and shipbuilding methods even before the monitors were adver­ tised, spending a week (August 11 through 19, 1862) in New

York City for the purpose. Heavy punches and shears were on his mind, and he found that it would take four to six weeks to obtain them.Besides purchasing specialized tools.

Greenwood made some of his own machinery.®® Greenwood began the actual construction of his vessel, soon to become the Tippecanoe. about September 28, 1862.®° Swift and Niles Works started their facilities from scratch on a lot just across the street from the Niles Works shops (Figure 5.3), less than a mile by water from Swift's rolling mill. Their yard was about three quarters of a mile down the river from Greenwood's operation, and Thom passed

Swifts' yard every day on his way to work. Swift also

^Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-3 0, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. This deposition includes many excerpts from Thom's diary which help to give a day-by-day picture of the enterprise. ^’Deposition of Henry E. Nottingham, August 25, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. Nottingham managed Greenwood's "moulding and casting department." The possessive usage of a principal's name (e.g., "Greenwood's" or "Swift's") should be understood to refer to the firm, since it is almost impossible to ascertain whether a firm's principal(s) acted personally in any given case.

^“Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, May 28, 1875, NARG 123, Entry 1, Cases 6326/6327, Swift v. US. "Began con­ struction" apparently meant beginning to accumulate mate­ rial, since the ship's keel was not laid until November 5, 1862. Brief for Defendants filed December 16, 1878, ibid.. Case 7157, Greenwood v. US, 23.

130 n a x s r ^ ^

Figure 5.3. View of Cincinnati waterfront, ca. 1866. This view, part of a panorama taken from atop the unfinished suspension bridge, looks upriver toward the water works (the waterfront building with tall smokestacks). Swift's yard lay between the water works and the public landing (from the collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Inland Waters Collection, plate 998). needed tools, most of which had to be built expressly for

the work, but Alexander Swift asserted in retrospect that

"the getting up the tools was no hindrance to the work."

Like Greenwood, Swift and Niles bought some from eastern manufacturers and made others themselves ; either way, he

131 stated, they had everything they needed when they started work.®^ Swift's first ship, Catawba. and his second, Oneo-

ta. were begun in late September or early October, about the same time as Greenwood's Tippecanoe.

In Pittsburgh, Snowdon and Mason had to start practi­ cally from scratch to build their vessel, the Manavunk.

Snowdon & Son, composed of John Snowdon and his son John N.

Snowdon, owned the Vulcan Iron Works and built machinery and engines in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, some thirty miles southeast of Pittsburgh." Another Brownsville man, Albert G. Mason, was a boatbuilder, and the Snowdons joined with him in a partnership to bid on the monitor." Loring, Greenwood and Secor were established firms, but three of the successful bidders (Swift/Niles, Snowdon & Mason, and

®^Deposition of Alexander Swift, November 10-11, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. In evaluat­ ing Swift's retrospective testimony it should be noted that the contractors' readiness to begin was a key element in both Swift's and Greenwood's later claims against the gov­ ernment. The government asserted that the shipbuilders' unpreparedness, rather than the navy's slowness in providing plans, caused the delays. ®^Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, April 25, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US,

Snowdons did a "large business" in 1860 but had "gone by the board" in 1861 "due to Southern paper coming back unpaid." By early 1863, they were rated as worthy of "cr[edit] with caution" due to their "Govt contract for building a Gun Boat which when completed will amount to 1/2 million. " R. G. Dun, Pennsylvania 66 (Fayette County 1), 576B; Pennsylvania 7 (Allegheny County 2), 199.

^■‘Deposition of John N. Snowdon, October 5, 1891, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16834, Snowdon v. US; Defendants' brief filed February 21, 1893, ibid., 19.

132 Perine, Secor) were entities created expressly to build monitors for the government.

While Snowdon & Mason did have boatyard facilities at

Brownsville, Mason's small-scale operation was inadequate to the task.®^ Only wooden vessels had previously been built there, and in addition, the monitor would be too big to fit through the locks on the Monongahela River. Accordingly,

Snowdon & Mason rented land farther down the Monongahela, across the river from Pittsburgh, where they built a ship­ yard and shop from the ground up. On the Pittsburgh shore,

they bought a machine shop "already built, machinery and everything in its working order, " and a second shop else­ where in the city. The Snowdons shut down their Brownsville shops and brought their workmen to the new "gunboat yard" in Pittsburgh.®® Their new shipyard was only some three hun­ dred yards from its principal supplier of iron, Lyon, Shorb

Sc Co. Snowdon & Mason, like the other expansion shipyards, met one condition that Thomas Heinrich judged essential for

®®In 1856, R. G. Dun gave Mason's worth as $8,000 to $10,000; in early 1861, he had "ample means" and in July 1862 his credit was "first rate." R. G. Dun, Pennsylvania 66 (Fayette County 1): 47. Although Mason was reported to be "a g[oo]d boat builder of excell[en]t standing & char- [acter]," his capital was clearly inadequate for a half- million dollar venture. Ibid., Pennsylvania 7 (Allegheny County 2), 199. ®®Deposition of John N. Snowdon, October 5, 1891, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US; Deposition of Jacob Graser, October 5, 1891, ibid.; Claimant's Motion for Additional Findings, no date, ibid. Snowdon & Mason paid $1000 a year for the shipyard lot.

133 iron shipbuilding success: each was at the center of "highly- developed metal production and engineering industries."®"'

Yet Pittsburgh, like Cincinnati, had a small industrial base for shipbuilding. Although iron-hulled vessels of up to 1,000 tons were built in the 1840s, Pittsburgh's building in the 1850s had been confined to small wooden ships of less than 500 tons displacement. The brought Pittsburgh shipbuilding to an abrupt end.®®

Common physical needs in the establishment of all of the expansion yards were facilities in which to build the hulls, facilities in which to build the machinery, and specialized shipbuilding tools and equipment.®® To obtain them, the expansion yards followed different courses. Greenwood chose the most conservative path by renting an existing shipyard from an experienced builder of wooden­ hulled ships. Snowdon and Mason's partnership took a middle

®"'Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas, 52. Pittsburgh's antebellum iron industry is discussed in John N. Ingham, Making Iron and Steel: Independent Mills in Pittsburgh. 1820-1920 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991), 21-46 .

®®William F. Trimble, "From Sail to Steam: Shipbuilding in the Pittsburgh Area, 1790-1865," Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine. 58, no. 2 (April 1975), 159-64.

®®The "experienced" yards of the East Coast had a head start in some of these areas, but that was by virtue of having worked out most of their "teething troubles" on the much-delayed Passaic class. Theodore Allen noted that in 1863, there were several new builders "and the concern [Greenwood] at Cincinnati had equal facilities with those who were newly constructing vessels on the Atlantic sea­ board." Deposition of Theodore Allen, April 29, 1874, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

134 way, joining an ironworker and an experienced shipbuilder but starting their shipyard from scratch. Swift and Niles were the least influenced by the experience of building wooden ships. Ironically, the expansion yards' success in building monitors would be inversely proportional to each firm's reliance upon wooden shipbuilding experience.

To return to material issues, the first thing any contractor needed was detailed information about the ship he was to build, and for the harbor and river monitors, that information was sparse indeed. The navy gave Harrison

Loring a contract on August 3 0; nearly two weeks later he was writing plaintively to ask if he could "obtain some of the general dimensions from Chief Eng[ineer] A. C. Stimers or any other party you might designate having the desired information."7° Snowdon & Mason sent their foreman ­ maker, Jacob Graser, for two weeks in New York "to get all the information I could concerning this work; the vessels as well as the boilers. Nathaniel Thom, Greenwood's super­ intendent, spent three weeks in New York seeking informa­ tion; all he could obtain were sketches, taken "on my own account," for which Stimers disclaimed responsibility."'^

"'“Harrison Loring to Fox, September II, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 419, 11.

"'^Deposition of Jacob Graser, October 5, 1891, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US. "'^Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. Thom wrote Fox that he had

135 On the navy side, Stimers asserted on September 13 that "preparations for commencing" the harbor and river monitors were "going rapidly forward." He told Admiral Gregory that the contractors were "so eager to get plans and lists of iron that they really retard me to some extent. . . . Capt Ericsson's recent experiences are so much in favor of having very complete general plans to commence with that his draughtsman is still at work upon the one for these ves­ sels. ..." Stimers argued, "Sending this information from headquarters where we have the experience of all that has gone before will facilitate the work more than these con­ tractors will ever appreciate. . . . Stimers responded to the contractors' complaints by increasing his drafting

staff. On the harbor and river program alone, Stimers' draftsmen issued thirty sheets of drawings (Figure 5.4 below) in September 1862, forty-five in October, and seventy-six in November.Yet whatever the promise of eventual facilitation, Stimers could do nothing to ease the

shipyards' immediate problem: two weeks after the contracts spent three weeks "waiting in New York for drawings and left at last without a single official drawing, specification, or any thing by which to start with on our gun boat." N. G. Thom to "T. J. Fox" [G. V. Fox], September 22, 1862, en­ dorsed by Fox to Stimers on September 23, 1862. NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Mahopac.

^Stimers to Gregory, September 13, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 65, box 1, 2: 20.

'’“‘NARG 19, Entry 1259, Record of Monitor Drawings Sent to Contractors.

136 had been awarded, the shipbuilders had no drawings nor even specifications for the ships. For the contractors, the clock ticked in dollars: two weeks delay at $500 per day equated to $7,000.

Stimers later stated, "we were unable to send any plan immediately upon the execution of the contract [s] , " noting that he had written to the Navy Department to recommend "that the time of the contractors be extended, I think, 15 days because that amount of time elapsed before the 1st plans were sent."’’^ Those plans, while not the "very com­ plete general plans" Ericsson had mentioned, were at least something upon which shipbuilders could begin to order materials: the first drawing, sent on September 13, 1862, was a schedule of the angle iron required for the vessel. (As a harbinger of things to come, it was modified by a revised listing sent two days later.) The schedule of plating required did not leave Stimers' office until Septem­ ber 22, so the fifteen days reprieve granted the contractors by postdating the contracts had been half-consumed before the plating schedule was furnished.

The next drawing was that of the ship's boilers, sent on September 24, 1862, and received in Cincinnati the next

^^Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 25, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. The contractors were pressing for a longer extension; Stimers wrote, "Mr. Mason of Pittsburg [h] told me yesterday that they all had hopes of getting their contracts dated Nov. 1st." Stimers to Fox, November 20, 1862, Private, Fox Papers, Box 4.

137 spas Ts sh ZJazaahaia

Figure 5.4. Typical drawing for the harbor and river moni­ tor program. This plan, a side view of the joint between turret and pilot house, clearly displays the "Harbor and River Monitors" stamp with General Inspector Stimers' signa­ ture (NARG 19, BuShips Plan 2-8-19). day. The boiler plans, however, were "soon after returned

for alteration by order from the Government" and not seen again until late January 1863. The "general plan" was not provided until October 4, 1862, and the scale model of the hull, needed by the contractors to ascertain the size of the keel plates, was not sent until October 7, 1862.^®

Swift and the Niles Works' Case," 14 Court of Claims 235, December Term 1878, 242-44 lists plans and specifica­ tions for the Catawba and Oneota arranged in order of the dates they were furnished to the contractors. A listing for the Canonicus (arranged by plan number) is in NARG 45, Subject File AC, "Material from the Records of the Marchand Board"; this listing does not mention the two materials

138 Under the prewar system, or in fact under the system used for the first three ironclads, the slowness of the central office would have meant little. Each shipyard, working from the specifications, would have made its own model, developed its own materials lists, and ordered its own materials. Yet as Stimers later observed, because

"these vessels were all of novel construction and many of them were being built by people who were not in the habit of building sea-going vessels, anyway. ..." the navy decided that the contractors would be required to work strictly by the plans the navy furnished.'''' One contractor noted, "we were not allowed to proceed with a single bolt without the drawings," and another recalled that his firm was "strictly forbidden" from proceeding without plans.''® Secor and Loring were responsible for four of the seven contracts the navy initially let, and both had built lists but says the General Plan of Vessel was sent September 24, 1862. The Marchand Board's listing seems to have trans­ posed the General Plan and the Boiler Plan dates; Thom's diary-enhanced recollection supports the printed Court of Claims listing. Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-30 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. A single "plan" or "drawing" might require a number of sheets.

''''Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US; also Deposition of Theodore Allen, April 29, 1874, ibid.. Case 7157, Greenwood v. US: "the contractors knew nothing about such vessels or about their machinery, therefore every bolt and rivet had to be shown in the greatest detail. ..."

^Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, May 28, 1875, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US; Deposition of Joseph S. Kirk, May 30, 1876, ibid.

139 Passaic-class vessels. Contractor inexperience was thus not the only impulse behind the navy's decision to enforce strict configuration control. For one thing, Ericsson, who had originated the Tippecanoe design, had a very high repu­ tation; the navy wanted to ensure that his wishes were followed.’® For another, the navy had begun to recognize that in the application of high technology, apparently insignificant details could have far-reaching impact.®® Most importantly, the navy wanted each of its ships to incorporate all the available improvements. This motive would come to dominate the harbor and river monitor program. The fixation on better instead of good enough first showed in the "specification growth" between the "original specifications" shown to bidders in August 1862 and the "modified specifications" sent to contractors in October.

Among the changes, the deck armor was doubled in thickness from one to two inches, the pine armor backing became oak.

’^Deviation from Ericsson's drawings in the monitors Passaic. Montauk and Kaatskill resulted in leakage in the joint between the after overhang and the body of the vessel. This discovery must have reinforced the navy's determination to enforce strict compliance with centrally issued drawings. Ericsson to Fox, January 10, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 430, 168. ®°For example, the armored pilothouse fitted to the New Ironsides sat on the centerline, directly behind the smoke­ stack. Since the stack was eight feet in diameter and the pilot house only four, the stack severely restricted the conning officer's vision. Lacking experience and sound theory to guide the designer, the pilot house was probably placed aft because officers directed unarmored ships from there. Roberts, USS New Ironsides, chapter three.

140 and auxiliary boilers were added. The Martin boilers origi­ nally specified were replaced by horizontal tubular boilers which were larger. The contractors only became aware of these changes when they received the specifications and the first few drawings in late September or early October 1862.

In addition, "specification growth" delayed the production of drawings; as Stimers noted, experience in building the Passaic class showed the navy weakness "that we thought we would like to improve upon." Making the details "in this better way . . . of course was a change" for which the contractors later claimed compensation, but more damaging, it delayed the plans; "it took time to study out just how we would do it, instead of tracing plans which had been worked from before."®^

The effects of specification growth were still in the future when the navy decided that it had not ordered enough of the Tippecanoe class ships. Contracts for seven ships had been let around the first of September, 1862, all for six months and $460,000. Some bidders were rejected because they were not considered able to build the ships; some bids from established builders were rejected because they in­ cluded unacceptable conditions, their price was too high or their time too long. In addition, designs for Fox's pet

®^Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 25, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US; Deposition of Nathaniel G . Thom, December 29-30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, ibid. Tubular boilers: Stimers to Fox, September 6, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4.

141 project, the "light draft" or "six footer" monitors, seemed to be progressing rapidly. Stimers and Fox hoped to begin building light draft monitors soon, so no more Tippecanoe class contracts were to be issued. Such explicit allocation of national industrial resources was among the first cases of its kind.®^

Yet during September, the long-promised plans for the light draft monitors kept receding before Fox's eyes. He had begun pressing Ericsson for them in August, hoping for a four foot draft, but Ericsson's workload did not permit him to expedite the project. In mid-September, Stimers wrote, "Capt Ericsson gives up on the idea of an impregnable 4 foot boat," but by late September Ericsson was working on a design with a six foot draft. Ericsson finally wrote Fox on October 5 that plans for the "six footer" were finished, but that it would take a few days to make fair copies, and the plans were sent to Washington on October 9." Meanwhile, contractors were looking for work to do; on September 12,

®^"In consideration of the light draft boats we shall not give out any more Monitors." Fox to Stimers, September 15, 1862, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5. "I think if we now employ the force remaining to us in the country upon the six foot boats it would be better than giving out any more of the Tippecanoe class. They can be completed sooner . . . and a large fleet can be built by Spring. . . ." Stimers to Fox, October 8, 1862, ibid.. Box 4.

®®Fox to Ericsson, August 8, 1862, typescript. Fox Papers, Box 3. "Gives up": Stimers to Fox, September 17, 1862, ibid.. Box 4. Six-foot boat: Stimers to Fox, Septem­ ber 22, 1862, typescript marked Naval War Records (NWR) 305: 10, NARG 45, Subject File AC. Stimers to Fox, October 9, 1862, ibid.

142 1862, an agent of Harlan & Hollingsworth visited Stimers to ask about building a monitor.®^

Stimers in early October was still advocating that the navy wait and build light draft monitors.®^ Fox, however,

had evidently decided that the navy should go ahead with more "fast monitors" while waiting for the light draft plans. On October 1, Fox telegraphed Harrison Loring,

Harlan & Hollingsworth, and the Niles Works, offering each

firm "another iron battery on the same terms as last, con­

tract to date from today." Niles Works, the first to ac­ cept, agreed without additional conditions and immediately obtained a second contract as Fox had proposed. Harlan &

Hollingsworth dithered for several days over whether to wait

for a light draft monitor, but the still-incomplete plans for that class combined with "one sett [sic] of our ways being now vacant since the launch of the 'Patapsco'" to impel them to accept. Originally asking $500,000, they

acquiesced to the same $460,000 that other builders received

and received a contract for one ship in mid-October.®® Loring wanted to take on an additional vessel, but because

®“Stimers to Fox, September 12, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4 .

®®Stimers to Fox, October 8, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4.

®®Fox to Niles Works, Harrison Loring, Harlan & Hol­ lingsworth, October 1, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 69: 41. Niles Works to Fox, October 2, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 421, 29. Harlan & Hollingsworth to Fox, October 4, 1862, ibid., roll 421, 105; Harlan & Hollingsworth to Fox, October 11, 1862, ibid., roll 422, 16.

143 he imposed conditions that the navy would not accept. Fox refused to award him a second contract. The Tippecanoe class would thus total nine ships.

At the same time, the navy centralized monitor building under Stimers and Gregory. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh had been in the western area in which Captain Joseph B. Hull supervised all navy shipbuilding. On September 26, 1862, Welles transferred responsibility for the western monitors (Tippecanoe. Catawba. and Manavunk) to Gregory, with Chief Engineer James W. King as supervising engineer.®®

The early stages of the acquisition process were thus complete, but with hidden problems that would soon become apparent. The vessels had been designed and placed for bid, but the ill-defined design was already growing and changing. The government had decided to expand the industrial base for

^Harrison Loring to Fox, October 3, 1862, ibid., Microfilm entry M124, roll 421, 60; Fox to Loring, October 4, 1862, ibid., M209, 69: 417. Loring's "inadmissible" conditions: Fox to Stimers, October 7, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 5. Fox wanted to engage Loring; he wrote, "we did not wish to have a party capable of doing the work, say that they were willing to undertake one and the Government refused." ®®Welles to Hull, September 26, 1862, ORN 23: 381. Oneota's contract was awarded after this letter was sent, so she was under Gregory and Stimers from her inception. Fox told Stimers a week before, "the Admiral superintends every thing now, wood and iron, and all the Engineers who have been reporting to the Bureau, report to him as you do. This gives us one organization." Fox to Stimers, September 20, 1862, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5. Gregory, however, interpreted his orders as not covering the western vessels, so Welles made the point explicit. Stimers to Fox, Septem­ ber 22, 1862, typescript marked NWR 305: 10, NARG 45, Sub­ ject File AC; Fox to Stimers, September 25, 1862, Unoffi­ cial, Fox Papers, Box 5.

144 building ironclad vessels, but it had not taken into account in its contracts the unique conditions facing western build­ ers. To support its urgent need for armored vessels, the navy had established the Inspectorate of Ironclads in New

York, but its overgenerous grant of authority to this "moni­ tor office" left the ironclad program without meaningful independent technical oversight. Successful and timely production of the new monitors would be a major task.

145 CHAPTER 6

THE BUILDERS WILL ALL BE BACKWARD ; MOBILIZATION ON THE OHIO RIVER

In late 1862 Cincinnati's waterfront displayed a good deal of activity. Joseph Brown and McCord & Junger had just finished the wooden-hulled riverine ironclad Chillicothe in September 1862, and were building the similar Tuscumbia and Indianola. As winter approached, both Greenwood and Swift were working hard to begin their monitors.

Greenwood had rented John Litherbury's boatyard as a construction site. It was little more than a site with a loft, since Litherbury apparently had few metal-working tools and there were many things required to build ships of iron that were not needed for construction in wood. Like the frames of wooden ships, the frames for iron vessels were laid out full sized in a "mold loft." Many of a wooden ship's structural members would be hewn from wood which already possessed the proper curves ; others were scarphed together and a few pieces were steamed and bent.^ Iron

’•The best treatment of shipbuilding timber is Robert Greenhalgh Albion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem

146 frames, however, all had to be bent to shape. To do this,

the shipbuilder needed a "bending floor" or "bending table."

Bending tables were large, heavy plates in which holes were arranged in a regular pattern. Metal dies of appropriate

curvature, called bending blocks, were secured to the table with pins inserted into the holes, and the heated iron beams or plates were bent to shape using sledge hammers or, occa­ sionally, hydraulic rams.^

The bending process required a good deal of lead time.

First, drawings had to be made for the bending blocks. Wooden patterns then had to be made from the drawings and

iron castings made from the patterns. Only then could the

iron be bent. ^ After bending, it had to be punched or

drilled for rivets before being erected. Thom's diary notes

of the Roval Navy 1652-1862 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965; reprint of 1926 edition); pages 5-9 describe the timber needed for complex wooden shapes. For William Cramp's difficulties in obtaining such timber for the New Ironsides. [Cramp's Address to the Contemporary Club], Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Papers of Rear Admiral George E. Belknap, Box 2 (hereafter "Cramp, [Contemporary Club]"). For steaming and bending, John W. Watson, "The Building of the Ship," Har­ per's New Monthly Magazine 24, no. 143 (April 1862): 609.

^For a detailed description of 1860s iron shipbuilding, E[dward] J. Reed, Shipbuilding in Iron and Steel: A Practi­ cal Treatise (London: John Murray, 1869), 428-63. A more succinct treatment is in Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas. 87-92 .

^Ericsson to Lenthall, February 17, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 8, discusses bending turret plates on a cast iron mold.

147 that Greenwood was preparing bending tables in mid-October; Swift probably did so at about the same time.*

Preparation of the shipyard also required some atten­ tion. First was a shiphouse, a large shed that mOre-or-less protected the ship and the workmen from inclement weather.

Litherbury's shipyard apparently included a small one, but

it was not large enough to hold a monitor, and Greenwood had to build a new one.® At their site. Swift and Niles had only a lot; since a shiphouse was absolutely necessary if work were to continue during a Cincinnati winter. Swift had to have two built, one for each monitor. The shipbuilders also needed to grade and level the areas in their yards where their ships would be built and begin to make the keel blocks upon which the keel would be laid down. Ohce the general plan of the ships was received, the keel blocks could be finished and set in place.®

*"Oct. 18, 1862. . . . Lay down tables for bending." Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. For hydraulic plate bending machin­ ery, Deposition of Joseph S. Kirk, May 30, 1876, ibid.. Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

® "The shipyard had to be prepared for laying down the ship, large buildings erected, and a large amount of tools purchased." From "Supplemental Argument of defendants," filed March 17, 1875, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Green­ wood V. US. "Oct. 1, 1862, surveyed ground at Fulton for ship-house" from "Brief for defendants," filed December 16, 1878, ibid., 23.

6"As yet but little has been done beyond making prepa­ rations. A ship house has been erected and keel blocks laid. " Copy of report of inspector Charles H. Lor'ing [for Catawba and Oneotal . November 11, 1862, NARG 123, Entry 1,

148 Specialized tools have been mentioned in Chapter 5 above, but each shipbuilder also needed general purpose

machine tools to build the ships' machinery. The Swift/

Niles consortium, with access to Niles Works' shops, had

plenty of those general purpose tools, such as shapers,

planers, mills and lathes. Greenwood, however, found that in addition to specialized tools he needed additional gen­

eral-purpose tools. Thom had to arrange in December 1862 for the use of a large planer, boring mill and engine lathe,

He got the use of the tools, along with a blacksmith's fire

and two pattern benches, for $12 per day."'

Organizing a network of suppliers and subcontractors was a key element in the shipbuilders' preparations. (A distinction should be made between subcontractors and sup­ pliers; in simplest terms, the supplier provided some

material or piece of equipment, such as a pump, to the shipbuilder, while the subcontractor provided labor to perform a task for the shipbuilder.®) Heinrich noted the

Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

"'Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-30, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. The ready availability of such metal-working tools evinces Cincinnati's strength as an industrial center.

®This definition leaves grey areas in practice. For example, a manufacturer who builds a pump for a ship is clearly a supplier. If the manufacturer then sends a repre­ sentative to supervise the installation of the pump by the shipbuilder's mechanics, he is probably still a supplier; if he sends an entire work crew to install the pump themselves, he may be considered a subcontractor. (For an example, Wm.

149 prevalence of subcontracting among Philadelphia shipbuild­ ers; "a single wooden steamship usually involved twenty to thirty firms."® Unlike eastern builders, who had the bene­ fit of long-established relationships, the western firms had to start practically from scratch.

Relatively few subcontracting relationships are evident in the harbor and river monitors, although Greenwood had more than Swift. Swift and Company and Niles Works accepted the contracts for Catawba and Oneota as partners rather than as contractor and subcontractor; although Swift appears to have been dominant, it is difficult to determine from sur­ viving documentation exactly what percentage each firm contributed, and contemporary correspondence refers as frequently to Niles Works as to Swift. Swift's bookkeeper later stated flatly, "There were no sub-contractors on those two boats rCatawba and Oneotal

D. Andrews & Bro. to Chief Engineer William W. W. Wood, 11 August 1864, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba.) Note that in the usage of the 1860s, a firm might "subcontract" an­ other firm to make and furnish, say, a valve or a forging; in modern parlance the second firm would be a supplier. ®Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas. 22-23. Subcon­ tracting continued into the iron shipbuilding period, espe­ cially for urban shipbuilders who would otherwise have to invest in expensive city real estate to erect foundries and mills. Ibid., 62-63.

^Deposition of Gustavus Ricker, January 5, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. (The more Ricker was questioned, the more complex the financial relationships appeared, but the greatest complexity was in the post-war arrangements that financed the suit.) No subcontractors : Deposition of Edward A. Jenks (Swift's bookkeeper), June 15, 1875, ibid. Some of Greenwood's "subcontractors" may have

150 In Greenwood's case, the machine shop was part of his own firm; while Greenwood rented John Litherbury's shipyard,

Litherbury's involvement with Tippecanoe ' s construction was vanishingly small. This may have been because Lither­ bury's business acumen was questionable, despite his many years in shipbuilding; when asked later about him, a contem­ porary observed, "He wouldn't do to offer as a good example any way for he is busted wide open. . . . he won't do to tie to." The shipyard "wasn't worth much to him I guess for he hasn't made anything out of it since. . . . Greenwood's superintendent, Thom, kept a diary of his business affairs, and the portions of it that became part of later court proceedings give an incomplete but unusually been inside contractors, employees who contracted with their employer to produce certain items. Employers provided tools and materials but the inside contractor provided labor and supervision, hoping to make a profit on the job. Brown, Baldwin Locomotive Works. 115-16.

‘^Litherbury is almost never mentioned in Greenwood's correspondence. Greenwood paid Litherbury "$100 per month for use of [mold] loft and ground." "Brief for defendants," filed December 16, 1878, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US, 23. Litherbury also furnished timber from a sawmill he owned that was very near the shipyard.

^Deposition of Oliver Perry Clark, July 25, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. In 1862 Dun noted "ups Sc downs"; he had lost "considerable money by steam­ boats" and was "working by the day for Govt on the Gun Boats but c[oul]d not have made much by that." R. G. Dun, Ohio 81 (Cincinnati 4): 252. Litherbury's obituary commented di­ rectly on his generosity and obliquely on his business ability by noting, "When he had means no one in need was ever turned away." Smithson E. Wright, compiler. Obituaries of Cincinnatians 1868-1891. Scrapbook of newspaper clip­ pings with index, microfilm edition, (Cincinnati: American Jewish Periodical Center, 1962), 117-18.

151 detailed view of the shipbuilding process.Greenwood engaged and supervised his own work force and subcontractors without using Litherbury as an intermediary. For example.

Greenwood contracted on October 14, 1862, with Richard Tudor to build the boilers, and on October 5, 1863, with George H.

Grey to "put up turret." In September 1863, a Mr. Morris agreed to fit the tubes for the main condenser. Greenwood also considered having a Cincinnati firm, Hampton & Morgan, install the wooden armor backing, but superintendent Thom noted, "I don't think this contract was ever made. There were so many of these propositions made that I don't remem­ ber."^'' By contrast, in Pittsburgh, Snowdon and Mason had a boiler shop of their own, and Swift also built his own b o i l e r s . 's in this pattern of subcontracting. Greenwood followed more closely the traditional model of shipbuilding in wood than either Swift or Snowdon & Mason.

Of course, the single biggest supplier for each ship­ builder would be the firm that provided the iron. Greenwood had contracted for iron with Phillips & Son (also called

■•^Because Thom's route from his residence on Third Street to Litherbury's shipyard took him past the Niles Works and the Swift/Niles shipyard, Thom's diary and deposi­ tions also provide some glimpses of Catawba and Oneota under construction. '■‘Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 2 9-3 0, 1876, January 2, 1877, July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.; Deposition of Richard Tudor, 14 and 20 July 1877, ibid.

^Deposition of Jacob Graser, October 5, 18 91, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US.

152 Phillips & Jordan) of Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. They agreed to furnish all the plate needed at 5 3/8 cents per pound, although they later renegotiated the contract. It appears that the actual price

Greenwood paid in September 1862, for plate, bar and angle iron, was about 5 cents per pound.’-® For the Swift/Niles consortium, the iron needed to build the vessels would of course come from Swift's own iron works, also across the river in Newport, Kentucky. (Swift's mill sat near Phil­ lips' , with the Licking River between them.) In Pittsburgh, Snowdon & Mason would get their iron from nearby Lyon, Shorb

Sc Co. Easy access to local suppliers of iron was a feature common to all three operations.

The government inspector assigned to the Cincinnati monitors arrived in early November 1862. For this job,

Stimers chose Chief Engineer Charles H. Loring, a naval engineer of eleven years service. Loring had risen almost as rapidly as Stimers, from Third Assistant Engineer in

’^Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-30, 1876; January 2, 1877; July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US; "N. G. Thom's record of Prices Paid by M. Greenwood," Exhibit R-RNB, ibid.. Case 6326/6327, Swift V. US. Later testimony indicated that Phillips & Son broke this contract or insisted upon a modification which raised the price to 5 5/8 cents per pound. Brief for Defen­ dants filed December 16, 1878, ibid.. Case 7157, Greenwood V. US, 35-36, 38. ’■’Heinrich has pointed out how important such proximity to "highly developed metal production and engineering indus­ tries" was to Philadelphia shipbuilders. Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas. 52.

153 February 1851 to Chief Engineer in March 1861.^® Stimers thought highly of Loring, writing Fox, "I am glad Loring is going to Cincinnati. He has ability, tact and sterling character." A few months later, Stimers wrote Loring, "I wish you were here with me. It would relieve me of a great deal of hard work and permit me to attend to many important matters that I now have to trust to inferior hands. ..."

He went on to say that he knew of no one whom he could both rely on and spare to fill Loring's position.^®

This was high praise from the irascible Stimers but well deserved, since Loring's assignment clearly carried more responsibility than its equivalent in the "established" shipyards. As Chief Engineer King later wrote, when con­ struction began, "Neither of the Heads or Superintendents of the establishments had ever seen an iron vessel, a marine steam engine or marine boiler constructed, or had they previously built work from regular drawn plans. . . . the duties of the Inspecting Engineer became that, not only of an Inspector of Materials and Workmanship, but also the director of construction throughout every detail from the

^®Callahan, List of Officers. 338. Loring became Engineer in Chief in 1884 and retired in 1890.

’■^Stimers to Fox, October 9, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4 (second of two letters of this date) ; Stimers to Loring, May 30, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1252, Letters sent to Contractors and Local Inspectors concerning Harbor and River Monitors, May 1863-February 1864, 1: 129.

154 to the pilot-houses, a task requiring the exercise of judgment, care, and energy.

Loring, like the other inspectors, was required to report to Stimers on a regular basis, usually every two weeks. His first report, dated November 11, 1862, indicates how much preparation was required. The shiphouse for Ca­ tawba was finished, the keel blocks la^.d, the lines for the frames drawn in the mold loft, and many of the bending blocks (also called molds) were being made. Displaying vigilance early, Loring had inspected twenty sheets of iron and condemned eight of them. Oneota lagged behind, with Swift's second shiphouse still under construction, but since the two vessels were identical, the lines and molds made for one ship could be used for the other. At Greenwood's yard, Tippecanoe's shiphouse had been built, her keel blocks laid, and her lines drawn in the mold loft. Her stern post was forged and was being bored for the propeller shaft.Two of the six months allowed by the contracts had passed with­ out a keel plate being laid.

Stimers commented upon the progress of the Cincinnati vessels in his own report to Admiral Gregory. The General Inspector noted that the contractors appeared to be "rather

^°Chief Engineer J. W. King to Welles via Gregory, April 20, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba.

^^Loring to Stimers, November 11, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 64, Box 1 (Jan 1862 - June 1863),2:2 (Catawba), 3 (One­ ota) , 4 (Tippecanoe).

155 behind hand in their preparations for doing this class of work, much more so than one would have suspected, to have listened to their representations of their facilities and their great anxiety to obtain all their drawings at once from this office." He observed, however, that their slow­ ness was "not more so than is naturally to be expected when we consider that Iron Ship building on an extensive scale, is an extremely new business in this country.Referring specifically to Swift, Loring later judged that the contrac­ tors "had no facilities for building the hulls at the time the contract was taken," although he described their machine shop facilities as "excellent."^’ Despite the presumed advantage of taking over Litherbury's existing shipyard. Greenwood had already begun to fall behind. Loring's early reports show some of the consequences of the inexperience to which King referred, difficulties to which Greenwood seemed to be more prone than Swift. While

Greenwood had bent more keel plates than Swift, Swift's had been drilled for their rivets while none of Tippecanoe's plates could be punched because, "the machine is not yet in readiness." The stern post forging that Loring mentioned two weeks before had been condemned for being scant (too thin) and would have to be remade, as would two of the

•^Stimers to Gregory, November 20, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 64, Box 1 (Jan 1862 - June 1863), 2: 1.

"Deposition of Charles H. Loring, March 22 and 25, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

156 fifteen keel plates. In two weeks. Swift had worked 649 man-days on the Catawba and another 138 on the Oneota; Greenwood had expended only 339 on the Tippecanoe.

During this period Stimers' drafting office worked steadily on the plans for the ships (Figure 6.1). By mid-

November it employed sixteen men and, as noted above, its output had more than doubled since September. That was insufficient, especially since the office had begun to prepare drawings for the light draft monitors, but as Sti­ mers observed, "Men who can trace are in plenty, but not those who can construct. The General Inspector recog­ nized the position he was in, writing, "The builders of the Harbor and River Monitors will, I fear, all be backward with their vessels and I do not wish them to throw it upon the non receipt of drawings." Fox confirmed this two days later, writing, "Greenwood and Secor are here complaining that they do not get drawings." Stimers replied, "Greenwood and Secor are simply preparing you to let them off from their forfeiture when their six months are up." He advised

Fox not to commit himself, claiming to have "a very simple

^‘‘Loring to Stimers, November 25, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 64, Box 1 (Jan 1862 - June 1863), 2: 41 (Catawba). 43 (One­ ota) , (45) (Tippecanoe). Thom later asserted that Green­ wood's reports to Loring were incomplete; all the heavy forging was done outside the shipyard, and the smiths who did the work were not included in the manpower numbers that Loring forwarded to Stimers. Deposition of Charles H. Loring, October 12 and 13, 1874, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

^Stimers to Fox, November 10, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4.

157 I T T U cn nr- '.11

Ü 'i!j u TT J irm .W ii'Jh w

u p I f l aln in 00 T ’* T - %" - f r IJ ] J ] J ] J .[ J J J J Tj . « «1 --- M II

Figure 6.1. Side view of bow of Tippecanoe class monitor, from sheet 44 of the General Plan (from NARG 19, BuShips Plan 7-9-9; Naval Historical Foundation photo NH 69061). plan" to determine "whether there has been any delay on this account and if so, how much. Among the many drawings not issued when this exchange took place were the boilers, the engine keelsons (the heavy bottom frames upon which the engines rested), the armor arrangements, and most of the valves, gears and linkages for the engines.

Here the seed of standardization planted earlier in 1862 began to bear poisonous fruit. The board that reviewed the proposals received from the "twenty ironclads" adver­ tisement had recommended that the navy prepare plans upon which "all who choose to compete" could bid.^® The level of detail was not specified, but previous practice had been to furnish relatively general drawings and relatively detailed specifications. Shipbuilders and contractors would comply with the specifications, but because each establishment had its own peculiar shop practices and its own customary ways of doing things, each product would differ in its details. Each establishment depended upon its experienced tradesmen

Non receipt" Stimers to Fox, November 10, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4. "Greenwood and Secor" Fox to Stimers, Novem­ ber 12, 1862, Private, ibid.. Box 5; Stimers to Fox, Novem­ ber 14, 1862, Private, ibid.. Box 4. Unfortunately, Stimers did not reveal the plan, and subsequent events show that if he had one he never put it into effect.

^''"Swift and the Niles Works' Case, " 14 Court of Claims 235, December Term 1878, 242-44.

^®NARG 45, Entry M518, Lenthall, Isherwood, Hartt and Martin to Welles, May 10, 1862. 159 and supervisors to develop over time sound practices that would satisfy the specifications.^®

High technology and the expansion of ironclad produc­ tion disrupted this system. First, the fast-changing new technology required adjustments that frequently seemed counterintuitive to men accustomed to the old; in many cases, "established practice" was the product of days or weeks of experience, not of years. Second, as the demands of the monitor program grew, the navy turned to contractors who had no experience whatsoever with such work. In this two-fold absence of established practice, builders might make apparently insignificant decisions that could have far- reaching impact. Even established builders could cut cor­ ners or ignore drawings, with embarrassing and potentially dangerous results.®®

^®Harlan & Hollingsworth was among the few shipbuilders in the country with prewar iron shipbuilding experience. Stimers to Fox, April 8, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 9.

®°For example, members of Ericsson's own group erred by disregarding the plans : "Mr. Rowland who I am sorry to say has grown both negligent and overbearing by the money he has made from my undertakings, committed the error of giving 2 0 1/2 inches shear to the Passaic although my plan calls only for 12 inches shear." Ericsson to Fox, December 17, 1862, Private, Fox Papers, Box 3. Rowland also "entirely deviated from my plans of the overhang at the bow and stern. ..." resulting in gross leakage at sea. Passaic. Mont auk and Kaatskill. built in New York, had the same defect, while Patapsco. Sangamon and Lehigh were "made exactly according to the drawings furnished." Ericsson to Fox, January 8, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 430, 143. Until the needed costly repairs could be carried out, the ships had to reduce their coal supply drastically.

160 Stimers had first faced the problem as the government's inspector for the original Monitor, where he contended with

"a very great want of exactness and detail in the specifica­ tions, which makes the duties of the superintendent very responsible and onerous.He had included more informa­ tion in the Passaic class specifications but had found that, too, to be insufficient. On the harbor and river monitors,

Stimers insisted everything be drawn out in detail. Theo­ dore Allen, Stimers' principal assistant, later testified.

The construction of the vessels themselves was very novel; the contractors knew nothing about such vessels or about their machinery, therefore every bolt and rivet had to be shown in the greatest detail and these were furnished from time to time as rapidly as we could furnish them. . . . The contractors could hardly have carried out the desires of the Government without their being furnished with drawings.

Even as the contractors began to "carry out the desires of the Government," major modifications to those desires were in the wind. There were many changes between the "original" and the "modified" specifications, changes that simply were mandated--no one calculated the effects of doubling the thickness of the deck armor or of enlarging the engines for higher speed. Even after "modified" specifica­ tions were issued, Stimers observed, "from our experience &

’’•Stimers to Fox, February 3, 1862, Private, Fox Pa­ pers , Box 4.

^Deposition of Theodore Allen, St. Louis, MO, April 29, 1874. NARG 123, Entry 1, 7157, Greenwood v. US.

161 observations of the Passaic class of vessels, it was decided to add here & there additions to the strength of the ves­ sels . . Eventually someone noticed a problem. It is not entirely clear who that someone was. The Secor firm, the most experienced at building monitors,

claimed to have been the first to question the design, but Stimers later credited Ericsson. Charles H. Secor said the

firm's "attentions were called" to the specifications, which had not been issued until the second week of October 1862. The firm estimated the "floatative power of those vessels with those changes and alterations, so different from what was understood to be the contract." Secor took the results

to Washington and "told Mr. Fox that his plans and specifi­ cations for those vessels were so entirely different from the information that I got from Mr. Ericsson for them, and others, that the vessels would sink the moment they got in the water. " This meeting was followed the next day by a conference that included Fox, Secor, Stimers, and Lenthall and resulted in a stop-work order to the Secors, whose ships were the farthest advanced, to give time to sort out the

“ Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 25, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. David Brian McGee noted the problem with such "unmeasured" designs, "created in the absence of the constraints of nature or physics.": "Once built, those constraints will be reintroduced. . . . Building from such [unmeasured] drawings therefore entails high risks of expense, physical failure, and failure in use." McGee, "Floating Bodies, Naval Science," 24-25.

162 problem.None of the participants appear to have recorded just when this meeting took place, but it was probably very late in October or very early in November, since when Loring arrived in Cincinnati in early November he told the contrac­ tors "that large changes were to be made, but what[,] they had not yet decided.

The accumulation of unmeasured changes--changes made piecemeal, without quantitative assessment of their impact-- nearly sank the harbor and river class program as well as the vessels. Wartime urgency had caused the navy to try to cut corners in the design process by modifying the earlier Passaic class design without making the calculations re­ quired to ground the modified design firmly in physical reality. In defense of Fox and Stimers, in those days such calculations involved massive manual computational effort-- the theories of static stability, of buoyancy and of balanc­

ing floating were well understood, but their practi­ cal application was extremely laborious. In a design as tight as Ericsson's, however, there was simply no margin for such massive changes. In terms of making the calculations, the effort was, "pay me now or pay me later."

^Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. Stimers said "Capt. Ericsson gave notice that they were being loaded beyond their floatative power. ..." Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 25, 1873, ibid.

^Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, December 29-30, 1876; January 2, 1877; July 9-10, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

163 The labor involved in the calculations supports the idea that the problem was discovered in late October or early November, since it was not until December 15 that

Stimers reported that the work was complete.^® He had bal­ anced the ship by moving the turret forward, but he had a tougher problem: "With regard to the draft of water and displacement, we are utterly swallowed up by calculations[; ] allowing for no contingents we are within 10 inches of the top of the deck and Capt. Ericsson feels satisfied that we will go three or four inches more than this." A discussion then began about what to do. Ericsson recommended removing the second inch of deck armor and returning the wooden armor backing from oak to pine. Stimers insisted on the oak but even so, "there is no choice, one inch is all the iron we can have." Fox, for whom even two inches of deck armor was insufficient, would not permit this. He wrote, "Your proper course is to make these vessels deeper.

That Stimers and Ericsson proceeded to do. The two engineers quickly agreed upon a plan to deepen the vessels

18 inches, increasing their draft to 12 feet 6 inches and reducing their speed to 10 knots. Stimers sent Fox a list

^®Allen made the calculations "some months after the vessels were under contract." Deposition of Theodore Allen, August 11, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. ^Stimers to Fox, December 15, 1862, Private, Fox Papers, Box 4; Fox to Stimers, December 18, 1862, Unoffi­ cial, ibid.. Box 5. 164 of other improvements that would result, including the opportunity to increase the height of the boilers to reduce foaming. Complimenting Fox for insisting on a two inch deck, Stimers put the best face on the situation: "You may therefore congratulate yourself that you have caused these vessels to be greatly improved in all their weak points."^®

On December 22, 1862, Stimers sent a letter to each contractor outlining what changes were forthcoming. Reiter­ ating that the ships were "in their general plan, simply a modification of the Passaic class," Stimers noted that weight-increasing changes had been incorporated "after this plan left the hand of the designer" until "Captain Ericsson gave notice that he would no longer be responsible for the floatative power of these vessels." Stimers had "caused the displacement and the weights to be carefully calculated," including the weights needed to balance the vessel without ballast, and as a result "it has been determined to make the following alterations." In contrast to the rest of the letter, written in Stimers' usual direct style, the entire paragraph that described what had happened to Ericsson's design was written in the "bureaucratic passive": "there was added" another inch of iron, pine "was changed" to oak, full thickness "was demanded" for armor plates, boiler weight

^Stimers to Fox, December 21, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4.

