 On August 11, 1861, the Mobile Register published an article about the Merrimack that the Confederacy was trying to construct in secret. Although John Brooke, its designer, was tight-lipped about the project, the construction took so many workers that details inevitably leaked out. Upon reading the report, Brooke complained in his diary, quote, The Mobile Register contains information and relations to the Merrimack of much value to the enemy. Editors are doing infinite harm in that way. I shall begin to think that even the South cannot tolerate a free press," end quote. The spheres about the damage being done were not unfounded, as one of the people who read the article published in the register was the US Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells. The article reported, quote, It would seem that the whole of the Merrimack is being converted into an iron-cased battery. If so, she will be a floating fortress that will be able to defeat the whole Navy of the United States and bombard its cities. Her great size, strength, and powerful engines and speed, combined with the invulnerability secured by the iron casing, will make the dispersal or the destruction of the blockading fleet an easy task for her. Her immense tonnage will enable her to carry an armor-proof against any projectile and she could entertain herself by throwing bombs into Fortress Monroe, even without risk. We hope soon to hear that she is ready to commence her avenging career on the seas, end quote. The report wasn't fully accurate, as you already know if you listen to the episode I devoted to the construction of the Merrimack. Its hull was not armored due to both the scarcity of iron and time. Only its truss was iron, and the hull would be protected by the ocean as it was designed to be entirely submerged so that only the iron-plated truss rose above the waterline, but those details were ultimately unimportant. Before Gideon Wells had learned of the Confederate ironclad, he had already mentioned in a report to Congress that, quote, Much attention has been given in the last few years to the subject of floating batteries, or ironclad steamers. But he concluded that they were too expensive for the United States Navy to worry about for the time being. Now as Gideon Wells read the article, he realized that if successful, the Confederacy's ironclad could prove to be a great threat to the Union naval power. He no longer believed that experiments in ironclad steamers were too expensive and experimental. Wells became determined to make sure that the North did not go without its own iron ship to respond to the Confederacy's new weapon. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the previous two episodes, we learned about the building of the ironclad Merrimack and its first successful battle against the U.S. Navy, in which it demolished the USS Cumberland and the USS Congress. The battle took place on March 8, 1862, and the Merrimack left the USS Minnesota, the powerful and modern steam frigate, and the waters of Hampton Road to face its own demise when it returned. But before the Merrimack returned to finish off the Minnesota, the newly constructed USS Monitor would join the fight. I'll go ahead and warn you that I intend to spend two episodes on the construction of this ship, and that's because there is so much more that went into it than the Merrimack. It might sound dull to spend so much time on the construction of the ship before we get to the episode where the action takes place, but I promise you this is an amazing story of a genius who spent his life inventing numerous pieces of technology that would go into the ship. Most of the shows in this episode are either stories about combat or political intrigue, but for those of you who are interested in the development of technology, innovations, and the colorful characters behind them, I guarantee you these episodes will be worth your time. The article in the Mobile Register was not the only, or even the first, source of information about the Confederacy's not-so-secret efforts to build an iron clad. Despite the employment of small boats to patrol the waters around Norfolk to protect information from leaking, one slave woman named Mary Lou Vester copied the specifications for the Merrimack's new design and smuggled them to Washington D.C., which only gave Gideon Wells more cause for concern. The idea of a Northern iron clad was not unique to Gideon Wells or other naval officials. Since they had already been experimented with in Europe, Americans were imagining what the U.S. Navy could do with one of their own. In addition to the numerous proposals that were presented to the U.S. Navy, at least one person submitted a proposal to design a rubber clad ship, theorizing that the Confederate shells would bounce harmlessly off of it. But all of these proposals were rejected, resources were tight, and investment in experimental ship design was a huge risk to take for a ship that may not end up working. But now that Wells was determined to get an iron clad of his own, he knew that he needed not just somebody with