Maritime History

Canonicus-class monitor

The Canonicus-class or Tippecanoe-class was a class of nine monitors built for the Union Navy during the American Civil War. An improvement on the preceding Passaics, modified in accordance with war experience, each vessel mounted two 15-inch (381 mm) Dahlgren guns. The five ships commissioned during the war participated variously in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, the Battle of Mobile Bay and the First and Second Battles of Fort Fisher. When attacking the ironclad ram CSS Tennessee in 1865, the monitor Tecumseh was sunk by a naval mine, then termed a "torpedo", 94 men died. Eight of the suspected conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln were incarcerated aboard Saugus and the monitor Montauk before they were transferred to the Arsenal Penitentiary. The remaining four ships not commissioned during the war were built on the Ohio River, three at Cincinnati, and Ajax at South Pittsburgh. Of these, Catawba and Oneota, renamed Atahualpa and Manco Cápac respectively, were sold to the Peruvian Navy and participated in the War of the Pacific, both being scuttled to prevent their capture by the Chilean Navy. The last remaining member of the class, the lead ship Canonicus, was an exhibit during the Jamestown Exposition, before being sold and broken up in 1908.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Flying Cloud (clipper)
• ▸70 Ophiuchi
• ▸Great Republic (1853 clipper)

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.