The Helicopter Guy and the Monitor

NASA 736 wrote:

2) I have seen several ship models which are displayed on two posts and then there are some which sit on what looks like (to me) railroad ties. Is there some signafinance to this?

Each is a method of displaying whole hull ships.   The railroad ties, as you call them, represent the timber cribbing on which a ship rests during construction or during drydocking.  It is more of a functional display.  

The posts, or pedestals, represent a more elegant display which harkens to the days of the Admiralty display models.  They are ususlly of brass,  but can be of many other materials & forms.

The Monitor's hull was virtually completely covered in iron plates - above and below the waterline.  So there was no need for copper sheathing.  (Besides, copper, iron, and salt water don't get along with each other.)  The people who've researched the wreck and the available documentation are pretty sure she was painted black (or perhaps an extremely dark grey) above the waterline and with red primer or anti-fouling paint below.  (The red in question probably was a good bit lighter, and more orange-ish, than the dark red anti-fouling paint we take for granted today.)

I don't think the term "planned obsolescence" had been coined at the time of the Civil War.  One huge factor in the construction of the Monitor was time.  The Union naval thinkers knew the Confederates in Norfolk were working on the conversion of the Merrimac into an ironclad, and desperately wanted their own ironclad finished in time to deal with the latter before she was able to make a serious nuisance of herself.  As we all know, they almost, but not quite, made it.

Are you working on a kit, or from scratch?

I'm working from an old Lindberg kit, got my hands on some PE parts from Flagship to sort of address it's lack luster appearence and/or my humble ship skills.  After I build up my skills I may go for a more complex model... There are some nice ironclads (also expensive) that I'd like to take a shot at when I get better at this.

The red paint is something of a surprise though, I guess I tend to think of that as a more modern application...oh say something after the turn of the century. (Thanks for the information about that...very interesting.) From pictures I have seen the Monitor looks like it's painted with a gloss black coating of some sort. However, I think over all I'm going to do her in a flat black above (and now) red below. Then I can use a gloss black to pick out the details of the PE parts and some of the "moulded in" details.

Thanks you guys for the info on the ship and the display stands.

Best regards,

-Chuck

That old Lindberg kit isn't actually too bad.  It's certainly preferable to the other once-commonly-available one, which was originally made by Pyro and reissued under the LifeLike label.  On that one, for some reason, the turret is off-center.

Apparently one common "paint" during the Civil War was a concoction containing tar, lamp black, and I'm not sure what else, which was effective at protecting iron from rust.  It seems to have been applied ubiquitously to cannon barrels, iron parts of wagon wheels, and just about anything else that was made of iron.  It did indeed have a shine to it, at least when it was new.  I haven't done any research on the Monitor in a long time, but I rather suspect that's what the "black" paint on her may have been.  The guys in charge of the Confederate ironclad Neuse, whose remains are about 25 miles from where I live, think that's how Confederate ironclads generally were painted.

Anti-fouling paint in one form or another actually dates back to at least the mid-nineteenth century, and the use of lead-based red paint as a primer is even older.  There's an old story that the inboard works and deck furniture of warships from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was painted red to camoflage blood.  Recent research has established that the red paint in question was simply a cheap, durable primer.

A good, relatively new place to study the Monitor is the website of the Mariners' Museum ( www.mariner.org ).  As you probably know, that's where the ship's turret is being conserved (though it won't be ready to go on public display for quite a few years yet).  There are some good, useful pictures on that site.

The Monitor is the sort of subject that looks ludicrously simple and boring at first glance, but the more you read about it the more interesting it gets.  Good luck.

Another good place to look for plans can be found at: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-m/monitr-v.htm

 

Here's an example:

One of the things that I can't understand about the Monitor vs Virginia battle is the total lack of photographs of either ship before or during the battle. It was known for weeks the battle was comming.There was near hysteria in the area. Several newspapers had reporters there. There were written eyewitness accounts.  People were on rooftops and lined the shoreline to see the battle. Lots of engravings and artistic interpretations but not one photograph! How could this be?  modelbob@hotmail.com

Several possible answers to modelbob's question come to mind.  In the first place, cameras and photographers were relatively rare in 1862; it's entirely possible that nobody with the necessary equipment was on hand around Norfolk at the crucial moment.  Secondly, the actual fight between the two ships took place a considerable distance from land; a camera set up on the nearest land would have captured a smear of smoke.  (I suspect no photographer would have considered lugging all his cumbersome gear on board a ship that was heading out to fight an action - bearing in mind that the chemicals had to be poured on the glass, the picture had to be shot, and the negative had to be developed within a few minutes.) And, of course, the exposure times required for those old glass wet-plate negatives was enormous; photographers generally didn't bother trying to take pictures of moving objects.

The truth of the matter is that, despite the huge number of photos taken during the Civil War, few of them were shot during big events.  (All the extant Gettysburg photos, for instance, were taken after the battle  One guy supposedly tried to photograph Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, but the speech was over before the camera was ready.)  And the number of navy-related Civil War photos is depressingly low.  I'm not absolutely sure about this point, but so far as I know nobody has ever located a photograph of a Confederate Navy enlisted man.  (There are some photos of Confederate naval officers, and of Union enlisted men.  But I've asked several experts on the Confederate Navy whether they've turned up any of Confederate enlisted men, and none has.)

Considering all that, we're lucky to have a few photos of the Monitor - taken a considerable time after the battle.  To my knowledge nobody has ever found a photo of the Virginia, and that does seem remarkable.  Civil War enthusiasts keep hoping that someday, in some neglected archive or deserted attic, one will turn up.  Such things do happen.