 We're so used to seeing gigantic still ships in the water and we don't always think about what a miracle it would have looked like to people less than 200 years ago. If you take a piece of wood and throw it in the water it's likely to float, but if you do the same thing with a piece of iron it'll sink straight to the bottom. The reason people in 1861 were thinking about designs for iron clad ships is because they believed that they needed the wooden base to keep the iron from pulling the ship to the bottom of the ocean. The iron plating was kind of like cargo in that sense. Even this was enough to make people nervous. When President Lincoln was urging Gustavus Fox, who he thrust upon Gideon Wells to hold the newly created position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to come up with an iron-armored ship, Fox essentially told the president that it was easier said than done, making sure that things could stay afloat. He can ask, quote, is not that a summoner arithmetic? On our western rivers we can figure just how many tons will sink a flatboat, can't your clerks do the same for an armored vessel, end quote. Fox replied, I suppose they can, but there are other difficulties. With such a weight, a single shot piercing the armor would sink the vessel so quickly that no one could escape, end quote. This was the fear that Fox, a seasoned Navy man, and many other people held when considering the idea of simply coating a wooden ship with iron plates. In 1861, even this was entirely new. The world's first iron-armored wooden warship in the entire world had only been launched a year before in France. The battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack is still known as the Battle of the Iron Clads, as the title of these episodes indicates, but it's a misnomer that came out of people's inability to think of any ship being more than merely clad with iron. So when Cornelius Bushnell showed up in Washington to show the president the design John Erickson had come up with for an entirely iron ship, he knew that it was likely to be met with skepticism. People were likely to think a ship made entirely of iron would sink like a rock. Bushnell had difficulty selling the idea to the iron-clad board for exactly that reason, so he convinced Erickson, the ship's designer, to come to Washington himself and explain how it would work. Erickson, the genius that he was, gave such a detailed explanation for why his ship would stay afloat that one board member, Admiral Hiram Paulding, who had been a Navy man since 1811, said, quote, Sir, I have learned more about the stability of a vessel from what you have said than I have ever known before, end quote. Between Erickson's intelligence, Bushnell's salesmanship, and the asking price of $275,000, a third the price of the competing bid for an iron-clad warship, the board approved Erickson's bid and work started on the ship only eight days after Bushnell and Erickson first met. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. We've been talking about the race to build an iron-clad warship early into the Civil War. Typically, even though the seasons of this podcast follow a connected chronological story, I try to make each episode capable of standing on its own for people who may not listen every episode. Even when I do multi-part episodes like the ones we're on now, I do my best to write them so that they are not dependent on each other. But every now and then I have to produce some episodes that require information from previous episodes to follow and I suspect this is one of them. So if you haven't listened to the previous episodes in which I introduce the characters of John Erickson and Cornelius Bushnell, I strongly recommend you go back and listen to that episode before this one. We left off right where this episode picks up with Bushnell learning about John Erickson's design for an entirely iron warship that incorporated innovations he designed over the course of a lifetime of engineering. Due to a combination of being ahead of his time, off-putting arrogance, slimy business partners and bad luck, Erickson's incredible brilliance had yet to be appreciated, save for some commercial success he'd achieved with the sales of his caloric engine, which did not require steam to push pistons. But now, even though he was still resentful of the US government's refusal to pay him for work he'd done in the past, he was about to prove himself once and for all by designing the world's first iron ship for the United States. When Erickson won his contract to start building the ship, he really only had the skeleton of the idea. He had his cardboard model and the various inventions he either came up with or adopted to solve various problems with traditional ships. And he had the calculations to know that a ship the size and weight of his would stay afloat. But the interior details and other specifics had to be figured out on the fly. And Erickson was like an obsessive micromanager when it came to this. He was one of those people who was annoying because he always thought he