Stevens Battery The Stevens Battery was an early design for a type of ironclad , proposed for use by the United States Navy before the American Civil War . One full - sized example was begun but never completed due to lack of funding . Background . In 1841 , the United States was in the midst of a war scare with the United Kingdom over the American boundary with Canada , among other issues . Americans remembered the British invasion of the United States by sea during the War of 1812 and , to avoid its recurrence , President John Tyler and Secretary of the Navy Abel P . Upshur called for a large increase in the size of the U . S . Navy in order to defend the coast . A like - minded U . S . Congress authorized the use of $ 8 , 500 , 000 ( USD ) to fund the expansion . In this environment , Robert L . Stevens and Edwin Augustus Stevens , the sons of Colonel John Stevens of Hoboken , New Jersey , proposed to the Department of the Navy on August 13 , 1841 the construction of a revolutionary steam - powered ironclad vessel of high speed , with screw propellers and all machinery below the water line . Congress passed and President Tyler signed the Stevens Battery Act the same year to authorize funding for the construction of the ship , and the U . S . Navy ' s Board of Commissioners approved the Stevens brothers ' specific proposal for the ship in January 1842 . An Act of Congress authorizing Upshur to contract for the construction of a shot - and shell - proof steamer , to be built principally of iron , on the Stevens plan was approved on April 14 , 1842 . The ship , which became known as the " Stevens Battery , " was to be the first such ship ever to be built under government authorization . She was intended to serve as a fast , powerful , heavily armored , mobile battery , reinforcing the coastal fortifications of New York City . The Stevens brothers selected their family estate in Hoboken , New Jersey , as the construction site for the ship . They had to have a drydock dug out of solid rock there , and then install large pumps to keep the drydock from flooding , and delays occurred from the very beginning of the project . The budget for the ship was set at $ 600 , 000 ( USD ) , based on vaguely similar earlier ships , but in fact the new ship was revolutionary in concept and design that no one really knew how to build her or how much she would cost . The 1844 design . The Stevens ' original design for the ship was completed in 1844 and called for a 250 - foot - ( 76 - meter - ) long ship 40 feet ( 12 . 2 m ) in beam and displacing 1 , 500 tons . She was to be armed with six large - caliber muzzle - loading cannon s in open casemates on decks , loaded from below the main deck by gun crews protected by armored casemates employing sloped armor to further improve protection . She was to be proof against 64 - pound ( 29 - kilogram ) shells , the largest fired by U . S . Navy guns at the time . To achieve this , she was to be armored with 4 . 5 - inch - ( 114 - millimeter - ) thick iron plate reinforced by 14 inches ( 356 millimeters ) of locust timber , a thickness of iron and wood believed by the Stevens to be sufficient to resist any gun then known . Furthermore , she was to be semisubmersible , able to submerge herself to her gunwale s to make her a smaller target for enemy gunners . Her steam engines were to produce 900 indicated horsepower ( ihp ) , and this very high speed for the era combined with good maneuverability were intended to make her a hard target to hit as well . Experiments by John Ericsson with his 12 - inch ( 305 - mm ) wrought iron gun " Oregon " , which could fire a 225 - pound ( 102 - kilogram ) shell 5 miles ( 9 . 25 kilometers ) , soon proved that 4 . 5 - inch ( 114 - millimeter ) armor was insufficient . In March 1845 , Robert Stevens ' health failed and he spent the next two years recuperating in Europe . His absence and the need to rethink the ship ' s armor scheme led to little work being done on her for several years . In 1851 , Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft ordered work on the ship stopped because of her inadequate armor , and Commodore Charles W . Skinner , chief of the Navy ' s Bureau of Construction announced his intention to scrap the incomplete ship and sell her materials . The 1854 design . The Stevens brothers succeeded in getting Congress to overrule Bancroft and Skinner , and set about radically redesigning the Stevens Battery . The new design was ready by January 1854 . It called for a great increase in the ship ' s size and capabilities . She was now to be 420 feet ( 128 m ) long , 53 feet ( 16 m ) in beam , and displace 4 , 683 tons . She was to be proof against 125 - pound ( 56 . 7 - kilogram ) shells , with armor made up of 6 . 75 - inch ( 171 - millimeter ) iron plates sloping upwards from 1 foot ( 0 . 