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John L. Worden
Rear Admiral and Commander of the Monitor
by C. Clark Julius, FPS

In the spring of 1861, during the early
months of the American Civil War, the
Confederate navy began building an ex-
perimental "ironclad" warship in the
Gosport Naval Yard at Norfolk, Vir-
ginia. (A few ironclads had previously
been built in Europe, but no ironclad had
yet been tested in combat.) The South's
experimental ship was created by modi-
fying a conventional warship, the U.S.S
Merrimac, which the Federals had left
behind when they evacuated Norfolk.

When Southern Engineers began
working on her, the Merrimac was a
badly-damaged wooden sailing ship, 275
feet long, with an auxiliary steam engine
and a screw propeller. After nine months
of labor, however, the engineers trans-
formed the Merrimac into a floating for-
tress without sails. Every part of the ship
that might be exposed to enemy cannon
fire was protected with a four-inch thick-
ness of iron armor. This armor, extend-
ing from cabin roof to a depth of two feet
below the waterline, weighed 732 tons.
Her weight made the ship slow, with a
top speed of about five miles per hour.
She was armed with ten big guns and a
cast-iron beak for ramming enemy ships.

On February 17, 1862, when the ship
was deemed ready to fight, the Confed-
erates rechristened her as the C . S. S. Vir-
ginia. The Yankees, however, persisted
in calling the ship the Merrimac.

The Virginia's first assignment was to
smash the Union navy's blockade of the
lower Chesapeake Bay. Seventeen Fed-
eral ships were guarding the approaches
to Norfolk and theJames River. Most of
these Federal ships were anchored in a
line near the north shore of Hampton
Roads, a shallow channel about eight
miles long, where three Virginia Rivers
join and flow into the Chesapeake Bay.
They were wooden with tall masts, but
their sails had been furled for months.

At high noon on March 8, 1862, the
rigging of the Federal warships was fes-
tooned with drying laundry. The
weather that day was clear and unsea-
sonably warm, with a gentle breeze from
the northwest. A reporter for the Boston
Journal later wrote: " Never has a
brighter day smiled on old Virginia that
last Saturday. The hours crept lazily
along, the sea and shore in this region
saw nothing to vary the monotony of the
scene. Now and then a soldier might be
heard complaining that his detachment
of the loyal army was having no part in
the glorious victories which everywhere
else are crowning American valor with
brilliant success. "

The Union seamen knew that, sooner
or later, the Confederate ironclad would
come out of Norfolk to challenge them.
Lieutenant Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., of
the U. S. S. Cumberland, hoped the
Merrimac would appear soon to break
the monotony of blockade duty. He com-
plained, "Rumors of her expected ap-
pearance came so often that at last it
became a standing joke with the ship's
company. "

Aboard the U. S. S. Minnesota at
Hampton Roads, Captain Henry Van
Brunt wrote, "We have nothing new
here. All is quiet. The Merrimac is still
invisible to us, but a report says she is
ready to come out. I sincerely wish she
would; I am quite tired of hearing about
her. "

At 12:45 p.m. on March 8, the quarter-
master of the U.S.S. Congress was idly
gazing through a spyglass over the sunlit
waters of Hampton Roads. Suddenly he
called out to a nearby of ficer, " I wish you
would take the glass and have a look over
there, sir. I believe that thing is a-coming
down at last. "

Meanwhile, aboard the Union gunboat
Zouave, the skipper saw smoke on the
Elizabeth River. He later reported, "We
saw what looked like the roof of a very
big barn belching smoke as from a chim-
ney on fire. We were all divided in opin-
ion as to what was coming. The bosun's
mate was the first to make out the Con-
federate flag, and then we all guessed
that it was the Merrimac come out at
last. " Having identified the looming ap-
parition as an enemy ship, the skipper of
the Union gunboat Zouave ordered his
men to start shooting.

The Zouave fired five shots from her
single cannon, but the thirty-pound shots
bounced harmlessly off the armored
sidesoftheC.S.S. Virginia. Ignoringthe
Zouave, the Confederate warship aimed
her cast-iron ram at the U.S.S. Cumber-
land, a twenty-four-gun frigate.

