The nineteenth century was a period of immense technological development in the United States. The Industrial Revolution transformed the Union from a collection of small northern towns and southern plantations to an interconnected Nation dedicated to scientific and technical advancement. When the Civil War broke out in the 1860s, many enterprising individuals from the North and the South thought up ways to use new industry and inventions in the war effort. The Civil War furnished many people with a sense of urgency to fuel their creativity, catalyzing scientific progress. During the war, Union and Confederate forces used recent technological advancements to improve their navies, changing the nature of conflict.
The Civil War brought significant change to naval warfare. Though it might seem that only armies mattered during the conflict, given that land borders separated Union and Rebel states, water was an integral part of the northern strategy. At the onset of the war, General Winfield Scott devised the "Anaconda Plan," a tactic aimed at strangling the Southern economy using the Navy. Union ships would blockade southern ports, preventing resource imports and cotton exports, squeezing the life out of the South like an anaconda squeezes its prey. In the plan, the Union also sought to secure control of the Mississippi River, cutting the treasonous Confederacy in half and separating critical agricultural lands in the West from population centers in the East. The North needed to develop its Navy to ensure success in this endeavor. In 1861, the Navy included old-fashioned wooden sailing vessels, although recent technological advancements allowed steam to power 24 of the Union's about 90 ships. Nevertheless, the force was not big or powerful enough for its task. The Navy needed to expand to be able to blockade southern shores properly. To cope, the government rapidly converted merchant and transport vessels into warships.
The Southern Navy was small and weak compared to the Northern one. The Confederates needed to think outside the box to level the playing field. When Virginia seceded from the Union, many damaged U.S. ships being repaired in the state fell into Southern hands. Among these ships was the USS Merrimack. The rebels fixed the vessel and fortified it with a shell of two-inch thick iron plates, renaming it the CSS Virginia. This move introduced the idea of ironclads to America. For millennia, ships had been made of buoyant but weak wood. Wrapping a boat with a heavy iron shell proved revolutionary.
On March 8, 1862, the Virginia emerged from the Elizabeth River in Southern Virginia into the Chesapeake Bay to face blockading northern ships. It first encountered the USS Cumberland. The Cumberland embodied the traditional Navy. The enormous wooden sailing ship sported 50 guns. The modest-looking Virginia steamed directly towards the Cumberland. The Cumberland fired cannons on the Virginia, but the latter's metal shield protected it from any damage. The Virginia smashed its 1500-pound ram into the Cumberland, ripping its opponent's wooden hull apart. The impact tore off the Virginia's ram, but the Cumberland quickly sank, killing 121 men. Over the rest of the day, Union ships and fortifications fired continuously on the Virginia, but the strong ironclad only suffered minor damages.
The next day, while the Virginia was wreaking havoc on the Union blockade, the USS Monitor, an ironclad that the Union army had been constructing, joined the fight. The Monitor, like the Virginia, was impervious to traditional naval weaponry. It was the only ship that could stand up to the Virginia. The two ironclads dueled for hours, exchanging cannon fire in vain. The battle ended in a draw. The Monitor, being smaller than the Virginia, retreated into shallow water, at which point, the Virginia, low on ammunition, returned whence it came.
This technological advancement could have lost the North the war. No traditional ship could face the ironclad Virginia. For a moment, the Virginia had the whole union navy at its mercy. It may have never met its match if not for the Monitor. It, impervious to artillery, could have steamed up the Chesapeake and the Potomac right up to Washington, DC. With a warship in the Capitol, the Confederate government would have been in an excellent position to negotiate for peace. Only Yankee ingenuity keeping pace with the technological advancements by creating the Monitor could preserve the Union. This advancement in shipbuilding, pushed forward by desperate engineers, ended the era of wooden ships and forever changed the nature of the Navy.
Like ironclads, the first submarines came about during the Civil War. After the battle between the Virginia and the Monitor, Union and Confederate forces sought to fill their fleets with ironclads. As technology improved, these ships sat ever farther below the water line. Some sat so low that only a pipe protruded to expel fumes. While such developments immensely helped to increase stealth, confederate inventors Horace Hunley, James McClintock, and Baxter Watson took it upon themselves to design a true submarine.
In 1862, the group completed its first submarine, the Pioneer, in New Orleans. The vessel could sometimes move underwater, but it often got stuck. The group destroyed the Pioneer before it saw conflict to keep their invention a secret as Union forces captured Southern Louisiana, but the men went on to build a second model, which they called American Diver, in Mobile, Alabama. The submarine wasn't fast enough to damage Union ships and eventually sank.
The team built a third model that would be called the Hunley. The design of the Hunley required the submarine to tow a torpedo as it navigated under its target ship. In July of 1863, the Hunley's builders tested their vessel by blowing up a barge in the Mobile River. After proving itself capable, the Hunley was ready to face genuine Union ships. The submarine went to Charleston to break the city's naval blockade. Before it could blow up a boat, the Hunley sank, killing its entire crew. After the Confederates retrieved the sunken submarine and tried it a second time, it sank again, killing another crew.
The Hunley needed to undergo some changes for its third attempt. Instead of towing the torpedo behind it, the vessel would ram the torpedo, attached to its front with a 16-foot pole, into its target. In February 1864, the Hunley sank the USS Housatonic, but its success proved fleeting. Because the short pole replaced the long tether to hold the torpedo, the Hunley was close enough to the blast to sustain damage. The submarine sank, killing its crew once more.
While the Hunley carried out the first successful submarine attack in history, the Civil War saw the use of more than a score of such crafts. Although most of these submarines never participated in combat, their mere existence is a symptom of the ingenuity brought about by the conflict. The transition from navies made of purely wooden ships to ones that included submarines and ironclads required massive technological advancement. Using novel propulsion systems and weapons, air-tight metal tubes sustained humans deep under the sea. Heavy metal shells guided ships over waves, defying the laws of buoyancy. Inventors, pressured by the Civil War to innovate, contributed significantly to nautical mastery. Their inventions were the ancestors of today's aircraft carriers, destroyers, and nuclear and scientific submarines. For better or worse, the Civil War forever altered the nature of our seas.
Works Cited
American Battlefield Trust. “Battle of Hampton Roads Facts & Summary.” American Battlefield Trust, 7 Mar. 2019, www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/hampton-roads.
“Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack | Summary & Facts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2019, www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-the-Monitor-and-Merrimack.
“Clash of the Ironclads.” American Battlefield Trust, 27 July 2017, www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/clash-ironclads.
“Hunley Submarine: Historic Naval Innovation at Work.” Huntley, www.hunley.org/naval-innovation/.
“NOAA Ocean Explorer: Cumberland Club 2007.” Oceanexplorer.noaa.gov, oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/07cumberland/logs/history/history.html. Accessed 1 May 2023.
Rafuse, Ethan. “CSS Virginia – Encyclopedia Virginia.” Encyclopedia Virginia, 1 May 2023, encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/css-virginia/.