The Warship That Ended an Era

This video is sponsored by War Thunder. For centuries, warships were towering wooden vessels lined with broadside cannons, but they lacked armor, could only fire within a narrow arc, and depended entirely on the wind. Then, in 1862, everything changed when the USS Monitor arrived, low to the water, forged in iron, steam-driven, and crowned with a rotating turret that could fire in nearly any direction, revolutionizing naval warfare. In this video, we've modeled the entire USS Monitor inside and out to see how this radical vessel worked, and why it became the blueprint for the modern navy. But before we get into it, this is Deconstructed. We break down the engineering behind history's most fascinating machines, vehicles, and structures. So, let's see how it all works. During the American Civil War, the Union and Confederacy found themselves in a rapidly escalating technological arms race. Each side was searching for an edge, a single innovation that could tip the balance. The turning point came when the steam frigate USS Merrimack, which had been scuttled by the Union, was razed by Confederate forces. They rebuilt and converted her into an ironclad, an armored steam-powered warship, renaming her CSS Virginia. As the Virginia was being built, Union forces rushed to combat this threat by building an ironclad of its own, the USS Monitor. They selected the design of naval engineer John Erickson, whose proposal was unlike anything the Navy had ever seen. A low-profile hull with a rotating gun turret mounted on top, the USS Monitor would become the first US Navy vessel to feature a revolving gun turret, a breakthrough that would go on to revolutionize naval warfare and warship design entirely. Construction moved at breakneck speed. Built in just roughly 100 days, Monitor was launched days prior to the Virginia from the Brooklyn Navy Yard in January 1862, making her the first ironclad commissioned by the US Navy. A few weeks later, the two ironclads met in battle. The Battle of Hampton Roads was part of the Confederate effort to break the Union blockade, which had cut off Virginia's largest cities from international trade. What followed became one of the most iconic naval engagements in American history, the first battle between two ironclad warships. On March 9, 1862, the Monitor and the Virginia met at dawn. Monitor was smaller, less than two-thirds the length of the Virginia, and only about a quarter of her displacement, but the armored ships proved evenly matched. The battle raged on for four relentless hours. Neither ship could sink the other, but the Monitor succeeded in her objective. The Virginia failed to break the blockade. The clash marked a decisive turning point in naval warfare. News of the battle spread across the world, and its impact was immediate. The major naval powers halted the construction of wooden warships. The age of the ironclad had begun. 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Personally, I love the naval combat most, positioning armor, timing fire, and watching shells hit with real physics feels incredibly satisfying. Play War Thunder and sign up for free on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and mobile by clicking my links in the pinned comment and description. New players and returning players who haven't played in the last six months on PC or console will get a massive bonus pack, including an exclusive vehicle decorator, Eagle of Valor, 100,000 silver lions, and seven days of premium account. But don't wait, this offer is only available for a limited time. Before we dive into the details of the USS Monitor itself, it's important to understand the state of naval warfare leading up to this turning point in history. For centuries, the world's major navies were dominated by wooden, sail-powered warships. Their cannons were arranged in fixed broadsides, long rows of guns lining each side of the hull. This style had worked for ages, but it came with serious flaws. Wooden hulls were vulnerable to explosive shell fire, which could shatter exposed timber and start fires. And broadside armament introduced tactical limitations. The guns could only fire across a restricted arc on either side of the ship. Targeting required the entire ship to maneuver into position, and only one side's guns could be brought to bear at a time. Enormous firepower, but very inefficiently used. When steam-powered warships had come into play in the mid-19th century, like the USS Merrimack, they still carried full sailing rigs and relied on traditional broadside gun batteries along their sides. The CSS Virginia represented an important transition, a step between the traditional broadside ships and the modern turret warships that would follow. The Virginia, which had no sails, was a casemate ironclad with an iron-plated wooden hull. Its guns were housed inside a single armored structure with sloped sides on the main deck. This protected the battery more effectively than wood ever could, but the ship still relied on the traditional broadside firing arrangement and inherited all of its limitations. The USS Monitor broke that pattern completely. For the first time, a warship's main guns could be aimed independently of the ship's orientation, able to rotate nearly 360 degrees. Instead of lining both sides of the hull with dozens of smaller guns, Monitor concentrated her firepower into fewer larger cannons that could be all trained on a single target at once. This wasn't just a new ship, it was an entirely new way of thinking about naval combat. Before we dive deeper, we actually turned this video into something you