Category: A Victory!
A New age of Warfare and advent of the Ships of Iron.
Iron Ships of War
It was March 8, 1862, a Saturday. On the waters of Hampton Roads off Newport News, Virginia – where the Chesapeake Bay empties into the Atlantic Ocean – the Federal warships Cumberland and Congress bobbed easily on a light chop.
The sky was blue, the day warming, the morning uneventful. Drying wash flapped on a light breeze, harmonicas offered-up pleasant tunes, as sailors went about their usual duties. Then, abruptly, around 12:30 in the afternoon, all that changed.
Across the Bay, far to the south, emerging from the Elizabeth River at Norfolk, something odd, something never seen before, had just been spotted. Heads turned, fingers pointed, as binoculars and telescopic glasses were quickly yanked from their cases. A trail of black smoke could be seen rising from a smokestack, below that what appeared to be an enormous hull moving very slowly, bearing WNW.
“I wish you would take the glass and have a look over there, sir,” said the quartermaster of the watch. “I believe that thing is a-comin’ down at last.”
General Quarters was sounded. Drums beat the rhythm as men scurried cross decks, pulling down laundry, racing to the guns, preparing for battle. Truthfully, there was no rush. It would take almost an hour before the hulking mass would be near enough to spot the gun tubes that lined its casemate, or the iron that covered its hull.
At that point there was no doubt, however, it was the rechristened USS Merrimack, clearly identifiable now by the Confederate, seven-star, blue naval jack flying from her stern. The Confederates had renamed her Virginia, but everyone – friend and foe alike – still called her Merrimack.
She had been joined by several vessels of the Confederacy’s James River Squadron – Raleigh, Beaufort, Jamestown, Patrick Henry, along with the tug, Teaser – all of them smaller, and far less formidable than the Merrimack.
The Merrimack had been a frigate under construction at the Federal Navy’s yard in Norfolk at the beginning of the war. That yard was then put to the torch when the Navy decided to abandon Norfolk to the Confederacy, but much of the Merrimack survived the flames. Salvaged and retooled as an ironclad, the vessel, now a lumbering, iron monster with sloping sides, and a formidable collection of guns, looked far more like some leviathan risen from the deep, than any recognizable vessel of the day.
As Cumberland and Congress cleared decks for action, the other wooden ships of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron – St. Lawrence, Roanoke, and Minnesota attempted to get underway and escape as quickly as possible. Cumberland, a powerful sloop-of-war, was the flagship of the Home Fleet, a wood-and-sail vessel of the Raritan-class. She had been recently streamlined and refitted with twenty-two 9” Dahlgren smoothbore cannon, one 10” Dahlgren, and a 70 lb. naval rifle – a daunting array of weaponry.
But the Virginia – now armed with three 9” Dahlgren guns on each broadside, a Brooke rifle fore and aft, and an additional Brooke rifle on each broadside – appeared unimpressed. The ironclad churned-on slowly but steadily, straight at Congress, a wood and sail frigate bearing 48 32 pounder guns, and four 8” smoothbore cannon.
The crews of both Federal warships looked-on in amazement as the Virginia closed to within two hundred yards. “The Congress then fired a full broadside point-blank. Nine hundred pounds of hurtling metal smashed fully home. In horror the gunners saw the balls ricochet into the air likes pebbles off a roof.”
The Virginia was not only unscathed by the broadside, but unfazed. Hardly a metal plate had been rattled loose. The ironclad then came about and unleashed a four-gun broadside, tearing Congress to pieces. Below decks, smoke billowed, men screamed, and blood pooled like water. The era of the wooden warship – an era that had reigned for at least five thousand years – had just been brought to an abrupt and frightful end. The age of the iron warship had dawned.
As Congress took on water, Virginia came about, then headed straight for the Cumberland. Attached to her prow was an iron ram – a weapon not used widely since the days of Greece and Rome – with which she intended to dispatch the Federal sloop-of-war. The ironclad fired one shot with its forward gun which exploded below decks, then rammed Cumberland dead on the bow.
Mayhem reigned onboard the Federal sloop as the ironclad backed away full astern, turned slightly, and found a comfortable position just off Cumberland’s shattered bow where she raked the Federal warship with impunity. The Cumberland soon went-up in smoke and flames. That accomplished, the ironclad returned to the wounded Congress, which was trying to limp away to safety.
