ME350X_CC Reflective Essay_Keyser

CC Reflective Essay

Age of Ironclads

Ethan Keyser

ME 350X History of Technology

December 6, 2014

H.R statement: Yes, referenced my old assignments, and used resources cited in footnotes

Age of Ironclads

            War is often the catalyst for great innovations. When men are fighting one another, outdoing the enemy is a matter of survival; although many times these inventions are created to destroy human life, there are still many other devices that become beneficial to society.  For instance, the evolution of the airplane into a useful machine, the creation of stainless steel, and conception of wristwatches can be attributed to WWI alone[1].  The Ironclad ships of the Civil War are another example of a groundbreaking invention produced by war. A convergence of new steam engines, iron and steel plating, and many other innovations, these developments changed not only naval warfare, but also affected greater society.

The first invention that made the ironclads possible was the steam engine.  Steam has been used as a power source for thousands of year, but its significance was increased exponentially with the invention of the steam engine.  In 1698[2] Thomas Savery designed a very simple steam engine to pump water out of mines.  Although it was not very powerful, it was useful because prior to the steam engine, animals had to be used to move the pumps.  With Savery’s invention, mines no longer had to rely on animals, which had to be fed and taken care of; the miners could just use a machine.

Shortly after Savery designed his pump, Thomas Newcomen created the “Newcomen Atmospheric Pump”.  Considerable more advanced and more effective than the Savery pump, the Newcomen pump “is called an ‘atmospheric’ engine because the greatest steam pressure used is near atmospheric pressure[3].  For many years the Newcomen pump was the most advanced steam engine available.  In 1765 James Watt designed a engine where the condenser was separate from the rest of the device, this allowed the engine to be much more efficient.  A few years latter, Watt created an engine that was a breakthrough because the piston did work in both directions.  The engine also had a throttle to control its speed.

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In 1800 a man named Oliver Evans created a steam engine that “used the concept of steam for powering an engine rather than condensing steam and creating a vacuum[5]”; this lead to engines capable of 30 RPM.  Originally the engine was used to run a sawmill, but soon people began putting them on railway cars and boats.  As is often the case with new technology, Navy warships were some of the first to use the new steam engines.

At first, using steam to power a boat did not appear to be that big of an advantage, “The engines did not make the ships dramatically faster, and many steam ships continued to use sails preserve fuel on long trips.  These ships looked and functioned much like ships from the age of sail except for the tell-tale smokestack rising above their decks. Nevertheless, because of their flexibility, steamers served as blockade-runners, transports, and cruisers – and in virtually every role that could be found for them during the war”[6].  Although it took a while for steam powered craft to catch on, they soon proved themselves very advantageous.  In traditional Naval combat, it could take hours to position your ship for a broadside against the enemy; however, steam power allowed a ship to move independently of the wind and outmaneuver its opponents.  To add, ships that functioned in rivers could move much more quickly up stream with a steam engine than with traditional sails.

The increased maneuverability of steam ships changed naval warfare, because the steam ships could hit their target more frequently then traditional ships, it became clear “how tremendously vulnerable wooden ships were to destruction by long range, explosive cannon fire, naval architects began to dramatically improve ships’ defenses by plating them with iron or steel”[7].  This brings up the second major advancement in shipbuilding technology—iron and steel armor.

Mankind had been using iron since 2000 BCE[8].  Early on he realized that it was much stronger than bronze or stone. In fact, whole empires were rose and fell based on whether or not they had iron weapons.  Iron itself dramatically changed warfare.  In addition to making better weapons, Iron was also used for tools, nails and other things.  As time went on methods for strengthening the iron were developed.  One of the first methods was that for creating wrought iron. After smelting the iron ore, a blacksmith would hammer the iron on an anvil, which would remove the impurities.  At the height of the middle ages, blacksmith’s developed furnaces that were capable of creating higher temperatures with the use of a bellows (Interestingly enough, one of Watt’s steam engines would later be used to perform this task).   These new furnaces allowed blacksmiths to create “pig iron” more commonly known today as cast iron. The creation of iron remained the same for hundreds of years, until in the 1700’s Europeans started to develop steel.  Initially this steal was very expensive to make and could only be manufactured in small amounts; however, the methods continued to improve over time. It is at this point that iron met with steam ships to form the “ironclad”, an armored ship that changed Naval warfare.

Although several Ironclad ships had been built in Europe before the Civil War,

The true demonstration of the superiority of the ironclad was the showdown between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia.  The race for an ironclad began when the Confederacy started construction on the CSS Virginia.  The Union had many more traditional warships than the Confederacy, and had set up blockades on many key ports.  In hopes of breaking the blockades a Southern engineer named Stephen Mallory raised the sunken hull of the Union vessel USS Merrimac and began to plate it with iron to make an ironclad.  The ship was powered by a steam engine, had nine guns and a five hundred pound iron ram[9].  Once the union heard about the construction of the CSS Virginia, they commissioned a Swedish engineer named John Ericsson to build an ironclad capable of defending the union blockade from the USS Virginia[10]

The design that Ericsson wanted to use was completely untested, the vast majority of the ship was submerged, and instead of having many guns, it had only two, housed in a rotating turret.  These features were in many ways ahead of their time and gave the monitor some distinct advantages.  First, having the ship below the waterline made it a very difficult target.  Secondly, the rotating turret was advantageous because it allowed the ship to attack the enemy from any direction.  Additionally, once the two fifteen hundred pound guns had been fired, the turret could face away from the enemy, shielding the crew from incoming fire[11].  Because of their advantages, rotating turrets would become a staple on almost all battleships of the future.  The monitor was built in one hundred and one days, once completed it was sent of to the Hampton Roads area to try and contain the CSS Virginia.

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On March 8^th, 1862 the CSS Virginia attacked the Union blockade at Hampton Roads. The Ironclad easily sank two of the vessels there before the USS Monitor showed up.  Because of its low profile, the USS Monitor was originally thought to be a life raft by the crew of the CSS Virginia.  However, “When the turret of the Monitor turned around and fired on the (Virginia) every naval craft in the world became immediately obsolete”[13].  The two ships fought for several hours; neither one able to seriously damage the other.  Finally, the Virginia withdrew up the river.  Although neither ships lost, the Monitor won a tactical victory by containing the Virginia and defending the blockade.

More important then who won the battle was the point proven by the ironclads.  The rest of the world now saw how effective the ironclad ships could be, and how useless wooden ships were against them; this would bring about a new age of iron ships.  Powered by steam, these ironclads would change naval warfare forever.  After the battle of Hampton Roads, both the Confederacy and the Union increased their investment in ironclad ships.  From the civil war on, warships were ironclads.  Soon afterword, passenger ships also began to be made out of iron and run on steam.

Ironclad warships were a combat changing innovation made possible by the convergence of many inventions.  Covered in iron, powered by steam, and possessing the newest inventions, Ironclads were cutting edge at the time.  The Ironclads were also an example of how developments from different eras of history often cross at some point and change the world.