165 "was increased" fifteen percent.” A major engineering blunder, albeit one engendered by a sincere desire for improved ships and enabled by the legitimate driving urgency of war, was being disowned as gently as possible.

In this context one must ask what had happened to the Navy Department's Bureaus of Construction and Repair and of

Steam Engineering. The Bureau of Construction and Repair let the contracts for all shipbuilding, including the moni­ tors, and the Chief Constructor, Lenthall, was a man of long experience. Why did not Lenthall review the design and verify that it would float? If he questioned its mechanical feasibility, why did he not discuss it with Engineer-in- Chief ISherwood?

One answer is that Lenthall was simply not kept cogni­ zant of the changes. The characteristics of each monitor, from the Passaics on, and the changes to them, came from the

Fox-Ericsson-Stimers triumvirate.” All Lenthall did was

”Stimers to Messrs. Secor & Co., December 22, 1862, printed copy in "Petition and Statement of Secor & Co., and Perine Secor & Co., Respecting the claims, for losses sus­ tained (through the action of the Government), in building the Harbor and River Monitors 'Tecumseh,' 'Mahopac,' and ''." (New York: City Law and Job Printing Office, n.d. [after May 28, 1874]), in NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Mahopac.

‘‘“This was usually the result of face-to-face interac­ tion between Ericsson and Stimers and of exchanges of let­ ters between Fox and Stimers and Fox and Ericsson. In its purest form: "Enclosed I send you the letter of recommenda­ tion which Mr. Lenthall can convert into an order and which covers the ground agreed upon at Capt. Ericsson's last night." Stimers to Fox, May 20, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7.

166 issue the contracts; in some cases, he did so without even having seen the specifications that accompanied them.'*^

A second answer is that he and Isherwood had tried to exercise oversight of the monitor program and had been slapped down. In June 1862, for example, Lenthall and

Isherwood reviewed Ericsson's design for "a large monitor," evidently either Puritan or Dictator. Despite Isherwood's objection that the ship's speed would be "far short" of

Ericsson's estimate, Ericsson received a contract for not one but two " large monitors. Clearly the two bureau chiefs had no control over the monitor program.

In point of fact, they had never had control. When the navy built the first three ironclads, the officer in charge was Joseph Smith, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks.

Isherwood and Lenthall made a valiant effort to get back into the game with the "Bureau" ironclad design, but despite its technical excellence the Monitor had eclipsed it. By the end of 1862, the Bureaus found themselves responsible

■‘^"You better send us a copy of the specifications etc. but you must furnish them to contractors. . . . Of course Mr. Lenthall will make the contracts for the boats." Fox to Stimers, September 15, 1862, unofficial. Fox Papers, Box 5. Stimers recalled, "The matter was generally talked over in the Navy Department and they decided to do certain things, and then to get the thing into official routine, the proper bureau would issue a written order to Admiral Gregory, who endorsed it over to me, and that made everything square. " Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, New York City, August 11, 18, and 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift V. US. ^Fox to Stimers, June 4, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 5.

167 for the later riverine vessels and the non-monitor seagoing ironclad Dunderbero. built by contractors, and the Mianto- nomoh class "seagoing" monitors being built in navy yards/"

Even the navy yards were not the Bureaus' private preserve, since Stimers' office had charge of the turrets for the ships being built there. Monitors dominated Union ironclad building, and bureaucratically, Stimers' New York "monitor bureau" owned the monitor program in fee simple.

Certainly Isherwood's and Lenthall's support for their own "Bureau" and other non-monitor designs, and Isherwood's long-standing mutual antagonism with Ericsson, were elements in their being shunted aside. The most important factor, however, was that Lenthall and Isherwood lost a battle of perception. Fox was an enthusiast, "a live man, whose services we cannot well dispense with." Another correspon­ dent wrote, "Now Captain you are regarded as the active man of the Dept. and that anything requiring quick movement & prompt action must come through you."'‘‘‘ Fox perceived a similar drive and enthusiasm in the single-purpose New York

"monitor bureau," characteristics that were missing from the slower rhythms of the established Washington bureaucracy.

■•^For Dunderberq transfer to the Bureau of Construc­ tion, Gregory to Lenthall, October 31, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 64, Box 1, 1: 171.

■‘■‘"Live man": President Abraham Lincoln, quoted in Hayes, "Captain Fox," 65-67. "Active man": O. G. Halsted to Fox, November 23, 1862, private and confidential. Fox Pa­ pers , Box 3. 168 Even Admiral Gregory, himself over 70 years old and not entirely comfortable with Stimers' position vis-a-vis the Navy Department, referred to Lenthall as a "patriarch.” When Lenthall and Smith visited New York, he told Fox, "You had better send them oftener, if only to keep them awake.

Combined with Fox's conviction that John Ericsson was a genius who could solve any mechanical problem, this percep­ tion of slowness cost Lenthall and Isherwood the Assistant

Secretary's confidence, at least when it came to ironclads. In fact, the perception was undeserved. Lenthall and

Isherwood were jointly responsible for the largest, most compressed shipbuilding and conversion program up to that time and had many calls upon their time and resources. Their development of the "Bureau" ironclad design and their repeated attempts to gain approval for seagoing ironclads shows that they were by no means fossils, inimical to tech­ nological change and resistant to progress.‘‘® In fact, they began with a sailing navy that contained a few steamers and built a technologically up-to-date steam navy that had some leftover sailing ships. Yet the breadth of their responsi­ bilities, as much as any bureaucratic foot-dragging, made them appear slow--they could not ignore their other

‘‘^Gregory to Fox, May 25, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 6.

“•^As Baxter points out, the Navy Department "was not skeptical of the merits of turreted ironclads." Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 284. For seagoing ironclad projects, Canney, Ironclads. 12 6-12 9; Sloan, Beniamin Franklin Isher­ wood. 52-65.

169 obligations to concentrate solely on ironclads, while Sti­ mers' much narrower organization was far more able to re­ spond quickly to Fox's concerns.

Secretary Welles later wrote, "I confided in Fox who was giving these vessels special attention. . . . Fox reciprocated the Secretary's confidence and understood very well both the authority and responsibility it conferred on him. In December 1862, he told Ericsson, "Being myself responsible that some twenty [monitors] are now under­ way. . . . I have personally considerable at stake in the matter." The stake, he wrote, was his reputation: "It is briefly whether I shall be considered an Ass or a very sensible man.""*® Under such stress. Fox confided not in the

Bureaus but in Ericsson and Stimers and the highly focussed and responsive organization Stimers had built so rapidly. After Fox displayed this confidence by overriding or mar­ ginalizing Isherwood and Lenthall, the bureau chiefs appear to have reached two conclusions, both of which impelled them towards a "hands off" policy of ignoring the monitors. One was that they had plenty to do in other areas, and there was no point in increasing their workload by trying to oversee

^’Welles, Diary, entry for July 19, 1864, 2: 81-82. Welles assessed Fox as a loyal subordinate but at times officious; "Most men like to be, or to appear to be men of authority, he as well as others." Ibid., entry for August 13, 1863, 1: 401.

‘‘^Fox to Ericsson, December 16, 1862, typescript. Fox Papers, Box 3.

170 the monitor program if their opinions were to be disre­ garded. The second was that since Stimers wanted the re­ wards of independence, he could have the responsibilities as well--he was on his own.

One area in which Stimers was on his own was in fixing the problems of the Tippecanoe class. Had Fox been willing to accept the thinner deck that Ericsson and Stimers recom­ mended, the task would have been relatively simple. The turret would still have been moved, to balance the ships

fore and aft, but since none of the ships would be ready for their turrets or turret foundations for some time, little disruption would occur. Other changes would have been minimal, and probably none would have required undoing work already done. The course that Fox directed and that Erics­ son and Stimers so promptly implemented would produce more capable ships, but it would also delay them far longer than the less-extensive work the two engineers first proposed.^®

■‘®For a generally pro-Isherwood treatment, Sloan, Ben­ iamin Franklin Isherwood , 49-77. ^°The navy again failed to consider the unique problems of western shipbuilding. As Thom pointed out, it was fortu­ nate that much of the increased height was above water rather than below. If the ship had drawn 18 inches more, her draft would have been too great to get her downriver with all her weights aboard. She would have had to have been moved before completion and finished somewhere other than Cincinnati, with a tremendous increase in cost. Depo­ sition of Nathaniel G. Thom, May 28, 1875, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. Nothing in their correspon­ dence indicates that this occurred to Stimers or Fox.

171 The impact of these major modifications was greatest and most clearly felt for Secors, who had three ships under construction.®^ The Mahopac. Tecumseh and Mannahata (later

Manhattan) were the farthest along of the class; at the time the problem was brought to light, Charles Secor recalled,

" the angle iron was well set up and the plates nearly two- thirds on the Tecumseh and about one-third each on the other ships. To deepen the ships, a great deal of effort was rec[uired. While a strake of hull plating was in itself easy to add, all the ribs that would support that plating were too short. Each had to be lengthened to accommodate the in­ creased height. The stem and stern posts, each an expen­ sive forging, had to be pieced out or remade. Extensive work was involved, much of which had to be hand work done on site aboard ship rather than by power tools in the shops. In addition to the effort required to redo the work, the changes affected the workers. Secors' superintendent said, "It demoralized the whole establishment . . . it was like building a building and getting it part way done, and the man wants to alter it . . . you have got to discharge a large number of workmen and you don't know what to do."®®

®®"Perine, Secor & Co." was a fiirm of convenience; the actual work of building Manhattan was done by Secors.

®®Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

®®Deposition of George Birkbeck, Jr., August 13, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US

172 5HEr N=35 CÇrflS» ,:Çe(tüm T'PMSAZtCC C*A*ê

Figure 6.2. Cross-section of hull of *Piclass monitor (from NARG 19, BuShips Plan 7-9-9; Naval Historical Center photograph NH 69060).

The Cincinnati ships were not as far along as those in

Jersey City, but the redesign meant significant rework, there

as well. Ribs, bulkheads and stem and stern posts had to be

remade, of course, but the keel blocks for Catawba and

Oneota had to be relaid as well--adding eighteen inches in height to the ship would have brought the deck too near the beams of the ship house. The keel plates had to be removed

to relay the blocks, and relaying the keel was like starting

the job over. At Greenwood's yard, "everything had to be

taken down before you could go to work again. We had to

take down the work that was up, have it spliced out, and stem & stern-posts, frames and some other work; the bulk­ heads had to be cut out, replaced and changed." Loring

173 observed that after receiving Stimers' letter, "There was considerable delay" in getting the work started.

The change cost the builders time in several ways. First was the "stop work" order, given at least to Secors

and possibly to all contractors.^® Second, as Stimers later

stated, because the navy "did not permit the vessels to go

beyond the drawings which we sent . . . it was therefore impossible for them to go on with anything regarding the

original contract when we were contemplating making changes

from them." The contractors "couldn't carry on those parts

which were not changed beyond what would be permitted in

making the changes." Under the older system, the navy would

have told the contractors to deepen the vessels 18 inches and let them be about it. Under the centralized system, the

®‘‘Keel blocks, considerable delay: Deposition of Charles H. Loring, March 22 and 25, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. Greenwood's yard: Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, May 28, 1875, ibid. Snowdon & Mason in addition had to lengthen their launching ways, "a very difficult and expensive piece of work." Deposition of Joseph S. Kirk, May 30, 1876 , NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US.

^Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. Loring's reports indicate that Swift and Greenwood continued work during November. Since the Cincinnati ships were well behind the Jersey City vessels and any changes rumored in November would have involved reducing the deck armor rather than deepening the ships, continuing to work was a reasonable risk to take. Work slowed dramatically after the December 22 letter, partly because of the changes and partly because a stoppage at the rolling mills curtailed the supply of iron. Loring to Stimers, December 23, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 974, vol. 1: 164-66; Loring to Stimers, January 6, 1863, ibid., 2: 18-20, Loring to Stimers, January 20, 1863, ibid., 2: 35-37. By January 20 the mills were back in operation.

174 contractors were idled until drawings could be prepared and duplicated.s* Finally, the effort Stimers' office made to produce the plans for this major redesign detracted from the manpower available to finish the drawings for the unchanged parts of the ship.

Although it had not hesitated to incorporate other

"additions to the strength of the vessels" without formally modifying the original contracts, the Government recognized that a redesign of the magnitude called for in the December 22 letter was far beyond what the contractors could be expected to absorb. Accordingly, Stimers included a para­ graph which explicitly described the change process that would be followed; it is worth quoting in full:

"You will please make out a statement in detail, show­ ing the expense to yourselves which will be added to the cost of the vessel, and the length of time which must be added on account of the foregoing enumerated changes. You will please give the local Inspector an opportunity to judge of the correctness of your esti­ mate, that you may both estimate from the same basis. You will understand, of course, that the Government will pay you all expenses incurred on account of these changes in addition to the price agreed upon in the contract, and to allow you the extra time required on account of them to complete the vessels."®’’

^Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, and 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. This affected, for example, the boilers; boilermaker Richard Tudor recalled, "We stopped for some time. . . . there was a great deal of material there that had to be returned and changed." Deposition of Richard Tudor, boilermaker, 14 and 20 July 1877, ibid.. Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

®^From Stimers to Messrs. Secor & Co., December 22, 1862, printed copy in "Petition and Statement of Secor & Co," NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Mahopac.

175 On its face, this letter (sent to each Tippecanoe class contractor) showed significantly more sophistication than the "changes" clause in the original contract. It seemed to recognize that the price of the alterations would vary from shipyard to shipyard, in part because of variations between shipyards but also because the ships themselves were in varying states of completion; the Secors' vessels, already partially plated, would require more ripout and rework than would the western ships. The letter further recognized that the shipyards were in the best position to estimate their costs, and the requirement that the local government inspec­ tor also furnish an estimate implied negotiation over the price. The provision for increasing the contract delivery date by the length of time needed to make the changes ex­ plicitly recognized that changes would delay completion. Yet even with this growing sophistication there were areas in which Stimers' letter fell short. First, the changes would in modern parlance be "unilateral"--Stimers' letter implied negotiation, but it set forth changes the contractors could not refuse to implement. Had it been a true "negotiated" change, the government would have obtained a price and schedule impact estimate from the contractor and then decided whether to make the change or to defer or cancel it. In the December 22 letter, the navy told the contractors to perform the work and only then began to haggle over the price. Obviously this weakened the navy's

176 negotiating position while it encouraged the contractors' hopes that they could use such a major change to make them­ selves financially whole again.

Second, there would be considerable delay in pricing the change because neither the contractors nor the inspec­ tors could make valid estimates until they received the revised plans. Those plans would not be forthcoming for some time. Third, there was some question about what "all expenses incurred" would include. Both sides agreed that the navy was liable for the cost of erecting the new work.

Beyond that, as when dealing with ripout of the old work, the water grew murky. To complicate matters further, as will be discussed, at about this time the General Inspector established a fixed price for alterations based upon the amount of material involved, a fixed price that did not account for cost differentials among shipyards. Stimers' letter made the navy's contracting philosophy seem clearer and more sophisticated than it actually proved to be. In so doing, it raised expectations among the contractors that the navy would be unable to satisfy.

177 CHAPTER 7

THESE MONITORS ARE MISERABLE FAILURES:

COMBAT LESSONS AND POLITICAL ENGINEERING

The year 18 63 gave the new monitors their first signif­ icant combat experience, revealing some strengths and a number of weaknesses. The first fleet engagement involving monitors was Rear Admiral Samuel F. Du Font's unsuccessful attack on Charleston, South Carolina, and in its aftermath the monitors became a focal point of conflict. The contro­ versy that followed the Charleston failure colored the monitor program long past the end of the Civil War. The aggressive orientation of the Federal ironclad program became evident soon after the Battle of Hampton

Roads. In the first of many plans to use the ironclads offensively, the navy decided to attack the forts guarding the entrance to the Cape Fear River to close the blockade running port of Wilmington, North Carolina. The Navy De­ partment planned an attack in early 1862 but cancelled it in mid-May, although Rear Admiral Louis M. Goldsborough as­ serted confidently that he could take the forts at

178 Wilmington as soon as he could get the ships. ^ Goldsbor­ ough' s plan required no army cooperation, a positive factor in light of General George B. McClellan's involvement in the Peninsular Campaign. The Peninsular Campaign, however, caused Goldsborough's plan to be postponed. Not only did it prevent the army from providing assistance to the navy, but

McClellan's demands for naval support kept the only two Federal ironclads yet completed (Monitor and Galena) in the

James River.^ McClellan's withdrawal after the eased this requirement, but the damage done to the

Galena by Confederate fire at Drewry's Bluff in the James caused Goldsborough again to delay his attack.^

The postponement effectively precluded action against Wilmington, since Fox and Welles were already leaning toward an attack on Charleston. Although it had little strategic importance other than as a blockade running port, it was the "seat of the great wickedness that has befallen our coun­ try." The "insolent, conceited, unreasonable, and arbitrary

’Fox's letter to Du Pont, advising him, "we are ready to give you a force for Charleston," meant the end of the Wilmington project. Fox to Du Pont, May 12, 1862, Thompson, Correspondence of Fox. 1: 119. Fox to Goldsborough, May 17, 1862, ibid., 1: 269; Goldsborough to Fox, May 21, 1862, ibid., 1: 273. ^See, e.g., J. G. Barnard to Fox, March 12, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 3.

^Goldsborough reported "little or no chance" of Galena being used against Fort Caswell, since she leaked at the rate of five feet per day. Goldsborough to Fox, June 16, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 3.

179 author of all our national troubles. ..." made an obvious target.'* In early June 1862, Fox wrote Du Pont, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, "We should be inclined to skip Fort Caswell [at Wilmington] if you con­ sider it imperative, for the fall of Charleston is the fall of Satan's Kingdom.

Du Pont, the man whom Fox and Welles selected to take

Charleston, had earned his admiral's stars by his successful attack on Port Royal, South Carolina, in October 1861. In 1862, he had been quite impressed with the new ironclads, writing, "I wish now I was forty again, instead of fifty- eight, to go in for ironclads, etc. . . . Du Pont came north for consultation in October 1862 and visited all three first-generation ironclads. New Ironsides he characterized as "one of the wonders of the world, for she is a seagoing plated ship. . . . the most formidable ship I have seen."

Galena's combat damage was "a most curious sight," but Monitor was "scow-like, with decks and turrets laid on." The new monitors, he wrote, "will be very superior," and a

■‘Welles, Diary, entry for May 26, 1863, 1: 314; "Port Royal." Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin. November 15, 1861: 1. Du Pont's capture of Charleston was to be a "crowning act of retribution." Fox to Du Pont, April 3, 1862, in Thompson, Correspondence of Fo x. 1: 114-15

^Fox to Du Pont, June 3, 1862, Thompson, Correspondence of Fox. 1: 128. ®Du Pont to Lammot Du Pont, July 1, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters 2: 147.

180 "sufficient number" of them, armed with Dahlgren's new XV- inch gun, would tear away the walls of forts. ^

As he grew more familiar with the ironclads, however, Du Font's initial enthusiasm began to wane. A major influ­ ence was his correspondence with Captain Percival Drayton, the prospective commanding officer of the Passaic. The letters quoted in Chapter 4 negatively influenced Du Font's view of the new monitors. The difficulties Passaic encoun­ tered on her first voyage, in late November 1862, certainly did not help matters. On that trip, the stays in Passaic's boilers gave way and crippled the ship, forcing her to be towed into Washington, DC, for repairs. The cause of the accident was a matter of dispute ; Stimers asserted that the engineers on watch had overpressurized the boilers through carelessness, while Drayton blamed "very bad work and fas­ tenings not half the proper size."® Ericsson furnished men to repair the boilers and increase the size of the stays.

"'Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, October 20, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 250; Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, in Journal Letter 1, October 22, 1862, 258 (Du Font's emphasis).

®Stimers to Fox, November 30, 1862, Private, from Baltimore, Fox Papers, Box 4; Drayton to Du Pont, December 20, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 305. An anonymous article by one of Passaic's officers detailed the difficul­ ties, among them leakage "in constant streams" and steering gear that broke four times in a day. "The First Cruise of the 'Monitor' Passaic," Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 27, no. 161 (October 1863) : 577-79.

181 while Welles directed Gregory to ensure that other ships of the class were properly built.®

The delays involved in delivering the ships were also a factor. All the Passaic class ships were to have been completed by the end of August, but were considerably de­ layed. Ericsson delivered the first of the class, Passaic, to the navy on November 25, 1862, but her arrival in Du

Pont's squadron was delayed by the boiler casualty mentioned above. This was unfortunate, since in the autumn of 1862,

Du Pont's immediate concern was not attacking Charleston but defending his wooden blockaders from Confederate ironclads. He wrote Welles in late October that reliable information placed three ironclads building at Savannah and two at

Charleston and asked for New Ironsides and Passaic to be assigned to his squadron.He continued unsuccessfully to press his case, writing later he had been promised the New Ironsides but did not get her because "Fox don't Fsicl believe a word" about the ironclad threat.“

By January, however, things began to come together for

Du Pont. The Navy Department's fears for Hampton Roads had

®Welles to Gregory, December 5, 1862, Welles Papers, Reel 5, Container 7, Letterbook Oct 4 62-Feb 2 63, 239-41. Despite Ericsson's and Stimers' remonstrances about poor operation of the boilers, Welles apparently accepted Isher­ wood' s conclusion that the stays were inadequate.

’■“Du Pont to Welles, October 25, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters, 2 : 266. ’’D u Pont to Henry A. Wise, 16 January 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 358.

182 eased to the point that New Ironsides was sent to Port Royal, where she arrived on January 17, 1863. She entered the harbor the next day, causing Du Pont to report, "I felt my heart lighter." Du Pont was even happier when the moni­ tor Mont auk arrived on January 19, and one of New Ironsides' officers reported, "The Admiral is in high glee because he has two iron dads to work with. Du Pont would soon have more than two, but his doubts about the monitors were not assuaged by seeing the Montauk's deck level with the water, her crew "huddled together under the lee of the turret look [ing] like drowned rats. While New Ironsides ex­ changed her masts for light signalling poles and tried to improve the view from her pilot house, Du Pont considered what to do about the monitors. The first thing he did was to write to Welles, saying that the Navy Department should "put at my disposal every means to ensure success, especially by sending additional ironclads, if possible. ..." The next thing, he decided, would be to try the Montauk under fire, on an easier target

^Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, January 18 and 19, 1863, in Journal Letter 29, January 16-24, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 366, 368. (One reason for the concern Du Pont displayed about Montauk was the foundering of the original Monitor in a storm off on December 31, 1862.) Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, John M. Butler Diary, 1862-1864, MSS 3947 (microfilm edition) (here­ after "Butler Diary"), entry for January 19, 1863. Acting Master's Mate John M. Butler joined New Ironsides in 1862.

“Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, January 18 and 19, 1863, in Journal Letter 29, January 16-24, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 368.

183 than heavily fortified Charleston. The Confederate blockade runner-cum-raider Nashville had been sheltered in the Ogee- chee River in Georgia for several months, protected by a small earthwork called Fort McAllister. Du Pont sent John

Worden (who commanded the original Monitor at Hampton Roads) in the Montauk up the Ogeechee to try to destroy the fort and the Nashville. Four hours firing on January 27, 1863, had no apparent result on either side. The Montauk was struck several times with very little damage, but she failed to damage the fort either. Du Pont assessed the relatively long-range action as speaking well for the monitor's defen­ sive prowess, but decried her lack of offensive ability. It increased his concerns about attacking Charleston; as he wrote a friend, "if one ironclad cannot take eight guns, how are five to take 147 guns in Charleston harbor?

Du Pont lost no time in advising Welles of his experi­ ment and its results. It confirmed, he wrote, his "fre­ quently expressed" opinion that the monitors had no "corre­ sponding powers of aggression or destructiveness" to match their impenetrability. He also observed, "in all such operations to secure success troops are necessary."^® This letter crossed Welles' reply to Du Pont's missive of January

^Du Pont to Welles, January 24, 1863, Confidential, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 377. For the action, Worden to Du Pont, January 27, 1863, ORN 13: 544-45; "one ironclad" Du Pont to Benjamin Gerhard, January 30, 1863, Private and Confidential, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 3 94.

^Du Pont to Welles, January 28, 1863, ORN. 543-44.

184 24, in which the Secretary advised Du Pont, "The Department does not desire to urge an attack upon Charleston with inadequate means, and if after careful examination you deem the number of ironclads insufficient to render the capture of that port reasonably certain, it must be abandoned." Welles went on to tell his admiral, "The five ironclads sent you are all that the Department has completed on the Atlan­ tic coast, with the exception of one retained at Newport

News to watch the rebel ironclad Richmond." The decision would be up to Du Pont, but the capture of Charleston was

"imperative" and "the Department will share the responsibil­ ity" if Du Pont decided to make the attempt.^® Meanwhile, Worden replenished his for an­ other try at Fort McAllister. On February 1, 1863, he took position about 600 yards below the fort, and Montauk and four wooden gunboats shelled it for an hour and fifteen minutes. Fearing to be left high and dry on the falling , Worden dropped downriver some 800 yards and continued firing for three more hours. Again, there was little ef­ fect; Montauk's projectiles tore up the earthen parapets but did minimal damage to the Confederate guns. At this closer range, the monitor received more damage, including sprung plating and broken armor bolts. The Confederates hailed a

^®Welles to Du Pont, January 31, 1863, ORN 13: 571.

185 victory, the "gallant and determined" garrison having "driven off the enemy.

Among the issues that came into sharper focus as a

result of Montauk's two bombardments were the obstructions

the Confederates had placed in the river to prevent Federal

ships from running past Fort McAllister. Du Pont perceived

that obstructions, which the Confederate defenders under

General Pierre G. T. Beauregard had planted in Charleston harbor, would be one of the most serious problems in attack­ ing that city. Removing the obstructions under Confederate

fire would be very difficult and time-consuming.

Ericsson had considered the problem of obstruction removal, proposing in September 1862 to remove obstructions

"in the harbor of a certain Southern city" using a "deep iron bound raft pushed by one of our monitors." The raft would carry a large explosive charge on its bow to blow up the obstructions."® Fox immediately ordered four rafts and thirty explosive charges, to be built under Stimers' super­ vision. The rafts and "shells" were sent to Port Royal with the steamer Ericsson in late January.’-®

^Worden to Du Pont, January 31, 1863, ORN 14: 576 Worden to Du Pont, February 2, 1863, ibid., 14: 626-29 Worden to Du Pont, February 2, 1863, ibid., 14: 630-31, Thomas A. Stephens to Worden, February 2, 1863, ibid., 631- 32. Confederate reports are in ibid., 14: 633-39.

^Ericsson to Fox, October 24, 1862, Reel 3, Ericsson Papers.

^Stimers to Fox, November 26, 1862, Private, Fox Papers, Box 4; Gregory to Chief Engineer E. D. Robie, Janu-

186 It was at this time that Du Font's fears of an attack

by Confederate ironclads were realized. During the night of

January 30, 1863, the ironclads Chicora and Palmetto State got underway, crossing Charleston bar soon after 4:00 A.M. on January 31. In the ensuing melee. Palmetto State rammed

the Union steamer Mercedita. which surrendered, and Chicora engaged Keystone State, which also yielded. Other Union

ships withdrew but both Mercedita and Keystone State escaped when the Confederates failed to secure the captured ships. The Confederates returned to the harbor and the Federal ships resumed their stations. Beauregard, trying to apply

international law to the Confederacy's advantage, promptly proclaimed that the blockade was broken, but despite his - protests it continued as before. Du Pont sent New Ironsides to "prevent the rebel ironclads from again attacking the blockading fleet." Unlike the monitors, he wrote. New Iron­ sides could at least "keep the sea."^° ary 20, 1863, ORN 13: 519-20; Gregory to Du Pont, January 27, 1863, ibid., 537. The Ericsson lost one raft en route to Hampton Roads, then two more between Hampton Roads and Port Royal. Du Pont to Welles, February 18, 1863, with enclosures, ibid., 13: 669-70. Du Pont wrote, "It is a pity the fourth did not follow. ..." Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, February 17, 1863, in Journal Letter 35, February 15- 19, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 439.

^Reports on this affair are in ORN 13: 577-624. To be legal, a blockade had to be physically effective. John Fraser MacQueen, Chief Points in the Laws of War and Neu­ trality. Search and Blockade (London and Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers, 1862), 29-30. "Prevent" Du Pont to Turner, January 31, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 399; "keep the sea" Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, February 1, 1863, in Journal Letter 32 (February 1-3, 1863), ibid., 2: 405.

187 Meanwhile, the sense of urgency in the General Inspec­ tor's office had not been lessened by the passage of Secre­ tary Welles' mid-November deadline. The navy continued to apply great pressure to the contractors, and as each monitor was completed, she was sent off to join Du Font's slowly growing force. After Montauk came Passaic. on January 21, 1863, and Weehawken. on February 5, 1863.

Weehawken's voyage was noteworthy in two ways. First, her trip from New York to Hampton Roads was a stormy one.

Given the fate of the original Monitor, which sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862, it caused considerable concern in naval circles. Her commander, John

Rodgers (formerly of the Galena), was favorably impressed with the ship's seaworthiness, and the Navy Department promptly circulated his report of the trip to bolster the monitors' reputation. Second, Weehawken forced the navy to face the problem of keeping such complex machinery opera­ tional far from northern bases.

^For Passaic. Du Pont to Welles, January 22, 1863, with enclosure, Drayton to Du Pont, January 22, 1863, ORN 13: 528-30.

^Rodgers' report was reprinted in Report . . . Armored Vessels 42-45, along with a letter from Rodgers to Ericsson, ibid., 45-46. Ericsson addressed a private critique to Welles in which he blamed the ship's problems upon improper operation--if. several things had been properly done, the trip "would have been devoid of all trouble or danger." Ericsson to Welles, January 24, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 432, 71. He had made similar assertions when the Monitor failed to destroy the Virginia. To Erics­ son, at least, Ericsson's designs could never be at fault.

188 The difficulty had its root in a shipyard quality control failure: the bolts that held the inner cylinder head of Weehawken's port engine had been improperly installed.

During the trip the bolts had worked loose, and as the ship was preparing to enter Port Royal on February 5, 1863, the piston drove the loose bolts into the inner cylinder head, cracking it. Broken pieces of cylinder head jammed the pis­ ton, which promptly cracked the cylinder and broke itself in the process. Weehawken would be out of commission until the cylinder and piston could be replaced, a job that required cutting a hole through the armored deck over it. Either the ship would have to be towed back north for shipyard repair or the work would have to be done in Port Royal. The Navy Department concluded to repair the ship on station at Port Royal and immediately began to marshal the equipment, parts and talent needed to do so. Fortunately, the navy already had shop facilities at Port Royal, where Du Pont had established a machine shop to repair his blockaders on two whaler hulks rescued from the "stone fleet," old

^^For a survey of the damage, Du Pont to Welles, Febru­ ary 9, 1863, with enclosures, ORN 13: 652-54. Again, to Ericsson, the fault could not be in his design: ". . . I claim unhesitatingly that the plan is practically perfect." Ericsson to Welles, February 13, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 434, 55. For the hatch, Ericsson to Fox, February 19, 1863, ibid., roll 434, 51. A wooden blockader with a similar casualty was simply towed north for repairs. William Reynolds to Dahlgren, August 21, 1863, NARG 45, Entry 3 95, Letter books of Officers of the United States Navy at Sea, March 1778-July 1908, Subseries E-72, Corre­ spondence of CDR William Reynolds, vol. 2 (hereafter "Rey­ nolds Letterbook E-72").

189 merchant ships that were to be filled with stone and sunk to block Confederate harbors.Parts could have been a much more difficult matter, since main cylinders and pistons were not "off the shelf" items. For most engines the navy would have had to order new parts from the manufacturer, and even with the foundry patterns in hand it would take several weeks to cast and machine a new cylinder and piston. Unlike most engines, however, the Weehawken's was not unique: the

Passaics and their machinery plants were all built to the same design, and the Secor firm that built the Weehawken was also building the Camanche. A few weeks delay would not seriously affect that ship, destined as she was for the West

Coast, so on February 13 Welles directed that the needed parts be taken from Camanche and sent south. Supervisor Edward Faron and six machinists would accompany them. So would General Inspector Stimers.

^■‘Du Pont had seen such a floating machine shop used by the French in China. The Port Royal shop was being fitted up on the hulk Edward by February 1862 and was in operation later that year. Among other correspondence, Du Pont to Fox, November 12, 1861, ORN 12: 341-42; Du Pont to C. S. Boggs, February 24, 1862, ibid., 12: 561; Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, in Journal Letter 47, March 30, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 528; Du Pont to Benjamin Gerhard, February 19, 1863, ibid., 2: 446. ^^Welles to Zeno Secor, February 13, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 70: 352; Welles to Hiram Paulding, February 13, 1863, ORN 13: 662; Welles to Stimers, February 13, 1863, ibid; Ericsson to Fox, February 19, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 434, 51. This is among the earliest instances recorded in the US Navy of "cannibaliza­ tion, " in which otherwise-unavailable parts are stripped from one ship to repair another quickly. The practice doubles the overall maintenance burden; besides the work on

190 Stimers and the others had arrived in Port Royal and were at work by the last week in February.^® Their presence was opportune, since it gave Stimers the chance to see

first-hand the result of combat in the monitors. Late on February 27, 1863, Montauk found the Confederate steamer

Nashville aground near Fort McAllister. The next morning,

February 28, 1863, the monitor shelled the Nashville until she caught fire and blew up. Again, McAllister's guns did little damage to the monitor, but as Montauk withdrew from action she struck a (what we would now call a mine) that the Confederates had planted in the river. The damage was relatively minor, being confined to bent bottom plating and a broken overboard pipe, but the incident heightened Du Font's concern about torpedoes. In addition, it highlighted design deficiencies in the monitors. For one thing, men could not escape quickly from the machinery spaces in an emergency. For another, the pipe elbow that broke was made of brittle cast iron, and it had no valve at the skin of the ship to stop the flooding that would occur if the casting the receiving ship, the part must be removed from and even­ tually replaced in the donor ship. Cannibalization contin­ ues to this day. (In the 1970s the official motto of the Polaris program was, "Forty-one for freedom"; unofficially it was, "Forty for freedom and one for spares.") ^®Du Pont wrote his wife on February 24 that he had already told her about Stimers' arrival, presumably in his letter of February 19, but I am unable to locate an explicit mention of Stimers or of the Marv Sanford (the ship in which he was to travel) in Du Font's Journal Letter 35 of February 15-19, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 435-43.

191 broke. Stimers recommended beaching the ship to repair the bottom and replacing the cast iron pipe with one made of wrought iron.

Meanwhile, Du Pont was active on two fronts. Fox had written him on February 20, saying that the Navy Department was pushing the work on the monitor Catskill based on a report from an army general that Du Pont would be "perfectly satisfied" with two more monitors. Du Pont replied on March 2, seeking to "undeceive" the Assistant Secretary: "the limit of my wants in the way of ironclads is the capacity of the Department to supply them.Simultaneously with this attempt to increase the size of his force, the admiral sent Passaic. Patapsco and Nahant to test their power against Fort McAllister.

Stimers rode the Passaic during this eight-hour action, in which that ship suffered some heavy blows but no serious casualties.^ He came away with a changed impression of the monitors' offensive ability; although he had earlier told

^^John L. Worden to Du Pont, March 3, 1863, with enclo­ sure, Thomas A. Stephens to Worden, ORN 13: 700-704.

^®Report of Board of Survey, Stimers, R. W. McCleery, and Faron to Du Pont, March 5, 1863, ORN 13: 707-708. ^^Fox to Du Pont, February 20, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters, 2: 450; Du Pont to Fox, March 2, 1863, ibid., 463.

^°The reports of the action are in ORN 13: 716-34. The fight was perceived as a repulse, with morale effects on both sides: the Confederates took heart, while Acting Master Butler noted, "We get news that the Monitors are 'not much account' at Fort McAllister." Butler Diary, entry for March 9, 1863.

192 Fox, "Four Monitors will do up Charleston without diffi­ culty. . . he now reported to Welles, "we must have more guns to be successful against Charleston." Du Pont, who felt confirmed in his opinion of the monitors' offensive deficiencies, was exceptionally pleased that Stimers had come to the same conclusion. The engineer was very clever, Du Pont wrote, but "it was one of those experiences which could only come from actual observation." Du Pont was certain that "Ericsson's high priest" would "enlighten them more at the Department than fifty letters from me would do, because he belonged to the enthusiasts and, like Fox, thought one could take Charleston.

Both the Navy Department and the General Inspector did their best to give Du Pont every possible ironclad and to improve those he already had. In addition to pressing the work upon the remaining Passaic class monitors even harder, Stimers had several other projects in hand. One was to reinforce the monitors' decks with a layer of wood and additional iron plating, since a shell had broken

“Four monitors: Stimers to Fox, February 4, 1863, from Philadelphia, Fox Papers, Box 7. Stimers to Welles, tele­ gram, March 11, 1863, ORN 13: 729; Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, March 4, 1863, in Journal Letter 39, March 4-7, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 467. As early as September 1862, Fox wrote Ericsson about the question "of iron dads against stone forts," and Ericsson's reply showed his concern: ". . . the number of fifteen-inch guns, rather than the number of vessels, will decide your success. ..." Fox to Ericsson, September 27, 1862, Reel 4, Ericsson Papers; Ericsson to Fox, September 30, 1862, in Church, Life of John Ericsson, 2: 45.

193 Passaic's deck and nearly penetrated the ship. Another was to address Du Font's concern about torpedoes by adding a grapnel arrangement, devised by Ericsson, to the obstruction-clearing raft. A replacement part was required to repair Nahant's 150-pounder rifle, and all the monitors wanted the sort of jointed rammers and sponges that Patapsco had received. Stimers' vigor in prosecuting these prepara­ tions is shown by the timing of his dispatches : after arriv­ ing at Hampton Roads late in the afternoon of March 11, he wrote from Baltimore on March 12 that he had already ar­ ranged to purchase iron and prefabricate it for the "bomb decks" (deck reinforcement) of the monitors.“ Meantime, other work at the "monitor bureau" had been delayed by Sti­ mers' absence, notably the design and contracting of the light-draft monitors.

^^Ericsson proposed to add twelve inches of pine and 3/8 inch iron plating to "break the shock and reduce the force of the falling shell." Ericsson to Welles, March 15, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 437, 82. ^^Stimers to Fox, March 12, 1863, from Baltimore, Fox Papers, Box 7. Fox later wrote, ""Stimers leaves New York to day with all you required and in addition contrivances which Ericsson thinks will pick up the torpedoes." Fox to Du Pont, March 18, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5A. Seven "bomb decks" were prefabricated but apparently never installed; the timber and iron plating were eventually used for other purposes at Port Royal. Gregory to Du Pont, April 6, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 11: 21 for numbers. For eventual disposal, Reynolds to Fleet Captain Rodgers, August 17, 1863, Reynolds Letterbook E-72, vol. 2; Reynolds to Chief of Staff, October 1, 1863, ibid; Reynolds to Dahlgren, November 4, 1863, ibid.; Dahlgren to Fox, October 2, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 6.

194 Du Pont chafed at the slow accumulation of force, but also at Fox's often-declared desire that the capture of Charleston be a "purely n a w " operation. Fox considered his duties "twofold: first, to beat our southern friends ; sec­ ond, to beat the Army." Success would cover Du Pont, the country, and the navy with glory, "with the Army as specta­ tors as we arranged it at Port Royal. . . . Welles had written that the ironclads would enable Du Pont to "enter the harbor of Charleston and demand the surrender of all its defenses or suffer the consequences"; Fox had reiterated that idea, hoping that Du Pont would carry his flag, "su­ preme and superb, defiant and disdainful, silent amid the 200 guns, until you arrive at the center of this wicked rebellion. ..." Du Pont, who had earlier characterized the harbor as "like a porcupine's hide and quills turned outside in and sewed up at one end," was not so sanguine.

He wrote Fox that there was no question that the "grand plan of sailing in silently on our friends" would have the de­ sired results, "but, my friend, you have to get there.

^"Fox to Du Pont, May 12, 1862, Thompson, Correspon­ dence of Fox. 1: 119 (Fox's emphasis); "beat the army" Fox to Du Pont, June 3, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters 2: 96; "Spectators" Fox to Du Pont, March 11, 1863, ibid., 488. The Confederates feared a joint attack but doubted the Union could spare the troops, so they believed "our greatest danger lies in a naval attack by [the Union] iron-clad fleet." Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley to Thomas Jordan, October 25, 1862, OR, ser. 1, 14: 652-53.

^^Welles to Du Pont, January 6, 1863, Confidential, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 352-53 ; Fox to Du Pont, February 20, 1863, Unofficial, ibid., 450. Porcupine's hide : Du Pont

195 Du Pont had long argued that the way to take Charleston was through joint army-navy action. He had hoped that the army would take advantage of the panic that followed the occupation of Port Royal, but, "Oh those Soldiers I put them nearly on too of the house in Charleston, but I did not push them into the windows and they came back. Du Pont con­ tinued to recommend a joint attack, and as late as February 1863 newspaper correspondents at Port Royal were reporting that joint action was planned.^"' Since at the same time Welles was telling his diary that the navy could "move independent of the Army, " there was clearly a serious lack of communication between the Secretary and his on-scene commander. When it became evident that the army would send no more troops, Du Pont resigned himself to a purely naval attack. His plan resembled Fox's in that he would pass the outer defenses. Forts Moultrie and Sumter, without engaging them. Instead of attacking the city as Fox

to Sophie Du Pont, June 22, 1862, in Journal Letter 65, June 19-22, 1862, ibid., 2: 119-37. "Get there" : Du Pont to Fox, March 2, 1863, ibid., 2: 464 (Du Font's emphasis). ^®Du Pont to Fox, August 13, 1862, Thompson, Correspon­ dence of Fox. 1: 149. ^''Henry Villard to Murat Halstead, February 12, 1863, from Hilton Head, South Carolina, "Private," Cincinnati Historical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio, Mss VF 3325. Halstead was the editor of the Cincinnati Daily Commercial.

^®Welles, Diarv. entry for February 16, 1863, 1: 236.

196 desired, however, his ships would then destroy Fort Sumter from Rebellion Roads, i.e., from the north and northwest.

The lack of effective communication between Du Pont and

Welles helps to provide background to Welles' growing feel­ ing that Du Pont was not the man for the job of taking

Charleston. Despite being given all but one of the navy's coastal ironclads, Du Pont continued to call for reinforce­ ments and continued to delay his attack to await them. The postponements clearly affected the Secretary's thinking. By February, he wrote in his diary that Du Pont "shrinks from responsibility, dreads, [sic] the conflict he has sought yet is unwilling that any other should undertake it, is afraid the reputation of Du Pont will suffer. . . . I deplore the signs of misgiving and doubt which have recently come over him. . . . By March 1863, Welles was convinced : "Du Pont is getting as prudent as McClellan. . . . He has a reputa­ tion to preserve instead of one to make.""*® Welles' contemporary assessment of Du Pont's motivation is somewhat harsh, since Du Pont's correspondence shows that a major element of his caution was his fear that a repulse would do great harm to the Union cause. A second element was his very valid concern that the Confederates would

^®Ironclad assignments : Fox to Du Pont, March 11, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 487. Welles, Diarv. entry for February 16, 1863, 1: 236.

■‘“Welles, Diarv. entry for March 12, 1863, 1: 247.