a design, but he also needed somebody with the personality to convince Congress to approve it. When he met with Cornelius Bushnell, he believed he had such a man. Bushnell brought Wells the design for an iron clad schooner. Wells told him that Congress was not moved by his arguments for an iron warship, but of Bushnell, who had built his success in the railroad industry on his strong personality. If Bushnell believed he could convince Congress to approve funding, Wells would start drafting the bill immediately. On August 3, days before the report by the Mobile Register, Congress approved Wells' act to provide for the construction of floating batteries, which put one and a half million dollars into Wells' hands. The term floating batteries was ambiguous wording that Wells could interpret liberally to include iron warships, and he formed an iron clad board, consisting of three naval experts, to oversee the project. Bushnell assumed he would be awarded the contract to build the first ship, and he quickly found factories to supply his iron plating. But when the iron clad board saw Bushnell's plan for an iron clad schooner, they shared a lot of the same skepticism that John Brooke received when redesigning the Merrimack. They didn't believe it would float, and they were reluctant to sink $1.5 million. But they didn't reject the contract outright. Instead, they told Bushnell that, quote, with a guarantee that she will operate, we recommend on that basis a contract, end quote. A guarantee for an experimental design was difficult to offer, and if Bushnell offered a guarantee that he couldn't fulfill, he would have to eat the entire expense, costing him a fortune. As luck would have it, Bushnell knew a guy who knew a guy, so to speak. When he was discussing his problem with a business friend in New York, his friend said that he knew just the guy to tell him whether his design was practical or not. The man's name was John Ericsson. Ericsson is a classic example of a genius whose success is undermined by his own ego. He was originally from Sweden, and as a young man in the Swedish military, he produced incredibly accurate maps of his country's military bases in the north. But while he worked, he started thinking about steam engines and how they could be made more efficient. He believed steam itself was an inefficient means to push the pistons of an engine, and he designed a model of an engine that used hot air to do the job, cutting out the need for boiling water. A small model worked well enough, but his life was disrupted when he fell for the daughter of Swedish nobility. This is the kind of story that people make movies about. He impregnated the girl and they planned to get married, but the girl's father said, quote, never will I give my daughter to a commoner without a future, end quote. And he shipped his daughter off to Stockholm to have the child. Ericsson financially supported his son for years, but they would not meet for the first time until his son was more than 50 years old. So now, with the love of his life ripped away from him, all Ericsson had left was his hot air engine design. Sweden no longer held any appeal, so in 1826, the young inventor took his design to England, where the industrial age was born. This was the land where his invention would be most appreciated. He wasn't wrong, as the institution of civil engineers was immediately intrigued by the possibility of a more efficient engine that would not require water to work. They gave him the opportunity to test his engine, but Ericsson did not anticipate an important differentiating factor between the model he tested in Sweden and the full-sized engine he constructed in England. Originally, he used wood as the fuel to create the heat, and wood burned quickly at first and then more moderately after the flames took hold. This was perfect for his design as the initial quick burn helped the engine get started, and then the momentum was maintained with the moderate heat that followed. But in England, they used coal as fuel, and coal worked in the opposite direction. It burned very slowly to begin with, and then gradually became hotter. This was no good for Ericsson's design. Burning coal, his engine came to a lethargic start, and then as the coal grew hotter, it started to jerk uncontrollably before failing completely, nearly melted. But this was a successful failure as it provided Ericsson with an introduction to an engineer named John Braithwaite, who was impressed enough with Ericsson, who was only 23 years old at this point. Braithwaite saw the potential in Ericsson's idea, even if the initial test was a failure, and the pair teamed up to perfect the engine. It worked, and they sold one to the king of Prussia, but the new engine never got widely adopted in England likely because steam engines were already so well-entrenched in Britain. But Ericsson and Braithwaite knew their engine was better than what existed, and they saw the opportunity to demonstrate this once and for all in the new industry that was starting to compete with steamboats, railroads. British railroads, contrary