Hi everyone, welcome to an independent bookstore and we have a second location in jersey city, you can find more information about us and sign up for emails about our pics at weird books. Com. We are still so honored to be here reading then next book iron gone, the merrimack and the civil war battle and lets get around of applause for the new book. He has previously been editorinchief at American Heritage magazine, written several books including two novels in the book of poetry. And he has written for films including the pbs film coney island, thank you so much for coming and enjoy. Come on up. Thank you very much. And thank you, what a nice store. And thank you for having me. This is the books publication date. For the last few weeks that ive been in what a writer friend of mine called the calm before the lowell. And im pleased and honored to have iron gone make its debut not only in brooklyn but in greenpoint. Brooklyn has many technological wonders, the cyclone coaster. But perhaps the most impressive is the hero of my book, i need the uss monitor. The most influential warship ever built that was born 400 yards away from here. We tend to think of the civil war as a land affair. You say civil war, people think of gettysburg, shiloh and its unlikely anyone will remember the navy. The reason is clear. The navy accounted for five percent of the unions manpower and its losses for the entire four years of the war were often surpassed in the single days fighting on land. But there are two civil war ships that still live in the national memory. The monitor and the merrimack. And theres a good reason for this too. They were the first to metal ships and back then they were the first to Steam Powered ships that ever fought each other but theres more to it than that. A lot of c fights over the course of history in hours, even minutes for midway, the japanese fleet in four minutes. But theres never been a battle quite like this one. It was a test of a brandnew technology that changed everything in a single morning. Its as little as three days after kitty hawk, the Wright Brothers took their claim to see and wanted what a stunning victory for their country. And then a lot of writing about the civil war, this contest between an Agrarian Society and in industrial want of course thats largely true. It was interesting that it was the south, the agrarian south that brought the technology into the fight. But when the war broke out, half the southern drawl swat officers in the u. S. Navy. If you are worried about this election, think about that one. Resigned their commissions and went south but they didnt take any ships with them. So the secretary of the navy had to find himself with a lot of good officers and had no ships to put them on. He was stephen mallory, he knew a lot about this and he was a good marine lawyer. He knew that the north would throw a blockade along the southern ports and it would take a generation for his country to build a comparable fleet so what to do . He didnt want to wage war defensively, he wanted to go on the attack and every union ship is made of wood. Right away he wrote about naval affairs, i resolve the possession of an iron ship as a matter of the first equity and equality in numbers may be compensated bipolar ability, now if only the economy but naval and dictate the wisdom and expediency of fighting with iron against wood. So he put two gifted shipwrights to work on an ironclad, they had the idea of building a metal port on a wooden hole, the whole would be underwater and impervious to cannon fire which is a very simple concept but extremely difficult one to pull off. For one thing, it would take a very powerful engine to drive a ship like that. And they went to this credit are working richmond in the south and asked them to build it, nothing doing, too complicated, it would take years. But weirdly enough they solved their problem but one of the most important navy yard the United States navy yard was in norfolk virginia. There were dozens of big warships there when fort sumter was fired on end of the war began. Anyone of them could have held it to the union but the common system there was panic and he put them all to the tort. And the best ship he burned was the merrimack area she burned right down to the water line and sank with her whole and engines intact. The hole was down, engines were down. And it saved itself half a years work. But there was still plenty to do. There was a tremendous undertaking, its not too much to call it the faust manhattan project. Even getting the iron plate there were 753 tons of them to norval from predator was difficult, in the end it resolved that Railway System at the south but once it arrived, it got voted in trust work 24 wide with heavy guns inside it. So on august 8, these newspapers the mobile register, the mobile alabama register published an article that began, it would seem the merrimack is being converted into an iron cased battery. If so she will be a fortress that will be able to defeat the whole navy of the United States and bombard its cities. Now, this story had no idea of secrecy rewith the military in those days. It reached the secretary of the navy a couple days after being published and it scared him. He was gideon wells. He was a very able guy, given to the navy by lincoln even though he wanted to be postmaster general but even so, in the first few months of his administration he had set up a blockade thousand miles of our coastline of all wooden ships. And now this. Wells was worried not only about the iron ship but about where it was being built. His blockade began at Chesapeake Bay and stretched all the way down to florida but the crucial partwas there in the chesapeake. As long as the chevron station there, they could strangle report from virginia which were the most important in the confederacy. Now 10 miles south of norval there were three rivers come together and they form and roads , the largest natural harbor in the world on