The Cumberland's Pilot, A. B. Smith,
later recalled: "As the Merrimac came
plowing through the water toward our
port bow, she looked like a huge, half-
submerged crocodile. At her prow I
could see iron ram. It was impossible for
our vessel to get out of her way. "

As the C. S. S. Virginia steamed toward
the Cumberland, she exchanged broad-
sides with another big Union warship,
the U. S. S. Congress. The Congress fired
first, doing no damage to her armored
opponent. Then the Virginia fired a
broadside in reply, which killed dozens of
men aboard the Congress. A Federal
gunner aboard the Congress later wrote,
"All I remember about that broadside
was of feeling something warm, and the
next instant I was Iying on the deck be-
side a number of my shipmates. "

Meanwhile, the bow gun of the Vir-
ginia was blowing holes in the Cumber-
land. Aboard the Cumberland,
Master's Mate Charles O'Neil ob-
served, "The shot and shell from the
Merrimac crashed through the wooden
sides of the Cumberland, as if they had
ben made of paper, carrying huge splin-
ters with them and dealing death and
destruction on every hand. Several shot
and shell entered one side and passed out
the other carrying everything before
The Philalethes, April I YY~

them .... The once clean and beautiful
deck was slippery with blood, blackened
with powder, and looked like a slaughter
house. "

A Northern newspaper correspondent,
watching the battle from Newport News,
described the Confederate ironclad as
"silent and still, weird and mysterious,
like some devilish and superhuman mon-
ster, or the horrid creation of a night-
mare. " The Cumberland's gunners
kept bombarding the Virginia with an
accurately-fired rain of shot and shell,
but their missiles " struck off and
glanced, having no more effect than peas
from a pop-gun. "

Then the Virginia rammed the Cum-
berland, opening a hole "wide enough
to drive in a horse and cart," in the
words of a Confederate officer. The
Cumberland began sinking so rapidly
that the Virginia' s iron ram was trapped
in the hull of the doomed ship. For a
minute it seemed that the two comba-
tants might be dragged under water to-
gether in a fatal embrace; but then the
iron ram broke from the Virginia's bow
and remained buried in the belly of the
sinking Cumberland.

Lieutenant Selfridge wrote, " I was
fighting mad when I saw the shells from
my guns were producing no effect upon
the Merrimac. " One Union gunner had
both legs shot away, but managed to take
three steps on the bleeding stumps in
order to tug the lanyard of his cannon
and fire a final, futile round at the C.S.S.
Virginia.

Despite their furious determination,
the Union gunners could not hurt their
ironclad opponent. The Virginia's chief
engineer, Aston H. Ramsay, was grati-
fied to see how the Federal projectiles
which struck his ship "were deflected
upward to burst harmlessly in the air, or
rolled down and fell hissing into the
water, dashing the spray up into our
ports. "

As the Cumberland sank, her crew
refused to abandon ship. Gun crews kept
trying to fire as their ship went down,
and the muzzles of her cannon disap-
peared under water. When the Cumber-
land plunged to the bottom of Hampton
Roads, one hundred twenty men went
down with the ship.

The water was only fifty-four feet deep.
As the Cumberland settled keel-down
on the sand, some of her spars still pro-
jected above the waves. The pennant at
her topmast continued to fly bravely in
the breeze.

The Virginia next turned to finish off
the U.S.S. Congress, which had already
been devastated by a passing broadside
from the invulnerable ironclad. The
Congress tried to run away, but was cut
to pieces before she could escape. When
the little steamboat Zouave ran under
the stern of the Congress, in a futile
attempt to push her to safety, blood from
the big ship's gun deck poured onto the
Zouave "like water on a wash- deck
morning. "

In her attempts to flee from the devas-
tating Rebel guns, the Congress ran
aground. The Virginia fired heated can-
nonballs into the stranded Union ship,
setting her afire. Some Union seamen
waved a white flag, but others kept
shooting .

At one point the skipper of the Confed-
erate ironclad, Flag Of ficer Franklin Bu-
chanan, went topside to get a better look
at the situation, and was shot in the thigh
by a sniper. He was carried below to his
cabin, while Lieutenant Catesby Jones
took command of the Confederate ship.

By this time, the C.S.S. Virginia was
running low on ammunition. Of the
three hundred thirty sailors aboard the
Confederate warship, two had been
killed while standing in front of open
gun-ports to swab their guns. Nineteen
others had been wounded, and two guns
had been damaged. The sun was sink-
ing, the tide was ebbing, and the men
needed a rest. Reluctant to risk running
aground in the dark, Lieutenant Jones
decided to head for the shelter of the
Confederate batteries at Sewall's Point,
where his men could relax and reload.
Jones reckoned the Virginia could wait
until the next morning to complete her
destruction of the Union's blockading
fleet.

As the Virginia puffed homeward on
that evening of March 8, 1 962, telegraph
wires carried news of the triumph to
every state of a divided America. In the
happy South, people hoped that the
Virginia's victory marked a strategic
turning point in the Civil War.