to most of the railroads built in the United States, were constructed privately, so efficiency was a higher priority than, for contrast, the US-specific railroads that profited from government subsidy. So the board of directors for the Liverpool and Manchester line announced a contest to see who could build the best engine, and the winner would receive a cash prize as well as the lucrative contract to build the company's trains. But Ericsson only got wind of the contest seven weeks before it was scheduled to take place, so he and Braithwaite had to rush to prepare. They had no time to test or perfect their design, but they only had to beat out four other designs, and two of them were out of the running before the contest even started. One was wrecked on the way to the race, and the other was an embarrassing design that relied on two actual horses pulling the locomotive from either side, hardly a testament to a successful steam engine. Of the three that actually participated in the race, Ericsson and Braithwaite's design, dubbed the novelty, was half the weight of either of its competitors, and it was the only one that was able to carry its fuel in the same car as the engine itself, where the other two had to pull their fuel behind them in a separate car. The advantages of their design is a testament to how impressive their innovations really were. They put this thing together in seven measly weeks. By comparison, the Rocket, which was the name of their primary competitor, was built in a locomotive factory and was already being tested when Ericsson and Braithwaite were only starting their work. When it opened the race, it achieved a whopping speed of 24 miles an hour, which was basically lightning fast by 1829 standards when the competition was held. The novelty was the last to take to the tracks. A reporter from Mechanics Magazine was present, and in his report he described the test quote, almost at once, it darted off at the amazing velocity of 28 miles an hour, and it actually did one mile in the incredibly short span of one minute and 53 seconds. It seemed indeed to fly, presenting one of the most sublime spectacles of human ingenuity and human daring the world ever beheld, end quote. If it did a mile in a minute and 53 seconds, that means that it had to have topped out at at least 32 miles an hour, which was incredible. And Mechanics Magazine wasn't the only publication to laud the unprecedented speed of the locomotive. It just blew everything out of the water. But unfortunately, not having tested the engine, they unnecessarily put full power into it, which proved too much. And the novelty broke down before it could reach the finish line. The judges gave them time to repair the engines, but the delay was too much, and the rocket won the contest. Its top speed was nowhere close to what the novelty could achieve, but it had the honor of going the full distance. Had Erickson and Braithwaite had as much time to work on their engine, it seems almost certain they would have easily won the contest. But instead of leaving the contest with a lucrative contract, Erickson left with debt that would land him in debtor's prison. He resented the Englishman, whose quote, devilish intentions put me to hell, end quote. Though at least a third of the debt was the product of his fancy taste and expensive suits that he purchased under the assumption that his design couldn't lose. But the outcome of this trial had two effects. First, the engine that he and Braithwaite designed was almost identical to the one that would be used on the USS Monitor. Second, while he was in debtor's prison, he turned his inventive mind to solving the problem of the cumbersome water wheels that steamships used. As he thought of a better way to propel and maneuver a boat, he conceived of another important innovation, the one that other people would conceive of in various forms as well, the screw propeller. When he got out of prison, he cleared his debts, married a woman, and teamed up with the American consul in Liverpool, Francis Ogden, to design a propeller-driven steamer tug. The design worked incredibly well, and it could sustain speeds of 10 knots while pulling a barge, but the Royal Navy refused to buy the design. Even when he had an invention that worked, he couldn't find a buyer, it seemed. But a small bit of fortune did come his way, as an audience to his demonstration of the propeller-driven tug was a man named Robert Stockton, who just happened to be the richest man in the state of New Jersey and was president of the Delaware and Raritan Canal. Stockton saw more potential in the propeller than the British Navy, and he wanted to bring it to the United States. Stockton contracted Erickson to build him two screw-propelled steamers. Only one was ever built, which was named the Robert F. Stockton after its financier and owner, but it was the first propeller ship to successfully cross the Atlantic Ocean. With the ingenious John Erickson as an asset, Stockton set his eyes on government contracts and commissioned him to start working on a new 12-inch cannon, larger