Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power

by Howard J. Fuller

The relatively unknown 'Cold War' of the American Civil War was a nevertheless crucial aspect of the survival, or not, of the United States in the mid 19th-century. Foreign intervention--explicitly in the form of British naval power--represented a far more serious threat to the success of the Union blockade, the safety of Yankee merchant shipping worldwide, and Union combined operations against the South than the Confederate States Navy. Whether or not the North or South would be 'clad in iron' thus depended on the ability of superior Union ironclads to deter the majority of mid-Victorian British leaders, otherwise tempted by their desire to see the American 'experiment' in democratic class-structures and popular government finally fail. Discussions of open European involvement in the Civil War were pointless as long as the coastline of the United States was virtually impregnable.
The most famous warship of the American Civil War, the USS Monitor , was the front-line weapon in a grand strategic initiative established by the U.S. Government (the White House, Congress and the Navy Department) as a means of insuring the ultimate defeat of the Southern Confederacy through not only the blockade but isolation from possible foreign aid and intervention. Union ironclads were designed, approved and constructed for the specific purpose, first and last, of deterring and/or destroying the great broadside-ironclads being fashioned by European powers--especially Great Britain.
As such, this work addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the monitors were for, and why they failed in other roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War (such as the repulse at Charleston, 7 April, 1863). Monitors were ironclad--not fort--killers. Their ultimate success is to be measured not in terms of spearheading attacks on fortified Southern ports, but in the quieter, much more profound, strategic deterrence of Lord Palmerston's ministry in London, and the British Royal Navy.
Combining extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, this work offers an in-depth look at how the Union Navy achieved its greatest grand-strategic victory in the American Civil War. Through a combination of high-tech 'machines' armed with 'monster' guns, intensive coastal fortifications and a new fleet of high-speed Union commerce raiders, the North was able to turn the humiliation of the Trent Affair of late 1861 into a sobering challenge to British naval power and imperial defense worldwide.

Genres: History, American Civil War, Naval History, Civil War

448 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2007

About the author

Howard J. Fuller is Senior Lecturer of War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton (UK), Associate Editor for the International Journal of Naval History. He completed his BA in History at the Ohio State University and his MA and then PhD in War Studies at King’s College, London.

Reviews

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the use of iron clad ships during the American Civil War development of their technology and armament was occurring in the European naval race between England and France. There is extended discussion of the use of ironclads in both the Union and Confederate navies.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rarely do I have a love hate relationship with a book like I do this one. In the past 48 hours I've seriously considered giving this book 2 stars or 4 stars.

The book is about my favorite period of history and two of my favorite niches: Civil War, Naval, and foreign affairs during the Civil War. How could it go wrong?

Argument for 4 stars: This book is an incredibly dense book with tons of information in it. Fuller wrote the book as an extrapolation of his PhD dissertation. As such, the book includes many ideas and concepts that are not readily available elsewhere. The discussions on the divergent ways in which the US/Britian approach the question of Iron Clads, the coastal vs seaworthy debates, the turrents v broadsides, rifled vs loads were intriguing questions. Based upon the quantity and quality of the information, this book deserves 4 start.

Argument for 2 stars: The book is an incredibly dense book with tons of information in t. Fuller wrote the book as an extrapolation of his PhD dissertation. As such, it is incredibly dry and sometimes overly complex. The author failed to provide basics in writing composition. He didn't adequately articulate the purpose of the book or the chapters. While there was a ton of info, it could have been better organized/presented.

While I settled on 3 stars, I think my final appraisal is actually closer to 2 than to 4. Throughout the book I felt that Fuller had an interesting point to make and was a passable author, but I felt that the book lacked focus or purpose. The very first chapter drops us into a highly technical discourse about ironclads, but does not provide context for the discussion. Throughout the book I couldn't help but wonder if he might have benefited from having an editor who would have insisted upon introductory paragraphs into the chapters to explain the purpose of the chapter.

After the second section, I realized that Fuller had a 2-4 page conclusion to every section. I realized that it was helpful to read the conclusion first so as to understand the point he was attempting to make.

I also could not but help think about the old saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words." This book could have used about 40,000 fewer words and 40 more pictures. Fuller is describing ships, weaponry, and naval concepts with words. He provided fewer than 10 pictures in the entire book and only two of them were of the ships he was describing. A lot could have been done by including illustrations of the ships he was discussing.

