The John Ericsson story is very interesting too. There was to be a
statue of him installed in Theodore Roosevelt Park I think I recall in
Manhattan fairly recently. He steamed into New York City on a boat
driven by his invention, the screw propeller but no one was
interested, still (and for a long time after) using sidewheels to
drive the ships. And why not, they kept the coal industry happy, as
propellers used half as much coal attaining the same efficiency.

One of the descendants of the people who worked on the contract for
the "Monitor" wrote a letter to the NY Times stating that it was one
of the first contracts where all the necessary parts were "farmed out"
to twelve (12) or thirteen (13) other companies, one of the first
contracts where a single provider had not done all the work he
claimed, also stating that perhaps those that did let the contract,
never thought they would succeed in 100 days. Many ships adopted the
screw propeller technology after. John Ericsson was a resident of NYC
for many years in the East Village, and was buried in the New York
Marble Cemetery (est. 1830) until removed (as was former President
James Monroe to the Hollywood Cemetery in Virginia before the Civil
War) to Sweden and reburied in his native land.

It also interesting that the predecessor to the "Alligator" I read was
seized by the US government considered a serious threat to national
security.

Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D., the principal investigator on the Cold
Spring, NY EPA project which recovered R. P. Parrott's "gun platform"
along with other work in the vicinity of the remediation involving the
periphery of the West Point Foundry remains, said something about
President Lincoln wanting to send 20 submarines out to Great Britain
if it did not remain neutral during the US Civil War. The President
was also at a firing of 200lb and 300lb shells of the rifled Parrott
"guns" (cannons) at the West Point Foundry, across the Hudson River
from the famous military academy. One of Great Britain's shipyards
built the notorious CSS Alabama which sank much shipping in the North
Atlantic until sunk off Cherbourg, France. A huge reparation, for the
time (20 million?) was paid in a Swiss negotiated settlement after the
Civil War, between the US and Great Britain over the building of the
CSS Alabama, sunk by the USS Kearsarge which had a small Parrott gun
aboard.

Gordon Watts, Ph.D. (St. Andrews of Scotland University) at East
Carolina University, has an interesting archaeological career having
found the "Monitor" in the State of North Carolina SHPO mandated
survey, worked with us in Cold Spring, NY and it's West Point Foundry
providing magnetometer, side-scan sonar and other testing, and worked
on the remains of the CSS Alabama, where some of its Confederate crew
are buried France, and some perished with the sinking, and other
underwater and terrestrial archaeology. Glad we switched to Ericsson's
propellers!