Confederate shipbuilding

Studies in Maritime History

by William N. Still Jr.

In Confederate Shipbuilding, William N. Still Jr. cogently demonstrates the real grounds for the Confederacy's failure to build a successful navy. The South's major problems with shipbuilding concerned facilities, materials, and labor. To each of these subjects the author devotes a chapter, and then concludes by joining these problems to the larger issues of the Civil War. Still argues that the Confederate navy's difficulties in construction were mainly caused by military, geographic, and political factors -- not by lack of resources or the inefficiency of Southern naval officers. Problems caused by internal dissension -- states' rights quarrels and interservice rivalries -- were characteristic of other theaters of the war; yet, Still shows, the navy was particularly affected, being the stepchild of a war department that was land-minded. This careful study therefore contributes not only to our understanding of the failure of the Southern shipbuilding program, but also to our knowledge of the reasons for the downfall of the Confederate States of America.

Genres: History, American Civil War

110 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

William Norwood Still, Jr., was an American maritime historian, who was the first director of the program in maritime history at East Carolina University and a noted author of works on U.S. Civil War history and U.S. naval history.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice concise analysis of Confederate shipbuilding efforts during the Civil War. Still does a nice job inventorying the challenge Mallory and the Confederacy faced to start the war, and discusses key changes in approach (the move to ironclads) and the relationship within the Confederate cabinet.
Still takes a chapter to examine elements in detail: shipbuilding facilities, material, and labor.
In Still's analysis, the Confederates were smart in strategy to pursue ironclads and did well to develop the capacity to lay down hulls.
Still looks at the factors that created the limit on materials - interestingly, he argues that the Confederacy developed foundry capacity during the war, but the key issues were shortages of pig iron and coal. He also points to a shortage of seasoned lumber which led to the use of green timber, creating leaky hulls. Finally, the absence of copper for sheathing left hulls vulnerable to marine life.
Transportation only exacerbated this - limited rail capacity meant that armored plate, cannons, and raw materials could not be delivered in a timely manner.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the analysis is on labor - the need for soldiers and conscription led to general labor shortages, but Still points in particular to the skilled labor shortage and argues that poor policy meant that many skilled laborers who were needed for shipbuilding were often serving as infantry. While there can be credit for the improvisation elsewhere, Still finds this last, avoidable issue, particularly damning.

[Jerel Wilmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very brief, but sound survey of the issues confronting the nascent Confederate Navy's attempts to construct warships for the defense of the Southern Confederacy. Highlights the shortages in material, labor, and transportation that contributed to the South's failure to construct a credible navy.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still suggests that it was not the absence of ship-building facilities that doomed the Confederate Navy or a lack of foundries, iron works or armament works. It was a lack of ability to get the iron and coal out of the ground fast enough and a lack of rolling stock to move resources and finished materials around. The success of the Union blockade forced the Confederates to disperse their facities and place them as far inland as possible...which led to further logistics and transportation problems.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still puts in a solid entry to the body of works on the Confederate Navy with this book. It's brief, so it doesn't delve into too much detail, but provides a good overview of the many challenges that Confederate shipbuilding faced. A liberal sprinkling of shipwrights' plans of Confederate ironclads throughout the text is a nice touch. This book would serve as a good introduction to the subject it covers, and while it includes some on non-ironclad shipbuilding, this book is really eclipsed by Still's more comprehensive Iron Afloat.