197 salvage any monitor which might be sunk in the attack, "in which case we lose the whole coast. . . . Welles later confided to his diary that while Du Pont had never advised the attack on Charleston, he had never discouraged it, either, and although Welles' letter of

January 31, 1863, had urged an attack, it left the final decision to Du Pont/" Welles and Fox may be faulted for not recognizing Du Pont ' s "distaste for the Charleston scheme," but even Du Pont's sympathetic biographer points out that the admiral "did not specifically or officially" tell his superiors that he feared a repulse."*^ In this context, one must consider the tenor of Du Pont's extensive official correspondence with the Navy Department and his private correspondence with Fox: assertive, forthright and direct, with no hesitancy whatsoever about expressing his "growls" on every subject from force levels to ship repairs. The diffidence Du Pont showed on the subject of Charleston--

‘‘^Du Pont to Congressman Henry Winter Davis, April 1, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 533 and Du Pont to General David Hunter, April 8, 1863, OR ser. 1, 14: 442. A monitor in Confederate hands would have tied up ironclads to guard against a sortie like that made earlier by the far less capable Chicora and Palmetto State; as Du Pont put it, "you would see a different kind of a raid from the feeble effort of [Flag Officer Duncan L.] Ingraham and [Commander J. R.] Tucker." Du Pont to James Stokes Biddle, March 25, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 510. ■‘^Welles, Diarv. entry for April 21, 1863, 1: 277. Welles to Du Pont, January 31, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters 2: 399-400. James M. Merrill, Du Pont : The Making of an Admiral (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986), 298-99.

198 he wrote his wife, "If consulted from time to time--if my opinion had been asked--I should have spoken freely" about his " dampened" hopes--was far out of character.** Welles and Fox had good reason to take Du Font's silence as an indication of satisfaction and his reluctance to move as

McClellan-like overcaution rather than simple prudence.

Stimers arrived back in Port Royal with men and materi­ als on March 25, and immediately took a party up to Du

Pont's advanced anchorage on the North Edisto River to work on the four monitors there.*^ Before he left, he told Du

Pont about a March 12 meeting that Du Pont characterized as a "scene." Besides Stimers, the attendees at the impromptu conference included Welles, Fox, Secretary of the Treasury Chase and President Lincoln. Du Pont suspected Stimers of having "nous a joué faux [played us false] when he found out how the tide was running," since the sense of the meeting was strongly against further delay. Lincoln wanted Fox to go to Charleston to consult with Du Pont, but as Du Pont wrote, "Fox slided [sic] out of it--I wish he had come." Du

Pont continued his preparations, writing that "Mr. Stimers never explained [to Fox] the work necessary to fit these

**Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, April 5, 1863, Journal Letter 51 (April 5-6, 1863), Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 547,

*^Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, March 27, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 518-19; Du Pont to John Rodgers, March 25, 1863, ORN 13 : 784.

199 vessels for action." The monitors, "wonderful as they are," had to be led "as you would help a tottering child.

Du Font's preparations had been paralleled by those of the Confederate defenders under General Beauregard. The attack was no , either strategically or tactically, and as Du Pont and Welles both foresaw, the defenses had been "strengthened much faster than the assailants. " Beau­ regard had instructed the batteries in detail on how to attack ironclads and there were obstructions scattered through the channel. Aboard New Ironsides, still on guard at Charleston, Acting Master Butler noted, "we are likely to fail after waiting so long," writing presciently, "At a certain time we had a chance to take a city and it passed-We shall never have it again."'*''

As the attack neared, Du Font's mood became gloomier.

Although he reported himself "very calm and resolute," his

■*®Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, March 27, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 518-19. Du Pont opined that Stimers was "re­ ceived like a dog in a tenpin alley by old Lincoln, Welles and Co. for thinking the monitors ought to be strengthened." Du Pont to Henry Winter Davis, April 1, 1863, ibid., 2: 534. Welles' outline agrees with Du Font's deductions. Welles, Diarv. entry for March 12, 1863, 1: 247. * "'Welles, Diarv. entry for March 17, 1863, 1: 249. Du Pont wrote Charles Henry Davis, "The work on the defenses of Charleston has never ceased since the fall of Sumter. . . ." Du Pont to Davis, January 4, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 340. For Confederate preparations. Circular of Instruc­ tions from the Commanding General at Charleston, SC, dated December 26, 1862, signed by Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley, ORN 14: 102-103 and OR, ser. 1, 14: 733-35. Butler Diary, entry for March 5, 1863.

200 letters were full of pessimism.*® The monitors assembled in North Edisto anchorage on April 4 and moved up to Charleston on April 5. The ironclads crossed Charleston bar on April 6 and anchored in the line ahead formation that Du Pont had ordered, with John Rodgers' Weehawken leading and the flag­ ship New Ironsides in the middle of the line of monitors.

Poor visibility then caused Du Pont to postpone the attack until the next day.

The ships got underway about 1:00 P.M. on April 7, 1863, after some delay caused by Weehawken fouling her anchor in the grapnels of the torpedo clearing raft she was pushing. Stimers and his mechanics watched from the Coast

Survey Bibb, outside Charleston bar. The ships slowly moved up the channel, stemming the ebb tide because the pilots thought it would be easier to see obstructions when the tide was ebbing. At 2:10 P.M. Weehawken. in the lead, encountered the rope obstruction. Weehawken's commanding officer, John Rodgers, thought he saw a torpedo explosion nearby.*® He turned aside upon

*®For example, Du Pont to Henry Winter Davis, April 1, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 534, and his letters to his wife during the week or two preceding the attack.

*®Rodgers probably mistook a shell splash for a torpedo explosion. The small torpedoes in the harbor could not be detonated remotely, so Weehawken would have had to strike one to set it off. Montauk's experience shows that had Weehawken struck a torpedo she would have been damaged by it. Also, Confederate reports emphasize that no ship came within three hundred yards of the obstructions or the torpe­ does. This, however, is hindsight; in 1863 torpedo warfare was a high-tech unknown.

201 ^^Charleston

Biy Ramsay Ç / (W hifa P a n t Bty)

\ Ü C a s tle P in ckney

F ort ff R ip ley --

James Island f F art ML Pleasant Jotm son

F ont) r Sumter \ K

B ty G regg

Figure 7.1. Du Font's attack on Charleston. "K" indicates USS Keokuk# "NI" indicates USS New Ironsides; the other ironclads depicted are Passaic class monitors (from Official Records . . . Navies# 14: 81).

202 reaching the rope obstruction, throwing the formation behind him into confusion.®® Confederate batteries began firing at about 3:00 P.M. and Du Pont ordered Weehawken to begin the

action at 3:15 P.M. By 4:30 the admiral signalled his ships

to withdraw. By the time both sides ceased firing, the

ships had expended 139 rounds ; the fortifications 2,229, a telling differential. Four Confederates were killed or

mortally wounded while ten suffered lesser injuries. The Fédérais suffered twenty-three casualties, including one

mortally wounded.®^ The casualties on both sides were

small, and of course neither side was aware of the other's

injuries, but the Union retirement made it clear to all that

the "great assault" had been repulsed. While torpedoes had played a powerful psychological role, the physical battle was purely an artillery fight, "other means of defense,

obstructions and torpedoes, not having come into play."®^

®°Rodgers does not indicate that the raft affected his actions, but he and others considered it a waste of effort. The ironclad commanders refused to install the explosive charge because of the hazard to friendly ships. Rodgers to Du Pont, April 20, 1863, ORN 14: 43-45, and "Statement of commanding officers of ironclads which participated in the attack on For[t] Sumter, in response to newspaper accounts," April 24, 1863, ibid., 45-48.

®^Abstract of ammunition expenditure, dated April 14, 1863 and signed by Lieutenant Alexander S. Mackenzie, ORN 14: 27; Return of Ammunition Expended in Action and Return of Casualties in Action appended to Report of Brigadier General Ripley, ibid., 84; Report of Casualties on the USS Keokuk and Report of Casualties on the USS Nahant, ibid., 4.

®^Report of Brigadier-General Ripley, ORN 14: 82; Report of Major Harris, ibid. 14: 85; Ripley to Jordan, April 13, 1863, OR I, 14: 259. Beauregard's military

203 With the exception of Keokuk, holed by Confederate fire and sinking, the ironclads returned to anchorage and their commanders reported individually to Du Pont. He had contem­

plated a longer engagement, but upon hearing their reports

Du Pont was convinced that renewing the attack "would have converted a failure into a disaster, " since five of the

ironclads were "wholly or partially disabled after a brief engagement. " At this point Du Pont and Stimers began to

part company. Stimers, wrote one of New Ironsides' offi­

cers, "was then sent for to examine the Monitors, which were found to be pretty well knocked up . " The General Inspec­ tor and his crew went promptly to work and by the next day had repaired much of the damage. Still, Du Pont did not

renew the attack, preferring to withdraw the monitors from their "very insecure anchorage" and return to Port Royal. The press handled Du Pont very roughly. Charles C.

Fulton, editor of the Baltimore American, wrote a severely

biographer lists the hits on each ironclad and observes, "This was the real cause--there existed no other--of Admiral Dupont's [sic] failure to carry out his programme . . . The ' torpedoes ' and the ' rope obstructions, ' so much spoken of, had nothing whatever to do with it. . . ." Alfred Roman, The Militairv Operations of General Beauregard in the War Between the States 1861 to 1865 (New York: Harper & Broth­ ers, 1884; reprinted 1994 Da Capo Press), 2: 77. ^^First report of Rear Admiral Du Pont, April 8, 1863, ORN 14 : 3.

^‘‘Lieutenant Henry B. Robeson to "My dear Aunt, " April 9, 1863, from the collection of Dr. Charles V. Peery.

5^Du Pont to Welles, April 16, 1863, in Report . . . Armored Vessels, 78-80.

204 critical dispatch that asserted, "The great work has been entrusted to incompetent hands." Fulton's article espe­ cially angered Du Pont because he believed Fulton had the sanction of the Navy Department.®® Stimers returned north on April 11; because Fulton took passage on the same ship,

Du Pont came to believe that Stimers had encouraged Fulton in his opinions.

The repercussions of the failure eventually cost Du Pont his command, but Stimers and Fox had a more immediate problem: in their first major combat test, the monitors had failed. Turrets had been jammed, pilot house roofs knocked off, port stoppers and gun carriages knocked out of align­ ment, and men killed and injured by broken bolt heads and nuts from the laminated armor. As Stimers wrote, the action revealed "faults of design which only such experience could point out. ..." In addition to correcting those faults in the existing ships, he held out the promise that they could be "entirely removed in the new vessels now building.

®®Du Pont to Welles, April 22, 1863, ORN 14: 51-56. Du Pont wrote, "Fulton came especially down to represent the monitor interest in full sympathy with Fox." Du Pont to Henry Winter Davis, May 3, 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 3: 78. Fox denied it, ORN 14:64. "Newspaper clipping from the Baltimore American of April 15, 1863," signed C. C. F., in ORN 14: 57-59. Fox was allied by marriage with the Blair family, political enemies of Du Font's close friend Henry Winter Davis. Niven, Gideon Welles. 435. ^stimers to Welles, April 14, 1863, in Report . . . Armored Vessels. 81.

205 Stimers arrived in New York on April 14 and by April 18 had enlisted Ericsson's aid to correct the problems.®® It

is unclear just what Stimers considered those problems to be at first, but on April 25 Fox gave Stimers a list of the deficiencies as he saw them.®® They included:

Lack of ventilation--Fox noted the debilitating effects upon the monitor crews and pointed out, "It will

not do to make a calculation as we did about the

first monitor to prove that the men are perfectly comfortable and happy. We must satisfy them now ourselves." "Weak pilot house"--The bolts that held the laminated

armor together tended to break when shot struck

the armor, and the severed nuts and bolt heads flew around inside with force sufficient to injure or kill those whom they struck.Further, if

®®Stimers to Fox, April 19, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7.

®®Fox also wrote Ericsson on the subject; this letter was similar but not identical. "1st Pilot house to be strengthened. 2d Turrets liable to jam. 3d Turrets do not work with low steam. 4th Deck is vulnerable. 5th Some kind of protection seems desirable for the bottom of the tur­ ret. . . . 6th Top of Pilot House & Turret requires strengthening. 7th Ground tackle is insufficient. One anchor is unreliable. 8th And the only serious matter not easily remedied is the absolute want of a proper system of ventilation." Fox to Ericsson, April 24, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5A. ®°0f the monitors in Du Font's attack, at least four suffered broken bolts. Nahant suffered most, with seventy- seven bolts broken in the turret and pilot house and one resultant fatality. The problem was undoubtedly aggravated by corrosion. Because the laminations could not be made

206 shot struck a pilot house near its top, the eight-

inch laminated plating deformed and popped the roof off, leaving the occupants exposed. High steam pressure required to turn the turret--this

was in part due to the problem of clearances be­ tween the turret and the deck and the turret and

the pilot house. A shot striking the pilot house

could bend slightly the long, slim spindle that supported it, causing the edge of the pilot house

to dig in and jam the turret. (Figure 7.2) "Weak deck. Fatal defect known from the beginning."

Additional protection for the turret base--Turrets were liable to jam if struck near their bases.Be­

sides the spindle problem mentioned above, if a shot indented the armor near the bottom of the structure, it could jam the mechanism by bulging

the bottom of the armor slightly (Figure 7.3) and causing it to rub against the deck below it.

Also, a foreign object such as a bolt or projec­ tile fragment could jam between the edge of the

watertight, laminated armor suffered far more from corrosion than solid plates.

®^The Confederate gunners recognized this vulnerability and deliberately aimed for the turret bases. Circular of instructions from the commanding general at Charleston, SC, December 26, 1862, ORN 14: 102-105.

207 TURRET TOP

SPINDLE EFFECT OF BENT SPINDLE

Figure 7.2. Effect of bent spindle (exaggerated).

turret or pilot house and the horizontal surface

under it . A second anchor.

Some arrangement to enable the propeller to "cut lines and hawsers"

Better viewports "embracing more of the horizon."®^

Despite Fox's hopes, some of the deficiencies would be extremely difficult to remedy in existing ships. Stimers and Ericsson set out to try, however. Some problems were relatively easy to correct. To solve the problem of pilot

®^Fox to Stimers, April 25, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

208 INTACT ARMOR W/BASE BULGED FROM ARMOR IMPACT (EXAGGERATED)

Figure 7.3. Bulging effect on base of turret armor (exag­ gerated) .

house roofs popping off, for example, Ericsson designed an

improved pilot house for the later monitors. Existing ships were retrofitted with a new dished roof plate and a three- inch thick laminated cylinder. The new roof was put on and the sleeve dropped down over the old pilot house. House and sleeve were then bolted together and the joint between filled with lead.The sleeve, crimped inward at the top.

®3"The pilot house cover of three inches and the turret ring should be put in hand at once. Please make the former big enough to slip over easily; it can be easily secured and let us have Ericsson's new peep holes--they are the best." Fox to Stimers, May 27, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

209 not only held the roof on but increased overall protection.

The deck protection could not be increased as Fox wanted, since the ships could not bear the weight, but additional plating was installed over magazines and engine rooms.

The turret, however, proved to be a tougher problem.

Stimers lamented that he had been unable to devise a glacis for the turret base that would not cause more problems than it solved. Ericsson then attacked the problem but he, too, was unable to solve it with a glacis.^ In hindsight, part of the problem was Ericsson's emotional investment in his design, which closed potentially promising avenues of varia- tion-selection. His insistence upon the central support kept him from correcting the bent-spindle problem in future designs, and the "tightness" of his design gave him no room to install a glacis adequate to resist shot in existing ships. The best he could do was reduce the chance of base deformation jamming by attaching a thick reinforcing ring of soft iron to the turret at its base. He planned to prevent

let us have Ericsson's new peep holes--they are the best." Fox to Stimers, May 27, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 5A. For bolting, Thomas J. Griffin to Stimers, July 9, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 68, 1: 132. Lead filling, Stimers to Patrick Hughes, September 20, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1252, 1: 306.

®'*A glacis was a stationary protective barrier attached to the deck to protect the junction between turret and deck. Stimers to Fox, April 30, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7.

210 »■ tm- 1

J gnn-K:::rssïïs® :L

Figure 7.4. Side view of turret and pilot house of USS Mon- tauk (Passaic class). Note wedge at base of central spindle and reinforcing ring visible at base of turret armor. This drawing, made in 1896, shows the hydraulic spindle-raising mechanism added after the Civil War (from NARG 19, BuShips Plan 1-10-28).

211 damage to the gun slides by shortening them and placing them farther away from the turret wall.®®

In areas where he had invested less pride, Ericsson was able to make significant improvements. Besides the pilot house sleeves, he reduced leakage under the turret and re­ duced the incidence of foreign-body jamming by redesigning the metal-to-metal seal. In the new system, a channel or gutter was cut into the deck. After being filled with hemp packing, it was covered by an iron ring to form a resilient pressure plate. This helped keep water out while being flexible enough to resist jamming if a bolt head or shell fragment fell under the turret edge.®® Yet some problems, such as the danger from broken bolts, could only be amelio­ rated. Accepting the bolt problem as inherent to laminated armor, monitor crews installed fabric or light iron screens inside turrets and pilot houses to protect the occupants from flying pieces.®^ Ventilation, too, could be improved

®®Naval History Division, Monitors. 20; Canney, The Old Steam Navy 2: 79-80. Reinforcement did not fully solve the problem; e.g., Edward Simpson to Dahlgren, September 10, 1863, QRN 14: 557. Many photographs show this reinforcing ring, although some incorrectly label it a glacis.

®®For details, Stimers to Secor & Co., June 18, 1863, in Gregory to Lenthall, January 9, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 64, Box 4, 19. For installation, Dana Wegner, "The Port Royal Working Parties," Civil War Times Illustrated 15, no. 8 (December 1976), 26-27, and Thomas J. Griffin to Stimers, July 9, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 68, 1: 132.

®’Even with the screens, casualties occurred; in August 1863 Commander George W. Rodgers was killed in Catskill by broken bolts. Report of Charles C. Carpenter, August 17, 1863, QRN 14: 458.

212 but not corrected. Some changes simply could not be retro­ fitted to existing ships without prohibitive expense and time.

Meanwhile, the controversy over Du Font's Charleston attack had come to a boil. After the attack, Du Pont had quickly concluded that the monitors were worthless; on April

8 he wrote Major General David Hunter, "These monitors are miserable failures where forts are concerned. ..." and his reports of the battle blamed the shortcomings of the moni­ tors for the repulse.®® Welles, concerned about "inspiring the rebels . . . and impairing the confidence of our own men," refused to publish Du Font's dispatches.®® Although there was plenty of blame to go around both for the ships and for their employment, in the emotional atmosphere of war it was difficult to apportion it fairly. The Navy Depart­ ment had committed itself to the monitors publicly and enthusiastically, so Du Font's direct assault on the monitors was by extension a declaration of war against the Navy Department, and especially against Fox.''® Since ships

®®Du Font to Hunter, April 8, 1863, QRN 14: 30-31.

®®"Inspiring" Welles, Diary, entry for May 14, 1863. For the decision not to publish, Welles to Du Font, May 15, 1863, in Report . . . Armored Vessels. 96-97. Schneller, "A Littoral Frustration," 43-44, contains a good summary, but his assertion that the navy's offensive strategy resulted from Du Font's failed attack is chronologically inaccurate.

Although in mid-1862 Du Font chided his wife for her "oversevere" criticism of Fox, a year later he was referring to Fox as an "upstart . . . swelled out like a toadfish," "an insect which lives for a single day," "a liar and a

213 could not be court-martialed, to vindicate himself Du Pont laid charges against Stimers.

These charges stemmed from Fulton's anti-Du Pont arti­

cle, since Du Pont believed that Stimers had encouraged Ful­

ton with false statements. According to Du Pont, Stimers

said the monitors were less damaged than Du Pont claimed and

that Du Pont was too prejudiced against the monitors to give

them a fair trial. Du Pont wanted Stimers arrested and sent back to Port Royal for trial.

Rear Admiral Gregory informed Stimers of the charges on

May 20 and Stimers discussed them in a letter to Fox the same day. Writing that he had been "actuated by the purest

and most correct motives of duty," Stimers told Fox that he

feared no trial by any court.Welles, however, was not nearly so sanguine. He confided to his diary that Du Pont

wanted "to lay his failure [at Charleston] on the ironclads, and with such a court as he would organize, and such wit­ nesses as he has already trained, he would procure Stimers and vessels to be condemned." Saying he would not put

anyone whom Du Pont "wished to make a victim, in his power, "

scoundrel." Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, June 30, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 139; Du Pont to Sophie Du Pont, May 17, 1863, in Journal Letter 66, May 17-19, 1863, ibid., 3: 120; Du Pont to Henry Winter Davis, May 18, 1863, ibid., 3: 128; Du Pont to Percival Drayton, May 19, 1863, ibid., 3 132 .

^^Du Pont to Welles, 12 May 1863, QRN 14: 59-60. ‘'^Stimers to Fox, May 20, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7.

214 Welles appointed a court of inquiry instead of the more serious court martial. "Nothing less will satisfy Du Pont, who wants a victim."’'^ The Secretary appointed Gregory,

Stimers' immediate superior, as president of the court.

The court convened on June 5, 1863, and spent ten days taking testimony from available witnesses. In mid-June, the court recessed for three weeks to give time to gather an­ swers to written inquiries, at which time Gregory advised

Fox, "Confidentiallv I may say there has not [been] much wickedness brought out." Stimers, he said, was "braced up sharp for the weather gage . . . as stiff as a frozen eel. " Stimers, meanwhile, was complaining that the court inter­ fered seriously with his other duties. Du Font's case was weak enough that Stimers could describe the inquiry as "a dignified farce.After four brief meetings in July, the court recessed until October. Several days of testimony and a day of deliberations resulted in the decision that further proceedings were unnecessary.’'® Although a better alterna­ tive than a court-martial, the proceedings had been divisive and disruptive for all concerned. The navy had been polar­ ized by the episode into pro- and anti-Du Pont factions.

’'^Welles, Diary, entry for May 20, 1863, 1: 307.

''“Gregory to Fox, June 15, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 6 (Gregory's emphasis) . Stimers to Fox, June 14, 1863, ibid., Box 7. ''®The record of the court is in Report . . . Armored Vessels. 114-70.

215 which generally coincided, respectively, with anti- and pro­ monitor factions. Radical Republican Congressmen like Henry Winter Davis had used the case to attack Welles, a moderate Republican, and his policies. The acrimony and the demands upon Stimers' time adversely affected the entire monitor acquisition program and tinged every subsequent decision with political partisanship.

216 CHAPTER 8

IT WOULD COST A MILLION OF DOLLARS'.

THE PRICE OF "CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT"

The number of "lessons learned" from two month's worth

of operations and a two-hour general engagement highlights the unaccustomed problems that the monitors brought in their

wakes. The monitor program was the first in which the navy built so many practically identical vessels so rapidly.

Just as the Passaics were designed and built before Monitor

gained any significant combat experience, so were the Tio- pecanoes (and the light-drafts) designed before the Passaics entered combat. The testing phase of the variation-selec- tion process vanished under the pressure of the Navy Depart­

ment's desire to get a substantial force of armored ships as

quickly as possible. When the Passaic class began to dis­ play its defects, the navy faced a dilemma. There was no question that the ships required modification. The problem was how the alterations should be made.

For the Passaic class, already in service, the navy had two options: bring the vessels back to the North to be modified or make the modifications "on station" by workmen

217 at, say. Port Royal. In either case, the changes would be

"new work, " bearing no relation to the original construction contracts. For the ships still being built, the problem was more complex.

The question boiled down to whether to incorporate the changes before the ships were completed (a system we will call "continuous improvement"), or to wait until the ships were finished and then alter them (which we will call "build it now, change it later") . If the changes were to be made before completion, they had to be made by the building yards; if made after completion, the work could be performed by the contractors who built the ships, by other contrac­ tors, by navy yards, or by "on station" workmen. The magni­ tude of the changes would affect this decision.

Some changes, like the major redesign of the Tippecanoe class, were clearly shipyard work and just as clearly had to be done while construction was in progress--the redesign involved so much of the vessel's structure that it would be foolish to put it all together and then rip it back out and rebuild it. Other items, with less impact, might go either way. When the navy decided to improve the pumping capacity of the monitors by installing centrifugal pumps, for exam­ ple, existing monitors were altered on station, but those not yet completed received their pumps from their builders.^

^See, e.g.. Asst Inspector Thomas J. Griffin to Sti­ mers, February 29, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Port Royal Working Party; Wm. D. Andrews & Bro to W. W. W. Wood, 11

218 Similarly, the Tippecanoes received from their builders the same sort of turret base rings the Passaics received in Port Royal. For such alterations, there appears in retrospect to be no reason not to implement a "build it now, change it later" program.

The question of whether the ships already in service should return north for alterations was apparently discussed at some length, since Ericsson and Stimers had been at work on the changes for six weeks by the time the decision was communicated to them. To permit Ericsson to examine closely

the battle's results, Passaic was brought back to New York, where she arrived on May 4, 1863.^ Over three weeks later, Fox advised Stimers, "We have concluded not to bring the Monitors North; in fact we cannot as active operations have commenced under new auspices. . . . A gang under a good man

should be at Port Royal to attend especially to these mat­ ters . This was the genesis of the Port Royal Working

Party, the forerunner of today's mobile repair teams. Stimers had taken a hastily assembled work gang with him to Port Royal to repair Weehawken' s main engine, and another group of two dozen men was sent in early April to

install the "bomb decks" and prepare the monitors to attack

August 1864, ibid., s.v. Catawba. ^Drayton to Welles, May 4, 1863, QRN 13: 174;

^Fox to Stimers, May 27, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 5A. 219 Charleston. The April group, recruited by shipbuilder Cornelius Delamater, stayed to help repair the monitors after Du Font's attack, but it had neither the materials nor the proper trade mix to make the alterations for which the navy called later in May.* After Fox's May 27 letter tell­ ing Stimers that "a gang under a good man" would be needed in Port Royal, preparations moved into high gear. At Stimers' behest, Welles had appointed Patrick Hughes as Assistant Inspector of Ironclads on April 18, 1863. Sti­ mers chose Hughes, "one of the greatest drivers I know," to take charge of the working party, and on June 1, directed Hughes to "examine the market" for a suitable steamer to carry himself and "thirty or more workmen." As well as transporting the men and their tools and materials, the ship would "make a home for them in a Southern port" and bring them back after their work was done, which Stimers estimated would take two months.® Hughes located the steamer Relief. which was duly chartered, and on June 18, 1863, the working

■‘Gregory to Du Pont, April 6, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 123 5, 11: 21; Gregory to Fox, April 6, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 6; Delamater to Stimers, May 5, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Port Royal Working Party. The "completely demoralized" deck laying party was still in Port Royal in August, "without employment since April last," and the officer in charge had had to threaten to put them in for "giving much trouble." Reynolds to Dahlgren, August 20, 1863, Reynolds Letterbook E-72, vol. 2.

®Welles to Hughes, April 18, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 71: 58; Stimers to Hughes, June 1, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1252, 1: 13 0. "Greatest drivers" Stimers to Fox, June 4, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7.

220 party, with "40 excellent men," materials and $3400 worth of tools, departed New York for Port Royal.® Relief arrived at

Hampton Roads on June 19 and at Port Royal on June 25.^

Hughes and his men immediately started work on three moni­ tors with the limited material they had on hand while Assis­ tant Inspector Thomas J. Griffin, back in New York, super­ vised the contractors who were prefabricating more modifica­ tion materials for the Working Party.® Hughes' men worked hard to install the heavy reinforcing rings on the turrets and perform other repairs and modifications, but on July 4, 1863, Hughes was told to put together everything they had taken apart so that the monitors could go to sea on July 8.

®Wegner, "Port Royal Working Parties," 25; Stimers to Fox, June 4, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7; Gregory to Isaac Henderson, June 8, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 11: 58. For tools, Stimers to Gregory, June 15, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 186, Port Royal Working Party.

"'Wegner, "Port Royal Working Parties," 25-26. Wegner asserts the party's arrival at Charleston was "part of a coordinated move that failed," having been held up so that it would occur at the same time that Rear Admiral Andrew H. Foote replaced Du Pont in command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. I find found no indication that Hughes was deliberately delayed. First, the working party was assembled, its tools and materials gathered, and its trans­ portation arranged in little more than three weeks after its formation was directed, and that during a period when New York was in an uproar over the depredations of the Confeder­ ate raider Taconv. Second, Fox's correspondence indicates that he wanted the monitors strengthened as soon as possi­ ble. Fox to Stimers, June 3, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 5A. Stimers' own letters indicate no letup in the pressure. Stimers to Fox, June 14, 1863, ibid.. Box 7.

®Thomas J. Griffin to Stimers, June 25, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 68, 1: 65; Stimers to Gregory, July 20, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, vol. 3, part 2: 29; Griffin to Stimers, July 25, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 68, 1: 204.

221 As Fox had told Stimers a month before, "We are going into

that operation again, " but with a new leader who had more

faith in ironclads than Du Pont. ®

Du Pont's correspondence had grown almost daily more acrimonious since April. Writing bitterly that rumors of his impending relief from command meant "war in favor of the

ironclad plunderers, to sustain whom I must be sacrificed," he asserted that the Navy Department sent "untried ma­

chines. . . . all received on Mr. Ericsson's dictum" to be

tested against "the most thoroughly and scientifically defended place in America." The "clever men" of the monitor interests, however, felt "Charleston could have been readily taken if naval officers had believed in the irresistible machines in their hands."^° Whatever the merits of the case, by late May Du Pont had lost Welles' confidence. He clearly could not remain in such an important command as the

South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Captain John A. Dahlgren had been lobbying for command of the attack on Charleston since October 1862, but Welles refused his request because Dahlgren's ordnance work was too important to leave and because Dahlgren himself was far too junior for such a command. When Welles decided to remove Du

Pont, Dahlgren, by then a Rear Admiral, immediately renewed

*Fox to Stimers, June 3, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

^°Du Pont to Henry Winter Davis, 3 May 1863, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 3: 75-79.

222 his entreaties. Welles instead chose his old schoolmate

Rear Admiral Andrew Hull Foote to succeed Du Pont and of­ fered Dahlgren the position of second in command. Dahlgren initially declined, unwilling to serve as a subordinate, but accepted when Foote agreed that Dahlgren would lead the attack on Charleston.’-^ Foote, however, became ill in mid-

June and died June 26, 1863. Bowing to Lincoln's wishes, Welles appointed Dahlgren and, on July 6, 1863, Dahlgren re­ lieved Du Pont as Commander of the South Atlantic Blockading

Squadron.^ He lost no time in commencing operations. On

July 10, 1863, Brigadier General Quincy A. Gillmore began to besiege Fort Wagner on Morris Island and Dahlgren's monitors provided gunfire support for the troops.

The monitors were under fire again on July 11 and 12, 1863, after which they had a few days respite before engag­ ing Wagner on July 18 and 20. In these actions, the still- unmodified monitors suffered the same sorts of injuries they had received in Du Font's attack. On July 21, the Relief took Hughes and his men to Charleston, where they commenced

“Welles, Diary, entries for 25, 27, 28, 29 May 1863, 1: 311-12, 314-15, 315-16, 317-18; Schneller, Ouest for Glory. 243. Dahlgren had spent much of his career in ord­ nance work and had rather less seagoing experience than his contemporaries. Foote was his close friend, so close that in October 1862 Foote had urged Du Pont to give up his command to Dahlgren. Du Pont to Fox, 8 October 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 243.

“Welles, Diary, entries for June 21 and 23, 1863, 1: 337-38, 341; Naval History Division, Civil War Naval Chro­ nology. III-llO.

223 repairs on Dahlgren's ironclads. Meantime, Dahlgren wrote to Welles in a tone reminiscent of Du Font's "limit of my wants" letter, wondering what to do about the modifications to the monitors. The modification work was, he wrote, "suspended in consequence of the operations now pend­ ing. . . . so far from being able to spare one [monitor for repairs], I would rather request more. " By July 24, however, he had apparently recognized that at least some repairs were essential, since his listing of "vessels drawn off from Charleston" includes the monitors Catskill and Nan­ tucket . " for repairs. On July 31, Dahlgren advised Sti­ mers that three monitors "already commenced by Mr. Hughes" would be put back in Hughes' hands "as soon as possible, if they can be spared from service. . .

By July 20, Stimers had over sixty tons of prefabri­ cated "modification kit" materials awaiting shipment to Hughes, and to get them there, he had to charter a steamer, the Thames. The items included six pilot house sleeves and covers, as well as bronze glacis rings for the bases of the

^Dahlgren to Welles, July 22, 1863, CRN 14: 382. The next day he forwarded a report from Hughes on the monitors' condition but reiterated, "I can not spare one, even, at this time. ..." Dahlgren to Welles, July 23, 1863, ibid., 14: 388-89.

^Dahlgren to Welles, July 24, 1863, QRN 14: 389-90. Both monitors had participated in that day's bombardment of Wagner. ^Dahlgren to Stimers, July 31, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Port Royal Working Party.

224 pilot houses and thick iron rings for the turret bases.^

After the materials arrived, Dahlgren tried to restrict the number of monitors under repair and to limit arbitrarily the time the mechanics were given to do their jobs.^’ The small number of available monitors meant that the loss of a single ship could decrease the offensive power of the monitor fleet by twenty or twenty-five percent. The need to balance the loss of availability caused by repairs against the loss of efficiency caused by lack of repairs had not been so acute with wooden sailing ships.

In early August, the General Inspector was directed to modify the monitor Sangamon in Hampton Roads "with utmost dispatch," and a second working party was organized and sent by August 1 8 . Inspector Hughes was invalided home "en­ tirely unfit for duty" in late August but returned to Port

Royal after a short leave. By October 2, Hughes could report that he had finished "the additions" on all the monitors except the Nantucket. In mid-September, the

^Stimers to Gregory, July 20, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, vol. 3, part 2: 29; Stimers to Fox, July 24, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 7; Griffin to Stimers, July 25, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 68, 1: 204 . ’•'^Reynolds to Dahlgren, August 8, 1863, Reynolds Let­ terbook E-72, vol. 1. ^®Gregory to Stimers, August 9, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 12; 27; Gregory to Fox, August 18, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 6.

^^Asst Surgeon Israel Bushong to Stimers, August 14, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Port Royal Working Party; Stimers to Quartermaster, Department of the South, September

225 intensity of combat at Charleston had markedly diminished, and by mid-October, monitors were being regularly rotated to Port Royal for repairs and bottom cleaning.^® By late

November, Stimers recommended that the original working party of forty men be relieved by a new group of twenty, with a trade mix weighted more toward repairs than alter­ ations. Gregory concurred, and about December 4, Griffin and his men of the second Port Royal Working Party departed for Port Royal in the chartered steamer Commander. Hughes and his group, once relieved, left Port Royal for the North aboard the Relief on December 23, 1863.

During this time, Stimers continued to direct and support both working parties from New York, dealing with everything from a shortage of bolts to "difficulties" with

the mechanics working on the Sangamon.Simultaneously with altering the monitors in service, he was implementing similar alterations on those under construction. He was

7, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1252, 1: 298; Hughes to Stimers, October 2, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Port Royal Working Party.

^“Reynolds to Dahlgren, October 15 and 16, 1863, Rey­ nolds Letterbook E-72, vol. 2.

^^Gregory to Lenthall, November 22, 1863, enclosing Stimers to Gregory, November 21, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, vol. 3, part. 3: 80. Stimers to Captain Young, commanding steamer Commander. December 4, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1252, vol. 1; Reynolds to Dahlgren, December 23, 1863, Reynolds Letterbook E-72, vol. 3.

^Stimers to Lenthall, September 7, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, vol. 3, part 2: 84; Stimers to M. Mara, September 10, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1252, 1: 310.

226 providing both original and revised drawings for the Tippe­ canoe class and the light draft (Casco class) monitors then being built. He was supervising the construction not only of all twenty-nine Tippecanoes and Cascos . but Ericsson's Dictator and Puritan as well. He was working on designs for a "fast of war," which he proposed to call Mercurv. as well as for a twin-turreted monitor.^ To top it off, he was the subject of a court of inquiry. Over a year before, when Stimers had far fewer vessels to inspect, Ericsson had opined, "Stimers cannot properly superintend the 6 vessels and be planning others at the same time. By the summer of 1863, the General Inspector had been working at a killing pace for over eighteen months.

The vessels that Stimers had been "planning" when

Ericsson expressed his concerns in April 1862 had been the

Tippecanoe class, but by the end of that year the Tippe­ canoes were under construction and Stimers was deeply im­ mersed in "planning" the light draft monitors. Secretary

Welles had noted in 1861 the difficulty of combining light draft with heavy armor, but difficult or not, the navy needed a light draft ironclad. The light draft monitor

^^For "fifteen feet draft two heavy turreted monitor," Stimers to Fox, June 4, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7. This design may have been superseded by the Mercurv project. Stimers to Fox, July 17, 1863, ibid.; Stimers to Fox, July 24, 1863, ibid.

^Ericsson to Fox, April 23, 1862, Private, typescript. Fox Papers, Box 3 .

227 program began in the summer of 1862, when Fox wrote Ericsson

about the need for an "invulnerable" ship with a six foot

draft that could penetrate the shallow rivers of the Confed­

eracy.^^ By early September the Assistant Secretary was pushing Ericsson and Stimers for a ship with a four foot

draft, but by the middle of the month Ericsson had decided

that such a ship was impossible.^® Fox, undeterred, told

Stimers that Ericsson should try for six feet, saying "The

side that produces the impregnable 6 footer, wins the rivers and waters of the South and West."^’

Fox also entreated Ericsson directly not to give up, saying that the enemy would "draw himself into his shell"

and light draft ironclads would be needed to get him out.

Fox envisioned an entire fleet of monitors, characterized by

their draft: "20 feet for foreign nations; 10 feet for

coast defence and harbor work; 6 feet for rivers."^® On

September 29, Ericsson promised to provide the information

Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy. 1860-61. 16. Fox to Ericsson, August 8, 1862, typescript. Fox Pa­ pers, Box 3. Ericsson described a meeting on the subject at about the same time in his testimony before the Joint Com­ mittee. Ericsson testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 68.

^®Fox to Stimers, September 5, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 5, mentions "the four foot boats." Stimers reported on Septem­ ber 17 that Ericsson "gives up" on an impregnable four footer. Stimers to Fox, September 17, 1862, ibid.. Box 4. ^''Fox to Stimers, September 20, 1862, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5.

^®Fox to Ericsson, September 27, 1862, Reel 4, Ericsson Papers.

228 Fox would need to advertise for the ships, and on October 5 he wrote that he had developed a suitable design.^® Ericsson put a good deal of practical thought into his plan, explicitly considering the industrial resources avail­ able to the country as well as technical elegance. He listed for Fox the conditions he had aimed to meet, and while the first was that the vessel should be "absolutely shot proof" and ram proof, the second and third showed a keen awareness of the country's industrial position. The vessels were to be as simple as possible to build, both hull and machinery, and they were to minimize the use of iron "as it cannot be obtained whilst the other Iron Clads are in process of construction." If Delamater's works were not already full, Ericsson said, he would undertake to build three of the vessels in 90 days. In addition, he told Stimers, he would furnish detailed plans for the ships. At this juncture the promising program began to go bad. Ericsson sent his general plans for the "six footer" on

October 9, 1862, after which, he later testified, he heard nothing for several months. Meanwhile, the workload Sti­ mers had assumed began to impede progress, since the

^^Stimers to Fox, September 29, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4; Ericsson to Fox, October 5, 1862, Private, ibid.. Box 3.

^“Ericsson to Fox, October 5, 1862, Private, Fox Pa­ pers, Box 3; Stimers to Fox, October 8, 1862, ibid.. Box 4.

^^Stimers to Fox, October 9, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4; Ericsson testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 68.

229 drawings for the Tippecanoe class monitors were already late and Stimers had no draftsmen to work on the light drafts. By mid-November, only two men could be spared for the "6 foot boats."32 The third week in November found the light draft plans not yet ready, but Stimers' letter of November 20 forshadowed more problems: "In making the changes re­ quired I have had to beat about the bush considerably.

The changes required continued to mount. The boilers were changed, the engines were changed and the machinery was changed, and each change moved the vessels farther from

Ericsson's original conception of a simple, cheap ship that could be built quickly. Eventually Stimers discovered that the vessels would draw ten inches too much water, so he "set Engineer Allen at it" to redesign them.^"* The iron hull of the new design was 12 feet longer and 3 feet wider than the original, and the wooden "raft" surrounding it was 5 feet longer and 4 feet wider.By now, it was December 30,

1862; two months had been spent making the vessels larger, more expensive and more complex.

32gtimers to Fox, November 10, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4 ; Stimers to Fox, November 14, 1862, ibid.

33gtimers to Fox, November 20, 1862, Private, Fox Papers, Box 4.

3‘‘Stimers to Fox, December 26, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4; Stimers testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 95-96.

3^Stimers to Fox, December 30, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4. Note the parallel with the harbor and river monitors: when additions made the design too heavy, Stimers chose to en­ large the hull rather than give up any of the additions.

230 Once Stimers had the redesign in hand, he took the plans to Washington. There, Rear Admiral Smith suggested installing a system of water tanks, piping and pumps to increase the vessel's draft for battle and decrease it for cruising or for floating free after grounding.^® All this added further complexity and weight. Not until February

1863 were the plans and specifications mature enough to advertise for bids, which were due on February 24, 1863.

By the time the bids were to be opened, Stimers had departed for Port Royal. In Stimers' absence, Fox wrote Ericsson regarding the plans for the light drafts. The navy. Fox said, presumed that Ericsson had furnished the plans and that Stimers had worked out the details to Erics­ son's satisfaction. "Before we contract I ought to know that this is so. . . . Before launching off into the con­ struction of these light drafts you will tell me if they are all right as we take them presuming them to be yours. One may imagine that Ericsson's reply caused consternation: Stimers, he wrote, had "frittered away" the inventor's

^®Stimers testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 97. Theodore Allen described the original design and the modifi­ cations. Deposition of Theodore Allen, August 11, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

^^Stimers to Fox, Februaiy 1, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7. This letter provides a "liberal" estimate for the light- drafts ; based on Stimers' calculations, the ships should have cost $259,797.14 ready for sea. The ships were adver­ tised on February 10, 1863. NARG 19, Entry 405. ^Fox to Ericsson, February 21, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

231 principles by changes. Because Stimers had persistently withheld the plans, Ericsson had not seen the plans until the day the bids were to be opened.^®

Since "victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan," at this point it becomes difficult to ascertain from the welter of self-serving statements precisely what happened. It appears that Welles was correct when he later told his diary that Stimers and Fox had " connived that they could do this work independent of the proper officers [Len­ thall and Isherwood] and perhaps of Ericsson--probably hoped to acquire reputation." Fox, he wrote, "expected great success . . . Stimers became intoxicated, overloaded with vanity.Stimers and Fox apparently had invested too much in the General Inspector's design to reopen the issue (or perhaps it was simply that Stimers' redesigns had taken so long that Fox's need was extremely urgent) , but Fox disre­ garded Ericsson's warning flag. Instead of holding the contracts in abeyance until the technical issues could be threshed out. Fox prevailed upon Welles to allow the con­ tracts to be let using Stimers' design. This decision was made before Stimers returned from Port Royal in mid-March, since the first light draft contracts, for the Napa and

^Ericsson to Welles, February 24, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 435: 67.

‘‘“Welles, Diary, entry for August 2, 1865, 2: 349, 351.

232 Yazoo, were let on March 2, 1863. By March 17, eight light- drafts were on order.

The light draft contracts themselves marked a further evolution in the navy's system for acquiring ships. Recog­ nizing the problems caused by the backlog in Stimers' draft­ ing room, the contracts stated that the government would furnish "general plans and specifications," while the con­ tractors were to make the working drawings and have them approved by the superintendent. Even more significant, the contract provided a specific mechanism for dealing with changes. Explicitly giving the government the right to alter the plans and specifications "at any time during the progress of the work," it also explicitly committed the government to compensate the shipbuilder for extra expense and that "in each case the cost of the alterations [are] to be determined when the changes are directed to be made."*:

The idea that individual contractors would make their own detail drawings might have worked if the ships had remained true to Ericsson's original conception. Ericsson had designed a very simple metal hull with a wooden raft surrounding it, filled with the simplest possible machinery.

■‘'•Naval History Division, Monitors. 25-27.

*:"Contract for Iron-Clad Steam Battery," in "Alexander Swift et al. v. The United States." 14 Court of Claims 208- 235, December Term 1878, (Case 6327), 210-11. Fox discussed the drawings in a letter to Stimers dated March 16, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

233 This design made minimum demands upon the country's strained resources for iron shipbuilding. Ericsson calculated that a mode of construction that emphasized woodworking could take advantage of the sort of widely distributed "shop practice" that was absent in iron shipbuilding, thus obviating the need for very detailed drawings. The greater complexity of

Stimers' vessel made this approach technically more risky.