was right. And even more annoyingly, he almost always was right. When the iron-clad board instructed him to include a mast for sales, Erickson ignored them completely, fully confident that his engine was all the ship needed. The main portion of the ship, which was only 172 feet long and 41 feet wide, didn't leave much wiggle room. So everything had to be designed to maximize efficiency. The crew slept on hammocks in a 16 by 25 foot room. This is also where they had their meals. The office recorders were nicer but still small, though they at least had the luxury of having their own chamber pot and wash basin. And Erickson actually designed these rooms with more luxury than was expected. To quote one pleased officer, Captain Erickson fitted our room up at his own expense and has been very liberal. I've been on board nearly all the vessels that have left the yard since I've been here as handsomely fitted up as ours, end quote. On either side of the living quarters were the rooms for ammunition on one end and the gunpowder on the other. The engine room sat underneath the living quarters in the ship's fat middle. The engine still used boilers to harness steam power but the design was similar to what Erickson used on the novelty back in the England Railroad Contest, so it was more efficient than other steam engines. He also designed blowers to pull non-toxic air into the underwater workspace. This was important. If the blowers failed for any reason, the men would be exposed to toxic fumes from the coal-burning furnaces. So basically, the underwater of the ship consisted of four basic compartments. The living area in the top middle, the engine room below it, the powder in the port side compartment, and the ammunition in the starboard. Above all of this was the gun turret, which was nine feet tall and had a diameter of 24 feet. Because the turret was the exposed portion, it needed to be the most heavily armored and Erickson wanted it to be eight inches thick. But no iron factory in the north could even produce four inch plates. So similar to the Merrimack, Erickson called for one inch plates to be layered on top of each other. The floor of the turret was graded so that men could pass ammunition up to the gunners from below. The roof was also graded, but with smaller holes. Erickson wanted light to be able to get through so the gunners wouldn't be blind, but they still needed to be protected from shell fragments. The turret sat on top of a turntable so that it could be rotated in any direction. The turret was originally designed, in Erickson's mind, to hold a one 20 inch cannon. But the monitor would carry two 12 inch cannons, which were all that he could get approved by a navy reluctant to spare any of its larger guns on an untested ship. For a typical naval vessel, two guns was nothing. Warships usually had dozens of cannons. But this would require a big ship, and Erickson saw it as unnecessary fire power. The turret would allow the guns to fire in any direction. And the monitor's invulnerability would allow it to take the time to send off as many shots as it needed. In the previous episodes, I highlighted a lot of innovations that made the monitor the most technologically advanced ship ever seen in 1861. But all in all, there were probably more than 40 novel inventions included, which Erickson either invented or adapted. Most of these are too banal to be worth detailing, such as the design for the toilets. But some of these novelties would be employed in some way or another until as late as World War II. And Erickson had to work out all these incredible details and engineering complications as construction was already taking place. He arrogantly boasted that the monitor was built with, quote, such Herculean labor as it's not on record in the history of engineering, end quote. But he may not have been wrong. It would be difficult to find anything up to that point in time and maybe even today that was full of so many innovations designed by a single person. When we think of inventions, a lot of times we imagine a single genius who invents this incredible new machine, which is the case sometimes. But for things like the monitor, which uses several different innovations, it's usually the product of a number of creative minds who each solve one or two problems. The computer would be an example of this as historians of technology debate over who should be credited with inventing the computer because so many different people contributed to it. But with the monitor, Erickson basically designed the ship almost single handedly and he did so in the course of only a few months, drawing up the plans for things as he went. So when he called it a Herculean feat, he wasn't wrong. He also managed to build it despite being constantly barraged with skeptics who believed the ship went in function. Naval architects conducted their own calculations and concluded that Erickson was wrong in saying that the ship would stay afloat. But Erickson never doubted himself. His lack of humility may have been an asset. He responded to these quote