The Civil War.— The screw steam war ves sel was now fully developed and those of our navy were as graceful as yachts and the most formidable of their class. Between 1856 and 1859 we built the Niagara, Colorado, Merrimac, Wabash, Minnesota and Roanoke, frigates, and the Brooklyn, Lancaster, Hartford, Richmond, Pensacola, Pawnee, Michigan, Narragansett, Dacotah, Iroquois, Wyoming and Seminole, sloops. Meanwhile the Dahlgren shell gun began to replace the older type of smooth bore. When the Civil War broke out the navy, how ever, had become much reduced. Of the 90 vessels on the list, 42 were in commission and the rest unserviceable. The sailing ships still carried the ancient 32-pounders and eight-inch shell guns and only the steamers were provided with Dahlgrens— but these were regarded as monsters, their calibre having increased to 11 inches. It went to 15 and even 20 inches before the war closed — but the guns were very short, powder charges small and initial velocities seldom rose above 1,200 feet per second. These pounding weapons— true to the old principle — were supplemented by rifles mainly of the Parrott type, which lingered long after they had been proved about as dangerous to friend as to foe. When the war opened, the navy had ,1,457 officers and 7,600 seamen — when it closed the officers numbered 7,500 and the seamen 51, 500-20i8 additional vessels were built and 418 purchased. The total number of Confederate or British vessels captured or destroyed was 1,504, valued at $31,000,000, and the net pro ceeds of property seized on the blockade which was efficiently maintained over more than 3,000 miles of coast was $20,501,927. The cost of the navy throughout the Civil War was about $314,000,000, equal to only 9.3 per cent of the government expenditure for the whole period of four years and four months. The total num ber of ships of all classes in the navy in De cember 1864 was 671.
The great naval development of the Civil War was the Monitor, a raft-like vessel 172 feet long over all, of feet beam and 11% feet depth, of hold plated with five layers of one inch iron on her hull and eight layers on her single steam rotated turret wherein were in stalled two 11-inch Dahlgren guns. She revo lutionized marine warfare and made the wooden steam frigate about as archaic as the Roman trireme. To a •limited extent also (especially in the Confederate ironclads Virginia and Ten nessee and the Federal so-called "tin-clads" of the Mississippi) the armored casemate was sub jected to test—but it is only of comparatively late years and following the great improvements in armor that the casemate has assumed a really important place in naval construction.
Reorganization.— After the Civil War, the navy as usual was rapidly reduced — the total number of vessels in commission in the fall of 1866 being but 115. The monitors were laid up at League Island and gradually destroyed. Five which survived, though practically useless, were permitted a brief harbor service during the Spanish War. Two, however, of the more formidable class, the Miantonomak and the Monadnock, made long voyages respectively to Europe and around Cape Horn — thus for the first time demonstrating the sea-going capacity of low freeboard turret ships and dooming to final extinction the wooden man-of-war. Gradu
ally but steadily the depletion of the navy list continued and vessel after vessel was sold. Many were broken up under the law decreeing destruction if needed repairs should be found to cost more than 20 per cent of the value and finally in 1881, so far as ships went, the country was little better than defenseless. In July of that year we had, as the steam navy, 13 so-called first rates (all of wood of from 2,840 to 3,173 tons measurement) of which one, the Tennessee, was at sea and four were ancient craft still on the stocks and never launched; 20 second rates (929 to 2,300 tons, all wooden but one) and most of these old-fashioned and unserviceable; 27 third rates (410 to 918 tons), again all wooden but four, and some of the Civil War monitors. The rest of the navy was made up of wooden sailing ships, two of which had served in the War of 1812, including some that became all but worn out decades earlier while chasing pirates in the West Indies and slavers on the African coast. The one sea going flagship Tennessee (plus "repairs") in 10 years of active service gradually cost $3,800, 000 and was ultimately sold for $34,555. Nu merous other vessels built in the interval since the Civil War had meanwhile gone almost im mediately from shipyard to scrap heap. "It is often the subject of wonder," says the Sec retary of the Navy in his report for 1887, "what has become of the $70,000,000 spent upon war vessels since the close of the war in view of the fact that there is now no navy." The existing armament was as antiquated as the ships themselves. It consisted principally of nine-inch smooth bore and eight-inch rifle guns, all muzzle loading, and the latter had been economically concocted from old 11-inch Dahl grens by inserting a wrought iron rifled tube in the bore. The only breech loaders in the service were those which had been "converted* from the miserable 100 and 60-pounder Parrott rifles. This deterioration of the navy, however, extended no further than to the ships, and, at times, to the Navy Department. Throughout all that long period of corruption and decay the dis cipline of the service never wavered, the attain ments of the naval officers constantly advanced, drills and target practice were as scrupulously maintained on wretched wooden craft which the poorest foreign ironclad could send to the bottom with ease, as if they had been held on the most powerful of battleships, and although we had, at most, only 55 antiquated ships, every one of them too slow to run away from and too weak to fight with a war vessel of the modern build and equipment, none the less all were ready to do their best inadequate as it was—instantly and at all times. The ships of the United States navy have often become weak in numbers and had in construction, hut the men who handle them have never retro graded. In quality the personnel of the United States navy has always been the best.