than any naval gun that existed at the time. Stockton's plan was to have an impressive new gun to mount on the equally impressive warship he had in mind to build for the U.S. Navy. Up to this point, Erickson was still living in England, but when Stockton sold his vision to John Tyler's secretary of the Navy, Abel Upsher, and he received the support of Congress, he convinced Erickson to move to Manhattan to design his ship. Erickson came to the U.S. in 1839. It's hard to undersell Erickson's achievement. The warship he built had a number of firsts, all of which were Erickson's own invention. It contained engines that he designed himself, which would be maintained by Benjamin Isherwood, giving him the early experience that would allow him to improve upon the Merrimax engines before that ship fell to the Confederacy. Erickson's ship also contained his screw propeller, making this the first propeller-driven warship in the entire world. Erickson even designed the furnaces himself, creating a more efficient and cleaner furnace that wouldn't emit smoke that could signal the presence of the ship to distant enemies. Stockton, who grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and went to the college that would later take the name of the town, named the new ship in his hometown's honor, the Princeton. When the ship was christened in 1843 with a flask of American-made whiskey instead of a bottle of wine, Stockton did not hesitate to credit Erickson for his indispensable work in bringing the Princeton to life. The Princeton was also equipped with the giant cannon that Erickson designed, but before the ship was completed, Stockton grew ambitious enough to try to copy Erickson's design to a cannon of twice the diameter, a whopping 24-inch gun. Stockton had the gun built without consulting Erickson, believing that all he had to do was pretty much double all the calculations, a naive and costly presumption bred from Stockton's ignorance about metallurgy. The giant gun was built and mounted on the ship, and it was given the name the Peacemaker. Erickson did not share Stockton's faith in the gigantic piece of weaponry. On February 18th, 1844, Stockton invited 300 congressmen, as well as President John Tyler, to witness the display of the Peacemaker fired from the grandiose warship. They were brought onto the deck of the Princeton, along with a crowd of cabinet officials and a Marine ban, and watched as Stockton fired off the 225-pound shot by a wide margin, the largest ever fired. The gun emitted an impressive boom, and the gigantic cannonball skipped across the water of the Potomac before sinking into the water miles in the distance. Stockton, fully aware of the awe-inspiring display, told the crowd, quote, it's nothing but honest gunpowder, gentlemen. It has a strong smell of the Declaration of Independence, but it's none the worse for that. That's the kind of music when negotiations fail, end quote. If you're a fan of Marvel movies like I am, I'm sure you've seen the first Iron Man movie at least once. If you remember the scene at the beginning of the movie where Tony Stark is demonstrating the missile he caused the Jericho to the army, where he gives this eloquent speech, shows off his new weapon, and just blows people away with how impressive it is. That's kind of how I imagine the scene on the deck of the Princeton in 1844, when people saw this gigantic cannon accompanied by Stockton's showmanship. President Tyler, to say the least, was impressed enough to go back to the White House and immediately draft a request for Congress to approve funding to purchase several ships designed after the Princeton, but to be even larger and more powerful. But Stockton was too proud of his baby, and he decided to hold a second demonstration, this time just for his own satisfaction, as he'd already sufficiently impressed the government. On February 8th, he brought another 350 people onto the deck of the Princeton. President Tyler included among them again, as well as this time Tyler's fiance, Julia Gardner, and the entire cabinet saved the Treasury Secretary. The peacemaker gave another impressive display, and the crowd celebrated with champagne over lunch. As Abel Upsher recently promoted to Secretary of State, toasted the success of the new weapon, he joked that the dead bodies would have to be removed before he could give his toast. Stockton laughed and replied, quote, there are plenty of living bodies to replace the dead ones, end quote. But the new secretary of the Navy, Thomas Gilmore, asked for an encore. After they finished their lunch, part of the crowd moved back up on the deck of the ship while the rest stayed below deck to continue their celebration. They were singing and drinking, and President Tyler was among the crowd who stayed below. With 100 people on deck to watch the encore, Stockton fired off the peacemaker a third time. One of the spectators this round was Missouri Senator Thomas Hart-Bitten, who described it, quote, I saw the hammer pulled back, heard a tap, saw a flash, felt a blast in the face, and knew that my hat was