Ten Passaic-class Monitors That Were Built During the American Civil War
William Conant Church, on page 5 of the second volume of The Life of John Ericsson , claims that a new class of ironclad emerged after the Battle of Hampton Roads. On the 14th of April, 1862, Commodore Joseph Smith is reported to have acknowledged that John Ericsson had been authorized to construct a class of six new monitors. A verbal agreement, which is claimed to have been made between John Ericsson and Navy Department of the United States of America, is reported to have preceded the written contract which permitted the Swedish inventor to build the latest generation of monitors. It is claimed, on page 21, that a total of ten monitors of the Passaic -class were built during the American Civil War. Passaic -class monitors, which are described in the first volume of the second series of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion , are reported to have been built by a variety of shipyards that were situated throughout the ...