But Virginia caught her easily and turned broadside. Raking the frigate from stem-to-stern, the ironclad simply tore her to shreds, and the Congress eventually blew to pieces when her magazines took fire
By day’s end the Federal squadron had been virtually annihilated. Both Congress and Cumberland were on the bottom, while the other three Federal vessels had run aground in their haste to escape. For those looking on, it appeared the Confederacy had developed a superweapon.
Thus, as the Virginia returned to its berth that evening –intent on returning the following morning to finish-off the stranded Federal squadron – it appeared the Confederacy had engineered a new weapon that would, not only break the Federal naval blockade, but revolutionize naval warfare entirely.
As the Virginia slipped away on the evening tide, however – and unknown to everyone present – another ironclad was then steaming-up Bay. As if Neptune, with an eye for high drama, had written the script himself, this ironclad finally cut its engines, dropped anchor, and took-up a position in defense of the stranded Minnesota. It was, of course, the USS Monitor.
The brainchild of Swedish engineer John Ericsson, his design was so radical that initially the navy board hardly knew what to make of it. The Monitor was only 172’ in length, 41’ abeam. On the deck sat a small pilot house, a revolving turret sporting 2 11” Dahlgren naval rifles, and nothing more. Constructed on New York’s East River in just over 100 days, having received reports of the Virginia’s imminent completion, Monitor had shoved-off for Virginia in early March.
Meanwhile, in Washington, President Lincoln, along with his cabinet, having received telegraphed reports of the prior day’s calamity, sat in benumbed silence. No one had the slightest idea what to do. Lincoln was reportedly so overwrought he could barely speak.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton finally broke the silence, railing: “The Merrimack would sink every vessel in the navy, capture Fort Monroe, cut off Burnside in the Carolina sounds, retake Port Royal, and lay New York and Boston under ‘contribution.’” Then he threw-open a window, half-expecting to see the Merrimac steaming-up the Potomac River, presumably to open fire on the White House. According to Gideon Welles, then Secretary of the Navy, it was “the worst day of the war.”
The morning following the Virginia’s frightening debut, March 9, the Confederate ram again journeyed across the Bay with the intention of destroying the stranded Minnesota, only to discover the tiny Monitor bobbing in the water like “a cheese on a raft,” gamely prepared to give battle. Much like a heavyweight fight, crowds jammed and jostled along the shoreline to watch as the spectacle unfolded.
The Virginia opened the engagement with a broadside that flew high, and the Monitor returned fire, striking Virginia, but doing little damage. Then, for hours-on-end, the combatants circled at close quarters, repeatedly scoring hits, but neither able to strike a decisive blow. Virginia attempted to ram, but the more maneuverable Monitor dodged away, unharmed.
Damage was done to both vessels, but nothing disabling. In fact, at one point during the confrontation, the Virginia’s guns fell oddly silent. Catesby Jones, the ironclad’s commander, inquired as to the pause. From the gundeck Lieutenant Eggleston responded wryly, “I find that I can do her as much damage by snapping my thumb at her every two minutes and a half.”
A shot finally struck the Monitor’s pilot house, momentary blinding the captain, and the vessel withdrew momentarily to make a change in command. It soon returned to combat, however, only to discover the Virginia’s – thinking its foe had given-up the fight – departed. Both sides subsequently claimed victory, but there is little question the first clash of iron warships had ended in a draw.
Regardless of wins and losses, however, every wooden warship then in existence had been instantly rendered obsolete, naval blueprints altered forever. And while Virginia’s had made a fine showing, it would be the gritty little Monitor with its low silhouette and revolving gun turret, that would inspire naval concepts of the future.
Indeed, it would not be overstatement to suggest that every battleship of the 20th Century – from Dreadnaught to Bismarck to Missouri – had direct bloodlines back to John Ericsson’s innovative design, and that on March 9, 1862 a page in the book of naval warfare had been emphatically turned.
Just after first light that morning, my father tapped me on the knee and slowly motioned to our left. I looked and saw two shapes carefully moving through the mist. Looking through the scope on my rifle, I could see that the shapes were two young bucks about 50 yards away, walking warily toward the feeder in front of us, and my pulse quickened.
“They’re bucks,” I whispered to my father.
“Pick one and go ahead and shoot him,” my father responded.
Steadying the rifle on the front rail of the deer stand, I took aim at the front shoulder of the lead buck and squeezed the trigger. With the roar of the rifle, my life changed forever.
