Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Russell Mallory, was a former US Senator from Florida before his state left the Union. Mallory previously served as committee chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs from 1859 to 1861 and worked diligently to modernize the US Navy. He was very aware of European advancements in producing armor-cased ship-of-war as well as the development of advanced naval artillery. When Mallory assumed his position in Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s cabinet, he realized that the South could never match the North’s superior shipbuilding capabilities unless a novel weapon could be introduced into the fray. The secretary advised the Confederate president, stating: “I propose to adopt a class of vessels hitherto unknown to naval service. The perfection of a warship would doubtless be the combination of the greatest known ocean speed with the greatest known floating battery and power of resistance.”[1]

Mallory’s Vision for a Confederate Ironclad

Mallory proposed that a combination of iron vessels armed with rifled cannons might be able to tip the naval balance of power in favor of the Confederacy. The secretary believed that “the possession of an iron-armored ship is a matter of first necessity. Such a vessel at this time could traverse the entire coast of the United States; prevent all blockades, and encounter, with a fair prospect of success, their entire Navy.” [2] He sought to employ the power of iron over wood to achieve victory.

Even though the best way for the Confederacy to secure an ironclad was to purchase one from either Great Britain or France, it would take too much time to do so. Consequently, Mallory endeavored to establish an ironclad construction program within the Confederacy. Mallory then met with Naval Scientist Lieutenant John Mercer Brooke to develop a workable ironclad design that could be built in the South. Brooke submitted his preliminary design to the secretary, featuring a sloped casemate to house cannons with the propulsion system housed below the waterline. Brooke’s concept submerged the bow and stern of the vessel to enhance buoyancy and speed. Accordingly, he met with Naval Constructor John Luke Porter and Chief Engineer William Price Williamson on June 23, 1861. The team agreed that Brooke’s plan was the most feasible. They also believed that the hull and engines of the scuttled USS Merrimack provided the Confederacy with the best opportunity to quickly produce an ironclad. [3] 

The Confederacy’s “Technical Surprise” 

Lt. Brooke’s primary responsibilities with Merrimack’s transformation project were two-fold. First, the lieutenant had to oversee the fabrication of two-inch iron plates by Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond to clad the ship’s 171-foot-long casemate. He also detailed the duty to arm the ironclad. The casemate was pierced for 14 gunports. The bow and stern pivot rifles had three ports each to expand their range of fire. [4]

Mallory wanted more than just an armor-plated ship; he desired an ironclad capable of firing shells and armor-piercing shot. Confederate ironclads must feature, he reasoned, weapons technologically superior to anything that the Union might muster. “Rifled cannon are unknown to naval warfare,” the secretary wrote, “but those guns [have] attained a range and accuracy beyond any other form of ordnance, both with shot and shell.”[5] Mallory believed that armored ships armed with rifled cannon would give the South a “technical surprise,” which could tip the balance in favor of the Confederacy. After all, he contended, modern naval battles would be “simply contests in which the question, not of victory, but of who shall go to the bottom first, is to be solved.”[6]

Brooke’s Design for a More Effective Gun

By the late 1840s, gun designers sought to produce a more accurate and reliable weapon. The answer, in part, was through the development of rifled cannons. Sardinian Army Officer Major Giovanni Cavalli introduced the first somewhat effective rifled gun in 1845. Cavalli’s gun featured a two-grooved, rifled barrel with a ribbed, cylindrical conical shell. The British Army found this weapon flawed and developed the Lancaster rifled gun; yet, this too was inadequate for combat use. Other designers, such as William Armstrong, Joseph Whitworth, and Robert Parrott, created a variety of rather reliable muzzle-loader rifled guns based on the concepts developed by Harvard University Professor David Treadwell. He created a built-up rifled gun that used a cast iron barrel supported at the breech by wrought-iron bars wrapped around the tube. [7]

Lt. Brooke was selected by Mallory to develop rifled ordnance for the Confederate Navy. Even before he had resolved plate production issues at Tredegar, he had begun work on these new guns. Brooke wrote in November 1861, “By order of the Secretary I designed two rifled cannon of 7-inch caliber for the Merrimac–– one of them had been cast and is now nearly bored.” The Brooke gun would become one of the most powerful rifles produced by either side during the Civil War. Mallory thought the Brooke gun was superior “in strength, precision, and range” to any other cannon available in America.[8]