The Confederate Secretary of the
Navy, Stephen R. Mallory, had recently
written to the Virginia's captain, "I
submit for your consideration the attack
of New York by the Virginia .... She
could shell and burn the city and its
shipping. Such an event would eclipse all
the glories of the combats of the sea . . .
. Peace would inevitably follow. Bankers
would withdraw their capital from the
city. The Brooklyn navy yard and its
magazines and all the lower part of the
city would be destroyed, and such an
event, by a single ship, would do more to
achieve our immediate independence
that the results of many campaigns. "

On the morning of March 19, the day
after the Confederate triumph at Hamp-
ton Roads, President Abraham Lincoln
and his cabinet met in emergency session
in Washington, D.C. Secretary of War
Edwin M. Stanton was visibly upset.
Pacing back and forth before a window,
he predicted that the Merrimac would
soon attack and destroy the cities of
Washington, New York, and Boston. As
he spoke, Stanton often paused to peer
nervously out the window, which faced
in the direction of the Potomac River. He
said, "Not unlikely we shall have a shell
or a cannonball from her guns in the
White House before we leave this
room. "

President Lincoln stepped to the win-
dow and glanced out, to see if the Rebel
ironclad was actually steaming up the
Potomac at that very moment.

At this point the Secretary of the Navy,
Gideon Welles, assured the President
that the Merrimac could not reach
Washington. The Potomac River was too
shallow at Washington to accommodate
the ironclad's twenty-two foot draft,
Welles said. He also reminded everyone
that the Union had built her own exper-
imental ironclad warship, the Monitor.
Welles said that the Monitor was on her
way to Hampton Roads at that very mo-
ment to fight and sink the Rebel iron-
clad.

Stanton asked, "What is the size and
shape of this Monitor? How many guns
does she carry?"

Welles explained that the union's iron-
clad was designed to be smaller, faster,
more maneuverable, and a lot cheaper to
build than the Merrimac. While the
Merrimac was 275 feet long, with ten
guns, the Monitor was only 172 feet
long, with two guns.

Stanton looked very unhappy. When he
left the White House, he sent telegrams
to the governors of New York and Mas-
sachusetts: "Man Your Guns. Block Your
Harbors. The Merrimac Is Coming!"

While Stanton fired off telegrams on
the morning of March 9, the fight had
resumed at Hampton Roads, where the
C.S.S. Virginia had gone to work very
early that sunny morning. The acting
commander of the Confederate warship,
Lieutenant CatesbyJones, was eager to
destroy the U.S.S. Minnesota, which
had run aground during the excitement
of the previous day. Stuck fast on a shoal,
the Minnesota could not run away.

As the Virginia steamed toward her
intended victim, suddenly a bizarre-
looking little ship darted from behind the
huge Minnesota. One confederate gun-
ner decided that the odd- looking ship
must be a raft with a boiler on it. "They
are taking the boilers out of the Minne-
sota," he said.

But the Confederate officers knew at
once that the odd-looking vessel must be
the U.S.S. Monitor, the Northern iron-
clad warship. " She appeared but a
pigmy compared with the lofty frigate
she guarded," one Confederate officer
observed.

Alistair Sinclair, another Confederate
officer aboard the Virginia, would later
write, "When I found the Monitor Iying
slightly behind the Minnesota, to me
she looked like a freak. What could that
tin can tied to a shingle do to our im-
pregnable vessel? A wisp of thin smoke
was curling from her stack, set aft ....
Suddenly she began to move. She was
going to give us battle. One bearded
veteran with a grimy rag about his fore-
head peered through a port about which
we were clustered and spat into the
water. 'Huh, she's a blasted toy!' he ex-
claimed, and turned away. "

Unlike the confident Confederates, the
fifty-seven Union sailors aboard the
Monitor were not eager to fight that day.
Their voyage from New York to Hamp-
ton Roads had been terrifying, and they
were physically exhausted.

The Monitor was built too low for sea-
worthiness with only a foot and a half of
freeboard. In the open Atlantic she rolled
so violently that torrents of seawater had
poured into her turret, threatening to
sink the ship. Additional gallons of sea-
water had washed down the smokestack
and blower vents causing mechanical
malfunctions that filled the engine room
with deadly carbon monoxide gas. Some
crewmen had been knocked unconscious
by the fumes.

When the crew of the Monitor reached
Hampton Roads on the evening of
March 8, they had been shocked to find
the Cumberland sunk and the Congress
still burning. Realizing that they would
have to fight early next morning, the
Monitor's exhausted seamen had tried
to get some sleep, but they had been
jolted awake at 1:00 a.m. when the blaz-
ing Congress exploded.

