A Year on a Monitor and the Destruction of Fort Sumter

I have cited Alvah Hunter's book,  "A Year on a Monitor and the Destructionof Fort Sumter," several times in the past few posts. I finished reading it and I highly recommend it if you have an interest in Civil War  ironclads and naval warfare.

While Hunter enlisted at age 16 and served as a cabin boy, he was a remarkable mature and curious young man. Unlike his shipmates that used their shore leave for drunken revelry that usually ended in fist fights and arrest, Hunter took the opportunity to visit various historic locations like Battery Wagner after it fell, a captured blockade runner and the captured CSS Atlanta. His curiosity took him on deck at the start of the engagement with the CSS Atlanta such that the first shot fired, missed his ship but thoroughly splashed him with water.

He provides a lot of detail about the USS Nahant's, a sister of the USS Passaic, construction, operation, maintenance, problems they encountered and general life on board. He was present for several important battles including the failed April 1863 attack on Charleston, the capture of the CSS Atlanta - from which he received a $176 payment of prize money, the capture of Fort Wagner and several other minor engagements. He augments his personal observations with passages describing the Confederate viewpoint on the battles since he wrote the book about 50 years after the war. This helps keep the story aligned with the bigger picture. All in all a great little book.

Earthquake, hurricane, ...what's next?

This past week Northern Virginia, as well as much of the US East coast, experienced a pair of natural disasters. Fortunately for us, the events did not cause much damage. We came through pretty much unscathed, with just some electrical power flickering but no serious power outage. Others were not so lucky, and there were several fatalities including a child killed in his bedroom by a falling tree.

The earthquake at 5.8 Richter Scale strength was unnerving but did not cause much damage. Earthquakes are very rare in this part of the world. Hurricanes are not as rare. Hurricane Irene was at category 1 strength by the time it reached the Mid Atlantic Seaboard. In Alexandria we only received tropical storm winds. Trees down seem to be the biggest problem in my neighborhood, but there don't appear to be that many. Last summer we had a powerful localized thunderstorm that destroyed hundreds of old trees. That caused our power to go out for 24 hours. That storm may have acted like a natural pruning and left only healthy strong trees that were able to survive this storm.

I need to add the cable stays to the stack.

Work continued on the Passaic in between preparation for the storm and checking the weather.

I added about 800 rivets to the hull armor plates. That was a tedious job without much visual payback. I didn't have a good reference shot of the armor plates, so I went with an educated guess. It is interesting that Alvah Hunter never refers to rivets when discussing the armor plate. He always uses the term "bolted." I wonder if he is being literal or if "bolted" was used synonymously with "riveted" in the 19th century. In photos they clearly look like rivets.

 I scratch built the smoke stack using sections of PVC pipe, a PVC coupling, strip styrene and rivets. Hunter mentions an armored grating on the top of the stack to prevent projectiles from entering, so I cut one on the laser and added it to the stack. I have a reference painting that shows cable stays on the stack. So I need to add them.

The ship is so big that I cannot fit it in my spray booth to paint it. So I had to take it outside to paint. In the process of handling the hull with wet paint, I dropped it. That popped some of the armor panels and will require touch up putty and sanding. You can see some of the crack damage along the hull-deck edge in the photo.

Close up showing stanchions, bell and
other details on the Catskill, a sister of Passaic.

The Monitors were equipped with stanchions and rope railings for use when not in General Quarters. The stanchions were removable for combat. Alvah Hunter describes the stanchions as being 2.5 feet tall. I had ordered a batch of brass machined stanchions from Bluejacket models. The biggest ones they had were 7/16th inch, at nearly a dollar each they were expensive and alas too short.

The photo above shows how I extended the stanchion with a short section of 1/16th inch thin walled brass tubing. They look like they should match the stanchions in the prototype photo at the left.  The hole spacing should work as the rope lines were not evenly spaced on the stanchion.  Also note the bell and davits detail in the prototype photo.

I later discovered that Billings Boats has the multiple size stanchions. I'll see if I can order some of them, but I think the extended ones I have will work. I can also try laser cutting some as they do appear to have a flat profile in the photo.











I found an interesting site about Dahlgren guns with neat 3d renderings of the gun in the Monitor turret.

Sheer Madness

I added the side armor panels to the hull. By cutting the panels to the appropriate shape I was able to add the sheer curve to the hull.  Sheer is the measure of longitudinal main deck curvature. Although the hull of an ironclad Monitor type hull looks like a flat raft, it actually has sheer and camber. My hull has both. I think it really helps the appearance of the hull, making it look much more like a ship.

The Passaic Monitor class ships were designed to be trimmed with the bow higher than the stern. This allows water to drain through the bilge to the rear where pumps would eject it from the ship. The Nahant almost sank because the trim was off  when they loaded too much ammuntion in the forward holds and some of the drain holes were plugged with construction debris. The Nahant's officers caught the problem in time to prevent sinking. Unfortunately, the USS Weehawken sank due to essentially the same problem, taking the lives of much of the crew.

The side armor panels have engraved detail and a base coat of black primer. I probably need to add 3D rivets to the side panel, but there are so many.... The rivets on the deck surface were counter sunk and are fine as just engraved detail. Whew, thank goodness..

The ventilators are probably a bit large, but look cool. They were added later to the ships to improve airflow. They may have not been on the ship in December 1862.

Yawning awning





One of the things that gives the Union Monitor class ironclads their character is the distinctive tent awnings on top of the turrets. Since I can't sew, I had to come up with a different method to make the awning.  I used my laser to cut a satin like fabric. I hoped that the laser would melt the cut lines and thereby avoid having to sew a hem. It worked. The fabric was "cauterized" by the laser. 

