The Man Who Made the Monitor: A Biography of John Ericsson, Naval Engineer

By Olav Thulesius
Illustrated, chronology, notes, bibliography, index, 254 pp., 2007. McFarland & Company Inc., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640, $35 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Joseph Derie
Joseph Derie is a VMI graduate and a long time Civil War buff and military book reviewer. A retired Coast Guard officer and licensed officer of the Merchant Marine, he is a Certified Marine Investigator and marine surveyor.

Review:
Although best known for his design of the USS Monitor, the vessel that began a revolution in warships, Swedish-born John Ericsson was something of a mechanical engineering genius with many other engineering achievements and inventions as well.

The son of a mining engineer, Ericsson showed early aptitude for engineering. He served in both the Mechanical Corps of the Swedish Navy and the Swedish Army as a surveyor and engineer prior to taking a year's sabbatical and going to London to pursue the design of a caloric (hot air) engine in 1826 at age 23. (He would later resign from the Army after being promoted to captain).

In England he designed and built railroad engines, a steam fire engine, and a propeller that was to replace the mechanically inefficient and vulnerable side wheels on steam ships. Bad luck, bad publicity, bad business practices, failure to obtain an earlier patent for his propeller, and a stint in a debtor's prison convinced him to move to the U.S. in 1839.

The move was better for Ericsson in many ways. He was able to sell some of his inventions and designs and his financial position improved. There was a large setback when a gun he designed for the USS Princeton, the world's first propeller-driven warship, exploded killing both the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy. The gun was designed by Ericsson but not manufactured to his specifications.

The manufacturer blamed Ericsson, however, and Ericsson, showing poor business and public relations sense, refused to attend any hearings thereby allowing the manufacturer to place the total blame on him, even though he had documents proving the manufacturing defects. The result was as expected - Ericsson's reputation suffered.

About that time he built a ship that utilized his caloric engine but the vessel, although economical to operate, was not a success due to its low speed and was later re-engined with a standard steam engine.

The story of the building of the Monitor, the background and politics as well as the engineering challenges has been often told, as has the Monitor's battle with the CSS Virginia (better known as the Merrimack), and the later loss of the Monitor at sea. In this volume the author offers no new information.

Ericsson's largely successful post-Civil War life included his design of more Monitor-type vessels including four for his native Sweden. In 1878 he designed a "semi-undersea fighting craft," the Destroyer, that was armed with the "torpedo-gun," basically the forerunner of the modern torpedo. The Destroyer was not an engineering or economical success but, sold to Brazil years later, it apparently helped to squash a civil war by just sailing to Rio.

Thulesius concludes with chapters of Ericsson the man, statues of Ericsson in America and Sweden, and the recent recovery of the Monitor. Interestingly enough, this is apparently the first complete biography of Ericsson in English in a number of years. There is a recent (1996) biography of him in Swedish, but the biography published by the University Press of the Pacific in 2003 was originally a two-volume edition first published in 1906 and 1907.

The Man Who Made the Monitor has some wonderful period drawings of Ericsson's inventions. It tells us much about the man and his other inventions but not much new about the USS Monitor. It will be mostly of interest to die-hard Monitor and Civil War naval buffs and those with an interest in the history of technology.