Now, on the morning of March 9, the
weary crew of the Monitor prepared to
defend the Minnesota from the attack-
ing Virginia.

According to paymaster Keeler of the
Monitor, the men in his ship's gun tur-
ret looked grim as they waited for the
battle to start. " The suspense was
awful, " Keeler wrote. "The most pro-
found stillness reigned. We were en-
closed in what we supposed to be im-
penetrable armor. We knew that a pow-
erful foe was about to meet us. Ours was
an untried experiment, and the enemy's
first fire might make it a coffin for us
all. "

The two guns of the Monitor were
housed in a revolving turret driven by
steam power. Because the guns were kept
turned away from the enemy except at
the moment of firing, the gunners in the
turret could not see the Virginia bearing
down on them.

While the Union gunners stood like
statues in the gloom of their armored
turret, waiting to see what would happen
when the first Rebel shell hit their ship
their skipper steered the Monitor
straight toward the oncoming Virginia.
Lieutenant John L. Worden com-
manded the Monitor from a tiny ar-
mored pilot-house on the foredeck of his
ship. He was supposed to communicate
with his gun crew be shouting into a
speaking tube, but now he discovered
that the tube did not work. Lieutenant
Worden therefore had to send a messen-
ger to the Monitor's gun turret with the
order, " C ommence firing . "

The Union gunners got a scare when
the first shell from the Virginia struck
their gun turret, making a big dent in the
armor. The gunners called down to the
engine room to summon Chief Engineer
Alban C. Stimers.

Climbing up the ladder from the engine
room, Stimers asked, "Did the shot
come through?"

"No sir, it didn't come through, but it
made a big dent, just look a-there, sir! "

Stimers said, "A big dent? Of course it
made a big dent. That is just what we
expected, what do you care about it, so
long as it keeps out the shot?"

"Oh!" said the gunners. Their faces
relaxed, and they began to brag about
how they would soon whip the
Merrimac.

Aboard the Confederate ironclad, Al-
istair Sinclair observed, "The Monitor
came toward us and instinctively the two
vessels seemed to recognize each other as
foes. Neither fired until they were close
aboard; then the Monitor opened, and
as she did so we went ashore on the
Middle Ground. "

Grounded on a shoal, the Virginia ap-
peared to be vulnerable. The Monitor
with a draft of less than eleven feet, was
able to steam in circles around the
stranded Virginia, which drew twenty-
two feet.

Alistair Sinclair noted, " The first of the
Monitor's shots struck us fairly and
glanced off, but it shook us up. She con-
tinued to fire, and then we replied, while
trying to back off the shoal . I watched her
curiously and she puzzled me. We could
see nothing of her guns until they sud-
denly appeared through the turret aper-
tures, were fired and disappeared as the
turret revolved rapidly. Our guns were
directed at that turret, our only target, or
at least the one we believed hid the heart
of the ship.

"On our gun deck there were grime,
smoke, flashes of flame, an inferno of
noise, terrific clanging crashes as the
heavy solid shot struck us. The rippling
sound of splintering wood as the heavy
oak backing gave way beneath the ter-
rific hammering. There were cheers
from [our Confederate] men. The air
was choking.

"There was a vital danger spot in us
had the Monitor but known it. Origi-
nally our protective armor had been car-
ried two feet below the water line. Now,
with the consumption of coal and water,
we had risen quite two feet, and had the
Monitor's fire been directed at our
water line, she must inevitably have sunk
us .

"Captain Jones was everywhere, see-
ing, ordering, encouraging, and
'fighting his ship' like a man who knew
his business to the last decimal point. We
were still aground. The engineers had
fastened down the safety valves, and the
boilers were humming madly with the
pressure. The screw was churning wildly
astern, and the ship shook and jarred as
if in agony. Around us and again around
us the Monitor circled, pounding us at
every possible angle, searching always
for the weak spot where she could plant
a shot that would cripple .... Suddenly
we came off the shoal and the tune of the
battle changed slightly ....

"We maneuvered in the narrow chan-
nel and finally turned. The Monitor was
close ahead. 'Stand by!' cried Captain
Jones.

'We'll ram her! ' "

The Virginia plowed right into the
smaller Monitor, but the Confederate
ship had lost her iron ram on the previ-
ous day when she sank the Cumberland.
The Virginia was now ramming her un-
protected wooden bow into the iron-
hulled Monitor. After the collision, the
Virginia sprang some leaks, but the
Monitor was undamaged.

