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The Naming of the Monitor
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Launching
of the Monitor
From the Collections of The Mariners' Museum
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New York
January 20, 1862
Sir:
In accordance with your request, I now submit for your approbation
a name for the floating battery at Greenpoint. The impregnable
and aggressive character of this structure will admonish the
leaders of the Southern Rebellion that the batteries on the
banks of their rivers will no longer present barriers to the
entrance of the Union forces. The iron-clad intruder will thus
prove a severe monitor to those leaders. But there are other
leaders who will also be startled and admonished by the booming
of the guns from the impregnable iron turret. "Downing Street"
will hardly view with indifference this last "Yankee Notion,"
this monitor. To the Lords of the admiralty the new craft will
be a monitor, suggesting doubts as to the propriety of completing
those four steel clad ships at three and a half million apiece.
On these and many similar grounds, I propose to name the new
battery "Monitor."
Your obedient servant,
J. Ericsson
Gustavus V. Fox
Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Washington, D.C.
Go to Main Category:
The Revolutionary Union Ironclad Monitor
Go to other documents in this category:
John Ericsson: Life Before the
Monitor
Report on Ironclad Vessels
Development of the Monitor
Description of the USS Monitor -
S.E.E. Edmonds
What Circumstances Dictated the
Monitor's Size and Peculiar Construction?
Chronology of the USS Monitor
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