[inaudible conversations] hello, everyone. Welcome to word bookstore the second location in jersey city. You can find more information and sign up for emails about events at wordbookstores. Com. We are excited to be here for the launch of richard snows book, iron dawn the monitor, the merrimack, and the civil war sea battle that changed history. Lets give richard a round of applause for his new book. [applause] hes previously been editorinchief at the American Heritage magazine and several books including two novels and a book of poetry. Hes written for films including the island. Thank you for coming, and richard, come on up. [applause] thank you to word for having me. This is the books publication date so for the last few weeks, we had the logo for the low. But i am pleased and honored not only for brooklyn but also greenpoint. Perhaps the most impressive is the hero of my book. The uss monitor is the most influential ship ever built and it was no word about 400 yards away from here. We tend to think of the civil war as a land affair. People think of gettysburg and shy low. Its unlikely anyone will remember the navy. And the reason is clear. The navy only accounted for about 5 of the unions manpower and its losses for the entire four years of the war were often surpassed in a single day of fighting on land. There are the two civil warships that live in a nationa the natil memory. The monitor and the merrimack. And there is a good reason for this. They were the first the first two Steam Powered ships but theres more to it than that. In hours or minutes the japanese fleet was broken in four minutes but theres never been a battle quite like this one. It was a testing of brandnew to allergy that changed everything in a single morning. It is three days after the Wright Brothers went off to see and won a stunning victory for their country. And in a love of writing it as a contest between the degree in society and the industrial one and of course that is largely true. But it was the south, the agrarian south that brought the technology into the fight. When the war broke out, half of the media if you are worried about this, think about that one. [laughter] theyve redesigned their commissions andsign south, but they didnt take any ships with them so the secretary in the navy had to file with a lot of good officers and just six ships put them on. He was a good marine lawyer and he knew the north would throw a blockade along the southern ports and it would take a generation to build a comparable fleet. He wanted to go on the attack and every union chip was made of wood. He would write on Naval Affairs i regarded the possession of the ship as a matter of the first necessity and a quality in numbers may be compensated by the vulnerability as naval success for the expediency fighting with iron against wou would. So they had the idea of building a metal, the whole would be under water and safe from cannon fire. This was a simple concept and a difficult to pull off. For one thing, it would take a powerful engine to drive a ship like that. And they worked in richmond and asked them to build it. But weirdly enough, they solved their problem and one of the most important was in norfork virginia and there were big ships when ford sumter was fired on and the war began. Anyone of them could have held for the union. But there was panic and the newest ship was the merrimack. She burned right down the water line and sank with her engine intact the engines were sound and it saved half a years work but there was still plenty to do. It was a tremendous undertaking. It wasnt too much to call it the manhattan project. Even getting the iron plates, tons of them from norfork was difficult. In the end, it was half the south, but it got there and it got sent to a wedding trust work 20 feet wide with heavy guns inside it. So august 8, the mobile alabama register published an article that began and it would seem that it is being converted into an iron case battery. If so, she will be opposing fortress to defeat the whole navy of the United States and bombard its cities. It reached the secretary of the u. S. Navy a couple days after it was published. He was a very able guy who been given the needy even though he wanted to be postmaster general but even so come he was in the first few months of this administration set up along a thousand miles of coastline but again old wooden ships. He was worried only about the iron ship but where it was being built. It stretched all the way down to florida but the crucial part was on chesapeake as long as they were on station, they could strangle the ports in virginia which were the most important. They came together in forged hampton road to the largest in the world on chesapeake and the north was in bad trouble and as the blockade got broken by it, england might come into the war which everybody was very frightened by back then. One was to bounce away the cannonballs and it was a great shame this wasnt built but they paid no attention to what would turn out to be the most important one. It would never have existed if a man named cornelius had and had a problem. He was a railroad guy accepting the plan to be iron clad. But if you can guarantee that it would float so he talked to the owner. He came down to franklin street and the next morning he met John Erickson and showed them his plans. As he said goodbye, ericsson took out the Cardboard Box and said would you like to see my plan. Now John Erickson is a public figure among them. He turned the course of a hole world. It is a day that he scarcely remembered and it is partly his personality that has to do with it because it comes from first to last she was quicktempered when things went his way and often when they did and or when they did and it was a grievance. He was more in the swedish mining town by the time he was 17, hed invented and engine of hot air rather than steam and it was getting famous from this when he began a complex personal life by getting a swedish noblewoman pregnant and the fallout from that sent him to england where he developed the first engine then he got into some in the steamboats. It is entirely possible when hes the inventor of the modern propeller. One of the ships caught the eye of the navy to get them to come to america and build of the first propeller driven warship