Was there nothing that could stop the Virginia? (Part 1)
Note: This is the first part in a three-part series about Samuel Dana Greene and Cumberland (MD)’s connections to in the epic battle between the U.S.S. Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia.
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The CSS Merrimack sinks the USS Cumberland in 1862. Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command.
She was a monster; a thing of nightmares. A more fitting name for the C.S.S. Virginia would have been The Phoenix, for she had been created from the ashes of the U.S.S. Merrimack.
And the U.S.S. Cumberland, which had aided in the demise of the Merrimack, would help complete the birth of the Virginia.
The Cumberland was a warship launched in 1842 and converted into a heavy sloop-of-war in 1856. Her armament consisted of 22 nine-inch guns, a 10-inch pivot guns and a Dahlgren rifle gun that fired a 70-pound ball.
When the Civil War began in April 1861, the Cumberland was docked at the Gosport Navy Yard in Virginia. Though Virginia had not yet seceded from the Union, its sympathies were with the Confederacy. The day following the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the decision was made to open the underwater valves of the Merrimack, another warship, and sink her.
“I begged the captain of the Cumberland to withhold the order; for assistance might be sent, and at any time she could be sunk with a shell from our battery. But the order was given, and the Merrimac slowly sank till she grounded, with her gun-deck a little out of water,” Thomas Selfridge wrote in an 1893 article in The Cosmopolitan. He served as a lieutenant on the Cumberland.
The next day the order came to abandon the shipyard. Nine ships, or one-quarter of the U.S. Navy according to Selfridge, were burned and an immense amount of weapons and munitions were left behind for the Confederacy.
“It was a splendid, but melancholy spectacle, and in the lurid glare, which turned night into day, the Cumberland slipped her moorings, and, in tow of the Pawnee, left Norfolk,” wrote Selfridge.
In November, the Cumberland sailed to the mouth of the James River near Newport News, but in the interim, she had fought in the bombardment and capture of the Hatteras forts. She was the last American frigate to go to battle under sail.
By this time, reports had made their way north that the Confederacy had raised the Merrimack and were turning her into an ironclad fighting ship. The Union was scurrying to build its own ironclad, but the Confederacy had a head start.
Hampton Roads, where the Cumberland was stationed was the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay and from there the gateway to both the capital of the Union and the Confederacy. Union officials feared what the Merrimack, now rechristened the Virginia would do if made its way to Washington. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles ordered fleet commanders to send ships in Hampton Roads out of harm’s way. “The blockade commanders couldn’t get the ships out of the Roads in time, and on March 8, a clearly rattled Welles reversed the order. By now, it was too late. His worst nightmare was unfolding,” wrote Paul Clancy in his book Ironclad.
As the Virginia, steamed toward Hampton Roads, Union shore batteries shelled it and watched in amazement as the shells bounced off the iron hull.
The Cumberland’s crew sighted the Virginia around 12:30 p.m. March 8. At first, she was believed to be a mirage because of atmospheric conditions.
The Virginia steamed full speed toward the Cumberland. As it passed the U.S.S. Congress, it fired a broadside damaging the frigate. Then the Virginia rammed the Cumberland with a 1500-pound iron spar. Even as the ram sunk deep into the Cumberland under the waterline, the Virginia reversed its engines. The ram broke off inside the Cumberland.
The Cumberland’s crew fired upon the ship. “So furious was the Cumberland’s response that the greased sides of the Confederate battery seemed to fry like bacon,” wrote Clancy.
Protected by its iron skin, the Virginia’s guns tore up the crew and deck on the Cumberland. Yet, the Cumberland’s gunners continued firing until the guns slipped underwater.
Selfridge wrote of the crew, “They really believed themselves invincible, and indeed could they have had a fair fight would have shown themselves to be such. With but few officers, for the first time in their lives exposed to a terrible shell fire, seeing their comrades mangled and dead before them. The manner in which these decimated guns’ crews stood unflinchingly at their guns, with water pouring over the decks, the ship trembling in the last throes of her disappearance, until the word was passed from their officers, ‘Every man look out for himself,’ just before the ship went down, was not only sublime, but ought to embalm the name ‘Cumberland’ in the heart of every American.”
Seeing the fate of the Cumberland, the Congress moved into shallower water where the Virginia couldn’t follow. However, the Congress ran aground leaving the Virginia free to draw as close as it could and fire upon it until the Congress flew the white flag of surrender.
When Confederate boats approached the Congress, Union shore batteries fired upon them so the Virginia fired incendiary shells at the Congress and burned her to the waterline.
It seemed almost too easy. It had been two warships against one new, untested ship. Yet the one had triumphed with no loss of life while the Cumberland had sunk with 121 lives of 376 lost and the Congress had been burned with 240 dead out of 434.
Nothing could stand in the way of the Virginia. It could steam up the Potomac River and bombard Washington or make its way up the coastline to destroy New York Harbor. It was unstoppable.
But even as the crew of the Virginia celebrated the victory, one ship had heard the sounds of battle and even now steamed south where among the debris of battle. A David would challenge the new Goliath.
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