can own. We created a detailed USS Monitor poster, mapping out every detail. Each of our videos is made entirely by humans and takes hundreds of hours of research, modeling, and animation, and every purchase directly supports the channel and the team behind it. Grab yours through the link in the description. We're also giving one away. For a chance to win one, like this video, subscribe, and comment below. What surprised you most about the USS Monitor? We'll announce the winner in the next video. Now let's see just what made her so different. First, let's look at the USS Monitor as she appeared in July 1862, after the Battle of Hampton Roads. She measured 54.6 meters in length, roughly the length of four city buses, and had a beam of 12.6 meters. Her most defining feature, the gun turret, was 6.1 meters in diameter. Monitor wasn't fast. Her top speed was about 7 knots, or around 13 kilometers per hour. She was operated by a crew of about 50 officers and enlisted men. Monitor was powered by steam alone. She was the first American warship without any masts or sails, a complete break from centuries of naval tradition. The vessel's most striking feature was the large cylindrical gun turret. Built from 200 millimeters of iron plate armor, its rounded shape helped deflect incoming cannon fire. It sat amid ships on the spar deck, a flat upper deck positioned just above the waterline. And speaking of being close to the water, Monitor's hull sat so low that very little of the ship was visible above the waves, earning her the nickname a cheese box on a raft. All jokes aside, this low profile drastically reduced the target area exposed to enemy guns. An iron-plated armor belt wrapped around the hull at the waterline for protection, and her flat-bottomed hull gave her a very shallow draft, making her ideal for coastal and river operations, though poorly suited for the rough open ocean. With her shape and profile in mind, we can move in closer, starting at the bow and working our way to the stern to see how every external feature served a purpose. At the bow was the ship's anchor well. When the cover was lifted, it revealed a recessed opening that housed the anchor below the spar deck. The crew raised or lowered the anchor from inside the ship, allowing them to remain fully protected under armor rather than working exposed on the deck during combat. Immediately after that was the pilot house, a compact iron beam reinforced structure housing the ship's helm, which was used to steer the ship. It was accessed from inside, and the crew could see out only through narrow slits between the beams. Its forward placement blocked the turret's guns from firing directly ahead, and after the Battle of Hampton Roads, angled armor plates were added to help deflect incoming fire. A canvas canopy was later fitted over the top of the turret. The turret roof itself was made of perforated iron plate, which vented gun smoke and allowed airflow during combat. The canopy provided shade, shed rain, and gave officers a place to stand when the ship was not in battle. Just behind the turret were the smokestacks, venting exhaust from the boilers below, followed by the blower air intakes, which circulated air throughout the vessel and into the boilers. At the stern was a single four-bladed screw propeller, positioned right next to the rudder that steered the ship. The turret was capable of a full 360-degree rotation, completing a full turn in about 22 seconds. Including the guns inside, the turret weighed about 163 metric tons, the weight of more than four fully loaded semi-trailer trucks. Inside were two 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbore shell guns, each weighing around 7,200 kilograms. They were muzzle-loading naval guns capable of firing 75-kilogram solid shot to a range of roughly 3,300 meters, with a practical rate of fire of one round every few minutes. Each gun required a crew of about eight men, with roughly 17 men and two officers working inside the turret during battle. The guns were mounted on rolling carriages moving on iron rails set into the turret floor. A friction-braking mechanism, called a compressor, absorbed the gun's recoil after firing in order to prevent it from slamming into the rear of the turret. This was controlled by a large brass handwheel, which tightened or loosened iron clamps pressing against wooden guides beneath the carriages. The only glimpse of the outside world came through the gun ports. When the guns were withdrawn for reloading or not in use, heavy iron port stoppers swung down to shut the openings. Azimuth, or left-to-right aim, was controlled by rotating the turret, while elevation was adjusted using an elevator screw at the rear of each gun. A hatch in the turret floor allowed crew access and ammunition transfer, but only when the turret was rotated to align with the deck opening below. Beneath the turret floor, the turret's base was connected to a large vertical shaft linked to the turret drive mechanism located below the spar deck. The shaft was driven through a two-stage gear system powered by a pair of compact steam-powered donkey engines. Passing below the spar deck led into the ship's only interior deck, located beneath the waterline. This deck was divided amid ships by a structural bulkhead, with crew spaces forward and machinery spaces aft. Two large oval iron hatchways in the bulkhead allowed passage between the two sections. At the bow, beneath the pilot house, was the chain locker, holding the anchor chain and the capstan used to raise and lower it. This area also served as the boatswain's store, used to store tools and