Development
In response to news about construction of Virginia, Gideon Welles decided the Union would need an ironclad. Welles proposed to Congress a board of experts on ironclad ships. He was granted the authority to create this board a month later.
The Ironclad Board was composed of three senior naval officers: Commodore Hiram Paulding, Commodore Joseph Smith, and Commander Charles Davis. Welles put advertisements in Northern newspapers asking people to submit their designs for ironclads. The board initially chose two designs from the 17 submitted. These ships were the USS Galena and the USS New Ironsides.
Cornelius Bushnell, the designer of Galena, went to New York City to have his design reviewed by Ericsson. Ericsson, after assuring Bushnell Galena would be stable, revealed the plans and a cardboard model of one of his own designs, the future Monitor. Bushnell immediately knew Ericsson's ship was far superior to his own and pressed the reluctant Ericsson to submit the design to the Ironclad Board. Bushnell eventually obtained permission to take Ericsson's model to Washington. Directly after his meeting with Ericsson, Bushnell showed the design to Welles, who arranged a meeting for Bushnell with the Ironclad Board.
Read more about this topic: USS Monitor
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“I’ve always been impressed by the different paths babies take in their physical development on the way to walking. It’s rare to see a behavior that starts out with such wide natural variation, yet becomes so uniform after only a few months.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.”
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“On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)