Davy Jones claims his prize (part 3)

Note: This is the third 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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Samuel Greene

The nature of naval warfare had changed in the morning of March 9, 1862. The C.S.S. Virginia had retreated leaving two destroyed wooden warships behind, but also a victorious ironclad called the U.S.S. Monitor.

Because of the battle fought at Hampton Roads, Virginia, the world’s wooden navies had become obsolete.

During the battle, Cumberland-born Samuel Dana Greene had commanded the turret of the Monitor as executive officer. He had chosen the targets and fired each round. When Captain John Worden was wounded, the 22-year-old Greene took command of the Union ironclad.

Worden wrote of Greene in his report to the Secretary of the Navy, “Lieutenant Greene, the executive officer, had charge in the turret, and handled the guns with great courage, coolness, and skill; and throughout the engagement, as in the equipment of the vessel and on her passage to Hampton Roads, he exhibited an earnest devotion to duty unsurpassed in my experience.”

When Worden gave Greene command of the Monitor, Greene had moved the ship to shallow water to determine whether it could continue fighting. When the Monitor moved back into action, the Virginia was already moving toward Norfolk. Rather than pursue, Greene had returned to protect the U.S.S. Minnesota, which had been its primary duty.

The next morning as the Monitor moved through the fleet. “Cheer after cheer went up from the Frigates and small craft for the glorious Monitor, and happy indeed did we all feel,” Greene wrote.

Later the crew received a hero’s welcome in Washington City and a visit from President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

To the Union, the victory was clear; the Virginia had abandoned the battlefield. That traditionally meant the Monitor was victorious. However, the South refused to admit the loss. They claimed that when Greene pulled away to check the steering gear during the battle, the Monitor had retreated, and the Virginia had then chosen to leave to keep from being trapped by the low tide.

On March 10, Greene was relieved of command because he was thought to be too young and inexperienced to serve as captain. Greene remained with the ship as the executive officer.

The two ironclads would never meet in battle again. Only two months later, with Union troops advancing on Norfolk, the Virginia could retreat no further up the James River because the water was too shallow. She was ordered grounded and blown up to keep from being captured.

The Monitor’s fate was no better. “We returned to Hampton Roads in November, and sailed thence in tow of the steamer Rhode Island, bound for Beaufort, N. C. Between 11 P. M. and midnight on the following night the Monitor went down in a gale, a few miles south of Cape Hatteras. Four officers and twelve men were drowned, forty-nine people being saved by the boats of the steamer. It was impossible to keep the vessel free of water, and we presumed that the upper and lower hulls thumped themselves apart,” Greene wrote.

Greene was ordered to the U.S.S. Florida as executive officer and later transferred to the U.S.S. Iroquois. Following the war, he served as an instructor at the Naval Academy.

Though he had a successful career, his failure to sink the Virginia and the Confederacy’s unwillingness to admit the defeat of the Virginia seemed to haunt him. In 1885, Greene wrote a lengthy article about his experience on the Monitor, and shortly before it was published, he committed suicide by shooting himself.

However, history remembers Greene better than he remembered himself. In 1918, the Navy launched the U.S.S. Greene, which would serve until the end of WWII.

In 2002, the Monitor’s turret and other artifacts, including the remains of two of the lost seamen, were recovered in a Navy salvage operation and are on display in the U.S.S. Monitor Center in the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia.

You might also enjoy these posts:

Greene accepts the burden of command (part 2)
Was there nothing that could stop the Virginia? (Part 1)
Gettysburg civilians endure horrors of POW camps