ironclad Sunday

today being Sunday i thought i'd better warship. these are pictures of USS Weehawken a Passaic Class Monitor and her sister ship USS Nahant. and CSS Atlanta a Confederate casemate type ironclad. the Weehawken along with her sister ship took place in bombarding Ft. Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 7, 1863. she was next sent along with Nahant to Wassaw Sound, GA. to deal with the CSS Atlanta. on June 17,1863 while coming out to fight the Union ships the Atlanta ran aground. both monitors moved in close to a position in which Atlanta could bring no guns to bear. Weehawken put 5 shots through the Atlanta's casemate which blew the roof off the pilot house and put two guns out of action. Nahant stood by in case of need. being unable to bring any artillery to bear and unable to get off the ground the Atlanta's captain surrendered his ship. the Atlanta was then put into Union service as the USS Atlanta. the two monitors then returned to Charleston and helped in bombardment of shore installations. on December 6, 1863 USS Weehawken sank during a gale. she had loaded ammunition recently and there was too much weight forward. being down by the bow water entered an open hawsepipe and an open hatch on the foredeck. the more water she took on the more her bow went down and the water could not flow aft to the pumps. thus she sank with the loss of 4 officers and 27 enlisted men. monitors had only a little more than 2 feet of freeboard under normal circumstances and were close to having negative buoyancy in any case so it was imperative not to ship too much water at any time for whatever reason. the Atlanta went on to serve throughout the war and was sold to the Haitian Navy after. she sank on her way to Haiti. the Nahant fought through the entire War Between the States was put in ordinary and put back into commission for the 1898 Spanish-American War where she served as a Coastal Guard Ship. put back into ordinary after this war she was sold for scrap in 1904. the Passaic Class monitors were 200ft. long and had 11" of iron armor on their turrets. they had Ericson vibrating lever engines and a top speed of around 5-6kts. most of this class of monitor had a battery of one 11" Dahlgren smoothbore and one 15" Dahlgren smoothbore. the Atlanta was built over the hull of the blockade runner Fingal. she had 4" of iron armor overall. she was capable of 10kts. very fast for a Civil War ironclad but she had steering problems which led to her grounding and defeat. her battery was a 7" Brooke pivot rifle on each end and a 6.4" Brooke on each side. i wonder about the armament though. i read the Atlanta only has one rifle a side. on the other hand almost every picture or photo i see of the ship shows 3 a side. the first picture is of a model of Weehawken wherein the hull form can be seen. next is a picture of sailors cleaning the guns of the Nahant which would be just the same as in the Civil War other than the later uniforms of the sailors. a more modern warship can be seen in the background. the next 3 pictures have their own captions explaining the action.