The road to that day began many years previously when I began accompanying my father and grandfather on their deer hunting trips, as I described in my previous article. As the years went by and I grew older and more mature, I began hunting myself. I started off hunting squirrels and other small-game animals. By the time I turned 11, my father decided I was old enough to hunt deer under his supervision.
That summer we attended a hunter education class together, and he purchased a rifle for me: a post-1964 Winchester Model 70 Featherweight chambered in .308 Winchester. He made some special reduced-power hand loads for me that had considerably less recoil than factory loads. The 130gr bullet fired at 2,300 feet per second was still plenty powerful for a white tail at relatively close range, but the recoil was much easier on my wiry frame to shoot than full-power loads.
My father was, and still is, serious about hunting safely and ethically. Even though I was going to be hunting under his direct supervision, he was strict about ensuring I understood when to shoot as well as the details of shot placement. As a result, I spent hours at the range practicing precise shot placement at various ranges and angles.
Finally, I had to pass a written test designed and administered by my dad. The test covered a lot of details about hunting in general that were not covered in the hunter safety class.
For instance, one of the questions was: How do you best determine if a deer is actually dead when you find the body after trailing it? Answer: While approaching the deer from behind, use a stick or the barrel of your rifle to touch the deer’s eye. If there is no reflex movement, then the deer is actually dead and is safe to otherwise touch. When we hit the woods that fall, I was probably one of the best prepared boys to ever start deer hunting.
Several years previously, my dad had constructed a two-person, elevated stand down in a creek bottom overlooking a feeder on our land in eastern Texas that we would hunt from that year. That area was always a solid producer of deer; my dad once counted 17 does eating from the feeder at the same time. If there was ever an ideal place for a first time deer hunter, this was it.
We made it up to the cabin for our hunting trip right after Christmas. That first morning dawned foggy and crisp with a light wind from the North. To this day I love weather like that because I’ve had so much success hunting in those conditions. This particular morning would be the first of those successes, and I distinctly remember seeing the muzzle flash of my rifle through the fog while looking through the scope at the buck.
The buck staggered at the shot and disappeared back the way he came. From his reaction, I knew that I had made a good shot. If it is even possible, I think my father was even more excited than I was after the shot (and I was pretty darn excited).
He gave me a pat on the back and said, “You didn’t even feel the rifle kick, did you?” No, I didn’t, and I don’t remember the report of the rifle hurting my ears either due to the adrenaline rush I was feeling.
After a few minutes, we got down and began looking for the buck. We quickly found him shot through both lungs. Even that reduced-power .308 Winchester load did a number on him: the buck ran less than 25 yards after the shot.
With just six points, he was not a big deer by any stretch of the imagination. However, I was a happy young man that day, and I still look back upon that hunt fondly.
I have plenty of larger and more impressive trophies hanging in my office, but I still proudly display the antlers from that little buck on the wall. There is no feeling like the first time, and on that cold day in December I took my first step into the world of big game hunting.
“They’re bucks,” I whispered to my father.
“Pick one and go ahead and shoot him,” my father responded.
Steadying the rifle on the front rail of the deer stand, I took aim at the front shoulder of the lead buck and squeezed the trigger. With the roar of the rifle, my life changed forever.
The road to that day began many years previously when I began accompanying my father and grandfather on their deer hunting trips, as I described in my previous article. As the years went by and I grew older and more mature, I began hunting myself. I started off hunting squirrels and other small-game animals. By the time I turned 11, my father decided I was old enough to hunt deer under his supervision.
That summer we attended a hunter education class together, and he purchased a rifle for me: a post-1964 Winchester Model 70 Featherweight chambered in .308 Winchester. He made some special reduced-power hand loads for me that had considerably less recoil than factory loads. The 130gr bullet fired at 2,300 feet per second was still plenty powerful for a white tail at relatively close range, but the recoil was much easier on my wiry frame to shoot than full-power loads.
My father was, and still is, serious about hunting safely and ethically. Even though I was going to be hunting under his direct supervision, he was strict about ensuring I understood when to shoot as well as the details of shot placement. As a result, I spent hours at the range practicing precise shot placement at various ranges and angles.
Finally, I had to pass a written test designed and administered by my dad. The test covered a lot of details about hunting in general that were not covered in the hunter safety class.
For instance, one of the questions was: How do you best determine if a deer is actually dead when you find the body after trailing it? Answer: While approaching the deer from behind, use a stick or the barrel of your rifle to touch the deer’s eye. If there is no reflex movement, then the deer is actually dead and is safe to otherwise touch. When we hit the woods that fall, I was probably one of the best prepared boys to ever start deer hunting.