Stimers' insistence on highly detailed specifications made the approach financially risky as well. One contrac­ tor's workmen described the ninety-two pages of small type that made up the "Specification Book" as "the monitor prayer book." Each supervisor "had to have one of these books in his pocket. The complexity of Stimers' vessel combined with his extremely detailed specifications made the light draft contractors decide to wait for the government's draw­ ings rather than taking the potentially costly risk of making their own and having their efforts rejected. As a result, "the United States assumed control of, and took entire charge of, making and furnishing to the contractors the detailed working drawings" and prohibited the contrac­ tors from proceeding until they had those detailed drawings. The contractors' acquiescence "without protest or objection" must have seemed the prudent course.**

*^Nathaniel McKay testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 31.

**Swift et al. V. United States, 14 Court of Claims 215. 234 By the time Stimers returned from Charleston in April to add more changes to the ships under construction, the monitor program had almost peaked. Yet there was still a great deal to do, particularly with regard to the changes which came thickly as combat experience mounted. Charleston- induced changes were applied to monitors under construction as well as to those in service, and the contracts issued for the later light drafts incorporated many of them.'*®

A key question is the extent to which the navy esti­ mated the impact that design changes would have on the monitor acquisition program. Were the changes piled on without considering the overall consequences, or did the navy attempt to assess the effect of changes on the program as a whole before deciding to go ahead? The navy did in fact consider the question before deciding to incorporate the lessons of the Passaics' combat experience in later classes. Stimers observed that the issue was discussed at the Navy Department, where, "it was well shown that it would cost a great deal of money to make the changes, and would make great delay. . . The

'*®Snowdon & Mason contracted for the light draft Umooua on March 9, 1863; Swift and Niles were awarded the light drafts Klamath and Yuma on March 26, 1863. These contracts were thus based upon the "original" specifications, and the Charleston modifications were extra work. For the later ships, "In the new light drafts we require those who are now offering to build to take the new specifications at the same price or decline as they choose." Fox to Stimers, May 2, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

235 problem, of course, was that "the whole object of having vessels of this kind was to enable people to go into fights that otherwise they would not be able to approach and remain in them and come out whole, " and "where it was shown by experience our present plans did not succeed in this, we had better change them. ..." The issue reached at least to the level of Assistant Secretary Fox, who "said he supposed if we went on in this way and made changes, every time a monitor was in a fight it would cost a million of dollars; but notwithstanding that, he supposed it was the best plan to pursue." Later that year, Stimers advised the contrac­ tors of the policy by writing, "The Navy Department however now desires that the vessels now building shall have incor­ porated in them all the improvements which our experience and a study of the subject shall point out.""*® Fox "supposed" that making changes during construction was the "best plan," but the factors that influenced his conculsion are not recorded. Then-current thinking appears not to have been sophisticated enough to estimate accurately the delays that alternative courses of action would produce;

^Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. Stimers' testimony in another case is in House Report 766, 51st Congress, 1st Session, March 10, 1890. He notes the desire to "take advantage of every such fight and make improvements as we went along, although we fully appreciated that it would delay [the ships'] completion and add to their cost." Ibid., 1. Stimers to contractors, August 31, 1863, quoted in Report of Aaron H. Cragin and Isaac Newton, Spe­ cial Commissioners appointed by the Court, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

236 in fact, it may not have been sophisticated enough to recog­ nize that the delays generated would be different. It is evident, however, that the navy explicitly considered the potential for great expense and "great delay" before decid­ ing to modify the ships under construction. Fox's "supposi­ tion" was a defensible decision, explicitly taken.

It was also a bad decision, at least in retrospect.

The two basic approaches for incorporating such modifica­ tions are "continuous improvement," in which each item is modified to the latest configuration before it leaves the manufacturer, and "build it now, change it later," in which the item is finished more or less to the original plan, then modified after delivery. Later successful acquisition programs generally chose the "build it now, change it later" plan or incorporated modifications gradually in series production. In World War II, for example, the B-2 9 bomber occupied a position analogous to that of the ironclad in the Civil War: technologically "very ambitious . . . for its day, pressing the state of the art in a number of areas." As with the monitors, intense wartime urgency caused orders to outrun testing : over 1600 B-29s were already on order before the first one lifted off the ground. Just as monitor pro­ duction was spread among shipyards, B-29 production was parcelled out to several contractors, with the same goal of

"greater and quicker production" and the same resulting

237 "complication. " In the World War II program, the Army Air

Force froze the bomber's design, introducing changes very gradually so as not to upset contractor production. To incorporate the latest changes, newly manufactured bombers flew to modification sites where each was brought up to the then-latest configuration.^

While assembly-line produced bombers may be considered mass production, another example involves specialty items. The US Navy's World War II were built in identi­ fiable classes like monitors, but differed in that the much larger number of ships involved meant they would be produced in series-parallel rather than purely parallel batches. Thus the submarine program displayed both "build it now, change it later" and "continuous improvement" philosophies in proportions that varied over time. Early in World War

II, parallel production gave the submarine program a close resemblance to the Civil War monitor program. During this early-war period, contractors stoutly resisted any changes because they would unduly delay production. Until 1943, contract-built boats were completed to contract specifica­ tions, then taken to navy yards for updating. Navy-yard built submarines, however, incorporated all the latest improvements.

‘‘'^Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: U. S. Bombers over Japan during World War II (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 82, 72, 75, 80.

238 As sequential production of submarines began to take hold, the navy's construction bureaus came under increasing pressure from the fleet to provide up-to-date ships. Under these conditions, the navy finally threatened to require contractors to build strictly to navy yard plans. The result was a compromise in which contractors agreed to make

"continuous improvement" changes that the navy deemed manda­ tory and the navy agreed to pay for the changes. ‘‘® For the period during which the submarine program most resembled the harbor and river monitor program, the contractors' "build it now, change it later" system was at least as successful as the navy yards' "continuous improvement" method. The "continuous improvement" system could succeed in navy yards because they differed from private shipyards in two vital ways. First, just as in the navy yards of the 1850s, the navy had full control over its own personnel. If the chain of command wanted to modify a ship under construc­ tion, the shipyard would comply. Second and more impor­ tantly, the navy yards had, in effect, unlimited capital.

■*®John D. Alden, The in the US Naw: A Design and Construction History (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1979), 78-79. The escort program operated in a similar fashion. After their shakedown cruises, ships built by contractors (e.g., USS Trumpeter (DE 180)) went to navy yards to receive the latest alterations. Personal interview with William H. Roberts, M.D. (late Lieutenant, US Naval Reseirve; First Lieutenant, USS Edgar G. Chase; Gunnery Officer and Executive Officer, USS Trumpeter), October 11, 1998. By contrast, constant design changes hampered produc­ tion during the mobilization. Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas. 180-183, 185-89, 223.

239 While they had to justify their expenditures to their supe­ riors and to Congress, they did not have to worry about going bankrupt as civilian contractors would if changes stretched out construction and delayed progress payments.

In World War II, the navy could design and build its own ships in navy yards, using the "continuous improvement" philosophy, in competition with private shipyards that used the "build it now, change it later" method. During the Civil War, the navy's inability to build iron ships in its own yards put it, as Drayton wrote, "completely at the mercy of the contractors."** The Civil War navy understood that it depended upon contractors to build its ships but did not understand that a shift in philosophy, from "continuous improvement" to "build it now, change it later," was essen­ tial to minimize the effects of that dependency.

In fact, the navy had before it in 1862 a prime example of the failure of "continuous improvement" construction when applied by a contractor. In 1842, engineer Robert L. Ste­ vens of Hoboken, New Jersey, proposed to build an ironclad warship, which he offered to complete in two years. Con­ gress appropriated $250,000 towards the project and Stevens began work in February 1843. In November 1844, he negoti­ ated a second contract that required completion in November

1846 at a total cost of $586,717.84. By 1862, Stevens'

**Drayton to Du Pont, October 1, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 241.

240 heirs wanted some $800,000 more to finish the ship, still far from completion. The project never was finished, one author observed, because it changed every time someone developed a more powerful gun. In debate, one senator observed, "Much has been said about his genius, his work,

£cC. Why, sir, in the process of the work on this vessel, the thing was changed over and over again. . . . The genius changes its operation and direction from month to month and year to year. . . . The Navy Department, which in 1862 opposed spending more money on the for precisely this reason, nonetheless embraced Stevens' philos­ ophy of "continuous improvement" in the monitor program. With a similar philosophy came similar effects: cost over­ runs and delivery delays.

^“Porter, "The Delamater Iron Works," 13. Senator William P. Fessenden (), in Congressional Record. 37th Congress, 2d Session, March 27, 1862, 1399-1400. The Senate debated the issue extensively on March 27 and 28, with senators from New York and New Jersey prominent among Ste­ vens' supporters. Ibid., 1394-1403, 1418-1429. For an overall treatment of the Stevens Battery, Baxter, Ironclad Warship. 49-52, 211-219, 246.

241 CHAPTER 9

THE PROGRESS OF THIS VESSEL IS CONSIDERABLY RETARDED-. WESTERN MONITORS 1863-64

The "continuous improvement" system directly affected the construction of Cincinnati's monitors. After Stimers' letter of December 22, 1862, regarding the major redesign of the Tippecanoe class, construction more or less paused on those areas of the vessels that required modification.

Construction was already held up in other areas by the government's slowness in providing drawings--the drawing of the deepened midships section was not furnished until Janu­ ary 14, 1863, while the arrangement of the stern appeared on January 27 and the revised drawings of the boilers and of the bulwarks and side armor a day after that. The "calcula­ tions and computations" from the deepening were not com­ pleted until April 21, 1863, three days after Stimers recom­ mended that the navy not enforce any forfeitures for failure to complete the vessels on time. The General Inspector admitted that the "many delays caused by the changes made in the vessels" rendered it "very difficult to decide exactly how much time should be added to that specified," and

242 suggested that the non-enforcement of the forfeiture clause be applied to all the ships of the Tippecanoe class.^ I have found no evidence that the non-enforcement policy was formally approved, but the navy's failure to pursue forfei­ tures, either during the war or later during settlement and litigation, implies that it was accepted by the navy's leadership. Similarly, I find no evidence that non-enforce­ ment was officially communicated to the contractors, and I suspect that it was kept from them for as long as possible.

The contractors soon recognized the problems caused by the navy's alterations. As early as January 12, 1863, Fox implied that some contractors questioned Stimers' authority to make the changes.^ The Secors, who were building three of the Tippecanoe class ships, and Harrison Loring, building one, were among the first to complain. Because their ships had made the most progress, they were the most seriously affected by changes, rework and delay. In early April 1863 Secors and Loring complained to Fox that their work was being delayed for lack of drawings ; in another letter to the Assistant Secretary, Secor & Co. noted "many important

’"Alexander Swift & Co. and the Niles Works v. The United States." 14 Court of Claims 235-47, December Term 1878 (Case 6326), 242-44. Stimers to Gregory, April 18, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, 2: 286-87.

^"Will you give me a mem. of the changes that have been, or are to be made in the fast monitors, so they can be regularly authorized, as some of the parties I notice sug­ gest to Stimers to get such authority from the Dept., which will be given as soon as we know what they are." Fox to Ericsson, January 12, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

243 changes" to the monitors and requested financial relief for the extra work.^ In June, Secor & Co. complained directly to Welles, noting that the amount they had been advanced fell far short of the cost of the alterations and advising the Secretary, "It is already known to the Department that there already exists a very wide difference of opinion between ourselves and the General Inspector Mr. Stimers as to the amount proper to be allowed to us by the Department for the extra cost and expenses to which the changes of plans here referred to have subjected us." Besides asking for additional progress payments, Secors requested that the Secretary establish a board to determine fair compensation for the "unexpected increase of costs and expenses caused by these alterations and improvements in the construction of the vessels."*

Welles reacted to the contractors' growing concerns in two ways, by limiting Stimers' authority to impose changes and by appointing the board requested by the contractors.

^Fox to Harrison Loring, April 2, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 5A; Fox to Ericsson, April 6, 1863, Unofficial, ibid. Ericsson told Fox that the vacuum engines for which the con­ tractors needed drawings were "very simple . . . an easy affair, " but Fox replied that he did not want the contrac­ tors to design their own vacuum engines, but instead "to work your idea not their own." [Emphasis in original.] Ericsson to Fox, April 7, 1863, ibid.. Box 6; Fox to Erics­ son, April 9, 1863, Unofficial, ibid.. Box 5A. Vacuum engine drawings were finally furnished by the General In­ spector' s office in late May 1863. Secor & Co. to Fox, April 14, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 440, 70.

*Secor & Co. to Welles, June 17, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Tippecanoe.

244 In mid-July Welles told Gregory that his subordinates [i.e., Stimers] were not to modify contracts or instructions to contractors without approval from the cognizant Bureaus.

Also, Welles insisted, all correspondence to contractors would go through Gregory.^ To ensure the contractors knew of this policy change, Gregory wrote to each on August 21, 1863, telling them, "the General Inspector and his subordi­ nates will not be permitted to alter plan[s], or modify contracts or instructions, unless authorized by the Depart­ ment, or the proper Bureau--which in all case must be through the General Superintendent." Each contractor was to acknowledge Gregory's letter.® It appeared that Stimers' autonomy had been reduced and a check placed upon his inde­ pendence .

Stimers' technical reputation was at its peak in the wake of Du Font's attack, however, and his relationship with Fox markedly diminished the impact of such restrictions. In a late September letter to Fox, Stimers asserted that Greg­ ory told him verbally to disregard the Navy Department's direction, only to reimpose the rule when the department repeated its injunction. Gregory then had Stimers draft an order for Gregory's signature that delineated what letters

Gregory would sign, but the admiral soon began to suspect

®Welles to Gregory, July II, 1863, Welles Papers, Letterbook May 23-September 30, 1863, 233.

^Gregory to monitor contractors, August 21, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 12: 47. 245 that Stimers was still dealing directly with contractors. Accordingly, the admiral directed that all of Stimers' correspondence go through Gregory. Stimers used the excuse that Gregory had placed some letters in the wrong envelopes to ask Fox to rescind this order, but Fox does not appear to have done so.’

Fox's reluctance to override Gregory may have stemmed from the escalating cost and schedule difficulties of the monitor programs. Fox told Gregory on October 9, 1863, that "accumulating accounts" arising from alterations made it necessary to appoint a board to assess the situation, deter­ mine how much was owed to the contractors, and "report some specific plan on which the vessels are to be completed and the sum for which the contractors will execute the work."® Reading between the lines of this relatively bland letter, one could conclude that the monitor construction program was in trouble and that the source of the trouble was incessant alterations. It was a portent in that Fox's esteem for Stimers was based upon Stimers' ability to get results-- first with the Monitor, then with the Passaic class. If Fox received delays and cost overruns instead of ships, Stimers' influence would necessarily decline.

’Stimers to Fox, September 30, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 7.

®Fox to Gregory, October 9, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5A. The board was appointed by Welles' author­ ity on October 16, 1863.

246 The claims board, under Gregory's presidency and in­ cluding Stimers, met sporadically beginning in October 1863.

It reviewed the cost of the changes already ordered and in many cases gave the contractors additional compensation for them.® Fox intended that the Gregory Board would clear up the accumulated charges, after which the newly established system of negotiating changes would prevent further dis­ putes. The idea that both parties would benefit from early agreement on the price and scope of work was sound, but its implementation suffered from the relatively small number of changes to which it applied, from the increasingly adver­ sarial relationship between the navy and the shipbuilders, and from the way it dealt with (or failed to deal with) prevailing economic conditions.

Although it was intended that the negotiation system be applied throughout the ironclad program, very few changes were actually processed in this fashion. In later testi­ mony, Stimers described the system of "having the costs all settled before we did anything about it. . . . But it really never got to a system." While the navy tried to make negotiation work, "that system applied to so small an amount as compared with the whole amount, that it didn't amount to

®NARG 19, Entry 362, Record of Payments on Contracts for Ships, 1861-1864. Stimers described the process: ". . . . we investigated it--singly, and we made a good deal of red tape about it, and then we managed to pay for it in some way or other." Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, and 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift V. US.

247 much.Theodore Allen testified, "This was never carried out as a system, and there were many alterations made for which bills were sent in, and then we could only consider to what extent they were extra as regards the contract, without

taking into consideration any delay or any probable rise in materials. ..." Allen also noted that the Inspectorate would compare the estimates received from several builders for identical alterations, establish a "fair" price and pay each contractor alike.

Stimers' testimony in this regard also establishes that the navy did consider the "build it first, change it later" system. If the estimate for a particular change were too high, he said, the navy would "say that we either wouldn't

have it done or that we would do it ourselves, or wait until the vessel was done and then do the alteration ourselves. This "change it later" policy seems to have been applied primarily to the eastern-built ships of the Tippecanoe class: the three built by Secors and the one apiece built by Harrison Loring and Harlan & Hollingsworth. This was

‘“Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, and 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

“Deposition of Theodore Allen, Cincinnati, July 25, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. For Tippecanoe. Greenwood furnished estimates for 105 alter­ ations; the navy returned only four of them. Claimant's Statement of Case, filed February 26, 1875. NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

“Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, and 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

248 because these vessels were so far ahead of the western monitors that some later alterations could not be applied without delaying the ships."

Insofar as the later Tippecanoe class ships were con­ cerned, the contractors did not always acquiesce to Stimers' estimates. M. C. Hill of the Niles Works reminded Stimers in November 1863 that a change that reduced the amount of work would not always create a savings, due to the cost of "writing, estimating, giving orders & directions to workmen, and delays occasioned." Two months later. Hill wrote, "You say 'you can get other parties to make those [pinions] for the "Catawba" & "Oneota" [sic] if we do not want the job.'

You can do just as you prefer. Superintendent Thom advised Stimers that he had endeavored to reduce his esti­ mates "to the lowest figures compatible with safety from loss. " A coal shortage caused by Government demands and the

^Regarding Secor's vessel [s], Greenwood's superin­ tendent Thom testified, "There were several things left off that were put on the others. The Government was very anx­ ious to get them out and they hurried that one forward." Thom obtained this information, he said, both from the contractor and from Stimers. Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, May 28, 1875, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift V. US. While Thom mentions only Secor, the earliest Secor vessel (Tecumseh, commissioned April 19, 1864), was a con­ temporary of Loring's Canonicus. commissioned April 16, 1864, and Harlan & Hollingsworth's Saugus, commissioned April 7, 1864. Secor's Manhattan was close behind, with a commissioning date of June 6, 1864, and their Mahopac com­ missioned September 22, 1864. Dates from Naval History Division, Monitors.

^■*M. C. Hill to Stimers, November 10, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba.; Hill to Stimers, January 1, 1864, ibid. 249 resulting high price of metal work combined with the price of labor to make it "almost impossible to cover the cost of executing any piece of work by any reasonable figures.

Another element of the failure of the negotiation system was the growth, or perhaps regrowth, of adversarial relations between the navy and its contractors. Antagonism grew, of course, as the delays mounted. On the navy's side, the attitude was generally that the contractors had agreed to build desperately needed ships and the ships were not yet built--the Tippecanoe class was to have been completed in six months, i.e., by March 15, 1863. While Secors and

Harrison Loring made better progress than others, Loring's

Canonicus was not launched until August 1, 1863, and Secors' Tecumseh and Manhattan not until September 12 and October 14, 1863, respectively. Even if in hindsight one allows the contractors a round six months of extra time for the delay caused by the December 1862 redesign, they were launching the first ships of the class when they should have been completing the last of them.’-® Besides his frequent exhortations to inspectors to enforce the highest standards on the contractors, the Gen­ eral Inspector clearly displayed an adversarial attitude when he told Fox about the progress of the ironclad Keokuk.

’®Thom to Stimers, January 14, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Tippecanoe.

’®Launching dates from Naval History Division, Moni­ tors. 20-23. 250 Stimers wrote that the contractor, C. W. Whitney, deliber­ ately worked slowly for two reasons. First, working slowly reduced Whitney's cost, since with fewer men he could work more efficiently. Second, "by keeping up the delay long enough the forfeiture will be so great that to demand it would appear to be very unjust." Contractors, Stimers asserted, "really have no patriotism, self love always being greater than love of country, especially among people who remain at home and grow rich in time of war."'-”'

Complicating the issue was the state of the nation's finances. As Stimers later wrote, "we had but little time to listen to arguments which would take money out of the

Treasury. We were paying it out so fast that it was incum­ bent upon every officer to get all he could for the Govern­ ment and pay as little as possible for it."^® Combining an adversarial relationship with a perceived need to get the most from every government dollar encouraged the resurgence of the 1850s style of management in which the government focused upon money as a club with which to beat contractors.

^^Stimers to Fox, February 1, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7. The forfeiture then amounted to $90,000; Stimers though the intent was make it over $100,000, "an amount which would be considered too enormous to exact." Stimers later wrote that he was aware of the "fashion" among contractors of declaring that they were losing money, but when he saw contractors who did nothing but navy work increasing their facilities, "I naturally conclude that such work is profitable. ..." Stimers to Nelson Curtis, February 29, 1864, ibid.. Box 9.

^®Stimers to Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, December 29, 1870, NARG 45, Subject File AC.

251 The western monitors were even farther behind schedule than the eastern ships. In early October Chief Engineer

King's report showed that none of the Cincinnati ships was ready for launching; Catawba, the farthest along, had no armor installed, and neither Oneota nor Tippecanoe yet carried all their hull plating. Inspector Charles Loring noted a number of causes, including the low state of the

Ohio River which prevented coal from getting to the iron mills and strikes by machinists and others for higher wages.

Commenting specifically on Tippecanoe in terms that applied to all of the western ships, Loring wrote, "The progress of this vessel is considerably retarded. . . With regard to Pittsburgh, King advised Fox in February 1864 that Snow­ don & Mason would not be able to deliver Manavunk and the light draft Umpqua in less than a year.^° From the shipbuilders' point of view, things looked different but no less adversarial. The navy had failed to provide the construction drawings as promised and had made many alterations, each of which tended to increase the ships' cost and delay their completion.Excepting the

*®J. W. King to Gregory, October 5, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, vol. 3, part 3: 35. Loring to Stimers, November 10, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 68, vol. 4, part 1 1863: 111.

^°King to Fox, February 4, 1864, Unofficial, Fox Pa­ pers , Box 8.

^’■Polser attributes the slow provision of drawings to the navy's desire to maintain "the privacy and the secrecy of its contracts." He notes that "very complete sets of plans for each vessel" were prepared but only rarely did the

252 vague language of Stimers' December 22, 1863, letter, how­ ever, the government had neither extended the time allowed nor compensated the contractors for their increased work.

Even when the navy approved the contractors' bills, the

Treasury would not pay them promptly.In effect, the shipbuilders had to finance the vessels themselves. At one time, Charles H. Secor recalled, the government owed Secors' firm nearly $800,000, and Secor told Fox the firm would have to stop work unless the navy paid something on account. Fox told Secor "that 'those were war times' and they, if we stopped worked [sicl , would have to take possession of our navy "allow a builder to possess at one time the complete specifications" for a ship. Aubrey H. Polser, Jr., "The Administration of the United States Navy, 1861-1865," (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Nebraska--Lincoln, 1975), 210. Welles was, as Polser asserts, concerned about privacy in the financial aspects of navy contracting, but plans were not withheld because of secrecy--Stimers' correspondence shows that he understood the construction slowdowns that would result. If his draftsmen could have produced the plans faster, he would have sent them sooner. ^^The problem was endemic throughout the war. In November 1861, Welles advised Merrick & Sons that payments due them were held up due to lack of funds in the treasury. Welles to Merrick & Sons, November 19, 1861, NARG 45, Micro­ film Entry M209, 66: 335. In January 1863 the Secretary noted that although the navy issued requisitions promptly, "for want of funds" the Treasury suspended them. Endorse­ ment on John Swazey to Welles, January 19, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 431: 168. In June 1864, Welles confided to his diary that Treasury management was, "terri­ ble, ruinous," and blamed Chase for redeeming his blunders by withholding payment to contractors. The next month, Welles wrote, "The great damage is from the Treasury which does not pay. . . . Men are kept out of their money wrong­ fully." Welles, Diarv. entries for June 25, 1864, and July 7, 1864, 2: 58-59, 69. Welles addressed Chase on the sub­ ject in Welles to Chase, May 20, 1864, Niven, Papers of Salmon P. Chase, 3: 386.

253 yard and establishment." If they did not continue work. Fox said, he "would send a file of Marines to take the charge of our works." The Secors, with their business survival at stake, felt "wronged and cheated" by the navy.

The contractors' distress stemmed from several causes, but chief among them were the markedly increased prices of materials and labor. This in turn resulted primarily from government policy and from materials and labor shortages.

During the period from 1860 to 1865, consumer prices in general almost doubled, as shown by Table 9.1.

Part of the problem was government policy. Although the Union supported considerably more of its war effort from taxation than did the Confederacy, inflation inevitably accompanied the transition from specie to paper m o ney.As Federal borrowing rose, the specie value of the dollar fell proportionately, leading Welles to tell his diary that naval contractors were "clamorous for advanced prices in conse­ quence of the depreciation of money. Besides the

^^Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. The burden im­ posed by the frequent changes, Secor wrote, "taxed very severely the financial resources of our Establishment." Secor & Co. to Welles, June 17, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Tippecanoe. ^■‘Paul A. C. Koistinen, Beating Plowshares into Swords : The Political Economv of American Warfare. 1606-1865 (Law­ rence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 178-83, 187, 265-69.

^^Welles, Diarv. entry for February 3, 1863, 1: 232.

254 YEAR Composite Con­ Increase over sumer Price In­ previous year dex (1860=100) (percent) 1860 100 - 1861 106 6.0 1862 121 14.1 1863 151 24.7 1864 189 25.1 1865 196 3.7 1866 191 -2.5

Table 9.1. Composite Consumer Price Index 1860-1866 26

"depreciation of money, " the contractors were hurt by the taxation program enacted on July 1, 1862. It included not only an income tax, but an excise tax of 3 percent on all manufactures.^”' This included items manufactured for gov­ ernment contracts, and contractors quickly began to lobby the Navy Department for exemptions (which apparently were not granted)

^®John J. McCusker, How Much Is That in Real Monev? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Monev Values in the Economv of the United States (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1992), 328. Using the same scale and base year, the composite price index in 1991 was 1629. ^''Richardson, Greatest Nation of the Earth, 116-17, 121-23.

^®Harrison Loring wrote asking for assurance that the navy would refund the excise tax on the machinery for the Nahant. Harrison Loring to Fox, April 15, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 440: 94. One of Ericsson's group wrote to "presume" that the Government would pay the monitor contractors for the excise taxes involved; Welles endorsed

255 The navy was hard-nosed on this issue, probably because it reflected directly on the credibility of the Union gov­ ernment. The "party line" was that inflation and deprecia­ tion were not the fault of the government, and Stimers later wrote, "The instructions from the Navy Department were to pay for the changes themselves, but to allow nothing for the increased cost of the original contract work because, as it was verbally explained to me in the Navy Department, this increased cost was due to the state of the country at the time, for which the Government was not responsible."^® The government contended during the war, as it contended later in court, that businessmen of "ordinary prudence and dili­ gence" should have been able to purchase most of their materials before prices began to rise. In retrospect, it is difficult to see how businessmen accustomed to relatively stable prices could foresee the magnitude of the inflation­ ary upon them. Nathaniel Thom kept a record of the prices paid by

Miles Greenwood for iron and other materials, which shows the rise in prices for specific shipbuilding materials the letter, "Nothing." NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, John A. Griswold to Welles, January 27, 1863, roll 432: 117.

^®Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 25, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. Welles later testified, "in regard to these damages for delay, my view was that it was rather a favor than an injury to the con­ tractors, because they had more time and would not be pressed so severely to finish their work." Charges Against the N a w Department. House Miscellaneous Document 201, 42d Congress, 2d Session, April 25, 1872, 261.

256 (Table 9.2) as opposed to the generalized consumer price series presented as Table 9.1. Thom's data show that by mid-1863, common plate, bar and angle iron had risen 35 percent, brass castings had risen 14 percent, iron forgings had risen 71 percent, and iron castings 50 percent from their prices when the Tippecanoe class contracts were awarded. By year's end, structural iron was up 75 percent, brass castings 43 percent, forgings 114 percent, and iron castings 108 percent from their initial prices. Shipbuilder George Quintard prepared a similar although not identical table reflecting New York prices. The "Quintard Table," forwarded to Lenthall by Gregory in July 1865, shows struc­ tural (refined bar) iron rising 52 percent between September

1862 and December 1863 and copper and tin, the raw materials for brass, rising 51 and 32 percent respectively.^®

While the percentage increases Quintard recorded are generally comparable to those experienced in Cincinnati, the actual money values were not. In December 1863, bar iron cost 8.75 cents per pound, or $175 per ton, in Cincinnati and $110 per ton in New York.This corroborates the assertion made by Cincinnati shipbuilders that prices were

^“Gregory to Lenthall, July 14, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 68, box 1: 2. The table appears as "Table A--Admiral Greg­ ory's schedule of prices" in Certain War Vessels. Senate Report 1942, 57th Congress, 1st Session, 9-10.

^^This conversion utilizes a short ton of 2000 pounds.

257 Date Plate, Bar, Brass Forgings Iron Angle Iron Castings Castings SEP 1862 5 35 7 3 OCT 1862 5 35 7 3 NOV 1862 5 35 7 3 DEC 1862 5.5 37 8 3 JAN 1863 6 37 7 4.5 MAR 1863 6.75 37 8 4.5 JUN 1863 6.75 40 12 4.5 SEP 1863 7.75 45 15 6.25 DEC 1863 8.75 50 15 6.25 JAN 1864 8.75 55 16 7 MAR 1864 9.25 55 16 7.5 JUN 1864 9.75 60 14 9 SEP 1864 10.75 65 14 10 DEC 1864 10.5 70 15 10 JAN 1865 10.5 70 15 9.5 MAR 1865 10.5 67 15 9 . 5 JUN 1865 60 12 9 . 5 SEP 1865 65 12 9.5 DEC 1865 65 12 9 . 5

Table 9.2. Extracts from N. 6. Thom's Record of Prices Paid by Miles Greenwood (NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326, Swift V. US) . Prices are in cents per pound. higher in the West. Thom, asked whether he had compared the Quintard table with his own, testified that he had done so

258 "frequently. I find that our prices here were considerably higher than in New York, for both labor and material.

The disadvantages suffered by western builders were made even more acute by the General Inspector's decision to establish a flat rate for alterations. Theodore Allen testified that during the winter (first calendar quarter) of 1863, "... the price for plate and angle iron work erected in the vessel inclusive of labor was fixed by us at twenty cts. per pound and for bar iron and plain forgings, also erected in the boat inclusive of labor, at twelve and a half cts. per pound. ..." Sixty percent was considered to be for labor and forty percent for material. At that rate, a ton of bar iron worked into a ship in

March 1863 would earn $250 for the contractor, of which $100 would nominally be to pay for the iron.For a New York firm, buying bar iron at $100 per ton, there was room for profit. In Cincinnati, where Greenwood was then paying $135 per ton for iron as well as higher prices for labor, there was significantly less margin. In this respect as in oth­ ers, the navy did not adjust its contracting policies to account for legitimate differences in contractors' costs.

^^Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, May 28, 1875, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

^^Allen testified that Stimers had determined the price. Deposition of Theodore Allen, July 25, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

259 Important as were material price increases, they were overshadowed by the contractors' inability to deal with steadily increasing labor costs and shortages. Initially, the problem was a nationwide shortage of skilled labor.

Shipbuilder Harlan & Hollingsworth noted in August 1862 that the demand for workmen who could build iron hulls was "so far beyond what has been the requirements in the merchant service heretofore, that the supply cannot in reality be obtained. ..." Beyond even that, as Stimers wrote in October 1862, the country had no experience in "building structures composed of such heavy, unyielding plates of iron. . . . Such work had never been done on an extensive scale in this country."^'* Thus the nation as a whole was short of the proper trades, and of the relative few with iron-working experience, even fewer lived in the West.^ The shortage of skilled workers plagued the western builders from start to finish.

^■‘Harlan & Hollingsworth to Welles, August 9, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 415: 262; emphasis in original. Stimers to Gregory, October 25, 1862, NARG 19, Entry 65, 2: 159. Stimers recalled that the cost of labor was greater in the West, largely because "this kind of labor was unusual in the west, and a man could not accomplish so much in a day, " so even if a man were paid the same wages the cost for a given amount of work was greater. Stimers estimated that labor in the West was some 50 percent more than on the eastern seaboard and overall costs (labor and materials) about 2 5 per cent greater. Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, and 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

260 The western shortage of skilled labor led directly to constantly increasing wages. Besides his record of materi­

als prices, Thom kept track of an "average" wage for those who worked in the shiphouse (i.e., directly on the ship

rather than fabricating materials in a shop). Comparing his

figures with those of the "Quintard Table" for wages in New

York (Table 9.3), the average wage for all trades, skilled and unskilled, at Greenwood's establishment was very close to the East Coast wage for boilermakers, among the most highly skilled and highly paid metal tradesmen. (Since the

Swift/Niles consortium competed in the same Cincinnati labor market, one may safely presume that their rates of pay were

similar to Greenwood's.) This tends to confirm Charles

Loring's statement in 1865 that many of Swift's mechanics "came from the East especially for this work." While Loring did not know the relationship between Cincinnati and East Coast wages, "it is evident that, while there was constant demand for skilled labor there, mechanics would not leave home and old associations except for a higher rate of pay.The Swift/Niles consortium had aggravated its own labor difficulties and those of Miles Greenwood when it took contracts in late March 1863 for the light-draft monitors

Klamath and Yuma, building the hulls in the shipyard of

^Charles H. Loring to Alex. Swift & Co., August 22, 1865, in "Statement 38, Klamath & Yuma, Alex. Swift & Co., Cincinnati," NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Klamath and Yuma.

261 Date Average Wage Laborers Boilermakers per day (Thom) (Quintard) (Quintard) SEP 1862 1.42 1.10 1.80 OCT 1862 1.67 1.10 1.80 NOV 1862 1.66 1.10 1.80 DEC 1862 1.67 1.10 1.80 JAN 1863 1.79 1.10 1.90 MAR 1863 2 . 09 1.20 2.00 JUN 1863 2.27 1.40 2 .30 SEP 1863 2.47 1.40 2.40 DEC 1863 2.73 1.50 2.75 JAN 1864 2.54 1.60 2.80 MAR 1864 2.88 1. 90 2.90 JUN 1864 3.28 2.10 3.10 SEP 1864 3.34 2.20 3.20 DEC 1864 3.30 2.20 3.20 JAN 1865 3.47 NA NA MAR 1865 3 . 51 NA NA JUN 1865 3 .30 NANA SEP 1865 3.48 NA NA DEC 1865 3 . 18 NA NA

Table 9.3. Wages from N. G. Thom's Record of Prices Paid by Miles Greenwood (NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326, Swift V. US). "Quintard Table" wages from Certain War Vessels Built in 1862-1865. Senate Report 1942, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., June 17, 1902, 9-10. Wages are in dollars per day.

Samuel and Thomas Hambleton just upriver from Litherbury's establishment and subcontracting much of the machinery to the shops of Moore & Richardson. By mid-1863, five

262 ironclads were under construction in Cincinnati and the labor problem was acute. Despite the high rate of pay, the reports of the navy's inspectors repeatedly note that skilled labor was very difficult or impossible to obtain.

Labor mobility was significant in Pittsburgh as well.

Alexander Jack, a boilermaker, had worked for Tomlinson &

Hartupee on their gunboats Sandusky and Marietta for $2 per day. He started at Snowdon & Mason for $2.25 per day in winter 1862 and stayed until late summer 1863. At that time, "I quit because I wanted $3.00 per day." He went to work on the Ft. Wayne and Chicago Railroad bridge at $16 per week ($2.67 per day), soon raised to $18 per week. Lewis

T. Brown had been an iron worker before enlisting in the army the day after Fort Sumter; after recuperating from a wound received at Gettysburg, he never returned to his regiment. He worked for Snowdon and Mason for a year as a driller, then took over the planer in the machine shop. As a driller, he made $1.50 per day; at the planer he made

$3.00 per day. He left Snowdon & Mason for another planing job at $5.00 per day.^® Snowdon & Mason was so desperate for skilled labor that John Snowdon, a native Englishman,

^‘'Deposition of Alexander Jack, October 5, 1891, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US.

^®Deposition of Lewis T. Brown, Pittsburgh, October 5, 1891, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US.

263 returned to England and recruited skilled ironworkers to bolster his work force.

While strikes seem to have been a significant problem in eastern shipyards, the very tight labor market made them infrequent and short-lived in the West. Thom, in fact, asserted there were no strikes in Greenwood's works because,

"We were obliged to give them just what they asked, and there was nearly every two weeks for along while, a rise in the price of labor. Ten years had blurred his recollec­ tion somewhat, but he was close to correct; I can locate only five strikes mentioned in the inspectors' reports. Compared to New York, Cincinnati was a model of labor peace, albeit a peace for which employers paid top dollar.

Conscription compounded the initial shortage of skilled iron workers in three significant ways. First was the direct loss of skilled men who were drafted and held to service in the army, or who enlisted under the threat of the draft to gain a volunteer's bounty and respect. Second was

^Deposition of Jacob Graser, October 5, 18 91, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,83 4, Snowdon v. US; Deposition of Isaac Winn, October 5, 1891, ibid. Winn recalled that the English contingent numbered thirty-five or forty men. ■•“Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, May 28, 1875, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

■•’•The strikes included boilermakers in April 1863, machine shop finishers in February 1864, carpenters in March 1864, and boilermakers again in April 1864. The finishers strike was against Greenwood only; the others affected Swift/Niles and Greenwood both. For a discussion of similar labor difficulties in Civil War Chicago, Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production. 165-67.

264 the movement of men from community to community to settle where draft calls would be relatively low. Third was the movement of men from private industry, where they were sub]ect to draft, to government employment, where they were much less so.

Shipbuilders saw from the first that conscription would make already-scarce skilled labor even scarcer. If they could protect their workmen from conscription, however, they could turn draft exemption into a powerful tool to attract and keep skilled workers and to reduce demands for wage increases. Shipbuilders began to lobby for blanket exemp­ tion as early as August 1862, when Harlan & Hollingsworth described the situation to Welles. After discussing the underlying shortage of skilled workers and the application of the draft as an incentive to volunteer, they wrote, "We see the ranks of our workmen thinned day after day without any hope of recruiting or obtaining men that can fill their places. . . . the difficulty may be speedily remedied by exemption.

Harlan & Hollingsworth had heard that New York firms had applied for exemption, and Ericsson, with eight vessels building by his group, echoed Harlan & Hollingsworth's support for the measure. He wrote Fox, "I trust you will be able to procure exemption from drafting for all hands

■•^Harlan & Hollingsworth to Welles, August 9, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 415: 262.

265 employed on the Iron Clad Navy. If you cannot, the Country

must look to its soldiers alone for protection for a long

time to come."'*^ Yet not every firm favored exemption.

Barnabas Bartol of the Philadelphia shipbuilders Merrick & Sons advised against it, writing confidentially that exempt­

ing only a few firms would cause "general discontent.

Western firms had begun to lobby for exemption even

before they received monitor contracts. In mid-August, Swift asked Welles to exempt his iron mill workers because they were making iron for gunboats. Saying that it was

difficult to carry on the work because "quite a good many"

had left. Swift & Co. wanted to be able to tell their men

"that they need not enlist for fear of a draft." Welles replied that while workmen in private establishments could not be exempted, "if skillful workmen employed upon work for

this Department, and whose absence would seriously hinder

its completion are drafted," the Navy Department would try

to get them discharged. Exemption was thus to be individual and after the fact rather than on a blanket basis. Welles answered concurrent inquiries from Harlan & Hollingsworth

and Merrick & Sons in the same language.

^Ericsson to Fox, August 9, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 3.

■‘'‘Bartol to Fox, August 7, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 415: 200; emphasis in original. “^Swift to Welles, August 15, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 416: 128. Welles to Swift, August 19, 1862, ibid.. Microfilm entry M209, 69: 191; Welles to Mer­ rick Sc Sons, August 19, 1862, ibid., 189; Welles to Harlan &

266 Among the first to request that individuals be released

from service was Miles Greenwood, although his case required no inter-departmental cooperation. On October 7, 1862, he

asked that two men who had enlisted in the navy's Missis­

sippi Flotilla be released and Welles told the commandant of

the squadron to grant the request if the men could be

spared.4* Shipbuilder Reany, Son & Archbold of Chester,

Pennsylvania, asked the Navy Department for the release of twenty men from the army draft, which the navy obtained from

the War Department. Niles Works similarly asked Fox for

help in December, and he obtained the War Department's order to discharge the twelve men for whom Niles Works had asked.It appeared that the government had struck a balance between the army's need for men and the navy's need for artisans to build and repair its ships.

As the war continued, however, the climate changed.

Secretary of War Stanton began to enforce the conscription law to the letter, even drafting men for the army who were already on active duty with the navy. By March 1863, Welles

Hollingsworth, August 22, 1862, ibid., 207.

■•^Miles Greenwood to Fox, October 7, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 421: 204, w/endorsement. ■‘"^Welles to Re any. Son & Archbold, October 18, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 69: 492; Welles to Reany, Son Sc. Archbold, October 24, 1862, ibid., 70: 4. Niles Works to Fox, December 2, 1862, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 427: 51, with endorsements. Snowdon & Mason also requested the discharge of men from the army. Snowdon & Mason to Wells Fsicl. January 15, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 431: 91.

267 would no longer approach the War Department to discharge an artisan who had volunteered, and by July, he had to advise naval contractors that Stanton "declines to grant exemptions from draft, or to suspend its operations, in any case."“®

Changes in the draft law in the summer of 1864 remedied some of the major injustices, but while civilian workmen in government employ could avoid the draft, workmen in civilian establishments remained subject to it.“® The problem of allocating manpower between direct military needs and war production was never satisfactorily solved.

Besides the general problems of inflation, soaring costs and scarce manpower, the Cincinnati shipbuilders faced other problems that shipyards on the eastern seaboard did not. First was Cincinnati's exposed position, separated from ambiguously loyal Kentucky only by the Ohio River.

■‘®For enlistees, Welles to Greenwood, March 2, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 70: 452; Welles to Greenwood, April 18, 1863, ibid., 71: 58. For Stanton's attitude, Welles to Merrick & Sons, July 29, 1863, ibid., 577. Welles addressed the "crude, and loose" conscription law in his annual reports for 1862-63 and 1863-64, and repeatedly in his diary.

‘‘^For example, in August 1864, nearly five hundred men left Reany, Son & Archbold "to ship in the Navy or to go to other places for the purpose of avoiding the draft. " First Asst. Engineer J. B. Houston to Chief Engineer W. W. W. Wood, August 18, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 64, 7: 72. In Decem­ ber, Commodore J. W. Livingston advised Captain C. D. Col- man, the local army Provost Marshal, that a drafted individ­ ual employed in the Mound City Naval Station machine shop was needed in his present capacity, and Livingston's certif­ icate appears to have been sufficient to prevent the man's conscription. Livingston to Colman, December 14, 1864, NARG 45, Entry 452, Letters Sent by the Commandant of the Mound City Naval Station, 2: 52.

268 Cincinnati shipbuilders were affected by several instances in which martial law was declared and men impressed to work on the city's defenses. In August 1862, Confederate General

Edmund Kirby Smith moved into central Kentucky, causing great concern that Cincinnati was his objective. Union

Major General Lewis Wallace assumed command of the city, closed all businesses, and impressed all able-bodied men to work on the city's defenses. The "Kirby Smith raid" passed without directly affecting the not-yet-begun moni­ tors, but it left Union authorities sensitive about Confed­ erate threats to the Queen City. Martial law was again declared in the summer of 1863, delaying work for several days. In May 1864, the state of Ohio called out the militia in response to Colonel 's advance into West Virginia and Kentucky, and it took two weeks to get most of the men employed on the monitors excused from militia duty.

50"Proclamation. Martial Law Declared," Cincinnati Daily Commercial. September 2, 1862, 2.

^^Asst Inspector Charles French to Stimers, July 20, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 974, 5: 31-32; Loring to Stimers, July 21, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 68, box 2, vol. 1: 163.

