Monitor
1862 · Turret Ship · Work 193 of 1,871
An ironclad whose long flat deck lies almost level with the water, its only superstructure a single squat revolving cylindrical turret standing amidships with two gun muzzles, and a small square pilothouse forward, crewmen seated on the bare deck.
- What it was used for
- Union ironclad. The Naval History and Heritage Command records that the prime contract went to her designer John Ericsson on 4 October 1861. On 9 March 1862 at Hampton Roads she fought the Confederate ironclad to a standstill in a four-hour duel, then performed blockade duty in Hampton Roads and was ordered to North Carolina on Christmas Eve 1862. Armament: two 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbores; turret armour eight layers of one-inch iron. Larrie D. Ferreiro gives the turret as just over 21 feet in diameter and weighing almost 120 tons.
- What was new
- Not the first idea for a revolving turret, but in Ferreiro's words "the first operational one in the world": two guns could fire in any direction without turning the hull, and the hull itself presented almost no target, because Ericsson accepted a deck that would frequently be awash. Cowper Phipps Coles claimed paternity of the turret, though on Ferreiro's account without any threat to Ericsson, as Coles was in Britain; Ericsson's partners also paid royalties to Theodore Timby against his own wishes. The barb: the very low freeboard that made her hard to hit in action made her unseaworthy. Almost ten months after Hampton Roads she foundered off Cape Hatteras shortly after midnight on 31 December 1862; four officers and twelve men went down with her. The contract allowed 100 days – from contract to launch on 30 January 1862 was 118.