Several years previously, my dad had constructed a two-person, elevated stand down in a creek bottom overlooking a feeder on our land in eastern Texas that we would hunt from that year. That area was always a solid producer of deer; my dad once counted 17 does eating from the feeder at the same time. If there was ever an ideal place for a first time deer hunter, this was it.
We made it up to the cabin for our hunting trip right after Christmas. That first morning dawned foggy and crisp with a light wind from the North. To this day I love weather like that because I’ve had so much success hunting in those conditions. This particular morning would be the first of those successes, and I distinctly remember seeing the muzzle flash of my rifle through the fog while looking through the scope at the buck.
The buck staggered at the shot and disappeared back the way he came. From his reaction, I knew that I had made a good shot. If it is even possible, I think my father was even more excited than I was after the shot (and I was pretty darn excited).
He gave me a pat on the back and said, “You didn’t even feel the rifle kick, did you?” No, I didn’t, and I don’t remember the report of the rifle hurting my ears either due to the adrenaline rush I was feeling.
After a few minutes, we got down and began looking for the buck. We quickly found him shot through both lungs. Even that reduced-power .308 Winchester load did a number on him: the buck ran less than 25 yards after the shot.
With just six points, he was not a big deer by any stretch of the imagination. However, I was a happy young man that day, and I still look back upon that hunt fondly.
I have plenty of larger and more impressive trophies hanging in my office, but I still proudly display the antlers from that little buck on the wall. There is no feeling like the first time, and on that cold day in December I took my first step into the world of big game hunting.
Categories
What it takes to win a War
Categories
I dunno!
Noncompliance Kneecaps New Zealand’s Gun Control Scheme
As of last week, only around 700 weapons had been turned over.
(Kyodo/Newscom)
Once again, responding to a horrendous crime by inflicting knee-jerk, authoritarian restrictions on innocent people proves to be an ineffective means of convincing people to obey.
Specifically, New Zealand’s government—which also stepped up censorship and domestic surveillance after bloody attacks on two Christchurch mosques earlier this year—is running into stiff resistance to new gun rules from firearms owners who are slow to surrender now-prohibited weapons and will probably never turn them in.
Specifically, New Zealand’s government—which also stepped up censorship and domestic surveillance after bloody attacks on two Christchurch mosques earlier this year—is running into stiff resistance to new gun rules from firearms owners who are slow to surrender now-prohibited weapons and will probably never turn them in.
Officials should have seen it coming.
“Police are anticipating a number of people with banned firearms in their possession won’t surrender them,” Stuff reported at the end of May, based on internal government documents.
As of last week, only around 700 weapons had been turned over. There are an estimated 1.5 million guns—with an unknown number subject to the new prohibition on semiautomatic firearms—in the country overall.
Traditionally relaxed in its approach to firearms regulation, and enjoying a low crime rate, New Zealand has no firearms registration rule. That means authorities have no easy way of knowing what guns are in circulation or who owns them.
“These weapons are unlikely to be confiscated by police because they don’t know of their existence,” Philippa Yasbek of Gun Control NZ admitted. “These will become black-market weapons if their owners choose not to comply with the law and become criminals instead.”
Yasbek’s organization advocates registering all guns in private hands. But that won’t help with gathering guns already in the possession of owners appalled by the government’s attack on the rights of innocent people—government attacks, it’s worth noting, that come in response to the crimes of one man who explicitly anticipated just such a response.
“I chose firearms for the affect it would have on social discourse,” the killer wrote in a document he released to explain his crimes. “The gun owners of New Zealand are a beaten, miserable bunch of baby boomers, who have long since given up the fight. When was the last time they won increased rights? Their loss was inevitable. I just accelerated things a bit.”
Politicians fulfilled the murderer’s predictions with panic-driven legislation.
That gun owners would, in large numbers, defy restrictions should have been anticipated by anybody who knows the history of government attempts to disarm their subjects—or who just glanced across the Tasman Sea to Australia.
“In Australia it is estimated that only about 20% of all banned self-loading rifles have been given up to the authorities,” wrote Franz Csaszar, professor of criminology at the University of Vienna, after Australia’s 1996 compensated confiscation of firearms following a mass murder in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Csaszar put the number of illegally retained arms in Australia at between two and five million.
