The Miantonomoh class monitors

Monitor (warship)

A monitor was a class of relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured but carried disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s until the end of World War II, and saw their final use by the United States Navy during the Vietnam War.The monitors...

 of the U.S. Navy were constructed during the U.S. Civil War, but only one ship of the class actually took part in it. They were broken up in 1874/5.

The ships of this class were designed by the Bureau of Construction and Repair

Bureau of Construction and Repair

The Bureau of Construction and Repair was the part of the United States Navy which from 1862 to 1940 was responsible for supervising the design, construction, conversion, procurement, maintenance, and repair of ships and other craft for the Navy...

, and were wooden-hulled. The , the only one to take part in the Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, is usually considered the best of the U.S. monitors. In 1865/6 she went to San Francisco, via the Strait of Magellan

Strait of Magellan

The Strait of Magellan comprises a navigable sea route immediately south of mainland South America and north of Tierra del Fuego...

 and although three ships were in company, she was not towed.

crossed the Atlantic in 1866, though she was towed for 1,100 miles by the side-wheel steamer . She returned in 1867 after a cruise of 17,767 miles. Two other ships, the and the were renamed Terror and Amphitrite respectively, on 15 June 1869.

The hull was of normal form without the Ericsson

John Ericsson

John Ericsson was a Swedish-American inventor and mechanical engineer, as was his brother Nils Ericson. He was born at Långbanshyttan in Värmland, Sweden, but primarily came to be active in England and the United States...

 overhang, and freeboard is given as 2 feet 7 inches. The armour was made up of 1 inch plates and there were pilothouse

Pilothouse

A pilothouse or pilot-house is a glass-enclosed room from which a ship is controlled by the ship's pilot. The pilothouse also is known as the wheelhouse....

s on both turrets, with armored bases to the funnel and a large ventilation shaft abaft it. The turrets were 23 feet internal diameter and thus 2 feet larger than in the Passaic class, and a light hurricane deck was rigged between them.

Unfortunately the wooden hulls decayed and the supposed rebuilding of this class of vessels into the iron-hulled "New Navy" monitors of the same names, was a fiction to explain Congressional refusal to allocate any funds for new construction.