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

The American Civil War (1861–1865) is usually studied as an exclusively American phenomenon – North against South, slavery versus democracy, the subject of increasingly panoramic treatments of mass slaughter at Antietam, Gettysburg and elsewhere. This important new book provides a very different perspective. Howard Fuller internationalises the war, and shows how in one critical aspect Federal naval policy was directed at enemies beyond the American continent.

Fearing the intervention of Britain or France the U.S. Government created a deterrent. Designed and built by John Ericsson, the tormented Swedish engineering genius, the USS Monitor became the defining icon of Union power. Ericsson chose the name to teach a lesson to rebels and British alike. This was typical of his approach to war, seeking knock-out blows through technological dominance and advanced engineering. When the Monitor stopped the CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862, the first ironclad naval engagement, the ship and her type were invested with a political significance far beyond their military utility. At this time Britain and France were engaged in a major naval arms race in sea going ironclads, of which HMS Warrior is the best known example. The North needed a defence against such fleets.

Consequently Hampton Roads became a public relations triumph, turned into propaganda by the press to warn off the British. The diminutive Monitor was sold as the antidote to the mighty Warrior, Yankee ingenuity countering old-fashioned European ideas. That the two ships were designed for entirely different purposes, and that the small American turret ship was too slow, and too slow firing, to stand up to her counterpart, was ignored by press and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. Soon the Federal Government had ordered a monitor fleet, including an ocean-going version, which Ericsson ominously named the Dictator.

In Britain these ships and their monster guns caused something approaching a crisis of confidence. Yet they were of limited utility: Ericsson had always taken care to stress that they had been designed to deal with hostile ironclads in coastal waters, and steam past forts. The loss of the Monitor in a gale, and the repulse of the monitor fleet by the defences of Charleston in 1863 dented their prestige, just as Anglo-American relations began to recover a degree of balance. Charleston provided a powerful case study for any naval commander serving a democracy. Desperate for success after a series of humiliating military set-backs, Federal cabinet officials pushed Admiral Francis Du Pont into an attack he did not believe could succeed. They had fallen into the trap of believing their own propoganda. Ericsson had warned them not to risk the prestige of his ships in an operation when they could only succeed by luck. After the defeat Du Pont was sacked, to avoid revealing to the public that monitors were a limited weapons system. His defence, telling the truth, was tantamount to treason.

The monitor fleet provided the Federal Government with an answer to British naval power, and reduced the chance that Britain would try to impose a two state solution on the conflict. At the same time British success in the ironclad race with France preserved the European state system from the ambitions of Napoleon III. That the two fleets never came to blows was in part a reflection of technological incompatibility, but more significantly of the underlying good sense of the leaders of both countries – in contrast to the press.

By placing the early ironclad fleets of Britain and America in their diplomatic context Fuller provides an altogether more persuasive explanation of naval technology and the war of words between admirals, engineers and politicians that swept both countries. The British did not need to put their faith in novelty, they had the resources and money to do the job with conventional ships. Once the French challenge...