Verlinden U.S.S. Monitor

I certainly don't claim to be the world's expert on this subject, but I have studied it a little. The university where I work has been involved in the exploration of the Monitor wreck, and a few years ago I designed a paper model (primarily for kids) on commission from the Monitor Marine Sanctuary. When I was working on that project I got in touch with the people who had done research in the primary sources (which I haven't). Among the questions we discussed was the color scheme. I should emphasize that this was about eighteen years ago, and I haven't been involved in anything connected with the Monitor since then. It's entirely possible that somebody has dug up some additional information since then, but if so I haven't heard about it.

What I was told back then was that, in the opinion of the experts, the color scheme of the Monitor was simple: black above the waterline and red lead primer below. The shade of red, they thought, was actually pretty bright - not the dull, maroon anti-fouling paint of today's ships. If I remember correctly, even the propellor was made of iron and, presumably, coated with the red primer.

If I were doing a scale model of the Monitor I'd probably paint the hull above the waterline a very, very dark grey - so dark that the casual eye would perceive it as black. (The German Luftwaffe color "Schwarzgrau," or "black-grey," would be about right to my eye - and is available in most of the standard hobby paint ranges.) That would allow such things as the seams between the hull plates and the openings for the airports, vision slits in the pilothouse, etc. to be picked out with true black.

Not the most interesting color scheme. But a fascinating and important subject. It will be especially interesting to see what the investigation of the turret, which came up from the bottom a while back, turns up about details of the ship. And the Verlinden kit, on the basis of the pictures I've seen on the web, looks like a beauty.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck.

jtilley
Thank you for the information on the Monitor color scheme, it will be a great help. As for not being an expert, if the curator of models at the Mariners Museum in Newport News does not qualify you for the title, I don't know what would! That is a very impressive Museum.

Thanks Again

Jordan

I'm adding this "reply" in order to shove the thread to the top of the list. A query from a newcomer to the forum relates to it.

As I noted in another forum. The CIVIL WAR NAVAL MUSEUM is in my town-Columbus Georgia-these guys are the difinitive authority on this subject-the hull color for Union and Confederate ironclads above the waterline is BLACK-Matte BLACK.
The Monitor below was a shade of antifouling red-the Virginia was sheathed in Copper-at least that is what it looks like on the huge model sitting in the museum.

There seems to be general agreement about the color scheme for the Monitor: black above the waterline and anti-fouling red (probably a somewhat brighter red than we associate with hull bottoms nowadays) below. The idea of the Viriginia being copper-sheathed certainly makes sense, in view of the fact that the original U.S.S. Merrimack almost certainly was built that way.

I would be extremely leery of generalizations regarding the painting of Confederate ironclads - or Union ones either, for that matter. The documentation just isn't good enough. There are few photographs of them (nobody's yet found a photo of the Virginia), and few if any pieces of documentation about color schemes.

Some of my students and I have been involved recently in a research project concerning the C.S.S. Neuse, an ironclad ram whose remains are on exhibit at Kinston, NC, about 25 miles from where I live. A considerable amount of research about that vessel has been done by people who know what they're doing. Nobody has yet found any documentation whatever about the color scheme. We think she was coated with some sort of tarry substance below the waterline (that's the only part of the ship that's survived), but we have no idea what color she was above that. No photographs of her prior to her sinking in 1865 have been found. We do have one photo of the Neuse's near-sister, the Albemarle. She seems to be a fairly dark color of some sort - possibly black (sunlight in those old photos can be deceptive), but possibly a grey paint. Or maybe some other color. I also think it's entirely possible that the iron plating of the casemate wasn't painted at all. I suspect paint was a relatively low priority for those folks.

Part of the problem in studying these ships is that they don't follow the rules we normally take for granted, because they weren't built by shipbuilders. The Neuse was built by carpenters and laborers (many of them presumably slaves, though we don't have detailed records) who happened to be available around the little town of White Hall, NC, which was chosen as a building site because it was located near a forest full of nice pine trees. The men worked from a set of very generalized plans supplied by the Confederate Navy Department, and used materials that were available and that looked like they would work. (The boiler, for instance, apparently came from a steam locomotive.) The surviving hull structure of the Neuse is massive, incredibly solidly built, and decidedly un-ship-like. It's composed almost entirely of straight timbers, and timbers that were originally straight and got bent into place. There are no curved knees, deck beams, or other pieces of fancy nautical-style carpentry. On one level the thing is crude and ugly. On another it's a truly ingenious structure, making excellent use of available materials and skills to do a specific job. And I suspect the people responsible had little interest in color schemes.