unquote absurd statements, that quote, there is no living man who has tripped me on calculations or proved my figures wrong in a single instance in matters relating to theoretical calculations, end quote. People cared a little for his condescending self assurance, but when Erickson debated the math with other experts, it was almost never wrong. But vindication in these matters could only come once the ship was completed. And the mounting doubts from other engineers and architects gave the ironclad board pause. They had already told Erickson and Bushnell that they could start work. But they decided that they didn't want to shoulder the expense of failure. They told Bushnell and Erickson that the payment would come in installments. And only after they determined that they were getting what they paid for. This means that the two men had to find backers to fund financial partners. So here's a lesson in the role of finance capitalists in the economy. Since these people are often depicted as profiting off the work of others without ever contributing anything of value themselves. Bushnell and Erickson did not have the capital to fund their endeavors, no matter how confident they were that the ship would function. So Bushnell went out and found two partners, John Winslow and John Griswold. Winslow was an iron manufacturer who agreed to supply the materials in exchange for partial ownership. Griswold was a banker who agreed to finance the work, covering the cost of labor and materials that Winslow couldn't provide. So to give a quick economic lesson for those who aren't familiar with these concepts, Griswold's function, like any finance capitalist, was twofold. One is that he had to delay his own gratification by withholding consumption, which is what anybody does when they save or invest money. The people building the ship expected to be paid as they worked. But Griswold's payday would only come once the work was completed. Delayed gratification is a cost absorbed by the investor entrepreneur. The other function is to absorb risk. The gratification of profits would only be delayed if the endeavor was successful, and there was no guarantee that it would be. If the ship failed, there would be no payday, and Griswold would lose a small fortune. The risk component is exactly what the US government was unwilling to accept. So when people claim that finance capitalists don't serve a productive function in a society, remember this. Without Griswold or somebody like him, the monitor could not have been built. But the delayed gratification wouldn't require a significant delay anyway. The ironclad board also sent word that they expected to see a working test of the ship within 90 days. In three months, they had to build a ship that was unlike any other that had ever existed, full of a panoply of innovations designed by a single man, and it had to be fully functional in three months. And the only test the ironclad board thought could prove the efficacy of such a new ship would be to test it in battle, which means that even if it was functional, it could float, maneuver, and fire. If it were defeated by the Merrimack, the government could conclude that the entire ship was a failure and refuse to pay for it. This was an entirely unreasonable expectation in reality, but there was little Ericsson or Bushnell could do about it. But Ericsson was surprisingly OK with this. When Bushnell told him of the government's demands, the inventor replied that the stipulations were, perfectly reasonable and proper. There really was no way anybody could consider these demands reasonable and proper, but this is apparently how confident Ericsson was in his work. The others did not share his confidence, and Griswold and Winslow nearly backed out, and they only stayed in because another finance capitalist, Daniel Drew, agreed to join in and shoulder some of the risk. But the government did inside Ericsson's famous temper when they sent Commodore David Dixon Porter to inspect the ship and offer his opinion on whether he believed it would work. When Porter met Ericsson, he said, I'm not a great mathematician, but I am a practical man, and think I can ascertain whether or not the monitor will do what is promised of her. Ericsson was insulted at this man's presumption, and he flew into a tirade, quote, ah, yes, a practical man. Well, I've had a dozen of those fellows here already, and they went away as wise as they came. I don't want practical men sent here, sir. I want men who understand the higher mathematics that are used in the construction of my vessel, men who can work out the displacements, horsepower, impregnability, endurance at sea in a gale, capacity to stow men, the motion of the vessel according to the waves, her stability as a platform for guns, her speed, actual weight, in short, everything pertaining to the subject. Now, young man. Porter was nearly 50, not much younger than Ericsson. If you can't fathom these things, you had better go back where you came from. If the department wants to understand the principle of my vessel, they should send