A what if

One of my guilty historical pleasures is playing with the idea of, ‘what if.’ What if the air craft carriers had been in harbor on December 7th… What if Jackson were alive at Gettysburg… What if… Well after reading Iron Makers To The Confederacy: John R. Andrews and Tredegar Iron Works by Charles B. Dew, I have found another what if.

During the late months of 1861 and into the spring of 1862 Tredegar Iron works of Richmond Virginia was asked to make the iron sheeting for the South’s new iron clad as well as make cannon. In the lot of armament made for the CSS Virginia were two 7 inch and two 6.4 inch Brookes rifled cannon. “They also cast a number of shell for the Merrimack’s rifled canon but no solid shot was produced prior to the ironclad’s first engagement with the enemy” (119.) Here comes the what if. “… the confederate gun crews had no wrought iron bolts with which to load their rifled guns. Those projectiles could have penetrated the turret of the enemy’s (Monitor) ship” (120).

So what if they had had the solid shells mentioned in the previous quote? If the confederate shot had penetrated the turret of the Monitor the result of the engagement would have turned in favor of the confederates. The smoothbore shots of the Monitor was not capable of breaching the Tredegar iron of the CSS Virginia. With the confederate iron clad in control of Hampton Roads, would the federal army have been able to use Fort Monroe as a staging center for the Peninsula campaign? How much more destruction could the CSS Virginia had brought on the federal fleet? How much would the loss at Hampton Roads impacted the overall strategy of the war early on? I am not of the opinion that a solid shot for the rifled Brooks guns would have won the war for the Confederacy. I do think the Peninsula campaign may not have happened. From there, I’ll let you ponder.

NOTE: After the Virginia/Monitor engagement, Tredegar came up with a steel tipped wrought iron bolt, weighing 115 pounds, developed to pierce iron (130). Later the U.S.S. Keokuk was sunk using that ammunition fired from a rifled cannon.

By the way the book was a fascinating study of the south’s largest iron producer’s successes and failures in equipping the Confederacy and how their ability to utilize the natural resources (iron ore, coal and the like) kept the South from capitalizing on its small but effective iron manufacturing base.