The James River Flotilla’s defeat at Drewry’s Bluff was caused by a myriad of factors. The Confederates had obstructed the James River and constructed gun emplacements atop the 90-foot-high Drewry’s Bluff. Plunging shot from this fortification badly damaged USS Galena. USS Monitor proved not to be a factor in the battle. Consequently, the Union flotilla was forced to fall back downriver. They had come within eight miles of Richmond; yet, the Confederate capital remained out of the Union’s reach until 1865.

The battle was really a test between ironclads and fixed fortifications. Commander John Rodgers had already expressed his contempt for USS Galena. Eventually, this gunboat would have its armor removed and would serve as a wooden warship during the August 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay. As for USRCS Naugatuck, it was never accepted by the US Navy. Most of the public really wanted to know how USS Monitor fared during this engagement. After all, it was the “little ship that saved the nation” on March 9, 1862. The ironclad seemed flawless; however, Drewry’s Bluff would make the ship appear otherwise. 

Lieutenant John Worden had already met with President Abraham Lincoln and told him about some of the ironclad’s weaknesses as he lay in bed recovering from his wounds received during the March 9 battle. Worden noted that the warship was unseaworthy and had a limited rate and range of fire. Monitor’s former commander expressed his fears that the ironclad could be boarded and captured. President Lincoln would then advise Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles not to expose the ironclad to close combat. (1)

Following the Drewry’s Bluff fight, Lieutenant William Jeffers decided to write a detailed report to Flag Officer Louis M. Goldsborough regarding Monitor’s fighting abilities. The ironclad’s commander was considered an ordnance expert and was assigned to Monitor to survey the experimental ironclad’s strengths and weaknesses. Jeffers did not like the ship and was quite contemptuous of its design. His report to Goldsborough highlighted several significant problems:

• The captain could not control the ship from the pilothouse. The pilothouse should have been placed atop the turret.
• The turret should have a protective shield to allow riflemen to be deployed.
• The turret did not have a full range of fire due to the location of the pilothouse and air intakes. Jeffers thought the range of fire to be 200 degrees rather than 360 degrees.
• Only one gun could fire at a time. The port stoppers were too heavy to operate in combat. The gun commander had limited visibility. The only view outside the turret was by looking over the gun barrels. The ironclad had limited fire control.
• The gun ports did not allow for adequate elevation of the guns.
• Ventilation was intolerable. Jeffers recorded and reported on June 16, 1862, the following temperatures: Gallery – 164 degrees, Engine Room – 128 degrees, and Berth Deck – 120 degrees. 

Jeffers summarized his report:

Notwithstanding the recent battle in Hampton Roads and the exploits of the plated gunboats in the Western rivers, I am of the opinion that protecting the guns and gunners does not, except in special cases, compensate for the greatly diminished quantity of of artillery, slow speed, and inferior accuracy of fire; and that for general purposes wooden ships, shell guns and forts, whether for offense or defenses, have not yet been superseded. [2]

John Ericsson responded to Jeffers’s report with fury. He felt that the US Navy did not understand how to operate his vessel and arrogantly answered each one of Jeffer’s complaints. Ericsson noted that the port stoppers were not to be opened and closed after each shot. The turret, he maintained, should merely be turned away from the enemy’s fire when reloading, as was done during the engagement with Virginia. 

He agreed that the pilothouse placement should be atop the turret. Ericsson wrote that this was an obvious solution to fire control and communications. He admitted that he had considered doing this while Monitor was under construction. The command center was not moved because it would have delayed the completion of the ship for over a month. The inventor concluded that the “damage to the national course which might have resulted from the delay is beyond computation.” [3] 

Even though Ericsson was correct about the turret’s operation and pilothouse location, he admitted that the poor ventilation system was a significant problem when he wrote First Assistant Engineer Issac Newton: “You have had a very severe trial and cannot imagine anything more monotonous and disagreeable than life onboard the Monitor at anchor in the James River in the hot season.” Fireman George Geer was well aware that Monitor “was not properly ventilated for men to live in it in hot weather; and I do not think she will go in another action until she has some alteration made, as the men would drop at the Guns before they fought half [an] hour.”[4]

USS Monitor had received great acclaim after the Battle of Hampton Roads. Despite the ironclad’s impenetrability, numerous flaws become apparent during its first three months of service. Lt. John Lorimer Worden had discovered just how unseaworthy the ship was when the ironclad almost sank twice en route from New York to Hampton Roads. The hull design and connection to the overhanging deck caused Monitor to leak and lurch in heavy seas. Monitor was too slow, which lessened its steering qualities in strong seas and heavy currents. Even though the turret was shot-proof, it could only house two XI-inch Dahlgren shell guns. Consequently, the ironclad had limited firepower and field of field as well as poor fire control due to constricted vision caused by the placement of the pilothouse. [5] 

The victory at Hampton Roads, public acclaim, and Ericsson’s sense of superiority duped naval leaders into believing that the monitor design was the wave of the future. Despite all of the noted obvious faults, the US Navy ordered 51 monitors during the war. Rear Admiral Samuel Francis DuPont, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, lamented in 1863 to Assistant Secretary of the Navy G. V. Fox: “But, oh! The errors of details, which could have been corrected if these men of genius could have been induced to pay attention to the people who are to use their tests and inventions.” [6]

Monitors were modified in many ways after the Drewry’s Bluff fight. These improvements, nevertheless, did not solve critical problems. The monitor design was not the super weapon many thought it to be. Instead, it was the graft of politicians and the greed of shipbuilders who ignored the flaws and sought to profit off the war by the mass production of monitors.

1. Lincoln to Welles, 10 March 1862, in The Valuable Papers of the Late Hon. Gideon Welles, Auction Catalog 1342, 24 January 1924, 8, no. 23, Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, IN. 
2. U. S. Department of the Navy, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, (Hereinafter cited as ORN), series 2, vol.18, p. 763.
3. IBID, p. 737.
4. William Marvel, ed., The Monitor Chronicles, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000,  p. 72.
5. John V. Quarstein and Robert L. Worden, From Ironclads to Admiral: John L. Worden and Naval Leadership, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2025, p. 122.
6. Gustavus Vasa Fox, Confidential Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1861-1865, 2 vols., edited by Robert Means Thompson and Richard Wainwright, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1972, I: 195.