a mathematician, end quote. Porter seemed not to be bothered by Ericsson's condescension. He said, quote, well, although I am not strictly what you would call a mathematician, I know the rule of three and twice two or four, end quote. This only made matters worse. Ericsson looked like he might punch him in the jaw. But instead, he simply started another scathing diatribe, quote, well, I never in my life met with such assurance as this. Here, the government sends me an officer who knows only the rule of three and twice two or four. And I have used the calculus and all the higher mathematics in making my calculations. My God, do they take me for a fool? End quote. But Porter, showing a tremendous amount of class. Well, Mr. Ericsson, he calmly responded, you will have to make the best of a bad bargain and get along with me as well as you possibly can. I am perfectly willing to receive instruction from you. But Ericsson might have none of it. He fired back, aha, that's it, is it? So you thank me as school master to teach naval officers what I know. I'm afraid you're too bad a bargain for me. You must expect no instruction here. Take what you like from my shelves, but you can't have my brains. But Porter simply asked Ericsson to show him the plans for the ship. And if you wouldn't explain them, Porter would try to understand them as best he could on his own. Still enraged, Ericsson replied, quote, ah, young man, with your limited knowledge of simple equations, you will run aground in a very short time. Look at this drawing and tell me what it represents. Porter said that it looked like a coffee meal. Ericsson scoffed, I am a fool to waste my time on you. That is the machinery that works my turntable for the turret. I have spent many sleepless nights over it, and now a man who only knows a little of simple equations tells me it's a coffee mill. Then he handed him a wooden model of the ship and demanded Porter to guess what it was supposed to be. Porter pointed to the bottom and said it had to be the casemate. Then he guessed that the turret must be where the engine was carried. Ericsson was fed up with this waste of his time, but Porter continued to probe him until he understood the design and then asked to see the vessel itself. When Porter finally said to Ericsson, now, sir, I know all about your machine. Ericsson responded dryly, yes, and you know twice two or four and a little of simple equations. Porter by this time was finally losing his patience with the insufferable Ericsson. He looked him in the eye and said, quote. Now, Mr. Ericsson, I have borne a good deal from you today. You have mocked at my authority and have failed to treat me with the sweetness I have a right to expect. I am about to have satisfaction, for on my report depends whether your vessel is accepted by the department, so I will tell you in plain terms what I think. Ericsson glared back at the Commodore, say what you please, he said coldly. Porter continued, I will say this to the government, in writing too, so that there can be no mistake. Ericsson snapped, go on, sir, go on, you will run on a rock directly. Well then, Porter continued at his own leisurely pace. I will say that Mr. Ericsson has constructed a vessel, a very little iron vessel, which in the opinion of our best naval architect is in violation of well-known principles and will sink the moment she touches the water. Ericsson was furious, but he had to know this was coming. He was arrogant and temperamental, but his confidence in his own genius was not misplaced. He knew that few people could truly comprehend and appreciate his calculations and feats of engineering, and if he couldn't explain his invention to people, he didn't help his case with his condescending tantrums. He'd been burned many times in his life, and he pretty much knew it was only a matter of time until some lesser mind stood in the way of this project as well. At this point, Ericsson hardly even cared. Porter's best naval architect, he referred to as the chief of the Bureau of Ship Construction and Repair and liked to ridicule the monitor by calling it Ericsson's iron pot. Oh, he's a fool, Ericsson spat back. At this point, he knew he had already lost his contract, so there was no reason to hold his tongue, not that he likely would have anyway. Porter continued, but I shall say also that Mr. Ericsson has constructed the most remarkable vessel the world has ever seen. One that, if properly handled, can destroy any ship now afloat and whip a dozen wooden ships together if they were where they could not maneuver so as to run her down. Ericsson's jaw dropped. After a moment of stunned silence, he took hold of the Commodore's hand and shook it vigorously. My God, and all this time I took you for a damned fool, and you are not a damned fool after all. From that day forward, Ericsson and Porter were close friends even years after the war had ended. As the ship neared completion, they also had to find a crew, including somebody to command the new ship. Commodore Joseph Smith, father of the captain who would be killed