USS MONITOR

You are looking at the most accurate USS Monitor model ever produced in the history of model making. It has coal loading ports, skylights, anchor access, among many other features. The armor plate design of the real ironclad and the number of them are strictly implemented. The first model was built from information provided by Dwight Sturtevant Hughes who is the author of the Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862. A subsequent model was commissioned by the president of National Museum of the American Sailor.

The USS Monitor was a marvel of the mid-nineteenth century. There are many first's associated with the USS Monitor. She was the first completely sheathed with iron plating on the sides, the first ironclad warship commissioned by the United States Navy, the first ship employing a revolving turret. She was also the first ship which had below waterline flushing toilets.  

Monitor was designed by Swedish-born inventor John Ericsson. Ericsson had moved to England in 1826 and promptly invented the screw propeller; then he crossed to the United States and designed the first screw-driven warship. After the start of the War, Ericsson designed the Monitor from scratch, a ship utterly different from any warship ever built: a low freeboard (only the ship's turret, stacks, and small armored pilot house projected above the hull) whose side was covered by whopping 7" thick armor plates. The turret was not part of Ericsson’s original design, but rather the brainchild of U.S. inventor Theodore Timby.  

Highly impressed by Ericsson's innovative design, Cornelius S. Bushnell--one of Connecticut's most distinguished men--traveled to Washington and convinced the Navy to authorize its construction. The contract for the ship was given to Ericsson and work began in New York. With construction workers working at a frenetic pace, the ironclad was launched just within 100 days of being laid down. On February 25, USS Monitor was commissioned with Lieutenant John L. Worden in command.

Not much more than a month after it hit the water, the USS Monitor was headed for its first naval engagement at Hampton Roads in southeast Virginia. The Confederate Navy had its own ironclad, the Virginia, which was different from the Monitor in that it was a conventional wooden warship that was given a new iron epidermis. On Mar. 7, 1862, the Virginia had destroyed several Union ships at Hampton Roads. When the Monitor pulled into the harbor the next night, the Virginia found a much worthier opponent. In the Battle of Hampton Roads, the two ships pummeled each other with cannon balls and shells to no real effect, and since neither ship’s cannons could penetrate the other's armor, the battle, which lasted about four hours, was a stalemate. The future of naval warfare changed dramatically on that day. The day of the wooden gunship was over.

After the ironclad’s showdown with CSS Virginia, she was considered the ‘little ship that saved the nation’, as without her, the whole Union Navy would have been destroyed by the Virginia. The Monitor continued to serve in Virginia waters. Monitor was positioned off of Newport News Point, guarding against any excursion by the Confederate ironclad CSS Richmond.

USS Monitor was lost on December 31 1862, when the vessel was swamped by high waves in a violent storm while under tow by the tug USS Rhode Island off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina for a new battle. Sixteen of her 62-member crew were either lost overboard or went down with the ironclad, while many others were saved by lifeboats sent from Rhode Island. In August 1973, the wreckage was located on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. In 2001, recovery efforts began to salvage the ship's steam engine. The next year, Monitor's innovative turret was raised. The upside-down turret was raised from beneath her deep, capsized wreck years later with the remains of two of her crew still aboard. The two were later buried with full military honors on March 8, 2013, at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. All artifacts are now at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, VA.  

This primarily wood USS Monitor model is 30" long x 9" wide x 9.5" tall $2,950 Shipping and insurance in the contiguous US included. Other places: $300 flat rate. This model is in stock and can be shipped within 5 business days.

Other ship, different size? Just let us know by clicking on this link: Commissioning. The process will be easy and stress free. 

Be sure to check out our beautiful USS Cairo, CSS Tennessee, CSS Virginia model, and USS Tecumseh.