American History - Part 096 - Lincoln - War at Sea - Battle of the Ironclads
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-06-10

The American Civil War in the 1860s was fought not only on land. There was a great deal of fighting between the Union and Confederate navies.
This part of the war -- the sea war -- is often forgotten, but it was important. The Union victory might not have been possible without the successes of its navy.
Many battles took place just off the coast of the United States. Many others took place farther away, in international waters.
This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe talk about the naval side of the Civil War.
The Union navy was too small for the job.
The Confederate seacoast was long. It extended from Chesapeake Bay to Mexico, a distance of five thousand six hundred kilometers. There were not enough ships in the Union navy to blockade all of it. Many months would pass before the Union could build up an effective naval force.
The Confederacy had no navy at the start of the Civil War. The Confederate government had little money to create one. And the South had no factories to build one.
. For the most part, the Confederacy depended on privately owned ships to get goods in and out of the South.
About twenty of these private ships flew the Confederate flag. Most were very successful in the beginning.
The Florida, for example, captured more than thirty ships before being captured itself off the coast of Brazil in 1864. The Alabama captured more than sixty ships. It was finally sunk in a battle with the Kearsarge off the coast of France.
The Shenandoah sailed in the Pacific Ocean. It captured forty ships. After the war ended, the Shenandoah tied up in Liverpool, England.
In addition to these victories, the Confederacy claimed responsibility for several new naval technologies during the Civil War. One was the first modern submarine.
This ship was ten meters long. It sank four times while being tested. It was raised each time and put back into service. One night, it fired its torpedoes at a much larger Union ship and sank it. But the explosion was so great that it tore apart the submarine. And it sank, too.
The Confederacy also developed very effective underwater explosive devices for use in the harbors.
Even with its victories and technologies, however, the Confederacy could not stop the Union navy. The Union navy was bigger to begin with and grew much faster.
President Lincoln appointed navy officer David Farragut to lead the attack on New Orleans.
When Farragut reached New Orleans, he found the city defenseless. Several thousand Confederate soldiers had fled. They knew they could not defend against the bigger Union force. Only civilians remained. Farragut captured New Orleans without a fight.
The Confederate flag was lowered. And the United States flag was raised over the city.
Several weeks before Farragut captured New Orleans, a new kind of navy battle was fought off Hampton Roads, Virginia. It was the first battle between iron ships.
On the Confederate side was the Virginia. It had been built from what remained of a captured Union warship called the Merrimack. The Virginia was like no other warship ever seen in the world.
It was eighty meters long. The part that showed above the water line was built of wood sixty centimeters thick. This part was covered with sheets of iron ten centimeters thick.
The Virginia could not move fast. And it was difficult to control. It took almost thirty minutes to turn around. Still, there seemed to be no way to stop this iron monster. It already had destroyed two Union warships. And it was coming back for more.
The Union ship chosen to fight the Virginia was the Monitor. It, too, was covered with iron. But it was much smaller than the Virginia. And it carried only two cannons.
These two cannons, however, were on a part of the ship that could turn in a complete circle. They could be aimed in any direction.
The Monitor and the Virginia faced each other on the morning of March ninth, 1862. They moved in close -- very close -- then began to fire.
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The battle at Hampton Roads between the Virginia and the Monitor was undecisive. It did not have much effect on the final result of America's Civil War. But it was still an important battle. For it marked the beginning of the end of the world's wooden navies.