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Question: What advantages did the Union ironclad, Monitor, have over Confederate ironclad, Merrimack,during engagement!?
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The Monitor had a much lower profile!. Basically all the Merrimack had to shoot at was the gun turret on the Monitor!. And considering the accuracy of the guns of the day that was a very big advantage!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

There was no Confederate ironclad named Merrimack!. There was, however, the CSS Virginia which had been the USS Merrimack before she was scuttled, raised, and then converted into an ironclad!. Schools continue to teach the fallacy that the battle was between the Monitor and the Merrimack, a fallacy which began during the war when Northern newspapers reported that the Monitor fought the Merrimack rather than using the proper name of the Confederate ironclad!. This fallacy would have been correct had the Confederacy commissioned the ship as the Merrimack!.

But in essence the Monitor faced a whole new ship!. Union forces had burned the former USS Merrimack (she had been decommissioned in February 1860 so as to undergo repairs) to the waterline when they scuttled her, but she did not burn enough to be irreparable!. Scuttling is the act of sinking a ship from aboard the ship itself!. Typically scuttling is done by a ships own crew to keep it from falling into enemy hands!. Because the Merrimack had been laid up in Norfolk, Virginia due to severe problems with her boilers, Union troops had tried burning her as there was no other way to evacuate her, but at the same time they scuttled her!. The effects of the scuttling put out the fire before it could completely make her usless to the Confederate cause!.

This failure allowed the Confederacy to raise the bulk of the ship!. Due to the amount of fire damage, she would have to be rebuilt from the waterline up!. At the same time the descion was made to turn the former screw frigate into an ironclad!. It was Lt!. J!. M!. Brooke who came up with the new warship!. Once completed she was christened the CSS Virginia!.

Virgina boasted an armament of 2 7" Brooke rifles, 2 6!.4" Brooke rifles, and 6 9" smoothbores!. Though DANFS (Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships) lists a pair of 12 lb!. howitzers, most other sources do not give a compliment of more than ten cannons by the time of her historic battle with Monitor (however, by May she did include the howitzers)!. This ten gun compliment means she outgunned the Monitor which only had 2 11" Dahlgren smoothbores!.

But Virginia had two problems in her battle with Monitor!. First was the very reason Merrimack had been laid up!. While much was done to rebuild Merrimack into Virginia, nothing was done about the problems with her boiler!. Problems that Virginia inherited!. This gave Monitor an advantage as her boilers were working properly and she was able to achieve her full power potential!. Virginia's boiler problems were only compounded by the previous days fighting in which her smoke stach was riddled with shell holes and she was not able to draw enough air into her boiler to get as much power out of her undepowered boiler!.

Her second problem was the fact that she was a broadside warship!. That is, the bulk of her armament was located on her sides!. According to "Gunsmoke over the Atlantic" by Jack D!. Coombe, two of her rifles served as pivot guns on her bow and stern (meaning they could be rotated through so many degrees left to right), this leaves the other eight as stationary weapons, four port and four starboard!. Stationary in that they could not be angled!. The broadside design was one that went back at least a couple of centuries as the best possible use for a ships compliment of cannon!. But it also meant that you needed more cannon to be effective as the fire arc was limited to staight ahead!. A full broadside could only be made if an enemy ship was within the fire arc of all cannons in that broadside!. And the broadside design meant you had to turn so your enemy faced either your port or starboard side!.

Monitor, however, was a highly unique and futuristic design!. She was the predecessor of the battleship and other modern warships!. Not because she was an ironclad, but because of her turret!. Though later warships, even during the war, would obstruct the firing arc of their turrets (turrets having a greater fire arc than pivot guns, during WWII the turret's of a battleship's main battery had a 180 degree fire arc), Monitor had a complete 360 degree fire arc!. Meaning that no matter which way she was facing, no matter where Virginia was in relation to Monitor, she could bring her complete weapons compliment to bear against Virginia while Virginia could not do the same to her!. Monitor's turret proved her major advantage over Virginia!.Www@QuestionHome@Com