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Every day, on land and on water, the Civil War soldier saw everywhere of the work of the heavy hand, the light hand, the always sure hand of the engineer -- and made use of it. On boats, the soldier moved down rivers or crossed them on bridges. On land, he moved along new roads or on rails in trains. He took refuge from the work of enemy engineers inside forts and trenches. In his hand, he held killing engines. But we have reached in vain to the endless Civil War bookshelf for a book by an engineer or even just about engineers, until now.
To tell the story of one of the engineering marvels of the war, the design and construction of the Monitor, would be difficult without simultaneously telling the very different story of the Merrimac. Enhancing his narrative with illustrations, James deKay tells both stories easily and eagerly, moving his readers through this book of only 220 pages at breakneck speed in a vigorous, vivid, intelligent style sustained right into the final chapter. What deKay has made of the clash of these armored naval gladiators is a story told from the engineer's point of view. John Erickson, a Swedish engineer, is himself an ironclad individual doing battle in several arenas and finally achieving victory. The Union struggle to rescue the Merrimac at Norfolk, the failed attempt to blow it up to prevent seizure by Confederates, its conversion under the direction of Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory into an ironclad, and the Union's race to launch its rival the Monitor is a saga as enthralling as the actual battle, which sent the Monitor down to its grave from which efforts are being made even as you read this review to raise it.
James deKay has raised the Monitor from that populous grave off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Not literally. That would, after the first shiver on seeing the headlines, be boring. No, he has raised it out of the collective American subconscious to a place in our conscious imaginations where we may watch its conception, construction, and conflict as if we were there.
David Madden is the Director of the United States Civil War Center at Louisiana State University. His Civil War novel "Sharpshooter" was recently published by the University of Tennessee Press.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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