ever driven by any navy. It was a triumph and they had a falling out. He spent the rest of his life making sure that erickson never got paid for his work. When he brought out his Cardboard Box, he was angry with the u. S. Navy and had been for years. What was in the box was a cigar shaped thing with a bulge in the middle and it was an entirely revolutionary warship unlike the merrimack it was all metal and it could revolve no matter which way the ship itself was going. It was completely won over. Hed gone to the president s design for him and got the best possible. Abraham lincoln was a possible exception of truckers and more interested in the mentioning ban any president weve ever had. The only american president to receive a patent. He got it for a maritime thing. He got this idea right away when he pitched the iron clapboard. The first meeting went well but the next one didnt. Davis put his opinions in biblical terms, the books of exodus. He pushed the model back and said you may take that little thing home and worship it if it into the idolatry since it was made in the image of the thing that is in the heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or the water under the earth. So now what . Even though he was mad at the navy, they got up to go to washington and explain himself and was very persuasive. When they said they were worried the ship wouldnt be stable, he said she will float upon the water and live live in it like duck. After explaining why, the head of the board said weve been in the navy for 40 years. Ive learned more about the vessel from what youve said then ive ever known before so he got his contract but it was a tough one. He had 100 days to put together what was the most complicated machine ever built in the world at that time. Captain davis was quite right. The monitor, 170 feet long had an absolutely flat deck that grows only inches above the water. It was 20 feet across and held to guntwo guns but they were th. The ship had inventions but he was too busy to file for any of them and when she was launched into the river over there in 1852, she did indeed flowed like a duck. Now to rebuild merrimack had been launched and stayed above the water. He founded the u. S. Naval academy but was best known in the service as being absolutely ferocious and mallory wanted a crew of about 300. The monitor had a crew of 38. James morgan, claimed any kind of fame was having been the first prisoner captured in the war on either side hed been taken after developing a secret message after the union in florida and he was still weak from the alabama jail but just as determined. Both sides knew they were in a race. March eighth 1862, the captain ordered the Hampton Roads and there were several powerful ships along the union station. The ones closest to the merrimack together they amounted to seven times as many heavy guns. Buchanan went first. Cumberland opened fire and the pilot said it bounced off the side like rubber. She kept coming on. She had a long spike on her bow and they were there watching. Slowly she moved horribly upon the vessel like a rhinoceros the frightful horn and a crunch she pierces her bow up. The cumberland started right away and they kept firing until the water was around their knees. Not one shot pierced the merrimack. They went down with the flag still flying and then they turned onto congress. She surrendered. 120 more dead. The next was another union. It was over to the ground but now it was coming out and they would be there. The merrimack called it a day, quite a day. The worst defeat they had ever suffered and would remain so until pearl harbor 80 years later. The news of the battle through the entire north into a panic in the Cabinet Meeting the next cat morning president lincoln kept walking over to the window and looking down fully expecting to see the merrimack speeding up river. And where was the monitor . Merely on the bottom of the atlantic. She set ou sat out the day befod ran into a storm that filled all the spaces with poison gases. Her engine crew passed out and the other crew members happened but the ship nearly sank twice. Just at dusk she entered the chesapeake and have seen it past the southern cumberland and the still burning congress a few hours later. About one in the morning from the stranded minnesota they saw a strange bubble shape in the darkness. The minnesota skipper said all on board felt he had a friend that would stand by in our hour of trial. All on board felt nothing of the sort. At the time come absolutely appalled with the best of the north could come up within the mobster that just killed two of the finest in the world. A union sailor on the tugboat was trying. They wrote the next morning was a fine one. Clear and bright there was a little monitor and we commenced a comment. That is certainly what they thought on the merrimack when she came to finish minnesota. As the captain steamed out to meet her he called out i will stand by you until the last. They shouted back no sir you cannot help me. You expect them to try from the longest possible distance, but that isnt what happened. Much to my astonishment on the she fell alongside the merrima merrimack. Not the only one to be astonished. When the monitor fired a first shot, they said you can see surprise on the ship just as you can on a human being. And there was a surprise all over the merrimack. They said mark the condition our men were in. They had little risk and little food but after the first fire, all the hard work and anything else they went to work fighting as hard as men ever did. On the merrimack she had more guns, the merrimack kept trying to get at the minnesota and they kept getting between them. They fought for four hours and leadership heard the other until an explosion on the monitors pilothouse that momentarily blinded the captain and he turned over the command to the executive order that drew more ammunition. The merrimack thought they were heading back and that was the end of the battle just a few hours on a sunday morning, but what annoys me. One of the things that makes the battle unusual is each side believes in one and thats how it came down in history. Its often called a draw. They didnt think it was a draw. The ship survived and so did the union blockade. De gaulle or not, it had the most immediate