As the ships hammered each other at
point-blank range, they seemed to Sin-
clair like "two knights in armor smash-
ing at each other with heavy maces."
There were few injuries on either ship
although Sinclair observed, "The bom-
bardment was terrific, and it did not
seem possible that guns carrying heavy
projectiles could fire at a distance of a few
yards and not do terrific execution. I
caught a glimpse ofthe Monitor's turret
once as she maneuvered past us, trying
again for our steering gear. Our fire had
battered her severely, but her armor was
intact although she bore our marks in the
shape of deep indentations. When a shot
would strike her, she seemed to shiver.
When one of her 180-pound balls struck
us, it jarred the whole structure. I am
sure that if her fire could have been con-
centrated in one spot for a time, she could
have broken through us. The uproar was
simply beyond description, for the roar
of the guns was almost in our ears. Our
men were compelled to load and swab
their guns from the outside; and had
there been rifle fire or machine guns, as
today, they would have dropped like
flies. As it was, we lost not a single man. "

Sinclair added, "There were no duties
for our marines. One of them sat on the
deck with his back against the oak
sheathing that supported the armored
side. A round shot hit outside im-
mediately at this point, and the resulting
impact transmitted through the iron and
wood was sufficient to drive him clear
across the ship, but without injury, where
he lay for a few minutes stunned. 'My
land, but that mule sure can kick!' he
exclaimed when he recovered, and was
careful to keep away from such an un-
pleasant experience in the future. "

Early in the afternoon, the Virginia
fired a shell that exploded against the
Monitor's pilot house. The Monitor's
skipper, Lieutenant Worden, had his
face pressed to the eye slits when the shell
exploded. He was blinded, permanently
in one eye and temporarily in the other.
While Worden was carried below decks
to his wardroom, the helmsman steered
the Monitor into shallower water, where
the Virginia could not follow.

The Virginia kept firing at the retreat-
ing Monitor, but the Confederates were
running low on ammunition. One of the
Rebel gunners suggested to his skipper
that they cease firing. "Our powder is
very precious, " the gunner said, adding
that he had spent two hours firing at the
Monitor with no visible result. " I can do
her about as much damage by snapping
my thumb at her every two minutes and
a half. "

Low on ammunition and leaking, the
Virginia's commander decided to re-
turn to his base. The first battle between
two iron-clad warships thus ended incon-
clusively, with no real damage done to
either ship.

As soon as the two ironclad warships
were out of range of each other's guns,
their crews rushed topside to breathe
fresh air and blink in the warm sunlight.
Aboard the Monitor, Lieutenant Dana
Greene felt a weird kind ofjoy. He later
wrote, "I had been up so long, and had
been under such a state of excitement,
that my nervous system was completely
run down . . . my nerves and muscles
twitched as though electric shocks were
continually passing through them. "

The Monitor and the Virginia never
fought again. Since neither ship could
harm the other, fighting seemed point-
less. Strategically, this stalemate
amounted to a victory for the North; it
meant that the Virginia could not break
the Union blockade or flatten New York
City. The navies of the North and South
immediately began building more iron-
clad ships, as did the navies of Europe.
One Northern commentator observed
that as a result of the battle between the
Monitor and the Merrimac, "The Brit-
ish discovered that their whole wooden
navy was useless. "

John L. Worden (1818-1879), Rear
Admiral, U.S. Navy, and the com-
mander of the Monitor in its famous
battle with the Merrimac in the Civil
War, was born March 12, 1818, in
Westchester County, New York. He en-
tered the navy as a midshipman in 1835.
He served on various vessels and at the
Naval Observatory until the Civil War.
He was a prisoner of war for seven
months, and after exchange was ordered
to superintend the completion of the
Monitor and to take command. His fa-
mous battle with the Confederate
Merrimac occurred on March 9, 1862.
At 11:30 a.m. a shell exploded against
the pilot-house of the Monitor while
Worden was looking through the slit.
This rendered him blind and helpless.
He later recovered from the injury to his
eyes. Worden was commissioned a com-
mander in July, 1862, commodore in
May, 1868. and rear admiral in Novem-
ber, 1872. He was commander-in-chief
of the European squadron from 1875 to
1877, Superintendent of the U. S. Naval
Academy, 1870-74, and was retired at his
own request by Congress in a special act
on December 23, 1886. He was a mem-
ber of Lexington Lodge No. 310, Brook-
lyn, New York, receiving the degrees on
May 25, June 1 5 and 29, 1857, and was
stricken from roll March 12, 1866. He
died October 18, 1897.

Sources

Century Magazine The Blockade (Time Life
Books) William R. Denslow, 10, 000 Famous
Freemasons Rick Bromer Historian Old News
Magazine William C. Davis, Duel Between the
First Ironclads.


The Philalethes, April 1993