in the Congress's fight against the Merrimack that I mentioned a couple of episodes ago, offered the job to John Warden, an experienced navy man that Smith trusted. Warden's wife tried to convince her husband not to take the assignment, fearing that the monitor would be Warden's coffin. But upon inspecting the ship, he said, quote, After a hasty examination of her, I am induced to believe that she may prove a success. At all events, I'm quite willing to be an agent in testing her capabilities and will readily devote whatever of capacity and energy I have to that object, end quote. Warden then had to recruit a crew. He expected it to be difficult to find volunteers, but he was surprised when he actually had to turn some away. Additionally, it is interesting to note that several of the crewmen were black. At this point in the war, the army was still not even considering black soldiers, but the navy was taking on black crewmen from the outset of the war. It was in 1919 that blacks were actually barred from enlisting in the navy, though current enlistees at the time were permitted to complete their term of service. And when they were accepted again in 1932, they were segregated and would remain segregated until after World War II. But in the Civil War, the navy accepted black enlistees even when the army refused them and they had no segregation policies. The monitor was finally launched on February 13th, 1861, a month after the government's three-month deadline had expired. But completion of the ship in four months was still an incredible achievement. The government did not publicize the launching of the ship. Likely because if it failed, it would be an embarrassment that the North didn't need at the beginning of 1862. But word got out anyway and a crowd formed. Some of the spectators were there to cheer the monitor on to victory, others were there to watch it sink. But it didn't sink. Despite all the skepticism Erickson faced since his work began, the ship worked, at least in terms of its ability to stay afloat and maneuver. Erickson promised that the ship would be able to attain speeds of nine knots, but in its first test it only achieved a third of that. But the fault was not in Erickson's design, it was the fault of the ironworks who constructed the engines on the traditional design that would cut off the pistons halfway, based on the traditional wisdom that Erickson and Benjamin Isherwood had fought against. Erickson himself was disappointed. He couldn't oversee every detail of the ship, and he had to trust the ironworks to do the job properly, which they apparently had failed at. But upon inspecting the problem, Erickson realized that he could make the necessary adjustments himself without too much time or trouble. This was good because Gideon Wells was not willing to delay the ship any longer. With the engine modified to operate at full power, Warden took the ship toward Hampton Roads. It was now the property of the U.S. Navy. But it wasn't without its complications still. It moved at a good speed and steered beautifully with Erickson's propellers, but working the gun turret was awkward and required some acclimation by the workers. The toilets Erickson designed were the cause of no shortage of suffering to the crew, either. They worked properly, but they were completely novel in the way they worked, and the learning curve was a disgusting process that resulted in the contents of the bull being launched into the face of the person who turned the valve in the wrong direction. The worst incident came, though, during a storm. The ship was submerged to keep it stable during just such an encounter, but this also meant that Erickson had to design a way to keep breathable air flowing into the engine room. And one of the rare instances of Erickson being wrong in an argument over the ship's design, he insisted on using intake pipes that protruded only four feet above the ship. He faced protests that this wasn't high enough, but Erickson insisted it was sufficient, and as with most arguments, he got his way. This is nearly the mistake that would have cost Erickson his glory, and more justly than his fall from grace after the incident with the Princeton I talked about in the previous episode. With the storm sending waves rocking against the ship, seawater got sucked into the intake pipes. The fans that were set to blow clean air to the crew were now spraying saltwater everywhere. A little ocean spray would hardly be an issue for a crew that was already dealing with toilet geysers, but the fans were turned by leather belts. The leather, once wet, would stretch and lose its hold. The fans stopped spinning. The lack of oxygen caused the boilers to simmer down as the fires needed oxygen as much as the men. The ship came to a halt, as did all of the machinery that allowed internal operations, which were all governed by steam power. It was like losing power in the days of electricity. The crew immediately jumped to start fixing the belts, but as the coals simmered with no oxygen being pumped in, the room started to fill with