But what about the sheen of the satin? I used flat white primer to paint the fabric. That killed the sheen, but reduced the fabric's flexibility. I then crumpled the fabric in my hand to break up the stiffness of the paint. That worked pretty well. I then laser cut small rings that I glued to the fabric with CAA. I also glued the long seam to create the teepee. I used a pencil to simulate seams between the panels.

Then it was a pretty simple matter of threading it on the davits. I made each segment longer than than the straight line distance between each davit so that fabric would drop slightly.  Once I had it threaded, I soaked the fabric with water to help shape it better. 

Once the fabric dries, I'll weather the awning with chalks to represent the coal soot from the engines.

The turret was the major challenge on this model, especially after deciding to detail the interior. With the awning on, you really can't see in the interior very well. But it was fun to make and the turret comes off if you really want to see the guns. There are still a few details left for the turret including  a flagpole and some ladders.

The rest of the hull should be pretty straight forward to finish except for the sheer. I had an idea on a method to simulate the sheer (i.e. the hull's upwards slope as it approaches the bow.) The sheer is only about a 1/4 inch over 50 inches, but it is noticeable.  I'll try that next.

Turret's Syndrome

I think I had a few too many paint fumes, but the turret is almost done.

Haupt explaining to Stevenson why he does not like XV-Inch guns on ironclads. The armored porthole covers
are visible in this shot.

From: Dictionary of American Fighting Ships, Volume III, 1968, Navy Department, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval History Division, Washington, DC


Armament for the Monitors

by Eugene B. Canfield

On March 9, 1862 Gustavis V. Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Lt. Henry A. Wise, Bureau of Ordnance, watched the encounter between Monitor and Merrimack from a small tugboat in Hampton Roads. Although MONITOR was left in possession of the battleground, neither contestant had been materially injured and it was apparent that something more powerful than Monitor's 11-inch Dahlgren shell guns [7] was required.

Coming ashore at Fort Monroe, Fox was attracted by an experimental 15-inch Rodman columbiad lying nearby. This obviously was the needed gun.Therefore, in April, Dahlgren completed a 15-inch design to fit the 20-foot interior of the new Ericsson ironclads. The first 15-inch guns weremounted alongside 11-inch shell guns since the 15-inch guns could not be produced quickly enough to provide two for each turret. The carriages were made of iron and the gun ports were so small that the 26.5-inch muzzles could not protrude. Consequently, a smoke-box was devised as shown in the illustration to protect the gun crew from the blast of the explosion.

Early testing was carried out in attacks on Fort McAllister, Ga. On January 27, 1863, Commander John Worden, of Monitor fame, and now captain of the new Montauk, fired twenty-six 15-inch projectiles at the fort from a range of 1,600 yards. "The firing from turret seemed slow and deliberate to those in engine room; the smoke from guns was forced rapidly into fireroom at each discharge, but was well diluted with air by the fans, and rapidly passed out through furnaces and smokepipe, causing no unusual discomfort."

Rear Admiral DuPont commented, "We have obtained valuable information in the success of the working of the XV-inch gun . . . My own previous impressions of these vessels . . . have been confirmed, viz., that whatever degree of impenetrability they might have, there was no corresponding quality of aggression or destructiveness as against forts, the slowness of fire giving full time for the gunners in the fort to take shelter in the bombproofs."

On February 28, Worden first proved the effectiveness of the 15-inch guns by destroying Confederate steamer Nashville lying aground under the protection of Fort McAllister. The range to the steamer was approximately 1,200 yards; only eight 15-inch shells and six 11-inch shells were required to set the wooden ship afire. Average time for firing the 15-inch gun was a little over 6 minutes with a minimum time of 3 minutes.

On other occasions and with other monitors, the average firing time might be as much as 10 minutes.Captain Drayton of Passaic reported that "pointing was done for both guns with the XI-inch, the port of the other being entirely closed by the concussion box." Furthermore, the smoke or concussion box was nearly knocked down, and the small projection on the cartridge would not enter the chamber so that priming powder had to be used to ignite the charge. Perhaps because of this, half of the 34 original guns had the teat chambers reamed out to parabolic form and the muzzle was turned down to 21 inches, the diameter of the 13-inch gun. [8]

Later, for the Canonicus class, the gun ports were enlarged to eliminate the smoke box and the 15-inch guns were redesigned with a 16-inch long muzzle. Canonicus and her sisters carried two 15-inch guns in their turrets.

Normally, the crew for firing the 15-inch gun consisted of 14 men, but often only eight men were preferred as being equally efficient with less crowding. Three type of projectile were provided, and the 440-pound solid shot could be fired with 60-pound charges at close quarters, although 50 pounds was the normal charge. Cored shot of 400 pounds was recommended for use against masonry. The 330-pound shell contained 13 pounds of powder and was ordinarily fired with a 35-pound charge. It contained three navy time fuses of 3 1/2, 5, and 7 seconds.Final justification for the 15-inch gun came on June 17, 1863 when Weehawken’s cored shot penetrated Atlanta’s 4-inch armor plating and broke the heavy iron casting at the top of the pilot house. Surrender occurred after only 15 minutes of fighting.In addition to the heavy smoothbores, a few of the monitors were equipped with the 8-inch 150-pdr. Parrott rifles. Of the Passaic class, Lehigh and Patapsco had them in place of the 11-inch shell guns, and finally the 11-inch of Passaic was replaced with a 150-pdr. rifle. The twin-turreted Onondaga also had a 150-pdr. Parrott alongside the 15-inch smoothbore in each turret. The extra range of the rifles was occasionally useful in reaching targets unattainable with the smoothbore.