Chads gave the orders calmly. A half dozen frigates were to detach themselves from the convoy and. along with the Warrior led ships of the line, form a wall to prevent the Union vessels from penetrating into the heart of the convoy and wreaking havoc. The remainder of the Royal Navy warships would watch for a sudden assault from a different direction, although Chads wondered where other Union ships might come from. From all intelligence sources, the heart of the North's navy was bearing down on him from the west. He smiled. He would pluck that living heart from the beast.
Commodore David Glasgow Farragut watched impassively as the might of Britain arrayed itself against his small force. It was an impressive sight. Freed from the constraints of fickle winds, the British steamships moved like ponderous but efficient and skillful dancers as they formed a wall against his fleet. Fleet? Farragut groaned inwardly. To call his assemblage a fleet was like calling a tree a forest, or a puddle a sea.
Along with his flagship, the untried New Ironsides, he had the Monitor herself and her sisters-the brand-new Hudson, Delaware, and Potomac. Only the Potomac was a two-turret vessel. The other two had a single turret and were identical to the original Monitor. Thus, he had five ships carrying little more than a score of guns against an enemy who had about as many ships as he had guns. The New Ironsides, the largest American ship, only carried sixteen guns: although they were all eleven-inch Dahlgrens. He could only hope that his ships could stand up to the pounding they were going to get as they tried to penetrate the wooden wall forming before him.
So far their greatest achievement had been gathering the squadron together at Philadelphia, where only the Ironsides had originally waited. The four Monitors had departed New York disguised as barges. Artificial wooden sides and piles of rubbish had made them appear innocuous.
When-if?-penetration was achieved, the squadron of wooden ships behind his ironclads and under the command of Captain David Dixon Porter would surge into the British convoy and attempt to sink as many as they could and disperse the rest. There was no hope of catching them all, but there was the prayer that the North's wooden warships could do enough damage to cause the British to either withdraw or delay an invasion of the North until the onset of bad winter weather.
As plans went, it wasn't a bad one. Ironically, the obsolete wooden American ships carried many more guns than the ironclads, so they should be able to truly wreak havoc if the ironclads could pierce the British lines. The archaic wooden ships, however, had no place in the coming battle. They would stand back and wait for their opportunity.
As the two fleets drew within range, they opened fire. The thunder of hundreds of British guns drowned out the sound of the few American cannon. Farragut was not a coward. He had first seen combat in the War of 1812, and had been a prize-master before he'd been a teenager, but he quickly realized that his plan to assess the battle from his ship's rigging was the height of folly. Anyone exposed up there would be killed by the hail of metal that was beginning to descend upon her. He retreated belowdecks while her empty rigging was cut to pieces. The ship itself, however, sustained no real damage.
They drew alongside British ships with the Monitors moving as close in as possible. It was then that Farragut realized that the British had learned something from their debacle off New York. British ships paired up and, blessed with overwhelming numbers, flanked the diminutive Monitors. As they had to turn their turrets away to safely reload, they were unable to reload quickly or often, as there was no side where there wasn't a British ship firing on them. The Monitors, however, were so small and so low in the water that the vast majority of shells fired at them were plopping into the ocean, rather than slamming into an armored deck or turret. The smallness of the Monitors also meant that the British ships had to avoid hitting their own sister ships. In this they were not totally successful, and a number of British ships sustained damage from their own side.
The British were unsuccessful in attempts to ram and board. When there was contact, the Monitors were pushed aside like toys and, with astonishing agility for such ungainly looking ships, simply avoided getting too close. On one occasion, a handful of British tars did gain a foothold on the Hudson, but the Potomac fired grape at her own sister ship and swept the British away in a bloody froth before they could do any damage.
The New Ironsides had better hunting. She drew alongside the wooden Agamemnon and sent several broadsides into her before another wooden ship came to her aid. Shells from the massive British vessel pounded against the hull of the Ironsides, but didn't break through her iron shield. The thunder was deafening, but they were safe. Just then, a piece of metal entered through a gun port and ripped off the arm of an American sailor. He screamed and fell writhing to the ground. He was replaced in the gun crew and dragged off to the care of the ship's surgeon. More metal penetrated the openings and Farragut understood what was happening. Unable to pierce the armor, the British ship was firing grape, or canister, which, like a shotgun, showered a target with pieces of metal. It was almost inevitable that some would come through the open gun ports. Once again, Farragut applauded the design of the Monitors' turrets. They were only opened momentarily, which negated most of the effect of canister. The navy would have to put turrets on larger ships such as his.
Farragut broke off contact with the Agamemnon, and the Ironsides suddenly found herself confronting the giant Warrior, For a few minutes that presaged the future of naval warfare, the two ironclads hurled shells at each other with no apparent effect.
“Damn that ship,” snarled Farragut. Another piece of canister caromed its way into a sailor's body and he dropped to the floor, dead. Others had been wounded, but not too seriously.
Farragut ordered the Ironsides to seek out another target. There was no point in having two ships that couldn't hurt each other waste ammunition in the futile attempt. A British frigate approached on his port side and he fired into her at extremely close range. His crew cheered as fires broke out on the frigate and she disengaged.
For what seemed an eternity the apparently unequal struggle continued. But as the afternoon waned, the small American ships continued to be impervious to British shells, while the wooden British ships took punishment that, since it was cumulative, gradually became serious. Even though they could not fire rapidly, the Monitors continued to shoot when they could, and their large twelve-inch guns did enormous damage.
Finally, the impossible was achieved. Penetration was made. Farragut had split the larger British squadron into two unequal halves that, under the protection of the equally unharmed Warrior. turned and commenced steaming south.
By their very nature, wooden ships do not sink very readily unless they are catastrophically damaged. Two British frigates were low in the water and helpless. Their crews were in lifeboats or in the water and clinging to wreckage. Several other warships, including at least one ship of the line, were burning, although they were under way and the fires appeared to be controllable. Most of the other British ships had sustained damage of some kind.
The Union had lost no ships. Without turrets, the New Ironsides had sustained the most damage. Half her guns had been dismounted and twenty of her crew killed. Another fifty were injured. No armor plates had been destroyed on any ship, although dents were everywhere, and many plates would have to be replaced. The Hudson could no longer turn her turret. She'd had to turn the entire ship to continue fighting. Farragut made a note to commend her young captain, Lieutenant George Dewey, on his doggedness.