^^Loring to Stimers, May 10, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 68, 7: 102. "There were also other delays incident upon threat­ ened raids upon Cincinnati, in fact the work came to a complete stand still upon certain occasions until we got the men relieved from that duty by an order from the commanding general." Deposition of Charles H. Loring, March 22 and 25, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

269 The weather also affected western shipbuilders more

than easterners. The more severe climate caused inland

shipbuilders to lose more working days in winter than their

seacoast counterparts, but this inconvenience was relatively minor compared to the disabilities that attended a site on fresh water. The same cold weather that impeded progress in

the shiphouses froze the Ohio River, which prevented iron from moving from the mills on the Kentucky side to the

shipyards on the Cincinnati side. Once the ships had been launched, winter weather sent chunks of ice drifting down upon them. The most serious issue, however, was the dra­ matic and unpredictable seasonal variation in river levels.

The shallowness of the Ohio River had been an element

of concern from the time the Tippecanoe class contracts were awarded; the navy had required Greenwood to provide satis­

factory evidence that his monitor could in fact be delivered at Cairo as stipulated. At high water, this would be no problem. At low water, however, the falls at Louisville, carrying 24 inches of water, became impassable by ships drawing as much as the harbor and river monitors did. Below Louisville, the shallowest point was Scuffletown (or

^^Loring to Stimers, January 19, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 68, 6: 98. Seaboard shipbuilders' materials that came by river from inland points could also be interrupted by very severe weather.

270 Shuffield Town) Bar, where one could expect to find only 22 inches at low water.

Despite Rear Admiral 's assertion that depth made no difference, because "at low water, the whole Mississippi is a chain of sand bars," the rhythm of construction depended heavily upon the river level.” Low water in late 1863 caused a coal shortage that reduced or stopped the iron mills' output. Similarly, low water af­ fected not only the transit to Cairo for delivery but the launching and fitting out of the ships. For launching, when the river was too low, the water's edge receded down the bank and was farther from the ship. The launching ways could have been extended, but that would have caused the ship to be moving more rapidly than normal when she reached the water. Since the river itself was narrower and shal­ lower than usual, the result of a low-water launching in

Cincinnati would have been a severely damaged monitor stuck stern-first in the mud on the Kentucky shore. By April

^"Tabulated Report of Ohio River, from mouth to Louis­ ville, Ky." Lieutenant Commander LeRoy Fitch to Rear Admi­ ral David D. Porter, December 1, 1863, CRN 25: 610-11; Report of the Commission . . . to select the most approved site for a n a w yard or naval station on the Mississippi river or upon one of its tributaries. Senate Executive Document 19, 3 8th Congress, 2d Session.

^^Porter to Welles, February 16, 1864, typescript marked Naval War Records 192: 159, NARG 45, Subject File AD, box 48.

271 1864, Catawba, the most advanced of the Cincinnati ships, was ready to launch "at the earliest rise of the river.

April 13, 1864, saw that rise. At 12:30 P.M., the last shores were knocked out and Catawba started down the ways with some 150 men and women on deck and a crowd of thousands watching from both sides of the river. The ship's sponsor,

Emma Bickerstaff, christened her with a bottle of sparkling Catawba wine, the thoroughly drenched color party at the stern raised the national ensign, and the wave created by the ship's striking the water knocked down many of the spectators crowded at the foot of Butler Street. Stimers, too eager to wait for Inspector Loring's official report, advised Gregory of the launch based on reports from the

Cincinnati newspapers. This "first launch of a monitor west of the Alleghenies" was clearly cause for the General In­ spector to celebrate.

Although high water permitted Catawba to be launched, it also placed the vessel at risk. The swift current caught her and swept her toward the steamboats at the landing, and only quick action by one William Conan snubbed her enough for to get her under control. The tugs returned her to the foot of Swift's ways for fitting out, and while

^®Asst. Inspector Charles French to Stimers, April 12, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 974, 7: 237.

"Another Ocean Monitor Afloat - -Launching of the Iron Clad 'Catawba'," Cincinnati Daily Commercial. April 14, 1864, 1. Stimers to Gregory, April 18, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 68, 7: 225.

272 the invited guests went across the street to the Niles Works office for a reception, the shipyard went back to work. Loring estimated five months to complete the ship if she remained at Cincinnati, but again, the stage of the river affected her progress. If the remaining work were to be done at Cincinnati, the ship would completed in the autumn and the river would probably be too low to permit her pas­ sage. If Swift took advantage of the high water to tow her downriver to be completed at Cairo, the lack of facilities and workmen there would delay her completion and make it considerably more expensive. Loring noted, "There has not been sufficient water in the river to pass these vessels over the falls at Louisville since March 1863. The contractors recognized that low water posed a financial as well as a technical problem. The government would not pay the reservation until the navy accepted the ships. Under the contracts, however, the vessels had to be delivered at Cairo. If low water prevented the ships from passing downriver upon completion, not only would the con­ tractors have to wait for their money, but they would have to pay the expenses and bear the responsibility of keeping the ships safe until they could be delivered. By the original contract timetable, delivery in Cairo looked like a good bet--the ships were to be completed in

"Another Ocean Monitor," Cincinnati Daily Commercial; Loring to Stimers, April 26, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 68, 7: 21

273 March 1863, and at that season the river would likely be high enough for them. If they were finished in the autumn, however, they would have to sit at Cincinnati for months until the spring rise in the river released them. Accord­ ingly, Swift proposed to Secretary Welles that the ships be delivered to the navy at Cincinnati, or that the navy should pay extra for delivery at Cairo. Welles promptly vetoed the proposal; the navy expected the ships to be delivered in

Cairo and would neither accept them in Cincinnati nor pay anything extra on the original contract.

The next monitor in line in Cincinnati was Oneota. Swift took advantage of a "sudden rise" to launch her on May 21, 18 64, and the ship touched the "turbid water of the swollen river" at 3:00 P.M. that Saturday, with "hundreds" of people on board and thousands lining the river bank.

There were no untoward incidents this time, and by the end of the day she was tied up next to Catawba for fitting out. The launch, however, had originally been scheduled for May

24, and had to be moved up with "great exertions" when the river began to fall.®° Welles having rebuffed the attempt to change the delivery point. Swift decided to complete the

”Welles to Swift & Co., May 21, 1864, NARG 45, Micro­ film entry M209, 74: 150. ®°"The Launch of the Oneota," Cincinnati Dailv Commer­ cial , May 23, 1864, 2. "Sudden rise" Asst. Inspector Charles French to Stimers, May 24, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 974, 8 : 161. Loring to Stimers, May 24, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 68, 7: 164.

274 two ships in Cincinnati rather than taking the incomplete vessels down the river.

The fact that Swift needed to make this decision points up a major difference between shipbuilding on the rivers and shipbuilding on the Atlantic seaboard. Delivery, whether on the river or on the seaboard, depended in part upon water level. Seaboard-built ships depended upon which were highly predictable and recurred daily. If an eastern con­ tractor missed delivering a ship to a nearby navy yard on today's high tide, he would have another chance tomorrow.

Western builders depended upon river level, which was much less predictable and recurred on a roughly annual basis. If the western contractor missed a rise in the river, it might be months before he would have another chance to deliver his ship to a navy yard hundreds of miles away. To take advantage of a rise, however, a contractor might have to move a vessel before completion. If so, unin­ stalled items would have to be sent by barge or rail and the ship would have to be finished far from the contractor's shipyard, in a place where lack of facilities and a local skilled labor pool would make the work markedly slower and more expensive.®^ The uninstalled weight would lessen the draft of the ship somewhat and every inch might help, but

®^Snowdon and Mason's general manager noted that towing their vessel down cost $8,000, and "to keep it light" they shipped four hundred tons of material "as ordinary freight." Deposition of Joseph S. Kirk, May 30, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Cases 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

275 the possible gain had to be balanced against the certain increase in expenses and the probable delay in completion. When the Swift/Niles consortium chose to complete their ships in Cincinnati, they probably did so because this was the least financially injurious course. By 1864 it must have been apparent to them that the navy would not enforce the original forfeiture clause, and absent any forfeiture for delay, finishing the ships at Cincinnati would minimize expenses. This remained true even when the steadily drop­ ping summer river levels compelled them to move the two ships upriver a mile away from their shops, reducing their efficiency. The other western monitors fared less well. Both Greenwood and Snowdon & Mason had approached Stimers for permission to launch their monitors before the decks were put on, but Stimers rebuffed them both. He told Snowdon &

Mason, "You ask me as I love my country and respect private interests" to allow the ship to be launched without the deck. "The Government is indeed in a great hurry for the vessel but it is a good strong vessel not an injured one that they are in a hurry for. . . . it is not considered as an advantage to facilitate the completion of the vessel and destroy her usefulness at the same time."®^ Loring reported

®^Loring to Stimers, June 7, 1864, NAVY 19, Entry 68, 7: 238.

®^Stimers to Greenwood, January 9, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 1252, 2: 58; Stimers to Snowdon & Mason, April 1, 1864,

276 in May that Tippecanoe would be ready to launch if the usual mid-June rise took place, but this did not work out. Green­ wood was making little progress on the ship due to a lack of skilled labor, but since he knew he could not launch the ship until the river rose, he may have been "pacing" the work to reduce his expenditures.®^ Tippecanoe was not launched until December 1864. In Pittsburgh, Snowdon &

Mason were reportedly ready to launch the Manavunk in April but did not do so because of low water.®® In July, Chief

Engineer King advised Fox that Manavunk and Snowdon & Ma­ son's light draft Umpqua were "in such incompetent hands that there is no estimating when they may be completed. "®® In March 1864, a year after the contracted completion dates, the harbor and river monitor program appeared to be in serious trouble. Of the nine ships, only four had been launched, all in the East, and only three of those were within a month of completion. The overarching cause was the ibid., 330.

®'*Loring to Stimers, May 24, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 68, 7: 164; Loring to Stimers, June 7, 1864, ibid., 7: 240; Loring to William W. W. Wood, July 19, 1864, ibid., 8: 155. ®®Naval History Division, Monitors. 22, note 10. Sti­ mers' letter of April 1 coupled with high river levels in April and May lead one to question Snowdon & Mason's asser­ tion of readiness.

®®King to Fox, July 20, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 8. Snow­ don tried for a year to make a steam cylinder for Manavunk and finally had to give up and order it from Niles Works. Such builders. King noted, would to contract for anything, to be delivered any time, and sometimes they actually be­ lieved their facilities were "good and sufficient." 277 inability of the monitor contractors to deal with rapidly changing conditions : design changes, inflation, labor short­ ages, fluctuating river levels. Poor management comes immediately to mind, but there were no complaints of incom­ petence against the Cincinnati or East Coast firms as there were against Snowdon & Mason. The aggravating element common to all shipbuilders was more-or-less inadequate capitalization. The difference between "more" and "less" was a key factor in determining each firm's success or failure. Simply put, poorly capitalized firms had no re­ serves upon which to draw when conditions deteriorated.

It is at first surprising that shipbuilders had such difficulty adjusting to changes, both in the ships they built and in the environment in which they worked. After all, as Scranton and Heinrich have pointed out, they were specialty producers, whose livelihoods and businesses de­ pended in great part upon their ability to react to changing conditions through flexible management of highly skilled laborWhile some firms were new to specialty production, others had been successful before the war and even during it; they had weathered economic hard times before and recovered. Why, then, did sound businessmen have such difficulty building ironclads?

^’’Heinrich characterizes shipbuilding as "the least stable market for capital goods equipment in nineteenth- century America." Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas. 219.

278 General Inspector Stimers characterized the initial situation when he wrote, "These men take this work to do as a matter of business. If the price which they are to re­ ceive is a fair one they will make money if they conduct their work upon correct business principles, if they do not do this they will inevitably lose money unless we have given them a price which is larger than it should have been.

He was absolutely correct : none of the contractors set out to build monitors as a public service. Each expected to make a "fair and reasonable" profit from their work.

A "fair" percentage of profit, over the actual cost of labor, materials and subcontracting, was variously stated. The most sophisticated analysis, by Cornelius H. Delamater, took the actual cost of payroll and purchased materials as the basis. Delamater then added 25 percent of that basis to account for rent, power, administrative costs, wear and tear, and tools, noting that the result was the actual cost of doing the work. He considered that ten percent of the actual cost of the work was a "fair and reasonable" profit. Less sophisticated men simply used a percentage, ranging from 10 to 3 5 percent, of the direct costs of payroll, purchased materials and subcontracts.**

*®Stimers to Fox, October 9, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4.

®*Deposition of Cornelius H. Delamater, July 30, 1877, Court of Claims 6327, Alexander Swift et al v. U.S., NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba. One deponent, questioned about the 3 5 percent figure, asserted, "Why, men would make nearly that much money swapping jack knives at that time." Deposi-

279 The shipbuilders had obviously thought to make that sort of profit. James F. Secor, agent for the Secor firm, said that Secors' based their bids on the Passaic class. "The Government had already given $400,000 for the Passaic class of vessels, and the modifications were estimated by Captain Ericsson, the designer of these vessels, to cost

$60,000, and they added $60,000 to it, which made $460,000."

His brother Charles A. Secor added that Ericsson estimated that the alterations from the Weehawken "would cost about $40,000. Says he, 'Secor, you can make $20,000 on that, with your energies on these alterations

The western firms must have agreed that the undertaking would be profitable, since Swift and Niles immediately accepted a second vessel when it was offered at $460,000. They knew that the cost of building two identical vessels in series in the same shipyard would be less than building them separately, since they would save much of the startup cost for the second ship and could get more than one use from

tion of Oliver Perry Clark, July 25, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. For a discussion of nine­ teenth century accounting, Gary John Prévits and Barbara Dubis Merino, A History of Accountancv in the United States The Cultural Significance of Accounting (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998), chapters 3 and 4.

’“Deposition of James F . Secor, August 8, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US; Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

280 such expensive items as foundry patternsIn the normal course of events, they would have been absolutely correct, even though Stimers apparently considered that $460,000 was a bargain for the government. He was probably right, given that the contractors had bid for much less ship than the government eventually demanded. As James Secor said,

"if the specification that was shown bidders at Washington, when the bids were made, had been adhered to, there was profit in the contracts."’^

In the capital they could command, the ironworking and engineering firms had an advantage over traditional ship­ builders. As Heinrich has pointed out, wooden shipbuilding did not require much investment. The workers who built wooden ships generally owned their own tools, so shipyard capital requirements were small, and they were further reduced by the practice of subcontracting. In Philadelphia in 1860, the capital that fourteen shipbuilding firms re­ ported to the Census averaged about $23,800, and each on the

''’■Deposition of Alexander Swift, November 10-11, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US.

^Stimers told Fox that corporate pride would make it difficult for Harlan & Hollingsworth "to refuse to build one at the price we are paying others, though I am not certain they would take one so low." Stimers to Fox, September 12, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4.

''^Deposition of James F . Secor, August 8, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

281 average employed about 20 workers.’^ Ironworking and ma­ chinery production required significantly more capital. In

1858, Merrick & Sons, the builders of the New Ironsides, had a capital of at least $200,000, which by early 1864 had

grown to $700,000.’^ In 1863, Swift & Co. was estimated to be worth $100,000, and by March 1864, $150,000. Their

partner, the Niles Works, was worth $258,600 in late I860.’®

Greenwood's worth is not recorded before the early 1870s,

but at the beginning of the war Greenwood was considered "wealthy."” In the Snowdon and Mason partnership, Snowdon Sc Son was estimated as being worth up to $100,000 in 1864.

Mason was credited with "ample" means in 1861, but his worth in 1856 was only $8,000 to $10,000 including real estate, so

’“Census Office, Manufactures in 1860. 522-27. Hein­ rich gives the corresponding figures for 1850 as $12,600 and 2 9 workers, which implies that shipbuilding had become slightly more capital-intensive during the decade before the war. Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas, 19, 21.

’®In 1858, Merricks' capital "can not be less than $200 m [thousand] & prob[ably] far exceeding that sum." R. G. Dun, Pennsylvania 131: 233; for $700,000 in April 1864, Pennsylvania 13 5: 320.

’®R. G. Dun, Ohio 82 (Cincinnati 5) : 71. By 1867, Swift's successor firm, a joint stock company, was capital­ ized at $500,000. Ibid., Ohio 84 (Cincinnati 7): 41. For Niles Works, Ohio 79 (Cincinnati 2): 271.

” R. G . Dun, Ohio 86 (Cincinnati 9): 98, 253; 87 (Cin­ cinnati 10): 313. The shipyard Greenwood rented could not have included much in the way of equipment since Lither­ bury's worth was small and his credit was poor. Ibid., Ohio 81 (Cincinnati 4): 252.

282 his 1861 capital could not have been large.''® In this respect it appears that the best-capitalized of the western firms was the Swift/Niles consortium. Swift and Niles were thus best able to withstand the many drains on their re­ sources and continue to forge ahead with their ships.

The problem of the contractors' relatively shaky capi­ talization was, in fact, noted by their contemporaries. In February 1864, the ships building at Secor & Co. (Manhattan and Mahooac) were progressing "very slowly indeed." The cause, Stimers wrote, "appears to be that the contractors have not sufficient capital to carry on such an extensive business with vigor, unless they are in frequent receipt of money. Materials can be bought on credit, but labor must be paid for weekly, and I have observed that it is in labor only they are deficient."

Stimers suggested what would have been a radical change in the navy's policy toward contract work, writing, "The only practical mode of procedure on the part of the Govern­ ment, to cause these vessels to be completed at the earliest possible moment, is for it to pay the weekly bills for labor, and charge the money thus paid to any account yet unpaid upon the vessels." The Secors, he observed, "have

'®R. G. Dun, Pennsylvania 66 (Fayette County 1) : 576B, 47; Pennsylvania 7 (Allegheny County 2) : 199. The 1860 Census recorded that Fayette County, where Brownsville was located, boasted three machinery firms, with capital total­ ling $119,000, and one ship and boat builder (probably Mason) with a capital of $2,000. Census Office, Manufac­ tures in 1860. 508-509.

283 remarkable energy and skill in advancing work when their finances are all right, but the work is now proceeding slowly in consequence, I think, of their want of money to pay for labor."’® The same could have been said for almost any of the monitor contractors.

All shipbuilders at one time or another used a time- honored method of self-financing : slow payment to their suppliers. Some were slower than others, however; the Dun firm noted that Zeno Secor, of Secor & Co., was "behind in his payments" and reported that he received credit "more on the strength of his lar[ge] Government contracts the am[oun]t of wh[ich] he was sure to receive than from any knowledge of his own responsibility. " Snowdon & Mason, somewhat more solid that Secors, were rated "Should be cr[edit] with caution."®® The creditworthiness of Swift and Niles was never questioned; that of Greenwood cannot be determined from the information available. ®^ Eventually, however, the bills had to be paid, and the cash flowing in from the government was inadequate to the task.

’’Stimers to Gregory, February 4, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 64, Box 3 (Feb 1864-May 1864), 6. ®°R. G . Dun, New York 380: 8, s.v. "Donohue, Ryan & Secor"; ibid., Pennsylvania 7 (Allegheny County 2): 199, s.v. "Snowdon & Mason."

®^R. G . Dun, Ohio 79 (Cincinnati 2): 268, vol. 82 (Cincinnati 5): 71, s.v. "Alex Swift & Co."; Ohio 79 (Cin­ cinnati 2) : 271, s.v. "Niles Works." The entries located for Miles Greenwood begin in 1872.

284 One reason was the reservation system. In normal times, progress payments would relieve the contractor of most of the financial burden of building the ship and the 25 percent reservation would roughly represent his profit, withheld as surety for the ship's performance. In mid-1863,

Secretary Welles had denied a contractor's request for payment of a reservation, saying it was not a prudent course to give up "the only real security the Government has in its hands.Clearly the general inability of contractors to deliver as promised reinforced the attitudes engendered by the 1850s acquisition process.

In the inflationary environment of the Civil War, however, it was counterproductive to withhold funds from contractors who were already in financial straits, and by 1864 the navy began to appreciate this. The government did not go as far as Stimers recommended in taking over ship­ yards and paying workers directly. In mid-1864, however, the navy reduced the reservation from the original 25 per­ cent to 16 2/3 percent and paid the harbor and river monitor contractors the difference of $38,333.33 (8 1/3 percent of the progress payments they had received). The navy also paid each of the contractors for alterations ("by bill of extra work") $54,000 in March 1864 and $46,000 in August

1864, with other "extra work" payments apparently keyed to

®^Welles to George W. Quintard, June 27, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 71: 411. Quintard built the double­ turret monitor Onondaga.

285 individual ships' state of completion.®^ Unfortunately, by the time these payments were made, the ships were already long overdue and the contractors were too much out of pocket to catch up.

The contractors were also inextricably committed to the monitor program. As Greenwood told Admiral Gregory in July

1864, "I have already expended on the 'Tippecanoe' from one hundred and twenty five, to one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in 'extras,' and have received only forty four thousand dollars of this amount in return." In addition. Greenwood noted, he had had to devote "my whole establish­ ment to the production of all the parts of this contract under our own supervision . . . to the entire exclusion of my legitimate business. "®“ Greenwood had so much of his capital invested in Tippecanoe that he could do little outside business. The same was true of Snowdon & Sons; John N. Snowdon opined, "I could have got as much money for

®®NARG 19, Entry 362, s.v. Catawba (304-305), Oneota (322-23), Tippecanoe (308-309). The reservation payment may have depended in part upon the vessels' progress; while Swift received payments of $38,333.33 "on account of reser­ vation" for Catawba and Oneota on October 4, 1864, Greenwood did not receive such a payment for the less-complete Tippe­ canoe until May 26, 1865. Additionally, Swift had earlier requested and received a "3/4 payment" of the last install­ ment on July 11, 1864; Greenwood received three-quarters of the last installment on July 17, 1865. Swift's request: Gustavus Ricker, Alex Swift & Co and Niles Works to W. W. W. Wood, 1 July 1864, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba. Ricker noted, "We are in very great need of money. ..."

®''Greenwood to Gregory, July 7, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Tippecanoe.

286 building a half dozen oil engines as we got for building the Manavunk's machinery."®^

In contrast to shipbuilders, other specialty producers thrived during the war. The Baldwin Locomotive Works used the combination of "greenback[s] and strong demand . . . [to turn] inflation to its own advantage." In mid-1862 Baldwin stopped giving credit to their customers and by 1863 they were building locomotives only on a cost-plus basis.®®

Civilian production had many advantages, which shipbuilders knew as well as anyone. Stimers noted Harlan & Hollings­ worth's hesitation to take a navy contract, "their private business giving them all that they can do at prices fully as favorable as those paid by the Government and conducted in a way which frees them from the many annoyances attending a contract with the Government." Among other things, "They work entirely from their own plans and all the little de­ tails are made in accordance with their own long habits and those of their workmen. There are no inspectors to direct and interfere with every part. . . . ''®^ Locked into long­ term government contracts and unable to pass along price increases, shipbuilders in fact lost the flexibility essen­ tial for success in specialty production.

®®Deposition of John N. Snowdon, October 5, 1891, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US.

36Brown, Baldwin Locomotive Works. 25

®^stimers to Fox, April 8, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 9 .

287 The economic environment buffeted the shipbuilders from every direction. Yet the original contracts envisioned the Tippecanoe class being completed by March 1863. Had the

program followed that timetable, the shipbuilders would have

finished their ships before the inflation, payment delays

and material and labor shortages of 1863-64 came about. For

short term projects supported by progress payments, any of the contractors would have had enough capital to survive.

The delays incident to "continuous improvement" stretched

out construction dramatically and allowed inadequate capi­ talization to cripple the monitor program. The problem was systemic, a result of the intense

urgency that had permeated the ironclad program from its inception. Under the stress of war, the navy had acceler­

ated the acquisition process to the point that contracts for the Passaic class were let before the ships' detail design

was completed. Ericsson's design for the Passaics. however, was reasonably mature, and he had a great capacity for work.

The combination allowed him to keep the design work just far

enough ahead of the ships' actual construction to avert

costly, time-consuming work stoppages and to minimize late ordering of materials. The lack of battle experience during the summer of 1862 kept the navy from learning much about

monitors under fire, but that lack of "lessons learned" also minimized the number of combat-driven design changes. As a

288 result, the Passaic program skirted the edge of failure but never quite fell in.

In the harbor and river class the urgency that drove

the navy's entire ironclad program finally became counter­ productive. Contracts for the class were let when the design was barely past the concept stage, after which the design underwent considerable evolution. Ericsson had

turned his attention to the seagoing monitors and Stimers

had focused his efforts on finishing the Passaics. so nei­ ther man could give the harbor and river design the concen­ trated attention it needed. The initial lack of detailed

plans and the December 1862 redesign markedly slowed con­

struction, which made the harbor and river class more vul­ nerable to the changes that stemmed from the combat experi­ ence of 1863. Those changes, in their turn, further slowed construction. Slow construction made contractors more vulnerable to inflation and reduced their cash flow, slowing construction still further, and the longer the ships spent in the shipyards, the more changes were added. In a sense, the harbor and river program never recovered from its prema­

ture birth.

289 CHAPTER 10

THE SUDDEN DESTRUCTION OF BRIGHT HOPES '.

DOWNFALL OF THE GENERAL INSPECTOR

By February 1864 the harbor and river monitor program was beginning to show results. Although a year overdue, the eastern built Canonicus. Saugus and Tecumseh were nearing completion and Manhattan was close behind. The last of the eastern ships, Mahooac. was almost ready to launch. In the West, construction continued, beset by steadily rising prices and a steadily shrinking labor pool. Like Mahooac in the East, Catawba and Oneota were nearly ready to launch, but neither Manavunk nor Tippecanoe was close enough to predict a launching date with any certainty. Of the western builders, the Swift/Niles consortium had made the most progress and Snowdon & Mason was next, despite the fact that both had also undertaken light draft monitors. The Mana­ vunk. King wrote, "was more than a task for the parties who never did any other than the smallest business--giving them the second vessel [the light draft Umpqua1 has already

290 delayed the work on the first to a great extent. . . . Snowdon & Mason was still ahead of Greenwood.

This improving state of affairs encouraged Stimers to address Fox with a proposal, probably long in the making, to create a new Navy Department bureau: the Bureau of Iron Clad

Steamers. The new bureau would be headed by "a practical and scientific engineer especially skilled in the construc­ tion of Iron Clad Steamers." The bureau chief would have an assistant chief, a chief draftsman and four assistants, a chief clerk and four assistants, a messenger and a laborer.^

Stimers' proposal would, in effect, institutionalize the monitor "project office" and make it permanent. The "project office" organization of the General Super­ intendent of Ironclads had given the monitor program signif­ icant advantages. These advantages, all of which derived from the focused nature of the General Superintendent's organization, offered the potential to develop better de­ signs, better construction management, better alteration management, better logistics support, and better opportuni­ ties to integrate all facets of the ironclad program.

First and most basically, the "monitor project office" had a single focus: monitors. Unlike the Bureaus of

^King to Fox, February 4, 1864, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 8. Even so. King wrote, Snowdon & Mason were better than Pittsburgh gunboat contractors Tomlinson & Hartupee, who "cannot be taught even in the school of experience."

^Stimers to Fox, February 18, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 9.

291 Construction and Repair and of Steam Engineering, responsi­ ble for everything from contract-built river gunboats to navy yard-built wooden cruisers, the General Superintendent had a limited area of concern. The "project office" could concentrate its efforts, initially on the provision of ironclads quickly and in quantity. The Passaic class repre­ sented a very aggressive program of concurrent development and deployment, and the project office successfully inte­ grated all the details required to produce serviceable iron­ clads in minimum time. As a single-focus organization, the

"project office" could also be highly responsive to the concerns of the navy's leadership. This may be seen not only in Stimers' ongoing relationship with Fox but in the considerable energy and inventiveness displayed in preparing

Du Font's ironclads for his attack on Charleston and in modifying them afterwards. Second, the "monitor project office" controlled all the details of its ships. Under normal conditions, a ship built by one bureau would be engined by another and armed by a third. If each agency optimized its own systems without regard for how they fit together, or coordinated their efforts imperfectly, the effectiveness of the ship as a whole might be lessened. With a single agency responsible for all parts of the vessel, everything could be integrated to optimize the overall design.

292 Third, the "monitor project office" was uniquely well

placed to provide integrated logistics support for its

ships. Its centralized technical management gave it much more control over the ships' configuration than was common

at the time, which meant that the ships could reasonably be expected to match the drawings on file at the project of­

fice. This, in turn, allowed the development of alteration

"kits," like the pilot house sleeves or the turret base

rings, that reduced the time and effort required to perform

alterations in the field. Similarly, common designs and readily available drawings eased the problem of providing

repair parts to deployed monitors. Involvement in every stage of design and construction allowed project office

personnel to become "monitor specialists" and enabled the

General Superintendent to provide afloat with experts to alter and repair the ships on station.^ Well-trained personnel, intimate knowledge of requirements and close

relations with monitor contractors allowed such highly

successful fleet support operations as the Port Royal Work­ ing Parties, their Hampton Roads counterpart, and the Wee- hawken repair team.

^For example, Inspector Griffin, newly arrived in Port Royal, was able to repair the Passaic on station when it was feared she would have to be sent north to be fixed. Type­ script copy of Lieutenant Commander E. Simpson to Dahlgren, November 8, 1863, Naval Historical Center Operational Ar­ chives, ZB file, s.v. Griffin, Thomas Jefferson (Box 95).

293 Fourth, the "monitor project office" was the central point for collection of feedback and "lessons learned" with regard to the monitors. All of the complaints and difficul­ ties attributed to the ships funneled back to the project office, either directly or through Fox. This provided an excellent opportunity to leam; as Fox wrote, "I like to hear their faults, because it teaches a lesson--Praise never does.""* Despite the division between builders (engineers) and operators (line officers) and despite Ericsson's prickly attitude towards critics, the results of feedback from the fleet could be seen in alterations such as those that strengthened pilot houses and turrets, reduced leakage under the turret bases, and increased the ships' capacity to remove flooding water. There were, however, drawbacks to the "monitor project office" form of organization, including the volume of work the office took on and the lack of independent technical review of its engineering decisions. Both stemmed from a combination of Stimers' personality and the ambiguous posi­ tion of the project office in the navy's organization. The volume of work assigned to or claimed by the pro­ ject office grew dramatically in 1862 and 1863. Originally conceived as a production-oriented organization, the project office expanded to fill the niches that opened in the

294 monitor program. When Ericsson was too busy to perform the detail design of the harbor and river monitors, the project office assumed the duty of turning the master's general plans into detailed drawings. When the deployed monitors required alterations and repairs, the project office assumed the organization and management of the work and the workers.

When the design of the light draft monitors seemed stalled, the project office took it over. Stimers even made designs for a "fast sloop-of-war," to be called the Mercurv.^ Coupled with temporary duty assignments to Port Royal and the demands of the Du Pont-instigated Court of Inquiry, the project office's work load was a killing one. Stimers could not do it all and still do it correctly.

Yet flaws in the General Inspector's character kept him from seeking assistance. Jealous of his "turf" and ambi­ tious for advancement, he would not turn to the established Bureaus for assistance and in fact rebuffed them whenever he could. Neither would he ask Ericsson for help, at first because of Ericsson's egocentric resistance to "any other than himself" designing monitors and then because of a quarrel over the Tippecanoe class gun mountings. Stimers became trapped in the cycle of overwork and cutting corners that is often characterized as "never time to do it right but always time to do it over."

^Stimers to Fox, July 17, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7; Sti­ mers to Fox, July 24, 1863, ibid.

295 Aggravating the problem of Stimers' rejection of bureau assistance was the attitude of the bureau chiefs themselves.

Stimers had gained practical independence from the Bureaus of Construction and Repair and of Steam Engineering, so those bureaus had lost their authority to oversee monitor construction. The bureau chiefs, in turn, washed their hands of Stimers' designs. While the independence and hand­ washing gratified the respective egos of those concerned, they removed an essential portion of an effective "project office" system: the second look. On the policy level, no one in a position of responsibility proposed alternatives to the monitors after the Battle of Hampton Roads. On the technical level, no one in authority double-checked Stimers' designs or Allen's figures ; no one calculated the trim of the harbor and river monitors or the displacement and weights of the light drafts. To be effective, the project office must have authority to make decisions concerning its assigned project, but basing those decisions upon a single source of technical information and opinions is not sound management. Stimers succeeded so well in his autonomy campaign that he gave up the "safety net" that a second technical opinion might have provided.

One major factor was that Stimers exercised influence all out of proportion to his station, influence which he owed purely to his relationship with Fox. Stimers' formal position in the navy command structure was far less exalted

296 than his informal one. Formally, the General Inspector's job was to ensure that the monitors being built met the specifications that others had prepared--a responsible assignment, but not one calculated to make an ambitious man stand out from his contemporaries. Informally, Stimers owned the entire monitor program, from design through con­ struction to in-service repairs.

The bureau chiefs had little practical authority over the ironclad program, but their formal authority, although latent, was a constant threat to Stimers. Also, they had a much more secure institutional base than the General Inspec­ tor. Stimers' position had been established by the Secre­ tary of the Navy at Fox's behest, and could be abolished just as quickly; if nothing else, the office of General Inspector, a wartime expedient, would almost certainly evaporate when the war ended. Contrariwise, the bureaus were permanent and their chiefs' positions were established by law. As a Chief Engineer, Stimers had been ordered to the General Inspectorate by a departmental pen-stroke; he could be sent elsewhere just as easily. The bureau chiefs had been confirmed in their positions by Congress and could not be dismissed lightly. Because he owed his highly influential and visible position entirely to Fox, Stimers would do nothing to jeop­ ardize the relationship that made it possible. His depen­ dence upon Fox colored the technical decisions he made, as

297 shown by his redesign of the Tippecanoe class and his eager­ ness to gratify Fox's desire that every monitor would be one hundred percent up to date when she left her builders' hands. It is quite possible that a bureau chief, more secure in his position and in his direct access to the

Secretary of the Navy, would have at least discussed such issues and could have objected to some of the less defensi­ ble courses the monitor program took under Fox's influence.

A permanent, formally established project office (such as Stimers' proposed Bureau of Iron Clad Steamers) might have prevented or ameliorated the delay and disruption caused by the "continuous improvement" philosophy.

The Bureau of Iron Clad Steamers legislation that Sti­ mers proposed was quite general, perhaps deliberately so.

It did not clearly define the administrative boundaries between the new bureau and the existing ship acquisition bureaus, the Bureaus of Construction and Repair and of Steam Engineering, perhaps to sidestep controversy that might harm its chances of passage. In his letter to Fox, Stimers discussed only Construction and Repair, saying that while Lenthall was in no way incompetent to perform his proper duties, "I think that nothing has ever been more thoroughly demonstrated than that he is unequal to the task of the production of an iron clad vessel." Reminding Fox that

Joseph Smith's Bureau of Yards and Docks had built the first ironclads over Lenthall's opposition, he asked rhetorically,

298 "Afterwards when the demand upon the Bureau of Construction was imperative, what did it produce?" Yet Lenthall was needed, Stimers wrote, because "where one iron clad is being built several wooden ones are projected," a state of affairs that would likely continue "for many years to come perhaps always." The "true remedy" would be a new bureau "devoted especially to this subject."*

Many would have opposed the creation of such a bureau, based on bureaucratic "turf" considerations, professional and personal animosity toward Stimers, and line officer reluctance to see a second bureau run by an engineer, but the proposal's demise was by no means foreordained. In its 1862 reorganization, the navy had acknowledged the need to institutionalize new technoloçry, and the Bureau of Steam

Engineering was the result. A similar move to institution­ alize another new technology seemed distinctly possible.

Three months before, in November 1863, Stimers had recommended that he should be made Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy as a very public way to answer a New York Times edito­ rial attack on his competence and character."' Although Stimers certainly saw himself at the head of the new bureau, his Bureau of Iron Clad Steamers was much less overtly self- serving than his earlier (apparently serious) proposal to be made Engineer-in-Chief. Given the chance, the Bureau of

*Stimers to Fox, February 18, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 9.

"'Stimers to Fox, November 10, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7.

299 Iron Clad Steamers could have corrected a number of prob­ lems. By reintegrating the ironclads into the navy's bureau system, it would have enforced cooperation among the navy's technical bureaus, or at the least ensured that controver­ sies between them would reach the Secretary of the Navy for explicit resolution. By formalizing the General Inspector's informal control of the ironclad program, it would have removed much of the insecurity that drove Stimers' quest for autonomy.

That autonomy had taken a blow in the autumn of 1863 when Admiral Gregory rescinded Stimers' authority to corre­ spond directly with the contractors and Fox had refused to intervene. The General Superintendent evidently kept a close watch on his ambitious subordinate, and as it turned out, he had reason to be suspicious. When Stimers' attempt to regain full control of the ironclad office's correspon­ dence failed, the engineer decided to evade Gregory's order. Although he could not instruct the contractors directly without going through Gregory, he reasoned, he could direct the government inspectors at each contractor's shipyard and have the inspectors direct the contractors. By the end of October 1863 this dodge had come to Gregory's attention.

The Admiral delivered a strong rebuke to Stimers, writing, "I can only consider the course, as an evasion of the orders

300 of the Department of which I cannot approve. . . . "® In essence, Gregory told Stimers that he expected the General

Inspector to follow the procedures for dealing with contrac­ tors both in letter and in spirit.

This was not the first time that Gregory had shown impatience with Stimers' autonomy. When the war began, the old sailor had sought command at sea but was denied; his promotion to Rear Admiral on the Retired List apparently brought him little pleasure, accompanied as it was by shore duty.® Gregory had been in the navy for over fifty-two years and had been a captain for twenty-four by the time he became General Superintendent of Ironclads in 1852. At that time, Stimers had served for thirteen years and had been a chief engineer, equivalent to a line commander, for less than four. A less-dedicated man than Gregory could readily have allowed himself to be consumed by resentment of the amount of influence wielded by so junior an officer, and an engineer at that. It is to Gregory's great credit that he worked so well for so long in such an uncomfortable position relative to his nominal assistant.

By the autumn of 1863, though, Gregory's tolerance had begun to wear thin. In part this was from overwork, the strain of intense effort on a frame that had already

^Gregory to Stimers, October 28, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 13: 25.

^Gregory testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 73.

301 exceeded its allotted three-score years and ten. Gregory wrote Fox in June of 1863 that he was "a very tired mortal," and on several occasions in 1863 and 1864 the General Super­ intendent had to curtail his activities due to illness.

Although this study has dealt exclusively with ironclads, and although Stimers' own duties included monitor ironclads only, Gregory's responsibilities extended much farther.

Other programs such as the wooden gunboats required his attention. He wrote in April 1863, "The side wheelers are hatching out, like a brood of young ducks, all quacking for something to be done for them."^^

In larger part, however, Gregory's impatience was probably due to Stimers' constant efforts to enlarge his own authority and autonomy. Despite the initial intent that

Gregory would manage the personnel of the inspectorate, Stimers had added that task to the inspection, design, alteration and repair duties already mentioned.^ Stimers exercised great influence over the assignment of naval engineers, both to positions in the inspectorate and to

^Gregory to Fox, June 15, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 6. Gregory's and Stimers' letters to Fox mention sev­ eral occasions of illness.

“Gregory to Fox, April 13, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 6. “Deposition of Alban C. Stimers, August 11, 18, and 19, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

302 afloat duties aboard the monitors.In this context, for example, Gregory noted in April 1863 that he had too few engineers "to look out properly for all the work going on" but "I have been shuffling along, waiting for General Sti­ mers' return to have the ranks filled. . .

Stimers had already turned back one serious challenge to his authority, at the cost of publicly embarrassing

Gregory. In early June 1863, Chief Engineer James W. King wrote Fox of his "considerable anxiety" about the western monitors and suggested that he could be "much more valuable as Supervising Engineer for all vessels under construction on the Western Waters." Fox consulted Gregory, who opined without asking Stimers that such an arrangement would bring many advantages, and on June 26, Gregory appointed King "Genl. Insp. of all the Iron Clad Vessels now under con­ tracts [sic] at St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh," reporting directly to Gregory.^®

Stimers reacted strongly, traveling promptly to Wash­ ington "under considerable excitement" to talk to Fox.

^For representative correspondence, Stimers to Fox, October 2, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4; Fox to Stimers, May 4, 1863, Private, ibid.. Box 5A; Stimers to Fox, July 17, 1863, ibid., Box 7; Stimers to Fox, August 27, 1863, ibid.; Sti­ mers to Fox, September 28, 1863, ibid.; Stimers to Fox, October 26, 1863, ibid.

^“Gregory to Fox, April 16, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 6.

^^King to Fox, June 4, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7; Gregory to Fox, June 15, 1863, Private, ibid.. Box 6; Gregory to King, June 26, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 123 5, 11: 66.

303 Gregory wrote that Stimers convinced him, "a joint of his tail had been cut off, occasioning considerable agony."

Although Gregory continued to support the idea of a General Inspector for the western vessels, he advised Fox that Sti­ mers' "affection for the monitors is so intense--that he cannot bear the least interference with whatever concerns them. ..." and recommended that Fox gratify Stimers to add to the General Inspector's happiness and efficiency.^® Gregory soon received an order that defined King's position as subordinate to that of Stimers, so the Admiral had to revoke his orders to King.^"' Despite his assertion of indifference, one suspects the episode chafed Gregory.

Stimers had clearly become accustomed to having his own way in technical matters. In October 1863 a board of offi­ cers reviewed the anchor arrangements of the Tippecanoe class and decided that only one of the two anchor chains could be protected by armor. Stimers, the minority in a two to one decision, disagreed with the board's findings and apparently refused to apply them, whereupon Gregory unequiv­ ocally directed compliance in another strongly worded let­ ter.Fox's failure to restore Stimers' authority to

^®Gregory to Fox, June 27, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 6. ^"'Gregory to King, July 3, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 123 5, 11: 69.

'^^Gregory to Stimers, October 28, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 13: 25. Fox agreed with the majority, calling Sti­ mers ' plan "certainly impracticable." Fox to Ericsson,

304 correspond directly with contractors combined with Gregory's two strong letters of October 28, 1863, should have warned Stimers that he was overreaching--that his influence was no longer waxing.

It was in this climate that Fox received Stimers' proposal to create a Bureau of Ironclad Steamers. The

Assistant Secretary does not appear to have commented upon it immediately. One reason was probably that the Tippecanoe class ships, in spite of their recent progress, were still a year overdue and hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget. A second reason was that Stimers' other major construction program, the light draft monitors, was also overdue and over budget.

The light drafts, ordered in the spring of 1863, were the last monitors for which the Civil War navy contracted.

In mid-May 1863, Stimers had recommended building one more harbor and river monitor to make a round ten of the Tippe­ canoe class and no more than twenty light drafts, because, "Even this number disturbs the prices of both labor and iron by carrying the demand considerably above the supply."i* Welles apparently concurred with these second thoughts, for Fox told Stimers in early June 1863, "We have given out 20 light drafts and that ends the list. The Secretary has decided not to build any more monitors excepting the 15 inch

October 2, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

^Stimers to Fox, May 17, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7.

305 double turret ones in the Navy Yard. . . In the event, the twenty light drafts did more than disturb the prices of labor and iron. They toppled Stimers, mortified Fox, embarrassed Welles, and set the navy's acquisition system back in a fashion that required decades to recoup.

Ericsson's original conception had been of a simple iron hull surrounded by a ram-proof wooden raft and moved by the simplest possible machinery, but that original goal of obtaining a light draft vessel quickly was lost in Stimers' quest for a technically elegant design. After the General

Inspector finished "gold-plating" them, the light drafts were much larger and more complex than Ericsson intended and would take far longer to build than the 90 days Ericsson had estimated.The navy had planned to provide an outline and allow each contractor to develop his own detail design, but the complexity that Stimers introduced carried technical and financial risks that deterred contractors from making their own plans.22 Waiting for the navy's plans further delayed

2°Fo x to Stimers, June 3, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 5A. ^Ericsson to Fox, October 5, 1862, Private, Fox Pa­ pers .

22a s Stimers wrote to Nelson Curtis of Boston, "For some reason, which is probably satisfactory to you, you did not avail yourselves of this but waited always for the drawings to be sent you from this office. This has been the case generally, a few only writing for permission to make alterations from my plans after they had received them." Stimers to Nelson Curtis, Atlantic Works, Boston, February 29, 1863, enclosure to Stimers to Fox, February 29, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 9.

306 construction, and the ships that Fox hoped to have for the autumn of 1863 were still under construction six months later. Then, in the spring of 1864, a crisis arose in the North Carolina sounds that in turn precipitated a crisis in the monitor program.

This study has not addressed Confederate ironclad building except in passing, but it continued throughout the war at a pace limited by the Confederacy's underdeveloped metalworking industries and grossly inadequate transporta­ tion system.^ After an unsuccessful strategic "first phase" in which the Confederacy built ironclads intended to break the Union blockade, the Confederate Navy entered a "second phase" in which harbor defense was paramount.

