In the years following the
American Civil War, the US Congress had allowed the Navy to fall into disrepair as the nation focussed its energies on
reconstruction and westward expansion.
The Robeson subterfuge Secretary of the Navy George Robeson wasted no time in bringing the Navy's lack of readiness to the attention of Congress, which hastily allocated a million dollars for the overhaul of five of the larger twin-turret Civil-War era monitors—, , , and . These vessels were in such poor condition however, that Robeson took it upon himself to use the money to build five entirely new monitors instead, under the guise of "repairing" the old ones. In furtherance of this scheme, he gave the new monitors identical names to the old, and authorized the scrapping of the latter to help pay for the new construction. As the Navy's own shipyards lacked the capability to build ironclads at this time, Robeson approached four private shipyards—
Harlan & Hollingsworth,
William Cramp & Sons,
John Roach & Sons and the
Continental Iron Works, and offered them his "repair" contracts for
Amphitrite,
Terror,
Miantonomoh and
Puritan respectively. A fifth contract, for
Monadnock, was accepted by a New York entrepreneur, Phineas Burgess. Continental Iron Works was the only firm to decline Robeson's offer, and consequently John Roach & Sons accepted the contracts to build both
Puritan and
Miantonomoh. However, Continental Iron Works would still participate in construction of the monitors through its supply of prefabricated ship parts to Burgess. The terms for each contractor were identical—a set of three contracts which covered respectively the building of the frames, installation of hull plates, and installation of the engines and boilers. The third contract was left unsigned in each case until the first two had been fulfilled. Since Robeson had been unable to secure funding for new warship construction, he hoped to be able to complete the ships from the Navy's annual repair and maintenance budget, but in the wake of the
Virginius incident, the Navy increased the number of its personnel and also conducted a series of Naval demonstrations, all of which reduced available funds. Robeson resorted to cannibalizing many of the old Civil War era ironclads to sell as scrap to the shipbuilders in lieu of cash payments. The Cramp shipyard received four old monitors for scrapping, including . John Roach & Sons, which had its own iron mill and could directly recycle scrap iron, received the most ironclads for scrapping—the original
Miantonomoh and
Puritan, in addition to the s , , , , , and . The scrap value of
Puritan was estimated at $43,000 and that of the
Casco class from $7,000 to $20,000 each. Roach also received several other vessels for scrap including the
screw frigate and the
screw sloop —fourteen ships in total, including the monitors. In spite of these ad hoc measures, Robeson soon ran out of money. In 1876, he was forced to ask Congress for an appropriation of $2,300,000 to complete the five new monitors. A few days before leaving office, he decided to sign the third (machinery) contracts for all five vessels, in hope that the incoming administration would honor them. He also awarded a new $997,642 contract to Roach for the fitting of additional armor to
Puritan.
Cancellation of contracts, 1877 , 19 September 1883.
Monadnock is the only known ship to have been built by Burgess. When the
Hayes administration came to power in 1877, it appointed a new Secretary of the Navy,
Richard W. Thompson, to replace Robeson. Thompson was shocked to discover the total indebtedness of the Navy to be in excess of seven million dollars, and he quickly slashed expenditures across the board by fifty percent. Considering the
Amphitrite-class contracts signed by Robeson in his last days in office to be illegal, Thompson initiated an independent review. An
ad hoc committee confirmed his opinion, and the contracts for all five monitors were cancelled. The four shipyards which had contracted to build the monitors were now forced to retain the cancelled ships in an unfinished state on their slipways at their own expense, while their debts went unpaid. Roach, for example, was owed in excess of $500,000 by the Navy, the interest alone for which amounted to $30,000 per annum. He was even compelled by the government to retain a watchman, again at his own expense, to guard the unfinished warships. The shipyard of Phineas Burgess, set up in
Vallejo, California specifically to build
Monadnock, was forced into receivership by the cancellation. Burgess' heirs sued the government for compensation and in 1897 won a settlement of $129,311.45.
Reinstatement of contracts, 1880s By the time the
Garfield administration assumed office in 1881, the Navy's condition had deteriorated still further. A review conducted on behalf of the new Secretary of the Navy,
William H. Hunt, found that of 140 vessels on the Navy's active list, only 52 were in an operational state, of which a mere 17 were iron-hulled ships, including 14 ageing Civil War era ironclads. Hunt recognized the necessity of modernizing the Navy, and set up an informal advisory board to make recommendations. Following this board's recommendations, Congress in August 1882 tentatively authorized the completion of the
Amphitrite-class monitors to the launching stage, including the installation of engines and boilers. It also set up a permanent Naval Advisory Board to make further recommendations. The new Board eventually recommended the construction of several new
protected cruisers and a dispatch vessel, as well as the completion of the
Amphitrite-class monitors including the extra armor for
Puritan. Congress approved these recommendations on 3 March 1883.
Naval yard delays, 1883–1896 , circa 1890 After their launching, Congress decided to have the five monitors completed at the Navy's own shipyards.
Amphitrite was transferred from the Harlan & Hollingsworth shipyard to the
Norfolk Navy Yard in
Portsmouth, Virginia;
Monadnock from the Burgess yard to the
Mare Island Navy Yard in
Solano County, California; while
Terror from William Cramp & Sons and
Miantonomoh and
Puritan from John Roach & Sons were all taken for completion to the
New York Navy Yard in
Brooklyn. Following their transfer to the Navy yards, the ships were to suffer even longer delays due to repeated design changes, and construction proceeded at a snail's pace. A major redesign occurred in 1886, when it was decided to fit each vessel with four 10-inch breechloading cannon, and another redesign occurred in 1889. The first of the five monitors to be fully commissioned was
Miantonomoh, on 27 October 1891; however, the other four vessels were not to enter service until 1895–96, more than two decades after the commencement of their construction in 1874–75. ==In service==