gone, and that was the last I knew of the world or myself for a time, end quote. Another congressman, New Jersey's George Sykes, wrote that he was, quote, astonished to find that every man between me and the gun was lying prostrate on the deck, and about 30 or 40 men lying in heaps indiscriminately and promiscuously round the gun, either killed, wounded, or knocked down and stunned by the concussion, end quote. The cannon's side had burst open, and when the shot was fired, chunks of iron were thrown toward the spectators, both Abel Upsher and Thomas Gilmore, the secretaries of state and the Navy were killed immediately. A prominent lawyer who was present had been torn in half, his torso completely coming free of his legs as a sailor tried to drag him away from the carnage. The father of President Tyler's fiance was mortally wounded, and he would die before his daughter was allowed to come up above deck and see him. Others died, including the president's personal servant and a slave who was on board. None of the women present were seriously injured, though one was flung so far from the blast that she landed on the ship's riggings above her. The people below deck were completely unaware of the catastrophe at first, but the singing stopped when they heard the cries of agony and terror coming from up above them. Stockton kept his cool well enough to take charge of the chaos and see that those who were not injured tended to the wounded. The day was a disaster, but he composed himself well in the face of tragedy. As the days passed after the event, he would simmer over the incident though, and he came to blame the incident on Erickson, who he refused to even allow on the ship to take part in the demonstration. When explaining the tragedy, Stockton said, quote, this mechanic of some skill thrust himself upon me. To my surprise and annoyance, I did not employ him, but permitted him as a particular act of favor and kindness to super intend the construction of the Princeton, end quote. Basically, Stockton threw Erickson under the bus. Despite having convinced him to move to Manhattan to work on his ship, Stockton claimed that Erickson begged him for work. He also took credit for designing the Princeton, which was full of technological breakthroughs that were entirely Erickson's design. The only thing that Erickson did not build was the peacemaker, which Stockton had crafted as an adaptation of Erickson's smaller design despite Erickson's own consternation about its reliability. So Stockton took credit for the inventor's success and blamed Erickson for his own failures that cost several people their lives. As if to add salt to the wound, Erickson's commitment to the Princeton cost him his marriage as his wife hated New York and left him. So Stockton had already cost Erickson so much only to now draw even more blood from the man. But President Tyler bought it, calling Stockton a quote, brave and distinguished commander, end quote, and absolving him of all guilt. Erickson still had not been paid for what he was promised for his work on the Princeton, a total of $13,930, which was supposed to come from Congress. Stockton, who would go on to serve as a Commodore in the Navy, made it his personal mission to use whatever influence he had to prevent Erickson from ever being paid for his work. In 1856, a claims court actually ruled that the US government owed Erickson the money, but Congress still refused to pay. In 1858, three years before he became the Confederacy Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory would actually lobby on Erickson's behalf for the work he did on the Princeton, which Mallory recognized as a tremendous accomplishment that had delayed naval innovation because of Stockton's mistake. But still, Congress refused to pay Erickson what they owed him. Only decades later, after Erickson's death, did Congress finally approve Erickson's claim, which was paid to his estate. So because of Robert Stockton's arrogance, ambition, and vindictiveness, the Navy halted funding for propeller-driven steamers and the incredible innovations that John Erickson pioneered were not implemented. Had they been, the US Navy would have been far more imposing at the outset of the Civil War. Instead, in 1861, when Cornelius Bushnell went to see Erickson, hoping that he would verify that his design for an ironclad schooner was viable, Erickson was a bitter, unappreciated genius who was still suffering from his unjust treatment by the US government. Working now as an engineer for an ironworks in New York City, where his incredible talents were left untapped. Erickson was in his mid-50s by the time he and Bushnell met, and he said it would take him a day to work out the calculations to verify whether or not the schooner would float. When Bushnell came back, Erickson informed him, quote, "'She will easily carry the load you propose and stand a six inch shot at a respectable distance,' end quote. Bushnell could not have been more pleased. But as he was about to leave, Erickson stopped him. The engineer pulled out an old cardboard box he had covered in