THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603300108
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Olde Towne Journal
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
It was a brisk day in February 1862 at Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth when a sizeable crowd of yard workers and townspeople gathered around the granite wall of Drydock 1 on the Elizabeth River.
Those who had never seen the project within the drydock gasped when they peered into the construction site. Others, more familiar with the conversion of the former steam frigate Merrimack, whispered in doubts while others spoke more openly that the new ship with its 800 tons of iron resting on the older timbers of the Merrimack would never float. According to John Porter's son, J.W.H. Porter, only Capt. A.B. Fairfax spoke openly in support of his father's work.
Seemingly oblivious to the crowd outside that winter morning, Confederate naval constructor John L. Porter continued to labor over his drafting table. . Occasionally a helper would break the stillness by helping him move the sheaths of drawings, which would come to cover more than 17 feet of scroll paper, or refill a lantern that had burned long into the night during the weeks before.
Otherwise, quiet prevailed within the building - while outside the crowd grew larger by the minute as people held their places around the launch site.
Whether they believed Porter's calculations were right or wrong, everyone knew that in a few minutes history would be made. If the ironclad floated in drydock, the Confederacy would get the credit for launching America's first ironclad. If the ship foundered, the Confederates by their failure would have forced the United States Navy into building their own ironclad. Either way, it was an ominous moment for all concerned. No one doubted that as workmen continued to bolt the last iron plates onto the sloping side of the Virginia, the era of wooden-hulled warships was coming to an end.
Although Porter remained confident in the eye of the storm, a significant number of Confederate leaders openly doubted his work, including Lt. Catesby Jones, who soon would receive orders to be Virginia's executive officer.
The Gosport yard's executive officer, Captain Sidney Lee, brother of Robert E. Lee, asked the naval constructor the day before, ``Mr. Porter, do you really think she will float?'' A long series of exchanges between Porter and Lt. John M. Brooke, the Confederate navy's chief ordnance engineer in Richmond, added fuel to those who were already critical.
At an earlier meeting at the shipyard in August 1861, both Porter and Brooke debated over the thickness of the iron-plated gun deck with a compromise drawn at 4 inches. Brooke also had been critical of Porter's design for a pilot house on the Virginia.
``Porter had placed upon the shield at the `forward' end of the opening a sort of look-out house, a hollow core of iron,'' Brooke wrote. ``It will break into fragments if struck by a shot. He has also closed the aperture (pilot house porthole) so that now there will be great difficulty in repelling a boat attack.''
As Porter worked in Gosport on balancing a new gun deck, alterations to the bow and stern of the former Merrimack and reworking her internal machinery and propeller arrangements, criticism from Brooke in Richmond continued.
``I must write Porter for the calculated positions of the Merrimac's (sic) center of gravity, which I fear Mr. Porter has placed too high in the construction of the ship,'' wrote Brooke. He feared Porter had not taken into consideration the proper weight and balance of the ironclad's armament, and he carried his criticisms to Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen R. Mallory, also in Richmond.
Porter was correct in assuming the Richmond bureaucracy was out of touch with developments and conditions at Gosport, and he had solved many of the problems Brooke foresaw.
The evidence is in Porter's own notebook.
``Having calculated the weight of the hull as I intended to fit her, with much care, and everything that was given that was to go on her as armor, guns, machinery, ammunition, stores and coal, shot, and shell and etc., I found I could cut her hull down to the nineteen feet fore and aft, and then have a surplus of fifty tons displacement, but when I drew my line I found that I would cut one foot into her propeller, this I had already decided not to do, because it would slow her down and consume extra time.
``Consequently, I raised the line to twenty feet aft, which gave me two hundred tons more than I required for the displacement, which I finally overcame by putting that amount of kentledge (iron bars) on her ends and in her spirit room in order to bring her eaves down two feet.''
Clashes between Porter and Brooke and other members of the Confederate naval establishment would continue through the ironclad Virginia's commissioning Feb. 17 right through her deployment on March 8, 1862. However, Virginia's swift destruction of the federal wooden warships Cumberland and Congress silenced those who doubted Porter. Virginia's subsequent battle with the federal ironclad Monitor the next day, March 9, which ended in stalemate, placed Porter and the ironclad Virginia at the top of America's naval technology era for their day. by CNB