An American Naval Officer in an Era of Civil War and Transition

When sixteen-year-old John L. Worden (1818-1897) entered the US Navy as a midshipman in 1834, the world’s navies consisted of wooden sailing ships mounting broadsides of smoothbore muzzle-loaded cannon. The basic technologies of war at sea had not changed much in three centuries. Flogging was still a common punishment (not abolished in the US Navy until 1850). When Worden retired as an Admiral in 1886 after fifty-two years of service, navies were on the threshold of radical transformation, building steel-hulled steamships with turret-mounted rifled breech-loading guns firing explosive shells. The submarines and aircraft that would further revolutionize war at sea in the coming decades were just a gleam in the eyes of a few visionary engineers and junior officers.

This is the first book-length biography of the officer who commanded the innovative ironclad USS Monitor in its historic but indecisive clash with the improvised Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia in Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862. Worden’s early career alternated between shore duty at the Naval Observatory in Washington, and shipboard deployments in distant South Atlantic and Pacific squadrons. He served in the Mexican War. In 1861, with the Civil War looming, he was sent on an urgent overland mission through the South carrying orders to the commander of an important fortress at Pensacola, Florida. Captured by Confederates on his return, he was imprisoned for seven months at Montgomery, Alabama, and eventually exchanged. When he resumed active duty in 1862, Worden was given command of Monitor. When a shell from CSS Virginia struck Monitor’s armored pilot house, Worden suffered severe facial wounds and was partially blinded, although he later regained his vision. He later commanded the new Passaic-class monitor USS Montauk, which destroyed Confederate cruiser CSS Nashville in Georgia’s Ogeechee River (February 28, 1863), and took part in the failed attack by a squadron of ironclads on Charleston, South Carolina (April 7, 1863). Following the Civil War, he spent several years recuperating on leave in Europe, celebrated as a war hero, and being promoted to Commodore (equivalent to Rear Admiral, Lower Half) in 1868. In 1869 he became Superintendent of the Naval Academy where he tried, with limited success, to stamp out the practice of hazing, but failed to create an environment where African-American cadets could be accepted (racial segregation was still the law in Maryland until 1964.) Promoted to Rear Admiral in 1872, he became the first president of the US Naval Institute, (which has published this book). Worden ended his active sea service as commander of the European Squadron in the late 1870’s. He died in Washington on October 18, 1897, and is buried in his family plot in Pawling, NY. Four US Navy warships have been named for Worden: (DD-16, DD-288, DD-352 and CG-18).

A significant contribution to the naval history of the Civil War and late 19th century, this book is well illustrated, and the maps are excellent. Biographies of this nature can easily fall into a pattern of uncritical hero-worship, but Worden comes across in this solidly researched narrative as a likable figure; sensible, hard-working, despite recurrent health problems, and modest. The authors are John V. Quarstein, director emeritus of the USS Monitor Center at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and Robert L. Worden, a collateral descendant of the Admiral.

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Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is an historian and wargame designer. He writes a monthly column for CoinWeek.Com and is a member of the ADBC (Association of Dedicated Byzantine Collectors). His previous reviews in modern history include To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940, Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler, Rome – City in Terror: The Nazi Occupation 1943–44, A Raid on the Red Sea: The Israeli Capture of the Karine A, Strike from the Sea: The Development and Deployment of Strategic Cruise Missiles since 1934, 100 Greatest Battles, Battle for the Island Kingdom, Abraham Lincoln and the Bible, From Ironclads to Dreadnoughts: The Development of the German Battleship, 1864-1918, Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City, The Demon of Unrest, Next War: Reimagining How We Fight, Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Hitler's Atomic Bomb, The Dark Path: The Structure of War and the Rise of the West, The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War, Operation Title: Sink the Tirpitz, A Light in the Northern Sea, A Street in Arnhem, British Naval Gun Mountings, The Indian Rebellion, 1857-1859, and Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War.

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Note: From Ironclads to Admiral is also available in e-editions.

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