dust, and he asked Bushnell if he wanted to see the design he had for a floating battery, one that would not be ironclad, but would actually be made entirely of iron, rendering it quote, "'Absolutely impervious to the heaviest shot in shell,' end quote. Bushnell said that he would very much like to see it." For more than two decades now, since his first contract with Stockton, Erickson had continued to work on and perfect his design for a steamship. He was convinced that his fire-heated engine, which he was calling his caloric engine, was not only much more efficient than steam, but because of the frequency of boiler explosions, it was also much safer. Boiler explosions, by the way, were so common during the days of steamships that tour books that people bought for their vacations on steamships actually told horror stories of the terrible injuries and deaths people suffered from boiler explosions, which seems an odd way to sell steam transportation to vacationing civilians, but didn't seem to deter people from buying tickets on steamers. Since the Princeton, Erickson had launched a sidewheel steamer using the engine, which he named the Erickson, but this was yet another commercial failure. The engine itself, though, was much more successful, and caloric engines modified from Erickson's design were put to use in things as banal as household fans as late as the 1920s. So despite his setbacks, Erickson had recovered financially by 1860, but the model of the new ship that Erickson revealed to Bushnell contained another innovation that Erickson claims to have conceived of years before it was actually invented by a British naval officer. The cigar-shaped cardboard model had a small bump on the middle of the top side. Bushnell asked what it was, and Erickson explained that it was a gun turret designed to hold a single 20-inch cannon. The turret would be able to rotate along the gun to fire in any direction, and it would be protected by the iron casing of the turret shell. Unlike Bushnell's schooner design, Erickson's ship would not be a wooden vessel covered in iron plates. It would be of entirely iron construction powered by his own caloric engine and a screw propeller. He also was the first to recognize the benefit of submerging the vessel underwater. He said, quote, the great importance of what I call the subaquatic system of naval warfare strongly presented itself to my mind in 1826, end quote. Brooke had the idea for a submerged hull for the Merrimack, but Erickson had the idea of an even more fully submerged ship, almost a complete submarine decades earlier. He got the idea when thinking about the problem of tall ships being capsized in stormy waters, and by keeping the ship almost entirely submerged, it would essentially be impossible to capsize. The design contained a lifetime of the genius's inventions, but he'd had this ship design since the 1840s. He was incredibly ahead of his time, and nobody else recognized the incredible potential this ship offered. The Navy turned him down, which is unsurprising as he submitted the plan only two years after the disaster with the Princeton. Louis Napoleon, Bonaparte's nephew, also turned him down. So he sat on his design for years until he saw the advertisement by the recently formed ironclad board asking for bids to design the union's ironclad response to the Merrimack. Even before Bushnell came to see him, Erickson had already submitted his design, addressing his proposal to his Excellency Abraham Lincoln instead of the Navy Department. Isherwood, who had worked on Erickson's engines on the Princeton, received the letter and never passed it along to the president or anyone else. Instead of a rejection, Erickson didn't even get a response. But when Bushnell spoke to Erickson and saw the small cardboard model, he saw the incredible potential that nobody else was able to recognize. This would be, in Ludwig von Mises's theoretical framework, the superior entrepreneurial foresight that would allow some people to succeed and innovate more effectively than others. Bushnell saw something that everyone else failed to appreciate and he was willing to take a risk on it that would prove monumental for himself, Erickson, and the Union War effort. For this, Bushnell deserves some respect. The safer option would have been to stick with his own design which he had already been offered a contract for providing a guarantee that it would work and he felt confident in that guarantee. But instead of taking the safe route for easy profits, Bushnell decided to gamble on the unappreciated genius who stood before him holding a cardboard toy. Taking Erickson's plans directly to Gideon Wells, he told the Navy Secretary that Lincoln, quote, need no further worry about foreign interference. I have discovered the means of perfect protection. The building of Erickson's ship will be the subject of the next episode. Historical controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at mesis.org slash supportHC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit mesis.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.