materials for maintenance, and contained the ladder leading up to the pilot house. The helm wheel inside the pilot house controlled the rudder through a gear and rope system. The crew's quarters were split into two areas, which were separated by a wooden bulkhead with a door in the center. Forward were the officer's quarters, a compact cluster of eight officer cabins, two rooms for the captain, a private cabin with one of the ship's four toilets, and a stateroom for conducting daily duties. The wardroom sat at the center, a shared dining and meeting space. Each cabin had a thick porthole set into the deck above. Aft of the officer spaces was the berth deck, where the enlisted men slept in hammocks. It was crowded and offered no privacy. This same deck held the powder magazine, starboard, and the shell rooms, port, which stored explosive projectiles, fuses, and primers. Non-explosive cannonballs were stacked in the center of the berth deck, as well as stored inside the turret itself. Storage closets and pantries occupied the remaining outboard spaces along the hull. Just aft of the midship's structural bulkhead was the ship's galley, where meals were prepared. A large iron stove stood directly against the monitor's boilers. In the same area were the crew's and officer's heads, or the ship's toilets. Aft of the galley was where the ship machinery was located. Directly behind the galley stood two boilers, which supplied the steam needed to power both the main engine and the auxiliary systems throughout the vessel. Farther aft was the main engine itself, which drove the monitor's single propeller. Along the port and starboard sides of this machinery space were the coal bunkers, partitioned off to store the fuel that kept the ship running. Each boiler was a double-furnace, horizontal fire tube design. Coal was shoveled into the firebox, where it burned to produce the intense heat needed to generate steam. The hot gases then passed through rows of horizontal tubes surrounded by water, transferring their heat and generating the steam that powered the ship. From there, the exhaust gases rose through the uptakes and out the smokestacks, while the steam moved through the main steam pipe and into the engine. Monitor used a vibrating side lever engine that featured two horizontal cylinders mounted back to back, each containing a trunk piston that moved on a horizontal plane instead of the vertical motion seen in other steamship engines. This configuration was chosen because its compact, low-profile layout allowed it to fit below the waterline. Each cylinder had its own set of sliding valves that regulated steam flow in and out by moving side to side. These valves were driven by rods linked to eccentrics. Circular discs mounted off-center on the engine crankshaft below. Each cylinder had a steam chest where steam coming from the boiler entered. These cylinders used two valves, a cut-off valve, which controlled how long steam was admitted in the cylinder, and a main valve, which directed steam to either side of the piston and exhausted it. Let's take a closer look at the operating cycle inside one of the two cylinders. After passing the valves, steam entered the cylinder and pushed the piston outward. As the piston moved, the cut-off valve gradually closed, preventing any additional steam flow. The trapped steam continued to expand, driving the piston to the end of its stroke. At this point, the main valve shifted to its exhaust position, allowing the now lower-pressure steam to leave the cylinder and move into the condenser. This cycle repeated on the opposite side of the piston for the return stroke. Each piston was linked by a connecting rod to a short lever arm on a rock shaft, one that oscillates instead of rotating, located on each side of the engine. A second lever arm aft on the rock shaft transmitted this motion through another connecting rod to the crankshaft, which in turn drove the propeller shaft, converting the rocking motion into rotary motion. As the collection point for the exhaust steam, the condenser was located at the aft end of the engine on the starboard side. A third lever arm extending from the engine's port rock shaft drove three pumps simultaneously through a connecting rod attached to the arm. The feed pump on the forward side, the air pump in the center, and the bilge pump on the aft side, which was used to remove bilge water. The condenser was a jet injection type, meaning seawater was pumped inside and sprayed directly into the incoming exhaust steam, rapidly condensing it into liquid water that collected at the bottom of the condenser. The resulting mixture was then pumped up to the hot well by the air pump through a series of unidirectional valves located on either side of the condenser, where the feed pump returned it to the boilers as feed water, and the excess was expelled overboard. The USS Monitor was revolutionary, but it also had its limitations. The low freeboard and heavy turret made the ship unstable in rough seas, ultimately causing the monitor to sink during a storm on December 31, 1862, less than a year after her launch. Her wreck remained lost until it was discovered more than 100 years later in 1973, off the outer banks of North Carolina near Cape Hatteras. Even still, the Monitor's legacy endured long after she vanished below the waves. Armored warships with rotating gun turrets became the new standard, ideas that evolved through ironclads and dreadnoughts into the massive battleships of World War II. I want to give one final shoutout to War Thunder for sponsoring this video. 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