Although the "second phase," like the first, included seago­ ing ironclads to break the blockade and fast cruisers to prey on Union shipping, both of these types of second-phase ships would be built in Europe. Home-built ironclads would operate in coastal waters as "moveable forts," their primary mission being local defense.^* One such home-built ironclad was CSS Albemarle. under construction at Edwards Ferry,

North Carolina, on the Roanoke River.

Among other handicaps, no city in the Confederacy had the sort of urban "agglomeration of specialists" that ex­ isted in cities all across the North. ^‘‘Raimondo Luraghi, A Historv of the Confederate N a w (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 189-90.

307 Albemarle was laid down in late 1862. She made halting progress over the next year and a half and on April 16, 1864, was commissioned in the Confederate Na vy. As Albe­ marle neared completion in the spring of 1864, Union leaders reacted with concern to the threat posed to Union control of

North Carolina waters. The Confederate ram--slow, mechani­ cally unreliable and poorly armed and armored--would stand little chance against a monitor. Unfortunately for the Fédérais, however, the water was too shallow for any of the existing Union ironclads. Even the Passaic class drew ten to twelve feet, while the Albemarle drew only six. The sounds and rivers of North Carolina were exactly the sort of areas for which the light draft monitors had been designed--but none of the light drafts were finished. In fact, in February 1864, none had even been launched.

Fox was clearly concerned about the delays. Stimers' proposal for the Bureau of Iron Clad Steamers arrived on his desk at about the same time as a complaining letter from Nelson Curtis' Atlantic Works in Boston, who was building one of the light drafts. The two combined to elicit a most revealing cri de coeur from Fox. The letter from Curtis, he wrote, "foreshadows delays, those horrible bills for addi­ tions and improvements and everlasting alterations, all of which have cursed our cause and our Department." More than melancholy, the construction delays were fatal--"fatal to

^"Still, Iron Afloat. 91, 96, 157.

308 the iron-dads, to the monitors, to the establishment of any proposition such as you have presented. . . . " The light drafts would not be done in time for the summer campaign,

"though six of them would have given us the vitals of the

South. What is the reason?--additions, alterations and improvements."

Asserting that the navy should have "taken a lesson from the rebels and put our vessels together cheaply and simply, " Fox summed up the results of "continuous improve­ ment" on the monitor program when he wrote,

The first monitor did more than all the others put together, because she was in time, and if the Department had made no attempts to improve her, for which I take all the blame, but had confined itself to repeating such a cheap class of admira­ ble vessels, what success would have crowned our efforts ! Now I repent in bitterness of disap­ pointment, more especially as everything I hear from the light-drafts is, that they are coming out fine made vessels, but alas! too late.^®

He went on to say that the "wish of my heart" was for

"twelve of the first monitors and twelve light drafts, upon which not a single alteration, addition or improvement had been added." Although the reasons for the delays and cost overruns might appear clear to the professional mind, "to us it comes like the sudden destruction of bright hopes."

Sending Stimers' Bureau proposal to Congress would only result in "another committee of investigation." Fox blamed

^®Fox to Stimers, February 25, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 8.

309 himself for the everlasting alterations, "because I could and ought to have prevented it."^’

Despite Fox's apportionment of blame to himself, Sti­ mers felt the rebuke keenly. He had just learned that the new recoil absorbers Ericsson had designed for the Tippecanoe class had failed under test, which had made

Stimers "so very blue that your [Fox's] letter could depress me no further." Looking insofar as possible on the bright side, the General Inspector reflected that because the

Southern ports were filled with torpedoes and obstructions,

"beyond maintaining the blockade the Navy can do very little toward shortening the present war even if all our iron dads were done." The ships had already prevented European inter­ vention, but in expectation of having to fight European navies sooner or later, "we may yet be thankful that we did not impair the efficiency of these new and powerful vessels" by attempting to enter Southern ports with them. Besides this strained attempt to put the best face on construction delays, Stimers told Fox that the cost of the improvements was "very light compared with the efficiency which they will add" and pressed his Bureau proposal, writ­ ing that it would tend to remove most of the difficulties the navy had experienced and "would save us some very bitter disappointments in the future." Although grateful for Fox's

^'^Fox to Stimers, February 25, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 8.

310 "nobleness" in taking the blame for delay, Stimers wrote,

"as you followed my advice with regard to the vessels build­ ing this removed none of the sting. . . . Almost buried in Stimers' letter was the admission that he and Ericsson had differed over the gun carriages of the Tippecanoe class, causing "a difficulty . . . which will I fear prevent any further personal intercourse between us.

Sometime in early March 1864 Stimers was sent to Boston to take personal charge of the light-draft monitor Chimo and to hurry her to completion, probably as a result of Fox's concern about the threat the Albemarle posed in the North Carolina sounds. Stimers took his assistant, Theodore

Allen, with him to assist. Allen later recalled that labor was very scarce, testifying that they could not obtain it in

Boston even by paying higher wages than the neighboring yard, and they had to import skilled workmen from New

York.^ Chimo was not yet launched when Albemarle was

^®Stimers to Fox, February 29, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 9 (Stimers' emphasis). ^®Stimers told Fox that Ericsson would blame the fail­ ure upon Stimers; he was correct. See Ericsson to Fox, February 27, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 8, in which the inventor asserted that Stimers did not follow his drawings.

^°This was apparently at Stimers' own instigation, since Gregory testified in 1865 that Stimers "proposed to go to Boston," pledging to complete the Chimo in one month. Gregory was skeptical, but "if anybody could do it I sup­ posed he could." Gregory testimony, "Light Draught Moni­ tors , " 75 . ^‘Deposition of Theodore Allen, August 11, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. The second Port

311 commissioned on April 16, 1864. After an engagement with

Federal gunboats on April 19, Albemarle joined Confederate General Robert F. Hoke's troops on April 20 to capture Plymouth, North Carolina.

The resulting uproar reached the Navy Department.

Since the light drafts werestill not available. Fox immedi­ ately entreated Ericsson todevelop a system of camels, or pontoons, to lift a Passaic class monitor enough to enter the Sounds and engage the Confederate ironclad. This scheme came to naught. " Albemarle remained at Plymouth until she set off for New Bern, North Carolina, but on May 5, 1864, she was engaged by several wooden gunboats and driven back to Plymouth. The redeployment of Confederate troops to meet Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's attacks in Virginia brought an end to Confederate plans to retake New Bern, but this was not immediately apparent to the Union. Albemarle remained at Plymouth to defend the town and to threaten

Federal control of the sounds, and Fox and Stimers continued

Royal Working Party was recalled by Stimers in late April. It would have returned about the time Chimo was launched, so the mechanics Stimers obtained from New York could not have been the ones who participated in the second Port Royal Working Party. Stimers to Griffin, April 20, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 1252, 2 : 3792. "^Still, Iron Afloat. 91, 96, 157-165. "Fox to Ericsson, 22, 23, 24, and 2 8 April 1864; Welles Papers, Container 8, Letterbook March 17-June 27, 1864, 109, 117, 119, 135. It is an excellent example of Fox's enthusiasms, quickly developed and as quickly fading.

312 to force the completion of a light draft monitor to meet the threat and help retake Plymouth.

March and April 1864 were difficult months for Stimers, during which he apparently had little correspondence with

Fox. What he had was not pleasant; Fox wrote in late April railing about bad inspection on the light draft monitor Naubuc and asserting, "Not an inspecting engineer has been reported for passing bad work, yet not a vessel has gone out that has not been grossly neglected. " Stimers replied that he had no time to answer in detail, but wrote "because I suppose you would regard my silence as a confession of the delinquency as charged."^® It was clear that Stimers' relationship with Fox, based in great part upon Fox's as­ sessment of Stimers as a man who got things done, was in jeopardy. Swift's launch of the Catawba on April 13 was good news for Stimers, but it was tempered by the knowledge that it was more than a year overdue. By dint of much exertion, Stimers and Allen managed to get the Chimo down the ways on May 5, 1864. At that point

Stimers' prediction of bitter disappointment began to come true, albeit in a different way than he had expected. The newly launched ship, still missing her turret, pilot house, guns, ammunition, coal and stores, had 37 inches of

34 Still, Iron Afloat. 162-65, 212-13. ^^Fox to Stimers, April 23, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 8; Stimers to Fox, May 2, 1864, ibid.. Box 9.

313 freeboard forward and 19 inches aft. As Aquila Adams, her builder, later noted, "it was thought that she drew more water than was anticipated, but they had not sufficient data at that time to tell positively. . . . As Stimers pushed the vessel on toward completion, data accumulated, and the first official notification of the problem appears to have come on May 31, when Gregory advised Welles, "It is a matter of doubt whether she will prove an efficient vessel, in consequence of the great draft of water. . . .

"Great draft" was an understatement for what has since come to be known as the "light draft monitor fiasco." In short, when equipped for combat the light draft monitors would not float.

Completed, with all coal, stores and ammunition, the light drafts were intended to have 15 inches of freeboard. Shipbuilder Adams' actual measurements, with less than a full supply of coal and no ammunition on board, showed 8 inches of freeboard at Chimo's bow--but her stern was 3 or 4 inches under water. Adding the ammunition would have brought the edge of her deck level with the water all along, or perhaps submerged it a bit; only the arched portion of

^®Aquila Adams testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 12. ^''Gregory to Welles, May 31, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 24: 35-36.

314 the deck along the ship's fore-and-aft centerline would have been out of the water. Naval Constructor W. L. Hanscom, who found the stem at 7 inches above water and the stern 1 inch under water when he measured the ship, observed that depend­ ing on that arched portion was, "Rather a small margin for a man to go to sea with."^ Casco, launched shortly after

Chimo by Adams' Boston competitor Nelson Curtis, displayed the same excessive draft. Not only were the light draft vessels far behind schedule, when completed they would likely sink. The millions spent for the twenty ships had been wasted.

The consequences of the failure spread widely. For Stimers, the blow was professionally fatal. He wrote pri­ vately to Fox on May 31, 1864, again straining to put the best face upon matters. Alluding to past successes the

General Inspector observed, "The Light Drafts will have to do as the other Monitors have done--fight their way into favor." Grasping at straws, Stimers resorted to "ifs": "If they were six inches more out of water . . . they would be decidedly the best vessels we have for this war. Unfor­ tunately, additional freeboard was beyond Stimers' grasp. Events began to unfold quickly as the magnitude of the problem became evident. The difficulties were twofold:

^®Fox to Benjamin F . Wade, December 15, 1864, in "Light Draught Monitors," 3-5; Aquila Adams testimony, ibid., 12- 13; Naval Constructor W. L. Hanscom testimony, ibid., 5-6.

^Stimers to Fox, May 31, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 9.

315 first, how to deal with the technical matter of ships that would not float; second, how to deal with the political fallout of a multi-million dollar mistake. Gregory visited

Washington on June 3, 1864, where Fox advised him to consult with Chief Engineers King and William W. W. Wood and First

Assistant Engineer Isaac Newton, and then to discuss the matter with Ericsson. Fox wrote Ericsson to ask him to help make the light drafts serviceable, help which Ericsson agreed to give.'*® The result was a meeting at Ericsson's house, sometime between June 4 and 7, involving Gregory,

King, Ericsson, and Stimers.

Stimers had already traveled from Boston to New York to call upon Ericsson. He wrote Fox on June 8, 1864, that he had tried to repair his relations with Ericsson but that the inventor rebuffed him. Stimers asserted that Ericsson's claim to have been insulted was "only an excuse to enable him to do everything in his power to crush what he chooses to consider a formidable rival," i.e., Stimers himself. During the hour and a half visit, Stimers was "strongly impressed" by Ericsson's intent to bring Fox to grief be­ cause the Assistant Secretary had allowed an engineer other than Ericsson to design monitors. Ericsson, wrote the General Inspector, decried Fox's "utter incompetency"; the

'‘“Gregory testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 75-76; Fox to Gregory, June 3, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 8; Ericsson to Fox, June 4, 1864, ibid. Fox to Gregory, June 15, 1864, Unofficial, Welles Papers, Container 8, Letterbook March 17 - June 27, 1864, 271.

316 inventor was "strongly committed" to the failure of the light drafts and would "stoop to anything under Heaven which he considers would not disgrace him" to ensure that Fox would be disgraced and Stimers "utterly annihilated.

Stimers then wrote of the meeting with Gregory, King, and Ericsson, reporting that "after some squirming about"

Ericsson said he could not express himself fully in Stimers' presence. Stimers attributed this to Ericsson's desire to undercut him, but since the gathering was held at Ericsson's house, he had to depart. Although he had not heard the result of the conference, Stimers wrote, he foresaw "that the vessels were to be ruined and that great amounts of money were to be expended in making the changes necessary to ruin them." Accordingly, he "studied out" a plan to alter the unlaunched light drafts to carry "all the weights origi­ nally intended or rather without removing weights to affect the draft" with 18 inches of freeboard. Stimers felt himself to be in desperate straits, and he resorted to desperate measures to preserve himself. His letter of June 8 seems to have been an attempt to drive a wedge between Ericsson and Fox. First, it attributed to

Ericsson a degree of hostility and bitterness toward Fox that from the record simply did not exist. Second, it

“^Stimers to Fox, June 8, 1864, Confidential, from Boston, Fox Papers, Box 9. ^Stimers to Fox, June 8, 1864, Confidential, from Boston, Fox Papers, Box 9.

317 attempted to discredit in advance any technical solution

that Ericsson might put forward. Third, it promised wonder­

ful things of Stimers' own design, "Stimers and Fox against the world again," was the unspoken message, "stick with me because I can deliver."

The messages Fox (and Welles) received were different,

in part because of the intersection of the political and the technical. The failure was technical--a miscalculation of a cumbersome but simple problem in --but the result was also political. The ships might be made useful, but whatever technical remedy the navy chose, it would cost a great deal of money and time, which in turn would lay the

Navy Department open to attack from enemies such as Du Pont and his partisans. Although Fox privately took overall responsibility for the monitor program, he was a political appointee and not a technical expert. Stimers was the expert, and it was he who had assured the Assistant Secre­ tary that the light draft design was technically sound. As the responsible party in a failure of such magnitude, Sti­ mers would clearly have to suffer serious professional consequences. One suspects that Stimers' intemperate letter of June 8 hastened rather than retarded his departure. Welles sent Fox to Boston to see the two light drafts himself, telling him to consult with Gregory before

318 returning. Welles wanted "prompt measures" to remedy the mistakes, which he called "serious miscalculations--an attempt to get too much in too small a space. ..." There was now, the Secretary wrote, "no alternative but to do what is possible," and Stimers "must not be tenacious in holding on to admitted errors.

Stimers returned to New York sometime after June 8 and went from there to Washington on June 14, 1864, to present his plan to fix the light drafts. He heard just before he arrived that he had been removed from the office of General

Inspector and replaced by Chief Engineer Wood, but inter­ preted Fox's comments to mean that the office itself had been abolished, that there would be no General Inspector.

When he arrived back in New York to find that the office had not been abolished and that Wood had been appointed to it,

Stimers' prickly temper and suspicious nature showed again. Wood's conduct was insulting, Stimers wrote, and Wood had been working industriously for over a year to undermine Sti­ mers; accordingly, Stimers could not work under Wood.

Displaying a noteworthy element of wishful thinking, Stimers proposed to salve his ego by dividing the General

‘‘^Welles to Fox, June 10, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 9. Fox faulted Stimers for "pushing the Chimo to completion after launching, when he ought to have known that she was defi­ cient in displacement." Fox to Gregory, June 15, 1864, Unofficial, Welles Papers, Container 8, Letterbook March 17 - June 27, 1864, 271.

319 Inspector's responsibilities: since there was "no complaint" against the harbor and river monitors, Stimers could super­ vise those ships directly under Admiral Gregory while Wood took over responsibility for the light drafts.

Besides writing to Fox, Stimers protested to Gregory that the Navy Department's order had meant to abolish the position of General Inspector in name but leave Stimers in charge of the monitor program in fact. Gregory asked Fox for clarification, saying that Stimers claimed the order was intended to "house his horn of 'General Inspector' in the present squall of disappointment, and leave him still to direct the Iron Glads by the tail--instead of the head as heretofore." Gregory viewed the order as removing Stimers, not removing the position.Fox apparently confirmed

Gregory's interpretation, since on June 17, the axe finally fell and Stimers was relieved by Wood. In the meantime, Stimers had characteristically continued to act as General Inspector. In his June 17 letter to Stimers, Gregory wrote, "The suspension . . . did not authorize you to exer­ cise any further jurisdiction over the business of that office--it was merely to consider the constructure you were

"Stimers to Fox, June 16, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 9. ‘‘^Gregory to Fox, June 16, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 8.

^'Gregory had earlier written that Stimers, "keeps me as ignorant as he possibly can of his doings--considering himself as the supreme director and dictator in all mat­ ters." Gregory to Lenthall, April 12, 1864, typescript, NARG 45, Subject File AC.

320 pleased to view the orders of the Hon. Sec. of the Navy removing you. Having done so, I find this the only proper course. With Stimers' removal, the position of General

Inspector lost the autonomy it had carried for the preceding two years.

Stimers' removal, however, did not change the situation in the shipyards. By mid-June 1864, the navy had completed four of the Tippecanoe class; three more were afloat but two had not yet been launched. Of the light drafts, Chimo.

Casco and Tunxis had been launched but work had been ordered stopped on the other seventeen while the navy decided what to do. Ericsson assisted in the effort to save the light drafts, and the ships were modified in two ways. The five most nearly completed, including Casco and Chimo. were finished as "torpedo boats," with reduced armor and no turrets, although with a top speed of only 5 knots they were not much use for torpedo work. The side frames of the others were extended to deepen the hull 22 inches, which gave them enough buoyancy to carry their two XI-inch guns without sinking. This alteration, which cost an average of $84,000 per ship, was applied to Swift's Klamath and Yuma and to Snowdon & Mason's Umpoua. It delayed their

''^Gregory to Wood, June 15, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 20: 44; Gregory to Stimers, June 15, 1864, ibid.; Gregory to Stimers, June 17, 1864, ibid., 20: 45. Stimers' reluctance to face squarely the circumstances of his relief is under­ standable; detachment for cause is both professionally humiliating and personally shattering for a naval officer, and not everyone can maintain composure during the process.

321 construction for several months.‘‘® Meanwhile, the menace of the Albemarle had been addressed in a fashion that--embar­

rassingly enough for Fox and Stimers--had nothing to do with monitors, light draft or otherwise. In a daring attack on

October 27, 1864, Lieutenant William B. Cushing sank the

Confederate ironclad with a spar torpedo mounted on a steam launch. 4*

With so much expense involved, Stimers' professional demise was insufficient in itself to head off criticism. The powerful Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War investigated the episode, one of the few Congressional

investigations of the navy conducted during the war. The

Joint Committee found that the proximate causes of the failure were the use of green timber, miscalculation of weights and displacement, and "additions and alterations made in the plans. Engineer Allen, who actually made the

^Stimers and Griffin were sent to Chester, Pennsylva­ nia, to supervise the alteration and strengthening of the light draft monitor Tunxis. Ericsson's biographer reported, without giving a source, "When [Stimers] reported on board he was confronted by an inscription on a plate set into the vessel, which declared that she was built by Reaney Son & Archbold, Chester, Pa., 'from designs prepared by Alban C. Stimers, Chief Engineer of the United States Navy.' Mr. Stimers was evidently not proud of this record, for he was discovered at work one day with a cold chisel cutting his name out of the plate." Church, Life of Ericsson. 2: 30. ■‘^For a view of Albemarle's exploits as well as Cush­ ing's, Ralph J. Roske and Charles Van Doren, Lincoln's Commando: The Biography of Commander W. B. Cushing. U. S. N. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 193-252.

^Seasoned oak weighed 53 pounds per cubic foot, while green oak, the only kind available in the country, weighed

322 calculations, may have made computational errors as well.

Allen took a good deal of blame for his mistakes, but the

Committee faulted Stimers for his failure to check Allen's work and faulted the Navy Department as "unwise" to order so many ships to the same plan without building a prototype.

The underlying difficulties, however, were those dis­ cussed above. When the ships were designed, Stimers' desire to please Fox and his urge to create the best possible ship led him to overcomplicate and overload the vessels. After­ wards, Stimers himself was too overloaded with work to take the time to verify Allen's calculations, and there was no technical "second look" to ensure against error. During the 1865 hearings, Stimers asserted that he had consulted with Ericsson, Lenthall and Isherwood and that he had asked Lenthall to verify Allen's calculations, which Lenthall refused to do. Isherwood and Lenthall, he claimed, "did not believe in iron-clads, and especially in the monitors . . . they were opposed to the whole thing, and lent no assistance

64 pounds per cubic foot, and a good deal was used in the extensive wooden "raft" of the vessels. The 1 inch iron plates used averaged some ten percent heavier than expected. Chief Engineer Eben Hoyt testimony, "Light Draught Moni­ tors, " 34-35, 39. Stimers gave the figure of 70 pounds per cubic foot, leading to a difference in draft of 3 inches for the oak alone. Stimers testimony, ibid., 96-97. On aver­ age, nominal 1 inch plate would weigh 40 pounds per square foot, with some plates a bit thicker and some a bit thinner. Stimers vociferously insisted that every plate meet the 1 inch minimum thickness, so thinner plates were rejected, driving up the average thickness and the average weight. The problem was exacerbated because rolling mills pressed by wartime demand could not maintain close tolerances.

323 to it." Stimers testified, "I always felt that it was a regular fight--that we had to conquer [the bureaus] before we could get them to do anything." Stimers also tried hard to dissociate himself from the plans, claiming, "Of all this work, it was held that Captain Ericsson was the designer, and

I the general inspector, until the light-draught monitors were accounted failures, when it was published throughout the country that I was the designer of them.

This self-serving testimony shows Stimers at his worst, doing his utmost to squirm out from under the responsibility he was once so eager to acquire. A review of Stimers' cor­ respondence, for example, makes it clear that he claimed the light draft design as his own until the failure of the vessels made it expedient to run for cover.Lenthall and Isherwood emphatically denied Stimers' claims that they were

"always inimical to these vessels," and the evidence sup­ ports their position. For example, Stimers asserted before

Congress that Isherwood refused to provide naval engineers to serve as inspectors; the General Inspector's extensive correspondence with Fox about personnel assignments, not

“Stimers testimony, "Light Draught Monitors," 93, 103; 95.

“To give two of many examples, Ericsson advised Fox before the light draft contracts were let in March 1863 that he had had nothing to do with them, and Stimers himself referred possessively to "my plans" as late as February 1864 in a letter that he copied to Fox. Ericsson to Welles, February 24, 1863, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M124, roll 435: 67; Stimers to Nelson Curtis, Atlantic Works, Boston, Febru­ ary 29, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 9.

324 only to inspection positions but to monitors afloat, belies this." Fox made Isherwood's lack of influence explicit in a letter in which he noted that Isherwood's involvement was limited to having his clerk write the engineers' orders. "I doubt," Fox wrote, "the propriety of Mr. Stimers putting on to Isherwood's shoulders any 'malign influence' against the

Monitor fleet."" Similarly, Lenthall and Isherwood had consistently supported ironclad vessels at least since the "Bureau" design of 1861.

While Isherwood was certainly a controversial figure within the navy and without, neither he nor Lenthall appear to have actively displayed "animus" toward the monitor program. One major reason was that the monitors had the unwavering support of Assistant Secretary Fox, who would have taken prompt and firm action to suppress any resistance or foot-dragging by the bureau chiefs. A second was that

®^The free flow of engineers into the inspectorate reversed only after Stimers' fall from grace. In directing Stimers to send Griffin back to New York, Gregory noted, "So many of the Engineers & Inspectors have recently been de­ tached, that he cannot be spared longer." Gregory to Sti­ mers, August 15, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 20: 52.

^'‘Fo x to Ericsson, December 30, 1862, Unofficial, typescript. Fox Papers, Box 3. Fox noted, "Mr. Stimers and Mr. Isherwood belong to a military family and it is impossi­ ble for the former, to talk as openly about the latter, as the Officers tell me Stimers does, without laying himself liable to be called upon to prove all he said." Stimers got at least a fair share of naval engineers for inspection positions, many of whom were front-runners in their corps. Loring, King, and Wood, for example, each rose to the posi­ tion of Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy.

325 both Isherwood and Lenthall were loyal to Welles and to the

Union cause; they would not deliberately obstruct either. To be sure, neither Lenthall nor Isherwood were saints.

Both were seasoned bureaucrats as well as technical experts,

and while they would not actively oppose Stimers, they were perfectly willing to let him fail on his own. As Welles

told his diary, Lenthall and Isherwood "culpably withheld from me information of what was being done--were vexed with

Fox and Stimers .... because a slight had been shown

them." The bureau chiefs, Welles wrote, "failed in their

duty in not informing me. I so told them and they each admitted it."®® Yet Stimers, whom Welles described as "in­ toxicated, overloaded with vanity, " and "more weak than wicked, and yet not devoid of talents," had also failed in

his duty.®® His failure brought the project office system

down with him.

Fox's change of heart about "additions, alterations and

improvements" came too late to make much difference to the western shipbuilders--for them, the damage in terms of delay, disruption and added expense was already done. Catawba and Oneota. launched in April and May respectively.

®®Welles, Diary, entry for August 2, 1865, 2: 350-51. Isherwood's biographer, whose assessment favors the Engineer-in-Chief, calls Isherwood's behavior selfish and agrees that he permitted his personal feelings to overcome his sense of duty. Sloan, Beniamin Franklin Isherwood. 77,

®®Welles, Diary, entry for August 2, 1865, 2: 349-51.

326 were well along in their fitting out. Tippecanoe and Mana- vunk. which had missed the spring rise in the river, pro­ ceeded much more slowly. Swift tested Catawba's boilers and machinery on October 15, 1864, and in late October Loring advised Wood that the ship's guns should be sent from Pitts­ burgh within two w e e k s . Manavunk was launched on December 18, 1864, and Tippecanoe followed on the same rise of the river on December 22. All nine of the class had now been launched but only eight remained afloat; Tecumseh had been sunk by a Confederate torpedo in August 1864.

Catawba and Oneota were close to completion, so close that Loring reported that they would go downriver on the

December rise to be completed at Mound City. Insufficient water at Louisville prevented this, however, and the ships remained in Cincinnati.®® Severe cold and frequent snow­ falls in January interfered with outdoor work, and the drift ice in the river was so heavy that Catawba. moored outboard of Oneota, had to keep steam up for some days in case she needed her engines in an emergency.Slow progress contin­ ued through February, but in early March, another seasonal rise in the Ohio River caused a flurry of activity.

®^Loring to Wood, October 15, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba ; Loring to Wood, October 27, 1864, ibid.

®®Loring to Wood, December 20 and 26, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba.

®®Local Inspector William Alder to Wood, January 31, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 68, 10: 190.

327 When it came. Swift's two ships were ready to go. They departed under their own steam on March 2, arriving at Mound

City on March 7, 1864.®° Tippecanoe was not nearly as ready as Swift's ships, but Greenwood dared not miss the opportu­

nity to take the ship downriver; 1863 and 1864 had seen the

lowest river levels in years and he could not take the

chance that shallow conditions would continue. Tippecanoe departed on March 10 under tow and arrived at Mew Albany, Indiana, on March 14.®^

Farther upriver at Pittsburgh, Manavunk's departure was

even more hurried than Tippecanoe's . On March 5, a big rise out of the Monongahela tore Manavunk loose from her moor­ ings, and she drifted some ways down river before her anchor

caught and held her. Two small towboats made no progress against the current until the larger towboat Panther arrived

to return the monitor to her berth. On March 6, Panther again took Manavunk in tow and headed downriver for Mound

City, where she arrived on March 11, 1865." In addition to

®°Loring to Wood, March 2 and March 10, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba ; Loring to Wood, March 14, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 68, 10: 70, 71.

®^Loring to Wood, March 14, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Tippecanoe ; King to Welles via Gregory, April 20, 1865, ibid.

®^Deposition of Captain R. Wilson Cowan, October 5, 1891, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US. Cowan was the engineer of the Panther.

328 the $7,000 Snowdon & Mason paid for the Panther's trip, they had to send some 400 tons of material as freight."

Catawba and Oneota were finished in late May, and each made two trial trips. The inspection board, headed by Com­ modore J. M. Livingston, reported to Gregory that the work­ manship was good and the machinery "first quality." The vessels were "greatly admired here for their beauty of workmanship, good taste and economy of arrangement."" On

June 23, 1865, Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Commander Francis S. Wells was appointed to take charge of the two ships and the contractors' men returned to Cincinnati. The vessels were moved some six miles from the Mound City Naval Station to a point where the water was deep enough for their safety and the navy took over shipkeeping and security.®^

Manavunk was the next of the Tippecanoe class to be completed. A naval board observed her trial on September 27, 1865, and reported that "all worked admirably." The board opined that the ship was the equal of Catawba or

"Deposition of Joseph S. Kirk, late General Manager for Snowdon & Mason, May 30, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US. Kirk said $8,000 for the towing, Cowan of the Panther said $7,000. ®‘‘J. M. Livingston to Gregory, June 10, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba.

"Livingston to Wells, June 23, 1865, NARG 45, Entry 452, 2: 578; Edward A. Jenks to Livingston, July 10, 1865, NARG 45, Entry 453, Letters Received by the Commandant of Mound City Naval Station, 3: 209.

329 Oneota. "if not superior," and the ship was accepted.** The workmen who returned to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh probably resumed work on the light draft monitors their firms were building. In Cincinnati, Swift/Niles had launched Klamath on April 20, 1865, and Yuma on May 30, 1865, both from the

Hambleton shipyard just upriver from Litherbury's establish­ ment.*"' By this time, monitor launchings had become "old hat" in the Queen City. Catawba. the first Cincinnati monitor to be launched, had merited front page coverage in the Cincinnati Dailv Commercial. A month later, Oneota's page two article was about one-fifth as long, and Tippecanoe in her turn received only a paragraph. Yuma, the last of the five Cincinnati ships to be launched, had to make do with a single sentence, buried next to a report that the towboat Allecrhenv Belle No. 4 had been sent to pick up a load of corn.** In Pittsburgh, Snowdon & Mason launched the Umpqua. the last of the western monitors, on December 21, 1865, six months after the end of the war.

**Livingston to Gregory, September 27, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Manavunk. Livingston had still not received official word of the ship's acceptance a month later, when he reminded Snowdon & Mason's supervisor that the ship's safety was still the contractor's responsibility. Livings- ton to D. McConnell, October 27, 1865, NARG 45, Entry 452, 3 : 95 . *"'Assistant Inspector Robert Gwynn to Wood, April 26, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 68, 11: 214; Gwynn to Wood, June 28, 1865, ibid., 11: 16. **Cincinnati Dailv Commercial. April 14, 1864; May 23, 1864; December 23, 1864; May 31, 1865.

330 By October 1865, of the harbor and river monitors, only Tippecanoe remained in her builders ' hands. When that ship arrived in New Albany in late March 1865, the local inspec­ tor had forecast that it would take six months to complete her. In late May, the ship had been moved to deeper water at Evansville, Indiana, to complete the hull; the inspec­ tor's forecast then was for five more months. The climate was unhealthy, however, and the facilities rudimentary. At times during the summer half the mechanics were sick with chills and fever, while getting the guns mounted on their carriages with no mechanical assistance except hydraulic jacks took nearly the whole work force.®® In the autumn, the engines were completed but could not be tested because the low water in the river kept the ship from being moored securely enough to take the strain.^ The ship was finally taken to Cairo, Illinois, for inspection in January 1866.

February 8, 1866, was the date appointed for Tippe­ canoe 's acceptance inspection. A naval board headed by

Commodore James F . Schenck reported, "no pains have been spared by the Contractors to make her perfect," and she was officially received from the contractors on February 20,

®®Charles French to Wood, March 28, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 68, 10: 114; French to Wood, May 28, 1865, ibid., 11: 244; William Alder to Chief Engineer Robert Danby, August 27, 1865, ibid., 11: 81; Alder to Danby, September 27, 1865, ibid., 11: 114. By this time, local inspectors' reports had been reduced to monthly. ’“Aider to Danby, October 27, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 68, 11: 144; Alder to Danby, November 27, 1865, ibid., 11: 168.

331 1866.71 Miles Greenwood must have heaved a huge sigh of relief. The contract that he had so confidently expected to complete in March 1863 had stretched nearly three years longer. Tippecanoe's acceptance marked the completion of the harbor and river monitor program.

71 James F . Schenck to Gregory, February 9, 1866, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Tippecanoe ; Schenck to Gregory, February 20, 1866, ibid.

332 w w w

Figure 10.1. Tippecanoe class monitor Canonicus about 1907, little changed from her original appearance (Naval Historical Center photograph NH 55202). CHAPTER 11

GOOD FOR FIFTY YEARS t

WINDING DOWN THE MOBILIZATION

It has been said about the armed forces of democracies that they hit their stride just about the time the war ends. This was certainly the case in the Civil War navy's ship acquisition programs. By late 1864, Fox had been weaned from the "continuous improvement" philosophy and the "nego­ tiation" method of making changes was gaining momentum. The excesses of the "monitor project office" had been curbed and corrective action was being taken on the worst excess, the light draft monitors. The acquisition bureaucracy had realized that withholding money from financially strained contractors was counterproductive, and Gregory's efforts to clear up the backlog of claims were bearing fruit. The expansion shipyards of the West were building quality ships as fast as the available labor supply would allow. The war had been a harsh teacher, but the navy appeared to have learned its lessons.

By the time the "new navy" of the 1880s began to ap­ pear, however, few traces remained of the massive industrial

334 mobilization of the war years and the lessons the war taught had been largely forgotten. Contracting had regressed to the practices of the 1850s, the wartime shipyards of Pitts­ burgh and Cincinnati had vanished, and the "project office" form of organization had evaporated. Harold and Margaret

Sprout contend that after the Civil War, the navy returned to its prewar routine so completely that a visitor "return­ ing in 1870 after ten years' absence might never have guessed that the Navy had passed through any war at all."^ Later authors have shown there was much concealed under the navy's relatively placid surface, but the Sprouts' assertion is not far off the mark in the area of shipbuilding.

The process of dismantling the wartime acquisition system began even before the dissolution of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865. In February 1865, Secretary Welles directed his squadron commanders to reduce expenses. Of more than six hundred vessels on the Navy List at the start of 1865, 340 had been sold out of the service by year's end and only 117 remained in commission.^ The General Superin­ tendent's office joined in the reductions. The second Port

^Harold Sprout and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of Ameri­ can Naval Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), 165.

^Annual Report of the Secretary of the Naw. 1865. ix. For a good overview, Polser, "Administration of the United States Navy, 1861-1865," 328-34.

335 Royal Working Party had returned north in May 1864.^ In

November 1864, Commodore Joseph B. Hull's supervisory orga­ nization for non-monitor ships had been consolidated with

Gregory's office, and in May 1865 Wood directed Loring to reduce the number of inspectors in the West "to the lowest limit, and dispense with their services as soon as you can."“ Yet the monitor contractors continued to build and the navy continued to pay for ships that could not be fin­ ished in time to fight. In view of Welles' very strong push for economy, the modem observer is tempted to ask why the navy did not simply cancel the uncompleted ships.

In hindsight, there was much to recommend that course. By the end of 1864, the naval situation was strongly in favor of the Union. Mobile had fallen, the Confederate ironclads at Savannah had been destroyed to prevent their capture, and Charleston was tightly blockaded and threatened from the rear by the . Cushing's daring torpedo attack had eliminated the Albemarle threat, and Wilmington, the Confederacy's last remaining seaport, was under attack. The chance of European intervention, declining since 1863, had become negligible. Lincoln had been re-elected and the Confederacy was undoubtedly tottering. In later wartime

^Reynolds to Dahlgren, May 17, 1864, NARG 45, Entry 3 95, subentry E-72, vol. 5.

“Gregory to Loring, November 10, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 1235, 21: 7; Wood to Loring, May 24, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 1232, 3: 246.

336 mobilizations, the perception of the war being on the down­ hill would lead to massive cancellations, not only of ships contracted for and not commenced, but also of ships under construction.^

Several factors militated against cancellation. One was that the Union had seen many reversals of fortune, and the picture of "war on the downhill" is far clearer in retrospect than it was to contemporary leaders. Similarly, while European powers would not intervene to support a failing rebellion, the Union had many grievances of its own with them, especially with Great Britain. To contemporary leaders, it was not at all clear that those grievances would be settled amicably. Fox spoke for many when he wrote, "We are fighting Great Britain on the high seas. She is at war with us but we are at peace with her, and there is no de­ fence except retaliation."®

A second element was that the monitor contracts con­ tained no cancellation clause. If the government cancelled the contracts, it would still have to pay the contractors the full value of the contracts and would still have to

®Alden, Fleet Submarine, 98-99, for cancellations in World War II submarine construction program. For WWII destroyer and cancellations, Norman Fried­ man, U.S. : An Illustrated Design Historv (Anna­ polis: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 129-30, 152-53. No such cancellations took place after World War I, and the resulting glut of "four stacker" destroyers hobbled US Navy shipbuilding for fifteen years. Ibid., 46-48. ®Fox to George B. Upton, June 12, 1863, Unofficial, Fox Papers, Box 5A.

337 resolve the contractors' outstanding claims, but would have no ships to show for the expense. Such a policy would have been attacked immediately as evidence of a gross lack of

common sense, of culpable waste, or of corruption; in the

case of the light drafts especially, it would have been

taken as an admission that the ships were total failures.

This in turn related to the most important reason to finish the ships : the widespread perception that they would be useful in the long term. Inspecting Catawba. Oneota and

Tippecanoe in April 1865, Chief Engineer King commented on their "superior" construction and observed, "If they be

placed in careful hands and kept properly preserved, they

will endure half a century, and in the event of a foreign

war will doubtless become of great value to the nation."’ Ericsson later wrote that if properly cared for, "vessels

like the monitors are good for f if tv years."® As political scientist Michael Vlahos has argued, America did not or would not recognize that technological change demanded

constant military modernization. Congress and voters per­ sisted in "the false but soothing perception that military goods once appropriated were durable and good for

’King to Welles via Gregory, April 20, 1865, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Catawba.

®Ericsson to Church, February 19, 1872, quoted in Church, Life of Ericsson. 2: 102.

338 generations. . . In the absence of any savings, there was no incentive to cancel the ships and many reasons to continue with them.

The question of whether the navy's expanded industrial base should be made permanent was likewise at issue. The navy's industrial mobilization, or at least the western portion of it, began as an experiment and turned into an investment. Driven by the intense urgency of 1862, the navy risked expanding beyond the eastern seaboard to meet its needs for ironclads. By 1863 it was clear that building monitors was more difficult than at first supposed; as Gregory reported, "experience has shown that all the con­ tractors for the Iron Clads were equally mistaken in their calculations of time, and took double or more to complete them."^° Enough reports had accumulated, however, to show that building ships in the West held some promise.

Building in the West not only took advantage of the "natural facilities . . . of that part of the country," but gave the navy a secure base "if our sea coast should ever become seriously harras[s]ed by any great Naval power."

Most observers agreed that western builders could compete with easterners on quality but needed encouragement to be

’Michael E. Vlahos, "The Making of an American Style (1797- 1887)," in Randolph W. King, ed., Naval Engineering and American Seaoower (Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing, 1989), 19.

^°NARG 19, Entry 1235, Gregory to Lenthall, April 11, 1863 11: 27.

339 able to build as rapidly. It began to become evident that patience would be required to make the investment in western builders pay off, and the tacit waiver of the six months time limit in the Tippecanoe class contracts was explicitly aimed at building up western industry.

Rear Admiral David Porter, sent to Cincinnati in Febru­ ary 1864 to assess the situation there, made the same obser­ vation about quality that Stimers had made, although he was more optimistic than circumstances warranted about rapidity of construction. If the government intended to build more monitors, "or indeed iron vessels of peculiar construction,

I would beg leave to recommend that a fair portion of pa­ tronage be given to the Western foundries. . . . Vessels of any size can be built in any part of these waters." The

West, Porter wrote, should be "converted into a large work­ shop for the building of future monitors of all sizes. I know of no part of the Union where the work can be done quicker or better.

Despite this endorsement, the western shipyards with­ ered almost as fast as they had grown. A few months after Porter visited Cincinnati, Congress caused the Navy Depart­ ment to appoint a commission "to select the most approved site for a Navy Yard or Naval Station on the Mississippi

^^Stimers to Gregory, April 18, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, 2: 285-87; Stimers to Gregory, May 4, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 974, 3: 26.

^^Porter to Welles, February 16, 1864, ORN 25: 756-61.

340 River" or its tributaries. Rear Admiral Charles H. Davis headed the commission, which reported in February 1865.

Because of their industrial facilities, the commission considered Carondelet, Missouri, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh as candidate locations for a construction yard. Hydrography made a critical difference among these sites.

Porter had inveighed against "the senseless cry about the want of water, here or there," for at low water, "the whole Mississippi is a chain of sand bars" and no place had an advantage." The Davis Commission looked more closely, however, and found that low water made more difference in some places than in others. Pittsburgh's situation was worst, as a vessel drawing eight to ten feet could pass down from Pittsburgh to Cairo during only four months of the year, and that time might be further reduced by the river being frozen. Navigation from Cincinnati was somewhat easier and from Carondelet about the same as from Cincin­ nati, but statistics confirmed what had been especially painful for Greenwood and for Snowdon & Mason: low water was common and during periods of low water, heavy ships could not move. Major delays were thus almost guaranteed.

“The full printed version is Senate Executive Document 19, 38th Congress, 2d Session. The draft is in NARG 45, Subject File PS--Navy Yards, Sites and Boundaries.

“Porter to Welles, February 16, 1864, ORN 25: 758.

341 Hydrographie considerations drove the recommendation to establish a "yard of construction" at Carondelet and a second building yard at Cincinnati, but to locate a naval station at Mound City, from which ships drawing ten feet could reach the mouth of the Mississippi nine months out of the year.^ Combined with the greater cost of western-built vessels, draft restrictions and transit delays made naval construction on the western waters very unattractive in peacetime. The uncertain hydrography of the Mississippi

River and its tributaries was probably the most important factor that kept the Civil War industrial expansion from becoming permanent.

Administratively, the "project office" form of manage­ ment was the major innovation of the war. It had many advantages, and Stimers' proposal to institutionalize it by creating a Bureau of Iron Clad Steamers would have been a step forward for the navy. The delays and expenses of western shipbuilding played their part in the reaction against the "project office" form of acquisition management, but it was primarily the light draft fiasco that discredited Stimers' 1864 proposal. The General Superintendent's office was officially closed on November 1, 1866, and its remaining records were shipped to the Bureau of Construction and

^^Report of the Commission . . . . 14-17.

342 Repair in May 1867.^® The long-running and occasionally bitter feud between line officers and engineers combined with postwar revelations of contracting scandals and cost overruns to ensure that the proposal for the new ironclad bureau would not be revived.

While the line-engineer dispute is beyond the scope of this work, some background is in order. Centuries before, there had been two kinds of officers aboard ship--the fight­ ers, who were in charge, and the seamen, who merely moved the ship. Over time, it became important that the fighters also know how to operate their ships to best tactical advan­ tage. Landsmen fighting officers found this beneath their dignity, so the seamen gradually became sea-fighters and displaced the landsmen. Steam propulsion led to a similar split between the men who made the ships move and the men who directed and fought them, and like the earlier landsmen fighters, the line officers considered the new motive power to be beneath their dignity. A separate class of officers appeared--the Engineer Corps. The war's emphasis upon steam propulsion increased the relative standing of the engineers, who began to agitate for increased recognition. Recognizing

^®Chief Engineer Robert Danby, a clerk, a messenger and a laborer were retained to tie up loose ends and close the office. Welles to Ringgold, October 26, 1866, quoted in Charges Against the Navy Department. House Miscellaneous Document 2 01, 42d Congress, 2d Session. Danby to CAPT J. W. A. Nicholson, May 3, 1867, NARG 19, Entry 64, vol. 13 con­ tains a list of the material from the ironclad offices that was shipped to Lenthall.

343 their growing importance, Welles had, in March 1863, admin­

istratively raised the engineers' ranks relative to those of line officers.

