John Ericsson
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Designer of the USS Monitor.
1803-1889
John Ericsson invented an early locomotive, the Ericsson hot-air
engine, an improved screw propeller, the gun turret, and a deep-sea
sounding device. He also designed ships and submarines.
John Ericsson, one of the 19th Century's most creative engineers and
inventors, was born on 31 July 1803 in Sweden. As a youth, he joined
the Swedish Army, which recognized his talents and put him to work on
topographical duties. Ericsson left the Army in 1826 and moved to
England, where he pursued a variety of engineering projects, among
them the use of screw propellers on ships, the development of
extraordinarly large guns and the creation of engines driven by hot
air instead of steam.
John Ericsson's work attracted the attention Robert F. Stockton, an
influential and progressive U.S. Navy officer, who encouraged him to
relocate to the United States. During the early 1840s, the two
designed a screw-propelled warship, which was commissioned in 1843 as
USS Princeton, armed with heavy guns of their devising. The tragic
explosion of one of these guns, and efforts to improperly assign the
blame to Ericsson, led the strong-willed engineer to redirect his
creativity into civilian fields, which he pursued successfully during
the 1840s and 1850s.
The outbreak of the American Civil War brought John Ericsson back
into formal contact with the Navy, when he designed and produced USS
Monitor, a revolutionary armored ship carrying her guns in a rotating
turret. Monitor's successful battle with the Confederate ironclad
Virginia on 9 March 1862 made Ericsson a great hero in the North. For
the remainder of the conflict, he was actively involved in designing
and building a large series of "Monitor"-type turret ships for the
Navy.
John Ericsson continued his work on maritime and naval technology
after the Civil War, producing ships for foreign navies and
experimenting with submarines, self-propelled torpedoes and heavy
ordnance. He remained active until his death in New York City on 8
March 1889. In August 1890, following a memorial service at New York,
his body was placed on board the cruiser Baltimore, which carried him
across the Atlantic to his native Sweden for burial.
