Ironclad Captains: The Commanding Officers of the USS Monitor

iii, [1], 79, [3] pages plus covers. Illustrated front cover. Illustrations. Bibliography. One of their Historical Report Series. Includes information on John Lorimer Worden, Samuel Dana Green, Thomas Oliver Selfridge, Jr., William Nicoholson Jeffers, Thomas Holdup Stevens II, and John Payne Bankhead. Name in ink on front cover--H.D. Langley. Harold David Langley (15 February 1925 - 29 July 2020) was a diplomatic and naval historian who served as associate curator of naval history at the Smithsonian Institution from 1969 to 1996. As a naval historian, he was a pioneer in exploring American naval social and medical history. Langley began his professional career at the Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, in Washington, D.C., where he served as a manuscripts assistant in 1951-52, while a graduate student. Moving to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was a graduate student, he served as a manuscripts specialist, rare book collection, 1952-54. Returning to the Library of Congress, he was a manuscripts specialist, there in 1954-55. In 1955, Marywood College in Scranton, appointed him assistant professor of history. He remained there until 1957, when he received an appointment as a diplomatic historian in the U.S. Department of State. In 1964, Catholic University of America appointed him associate professor, and in 1968 promoted him to full professor in 1968. In 1969, the Smithsonian Institution appointed him associate curator of naval history. He was also an adjunct professor of American history at the Catholic University of America from 1971 to 2001. William Norwood Still Jr. (born September 25, 1932 in Columbus, Mississippi) is an American maritime historian who was the first director of the program in maritime history at East Carolina University and a noted author of works on U.S. Civil War history and U.S. naval history. A leading figure in the academic field of maritime history, the North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) awarded Still its K. Jack Bauer Award in 1988. Subsequently, Still became an active leader of NASOH, serving as vice president in 1988-1992 and president from 1992-1994. In addition, Still served on the advisory council of the Society of Civil War Historians, 1987-1997 and on the editorial advisory board of The American Neptune from 1984 to 2002, Civil War Times Illustrated from 1994, and the Secretary of the Navy's Advisory Subcommittee on Naval History. In 1989-1990, Still occupied the Secretary of the Navy Research Chair in Naval History at the Naval Historical Center. In addition, he served on the advisory board of the National Maritime Alliance and the United States Commission on Military History. USS Monitor was an ironclad warship built for the Union Navy during the American Civil War and completed in early 1862, the first such ship commissioned by the Navy. Monitor played a central role in the Battle of Hampton Roads on 9 March under the command of Lieutenant John L. Worden, where she fought the casemate ironclad CSS Virginia (built on the hull of the scuttled steam frigate USS Merrimack) to a standstill. The design of the ship was distinguished by its revolving turret, which was designed by American inventor Theodore Timby; it was quickly duplicated and established the monitor class and type of armored warship built for the American Navy over the next several decades. The remainder of the ship was designed by Swedish-born engineer and inventor John Ericsson, and built in only 101 days in Brooklyn, New York on the East River beginning in late 1861. Monitor presented a new concept in ship design and employed a variety of new inventions and innovations in ship building that caught the attention of the world. The impetus to build Monitor was prompted by the news that the Confederates were building an iron-plated armored vessel named the Virginia in the old Federal naval shipyard at Gosport, near Norfolk, that could effectively engage the Unio. …