carbon monoxide. The men in the engine room, of course, had no idea of the danger they were in. We try to imagine their thinking as they tried to fix the fan belts. They had known that they needed air to breathe, but they assumed that what they were left with was a limited supply of oxygen, and they could work until that ran out. Don't get me wrong, people had been dealing with carbon monoxide poisoning for years. Miners already used canaries to signal danger. But the situation these sellers were in was new to the world. And even today, most people are unaware that before carbon monoxide causes you to pass out, it intoxicates you, clouding your perceptions, kind of like being drunk. When they were trying to fix the fan belts, they grew clumsy and disoriented. Then they started to drop. One of the crewmen in the upper chamber, John Driscoll, came down to the engine room to see what was going on. I'll read his account of the situation, quote, I retired to a loft under the turret where the hammocks were stowed. I had scarcely gotten asleep when the belt on the portside blower flew off. By this time, the fan box was full of water. While attempting to get the port blower started, the starboard belt blew off. And since all draft was cut off, the gas soon filled the engine room, suffocating all who was in there at the time. The other firemen on the berth deck, smelling the gas, rushed in a body to the engine room and dragged out those who were overcome. The last man to be carried out was chief engineer Newton. The latter leading to the turret was very close to where I was asleep and when Newton was being carried up, the noise awakened me. So I rushed like the others to the engine room. The only means of reaching the engine room was by a narrow passage leading from the berth deck and passing between the boilers and the coal bunkers. As the pressure of gas was so strong, I was forced to retreat. But by tying a silk handkerchief over my mouth and nose and keeping so close to the floor as possible, I succeeded in reaching the engine room and it was thick with gas. Like the others, I tried to start one of the blowers, but the belt flew off. Rushing into the storeroom, I procured a hammer and chisel and knocked a hole through the sheet box. While I was working, the water from the tower was rushing over me, but it helped to expel the gas from about me. When the water was all out, there was nothing to prevent the fan from starting. Five minutes had not elapsed since the time I had entered the engine room until I got the blower started. At this time, the crew were all up, on top of the turret. I had scarcely gotten one blower started when two seamen came into the engine room. They had wet clothes over their mouths. They informed that they had been sent to Captain Warden to find me and bring me up to the turret, supposing that like the others, I had been overcome by the gas and was overlooked. I had informed Captain Warden of what I had done and the condition of things in the engine room and requested that I get some help from among the seamen and then I received a glass of brandy, which relieved me if my trouble is a great deal. End quote. I had not been for Driscoll's quick efforts. There is no telling how many men would have died on the monitors made in voyage if Captain Warden would undoubtedly go down in the history books as a failure. But instead, every single man survived. While Driscoll was drinking his brandy before turning back to the engine room to see what else he could do, the rest of the crew was dragging their passed out comrades onto the deck. Albin Steimers, who pulled Mormon to safety than anybody else on the ship, nearly passed out himself several times. Every time his legs became weak, he had to step out to recover and back to drag another lifeless body to safety. After he dragged maybe half a dozen men or more out of the engine room, he passed out beside them. Every man survived. This was the first test of courage. The men on the monitor had to pass and they did so with flying colors. But their trials had only just begun. Before Erickson and his backers could get paid for their work on the ship, it would still have to prove itself in combat. Soon after they survived the storm and carbon monoxide, the monitor was stopped by another union ship, the Seth Law, and its captain brought the news that they had been waiting for. The Merrimack was in the waters of Hampton Road and it had already sunk one union frigate and was finishing off a second. They had no time to waste if they were going to rescue the Minnesota from certain death. The monitor took off without delay. They would face the ironclad Merrimack the next day on March 9th in the famous, if misnamed, Battle of the Ironclads where they would either earn eternal glory or face devastating defeat. This battle and the final history of the ships that participate in it 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 Mises.org slash SupportHC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit Mises.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.