The March 9, 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads. Similar to many other Civil War engagements, it has often been called numerous other frequently used titles. The Battle of the Ironclads and Monitor-Merrimac Battle are just two of the frequently used titles. This confusing nomenclature begs another question: What is the proper name of the Confederate ironclad? Is it Merrimac, Merrimack, or Virginia?

Monitor does not suffer from this type of identity crisis. The Union ironclad’s inventor, John Ericsson, was asked by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy to give the new ironclad, then referred to as “Ericsson’s Battery,” a proper name.

Since Ericsson believed that his innovative warship’s “impregnable and aggressive character…will admonish the leaders of the Southern Rebellion,” as well as prove to be a monitor to the Royal Navy’s ironclad frigate construction program, he proposed “to name the new battery Monitor.” The ironclad was such a success that “Monitor” became the name of an entire class and type of warship. [1]

The Confederate ironclad’s name, however, is consistently inaccurate. The most common usage, used alike by Civil War participants and historians, is incorrect. The steam-powered, 40-gun frigate with a screw propeller built at Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston, was named USS Merrimack by John Lenthall, chief of the U.S. Bureau of Naval Construction, on September 25, 1854.

Naval Constructor E. H. Delano, who designed the frigate, noted the ship’s name as Merrimack on all of his plans for the frigate.[2] The warship was the first of a class of five frigates built during the 1850s. Each of the ships was named for an American river: Roanoke, Wabash, Colorado, Minnesota, and Merrimack.

This class of steam screw frigates was named Merrimack-class. President Franklin Pierce was a native of Concord, New Hampshire, the county seat of Merrimack County, located on the Merrimack River. He signed the act approving the appropriation and warship names on April 6, 1854. The frigate to be built at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston was spelled Merrimack. [3]

This evidence clearly documents that the frigate’s name should always be spelled with a “k” at the end of the word. Furthermore, the ship was named in honor of the Merrimack River, although confusion concerning the river’s spelling is commonplace. The first written reference to the river dates to 1691 in the grant by the joint regents of England, King William and Queen Mary, noting the northern boundary of Massachusetts as the Merrimack River.

Other references to the Merrimack spelling include Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s 1764 History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The name “Merrimack” is a Native American word said to mean “swift water.” By the mid-19th century, many writers, Henry David Thoreau excepted, had begun to drop the “k.” It appears that the spelling Merrimack is more often used at places along the river above Haverhill, New Hampshire. Haverhill is located at the head of navigation. Merrimac without the “k” is the popular spelling below Haverhill. The river formed the Merrimack Valley, which is also referred to as Merrimac Valley. This region was a major textile manufacturing area. One town in the valley is named Merrimac, but it was not established until 1876. This circumstance and the fact that it is easier to spell Merrimack with just a “c” rather than  “k” is perhaps why so many Civil War contemporaries use the term Merrimac when writing about the frigate as well as the ironclad. [4] The Boston Evening Transcript on June 15, 1855, referred to the frigate as the Merrimac.

Once the Confederates raised the burnt hull of the frigate at Gosport Navy Yard, it was reconfigured into an ironclad and christened on February 17, 1862, as CSS Virginia. Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Russell Mallory and Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan, the ship’s commander, both refer to the ironclad after this date as Virginia.

Consequently, from February 1862, the ironclad should always be called Virginia. Unfortunately, not every Southerner recognized this technicality. Even the ironclad’s executive officer, Lieutenant Catesby ap Roger Jones, and chief engineer, H. Ashton Ramsay, often called the vessel Merrimac. Both of these men had served on the frigate prior to the war which may be the cause of their usage of both names in their wartime correspondence and post-war writings. The Southern newspapers usually refer to the vessel by its rechristened name, CSS Virginia; however Northern publications constantly used the name Merrimac without the “k.”

William Norris perhaps expressed the best summation clarifying the ironclad’s proper name when he wrote:

          And Virginia was her name, not Merrimac, which has a nasal twang

          equally abhorrent to sentiment and to melody, and meanly compares with

          the sonorous sweetness of Virginia . She fought under Confederate colors,

          And her fame belongs to all of use; but there was a peculiar fitness in the

          we gave her. In Virginia, of Virginian iron and wood, and by Virginians

          she was built, and in Virginia’s waters, now made classic by her exploits,

          she made a record that shall live forever.[5]

The Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia will forevermore be indiscriminately called Merrimac, Merrimack, and Virginia. Accordingly, the battle, too, will be known by several different titles, but CSS Virginia should always be remembered as the vessel that proved once and for all the power of iron over wood.

---

Endnotes

1. U.S. Department of the Navy, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894, Ser. 1, vol. 2, p.148.
2. John V. Quarstein, CSS Virginia: Sink Before Surrender, Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2012, pp.20-22.
3. Paul H. Silverstone, Civil War Navies 1855-1883, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001, pp.15-17.
4. Edward E. Barthell, Jr., The Mystery of the Merrimack, Muskegon, Michigan: Dana Printing Company, 1959, pp. 11-13.
5. William Norris, The Story of the Confederate States’ Ship “Virginia’ (Once Merrimac): Her Victory Over the Monitor; Born March 7th, Died May 10th, 1862, Baltimore, MD: John B. Piet, 1879. Reprint, Southern Historical Society Papers 41 (September 1916), p. 234.