Presenters
Abstract
On March 9, 1862, in the placid waters of Virginia’s Hampton Roads, the ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (aka Merrimack) met in battle. Their four-and-a-half hour engagement, while technically a draw, ushered in a new era in naval warfare. It also ushered in over 150 years of popular music, art, literature, and even kitchen appliances inspired by this event.
Immediately after the battle, the Monitor captured the imagination of the Northern public and was dubbed “the pet of the people.” Stephen C. Foster, working in New York, addressed his adopted city’s pride in the Brooklyn-built Monitor in a broadside published in 1862. Other composers wrote patriotic marches, galops and polkas, while a popular broadside entreated designer Captain Ericsson with the musical plea, “Oh, Give Us A Navy Of Iron!.” Southern scribes reminded the Union that the “The Virginia’s Still Knocking Around.” Playing cards, toys, and imagery flooded the market in 1862.
Neither vessel survived that year, however. The Virginia was destroyed by her own crew to keep her out of enemy hands and the Monitor succumbed to a storm off of Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862 – taking 16 of her 63-man crew with her. Yet the passing of both vessels did little to quell the public appetite for them. The iconography of the two ironclads continued to influence art, music, industry, and household appliances long after the vessels had left the stage. In fact, the most recent musical offerings about the ironclads appeared on March 9, 2010 with the release of indie shoegaze darlings Titus Andronicus’ second album simply entitled The Monitor.
I propose a richly illustrated, musical presentation which will track the arc of the imagery, music, literature, etc. devoted to the ironclads and how this has moved from representational to metaphorical over the past 152 years.