I'd be interested to know what the curator of the museum in Columbus, Bob Holcomb, has to say about all this. I served on his MA thesis committee - longer ago than either he or I would care to admit. He's certainly one of the most knowledgeable people in the country regarding Confederate ironclads - and, by the way, an absolutely first-rate, courteous, and congenial gentleman. He and I chatted about the subject quite a bit when he was working on his master's degree, but that was a long time ago. If there's been some major discovery about ironclad color schemes since then, Bob undoubtedly knows about it. But I suspect he'll be the first to acknowledge that any reconstruction of such a ship involves a great deal of guesswork - especially when it comes to color schemes.

So, did the black stay "black" when subjected to the salt and sun? Or will it have turned a dull blue / grey?

It would be interesting to see what the contents of the paint might have been ie: clay, lead, iron contents on the pigments, then see how those elements in the paint succombed to wear and weather.

Scott

Scottrc's basic point is, of course, correct: "black" is rarely truly black. As for the content of Confederate ironclad paint - I suggest we not hold our breaths waiting for an answer. I don't think there are any reliable records regarding such things. In the case of the Neuse, the one with which I happen to be most familiar, it's a safe bet that whatever paint was available was the one that got used. If anything was. I'm not a hundred percent convinced she was painted at all - above the waterline, at least.

Haven't had a chance to talk with Mr. Holcombe yet, but I did spend the better part of the afternoon today rummaging around the remains of the Neuse and chatting with her excellent, extremely knowledgeable site manager, Guy Smith. We talked at some length about the question of color schemes.

As I suspected, the bottom line is that not much is known about them. Guy is pretty confident that the iron plating on the casemate and the belt around the bilge got treated with the same substance that was routinely used to "blacken" cannon barrels. He wasn't sure off the top of his head what that substance was, but it apparently was viewed primarily as a rust preventer. Whether it met the definition of "paint" is, I gather, somewhat debatable, but it probably was black or close to it.

Guy thinks the underwater hull of the Neuse was coated with some substance containing tar - probably with mops and brooms, as well as brushes. Tar production was a pretty common rural industry in eastern North Carolina at the time, and abundant supplies of the stuff probably were available. My guess is that this stuff would be a slightly brownish black.

The color of the exposed decks remains a matter for guesswork. This particular ship did not have armored decks. (The top of the casemate probably was covered with an iron grating - or perhaps a series of iron plates laid over wood beams, with gaps between the plates for ventilation.) Those decks might have been coated with the same substance - or they might have been left unpainted.

So painting a model of the Neuse black overall could be justified. If I were doing one my inclination would be to leave the decks unpainted, if for no other reason than to provide some relief.

One other point that I found a little startling: there are some records of the flags carried by Confederate ironclads, and those flags were enormous. The Neuse's ensign was almost ten feet long. If, as we suspect, the ensign staff stood on the aft end of the casemate, and if the staff was long enough to keep the flag from drooping on the casemate roof, the staff must have been at least as tall as the smokestack.

I urge anybody who's at all interested in such vessels, and happens to be traveling in eastern North Carolina, to pay a visit to the Neuse. There's not a lot left of her; at first glance she looks like the skeleton of some gigantic prehistoric reptile. But the more you look at her the more you see. And the folks who run the site are both extremely knowledgeable and extremely generous with their time. Plans are in the works to build a new museum around her. (She got a brutal one-two punch in the late nineties from Hurricane Fran and Hurricane Floyd; the latter destroyed the nearby visitor center. The ship herself currently resides in a thoroughly inadequate shelter that barely provides protection from the elements.) The promoters are using the museum in Columbus, which Fighterfan spoke of, as a model to drum up public support and funding. And some private enthusiasts are almost finished building a full-size replica of the ship for exhibit nearby. We're hoping the Neuse can do for Kinston, NC what the Jackson has done for Columbus, GA.