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The most famous ship of the Civil War was almost never built. Swedish inventor John Ericsson had come up with his "sub-aquatic system of naval warfare" back in the 1820's. He envisioned a warship that would be protected both by an armor belt, and by having its vulnerable machinery placed below the waterline and thus out of the line of fire. Transforming the concept into practical engineering took decades. First there was the question of how to propel a ship by means other than paddlewheels, which by their function couldn't be below the waterline. In 1837, Ericsson devised the screw propeller. Next came the question of how to build a ship strong enough to carry the weight of armor. Ericsson was involved in the construction of the first iron-hulled merchant ships, gaining valuable experience. Then came the Crimean War. At the Battle of Sinope in 1853, the Russian defeat of a Turkish naval squadron signaled the vulnerability of wooden-hulled ships to the explosive effects of the new shell-firing guns. Ericsson decided that the time had come to build his novel warship, and submitted his plans to France (fighting against the Russians). His design consisted of a hemispherical turret on top of a curved "whaleback" hull, most of which would be below the waterline. Guns in the turret would be powered by steam rather than gunpowder. Steam would also propel "hydrostatic javelins" from tubes in the vessel's sides (what we would refer to as "torpedoes"). However, the French government declined to build the experimental warship. A decade later, Ericsson dusted off the cardboard model of his unnamed ship and offered the design to his adopted country, the United States. The Union was hesitant. Ericsson had been involved in the design of the U.S.S. Princeton. A gun explosion on the Princeton killed several Cabinet officers and could have slain the President. Though Ericsson had not designed that gun, he (unfairly) received the blame. The officers of the Naval Board were also skeptical of Ericsson's unconventional design. In the end, the design was accepted - with modifications. The complex curves of the proposed hull and turret were replaced with simpler shapes - a flat deck, a cylindrical turret - that would be easier to construct in the time available. Conventional guns would be used instead of the proposed steam guns, and the torpedo system was scrapped. But Ericsson's core ideas remained: a ship whose propulsive machinery was below the waterline, and whose armament resided in an armored turret. 
SourcesERROR - invalid isdn (0-8027-1330-0), pp. 7-31, 71-79 ERROR - invalid isdn (0-13-920652-3), pp. 42-47 |