Photo: 7-inch Brooke rifle

Brooke resolved the critical need to produce a safe, rifled cannon (not prone to bursting when fired which would be devastating to a gun crew within a casemate’s confirmed space) by supporting the powder chamber with a series of wrought-iron hoops. His gun looked somewhat like a Parrott rifle; however, that is where the similarities between the guns ended. Instead of using the Parrott method of welding one iron band onto the cast-iron tube in one piece, Brooke  heated several heavy wrought-iron rings. When expanded, they were placed tightly around the breech. Once the iron cooled, it contracted over the breech, thereby forging a very strong and tight reinforcing band. Basically, Brooke’s concept was similar to British-made Blakeley and Armstrong guns. The built-up breech, created by the shrinkage of hoops around the barrel, provided the metal with resilience to the internal force of exploding powder. [9]

Two models of the Brooke rifles were designed and quickly placed into production at Tredegar Iron Works. The 7-inch model weighed 15,300 pounds and during tests could throw a 100-pound shell over four and a half miles using a 12-pound powder charge. These guns were intended to serve as pivot guns on CSS Virginia. The 6.4-inch version was developed as a broadside gun and weighed 10,675 pounds. These huge and powerful guns featured a distinctive rifling technique called the Brooke Rifling System. Each barrel was rifled with seven grooves made in the shape of elliptical bands. The grooves culminated  in a cog from which the apex formed the next band. While working on the design of his Brooke rifles, Brooke also developed a brilliant system of converting old 32-pounder smoothbore cannon into rifles by forging bands over their breech. [10]

Once he had developed his rifled cannon, Brooke concentrated on the production of fuses, explosive shells, and a wrought-iron elongated shot (bolt) for his rifled guns. The flat-headed bolt was prepared specially for use against ironclads and could “literary punch a hole armor plate.”[11] Unfortunately for the Confederacy, when ordering projectiles for Virginia’s battery, Brooke and Catesby ap Roger Jones decided to delay the production of armor-piercing bolts. Both men believed that the Confederate ironclad would only face wooden ships when it attacked the Union fleet in Hampton Roads and instructed Tredegar to concentrate on fabricating explosive shells. [12] This decision would prove to be a major error.

Hot Shot Guns

Since Mallory wanted the ironclad to be armed with the finest heavy cannon, Brooke proposed that Virginia should mount six additional IX-inch Dahlgren shell guns in broadside. John Dahlgren, chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, had created a shell gun that was safe to fire and could also send solid shot and shell against an enemy. Consequently, the IX-inch version had become the standard broadside gun for the Navy’s new frigates and sloops of war built in the late 1850s. USS Merrimack had been armed with 24 IX-inch, 14 VIII-inch, and 2 X-inch Dahlgrens. These guns had been removed when the frigate was placed in ordinary in 1860 at Gosport Navy Yard. They became part of over 300 Dahlgrens that were abandoned when the Union left the yard. During this retreat, many of the Dahlgrens along the quay were damaged by US personnel; however, only the trunnions and casabels were partially injured. Six of these IX- Dahlgren guns served in Virginia. [13]

Virginia was designed as the death knell for wooden warships and each of its guns gave the ironclad various technological advantages. Two Dahlgrens were mounted to serve as hot shot guns. A heated shot would smash into the target ship igniting a fire and causing the greater splintering of wood. These ‘cherry red’ cannon balls were deadly against wooden ships. If a shot was overheated it would cause the ball to become misshapen.[14] Since a special furnace was required to heat the shot, this method was seldom used by warships due to fears of fire. The British outlawed its use on Royal Navy warships; however, some American ships, like USF Constitution, had a furnace for hot shot to be fired from its cannonades.[15] “I commanded the two hot-shot guns directly under the main hatch, and just over the furnace,” Lieutenant John Randolph Eggleston noted. “The hot shot was hoisted from below in an iron bucket, placed by means of tongs in the muzzle of the guns, slightly elevated and allowed to roll against a well-soaked wad that rested against the powder. Another soaked wad kept the shot in place” before the gun was fired. [16] Eggleston also reported that he liked to ‘skip’ his hot shot off the water so that the heated cannon ball would be hitting the enemy’s hull on an upward angle to cause the most damage.