the chesapeake. They put an indestructible worship there and the norval was in bad trouble and the blockade got broken by it, england might have come into the war which everyone was afraid of been so wells established an ironclad board. He got dozens of proposals. One was for a rubber clad that would bounce away cannonballs. Its a great thing this was never built but they chose some ships but paid no attention to what would turn out to be the most important one. The margaret would never have existed if a man named Cornelius Bushnell hadnt had a problem. He was railroad guy. It will float just fine. And he thanked him and said goodbye, erickson took out a dusty Cardboard Box and said, would you like to see my plan for an ironclad . He said yes. John erickson is a puzzling figure among american inventors. He turned the course of a whole war. Yet the mechanical genius of an edison. And yet today he is scarcely remembered. And i think its partly his personality has to do with it. From first to last he was haughty, prickly, quicktempered, all in a rage when things went his way, often when they did. And he always had a grievance. He was born in 1803 and a swedish mining town. By. By the time he was 17 he invented an engine that ran on hot and rather than steam. He was just getting famous when you began an extremely complex personal life by getting a young swedish noblewoman pregnant, and the fallout from that sent him to england where he helped develop the first steam engine. Then he got into steamboats. Of course success has a thousand fathers but its entirely possible that erickson is the inventor of the modern propeller. Anyway one of the ships called caught the eye of a man called robert stockton, build the first propeller driven or ship ever built by any navy. The ship was a triumph but stockton and erickson had a falling out and stockton spent the rest of his life making sure erickson never got paid for his needy work. So when erickson brought out his Cardboard Box, he was angry that 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. It was unlike the merrimack it was all metal. And that bulge was a trip that could revolve, pointed guns at any no matter which way the ship itself was going. He got in to see the president. Pitched erickson to design and get the best possible listener, abraham lincoln, with the possible exception of jefferson, was more interested in inventions than any president we ever had. He is the only american president to receive a patent and he got it for a maritime thing, a device. He got erickson idea right away and he pitched it to the ironclad board. The first meeting went well but the next one didnt. One board member, captain davis, put his opinion of erickson idea in biblical terms, th the book f exodus. He pushed the model back and said you may take that little thing home and worship it. It would not be idolatry sensors made in the image of nothing that is in the heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. So now what cracks even though erickson was a bitingly mad at the navy, which now can go to washington to explain the ship and selfpity was very persuasive. When the board said he was worried the ship would not be stable, he said, she will float upon the water and she will live in it like a duck. And after he explained why, that of the board said sir, they got been the navy for 40 years, sir, i learned more about the stability of a vessel from what youve said than ive ever known before. So he got his contract that it was a tough one. Yet 100 days to put together what was the most complicated machine ever built in the world at that time. And the biblical captain davis was quite right. About it being new under the sun. The monitor, ericsson and gave it the name, 107 feet long, had an absolutely flat deck that rose only eight inches above the water. It was a submarine really, although that word had not yet existed to describe the vessel. All that stuck up was that her and it held to guns that they were big ones. The ship had perhaps 50 patent adventures but ericsson was too busy to file for any of them. When she was launched into the east river right over there, on january 302000, 1862, she did indeed float like a duck. In the meantime the rebuild merrimack at also been launched. She, too, stayed about the water. Mallory chose a man named franklin mckenna. He founded the u. S. Naval academy but he was best known in the service as being absolutely ferocious and mallory wanted a man of violence. She had a crew of about 300. The monitor had a crew of only 48. Her captain was a man named james wharton. His sole previous claim to any kind of frame was having been the first prisoner captured in the war on either side. He had been taken after delivering a secret message from wells to a union for in florida. He was still weak from a year and an alabama jail but he was just as determined as buchanan. Both sides knew they were in a race, as a merrimack won it. March 8, 1862, captain buchanan ordered up anchor and steam out to Hampton Roads. There were several powerful ships on union station, on station there. And the ones closest to the merrimack where the cumberland and the congress. Together they mounted seven times as many heavy guns. Buchanan went for the cumberland first. Cumberland opened fire and his pilot said our shot bounced off the miramax side like india rubber. She kept coming on. She had a yard long iron spike after bough, a New York Times correspondent watching road, slowly she moves and horribly upon the doomed vessel. Like a rhinoceros she shrinks down her head and her frightful horn with a dead soul rendering crunch she pierces the starboard bow lifting her up as a man does a toy. The cumberland started thinking right away. Her gunners kept on firing until the water was around their knees. Not one shot pierced the merrimack eric the cumberland went down with a flag still flying, and 121 dead beneath it. Then the merrimack turned on the congress, set her on fire. She surrendered. 