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Monitor 21" Overall Dims: 21" L x 5" W x 3" H Shipped Fully Assembled Product Description 21" long x 5" Wide x 3" High (1:98 scale) Museum quality handcrafted wooden model ship with no plastic parts. Meticulously painted to the actual Monitor Includes a numbered Certificate of Authenticity signed by HMS Founder and Master Builder Richard Norris, as only 200 will ever be made. Requires over 100 hours to carve the wood from scratch (not from a model kit) by our master artisans. Built with rare, high quality rosewood . The model rests perfectly on a large, wood base between four arched metal dolphins (marble base pictured). To build this ship, extensive research was done using various sources such as museums, drawings, copies of original plans and photos of the actual ship. Product History

USS Monitor was the first ironclad warship commissioned by the United States Navy. She is most famous for her participation in the first-ever naval battle between two ironclad warships, the Battle of Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862 during the American Civil War, in which Monitor fought the ironclad CSS Virginia of the Confederate States Navy. The Monitor was the first in a long line of Monitor-class U.S. warships and the term "monitor" describes a broad class of European harbor defense craft.

Ironclads were only a recent innovation, started with the 1859 French battleship La Gloire. Afterwards, the design of ships and the nature of naval warfare changed dramatically.

Design

Monitor was one of three ironclad warships ordered by the U.S. Navy, after Galena and New Ironsides.

Designed by the swedish engineer John Ericsson, the USS Monitor was described as a "cheesebox on a raft," consisting of a heavy round revolving iron gun turret on the deck, housing two large (11 inch) Dahlgren guns, paired side by side. The original design of the ship used a system of heavy metal shutters to protect the gun ports while reloading. However, the operation of the shutters proved to be so cumbersome that the crews operating the guns adopted the procedure of simply rotating the turret away from potential hostile fire to reload the guns. Further, the inertia of the rotating turret proved to be so great, that a system for stopping turret to fire the guns was only implemented on later models of ships in the Monitor class. The crew of the USS Monitor solved the turret inertia problem by firing the guns on the fly while the turret rotated past the target. While this procedure resulted in a substantial loss of accuracy, given the close range at which the USS Monitor operated, the loss of accuracy was not critical.

The armored deck was barely above the waterline. Aside from a small boxy pilothouse, a detachable smokestack and a few fittings, the bulk of the ship was below the waterline to prevent damage from cannon fire. The turret comprised 8 bolted together layers of 1" plate with an additional ninth plate inside to act as a sound shield. A steam donkey engine turned the turret. The heavily armored deck extended beyond the waterproof hull which was only 5/8" thick. Thus the vulnerable parts of the ship were completely protected. Monitor's hull was built at the Continental Iron Works in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York, and the ship was launched t on January 30, 1862. T is a statue in Monsignor McGolrick park in Greenpoint, facing Monitor Street, commemorating the ship.

Monitor was innovative in construction technique as well as design. Parts were forged in nine foundries and brought together to build the ship; the whole process took less than 120 days. In addition to the "cheesebox", its rotating turret, Monitor was also the first naval vessel to be fitted with Ericsson's marine screw. Ericsson anticipated some aspects of moder...

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