THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 8, 1996 TAG: 9603070212
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Olde Towne Journal
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
AT FIRST, SHE WAS hailed as America's newest weapon of naval war, but before her brief, three-year career was over, the steam frigate USS Merrimack proved to be a national embarrassment.
Fearing that the United States was falling woefully behind England and France in the international arms race of the mid-19th century, Congress on April 6, 1854, authorized the construction of six first-class frigates ``to be provided with screw propellers.'' One of those six, the Merrimack, was to be built at Boston Naval Shipyard - and would have a profound effect on naval architecture at the time and during her second life as the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia in March, 1862.
Five of her sister ships in the series were to be built among the other government-owned shipyards of the time. The Colorado and Roanoke projects were assigned to Gosport, the Minnesota to Washington and the Wabash at Philadelphia. Only the Niagara was contracted out to a civilian firm, in New York.
Labeled the ``Merrimack-Class Frigates,'' they were designed along the traditional lines of sailing ships from the Congress-class frigate of 1839 rather than from more contemporary designs seen in European navies. Key Congressional leaders and Navy Secretary J.C. Dobbins bowed to the more conservative elements of the Navy Department rather than offend the senior officers who had grown up in an era totally dependent upon wooden hulls and canvas sail.
Thus the emphasis was placed on an already established sailing frigate design, one that placed steam propulsion far to the back of bulky lines and rigging and left little room on deck for larger caliber guns and modern armament.
From the first days of Merrimack's construction, a series of ironies occurred that were to haunt her throughout her career. Steam engineer Benjamin F. Isherwood raised a cautionary observation that older timbers, probably more suitable for narrower vessels, were being used or ``worked in'' as the vessel's principal timbers. Isherwood would later struggle to get the Merrimack out of Gosport during the federal evacuation before the Confederates seized her for their own use.
A greater irony was that in the beginning of the Merrimack's construction, she was supposed to have engines designed by John Ericsson. It was Ericsson who would later win fame as the designer of the federal ironclad Monitor, which took advantage of the Merrimack's weaker auxiliary engines during their epic duel March 9, 1862, after Merrimack's conversion into the rebel ironclad Virginia.
Finally commissioned in December 1855, Merrimack prepared to steam and sail out of Boston harbor the following year for England. During her sea trials, the Navy announced that on her auxiliary engines alone she could make 9 1/2 knots. However, the engine room log contradicts that claim, giving her a top speed of barely over 6 knots. Further telling was her fuel consumption under steam alone: 3,400 pounds of anthracite coal per hour. That fact alone would limit the future ironclad Virginia, which depended on coal entirely for her propulsion, to harbor defense only.
On a cruise from Norfolk harbor to Havana, other problems began to appear. The propeller broke four days out, and Merrimack made Cuba with sails only after 24 days. On her next leg, she made Key West, this time with her rudder displaced. It was an embarrassment to all to see her pull in under tow from four boats. From Florida, she was pulled by the steamer Susquehanna back to Boston, where she was listed as ``disabled.''
Such a series of mishaps could hardly be left unnoticed by critics, who saw the Merrimack as a step backward in marine technology. A scathing series of letters and articles appeared in the prestigious U.S. Nautical Magazine and Naval Journal. In summary, the magazine printed convincing arguments that the steam-frigate's draft was excessive and was far beyond the 23-foot limit set by Navy Secretary Dobbins. Actually, the Merrimack drew 23 feet, 9 inches - but those 9 inches prevented her from entering ``nine-tenths of the harbors of the nation's entire sea-coast.'' Her extended draft would have dire consequences for the heavier, iron-plated Virginia when it came time to evacuate Gosport shipyard in May 1862.
A second series of criticisms aimed at her auxiliary engines. Again their inefficiency and lack of reliability would haunt the Virginia as the inheritor of a propulsion system already called ``obsolete'' in 1856. A third problem that would plague Confederate ship constructor John L. Porter during the conversion of the Merrimack was her great deadrise and high center of gravity. She was continually prone to ``extreme rolling'' as a steam-frigate, a problem Porter would have to deal with as he applied tons of iron plating over her gun deck.
Despite these drawbacks, Merrimack did make sort of a splash during her October 1856 port calling at Southampton, England. The American vessel was such a hit that Parliament ordered the British Admiralty to build several ships after her design, which were then improved upon in a weapons race with France. After her cruise across the Atlantic, Merrimack was sent to patrol duty on the Pacific station until another series of mechanical problems sent her limping home again - this time for good.
Arriving at Norfolk harbor, Merrimack was towed to Gosport for extensive overhaul of her engines. Although in the beginning of her career, Merrimack's engine problems were not as critical as her rolling, Gosport engineers soon found critical problems within her propulsion system as well. For instance, a safety valve working to govern the Martin boilers was found to stick from time to time, forcing the engines to shut down altogether. This would prove almost fatal to the ship and crew of the Virginia when she rammed Cumberland and then could not remove herself from her victim's timbers. Seconds before it would have been too late, the ironclad's engines miraculously came to life, extracting her from the Cumberland, which headed straight to the bottom.
Just before the Confederates seized Gosport, federal engineer B.F. Isherwood arrived at the yard only to find the Merrimack's engines ``in a wretched state.'' Thus she was ``burned to her coppers'' - the tops of her boilers - and left behind.
Later converted into the ironclad Virginia, she took out a terrible vengeance on the wooden-hulled Cumberland and Congress, as if to erase once and for all her embarrassing former life as a steam-frigate. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
The plans for the USS Merrimack left little room on deck for larger
caliber guns and modern armament.
by CNB