Uss New Ironsides in the Civil War: William H. Roberts (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This is the first modern scholarly look at the little-known yet remarkable USS New Ironsides--America's first seagoing ironclad and the only one to see combat in the American Civil War. It describes the design, construction, and wartime career of the armored frigate, which included sixteen months of combat off Charleston, South Carolina, where she fired more shots than all of Rear Adm. John Dahlgren's monitors put together and caused the Confederates to offer $100,000 for her destruction. The 1865 assault against Fort Fisher led Adm. David Dixon Porter, a hard man to impress, to call the ship the best in the fleet for offensive operations.

Here, a former surface warfare commander chronicles New Ironsides's entire story, from inception as the Navy's insurance policy in 1861 through the straining urgency of construction and blockade service in the stormy early months of 1863 to the hard-fought engagements at Charleston Harbor and Fort Fisher. He places the ship in a broader context of warship design during a period of rapid technological change. He also reexamines the circumstances of 1861 to debunk the myth that the ironclad was a regressive design created by mossbacked naval traditionalists. This complete assessment of the ship's career shows both her operational and technical superiority. It also explains why, despite the success demonstrated by New Ironsides, the monitors dominated the Union ironclad program.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 188 pages
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press (June 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557506957
• ISBN-13: 978-1557506955
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,326,972 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars USS New Ironsides, January 31, 2000

By	Robert Thomas (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

Despite being an excellent source on the construction and operations of this unique ship, this book is also a comment on what could have been had more of this superior design been built, or the orginal not accidentally destroyed. The book does a good job of addressing the "Monitor Fever" of the time that caused many monitors to be built despite the flaws of the design. Monitors appeared in variety from one to three turrets, while only two seagoing broadside ironclads saw service. Designed for ship to ship combat, Monitors did not have the large battery's necisary to tackle forts, the broadside ironclads did. Since forts were common, but CSN ironclads were few and far between and were broadside ships to begin with, the puzzle is why the US did not explore this design further. The answer, the author proves, was politics.