worldwide impact. A few weeks earlier, the newspaper made fun of americas fleet and the mass of incoherence they once called the army. It now suddenly looked very different. The london times said nine tenths of the british navy has been rendered entirely useless. And just a month later, the admiralty hold it the construction on all of the worships. Over here the monitor continued to guard hampton road while they went forth and both wanted a rematch. That never happens. In may, the troops were advancing into the confederates blew up the merrimack to keep it from falling into enemy hands. Eight months later, the monitor got hold. But although both ships were gone with the year, their short lives sparked a technical and naval revolution that continues to this day. The last ships to be called monitors in the vietnam. This will be with us for decades and perhaps for centuries to come. Somewhat strange theres never been a wellknown problem celebrating the way that Oliver Wendell holmes wrote. But in the 1928 civil war essay, Steven Vincent wrote about not the future of the past and write an epitaph for the 2,000 year tradition they put to an end. He writes the sinking of all the constellations and galleys and then he and carthage. Those of the rtm prior to moving to see in one wooden wall beyond the flagship in such a swelling cloud of the ocean going down by the head, green waters spreading along the deck, going down. The mermaid pools to the particles where they drink everlasting rahm with vc the seahorses of the submarines. Thank you. [applause] what was the Immediate Impact [inaudible] the Immediate Impact was for the lack of impact spotted. Its not coming up to bombard washington. That would have been highly unlikely it wasnt easy to handle that had broken the blockade, it would have had an immediate effect on the national row thats gone very badly for the union and its the south that had suddenly broken through the thoughts that european powers would intervene. Looking back from 160 years, but seems unlikely. Bunobody thought so at the time. In any event, it had a great effect on morale, simply because the first fighting was so disastrous. Can you tell us about the name of merrimack and where that came from . This is something that may not come to most of you that a lot of people have argued iran a history magazine for many years and there wasnt a month that planned by that we didnt have someone writing in saying the merrimack should be called the virginia. The merrimack was named for a massachusetts river. When the confederates launched it, the Confederate States should virginia, and a fought under the title. But its interesting once in a great file in the official whill communications the officer on the ship was right about the virginia. Whenever they were talking about it and writing to their families, they called it the merrimack. There is another element to this, which would say that it hadnt been sold out of our navy. For instance, the phoenix of world war ii was sold in the Argentinian Navy under the name of the general, and everybody remembers that as her name. But the north certainly have been sold at the merrimack to the south, and a lot of people contend among the larger issue was what to call this ship. There is an argument that goes on and on coming an, and peoplee passionate about it. What is the best subject [inaudible] ive always been interested in this. I dont know when i first became aware of it, but i do know that when i was having a wretched time and summer camp at the age of ten, i remember t doing a loe of drawing of the ships and its a very nice subject for a not particularly talented 10yearold artist because they are both very easy to draw. It isnt as nice as a roof on a shingle, and i was always fascinated by them. Who were absolutely fascinated by that somehow seeped into the National Consciousness and got into mind fairly early. Tell us about the casualties during that three hours. Were there any . The casualties were there were plenty of casualties on the first day, i think all told 400 union navey men died. The cumberland got off a lucky shot and but basically what happened was two people died on merrimac and 400 people died on the union ship. Some idea why the battle frightened people. The next day nobody was hurt on either ship, except for captain worden who was terribly blinded but got his sight back. But the horrible disproportionate losses of the first day also gave a grim look into what would be going on in in next century when you were going to be sending men against the machine guns. The hery machine machinery is not easily take by human. But human flesh. Why were they not more aggressive an after that or decide they feel its sort of interesting. That both that the merrimac was a very cumbersome ship to handle and had been knocked around, but they were eager to get back in fight. The monitor wanted to, too, but all a sudden both ships had become so famous that they were actually too valuable to waste. Abraham lincoln himself said dont use the monitor unless they actually come from the union fleet, and mallory said dont but the Amer Merrimac in jeopardy. That led to a stalemate because weapons currently uses no weapons at all but they became to famous that nobody wanted to put them in harms way and never met each other again. The end of the story is the monitor is back on well. Well, thats true. Its worth yeah, its worth noting the merrimac was blown up by the confederate troops or her wheels survived or a couple of pieces of iron plate that might or might not have belong to her, but the monitor went down on the union seabed and stayed there until very recently, when with extraordinarily effective effort they raced first her engyps d they raise it her engine and then got the whole turret, and there are in the wonderful Mariners Museum in virginia. Theyre in this great you can see them there. A great big bath of electrolytes that is very shkreli taking waive the years marine encrustation, but its utterly thrilling to see the real tour rut turret where it really happened and at the guns that fired and theyll be there forever. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] as 2016 comes to a close many publications are offer thing picks for the best books of the year. Here some of the best books a mam amazon