War, Technology, And Experiences On The USS Monitor

During the time of the Civil War, the U.S. Navy had just gotten a new ship the USS Monitor. This ship was not the same type of ship as the others they had. They were used to wooden vessels, and the USS Monitor was an iron steamship. The book Iron Coffin: War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS Monitor written by David A. Mindell shows what it was like to have to get accustomed to the new ship and the conflicts faced because of people’s thoughts on new technology. People did not like that they had to learn how to run the new vessel and many believed that a new type of vessel was not at all necessary, very few people had fate in it. Their argument against the new vessel and technology was terrible. In order to prosper they needed to accept

The Monitor had to turn out being an amazing vessel for the Navy so that people would want to invest money and more vessels like it would have been asked to have been made. The goal was to make the Monitor look like it had the strength, power, and originality that the American industry had, this way they would have been for sure to have won the public. Ericsson destroyed most of his personal documents, which including drawings and models as he did not want people to see all the mistakes that the drawings had as they would believe that he lacked knowledge. Ericsson made sure that very few things about him remained. Ericsson made a friend write a biography and that was the only thing that contained his early career. The history of his career his not balanced as he removed most of his failures. The Monitor is not the only vessel that he made, the U.S. Navy ordered him to great a steam-powered warship which was named the Princeton. When making the Monitor, Ericsson calculated everything to try to make it perfect, but his drawings and calculation were just the start of a huge downfall. Mindell stated, “Ericsson's neglect of the

William F. Keeler wrote about his time on the Monitor and would send them to wife. Mindell stated, “…Keeler wrote and how they framed his views…point of experience did not always match that of Ericsson’s engineering.” The quote mentioned how Keeler views were manipulated on the Monitor and the things that went on were not supposed to have happened. In Keeler’s letters, he would sometimes sketch the decks, he originally started off in the Monitor as an acting assistant paymaster he later got a new position which involved keeping the vessel’s account. When Keeler received his new position he started distancing themselves from the crew as he did not approve of their behaviors like drinking, and Keeler was blamed every time a money problem would arise which made the other men not like him either. The Monitor gave its habitants a feeling of security, especially as it was usually a better place to be than the previous houses of the people on board. As per Mindell, Nathaniel Hawthorne boarded the vessel in March, Hawthorne said, “It was like finding a palace with all its conveniences, under the sea.” This was the way Hawthorne described the ship, to him he thought of the ship as a great place with everything he needed just located in the sea. Yet, not everyone thought that ship was all that many crew members spent their time complaining saying that there was not enough space it was all