In many places, I struggled to finish the page, paragraph, or chapter.

I really wanted to like this book more, I just can't---a weak 3 stars.

[Clay Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first rate book, excellent facts on how new revolutionary technology was important to the changes in the world navies.

[Brad Butturff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a relatively little studied part of the American Civil War and Fuller's book explores it exhaustively. One of the sources of speculation for some people is what would have happened if the British had intervened in support of the Confederacy after the Trent Incident. It seems this was also a bit of speculation that Abraham Lincoln and the War Department were avidly concerned about. Though the British had relatively few troops in North America during our Civil War they did have the most powerful navy in the world at that time. It would have been relatively easy for the Royal Navy to have broken the Union blockade of Southern ports and raised havoc with Northern ports.

Fuller's book shows how the Union Navy conducted an aggressive ironclad construction program for warships capable of making such an intervention more difficult. These were ironclads that were not optimal for the sort of shore bombardment and blockade duties required against the Confederacy. For those of you that like a detailed analysis of the specific capabilities of these ships this book will satisfy you. I was very impressed with the research he had done into this along with the documentation of his research.

The bottom line in Fuller's book is that Lincoln was engaging in a 'Cold War' of sorts with the British Empire. Initially there were those in England who would have welcomed a military intervention to prove this 'American Experiment' in democracy was a failure. The deterrence aspect of Union naval strength and careful political maneuvering served as a preventive measure against British intervention. Such things as the Emancipation Proclamation helped to reimage the war as a fight against slavery, something the British and the Royal Navy had been fighting against since 1830.

I really do have to recommend this book if you're wanting a different perspective on the American Civil War. It does make it abundantly clear why the British were more than willing to sell arms to the Confederacy, or the Union for that matter, but backed away from any kind of direct intervention.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a long-overdue study on the international dimensions of the American Civil War with particular regard to the navies, naval technology, national maritime strategy, and the development of European and American ironclads.



Many works covering the USS Monitor pay lip service to Ericsson's naming the vessel as symbolic of a check (or monitor, in the old pre-computer sense of the word) on European ambitions in the New World, but nearly none develop the theme any further. Howard Fuller ably demonstrates that the oft-cited "Monitor fever" in the US Navy was far from a misguided reaction to the mixed success of the type's namesake in Hampton Roads; the construction of heavily armored vessels mounting extremely (for the time) heavy armament was instead a direct challenge to Britain. While (perhaps necessarily) conceding the high seas to the Royal Navy, the Union Navy rendered its coastlines, harbors, and the blockade itself well-nigh invulnerable to nearly any vessel that could make the Atlantic crossing, reinforcing the Civil War as a domestic affair and strongly warding against foreign intervention.



"Clad in Iron" zeroes in on the "Trent Affair" as the crucial moment in US-British relations during the war, and observes the very different situation obtaining only a year or so later, as the monitors began to reinforce the Union navy, culminating in the visit of the USS Miantonomoh to Great Britain after the war's end. The book is heavily based in primary sources, especially British ones, seldom consulted in other Civil War naval histories and is an extremely valuable addition to the field.



While not (and not intended as) a detailed technical treatment of the development of ironclad warships, "Clad in Iron" does much to rehabilitate the image of the peculiar little turreted ironclads, and shows that the decision to build more of them wasn't so "feverish" after all.

[David Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book makes the argument, in a narrower and more technical sense that Amanda Foreman makes in a broader one (A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War): that although we treat our civil war as a purely domestic matter, it unfolded in the context of America's being both in the world, and by no means enjoying the dominant position of today. Moreover, it was happening at a time when the technological implications for war were ambivalent.

My first exposure to naval history, in the American Heritage Junior Library, always carefully reported the number of guns on a ship. But the civil war is where those numbers get confusing. Forty 32-pounders vs. 2 XI inch Dahlgrens? Bet on the Dahlgrens. But how does armor complicate it? How does steam, needed to move iron, but creating a dramatic dependence on coaling stations change the distinction between offense and defense? And how does the fear of one's enemy relate to the reality of missteps and self-promotion?

Ultimately, Fuller suggests, it was the success of the North's engineering talent and the Union Navy that allowed the civil war not to become a broader conflict. If battles can be won before the armies take the field, this was an instance of one being won before ships ever sailed.

Since this is an academic book, my four stars are for the intellectual content. The style of the prose is not quite at that level.