March 13, 1941 – USS Ericsson Commissioned – 3rd US Navy warship named for Swedish inventor John Ericsson

Who is John Ericsson and why does the Navy like him so much?

John Ericsson was a Swedish-born engineer born on July 31, 1803, in Värmland, Sweden. He is best known for transforming naval warfare during the U.S. Civil War through his design of the ironclad ship USS Monitor.

But this was not all he invented. As John H. Lienhard points out in “The Engines of Our Ingenuity” on a University of Houston website, Ericsson also invented an early locomotive, the hot-air engine (“now part of any engineering thermodynamics course”), the gun turret, a deep-sea sounding device, superheated steam engines, a desalting apparatus. and more.

John Ericsson

Ericsson came to America in 1839 to promote his screw propeller, and stayed. It wasn’t all a rosy path for him however. A website devoted to the history of the USS Monitor reports that in 1843 the U.S. Navy launched its first screw-powered warship, the USS Princeton, designed by Ericsson and Captain Robert Stockton. In February 1844 the Princeton was hosting Washington dignitaries on the Potomac River when one of the ship’s cannons exploded. The explosion killed eight people aboard, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy. Ericsson, not at fault, was blamed, and he spent many years in courts trying to clear his name.

When the Civil War broke out, it was well known that the Confederacy was transforming the USS Merrimack into an ironclad ship. President Lincoln signed a bill authorizing money for the Union to build its own ironclad. Ericsson’s design was determined to be the best, and on October 25, 1861, the ship’s keel was laid at Continental Ironworks in New York. On January 30, 1862, the USS Monitor, a revolutionary armored ship with the world’s first rotating gun turret, was launched. The Monitor’s performance during the battle with the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia on March 9, 1862, made Ericsson a great hero in the North.

Replica of USS Monitor via Wikipedia

Lienhard writes:

The Monitor was the first modern naval war vessel. Its revolving turret was entirely new. Its low profile was a radical change. The day the Monitor met the Merrimack in combat was the day naval warfare changed forever.”

John Ericsson continued inventing until his death on March 8, 1889 at the age of 85. It happened to be the anniversary of the Battle of Hampton Roads, in which his Monitor famously played a central role. The USS Monitor site notes that Ericsson was “touted as one of the greatest inventors and most remarkable mechanical geniuses of the 19th century.”