Stimers was born in
New York in 1827. He entered the Navy as a Third Assistant Engineer in January 1849 and became a Chief Engineer in July 1858. He served in the steam
frigate Roanoke during the early months of the
Civil War and later in 1861 was assigned to work with
John Ericsson on the construction of the
ironclad turret ship Monitor. Though not formally a member of
Monitors complement, Stimers took part in her difficult voyage from New York to
Hampton Roads, Virginia, and served on board during her historic battle with the
Confederate ironclad on 9 March 1862. Much of the success of these two operations was due to his inspired work, and Chief Engineer Stimers continued an intimate association with the Navy's ironclad shipbuilding program for much of the rest of the Civil War. In 1862–63, Stimers again worked with Ericsson during the building of the next class of monitor-type ironclads, the
Passaic class. He accompanied these ships during early operations against the Confederacy, most notably the 7 April 1863 bombardment of
Fort Sumter, in
Charleston Harbor,
South Carolina, and helped repair them after that action. Later in the year he was placed in charge of an ambitious project to construct twenty light-
draft monitors for use in shallow inland waters. Unfortunately, the displacement calculations made for these ships were badly done. The resulting
Casco class turned out to be useless for their intended role and had to be extensively modified. Stimers had inadvertently demonstrated the inherent difficulty of successfully shepherding complex technological endeavors, something that has bedeviled "project managers" from his time to ours. After the
Casco class debacle, Stimers returned to the seagoing Navy. At the beginning of 1865, he was Chief Engineer of the steam frigate
Wabash. He resigned from the Navy in August 1865, and became a consultant. He died of
smallpox on June 3, 1876, survived by his wife and five children. ==Published works==