Stevens Battery
 The Stevens Battery design as of 1874
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States | |
| Name | Stevens Battery |
| Namesake | Its designers and builders, Robert L. Stevens and Edwin Augustus Stevens, who proposed the ship in 1841 |
| Ordered | By Stevens Battery Act of 1841 |
| Awarded | 1842 |
| Builder |
|
| Cost | Approximately $2,500,000 ( USD ) spent between 1841 and 1874; approximately $450,000 (USD) additional estimated to be required for launching ship when work ended in 1874 |
| Laid down | 1854 |
| Launched | Never |
| Completed | Never |
| Commissioned | Never |
| Fate | Scrapped incomplete 1881 |
| General characteristics (1844 design) | |
| Type | Semisubmersible ironclad |
| Displacement | 1,500 tons |
| Length | 250 ft (76.2 m) |
| Beam | 40 ft (12.2 m) |
| Installed power | 900 kW ) |
| Propulsion | Steam engine; screw-propelled |
| Speed | 18 knots (estimated) |
| Armament | 6 x large muzzle-loading cannons |
| Armor |
|
| General characteristics (1854 design) | |
| Type | Semisubmersible ironclad |
| Displacement | 4,683 tons |
| Length | 420 ft (128.0 m) |
| Beam | 53 ft 0 in (16.2 m) |
| Installed power | 8,624 kW ) |
| Propulsion | Eight steam engines, two screws, 1,000 tons coal |
| Speed | 20 knots (estimated) |
| Armament |
|
| Armor | 6.75 in (17.1 cm) iron plate |
| General characteristics (1869 design) | |
| Type | Ironclad ram |
| Propulsion | Ten large-diameter boilers, two Maudsley and Field vertical overhead-crosshead engines, screw-propelled |
| Speed | 15 knots (estimated) |
| Armament | never determined |
The Stevens Battery was an early design for a type of
Background
In 1841, the United States was in the midst of a war scare with the United Kingdom over the American boundary with Canada, among other issues. Americans remembered the British invasion of the United States by sea during the
In this environment,
The Stevens brothers selected their family estate in
The 1844 design
The Stevens' original design for the ship was completed in 1844 and called for a 250-foot-long (76-meter) ship 40 feet (12 m) in beam and displacing 1,500 tons. She was to be armed with six large-caliber muzzle-loading
Experiments by
The 1854 design
The Stevens brothers succeeded in getting Congress to overrule Bancroft and Skinner, and set about radically redesigning the Stevens Battery. The new design was ready by January 1854. It called for a great increase in the ship's size and capabilities. She was now to be 420 feet (130 m) long, 53 feet (16 m) in beam, and displace 4,683 tons. She was to be proof against 125-pound (56.7-kilogram) shells, with armor made up of 6.75-inch (171-millimeter) iron plates sloping upwards from 1-foot (0.30 m) below the waterline to the main deck and running along the entire side of the ship from stem to stern. She was to have bulwarks to make her more seaworthy when steaming which could be lowered to reduce her freeboard in combat, making her a smaller target. Again, the ship was to be semisubmersible, able to submerge herself down to the gunwales, also to make her a smaller target.
Her armament was to consist of two 10-inch (254-millimeter) rifled guns mounted on pivots fore and aft and five 15-inch (381-mm) smoothbore guns mounted on the deck above an armored casemate. The 15-inch (380 mm) guns were to fire 425-pound (193-kilogram) shells. The gun crews, protected by the casemates, would load the 15-inch (380 mm) guns from below through holes in the deck protected by armored hoods; the gun's muzzle would be pointed into the hole, and a steam-powered cylinder would use a ramrod to load the gun for the next shot, allowing a high rate of fire. Water was to be injected into each gun automatically after it fired, to cool the gun and prevent it from being damaged by extended, rapid firing.
The ship was to have eight steam engines generating 8,600 ihp (6,400 kW) to drive two
The Stevens brothers made significant progress on the newly designed ship between January 1854 and September 1855, but then work slowed again. When Robert Stevens died in April 1856, worked stopped entirely, and did not resume until 1859.
The Navy by then was losing interest in the ship. By 1861, it had spent $500,000 (U.S.) on the project, and the Stevens family had spent another $228,435 (U.S.). That year, Edwin Stevens and his brother
The Civil War and USS Naugatuck
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Edwin Stevens claimed that a completed Stevens Battery would have a decisive impact against Confederate forces. Hoping to prove his point, he purchased an iron-hulled steamer and modified her greatly into a warship that would demonstrate to the U.S. Navy some of the principles he had in mind for the Stevens Battery, including high maneuverability, a respectable top speed, a semisubmersible capability, and a large gun on the main deck capable of a high rate of fire and loaded from below the deck by gun crews protected by armor.
The resulting vessel,
Although the Navy had a large ironclad program during the Civil War for which the Stevens Battery seemed a logical fit, a Navy board found numerous deficiencies in the ship and the Navy decided not to spend any more money on her. On July 17, 1862, Congress voted to turn all ownership of and rights to the Stevens Battery over to the Stevens family, and the ship spent the Civil War in her drydock.
The 1869 design
Edwin Stevens died in 1868, leaving the Stevens Battery and $1,000,000 (USD) with which to finish her to the
McClellan redesigned the ship yet again. The 1866
The end
By 1874, all the money for her completion was gone, and the ship was not yet ready for launching even after the Stevens family had spent $2,000,000 (USD) on her since proposing her in 1841. McClellan estimated that she would require another $450,000 (USD) just to reach a state where she could be launched, with more necessary to
Most of the ship's machinery was sold in 1874 and 1875, and the ship was sold for scrap at public auction in 1881. The scrappers had to use blasting to dismantle her hull.
The Stevens Battery in many ways was far ahead of her time when proposed in 1841, and remained a revolutionary design with potential capabilities far beyond the norm for her times. But her first design proved inadequate in the face of the advance of gun technology, her second design took too long to build and never found favor with the U.S. Navy, and her third design, although modernized, came too late to salvage the project before it ran out of money. Had the Stevens Battery ever put to sea in the 1840s, 1850s, or 1860s, she might have set a new standard for the time in naval design.
References
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.
- Canney, Donald L. (1993). The Old Steam Navy: The Ironclads, 1842–1885. Vol. 2. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-586-8.
- Gibbons, Tony (1989). Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War. New York: Gallery Books. ISBN 0-8317-9301-5.
- Olmstead, Edwin; Stark, Wayne E.; Tucker, Spencer C. (1997). The Big Guns: Civil War Siege, Seacoast, and Naval Cannon. Alexandria Bay, New York: Museum Restoration Service. ISBN 0-88855-012-X.
- Silverstone, Paul H. (2006). Civil War Navies 1855-1883. The U.S. Navy Warship Series. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-97870-X.
- Small, Stephen C. "The Ship That Couldn't Be Built." Naval History, Vol. 22, No. 5, October 2008.