“Many members of the community still possess grey-market firearms because they did not surrender these during the 1996–97 gun buyback,” the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission conceded in a 2016 report. “The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission continues to conservatively estimate that there are more than 260,000 firearms in the illicit firearms market.”
Just as Australian police named “outlaw motorcycle gangs, Middle Eastern organised crime groups, and other groups engaged in trafficking illicit commodities such as drugs” as beneficiaries of the prohibition-fueled black market in firearms, underground organizations are similarly poised to prosper in New Zealand. Gangs in the island nation announced very loudly after the new legislation was introduced that they wouldn’t be surrendering their own weapons.
“Will gangs get rid of their weapons? No,” one prominent gang leader told Stuff. “Because of who we are, we can’t guarantee our own safety.”
So Kiwis who actually do comply with the confiscation scheme will put themselves at a disadvantage relative to violent gangs that don’t intend to obey.
They would also be putting themselves at a disadvantage relative to the government, which is retaining its own weapons despite a distinct lack of competence (in April, a police station provided one-stop, discount gun shopping for an enterprising burglar) and intends to further squeeze the country’s liberty.
Even before the latest law has been fully implemented, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is planning more gun legislation, including registration. Additionally, the Security Intelligence Service stepped up domestic spying after the mosque attacks and saw a big boost in its funding courtesy of the latest budget.
Arguably, defiant gun owners are just being realistic in seeing little to gain by obeying restrictive laws that have their greatest impact on those who pose no threat to their neighbors.
Fulfilling internal police expectations, some Kiwis openly boast of defying the law—especially with compensation rates set well below the value of the firearms that are supposed to be surrendered. The low turn-in numbers suggest they’re matching words with action.
And who can claim to be surprised? By refusing to comply with restrictions, New Zealand gun owners are just following in the footsteps of their counterparts in Australia, Europe, and the United States. In each of these places, and many more besides, gun owners ignored laws, kept their property out of sight, and frustrated efforts to disarm them.
If New Zealand’s political class had looked to the history of gun control efforts they would have seen that they were walking a well-trodden path that leads to a dead end. But then again, if they had enough foresight to know that ill-considered restrictions on personal liberty are usually counterproductive and often breed rebellion, they probably wouldn’t have gone into government.
Last September, California passed a law raising the minimum age to own a firearm from 18 to 21. This highly problematic law was bound for one or more challenges from the moment it was proposed and now that’s come to pass. Multiple plaintiffs have come forward asking for the law to be struck down as it infringes on their Second Amendment rights. More coverage from the Sacramento Bee.
A coalition of California gun rights groups has sued the state in federal court to prevent the enactment of a law prohibiting people younger than 21 from buying firearms.
“Once individuals turn 18, they are adults in the eyes of the law,” said Carlsbad attorney John W. Dillon, lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “Law-abiding adults are entitled to fully exercise all of their fundamental rights, including their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for all lawful purposes, not just hunting or sport.”
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. That’s the same district where Judge Roger Benitez struck down California’s ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines earlier this year.
In an effort to make the bill a bit more palatable to gun owners, there were several exceptions built into it, one of which renders it almost toothless. Under this law you could still own a firearm at the age of 18 if you were serving in the military, a law enforcement officer or had a hunting license. That last exception was the real kicker because all you’d really have to do is apply for a hunting license, bring it with you and you could get around the law. You didn’t even have to actually go hunting. You just needed the license.
But as the attorney for one of the plaintiffs is pointing out, that shouldn’t make any difference. First of all, the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting, nor is gun ownership reserved to those who choose to hunt. Once you turn 18 you are legally considered an adult, with all the same rights and privileges as anyone else. (Assuming you’ve managed to avoid becoming a felon and haven’t been adjudicated as being mentally unstable.) The plaintiff, in this case, is 20 and has no interest in hunting. He just wants a firearm for home defense.
One important point is brought up by those claiming that states regularly pass laws restricting the sale of alcohol and tobacco to those under the age of 21. That’s very true, but there’s a key difference here. You don’t have a constitutional right to booze or smokes, so the state can regulate them as it chooses. You do, however, have the right to keep and bear arms, and that right fully engages when you become an adult.
This has cropped up in other cases and it’s always a source of frustration. It’s bad enough that we can’t seem to agree as a society what the age of adulthood really is and what it entails. You can enlist in the military at the age of 17 (with parental consent) and head out to fight America’s enemies on the battlefield. But you can’t defend your own home until you are three years older? Hopefully, the courts will see the lack of logic in this argument.