120 more dead. And. And the next target was another union frigate, the minnesota. It steamed over to help and run aground. But now the tide was going out and the minnesota would be there not tomorrow, at the merrimack called it a day. Quite a day. It was the worst defeat the union navy had ever suffered, and would remain so until pearl harbor 80 years later. The news of the battle through the entire north into a real panic. A Cabinet Meeting the next morning, president lincoln kept walking over to the window and looking down at the potomac fully expecting to see the merrimack steaming up river. And where was the monitor . Very nearly on the bottom of the atlantic. She set out from brooklyn the day before and run into a storm that knocked out her ventilators which filled all her spaces with the poison gases. Her engine crew passed out. They thought she would die, you know, the other crew members help they died. They had not, and when they came to the ship nearly sank twice. But just at dusk on the second day of this awful voyage she entered this chesapeake. She steamed in across the southern cumberland and the still burning congress, explode a few hours later. About one in the morning the lookouts on the state of minnesota saw the strange little shape in the darkness, and the minnesotas skipper said, all on board felt we had a friend that would stand by us in our ire hour of trial. All on board felt nothing of the sort. At the time he was appalled with this ludicrous little pie plate the best the north and come up against the monster that just killed two of the finest frigates in the world cracks a union sailor on the tugboat was trying to hug the minnesota off its sandbar wrote, the next morning was a fine one. Clear and bright. There was the little monitor flat on the water like a turtle. We all commenced to comment on her and made fun. That little thing . We could get rid of for ourselves. Thats sort of what they thought on the merrimack when she came to finish off the minnesota. As the captain steamed out to meet recalled to captain van brunt, i will stand by you to the last. Van brunt shouted back, no, sir, you cannot help me. He expected the monitor to stand up and try to pester the merrimack for the longest possible distance but that wasnt what happened. Much to my astonishment she later felt alongside the merrimack and the contest was that of a pygmy to a giant. He wasnt really want to be astonished. When the monitor fired her first shot, her quartermaster said, you can see surprise on a ship just as you can on a human being, and it was surprise all over the merrimack. The monitors executive officer said, now mark the condition are men were in, for 48 hours that no rest, very little food. After that first gun was fired we forgot all the tea, hard work and anything else i went to work fighting as hard as men ever did. They did on the merrimack, too. She had more guns. The monitor was more nipple. The merrimack kept trying to get at the minnesota. Wharton kept getting between the. They fought for four hours, and neither ship hurt the other until a shell implode in front of the monitors pilothouse, momentarily blinded captain wharton. He turned over commanders executive officer who drew off to hoist for more ammunition in the truck. The merrimack thought the monitor was retreating, headed back to norfolk, that was the end of the battle of Hampton Roads. Just a few hours on a sunday morning but what a noise it made. One of the many things that makes a battle unusual is that each side to the believes it had one, and thats how it is come down in history. Neither ship sank the other, so its often called a draw. Captain van brunt didnt think it was a draw. His ship survived, and so did the union blockade. Draw or not a fight at the most immediate worldwide impact. A few years, or a few weeks earlier a london newspaper made fun of americas door for fleet and shapeless mass of incoherence squads they call an army. Now that dwarf fleet suddenly looked very different. The British Press changed its tune. The london times said 9 10 of of the british navy have been rendered entirely useless. And just one month later the british admiral admiralty halted construction on all wooden warships. Overhear the monitor continue to guard hampton rose while the merrimack held norfolk. Both crews want a rematch. That never happened. In may when the union troops advancing on the north, the confederates blew up the merrimack to keep it from falling into enemy hands. Eight months later the monitor got caught in a gale and sink off the coast. Although both ships were gone within a year, their short lives sparked a technical and naval revolution that continues to this day. The last United States ships to be called the monitors patrolled the rivers of vietnam. The revolving turret will be with us for decades. Perhaps centuries to come. Somewhat strange that theres never been a wellknown poem celebrating the battle the way Oliver Wendell holmes wrote about old ironsides, but in the 1920s civil war epic john browns body, Stephen Vincent benet wrote about not it but what does it change. He doesnt look to the future but to the past. And writes an epitaph for the 2000 years tradition that Hampton Roads put to an end. He writes, the sinking of all the world old cebit and aims, victory and constellation, golden nine, galleys of anthony, galleys of carthage, galleons with the guilt of virgins, galleons says spiking long serpents, argo and rbcs of the achaean pride moving the sea in one long wooden wall behind the huge ghost flagship of the arc in such a swallowing clouds of phantom sale, they whitened oceans going down by the head, green water seeping through the ports. Spreading along the scrubbed and famous index, going down, going down, going down. The fiddlers green, to the dim barnacle throws where davy jones drinks everlasting ramah with the seahorses of his sunken dreams. Thank you. [applause] so you said