Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Naval Engineer. Edward William Sloan III
McCauley, finally despairing of any help and expecting his yard at any moment to be overrun by Virginian troops, took the situation into his own hands. He promptly scuttled all the vessels in port, including the Merrimack, whose engines and boilers, however, were still intact. Shortly afterward, a Union naval force led by Commodore Hiram Paulding arrived at the yard and attempted to destroy the entire installation; but when the Confederate forces moved in they were able to seize not only the smoldering and partly submerged Merrimack, but also a large amount of cannon and naval stores which would later prove to be of immeasurable value to their cause.
Responsibility for the loss of the Navy Yard rested on many shoulders. Welles and Lincoln had delayed initially through fear of provoking secession. McCauley and Alden, the senile Commodore and the Commander with “heroic drawing room resolution and good intentions.” had vacillated and retreated into impotent inaction, although one might argue that they should have received more explicit and forceful orders from the Navy Department. Only Benjamin Isherwood emerged from the episode with his reputation entirely untarnished. In his circumscribed field of action, he had moved with notable speed and decision. Furthermore, he made a vigorous effort to the limits of his authority to rescue the Merrimack. Failing in this endeavor, he had no alternative but to return to Washington.
Isherwood’s importance in this episode rests on several historical might-have-been’s; for the successful removal of the Merrimack would certainly have altered the course of naval operations in the Civil War, and might have drastically changed the course of American naval technology and strategy for a generation. Without the challenge of the Confederate ironclad built on the hull and machinery of the old Merrimack, John Ericsson’s revolutionary ironclad Monitor might not have appeared or engaged in the dramatic encounter at Hampton Roads. This battle, so influential in encouraging the development of ram tactics and in starting the American Navy off on a “monitor craze” which proved to be a strategic handicap in later years, might never have occurred without the effective challenge by the formidable Confederate ironclad which, phoenix-like, had risen from the ashes of the Merrimack.
Ironically, Isherwood was to a degree fortunate in his failure to prevent the loss of the Merrimack. His actions in this situation demonstrated that energy and resourcefulness which Welles had sought in choosing his new Engineer in Chief. Free from any blame for the Merrimack’s loss, Isherwood had earned the respect and confidence of his superior; and by wisely acknowledging the limitations of his authority, he had avoided a bitter conflict with officers of the line at a time when such conflict would have shattered the effectiveness of the Union Navy.
II. Building the Union Navy
“The first act I had to perform as Engineer-in-Chief,” Isherwood later recalled, “was to prepare machinery for the war service, as the war was then upon us.”1
At the beginning of March, 1861, the American Navy consisted of ninety vessels, of which forty-two were in commission. There were only twelve stationed in the home squadron, and of these, just four ships, with twenty-five guns among them, were in Northern ports.2 To hastily reassemble a fleet spread all over the world was a difficult task for the Navy Department; far more challenging would be the effective use of these few ships.
The most obvious role for the Navy at the beginning of the Civil War was to blockade southern supply routes. This was a staggering undertaking. From Alexandria, Virginia to Brownsville, Texas stretched 3,550 miles of coast, much of which was “double coastline,” providing a continuous, shallow inner waterway in which Confederate blockade-runners and coasters could operate with relative impunity. By his institution of a formal blockade of the South on April 19, 1861, President Lincoln gave his Secretary of the Navy the task of patrolling 189 harbors and navigable river mouths with a handful of naval vessels. If it were successful, this “Anaconda Policy” of strangling the South through disrupting its trade and economy would devastate the Confederacy by attrition, while complementing the military strategy of the Union Army.3
To achieve a successful blockade, Secretary Welles had to improvise a large fleet of steamers, capable of staying continually on station without breakdown, and fast enough to discourage all but the swiftest Confederate blockade-runners. For such warships, Welles once again turned to his Engineer in Chief.
Benjamin Isherwood, in 1861, presented an appearance and manner which alone were convincing evidence of his ability to meet the Secretary’s most stringent demands. Isherwood was a heavy-set man, with immensely broad shoulders and a thick chest. Although five feet, ten inches in height, he did not appear to be that tall because of his massive frame; yet his quick movements and alert manner dispelled any impression of corpulence. And the combination of his dark, masculine features, curly hair, and sensitive, if often forbidding countenance, won him an accolade as “the handsomest man in Washington” during the Civil War.4
Although reputed to be a great conversationalist, especially with the ladies of the Capital, Isherwood was not the charming bon vivant his well-meaning friends have portrayed. Passionately devoted to thoroughness and accuracy, and indifferent to his personal reputation with others, Isherwood was not an easy companion. His enormous energies far exceeded those of most of his associates; and his basic impatience, under the pressure of the war years, grew into an unremitting intolerance of stupidity, laziness, and error. He had neither time nor desire to cultivate people, regardless of their importance, and this indifference too often appeared to be contempt. He was admired, but all too often grudgingly, and his consistently unequivocal position on any issue, controversial or not, won him few real friends, but many dedicated enemies.
To create a steam Navy, Isherwood could draw on few resources other than his own abilities, but he received invaluable aid from a colleague. As Engineer in Chief, he was still under the immediate supervision of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment, and Repairs, currently directed by the civilian naval constructor John Lenthall. When he became head of the newly created Bureau of Steam Engineering, in 1862, Isherwood continued his close association with his former Chief. The Union and its Navy were fortunate that Lenthall and Isherwood were fast friends and would remain so throughout the war. Lenthall, fifteen years older than Isherwood, had a disposition closely resembling that of his colleague. Without, as Gideon Welles recorded in his diary, “much pliability or affability,” John Lenthall was sternly honest, and as dedicated to his profession as was his young engineering associate. His “unaffected manner ha[d] offended others” just as Isherwood’s tactlessness had endeared him to few, and Lenthall’s indifference to private interests won him a bitter, destructive criticism in which Isherwood was soon to share.5 With unfaltering faith in each other’s abilities, Lenthall and Isherwood worked together in complete trust, meeting the continuing challenge of technological and naval developments with confidence and conviction.
Totally out of keeping with Benjamin Isherwood’s personality were the surroundings in which he labored. In 1861 the Navy Department was housed in a “small red-brick building . . . very plain and even humble.” In this building Isherwood’s offices were located in “rooms below stairs,” while the Secretary and his staff enjoyed offices which lined both sides of an upstairs hall. To lend a feeling of tradition, a number of oil paintings, water colors, and engravings adorned the walls along the upstairs corridor.6
Isherwood started with a small staff which expanded only slightly throughout the war. This office, initially part of Lenthall’s bureau, contained several young naval engineers assigned to assist the Engineer in Chief. As the increasing amount of detailed and largely mechanical work threatened to inundate the engineers, Lenthall, in June, 1861, requested both a clerk and a draftsman for Isherwood’s office, noting that there were none attached there at the time.
Among the young engineers who worked with Isherwood, no one questioned the Engineer in Chief’s absolute authority. According to Clark Fisher, a naval engineer who worked with him during the Civil War, Isherwood “instilled a wholesome dread of any carelessness or error” in his subordinates. Not only was he “quick to discover a mistake,” but he was “never at a loss for incisive words expressive of his opinion of the culprit and his work, or lack of it.”7 His dedication to exact, exhaustive work easily explains the impatience