The line reacted strongly to the engineers' agitation, and feeling among line officers ran high where engineers were involved. In one case, a commanding officer ordered his engineer to act in a way that the engineer thought would endanger the ship's machinery. Besides refusing to obey, the engineer asserted that the captain had no right to give orders to the engineers. The engineer received a light sentence at court-martial and Du Pont, his squadron com­ mander, was enraged. Any engineer who made a similar asser­ tion, Du Pont wrote, would go north in double irons. In their total dependence upon steam power, the moni­ tors were quintessentially "engineers' ships." Ericsson's characterization of Drayton as "only a seaman" echoed the attitudes of many engineers: the monitors were war machines.

Those who employed machines should know how they worked, or at least listen to advice from those who did know.^® Erics­ son, reporting a divergence of opinion between a "skillful practical engineer" and his commanding officer, observed.

^Du Pont to Fox, October 24, 1862, Hayes, Du Pont Letters. 2: 265-66, and note thereto.

^®An analog from an earlier age was Admiral Medina Si- donia, who explicitly consulted an experienced seaman about the management of the fleet just as he consulted a landsman fighter for advice on battle tactics. David Howarth, The Vovaqe of the Armada: The Spanish Storv (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 105.

344 "It has often given me pain to think that our fighting machines are entrusted to officers who know nothing of mechanics and therefore have no confidence in their ves­ sels."^* On at least one occasion, Stimers recommended to Fox that a specific line officer be ordered to command a monitor because that officer had "a great admiration for mechanism." Even more extreme was the application of Chief

Engineer Wood for command of a monitor. This was too much even for Stimers, who recommended that Fox "let it pass in silence" because "every naval officer ought know" that such a change was not admissible.

The monitors thus became a focus for discontent on both sides of the line-engineer divide. For one thing, the ships were perceived as being more complex than earlier vessels.

(This clearly derived from the vessels' novelty--to a modern naval officer it is incongruous that men who were intimately familiar with the dozens of braces, stays, halyards, sheets, tacks, clews, clew-j iggers, clew-gamets, pendants, buntlines, bowlines, downhauls, outhauls, leech-lines, brails, guys and bunt-jiggers needed to operate a square- rigged sailing vessel should complain about complexity!)

^Ericsson to Fox, April 15, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 6 (Ericsson's emphasis). Griffin received letters from an engineer friend that asserted, "'Give engineers full control of the Iron Clads . . . and our flag would soon wave from Sumter.'" Ida Dudley Dale, "Thomas Jefferson Griffin: Superintendent of Iron Clads," Staten Island Historian 11, no. 3 (July-September 1950, serial no. 43): 19. ^Stimers to Fox, April 19, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7.

345 For a second, the monitors' guns were mounted in steam- driven turrets, and the ships thus depended upon mechanism

(and engineers) for their entire fighting power. Line officers had grudgingly accepted the intrusion of steam propulsion, in part because they could usually leave the engineers literally to their own devices belowdecks. De­ pending upon engineers for the ability to fight was a new and disturbing encroachment on the line officers' territory.

They reacted by reasserting their control over what Drayton called "mere engineers and mechanics."

The prospect that the chief of the Bureau of Iron Clad Steamers would be an engineer would have alone been enough to arouse opposition among line officers. The real failure to establish such a bureau, however, can be traced to the failure of the "continuous improvement" method of building ships. Fox's aversion to "additions, alterations and im­ provements" came over a year too late, and his epiphany in favor of ships "upon which not a single alteration, addition or improvement had been added" highlighted the key lesson to be learned from the industrial mobilization effort: better is the enemy of good enough. Major changes during construc­ tion caused major delays in the monitor program, which combined with a simple but monumentally expensive technical failure to discredit the organization responsible.

346 In contracting, the navy had also begun to leam some

lessons. Had it been implemented as was intended, the "negotiation" clause of the light draft contract held great promise for reducing delays and cost overruns. Similarly,

the navy appeared to be moving toward a more sophisticated appreciation of contractors' costs and of the effects of delay and disruption upon contractors' work.

Yet the end of the war brought revelations about con­ tracting scandals and excessive p r o f i t s . in general, the postwar reaction reversed the trend toward flexibility in government contracting. "Wartime urgency" could no longer provide an excuse to waive the more onerous requirements, and contracting scandals seemed to give good reason to make them even more onerous. The result was a renewed exaltation of competitive bidding and a multiplication of rules to prevent fraud.The failure of many contractors to deliver on time and within budget gave ammunition to those who sought to gain political advantage by attacking the Navy Department. In a defensive reaction, Welles tightened up contract administration, opining in one case, "As the con­ tract with the Government stipulated the price, neither I nor the Administration could vary the contract. ..." He

^^James F. Nagle, A Historv of Government Contracting (Washington, D.C.: George Washington University, 1992), 189- 90, 198-211.

^^The scandals of Ulysses Grant's Presidency showed just how effective such policies were, but the policies nevertheless continued to multiply.

347 later wrote, "... The law and the contract must govern me, Equity power is with Congress. The change in tone from his wartime willingness to bend the rules is noticeable.

For the navy, the postwar period saw contracting swinging back toward an 1850s model.

The contracts made during the war, however, had long­ term consequences, and it took far longer to wind down the navy's Civil War mobilization than it had taken to start it.

Many contractors had been badly hurt and their voices were heard both during the war and after. Having discussed the causes and short-term effects of delays and inflation, we will now examine how the navy dealt with the longer term consequences.

The first navy effort to compensate ironclad contrac­ tors was the Gregory Board. The board met irregularly from its creation in October 1863 until May 1867, heard the arguments contractors presented to it, and settled their accounts.^ After Gregory's sudden death in October 1866, his principal subordinate. Commodore Cadwalader Ringgold,

^^The discussion concerned the seagoing ironclad Dun-. derberg. of which more later. Welles, Diary, entries for January 25, 1867, and February 12, 1867, 3: 28, 42.

^'‘Fo r example. Greenwood's manager Thom wrote Stimers in early February 1864 that "we are informed" of "a commis­ sion sitting in New York to adjust the claims for alter­ ations" on the Tippecanoe class and asked for a hearing. Greenwood's listing of "Alterations and Changes made in the Iron Clad Battery Tippecanoe" was received in the General Superintendent's office on May 23, 1864. Thom to Stimers, February 5, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v. Tippecanoe ; Thom to [Stimers?], "Reed May 23d/64," ibid.

348 assumed the position of General Superintendent and with it the presidency of the board until his own sudden death in

April 1867. The Gregory Board, however, was intended to deal with increased costs due to the changes ordered by the navy. The board considered only the direct costs of the

"extras," without incorporating delay or inflation, and without including the effects of delay and inflation on the original contract work. For the contractors, the Gregory

Board payments were better than nothing, but as will be seen, they would not accept them as the final settlement of their claims. As Welles later testified, the contractors

"obtained all the allowance they could get from the Depart­ ment, and then they appealed to Congress.

The navy assumed that its acquisition system would permit contractors to make a profit, but by 1864 many were losing money. A representative editorial, from the New York

Times of February 14, 1865, discussed the problem of reim­ bursement in cases, "in which the action of the Government itself has substantially changed the conditions under which contracts were made, and thus rendered their fulfillment difficult. ..." Blaming the government for inflation and the draft, the newspaper wrote that contracts made three years before "to build iron-clad vessels at certain rates"

^^House Miscellaneous Document 201, 42d Congress, 2d Session, April 25, 1872, 262.

349 now imposed "enormous burdens" on the contractors. Relief, said the Times. was required.^®

In March 1865, the Senate passed a resolution requiring an inquiry into the losses that vessel and machinery con­ tractors had sustained. Under this authority Welles in May

1865 appointed Commodore Thomas O. Selfridge as president of a board to investigate. The Selfridge Board received claims direct from the contractors and ascertained the amounts by which their costs exceeded the navy's payments. Following its Congressional charter, it did not try to determine which excess costs were the responsibility of the contractors and which were chargeable to the government. Its report thus did not provide enough information for Congress to be com­ fortable about paying any claims; for most contractors, the Selfridge Board report was at best a moral victory

In March 1867, Congress tried again, directing that the

Secretary of the Navy investigate all claims from contrac­ tors for vessels and machinery, ascertain the increased cost over the contract price, and determine how much of the

Relief for Contractors," New York Times. February 14, 1865, 4. The emphasis is in the original.

^ Congressional Globe. 3 8th Congress, 2d Session, 98, 213, 143 5 for the progress of the resolution. The Selfridge Board report is Report of the Secretary of the N a w Communi­ cating . . ■ record of a Board of N a w Officers. .... Senate Executive Document 18, 39th Congress, 1st Session, dated January 30, 1866. It is also printed in full in Senate Report 1942, 57th Congress, 1st Session. Congress paid one claim by separate legislation in 1867 and seven more in 1899, ibid., 12-13.

350 increased cost was chargeable to the government. The re­ sulting Marchand Board, headed by Commodore John B. Mar­ chand, reported to Congress via Welles in December 1867.^®

The Marchand Board's "determinations" were generally lower

than the amounts allowed by the Selfridge Board. This was

in part because the Marchand Board refused to allow anything

for inflation if it felt the contractor could have avoided

increased costs by "ordinary prudence and diligence."^* In

July 1868 Congress directed payment of several Marchand

Board claims, including those for the Tippecanoe class ships

Canonicus. Saugus, Manhattan. Tecumseh. and Mahopac. with the provision that such payments should be "in full dis­ charge of all claims against the United States."

After accepting the payments and signing the "full

discharge" receipts required by the law, the contractors

returned to the fray, asserting that the amounts allowed were still too low and that they had been forced by "over­

powering necessity" to accept what the government offered. Secor & Co., for example, complained that the government had

^®The Marchand Board's report was printed as Letter of the Secretary of the N a w Communicating Report of the board appointed July 6. 1867...... Senate Executive Document 3, 40th Congress, 2d Session. ^®Report on resolution for the relief of certain con­ tractors for the construction of vessels of war and steam machinery. Senate Report 163, 41st Congress, 2d Session, May 12, 1870, 2-3.

351 always "kept us so poor we signed anything. Accordingly, yet another board was established in August 1869 at the direction of the new Secretary of the Navy, George M. Robe­ son. The Boggs Board, under Commodore Charles S. Boggs, reviewed the claims of three contractors before dissolving in November 1869; on its recommendation, Robeson in 1870 paid Secor & Co. another $93,000 for Manhattan. Tecumseh. and Mahopac.

The boards were intended to resolve all of the out­ standing claims, and the government paid some contractors based on the findings of the various boards. There were several boards, however, and they tended to overlap, making it difficult to trace either a specific contractor's claim or the navy's thought processes in dealing with that claim.

The picture becomes more confused because the boards were not the only venue in which contractors could seek redress. Those who were unsatisfied, either with the amount they recovered or with the process itself, could bypass the executive branch and pursue their claims in Congress or in the courts.

"Overpowering necessity" Senate Report 163, 41st Congress, 2d Session, 1870, 5. Deposition of Charles H. Secor, April 24, 1876, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Green­ wood V . US.

^Senate Report 1942, 57th Congress, 1st Session, 12. This payment, considered by some to be a raid on the Trea­ sury, figured prominently in charges raised against Robeson in 1872. For testimony, see House Miscellaneous Document 201, 42d Congress, 2d Session. A copy of the Boggs Board's report is at pages 21-28.

352 Congress could act on behalf of contractors either indirectly or directly. Indirectly, Congress could order an executive agency to investigate a class of claims (as with the Marchand Board), then approve or amend the agency's findings and appropriate money to pay the claimants as required. Alternatively, Congress could change existing laws (such as statutes of limitations) to permit contractors to sue for relief in the Court of Claims. Directly, Con­ gress could pass a private bill appropriating money to settle specific claims ; while this might seem to be the simplest approach for a contractor, a private bill took a good deal of lobbying and its passage was far from a fore­ gone conclusion. Ironclad contractors approached Congress to act in all three ways. Besides the ever-present issues of properly using personal influence and responding to constituents. Congress had to resolve a tug-of-war between two principles. On one hand, the contractors' losses were due to a combination of governmental actions both direct and indirect : the delays induced by direct action exposed the contractors to the indirect inflationary effects of the government's fiscal policies. Justice demanded that the contractors be compen­ sated. "The fact that these parties went on and fulfilled their contracts after it became apparent that to do so would involve them in loss, " thereby completing vessels that were

"indispensable in prosecuting the war to a successful

353 termination," was "certainly laudable.As Stimers wrote, now that "the country is out of danger and can afford to do simple justice to those citizens who worked for it faith­ fully in its hour of need I have no hesitation in saying that I regard [Secors'] claim as a just one and should be paid."^ To the proponents of this view, "the contractors are upright and meritorious men, who are not seeking to prey upon the government, but to obtain a just compensation for losses they have suffered by the government's own act."^“ On the other hand, it was argued, the contractors had made contracts upon which they expected a profit but which carried a normal level of business risk. The government should compensate its contractors for increased costs dueto direct government action (such as changes and drawing de­ lays) , but it was not obligated to go further and guarantee a contractor a profit, especially if the contractor had managed his business poorly. As Senator Jacob M. Howard of

Michigan declared in one debate over relief for contractors, "It comes exactly to this : . . . [the contractor] has made a bad bargain, or rather a hard bargain with the United

^^Report on memorials and bills for relief of certain contractors. Senate Report 673, 44th Congress, 2d Session, February 15, 1876. ^^Stimers to Robeson, December 29, 1870, NARG 45, Subject File AC, Box 23. ^^Senate Report 163, 41st Congress, 2d Session, May 12, 1870, 5.

354 States, by which he is not likely to make money. . . . As other legislators phrased it, "Congress should be just, but it has no right to surrender the rights of the United

States . . . and tax the whole public" to pay such claims.^®

Some legislators were less charitable; as Representative

Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois asserted, "there have been the grossest abuses practiced in this business of iron-clad vessels."'"' In many minds, the ironclad contractors who sought relief from Congress and the courts were lumped together with profiteers and frauds.

The debate continued for some time without resolution; as Welles noted in 1872, "It was the heaviest lobby, I think, I ever knew before Congress and before the Depart- ment."^ Meanwhile, in addition to pursuing their claims through Congress, contractors sought to recoup their losses by selling ironclads to foreign governments. In this re­ spect, 1867 and 1868 were banner years, as the casemated seagoing ironclad Dunderberg and the twin-turreted monitor Onondaga were sold to and the Catawba and Oneota to

“Congressional Globe. 39th Congress, 2d Session, 1134- 35, 1785, 1952-53. “Minoritv report on bill for relief of certain con­ tractors . House Report 269, 43d Congress, 1st Session, March 27, 1874.

“Congressional Globe, 40th Congress, 2d Session, 359.

“House Miscellaneous Document 201, 42d Congress, 2d Session, 262.

355 Peru. While superficially similar, the sales were different in important details.

The Dunderberg. built by New York's William H. Webb, was the subject of a private bill introduced in Congress in February 1867 and passed in the hectic last hours of the

Thirty-ninth Congress in March. The result of a year's lobbying by Webb and his political friends, it authorized

Webb to buy the never-delivered Dunderberg by refunding to the government the money he had received from the navy as progress payments.^ Shipbuilder George Quintard benefited from a similar bill that allowed him to repurchase the Onondaga in the same way, even though Onondaga had been delivered to the navy and had served as a commissioned ship. Both ships were promptly sold to the French government at a tidy profit.40

In October 1867, Gustavus Ricker, acting as agent for

Swift & Co., negotiated a deal with Peru to sell the Catawba and Oneota to the Peruvian Navy for a million dollars each.

Since Swift had delivered the ships to the US Navy, the deal rested upon the assumption that Swift would be able to re­ purchase the ships as Webb and Quintard had been able to repurchase theirs. Initial contacts with the Navy

^®"An Act for the Relief of William H. Webb," Chapter 211, Laws of the United States, United States Congress, Congressional Globe. 3 9th Congress, 2d Session, Appendix, 256.

4°For Dunderberg's sale, Roberts, "Thunder Mountain," 383-87.

356 Department indicated that this would be allowed, but Welles then decided that the laws passed in March 1867 applied only to Quintard and Webb. Soon afterward, on December 12, 1867, the House passed a resolution introduced by Frederick A.

Pike of Maine, authorizing the Secretary to relinquish ironclads to their builders on the same terms granted to

Webb and Quintard, i.e., refund of the price paid by the government. After the House amended the resolution to require sale at a price fixed by a board of officers, as House Resolution 13 6 it went to the Senate.

The Senate in its turn amended the House resolution to prevent the sale of certain classes of ironclads : the Dicta­ tor, Kalamazoo and Monadnock classes (the newest, largest and most capable) and the Passaic class (the oldest and most battle-worn). It also required competitive bidding, mandat­ ing acceptance of the highest price offered as long as it was above the appraisal. The House concurred with the

Senate's amendments and the resolution was signed by the President on February 3, 1868.

Welles promptly convened a board to appraise ironclads, and Catawba and Oneota were appraised at $380,000 and

$375,000 respectively. After some machinations in which

Swift & Co., or at least Ricker, appears to have colluded

^Congressional Globe. 40th Congress, 2d Session, 154- 55, 209, 359-61.

^Congressional Globe. 40th Congress, 2d Session, 816- 17, 869, 937.

357 with other bidders, the two ships were sold on April 11,

1868, for the appraised total of $755,000. At the instiga­

tion of Representative Washburne, the Joint Select Committee on Retrenchment investigated the "alleged fraudulent"

sale.^^ Despite the Committee's fulminations, their own

report shows that Swift & Co. had been prepared to repur­ chase the two vessels for what the navy had paid for them--

i.e., about $1,250,000. Congressional obsession with compe­ tition, reflected in the provisions about appraisal and competitive bidding, thus cost the government half a million dollars. Although some Congressmen, subscribers to the idea

that the monitors would be "good for fifty years," tried to block the sale, Welles had a more realistic point of view: "Simpletons, I wish we could sell all."^“ By 1868, when Swift & Co. took possession of Catawba and Oneota. the unsuitability of the Mississippi River

system for naval facilities had become even clearer than

*^Conoressiona1 G1obe. 40th Congress, 2d Session, 359. The full text of the investigation is printed as Report on Sale of Ironclad Vessels. House Report 64, 40th Congress, 2d Session, June 19, 1868. In reading this document, one must bear in mind that the Committee was dominated by who sought to attack Welles. As the investiga­ tion unfolded, the involvement of Radical Assistant Secre­ tary of the Navy became clearer, and the committee accordingly began to backpedal. In the end, the best they could do was to conclude that the Secretary should have known that two bidders were acting in concert. Welles characterized the Committee as "dirty scandalizing patriots" who were "'willing to wound but afraid to strike.'" Welles, Diary. Entry for June 20, 1868, 3: 387-88.

““Welles, Diary, entry for May 8, 1868, 3: 348-49.

358 when the Davis Commission reported in 1865. As they were

completed, the westem-built Tippecanoes were berthed near Mound City, Illinois, along with several light draft moni­

tors (Figure 11.1). In mid-1865 Catawba and Oneota were moved to deeper water opposite Cairo, with caretaker crews

to protect them from thieves and accidents. As winter neared, Manavunk joined them; because of their draft, all three had to be anchored in the main channel where they were

exposed to ice, drifting trees and accidents.

In February 1866 Tippecanoe joined her sisters, just in

time to demonstrate the hazards of the anchorage. On March 27, 1866, a steamer towing barges parted Tippecanoe's anchor chain. Tippecanoe in turn drifted into Oneota. and the ves­

sels were finally brought under control two miles downriver.

After four "disastrous" collisions, Tippecanoe had lost both

anchors and Manavunk and Oneota one apiece. The deep water anchorage they needed was unsafe for the ships themselves and for other river traffic."*® The incident precipitated the Navy Department's decision to move the vessels downriver

to New Orleans, a move hastened by the river being "in a

^Livingston to Welles, June 17, 1865, NARG 45, Entry 451, Letters Sent by the Commandant of the Mound City Naval Station, 1: 461.

■*®Shenck to Welles, March 27, 1866, NARG 45, Entry 451, 2: 113; Shenck to Welles, March 28, 1866, ibid., 2: 117. Schenck had reported to Welles only the day before that caring for his "fleet" of monitors required more men and material than he had on hand. Schenck to Welles, March 26, 1866, NARG 45, ibid., 2: 110.

359 Figure 11.1. Monitors at Cairo, Illinois, after the Civil War. The Cincinnati-built Yuma is at the left; her sister Klamath is third from left (from the collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Inland Rivers Collection, plate 9365). proper state" to allow them to pass.*^

The monitors made the voyage under their own steam because towboats powerful enough to tow them were scarce and

expensive. Scratch crews were assembled under Lieutenant

“^Schenck to Lenthall, April 8, 1866, NARG 45, Entry 451, 2: 131.

“®Shenck to Lenthall, April 9, 1866, NARG 45, Entry 451, 2: 133 ; Schenck to Lenthall, April 11, 1866, ibid., 2:

360 Commander Elias K. Owen and the four river and harbor moni­

tors left Cairo at noon on May 14, 1866. Although the pilots had reported plenty of water, Oneota grounded below

Memphis but was refloated without injury. After delivering

the four vessels to the Naval Station at New Orleans, Owen and his men retuimed to Mound City on June 2, 1866.“® In August 1867, Catawba and Oneota were turned over to Swift &

Co., who refitted them in New Orleans for their voyage around Cape Horn and their eventual delivery to Peru.

Once the requirements of neutrality were met (Peru had been at war with , and a neutral nation's sale of warships to a belligerent nation was at the heart of the Union's "" against Great Britain), the two monitors, rechristened Atahualoa and Manco Caoac. spent sixteen months making their way from New Orleans to Callao, Peru, where they arrived in May 1870.®^

135; Lenthall to Schenck, April 18, 1866, NARG 45, Entry 453, 5: 71.

“®Schenck to Owen, May 14, 1866, NARG 45, Entry 452, 4: 183; Schenck to Welles, May 14, 1866, NARG 45, Entry 451, 2: 168. Schenck to Welles, June 2, 1866, ibid., 2: 189. ®°Welles to Swift & Co., August 19, 1867, NARG 45, Microfilm entry M209, 80: 484, permitted Swift to take charge of the two monitors and fit them for sea but required surety for their return in good condition if the sale were not completed. No alterations were to be permitted "until they are fully paid for." This official correspondence corroborates the idea that Welles initially thought that the terms granted Webb and Quintard would apply to other con­ tractors .

®^John D. Alden, "Monitors 'Round Cape Horn," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 100, no. 4 (September

361 With the exception of this repurchase episode, the western firms abandoned shipbuilding when they delivered

their monitors to the navy. Thomas C. Cochran and Walter

Licht have argued that the apparent industrial progress

generated by the Civil War was illusory, and this is cer­

tainly the case with the "expansion" shipbuilders. Swift/ Niles, Greenwood, and Snowdon and Mason.It was evident

they could not continue to build ironclads, since there

would be none to build; the postwar navy was chockablock

with monitors, which eliminated support in Congress for

further ironclad construction. Neither were the three firms interested in trying to build commercial ships; laying aside

the uncertainties of the Ohio River, their uncompetitively

high costs would have priced them out of the commercial

market.S3 The decade of the 1860s ended as it began in Cincinnati, with two or three small facilities repairing ships and none building them.

Two of the three firms, the ones formed specifically to build ironclads, simply went out of existence. The

1974), 81-82. The two ships survived until 1880, when they were separately scuttled to avoid capture by Chile in the War of the Pacific.

s^Thomas C. Cochran, "Did the Civil War Retard Indus­ trialization?" in Ralph Andreano, ed., The Economic Impact of the American Civil War (2d ed) (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1967), 167-79; Walter Licht, Industrializing America : The Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 97-98.

s^Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas. 49-53, for the postwar shipbuilding slump.

362 Swift/Niles consortium dissolved, with Swift returning to making iron and Niles to machine shop production.^ In

1867, Swift sold out to an incorporated company called

Swift's Iron S c Steel Works that claimed paid-up capital of

$400,000. Despite a serious fire in 1870, by 1872 the company, making "large" profits, was expanding its iron- making facilities. The 1867 report shows that Swift sur­ vived his venture into wartime contracting without serious difficulty. His personal net worth, estimated at $150,000 to $200,000 in 1867, had grown to $800,000 in 1872.^® One may surmise that the profits from the sale of the two iron­ clads to Peru formed a major part of that increase. All things considered, by luck, good management and aggressive marketing of surplus ironclads. Swift had done well from his venture into wartime contracting.

Niles Works did not do so well. The firm was reported as having capital worth $258,600 in 1860. Despite having spent the war with "heavy business," "more than they can do," their worth in 1866 was estimated at $100,000. James

^For Swift, R. G. Dun, Ohio vol. 79 (Cincinnati 2): 268, 71; Ohio vol. 84 (Cincinnati 7): 41. For Niles, ibid., Ohio vol. 79 (Cincinnati 2): 271; vol. 84 (Cincinnati 7): 154. Ricker's deposition describes the nature of their convoluted financial dealings with the government and with their subcontractors for the light draft monitors, the machine shop firm of Moore & Richardson and shipbuilders S. S c T. Hambleton. Deposition of Gustavus Ricker, January 5, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

^^R. G. Dun, Ohio 82 (Cincinnati 5) , 71; Ohio 84 (Cin­ cinnati 7) , 41.

363 W. Goff became president of the firm in 1866, but in 1867, the Dun credit rating firm observed, "their management has not been profitable of late," and Cincinnati banks were reluctant to accept their notes. In 1868, Dun reported that the firm had "lost money steadily ever since the Niles retired from the active management," and in 1869, "The principal trouble with this concern is the want of available means." In 1870 J. W. Goff, George A. Gray, Jr. and Alex

Gordon took over the company, which began again to prosper under this new management. Although involved with Swift in claims to recover their losses on Catawba and Oneota. Niles Works did not participate in the Peruvian sale. In Pittsburgh, Snowdon & Mason "Dissolved & left the city" in May 1867, a year after completing the light draft monitor Umpcrua. Even before that, however, the partnership had dwindled to Snowdon & Son because Mason had died before the firm completed the contract. The assets of the partner-

G. Dun, Ohio vol. 79 (Cincinnati 2), 271; Ohio 84 (Cincinnati 7), 154. In his work on the company and its successors, Rick Stager states that Goff, Gray and Gordon took over the Niles Tool Works, a division of the Niles Works, in 1866. Rick Stager, History of the Niles-Bement- Pond Tool Company (Birchrunville, PA: n.p., 1993), 11. Dun's report of 1870 notes that "Goff is the capitalist," Gray, a good mechanic, would take over the "Mechanical department," while Gordon would superintend the whole. One may surmise that Goff became President in 1866 but did not replace the management team until 1870, when "Goff, Gray & Gordon" replaced "Niles Works Co." as the corporate entity.

^’'Ricker testimony. House Report 64, 40th Congress, 2d Session, 86-130; Deposition of Gustavus Ricker, January 5, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

364 ship were "sold out at sheriff's sale" to satisfy debts and Snowdon & Son went back to their iron works and machine shop businesses. In 1867 the elder Snowdon retired, leaving one son the rolling mill and the other son the machine shop.

Both were reported as being "in g [oo]d cr[edit] for bus[i- ness] wants." By 1871, however, they were reported as having quit business and "gone up the spout.

Among the clearest examples of wartime experience retarding rather than promoting industrial development is that of Miles Greenwood. When the three western shipbuild­ ers received their contracts in 1862, all three had to build shipyards and shipyard organizations from scratch. The three firms followed different paths to do so. The Swift/ Niles consortium started from bare ground, building a ship­ yard from scratch. Snowdon & Mason also built their ship­ yard from bare ground, but one of their partners had ship­ yard experience with wooden vessels. By contrast. Greenwood rented an existing shipyard that had previously built wooden vessels, seemingly an advantage. The performance of the resulting establishments varied widely. The Swift/Niles consortium completed two harbor and river monitors in 33 months, built two light draft monitors at a second shipyard at the same time, and produced material

^®R. G. Dun, Pennsylvania vol. 66 (Fayette County 1): 576B; vol. 7 (Allegheny County 2): 199; Deposition of John N. Snowdon, October 5, 1891, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v . US.

365 for the other two contractors as well Snowdon & Mason completed a harbor and river monitor in 36 months while building one light draft. Greenwood required 41 months to complete his single harbor and river monitor, even without the distraction of building light drafts. While the capital shortages mentioned in Chapter 9 also affected the firms' relative progress, one may tentatively conclude that the more a firm invested in wooden shipbuilding expertise, the worse its performance in iron shipbuilding. This supports Thomas Heinrich's assessment that moving from shipbuilding in wood to shipbuilding in iron was an extremely difficult transition for a shipyard to make.®° Another factor that affected Greenwood's performance relative to the other two firms was the degree to which each was truly a "custom" producer before the war. Leaving aside the firms that merely made the iron for the ships, Niles Works and Snowdon & Son were both "custom" producers who

^^Snowdon & Mason obtained a main steam cylinder from Niles Works (above) and one of Inspector boring's letters indicates that Niles made the gun carriages for Greenwood's Tippecanoe. Loring to Wood, September 27, 1864, NARG 19, Entry 68, 8 : 193. ®°Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas, 36-45, 51. Para­ llel cases may include the transition from piston to jet aircraft engines: General Electric, with no piston engine experience, became very successful building jet engines. Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce, both experienced piston engine manufacturers, did fairly well, but other piston engine manufacturers such as Napier and Curtiss-Wright were unable to make the transition. Brown sketches but does not explore the Baldwin firm's inability to transfer its steam engine expertise to diesel locomotives. Brown, Baldwin Locomotive Works. 228-33.

366 specialized in complex items made to order. In the absence of detailed accounts it is difficult to be sure, but it appears that while Greenwood's prewar business included custom machine shop and foundry work, it was centered around what could better be characterized as "batch" or "bulk" production. Cist's description of Greenwood's works in 1859 noted that the Machine Department turned out "every variety" of steam engines, mill machinery, hydraulic presses and

"hundreds of other articles of this description," but it stressed mass-produced goods such as stoves, hinges, archi­ tectural castings, and steam and gas fittings, most manufac­ tured "in much greater quantities, than in any other estab­ lishment in the West."®^ Even Greenwood's 1861 venture into war production involved large quantities of relatively simple items such as muskets and cannon rather than the true custom production characteristic of shipbuilding. Green­ wood's inability to keep up with his competitors probably stemmed from a combination of capital shortages, ill-advised investment in outmoded technology, and a less-agile organi­ zational mindset. By the end of the war, capital starvation and unreim­ bursed expenses had gutted Greenwood's firm. After Tippe­ canoe was delivered in 1866, he limped along until obtaining a loan from friends for $100,000 in 1869. A decade later, the Dun firm noted that he "has been for years engaged in

®^Cist, Sketches and Statistics. 278-80

367 fighting the Govt for money which he claimed was due him & the expenses have been very heavy.The arena in which

Greenwood chose to fight was the US Court of Claims.

In addition to his negotiations with Stimers over the "redesign" change. Greenwood had filed a claim with the

Gregory Board. The government had paid him, in all, $173,327.84 for "bills of extra work," and the total paid for Tippecanoe was in round figures $631,450." Since by

July 1864 Greenwood had expended at least $125,000 on "ex­ tras, " it is evident that the extra bills did not come near to covering the extras plus the increased costs due to inflation. Greenwood could not present his case to the Sel­ fridge Board because his contract was not yet completed, but he did receive more money for extras when his contract was settled in March 1866." The Marchand Board allowed him nothing, finding that none of his increased cost was caused by the government's action." For some reason. Greenwood did not sue the government in time to meet the statute of limitations. He therefore required for a private bill, which became law on March 3, 1873, to permit him to take his

"R. G. Dun, Ohio vol. 86 (Cincinnati 9): 98, 253; vol. 87 (Cincinnati 10): 313.

®^NARG 19, Entry 3 62, 308-309, s.v. Tippecanoe. ^‘‘CAPT J. W. Nicholson and Chief Engineer Robert Danby to Lenthall, April 30, 1867, NARG 19, Entry 64, vol. 13 (1867): 23.

®®Senate Report 1942, 57th Congress, 1st Session, 79; Senate Executive Document 3, 40th Congress, 2d Session, 3.

368 case to the Court of Claims. Losing no time, he filed with the court for relief on April 10, 1873.®®

Swift S c Co. was there before him. After receiving less than he desired from the Gregory Board, Swift had submitted a private bill to Congress for relief, but the Niles Works apparently changed their minds, "not willing to go to the expense of time and money required to get it through Con­ gress." They assigned their claim to Swift and his agent, Ricker.®'' Swift later appeared before the Self ridge and

Marchand Boards. The former found that the two Tippecanoe class ships had each cost Swift $114,009.94 more than the government had paid for them; as with Greenwood, the Mar­ chand Board allowed Swift nothing.®®

®®Report on a bill for the relief of Miles Greenwood. Senate Report 422, 42d Congress, 3d Session, February 12, 1873; Petition of Miles Greenwood dated April 10, 1873, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US. The petition contains the text of the bill. ®''Deposition of Gustavus Ricker, January 5, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. From his testi­ mony regarding the sale of the monitors to Peru, Ricker had been "embarrassed"; he was one of the parties to Alexander Swift S c Co. but he furnished none of its capital. House Report 64, 40th Congress, 2d Session, 86. Swift & Co. had renewed their claim before Gregory's successor, Ringgold, in April 1866 because Greenwood had received allowances that they had not; their request was denied. CAPT J. W. Nichol­ son and Chief Engineer Robert Danby to Lenthall, April 30, 1867, NARG 19, Entry 64, vol. 13 (1867): 23.

®®Senate Report 1942, 57th Congress, 1st Session, 11, 49; Senate Executive Document 3, 40th Congress, 2d Session, 3. Swift's submission for the Marchand Board is in NARG 19, Entry 186, s.v., Catawba; it asserts that "delays and change of plans" caused a loss of $342,908.14 on the two ships.

369 Swift S c Co. were apparently more aware of the time limits than was Greenwood, since they required no private bill to permit them to sue. In May 1871, Swift & Co. peti­ tioned the Court of Claims in two separate actions, one dealing with Catawba and Oneota and one covering the light draft monitors Klamath and Yurna.®® The suits asserted that the government delayed the construction of the vessels and thus caused Swift & Co. to have to pay increased prices for labor and materials, as well as shops and insurance. After the suits were filed in 1871, Swift decided he had been "a large loser in the business," and left prosecution of the suits and payment of the bills for them to Ricker. The Niles Works had already declined active participation; they had had enough of the matter and would "rather pursue their business than endeavor to collect claims from the Government which was so unsatisfactory. The claims, although they varied in detail, were at root the same: the government had delayed construction, as a

®®Case 5326 is "Alexander Swift et al. v. US," dealing with light-draft monitors Klamath and Yuma ; Case 6327 is "Alexander Swift and the Niles Works v. US," dealing with harbor and river monitors Catawba and Oneota.

^Deposition of Gustavus Ricker, January 5, 1877, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US. The suits may have been instigated by Charles A. Secor, who in mid-1864 agreed with Swift and Niles "to furnish the money and prose­ cute these claims," paying Swift and Niles $30,000 if he realized that much after expenses. Niles' president, Charles W. Smith, agreed because he "had no confidence that a claim ever so good could be made against the Government." Secor later withdrew, assigning his interest back to Ricker.

370 result of which the contractors were forced to pay inflated prices not only for changes and alterations but for the work required on the original contract. The government's re­ sponse were also the same : the contractors did not have the facilities to do the job they said they could do; had they been fully ready to build the ships, even with the changes they would have been done long before inflation really began to bite In addition, the government asserted, men of

"ordinary prudence and diligence" would have taken measures to protect themselves; the contractors were not free of blame for bad management and lack of foresight.

The evidence gathered for these cases helps to provide first-hand information about the monitor program; even Alban

C. Stimers, by now a consultant, was deposed several times before his death in 1876.^ All three cases dragged on for years. Greenwood's suit moved fastest, taking just under

’^See, e.g.. Supplemental Argument of Defendants, filed March 17, 1875, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US; Brief for Defendants, filed December 16, 1878, ibid.

^^The government asserted, for example, "A great deal of Mr. Greenwood's loss, and very much of the delay experi­ enced in the construction of the Tippecanoe, is due to the slovenly, unprofessional, and unbusiness-like management of Mr. Thom." Brief for Defendants, filed December 16, 1878, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 7157, Greenwood v. US, 5. Greenwood must not have thought so badly of Thom; he retained Thom for the entire course of the project, at the high salary of $5,000 per year. Deposition of Nathaniel G. Thom, July 19 and September 25, 1877, ibid.

^Stimers resigned from the navy in August 1865 rather than accept orders to sea duty. He died of smallpox June 3, 1876. Wegner, "Alban C. Stimers," 52-53.

371 six years from initial filing to decision. On January 13,

1879, the Court of Claims found he was entitled to $76,730, a substantial sum but much less than the $176,127.49 he had asked. Much of the settlement went to pay legal expenses.

Despite appeals to Congress and to the courts. Greenwood never recovered enough to get back on his feet.

Swift's cases, filed in 1871, were not argued before the court until February 1877, when they were referred to a pair of special commissioners appointed by the court to investigate them. The court heard arguments again in 1878 and issued its findings in 1879. Blaming the government for most of the delays, it found that there was no lack of diligence on the part of the contractors and that the actual cost of construction was considerably greater than the amount the government paid. Both sides had tacitly disre­ garded the contract; the contractor had made no protest against the delays, while the government had not tried to enforce the time limit. While the contractors had no shipyard when they took the contract, they were otherwise well equipped to build the ships for which they bid.

Despite these findings, the Court dismissed both of Swifts' suits on a point of law. Specifically, Ricker,

"'“‘Greenwood v. United States, 14 Court of Claims 597. In 1879, Dun reported that Greenwood "was at one time quite wealthy" but that he "Became embarrassed through building Monitors for the Govt. . . . The only satisfactory way of dealing with him is for cash or on undoubted security." R. G . Dun, Ohio 87 (Cincinnati 10), 313.

372 acting as Swift's agent, had accepted the navy's "final

payment" and given a receipt in full, without protest or

objection and without indicating that the amount was insuf­ ficient. Dodging the question of whether increased cost due

to inflation would be a valid reason to award damages, the

Court opined that Swift's receipt barred the firm from later filing a separate claim for damages.Swift appealed, but

because their filing did not conform to the rules, the

Supreme Court dismissed it without a hearing.

At this point. Swift & Co. and Miles Greenwood reached the point of diminishing returns, and they engaged in no

further litigation. Other contractors tried to obtain

Greenwood-style private bills allowing referrals to the Court of Claims, but these took time to bear fruit. As

the claims process dragged on, some Congressmen began to

^14 Court of Claims 208-235 (Klamath and Yuma), 235- 247 (Catawba and Oneota). The receipt defense stemmed from the case of the light draft monitor Etlah. argued as Charles P. Choteau v. US, in which a Court of Claims decision against Choteau was affirmed by the Supreme Court. Green­ wood had given a similar receipt, but the government could not use his receipt as a defense, apparently because Con­ gress had specifically referred Greenwood's case and told the Court to determine the amount of compensation due.

"'^NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 6326/6327, Swift v. US.

^^So many such bills were reported to the House or Senate that it is pointless to list them. After a few submissions, there was little new to say and many later committee reports simply referenced earlier ones. The Secors and their associates were perhaps the most persis­ tent; bills for the relief of Ferine & Secor and William Ferine's widow, Sarah E. E. Ferine, came up at least ten times over the course of as many years.

373 become testy, asking as early as 1878, "Pray when are we to have a finality? In addition to the sheer stubbornness of some contractors (especially the Secors) to give up what they felt was due them, the Senate acknowledged a major problem: "in the different Congresses with different member­ ships the same old subject and ground must be gone over and over again . . . much time is wasted on each one in explana­ tions and repetitions of ancient history.

In 1890, John N. Snowdon, the surviving partner of

Snowdon & Mason, obtained passage of a private bill refer­ ring his claim to the Court of Claims.The arguments covered the same ground as in the other cases, with the government blaming the problems on the contractor's unpre­ paredness and lack of "ordinary prudence and diligence" and asserting that inflation and manpower shortages were no fault of the government. The contractor similarly asserted that the delays were the government's fault because of the "great changes and alterations" it made. Once again the

Court of Claims appointed a board to investigate and argu­ ments were eventually heard. The Court awarded Snowdon

~^°Report on petition and statement of Secor & Co.. House Report 170, 45th Congress, 2d Session, February 28, 1878, 3.

^^Senate Report 1942, 57th Congress, 1st Session.

®°Report on a bill for the relief of Snowden fsicl and Mason. House Report 33 97, 49th Congress, 1st Session, July 20, 1886; House Report 766, 51st Congress, 1st Session, March 10, 1890.

374 $118,327.26 for the light draft Untpcrua and $91,072.00 for

Manavnnk. T h i r t y years after they entered it, western shipbuilders were finally out of the monitor business.

Eventually all of the remaining claims for the harbor and river monitors went to the Court of Claims for resolu­ tion, where the last of the "Secor Cases" was dismissed on March 31, 1919.®^ The ships themselves had been gone for over a decade. Despite Ericsson's confident prediction of durability, the only thing about the monitors that was "good for fiftv years" was the litigation they engendered.

®^Petition of John N. Snowdon, filed October 21, 1890, NARG 123, Entry 1, Case 16,834, Snowdon v. US. The text of the private bill approved October 1, 18 90, appears on pages 10 and 11. For arguments, the Petition (above). Claimant's Request for Findings filed January 28, 1892, and Defendant's Brief and Defendant's Request for Findings filed February 21, 1893, ibid. Snowdon's suit for damages for the light draft monitor Umpqua is Case 16,829. The findings are at 28 Court of Claims 563, Case 16,829 (Umpqua), January 31, 1893; 28 Court of Claims 564, Case 16,834 (Manavunk). April 27, 1893 . ®^Senate Report 1942, 57th Congress, 1st Session; "James F . Secor and Anna A. Secor, Executors of the Will of James F . Secor, deceased, survivor of Zeno Secor and Charles A. Secor, v. The United States" 54 Court of Claims 92-107, December Term 1918-19. (Cases 29939, 29943, 29944). These cases (the "Secor Cases") had been referred to the Court by the Secretary of the Navy in 1906. Secor's claims had also been referred by Congress (once in 1900 and once in 1904), so from 1906 to 1910 when the first Congressionally referred case was dismissed, the Secors had five suits running simul­ taneously, all covering the same ground.

375 CHAPTER 12

CONCLUSION;

ADDITIONS, ALTERATIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS

The navy's acquisition management and contracting

systems evolved along with its technology. Hackemer's conclusion that technological change caused the acquisition

system to change is true but does not go far enough; in its

search for an efficient, fair, and reasonably priced acqui­ sition system, the government has "tinkered endlessly" with

its procurement.^ Technical change was an important factor

but not the sole driving force.

The navy's procurement system changed over time in ways that mirrored the concerns of Congress. The Revolution, although certainly not a time of rapid technological change,

had seen widespread use of cost-plus rather than fixed-price

contracting. The post-Revolutionary War reaction against fraud and perceived "excessive" profits led gradually to the

idealization by Congress of competitive bidding. Well before the Civil War, this stress on competition had reached

^Nagle, History of Government Contracting, 7

376 the point that by law, the Secretary of the Navy's annual reports had to include not only the contracts made by Navy

Department bureaus, but all the unsuccessful bids as well.^ The performance guarantees and reservations of the 1850s were indeed a reaction to the navy's loss of control of the shipbuilding process, but they were a reaction as much to fear of fraud as to fear of failure. Not everyone who sought to build high-technology items could do so; while some of those who failed would fail honestly, others would be less scrupulous. The government needed protection against both sorts, so the system was "carefully structured to ensure accountability and competition.This carefully structured system did not work well under the pressure of war.

Part of the difficulty was that government purchasing on the scale required by the Civil War dramatically over­ loaded the purchasing infrastructure, both physically and conceptually. On the one hand, the sheer volume of material to be purchased and contracts to be administered overwhelmed

^Title 13, U. S. Code, Section 3720. John W. Hogg, Compilation of Laws relating to the Naw. Marine Corns, Etc.. from the Revised Statutes and Subsequent Acts to March 3. 1883 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883), 26. ^Nagle, History of Government Contracting. 181, 202. When catalytic converters for automotive exhausts were being discussed in the 1960s, the catalyst was expected to be platinum. Much of the debate centered on technical feasi­ bility and cost-effectiveness, but one expressed concern was that the proponents merely wanted to "get their hands on that highly portable platinum and port off with it."