that this was a draw. What was the Immediate Impact on the civil war . The Immediate Impact was fortunately for the north a lack of impact in that, the thing to link it was good about when he was down the potomac was about the merrimack had already sunk every union ship on station and now is coming up to bombard washington. That wouldve been highly unlikely. It was not a ship that easily handled, but had it broken the blockade there would have, it would have had immediate effect on the national morale. That you had gone very badly for the union, and if the south had suddenly broken through, there was a very real thought that the european powers would intervene. Looking back from 160 years, that seems unlikely, but nobody thought so at the time. In any event it had a great effect on morale. Simply because the first days fighting was so disastrous. Can you tell us a little bit about the name, merrimack. Where did that come from . Well, this is something that may not consume most of you, but a lot of people have argued about, i read a history magazine for many years and it wasnt a month that went by that we didnt have someone writing in and saying that the merrimack should be called the virginia. And there is, now, that merrimack was the u. S. As merrimack. It was named for the massachusetts river. When the confederates launched it, they rechristened it the Confederate States ship virginia. And it fought under that title, but its interesting that once in a great while an official medications, the authors on the ship would write about the virginia. Nobody were talking about it, whenever they were writing their families they called it the merrimack. Theres another, theres another element to this which would say that, this hadnt been sold out of our navy, for instance, the american cruiser phoenix of world war ii was sold to the argentinian navy. She was suffered and the falklands war. But the north certainly had not sold that merrimack to the south. A lot of people contend that among the larger issues sought by the words what they call a ship. Its an argument that goes on and on and people feel quite passionate about it. So what drew you to this subject . 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 in summer camp at the age of 10, i remember doing a lot of drawings of these ships. Its a very nice subject for an unhappy and not particularly talented 10yearold artist, because theyre both very easy to draw. You know, the monitor is in this nice oval, at the merrimack isnt this nice roof on a shingle. I was always fascinated by them. I think in part ways for the same reason that one is interested in movies about invasion from mars. They were so much unlike anything else that had ever been seen when they went out to fight, and it was such a huge public fight. There was no sea battle. They were like 15,000 troops on both, all the shores of a confederate and union like who saw the site and you are absolutely fascinated by it. And some out seat into the national consciousness, and it certainly got in mind fairly early. That may be more than you want to know about my camp. Can you 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 ill told 400 union navy men died. On the first day of the fight, on the first day of the fight the cumberland, the doomed to cumberland got off a lucky shot that blew off the muzzle of one of the confederate guns, but basically what happened was to people died on the merrimack, and 400 people died on the union ship. That gives you some idea of why this battle frightened people. On the next day nobody was hurt on either ship except for captain warden who again was temporarily blinded but he got his site back. But the horrible disproportionate losses of the first day also gave a grim look into what would be going on in the next century when you are going to be sending it against machine guns. The heavy machinery is not easily taken by human flesh. Given the first day results, why were they not more aggressive after that, the merrimack . Or did they really feel its sort of interesting, that both ships, the merrimack, it was a very cumbersome ship to handle, and it had been knocked around. But they were eager to get back in the fight. The monitor wanted to, too, but all of a sudden both these ships had become so famous that there actually too valuable to waste. Abraham lincoln himself said dont use the monitor unless they actually come for the union fleet. And mallory said dont put the merrimack in danger. They were suddenly such valuable properties that, that nobody wanted to stick their neck out within. That led to a stalemate of course because weapons cautiously used, there are really no weapons at all but they both became so famous in that one morning that nobody wanted to put them in harms way, and they never met each other again. The end of the story is, the monitor is back on . Thats true. And its worth noting that the merrimack was blown up by the confederate troops, or her wheel survived. There are a couple of pieces of iron plates might or might not have belonged to her, but the monitor went out on the union seabed and stayed there until very recently when it was extraordinarily affected effort, they raised first her engine and then, by god, they got up the whole turret with the two candidates in it. They are there in the wonderful members Mariners Museum in virginia. They are in this great, you can see them, theyre in this great big bath full of electrolytes that is very slowly leaving away the use of marine encrustation. But it is utterly thrilling to see the realtor at where it really happen and the real guns that really fired real turret. They will be there forever. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] this is booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. As 2016 comes to a close many publications are offering their picks for the best books of the year. Here are some of the titles of the book Industry News source Publishers Weekly has selected