USS Monitor

covert_shores

covert_shores

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Early design apparently presented to Napoleon before the civil war - random internet find.

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Very interesting drawing. Does this take the prize for the earliest project on this forum?
 
Surely Leonardo da Vinci's designs are the oldest? They must be here???

This design seems so un hydrodynamic and vague it's surprising it resulted in a successful and revolutionary design.
 
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was more or less a concept sketch - one hopes that French naval architects would have done something decent with the underwater lines if it had ever been accepted and built. That being said, IIRC the US went with the "cheesebox on a raft" design (sometimes two cheeseboxes) for quite a while, and how much ocean-going capability do you need in an armoured turret-ship when the stretch of water you really desire to control is the English Channel? (Not that that's the be-all and end-all, of course, especially in a global or transoceanic conflict - but in any naval war involving Britain, whichever side controls the Channel arguably has an easier time of it for as long as the control lasts.)
 
USS Monitor as built wasn't much better.
 

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TomS said:
USS Monitor as built wasn't much better.
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It was even worse with its angular hull and turret. But much better suited to the then
current production techniques and materials.
 
Jemiba said:
It was even worse with its angular hull and turret. But much better suited to the then current production techniques and materials.
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Yes and no. The contemporaneous HMS Warrior was a thing of beauty, but Warrior was a testament to the years of experience that the British had already had with iron shipbuilding, designed to go anywhere and fight almost anything while doing it (and they built her so well she's still with us). Monitor was just a way to get traversing guns behind armour in a hurry, and to do what her opposition was busy doing when the two of them had it out: cruise up narrow waterways under power, difficult to hit and likely to shrug off most of what did, while blowing trapped wooden sailing ships out of the water at leisure.
 
pathology_doc said:
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was more or less a concept sketch - one hopes that French naval architects would have done something decent with the underwater lines if it had ever been accepted and built. That being said, IIRC the US went with the "cheesebox on a raft" design (sometimes two cheeseboxes) for quite a while, and how much ocean-going capability do you need in an armoured turret-ship when the stretch of water you really desire to control is the English Channel? (Not that that's the be-all and end-all, of course, especially in a global or transoceanic conflict - but in any naval war involving Britain, whichever side controls the Channel arguably has an easier time of it for as long as the control lasts.)
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I can't say for sure but I think the French may have been interested in their monitor for inshore coast defence. During the Napoleonic Wars the RN spent a lot of time sitting in the lower mouths of various French rivers and inlets to strangle their sea lines of communication. A marginal sea boat like the Monitor could probably operate their breaking the British close blockade and also freeing up the French fleet for sea going (and channel going) operations.
 
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The first "real" steam powered, armoured warships were the French "Floating Batteries" of the Crimea War ( MUCH better than "monitor"), see ;


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9vastation-class_ironclad_floating_battery




The British directly copied these ( class) ;


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aetna-class_ironclad_floating_battery




And produced an improved class (Erebus class) - but they were sidelined


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Based on all that the French produced the wooden hulled, steam powered, armoured "La Gloire" as the first sea-going "Ironclad" - BUT they were so slow that HMS Warrior got to sea first, and she was iron-hulled, and much better engineered, faster, armed and armoured.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Gloire


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860)


Of course, Warrior was quickly outclassed in the RN, but ALL the above were better than Monitor (but don't tell the USA).


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I'm not sure, that a comparison of ships like the Warrior or Gloire with the Monitor really brings suitable
results here. Both were principally just armoured ( in the case of Warrior iron built) versions of the typical
older warships, guns still arranged in broadside arrays. Their classification as "frigates" came from their
single gun decks, the maximum, they could carry due to the weight of their armour. And both were designed
as sea going vessels, so not even a comparison with Monitors opponent, the CSS Virginia would be really fair,
I think.
The Monitor actually was a revolutionary design, with minimised freeboard to present a small target and,
probably most important, installation of its guns in a turret. Those features shaped later warships, not
the batteries of the Warrior or Gloire.
 
phil gollin said:
Of course, Warrior was quickly outclassed in the RN, but ALL the above were better than Monitor (but don't tell the USA).
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Everything has to be a p*ssing contest? Warrior and some of her ironclad contemporaries had better seakeeping characteristics, but the the Monitor was never intended as an open-ocean warship. The turret, the cheesebox sitting on top the flimsy raft, revolutionized warship design. Not only was it possible to point the guns independently of the ship's orientation, but it allowed the concentration of firepower into a fewer number of large naval rifles or Dahlgren guns as opposed to a broadside of smaller cannon. The brits knew this, their own mad genius Coles developed his own turret designs roughly at the same time as Ericsson. The difference was that the US Navy was producing its ironclads in a crash wartime production program, Monitor hit the water in just 101 days, and it was focused on the blockade and Confederate coastal/river ironclads as opposed to blue water iron warships.
 
Warrior was better because she was an integrated metal fighting ship, built from the keel up; La Gloire was a conversion.


Yes, both were clearly in a different category from Monitor or Virginia, but it wasn't as if the British weren't building contemporary low-freeboard coast-defence turret ships of their own (Royal Sovereign, Prince Albert, plus Scorpion and Wivern building for the Confederates but taken over). And just look at the armament layout: Prince Albert, 4 turrets, 4 x rifled ML; Royal Sovereign, 4 turrets, 5 x 10.5" SB ML; Scorpion class, 2 turrets, 4 x 9" rifled ML.


The only thing holding the British back from surrendering the broadside (and later the compromise central battery) design was their need to maintain worldwide mobility, which in those days was restricted by propulsion technology - for the British, sail was still essential to the early metal fighting ship and sails and turrets did not mix well, especially when detail design was rushed or not done properly (HMS Captain).
 
All wonderius designs if you ask me. All have strengths and weaknesses.

Monitor was the first ever turreted ship? The turret is the big deal in my opinion.
 
covert_shores said:
All wonderius designs if you ask me. All have strengths and weaknesses.

Monitor was the first ever turreted ship? The turret is the big deal in my opinion.
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Not quite. There was HMS Trusty, a British self-propelled floating battery retrofitted with a turret in 1861. Monitor was, I believe, the first ship built from the outset with a turret.
 

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