The lookout on the USS Mount Vernon, the ship closest to shore, saw smoke appear above Sewall’s Point and thought a fire had been lit. He was about to report it when the dark shape emerged into view. A ship, but what kind of a ship? Its length shortened as the bow swung toward him and he raised the alarm. He may not have seen a vessel like this before — but he could recognize the Confederate flag at her stern. This could very well be the armorclad craft they had all been expecting, the ship that was supposed to bring victory to the South.
The Mount Vernon raised a signal flag to alert the fleet. It was not noticed. Her captain ordered a gun to be fired at the approaching ironclad. This single shot was the first shot fired in the Battle of Hampton Roads.
Puffing leisurely up the South Channel toward the anchored warships the Virginia looked more ridiculous than menacing. Until her gun ports opened and the black muzzles of her guns appeared. Buchanan singled out Cumberland for his first attack. Still a mile away she opened fire with the bow gun loaded with grape shot that killed or wounded the crew at the pivot gun.
The drums sounded beat to quarters on the Northern frigate and the crew ran to their stations. But the attack was so sudden and unexpected that they even had washing suspended from the rigging. They did their best. The crew swarmed aloft to set sail while the guncrews leaned into the tackle. Within scant minutes the Cumberland’s guns roared their first broadside. The attacker was closer now and the broadside of solid shot crashed into Virginia’s armor plating, four inches of thick iron that was backed by two feet of pine and oak.
The shot hit — and bounced away. None penetrated the armor nor did they slow in any way her steady and ponderous approach.
“Steady,” Buchanan said to the coxswain, “steady.” The ironclad’s armor rang like a giant bell as the round shot struck and screamed away. “Hold her there — I want to hit the hull midship.”
Before the frigate’s guns could be loaded again the ram struck Cumberland with a tremendous crash, driving into her wooden hull and through it. Water gushed in through the immense opening and the ship commenced to sink — threatening to drag the ironclad down with her.
“Full speed astern!”
The threat was a real one and the Virginia’s forward deck was already under water. There was the constant crack of lead on iron as marksmen on the Cumberland fired their muskets at point-blank range. They were no more effective than the cannon had been.
But the Virginia had condemned herself. Her feeble engine could not drag her free of the sinking ship. Water was already flooding onto her deck, splashing through ventilation openings under her armor. The hope of the South was being destroyed in her first ship action.
But the strain on the ram was too much — it broke off and the ironclad was free. As the Virginia backed away the ocean poured through the gaping opening in the other ship’s hull. The attacker turned its attention toward the rest of the fleet.
But Cumberland did not strike her colors — nor did she stop firing. Because of this Virginia stayed beside her, firing steadily despite the solid shot that clanged impotently against her armor, fired until the Yankee warship was burning, sinking. Yet the surviving gun crews stayed at their stations, still firing. The crash of iron on steel sounded one last time before she sank.
Then the armorclad was into the Union fleet. During the attack on the Cumberland, Congress had set sail and with the aid of the tugboat, Zouave, had run ashore. Trapped there she was being pounded by the small Confederate gunboats. Now Virginia joined them in the attack. Crossing the frigate’s stern Virginia sent round after round through her frail wooden hull until it was ablaze from stem to stern.
Hot, exhausted, filthy — the crew of the ironclad still raised a victorious cheer as their ship turned toward the rest of the blockading fleet.
The steam-powered Minnesota could have escaped from the slow and ponderous attacker. Her commander and her crew did not see it that way. Using her greater mobility she circled the Virginia trying to press any advantage. There was none. Her cannonballs caused no damage, while her own wooden hull was penetrated again and again. By afternoon she was badly damaged and run aground. Only the turn of the tide saved her. Virginia had to stay in the deep channel or she would be aground as well.
“Break off the engagement,” Buchanan ordered, peering out at the setting sun and the turning tide. “Set course back to the river.”
As darkness began to fall the ironclad Confederate steamship, slightly damaged, with few wounded, chugged back into harbor. Buchanan and his crew celebrated, looking forward to the morning when they would bring their ship out again to destroy the beached Minnesota. And any other wooden ship of the Union navy. The fleet would be destroyed, the blockade lifted, the South saved.
Iron had triumphed over wood. Sail had given way to steam. Nor was this message lost to the world, for this battle had long been anticipated, the existence of the Virginia a badly-kept secret. There were French and British ships standing out to sea that had been waiting for this encounter. They had watched closely the events of the day and fully expected the total destruction of the blockading fleet in the morning.
This was a new kind of war at sea. The sun set on a day of Southern victory.
IRON OF THE NORTH
The same storm that had kept the Virginia in port had prevented the Monitor from leaving the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Days and weeks of frustrating delays had followed her launching in mid-February. Ericsson’s design was magnificent; her construction from keel to completion in 101 days was a mechanical miracle. It was the human factor that could not have been allowed for in the drawings.
The metal ship had a single-screw propeller that was turned by a powerful two-cylinder engine — also of Ericsson’s design. However the engineers who had fitted the propeller had made a single major mistake. They had assumed that the drive shaft rotated in one direction — when in fact it rotated the opposite way. So when the first sea tests were begun and her commander, Lieutenant John Worden, ordered half-speed ahead, the craft shuddered and went backward and slammed into the dock.
“What is happening?” he called down to Chief Engineer Alban Stimers. The engineer’s profane reply could luckily not be heard above the clank of machinery. This died away and Stimers went forward to the pilothouse and called up to Worden.
“No one ever seems to have asked if the propeller is left-handed or right-handed. When you want to go forward it goes into reverse.”
“Can a new propeller be fitted?”
“No. This was one was specially designed and made to order. I don’t know how long it would take to manufacture a new one, but I know it could not be done very quickly. And she would have to go back into drydock to have it replaced, which would take even more time.”
“Damnation! What about running the engine in reverse then? That would certainly make her go forward.”
Stimers shook his head gloomily, mopping his sopping face with a rag that only spread more grease across his skin. “We could. But we wouldn’t get more than two or three knots — not her design speed of seven.”
Worden climbed down from the armored pilothouse. “Why? I don’t understand.”