U.S.S. Choctaw (1862)
The Choctaw was known as the "Monster Ironclad," because of her bizarre shapes and proportions. She was converted by James B. Eads from a side-wheel river steamer under a pet plan of Admiral Porter, who envisioned a fast and heavily armed vessel. Choctaw was a conversion from an 1855 side-wheeler, a total rebuild--but Eads' yard did little to suit the engines for the much heavier load they would have to carry. Being underpowered reduced Choctaw's efficiency in fleet maneuvers; but she served long and luckily and lived to be broken up after the war, having survived several damaging hits on her lightly protected paddle wheels which could easily have spelled her doom. No doubt the "fright factor" of her alarming appearance laid the hex on this baby and protected her from harm.
As constructed, the Choctaw was comprised of several visually distinct sections which gave her a whimsical sculptural quality. The pillbox-like conning station, rising from the pulpit between the towering paddle boxes, gazes across the lumpy "lower ground" ahead through the lofty stacks. Choctaw's design included a murderous ram at the bow, armored casemate batteries bow and stern, a small waist between crowned with smokestacks and vent cowls, a small slanted casemate at the base of the conning tower, and finally the overstated, bulging paddle boxes, which balloon as bodaciously as the bustle on a hoopskirt. Unexpectedly, the grotesque proportions work together to form an idiosyncratic harmony. Assorted boat davis, three gaff-rigged masts for signaling, and a couple of world-class flagstaffs completed the Monster's deck kit.
As she is assisted upstream by a gunboat, the Monster Ironclad's hunchbacked profile was well captured in this Civil War photo, left unretouched in its full Bradyesque splendor. This angle shows the armored conning tower particularly well, just forward of the paddle wheels. Specifications for the Choctaw: 212'2" long x 41'6" beam. Draft: 22'7". Displacement: 1,100 tons. Armament: (4) 8" MLR; (4) 6" MLR; (2) 5" ML smoothbores. Armor: 4" iron plate (casement), paddle boxes 2", decks 1.5", conning tower 2.5". Top speed: 9 kts. Crew: 199.
Like many Civil War naval ships, the river ironclads invoked fierceness by borowing the names of native American tribes. The Choctaw were a people native to present-day Mississippi and Alabama, spreading as far as southern Georgia on one end and to parts of Louisiana and Arkansas on the other. In the early 1800s the nation was displaced by white settlers and large numbers migrated to present-day Oklahoma. After the Choctaw ceded their Mississippi lands in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit (1830), the mass migration of thousands peaked. The route was known as the "Trail of Tears;" not the last in the long tale of exploitation of indigenous peoples by the white settlers. The ironclad steamer Choctaw and her more shapely river cousins were cause for patriotic pride in the North, where citizens watched in combined awe and dismay as the sinews of modern industry knit ever tighter to bring the nation into the maw of modern, mechanized warfare. The new chromolithographic printing technique found an iresistible subject in impregnable armored gunboats, resulting in a steady stream of patriotic prints through the remainder of the 19th century and beyond. The ironclad ram USS Lafayette, another river steamer converted by Eads, provided the subject for one such "chromo."
Note the more conventional shape of the sloping casemate and elevated conning tower, combined with the towering twin stacks and huge, flaring armored paddle boxes, similar to the Choctaw's.