3 m ) below the waterline to the main deck and running along the entire side of the ship from stem to stern . She was to have bulwarks to make her more seaworthy when steaming which could be lowered to reduce her freeboard in combat , making her a smaller target . Again , the ship was to semisubmersible , able to submerge herself down to the gunwales , also to make her a smaller target . Her armament was to consist of two 10 - inch ( 254 - millimeter ) rifled guns mounted on pivots fore and aft and five 15 - inch ( 381 - mm ) smoothbore guns mounted on the deck above an armored casemate . The guns were to fire 425 - pound ( 193 - kilogram ) shells . The gun crews , protected by the casemates , would load the guns from below through holes in the deck protected by armored hoods ; the gun ' s muzzle would be pointed into the hole , and a steam - powered cylinder would use a ramrod to load the gun for the next shot , allowing a high rate of fire . Water was to be injected into each gun automatically after it fired , to cool the gun and prevent it from being damaged by extended , rapid firing . The ship was to have eight steam engines generating to drive two propellers and give the ship a maximum speed of , breathtakingly fast for the time . She would have consumed a lot of coal , and her 1 , 000 - ton coal capacity suggests that she would have had a very short operating range . She was to be the first ship equipped with fan - driven ventilation , to increase crew comfort by extracting fumes and hot air from below decks . The Stevens brothers made significant progress on the newly designed ship between January 1854 and September 1855 , but then work slowed again . When Robert Stevens died in April 1856 , worked stopped entirely , and did not resume until 1859 . The Navy by then was losing interest in the ship . By 1861 , it had spent $ 500 , 000 ( U . S . ) on the project , and the Stevens family had spent another $ 228 , 435 ( U . S . ) . That year , Edwin Stevens and his brother John C . Stevens offered to pay for completion of the ship themselves if the Navy would agree to pay for the ship if it was completed and proved successful , but a Navy board rejected the offer , finding deficiencies in the project . It was not clear when the ship would be completed , and in 1862 Edwin Stevens estimated that it would take another $ 730 , 484 ( U . S . ) just to complete the ship enough for to be launched . The Civil War and USS " Naugatuck " . When the American Civil War broke out in 1861 , Edwin Stevens claimed that a completed Stevens Battery would have a decisive impact against Confederate forces . Hoping to prove his point , he purchased an iron - hulled steamer and modified greatly into a warship that would demonstrate to the Union Navy some of the principles he had in mind for the Stevens Battery , including high maneuverability , a respectable top speed , a semisubmersible capability , and a large gun on the main deck capable of a high rate of fire and loaded from below the deck by gun crews protected by armor . The resulting vessel , " Naugatuck " , went into service with the United States Revenue Cutter Service in the autumn of 1861 , but soon was loaned to the Navy . In action in May 1862 , her main gun burst . Her armor protected the gun crew from the explosion as Stevens intended , but the Navy was not won over by the design , and " Naugatuck " soon went back to the Revenue Cutter Service . Although the Navy had a large ironclad program during the Civil War for which the Stevens Battery seemed a logical fit , a Navy board found numerous deficiencies in the ship and the Navy decided not to spend any more money on her . On July 17 , 1862 , Congress voted to turn all ownership of and rights to the Stevens Battery over to the Stevens family , and the ship spent the Civil War in her drydock . The 1869 design . Edwin Stevens died in 1868 , leaving the Stevens Battery and $ 1 , 000 , 000 ( USD ) with which to finish her to the State of New Jersey . New Jersey Governor Theodore F . Randolph appointed an oversight comnmission , and Major General George B . McClellan , the commander of the Army of the Potomac early in the Civil War , became engineer - in - chief . McClellan redesigned the ship yet again . The 1866 Battle of Lissa , in which ramming had proven an important tactic , was influential in ship design for 40 years , and his 1869 design called for the ship to have an iron spur ram bow . She also was to have a heavier hull . Instead of guns mounted in casemates , the Stevens Battery now was to have her guns in a revolving turret like that of USS " Monitor " , although the type and caliber of guns were never determined . Her machinery was removed and replaced by ten large - diameter boilers and two Maudsley and Field vertical overhead - crosshead steam engines which were to give the Stevens Battery a top speed of . The end . By 1874 , all the money for her completion was gone , and the ship was not yet ready for launching even after the Stevens family had spent $ 2 , 000 , 000 ( USD ) on her since proposing her in 1841 . McClellan estimated that she would require another $ 450 , 000 ( USD ) just to reach a state where she could be launched , with more necessary to fit her out after that . No more money was available from the Stevens family , Robert and Edwin Stevens both were dead , and the last hope to make something out of the project was to sell the ship . A possible sale to Prussia fell through , and there were no other potential buyers . Most of the ship ' s machinery was sold in 1874 and 1875 , and the ship was sold for scrap at public auction in 1881 . The scrappers had to use blasting to dismantle her hull . The Stevens Battery in many ways was far ahead of her time when proposed in 1841 , and remained a revolutionary design with potential capabilities far beyond the norm for her times . But her first design proved inadequate in the face of the advance of gun technology , her second design took too long to build and never found favor with the U . S . Navy , and her third design , although modernized , came too late to salvage the project before it ran out of money . Had the Stevens Battery ever put to sea in the 1840s , 1850s , or 1860s , she might have set a new standard for the time in naval design .