377 the very small number of government employees who worked in acquisition. On the other, the slow rhythms and competition-above-all mentality of peacetime had to be thrown out in favor of a system that would work and work quickly. Under strict competition, unqualified or exces­ sively optimistic contractors could "buy into" contracts with low bids. The government was bound to act as if the contractor would fulfill the contract until he actually defaulted, resulting in delay that was simply unacceptable under wartime conditions. As shown by the deliberations of the Ironclad Board of 1861 and the awarding of the Passaic and Tippecanoe class monitor contracts of 1862, the navy bypassed strictly competitive procurement and reached out to firms that it felt could produce serviceable ironclads.

Another part of the difficulty was that the fixed-price contract to which the navy was accustomed worked best in a static environment. The articles for which the navy usually contracted could be described by reasonably unambiguous specifications. Such contracts also assumed economic sta­ bility- -that prices would not change dramatically during the term of the contract. The two factors combined to give would-be contractors clear standards by which to estimate their costs and profits.^ Civil War shipbuilding contracts.

“The unstable environment of the war made fixed price contracts unsuitable even for simple items such as clothing. In October 1863 the Chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing wrote that his operations were "attended with great difficulties, necessarily following the inflation of prices,

378 however, suffered from the dual problems of ambiguous and fast-changing specifications and of unpredictable changes in the costs of materials and labor. While the fixed price contract was an inadequate vehicle for such times, the navy never abandoned it completely. As Nagle writes, the Civil

War "tested the contracting process--and it barely passed. The navy did improve its contracting system under the pressure of the war. First, it began to manage the process to ensure that obviously incompetent or unqualified bidders were not given contracts and to give marginal and expansion builders the detailed plans they would need to build useful ships. Second, it modified the provisions that described how the contract could be changed and instituted a system for negotiating the price and schedule impact of changes before directing their accomplishment. Third, it finally recognized that the reservation-centered contracting of the

1850s was counterproductive in the war's inflationary envi­ ronment, and it markedly lowered the amount of money re­ served to give contractors an infusion of badly needed cash. The navy was evolving toward a contracting system that promised to be better suited for high-technology acquisi­ tion.

and the consequent failure of most of the contractors to fulfil their engagements." Annual Report of the Secretary of the N a w 1862-63 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1863), 1033. ^Nagle, History of Government Contracting. 181.

379 Industrial mobilization also seemed promising. In its

urgent need at the beginning of the war, the government

turned, as it had in previous wars, to private industry, and

it c[uickly modified the strict rules of competition to allow

the flexibility needed in a high-technology environment.

Mobilizing the nation's resources by the application of

economic incentives rather than by fiat, the government at

least by implication accepted the idea that its acquisition

system should permit a contractor to make a profit. Yet the

high-technology aspect of the naval war made a difference. Koistinen notes that navy procurement was small compared to

army procurement but misses the qualitative distinction

between the two. Army procurement involved mass or bulk production--vast quantities of relatively simple items such as muskets, harness, clothing, and wagons. A certain amount of capital might be required initially for tooling, but once

tools were in place little more capital was required. Navy procurement, on the contrary, was specialty production, involving limited numbers of complex high-technology items.

Such production required not only greater amounts of capital to begin with but also steady infusions of more capital, and

that capital remained tied up for some time.

In addition to capital requirements, there were also knowledge requirements. Nagle correctly points out that

"war by an industrial society" required more complex weap­ ons, limiting the number of firms that were able to produce

380 such sophisticated items. He goes on to assert, however, that "a company could not enter the mobilization 'race' after it had begun. The well-entrenched, capital-intensive, high-technology 'competition' like Colt, Remington, and

Whitney and the complexity of the task was, more often than not, too much for a new firm to compete against."®

Nagle's own examples of later development show that with proper financing, firms could and did "enter the mobi­ lization 'race' after it had begun."”' More importantly,

Nagle, like Koistinen, fails to recognize the significant differences between mass and specialty production and the different levels of knowledge and capital required to suc­ ceed in each. The learning curve for twelve-pounder field guns, for example, was not nearly as steep as that for ironclads; Miles Greenwood, at best a qualified success at building ironclads, performed very well in manufacturing

®Nagle, History of Government Contracting. 220.

‘'Consider, e.g., the emergency shipbuilding programs and the essentially start-from-scratch conversion of automo­ bile manufacturers to airplane production. A key element in such mobilizations is government financial support; another is the mass production nature of both. Unlike shipbuilders in peacetime or those who built complex combatants in war­ time, the shipyards of the emergency programs were highly specialized, say in or destroyer escorts. The advantages of production of multiple-identical units apply to ships, but because ships are "of diverse types and appli­ cations as well as of extremely high unit cost . . . ship­ yards must choose between the advantages of diversification on one hand and specialization on the other." Thomas C. Gillmer, Modern Ship Design (2d ed.) (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1970), 186.

381 bronze cannon for the army. Yet we may take Nagle's recog­ nition of limits as a useful starting point.

The differences between the "established" and the "new" firms figured very prominently in the monitor program. The navy seems to have entered this industrial expansion without a very clear idea of what it wanted to accomplish beyond getting more ironclads as soon as possible. It did not take into account either the unique hydrographic and economic conditions of the western rivers or the difficulties faced by startup shipyards. The other problems that plagued all the monitor contractors, such as late drawings, changes upon changes, shortage of capital and inflation, were exacerbated by these omissions. Initially, the navy seems to have assumed that ship­ building on the Ohio River would be just like shipbuilding on the Atlantic coast. In the harbor and river contracts, the navy made no distinction between the western expansion shipyards and the eastern yards. By April 1863, however,

Stimers was recommending that the navy make no effort to hold the western builders to the completion dates set forth in their contracts.® Although progress reports and later inspections made it clear that the quality of western ships would be as good as that of their eastern counterparts, the more experienced and better staffed eastern yards could beat

®Stimers to Gregory, April 18, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 64, 2: 285-87; Stimers to Gregory, May 4, 1863, NARG 19, Entry 974, 3: 26. 382 the westerners on timeliness.® As delays grew, by mid-1863 the Secretary of the Navy had decided that the industrial mobilization had reached its limits.

In the heady days immediately following the Battle of

Hampton Roads, little thought of limits had entered the navy's plans. Ericsson, presumed to be an expert, assured Fox, "The building of a dozen Monitors is a mere trifle with the enormous engineering capabilities of the United States at this moment.By the time the harbor and river moni­ tors of the Tippecanoe class were ordered five months later, however, the navy recognized that building more ships would require expanding beyond the east coast shipyards, and by that autumn of 1862 Stimers was recommending the allocation of light draft monitors to specific shipyards based upon their workload and capabilities. By 1863 Stimers, Fox and Welles were thinking explicitly about the industrial re­ sources available to build ironclad ships. In mid-May 1863

Stimers recommended building one more Tippecanoe class vessel and no more than twenty light drafts, since, "Even

®For quality, see Porter to Welles, February 16, 1864, NARG 45, Subject File AD, typescript marked NWR 192: 159; Henry A. Wise to Fox, December 4, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7 ; Gregory to Lenthall, June 15, 1865, with enclosures, in NARG 19, Entry 64, box 6, vol. 9: 53; Gregory to Lenthall, Febru­ ary 14, 1866, with enclosures, ibid., box 7, vol. 11: 51.

^“Ericsson to Fox, March 19, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 3. ^^Based upon Ericsson's recommendations, "the following parties on the Atlantic coast [are] capable of getting out the number opposite their names within four months." Sti­ mers to Fox, October 8, 1862, Fox Papers, Box 4.

383 this number disturbs the prices of both labor and iron by- carrying the demand considerably above the supply.By

June, Welles was convinced that the nation's shipyards were stretched thin, and Fox told Stimers, "We have given out 20 light drafts and that ends the list. The Secretary has decided not to build any more monitors excepting the 15 inch double turret ones in the Navy Yard [s] . . . . In this effort to match navy programs to national capabilities, the

"monitor project office" had taken the lead.

The "project office" organization, in which the General

Superintendent of Ironclads controlled all aspects of moni­ tor building, was a major advance in other areas as well.

First, its single focus allowed it to push the ironclad construction program when ironclads were most needed and to support the vessels once built. Second, that single focus permitted the project office to be highly responsive to the concerns of the navy's leadership.

Yet the same single focus that permitted the project office's early successes led to failure when carried to extremes. Especially significant elements include the volume of work and the lack of independent technical review.

"^Stimers to Fox, May 17, 1863, Fox Papers, Box 7. ^^Fox to Stimers, June 3, 1863, Private, Fox Papers, Box 5 A . ^■‘A modern parallel of simultaneous naval development and deployment is the Strategic Systems Project Office's management of the Polaris ballistic missile program.

384 both of which were exacerbated by Stimers' personality and the ambiguous position of the project office relative to the navy's command structure. When the work of the project office expanded so dramatically in 1862-63, Stimers could not do or supervise it all and still do it correctly. His concern for autonomy, however, made him resent anything that smacked of interference. After losing a few skirmishes, the bureau chiefs decided to ignore Stimers and let him succeed or fail on his own. They thus deprived the project office of any meaningful technical oversight and of the "safety net" that a second technical opinion might have provided.

Stimers depended solely upon his relationship with Fox for the influence he wielded, influence far beyond that of any other Chief Engineer in the navy. Stimers probably discerned that Fox, a "live man," appreciated visible move­ ment, and his correspondence shows that he knew that main­ taining his relationship with Fox meant being responsive to Fox's concerns. The General Inspector correctly assessed the situation when he wrote, "I had but one friend in the

Government and that was Mr. Fox. When he deserted me I should drop out of sight immediately."^^ Stimers' depen­ dence upon Fox affected his technical decisions, and it is possible that a formally established project office with bureau rank (such as Stimers' proposed Bureau of Iron Clad

^^Stimers to Fox, June 16, 1864, Fox Papers, Box 9.

385 Steamers) might have prevented or ameliorated many of the problems of the monitor building program.

Leaving aside the merits of the project office form of organization, the war's biggest procurement lesson for the navy was that "better is the enemy of good enough." Fox wrote of "additions and improvements and everlasting alter­ ations, all of which have cursed our cause and our Depart­ ment." The light drafts. Fox wrote, would not be done

"until the whole contest is concluded, though six of them would have given us the vitals of the South." It is easy to agree with the reason he ascribed: "additions, alterations and improvements."^® The idea of the Bureau of Iron Clad Steamers, promising as it was, foundered on the rock of the light draft fiasco.

The very public failure of a multi-million dollar program discredited Stimers and derailed the whole idea of an inde­ pendent project office. The line-engineer feud and the contracting scandals discussed in Chapter 11 ensured that the proposal would not be revived after the war. Similarly, the postwar reaction reversed the trend toward flexibility in naval acquisition. The result was a renewed exaltation of competitive bidding for government contracting and a proliferation of (marginally successful) rules to prevent fraud. Ship acquisition swung back toward an 1850s model;

’■®Fox to Stimers, February 25, 1864, Private, Fox Papers, Box 8.

386 for a dozen, years after the war, the navy built most of its ships in its own yards.

The postwar period also brought a return to earlier ways for the companies that had been most involved in the wartime industrial mobilization. The experiences of the

"expansion" shipbuilders support the view that the apparent industrial progress engendered by the Civil War was illu­ sory. Swift/Niles and Snowdon & Mason, both formed for the express purpose of building war materials, simply dissolved.

Capital starvation and preoccupation with claims against the government retarded Miles Greenwood's enterprises, and his firm never regained its former stature. At the end of the decade, Cincinnati shipbuilding was no farther advanced than at its beginning. The navy, considering the industrial potential of the western states and the desirability of being able to build ships where no seaborne enemy could reach them, formed the

Davis commission to recommend a site for a navy yard on the

Mississippi River system. Despite the labor, material and infrastructure advantages of places like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, they could not overcome the fact that at low water, the controlling depth of the Ohio River was only 22 inches. Placing the western naval station at Mound City meant that operations would be less likely to be impeded by low water in the river system, but the Mound City area had none of the prerequisites for successful ship construction.

387 By the time the next wartime industrial mobilization ar­ rived, the ships the navy needed were too large to be built on the Ohio River.

Civil War experience showed that the "continuous im­ provement" method applied to contract-built vessels would produce ships for the next war, not the current one. The institutional memory was short, however, and the lessons were lost. From the end of the Civil War through the 1870s, the navy commenced twenty-two ships, all but three wooden hulled. Five were built by contractors, the others in navy yards. After 1873, the navy did not again build iron­ hulled vessels until the "ABCD" ships (cruisers Atlanta. Boston and Chicago and Dolphin) of 1882. In that effort, the navy repeated many of the mistakes of the Civil War building programs with identical results.

Rigid pro-competition laws forced the navy to award all four of the ABCD contracts to the low bidder, of

Chester. Leonard Swann has recounted in some detail the

^Gardiner, Conwav's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905. 12 6-29. Donald L. Canney, The Old Steam N a w . vol. 1, Frigates. and Gunboats. 1815-1885 (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1990), 145-66, 172. During this period the navy "rebuilt" a number of older ships to evade Congressional aversion to new construction. I have counted ships commenced as new construction or as complete rebuilds (*) between 1865 and 1880 as "new" ships. They comprise four new Algoma class ships (1867) ; Tennessee* ; six 1871 re­ builds called the Galena class (Vandalia*. Marion*. Mohi­ can* , Galena*, Ouinnebaug* and Swatara*); five Enterprise class in 1873 (four new and the rebuilt Nipsic*); three new iron-hulled Alert class (1873); the new (1873) Trenton: the 1874 rebuild Tallapoosa*; and the 1876 rebuild Lancaster* .

388 story of Roach's relationship with the navy, including

Roach's collusion with Secretary Robeson to "rebuild" sev­ eral monitors in a way which amounted to jacking up the old name and building a new ship under it. One may summarize

Roach's experiences with the ABCDs by observing that he suffered from careless or late preparation of drawings by the navy and a constant stream of "additions, alterations and improvements. " As a result of delays and the growing amount of rework required, his capital ran short and he had difficulty paying his work force. In 1885, newly appointed

(Democratic) Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney with­ held payments due to (Republican) contractor Roach, and Roach was forced into bankruptcy on July 18, 1885.^® Thanks to even more design changes, the navy required twenty-two more months to finish the nearly completed ships after it took over Roach's shipyard. It was "déjà vu all over again." The institutional consequences of the Civil War mobilization were as ephemeral as the physical ones.

After the original Monitor, the Passaic class, and the Onondaga. the navy ordered thirty-nine coastal and seagoing

^Leonard Alexander Swann, Jr., John Roach Maritime Entrepreneur: The Years as Naval Contractor, 1862-1886 (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1965. Chapters 7 through 10 deal with the "new navy" ABCD ships. Nagle observes, "Overruns; design changes ; breakdowns during sea trials; the navy's increasing dissatisfaction with the results; and carping criticism from politicians, competitors, and the press--all the curses of modern procurement--accompanied the efforts to refurbish the navy." Nagle, History of Government Contracting. 232-33.

389 monitors. Of the nine Tippecanoe class ships, only five were completed while the Civil War lasted. Only five of the twenty light draft Cascos were finished by war's end. Of eight navy yard built monitors of the Miantonomoh and Kala­ mazoo classes, only Monadnock saw Civil War service, and of

Ericsson's two "big pets," only Dictator was ever completed. When the war ended, twenty-seven of the thirty-nine monitors ordered after mid-1862 were still under construction. The magnitude of the resources wasted and the operational oppor­ tunities missed for lack of ships is staggering. There is plenty of blame to go around for individuals, but institu­ tionally, two elements stand out: the capital starvation that resulted from an unsophisticated contracting policy and the environment that permitted the age-old "continuous improvement" philosophy of "additions, alterations and improvements" to flourish unchecked.

390 APPENDIX A

TABULAR DATA FOR HARBOR AND RIVER MONITORS

Name Builder Launch Comm Fate Canonicus Loring 8/1/63 4/16/64 Sold 1908 Catawba Swift/Niles 4/13/64 6/10/65* Sold 1868 Mahopac Secor 5/17/64 9/22/64 Sold 1902 Manayunk Snowdon & 12/18/64 9/27/65* Sold 1899 Mason Manhattan Secor 10/14/63 6/6/64 Sold 1902 Oneota Swift/Niles 5/21/64 6/10/65* Sold 1868 Saugus Harlan & 12/16/63 4/7/64 Sold 1891 Hollingsworth Tecumseh Secor 9/12/63 4/19/64 Sunk 8/5/64 Tippecanoe Greenwood 12/22/64 2/15/66* Sold 1899 * indicates acceptance date vice commissioning date

In June 1869, Admiral David D. Porter caused a wholesale renaming with mythological or "heroic" names. Another wholesale renaming took place later the same year in which most ships received their original names again, but enough did not to trip the unwary historian. Among the harbor and river monitors, Tecumseh had been sunk and Catawba and Oneota sold to Peru, so the 1869 renamings were: Original June 1869 August 1869 Canonicus Scylla Canonicus Mahopac Castor Mahopac Manayunk Ajax Ajax Manhattan Neptune Manhattan Saugus Centaur Saugus Tippecanoe Vesuvius Wyandotte

Cincinnati- and Pittsburgh-built light draft monitors were also renamed: Original June 1869 August 1869 Klamath Harpy Klamath Umpqua Fury Umpqua Yuma Tempest Yuma

391 APPENDIX B

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

While there is a mountain of literature on the Civil

War and a foothill on the naval war, a large fraction of the naval works are operationally oriented. A good-sized body of literature of varying quality deals with the ships them­ selves, and a smaller group of authors have written on the strategic and political aspects of the naval struggle and on naval administration. Little work has been done on the acquisition and logistics systems that provided the navy with ships and kept them at sea, and no studies exist on the industrial effort spawned by the navy's urgent need for ironclads. To examine the subject of naval industrial mobilization, then, one must approach its literature from several aspects; at a minimum, naval, biographical, and industrial.

The Monitor herself has fascinated writers since the

Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862. The "monitor myth" tells how brilliant inventor John Ericsson convinced mossbacked naval officers to try his revolutionary armored warship.

392 After Herculean effort, his Monitor ventured forth to bat­ tle, miraculously surviving a gale on her way. Arriving in the nick of time, the "heroic little cheesebox on a raft" met the Confederate behemoth Merrimack in a seagoing version of David and Goliath, with the Union at stake. In a happy ending, the navy forsook its earlier skepticism, built a fleet of monitors and won the war with them.^ The non- mythological version, less frequently encountered, is no less interesting. Worthwhile examinations of the ship's inception and construction include William N. Still's Moni-

^Leaving aside Church's partisan biography of Ericsson and Century Magazine's accounts, some evocations of the Monitor myth: "Ericsson's Monitor, probably the most famous and epoch-making craft . . . except Noah's Ark" was adopted thanks to "almost miraculous chances." Frank M. Bennett, The Steam N a w of the United States (Westport, C T : Greenwood Press, 1974, reprint of 1896 edition), 274-82, 295-313. Enroute to Hampton Roads, "would [Monitor] get there in time? And even if she did, was this two-gun 'tin can on a shingle' any match for the rebel monster? She did, and she was. ..." James M. McPherson, Battle Crv of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 3 74, 376-78. "No one remembered [Ericsson] . . . it was by complete chance, an accidental meeting, that he came once again to the U.S. Navy's attention in 1861. . . ." "The Union Navy had taken no interest in [Monitor's] construc­ tion, beyond providing an inspector ..." Stephen Howarth, To Shining Sea: A History of the United States N a w 1775- 1991 (New York: Random House, 1991), 185, 188-90. The most recent example is James Tertius deKay, Monitor: The Storv of the Legendary Civil War Ironclad and the Man Whose Invention Changed the Course of History (New York: Walker and Company, 1997), in which "naval officers young and old" oppose Erics­ son. They make a "last ditch attempt . . . to scuttle the project" by inserting guarantee clauses in Ericsson's con­ tract in a "mean-spirited and unwarranted breach of faith" by the Navy. The "Merrimac" appears as "a deadly and invin­ cible scourge." (deKay, Monitor. 76, 95, 102, 149)

393 tor Builders and Stephen C. Thompson's thesis and article, "The Construction of the U.S.S. Monitor.

Many published works briefly address the later monitor building program in a few sentences or paragraphs; studies

that touch on the ironclad program almost always mention the

"light draft monitor fiasco," generally assigning the role

of goat to Alban Stimers with more or less attention to the

parts played by Fox, Ericsson and the bureau chiefs. Ex­

cepting Donald L. Canney's most recent work, which gives a glimpse of the process by which ships were produced, nothing

has been written about industrial mobilization.^ The impact

on the navy of such innovations as centralized configuration

control, integrated logistics support and "project office" organization has not until now been explored, nor have the ways in which economic and industrial conditions affected the success of the navy's ironclad building.

Naval logistics have been similarly neglected. Robert M. Browning's 1993 From Cape Charles to Cape Fear is among

^William N. Still, Monitor Builders: A Historical Studv of the Principal Firms and Individuals Involved in the Construction of USS Monitor (Washington: National Park Service, 1988) . Stephen C. Thompson, "The Construction of the U.S.S. MONITOR," Master's thesis. Old Dominion Universi­ ty, 1987; "The Design and Construction of USS Monitor." Warship International 27, no. 3 (1990): 222-42.

^Donald L. Canney, Lincoln's Naw: The Ships, Men and Organization. 1861-65 (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1998), includes a very brief section on shipbuilding administration. His The Old Steam N a w . vol. 2, The Iron­ clads. 1842-1885 (Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1993) focuses on the ships and gives valuable insights into their design histories.

394 the few published works to examine naval logistics, but

Browning's very valuable work stresses operational logistics and maintenance rather than ship acquisition. A shorter, more narrowly focused study of logistics matters is Dana M.

Wegner's article on the Port Royal Working Parties.*

With regard to the major players in the navy's indus­ trial mobilization. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles has received the most attention. The "standard" biography is John Niven's 1973 Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the

N a w ; among older works is Richard S. West, Jr.'s 1943 book,

Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Navy Department.^ Both books understandably focus more on the Secretary himself and upon the politics and strategy of the war than on the mobiliza­ tion effort. William J. Sullivan's dissertation on Gustavus

Fox' s administration of the Navy Department is the only lengthy work on this complex figure.® In his discussion of

*Robert M. Browning, Jr., From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993). A companion volume covering the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron is said to be forthcoming; because ironclads played a larger role in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron than in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, ironclad logis­ tics will be addressed more fully. Dana M. Wegner, "The Port Royal Working Parties," Civil War Times Illustrated 15, no. 8 (December 1976): 22-31. ®John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the N a w (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Richard S. West, Jr. Gideon Welles: Lincoln's N a w Department (India­ napolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943).

®William J. Sullivan, "Gustavus Vasa Fox and Naval Administration," Ph. D. dissertation. Catholic University of America, 1977. John D. Hayes' article, "Captain Fox--He

395 naval construction. Sullivan brings out much of the friction among the bureaus, Gregory, Stimers and Ericsson, painting

Stimers in a highly unflattering way. His focus in this area, however, is primarily the light draft monitor fiasco and its effect upon Fox. Some of Sullivan's conclusions are questionable; for example, he asserts that Fox decided which firms would receive construction contracts, apparently because Fox signed the letter advising a contractor of the

Navy Department's decision. Additionally, his treatment of Fox's complaint against "additions and improvements and everlasting alterations" ignores Fox's own role in encourag­ ing those changes.

Among lower-ranking figures. Engineer-in-Chief Benjamin Franklin Isherwood is the subject of a well-regarded biogra­ phy by Edward Sloan.^ The only work on Alban Stimers is

Wegner's Master's thesis, "Alban C. Stimers and the Office of the General Inspector of Ironclads, 1862-1864."® Biogra­ phies of Cincinnati's monitor builders seem to be limited to is the Navy Department" ably sets out the views of the "Fox as Chief of Naval Operations" school but its discussion of monitor procurement contains missteps. John D. Hayes, "Captain Fox--He is the Navy Department," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 91, no. 9 (September 1965) : 64- 71.

"'Edward William Sloan, III, Benjamin Franklin Isherwood Naval Engineer; The Years as Engineer in Chief. 1861-1869 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1965).

®Dana M. Wegner, "Alban C. Stimers and the Office of the General Inspector of Ironclads, 1862-1864," Master's thesis, State University of New York College at Oneonta, 1979.

396 vanity press articles (e.g., Miles Greenwood) or obituaries (e.g., Alexander Swift).

Key works in the limited body of literature on naval procurement and administration are three dissertations, by

Barbara B. Tomblin, Aubrey H. Polser and Kurt H. Hackemer.

Tomblin's study of the pre-Civil War relationship between the navy and civilian ship and engine builders demonstrates that the navy was aware of technological developments and kept itself informed of the capabilities of the country's engineering establishments. Her treatment of naval build­ ing, however, lumps together the building of steam-propelled wooden ships (by the 1860s a maturing technology) and iron­ clads (still largely experimental). Her analysis of the navy's industrial expansion is sometimes simplistic; for example, while drawings and specifications were "readily available," drawings alone did not guarantee success.® Polser's generally sound work on Civil War naval admin­ istration paints ship procurement with a broad brush. He recognizes that lack of timeliness and cost overruns were the "most persistent" difficulties but does not delve into their causes. Polser correctly sees "the frequent necessity to alter ship specifications" as a problem, blaming Stimers for "interference" and characterizing the intervention of

^Barbara B. Tomblin, "From Sail to Steam: The Develop­ ment of Steam Technology in the United States Navy, 1838- 1865," Ph. D. dissertation, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick, 1988.

397 "top naval administrators" as "improper." Viewing the

General Inspectorate purely as a quality-control organiza­ tion, however, he fails to observe its internal dynamics or to see how and why it evolved into the precursor of "project office" management. His observations on navy contracts similarly lack context; many contractual elements that were in his words "devised" for war-built ships were either held over from prewar practice or clauses required by law, and contracting practice did not remain static during the war.^ Hackemer's study of navy contracting practices is extremely valuable for its examination of the acquisition system that the navy evolved in the 1850s and its assessment of that system's performance under the stress of war in the 1860s. His case study comparison of the Merrimack. built under the 1850s system during peacetime, and the Galena, built under the same system under wartime pressures, pro­ vides many insights into the evolving relationship between the navy and its shipbuilders.^^

The broad question of whether the Civil War advanced or retarded industrialization can be answered in the negative in the area of iron shipbuilding. Cincinnati's experience

’•“Aubrey H. Polser, Jr., "The Administration of the United States Navy, 1861-1865," Ph. D. dissertation. Univer­ sity of Nebraska--Lincoln, 1975.

“Kurt Henry Hackemer, "From Peace to War: U.S. Naval Procurement, Private Enterprise and the Integration of New Technology, 1850-1865," Ph. D. dissertation, Texas A&M University, 1994.

398 supports Walter Licht's argument that the war's direct economic effects were limited; when the Federal Government "receded," so did Cincinnati (and Pittsburgh) shipbuild­ ing.^^ Paul A. C. Koistinen's Beating Plowshares into

Swords argues that the key element in Civil War mobilization was the preponderance of resources over requirements--that the mobilized manpower and industrial capacity of the United States exceeded the demands of the war.^ The Union could thus use financial incentives to mobilize without creating a "command economy" and without seriously disrupting the pattern of civil-military relations. This was especially true for the army, which absorbed the largest share of the men and money poured into the war. For the much smaller navy, which Koistinen considers well-managed, it was true in broad. The labor and materials shortages that crippled the monitor program show, however, that the broad characteriza­ tion of sufficiency must be qualified in several areas crucial to the success of naval industrial mobilization. Mobilization by financial incentive was not uniformly suc­ cessful .

^Walter Licht, Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Centurv (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) .

^^Paul A. C. Koistinen, Beating Plowshares into Swords : The Political Economy of American Warfare. 1606-1865 (Law­ rence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996). Koistinen devotes some 38 pages to the Union Army, fewer than five to the navy.

399 Thomas R. Heinrich's Ships for the Seven Seas addresses the transition among shipbuilders from building in wood to building in iron and helps to narrow the focus from indus­ trialization in general to shipbuilding in particular. While his work deals specifically with Delaware Valley shipbuilders and predominantly with the post-Civil War period, his analysis is readily applicable to both the Civil War expansion and the postwar contraction of the western shipyards.

Another useful lens through which to examine the naval mobilization is that of the specialty industrial producer.

Philip Scranton's Endless Noveltv provides a taxonomy of specialty production that helps both to characterize western shipbuilders and to correlate their relative success with their ability and experience as custom producers.^ Scran­ ton's assertion that Civil War production "solidif[ied] shipbuilders' technological shift to iron vessels" seems, however, to run counter to Heinrich's assessment and to western experience as discussed in this dissertation.

John K. Brown's The Baldwin Locomotive Works. 1831-1915 specifically addresses the specialty production of capital equipment, but much in his work is directly applicable to

^■‘Thomas R. Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas : Phila­ delphia Shipbuilding in the Age of Industrial Capitalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

^^Philip Scranton, Endless Noveltv: Specialty Produc­ tion and American Industrialization, 1865-1925 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

400 shipbuilders.^® Most illuminating is his discussion of how

Baldwin, a specialty producer, was able to turn the infla­ tionary environment of the Civil War to its own advantage.

Brown's assessment of Baldwin's success may be contrasted with the experiences of the shipbuilders. Like the moni­ tors, Baldwin's locomotives were complex mechanisms that were custom-built to order. Relative to ironclads, however, they were quick to build; Baldwin could execute a contract quickly enough to forestall customer-ordered changes and to escape the effects of inflating costs and fixed prices. In addition, Baldwin had much more capital relative to the price of its product than did the shipbuilders. The combi­ nation of relatively shorter-term contracts and relatively higher capitalization permitted Baldwin to use the flexibil­ ity that Brown and Scranton call the hallmark of the spe­ cialty producer. Shipbuilders, locked into long-term fixed- price contracts that absorbed most of their capital, lost that flexibility.

^®John K. Brown, The Baldwin Locomotive Works 1831- 1915: A Studv in American Industrial Practice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

401 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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408 Blackford, Mansel G., and K. Austin Kerr. Business Enter­ prise in American History (2d ed.) . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Brooke, George M. Jr. John M. Brooke : Naval Scientist and Educator. Charlottesville: University Press of Vir­ ginia, 1980.

Brown, David K. Warrior to Dreadnought : Warship Development 1860-1905. London : Chatham Publishing, 1997.

Brown, John K. The Baldwin Locomotive Works 1831-1915: A Studv in American Industrial Practice. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Browning, Robert M., Jr. From Cape Charles to Cape Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.

Buell, Augustus C. The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp. Phila­ delphia: J. P. Lippincott Co., 1906. Buell's reputation for veracity has been impugned. Allan Nevins wrote, in reference to another Buell book, "When his sources ran thin, Mr. Buell calmly manufac­ tured new ones." (Allan Nevins, from The Gateway to History, in The Historian as Detective: Essays on Evi­ dence . ed. Robin Winks, [New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1969], 201-202). Callahan, Edward, ed. List of Officers of the N a w of the United States and of the Marine Corps from 1775 to 1900. New York: Haskell House, 1969; reprint of 1901 edition. Carleton, William G. "Civil War Dissidence in the North: The Perspective of a Century." South Atlantic Quarterly vol. 65, no. 3 (Summer 1966), 390-402. Canney, Donald L. Lincoln's Naw: The Ships. Men and Orga­ nization. 1861-65. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998 .

______. The Old Steam N a w . vol. 1, Frigates. Sloops and Gunboats. 1815-1885. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990 . The Old Steam N a w . vol. 2, The Ironclads. 1842- 1885. Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1993.

Chapelle, Howard I. The History of the American Sailing Naw: The Ships and Their Development. New York: Bonanza Books, reprint of 1949 edition.

409 Church, William Conant. The Life of John Ericsson. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891.

Cist, Charles. Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1859. Cincinnati: n.pub., 1859.

Dahl gr en, Madeleine Vinton. Memoir of John A. Dahlgren Rear Admiral United States N a w . Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882.

Dale, Ida Dudley. "Thomas Jefferson Griffin: Superintendent of Iron Cl ads. " Staten Island Historian 11, no. 3 (July-September 1950, serial no. 43): 17-22; 11, no. 4 (October-December 1950, serial no. 44): 25-28. Daly, Robert W. , ed. Aboard the USS Monitor. 1862 : The Letters of Acting Paymaster William Frederick Keeler. U.S. N a w to his Wife. Anna. Annapolis : Naval Insti­ tute Press, 1964. Davis, William C. Duel Between the First Ironclads) (2d ed.). Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994; re­ print with new preface of 1975 edition.

Dudley, William S. Going South: U. S. N a w Officer Resigna­ tions & Dismissals on the Eve of the Civil War. Wash­ ington: Naval Historical Foundation, 1981.

Durbrow, Julia Stimers. The Monitor and Alban C. Stimers. Orlando, FL: Ferris Printing Co., 1936.

"The First Cruise of the 'Monitor' Passaic." Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 27, no. 161 (October 1863) : 577-95. Friedman, Norman. U.S. Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982.

Gardiner, Robert, ed. Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905. Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1979 .

______, ed. Steam. Steel and Shellfire : The Steam Warship 1815-1905. Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1992.

Gillmer, Thomas C. Modem Ship Design (2d ed.) . Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1970. Grimsley, C. Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

410 Griswold Tracts. No. 1: Startling Expose. The Real Facts concerning John A. Griswold and the Building of the Monitor in [Pamphlets relating to the Presidential Election of 1868].

Hackemer, Kurt Henry. "From Peace to War: U.S. Naval Pro­ curement, Private Enterprise and the Integration of New Technology, 1850-1865." Ph. D. dissertation, Texas A&M University, 1994.

Hayes, John D. "Captain Fox--He is the Navy Department," United States Naval Institute Proceedings 91, no. 9 (September 1965): 64-71.

, ed. Samuel Francis Du Pont: A Selection from his Civil War Letters, vol. 1, The Mission: 1860-1861: vol. 2, The Blockade: 1862-1863. vol. 3, The Repulse: 1863- 1865. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press for The Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, 1969.

Heinrich, Thomas R. Ships for the Seven Seas: Philadelphia Shipbuilding in the Age of Industrial Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Hess, Earl J. "Northern Response to the Ironclad: A Pros­ pect for the Study of Military Technology." Civil War History 31 (1985): 126-43.

Hogg, John W. Compilation of Laws relating to the N a w , Marine Corps, Etc., from the Revised Statutes and Subsequent Acts to March 3, 1883. Washington: Govern­ ment Printing Office, 1883.

Hounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Pro­ duction 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

Howarth, David. The Voyage of the Armada: The Spanish Story. New York: Viking Press, 1981.

Ingham, John N. Making Iron and Steel: Independent Mills in Pittsburgh, 1820-1920. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991. Johnson, Robert Underwood, and Clarence C. Buel, eds. Bat­ tles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 1, The Opening Battles. vol. 4, The Wav to Appomattox. New York: Castle Books, 1956; reprint of 1887 edition.

411 Jones, Howard. Union in Peril : The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Koistinen, Paul A. C . Beating Plowshares into Swords : The Political Economy of American Warfare. 1606-1865. Lawrence, KS : University Press of Kansas, 1996. Licht, Walter. Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 .

Luraghi, Raimondo. A History of the Confederate N a w . Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1996.

MacQueen, John Fraser. Chief Points in the Laws of War and Neutrality. Search and Blockade. London and Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers, 1862.

Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961-64. McCusker, John J. How Much Is That in Real Money? A His­ torical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1992. (Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Soci­ ety vol. 101, part 2 (October 1991).)

McGee, David Brian. "Floating Bodies, Naval Science: Sci­ ence, Design and the Captain controversy, 1860-1870." Ph.D. Thesis, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, 1994. Merrill, James M. Du Pont : The Making of an Admiral. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986. ______. "Union Shipbuilding on Western Rivers During the Civil War." Smithsonian Journal of History vol. 3 (Winter 1968-69), 17-44. Mindell, David A. "'The Clangor of That Blacksmith's Fray' Technology, War, and Experience Aboard the USS Moni­ tor . " Technology and Culture 36, no. 2 (April 1995), 242-70.

Munden, Kenneth W ., and Henry Putney Beers. The Union: A Guide to Federal Archives Relating to the Civil War. Washington: National Archives and Records Administra­ tion, 1986 (republication of 1962 edition).

412 Nagle, James F. A History of Government Contracting. Washington, D.C.: George Washington University, 1992. A popular history that concentrates on army con­ tracting.

National Geographic Society. Historical Atlas of the United States. Washington: National Geographic Society, 1988.

Neu, Irene D, Erastus Coming Merchant and Financier 1794- 1872. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1960.

Niven, John. Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary o£ the N a w . New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. ed. The Salmon P. Chase Papers vol. 1, Journals. 1829-1872. vol. 3, Correspondence 1858-March 1863. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1993, 1996.

Novotny, Samuel. "The Board of Strategy and Union Military Planning for Sea Operations Against the Southern Con­ federacy. " Master's thesis. Old Dominion University, 1978 . Parkes, Oscar. British Battleships: Warrior to Vanguard: A History of Design. Construction and Armament. Hamden, C T : Archon Books, 1970; first published 1956.

Polser, Aubrey H., Jr. "The Administration of the United States Navy, 1861-1865." Ph. D. dissertation. Univer­ sity of Nebraska--Lincoln, 1975. Porter, Holbrook Fitz John. "The Delamater Iron Works--The Cradle of the Modern Navy." Transactions of the Soci­ ety of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. 26 (1918), 1-32.

Prendergast, Thomas F . Forgotten Pioneers : Irish Leaders in Earlv California. San Francisco: Trade Pressroom, 1942 .

Previts, Gary John, and Barbara Dubis Merino. A History of Accountancy in the United States: The Cultural Signif­ icance of Accounting. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998.

Reed, E[dward] J. Shipbuilding in Iron and Steel: A Practi­ cal Treatise. Giving Full Details of Construction, Processes of Manufacture, and Building Arrangements. London: John Murray, 1869.

413 "The Stability of the 'Captain, ' 'Monarch, ' and Some Other Iron-clads." Naval Science 1 (April-October 1872): 26-42.

Reed, Rowena. Combined Operations in the Civil War. Lin­ coln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1973; origi­ nally published 1958. Reed's flattering portrait of Major General George B. McClellan has not worn well in light of more recent scholarship such as Edwin Fishel's meticulous dissec­ tion of McClellan's intelligence service and decision­ making (The Secret War for the Union : The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War). Although practically unavoidable at the time she wrote, her use of the 1911 edition of Gideon Welles' diary was unfor­ tunate. It is difficult to justify her failure to consult Gustavus Fox's papers, especially as she used the absence of material from Robert Means Thompson's published selection of Fox's correspondence to draw conclusions highly unflattering to Fox. Richardson, Heather Cox. The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Ridgely-Nevitt, Cedric. American Steamships on the Atlan­ tic ■ Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1981.

Roberts, William H. "The name of Ericsson: Political Engineering in the Union Ironclad Program 1861-1863." Forthcoming (1999) in Journal of Military History.

"Thunder Mountain: The Ironclad Ram Dunderbera." Warship International. no. 4, 1993, 363-400.

USS New Ironsides in the Civil War. Forthcoming (1999) from the Naval Institute Press.

Roman, Alfred. The Military Operations of General Beaure­ gard in the War Between the States 1861 to 1865 : in­ cluding a brief personal sketch and a narrative of his services in the war with Mexico, 1846-8. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1884; reprinted 1994 by Da Capo Press.

Ropp, Theodore. "Anacondas Anyone?" Military Affairs 27 (Summer 1963), 71-76.

Roske, Ralph J., and Charles Van Doren. Lincoln's Commando : The Biography of Commander W. B. Cushing. U. S. N. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957.

414 Schneller, Robert J. "A Littoral Frustration: The Union Navy and the Siege of Charleston, 1863-1865." Naval War College Review 49, no. 1 (Winter 1996), 38-60.

A Quest for Glorv: A Biography of Rear Admiral John A . Dahlaren. Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 1996. Scranton, Philip. Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization. 1865-1925. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1997.

Sewell, Richard H. John P. Hale and the Politics of Aboli­ tion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. Sloan, Edward William III. Beniamin Franklin Isherwood Naval Engineer: The Years as Engineer in Chief. 1861- 1869. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1965. An excellent portrait of the controversial Isher­ wood and, by extension, of the first widespread wartime use of steam propulsion.

Sprout, Harold, and Margaret Sprout. The Rise of American Naval Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946. Stager, Rick. History of the Niles-Bement-Pond Tool Com­ pany. Birchrunville, PA: n . p ., 1993.

Starr, Steven Z. "Was There a Northwest Conspiracy?" Filson Club History Quarterly vol. 38, no. 4 (October 1964): 323-41.

Still, William N. Jr. Iron Afloat : The Story of the Confed­ erate Armorclads. Columbia: University of South Caro­ lina Press, 1985. ______. Monitor Builders: A Historical Study of the Principal Firms and Individuals Involved in the Con­ struction of USS Monitor. Washington: National Park Service, 1988.

Sullivan, William J. "Gustavus Vasa Fox and Naval Adminis­ tration. " Ph. D. dissertation. Catholic University of America, 1977.

Surdam, David George. "Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War." Ph. D. disserta­ tion, University of Chicago, 1994.

415 Swann, Leonard Alexander, Jr. John Roach Maritime Entre preneur: The Years as Naval Contractor. 1862-1886. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1965.

Thompson, Robert Means and Richard Wainwright, eds. Con­ fidential Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox Assistant Secretary of the N a w 1861-1865. 2 vols. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1918-19; reprint. Regrettably limited and incomplete. An index for this edition was compiled some years ago; typescripts are at several repositories including the New-York Historical Society and the Naval Historical Center. Thompson, Stephen C. " The Construction of the U.S. S. MONI­ TOR." Master's thesis. Old Dominion University, 1987. Excellent for the financial and organizational background of the Monitor, but sometimes inaccurate in technical details, especially in marine engineering. Later version published in Warship International (see below).

"The Design and Construction of USS Monitor. " Warship International 27, no. 3 (1990): 222-42.

Tomblin, Barbara B. "From Sail to Steam: The Development of Steam Technology in the United States Navy, 1838-1865," Ph. D. dissertation, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick, 1988.

Trimble, William F. "From Sail to Steam: Shipbuilding in the Pittsburgh Area, 1790-1865." Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine. 58, no. 2 (April 1975), 147-67.

Tucker, Spencer. Arming the Fleet : U.S. N a w Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989. Vincenti, Walter G. What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Vlahos, Michael E. "The Making of an American Style (1797- 1887) ." In Randolph W. King, ed. , Naval Engineering and American Seapower. Baltimore: Nautical and Avia­ tion Publishing, 198 9. Watson, John W. "The Building of the Ship." Harper's New Monthly Magazine 24, no. 143 (April 1862): 608-20.

Wegner, Dana M. "Alban C . Stimers and the Office of the General Inspector of Ironclads, 1862-1864." Master's

416 thesis. State University of New York College at One onta, 1979.

"The Port Royal Working Parties." Civil War Times Illustrated 15, no. 8 (December 1976): 22-31.

Welles, Gideon. Diary of Gideon Welles Secretary of the N a w under Lincoln and Johnson. Howard K. Beale, ed. 3 vols. New York: W. W. Norton, 1960. A revised and more accurate version of the Welles diaries. This edition maintains the same pagination as the 1911 edition, heavily edited by Edgar T. Welles.

Wells, William S. The Original United States Warship Moni­ tor (2d ed.). New Haven, CT: Cornelius S. Bushnell National Memorial Association, 1906. A very flattering portrait of Bushnell.

Werrell, Kenneth P. Blankets of Fire : U. S. Bombers over Japan during World War II. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.

Western Biographical Publishing Company. The Biographical Cyclopaedia and Portrait Gallerv with an Historical Sketch of the State of Ohio. Cincinnati: Western Biographical Publishing Company, 1884. Wheeler, Francis Brown. John F. Winslow. LL.D.. and the Monitor. [Poughkeepsie, NY]: n.p., 1893. A very flattering portrait of Winslow. White, William H. A Manual of Naval Architecture for use of Officers of the Royal Naw. Officers of the Mercantile Marine. Yachtsmen, Shipowners, and Shipbuilders. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1900.

Wilson, Charles R. "Cincinnati a Southern Outpost in 1860- 1861?" Mississippi Valiev Historical Review, vol. 24, no. 4 (March 1938), 473-482. Wilson, James Grant, and John Fiske, eds. Appleton's Cyclo­ paedia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1888.

Wright, Smithson E ., compiler. Obituaries of Cincinnatians 1868-1891. Scrapbook of newspaper clippings with index (microfilm edition). Cincinnati: American Jewish Periodical Center, 1962.

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