This ten-gun battery of rifled and shell guns was very powerful; however, it provided some problems for the gun crews. The casemate’s 36-degree slope limited deck space, causing the broadside guns to be staggered. Consequently, the casemate’s interior layout still caused problems for the handling of cannon during combat, and the various types of guns mounted in Virginia did not enable the creation of an integrated fire control system. [17]

Revitalizing the Ram

The other weapon added to CSS Virginia was its ram. The advent of steam-powered armored ships in Europe revitalized this ancient naval weapon as a powerful tool of future navies. Ramming as a decisive offensive tactic had been virtually abandoned with the rise of large sailing ship mounting heavy artillery; yet, steam power made this battlefield technique once again a viable weapon. Mallory was keenly aware that “even without guns the ship would be formidable as a ram.” He likened ramming to a “bayonet charge of infantry.” Considering the gunpowder shortage in the South, Mallory recognized that Confederate ironclads could employ the ram as a technological weapon that could punch into the sides of Union wooden warships. John L. Porter designed the 1,500-pound, cast-iron, wedge-shaped ram. It was fabricated by Gosport’s blacksmiths. The prow was designed to protrude three feet from the ironclad’s bow. Bolted to the bow’s stern head, it was further secured by ironic braces. The ram, nonetheless, was poorly mounted. While hammering the bolts with heavy sledgehammers, a missed stroke thoroughly cracked one of the flanges holding the prow in place. Even though it was apparent that the ram was now improperly secured, nothing was done to correct the problem.[18]

Mallory’s dream of building an ironclad with the most powerful array of weapons was realized in Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862. “It was a great victory,” recalled Lt. Robert Minor. “The IRON and HEAVY GUNS did the work.” [19] In one afternoon, CSS Virginia truly stunned the federal fleet and had left in its wake a path of destruction, proving the power of iron over wood. 

ENDNOTES

1. U.S. Department of the Navy, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, (Hereinafter referred as ORN) Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, series 2, vol. 2, p. 757.
2. IBID. pp. 67-69
3. John Mercer Brooke, “ The Virginia or Merrimac: Her Real Projector,” Southern Historical Society Papers 14 (January 1891), pp.30-34;  John W. H. Porter. A Record of Events in Norfolk County, Virginia From April 19th 1861, To May 10th , 1862, With A History of the Soldiers and Sailors of Norfolk County, Norfolk City and Portsmouth Who Served In The Confederate States Army or Navy, Portsmouth, VA: W.A. Fiske Printer and Bookbinder, 1891, pp. 331-332; ORN, 2, 1: 784.
4. John V. Quarstein, CSS Virginia: Sink Before Surrender, Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2012, pp.67-70.
5. ORN, 1, 2: p.  53.
6. IBID. p. 67.
7. Spencer C. Tucker, Handbook of 19th Century Naval Warfare, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 200, pp. 86-92 and John V. Quarstein, A History of Ironclads, Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2007, pp.45-46.
8. ORN, 1,2, p. 186.
9. Ian Hogg, A History of Artillery, London: Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1974, p. 59 and Warren Ripley, Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War, New York: Promontory Press, 1970, p. 128.
10. Ripley, p.128.
11. Raimondo Luraghi, A History of the Confederate Navy, translated by PaoloE. Coletta, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996.
12. ORN, 2, 6, p. 786. 
13. Quarstein, pp 23 & 42.
14. Joseph Roberts, Handbook of Artillery for the Service of the United States, New York: D. Van Nostran, 1863, pp. 106-107.
15. David G. Fitz-Enz, Old Ironsides: Eagle of the Sea, Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Pub., 2004, pp. 106-107.
16. John Randoph Eggleston, “Captain’s Eggleston’s Narrative of the Battle of the Merrimac,” Southern Historical Papers 40, 1916, p. 168.:
17. George M. Brooke, Jr., John M. Brooke, Naval Scientist and Educator, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, pp. 241-242.
18. Porter, Norfolk County, p. 336; John S. Wise, The End of an Era, Boston: Putnam & Sons, 1902, 193-194; ORN, 1, 6, pp. 776-777.
19. John M. Kell, Recollections of a Naval Life, Washington, D.C.: Neale Publishing Company, 1900.