Wooden sailing ships were obsolete, not wooden steamships.

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Union8448

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Despite the advent of the Virginia the Confederate ironclad, and the battle between the Virginia and the Monitor , wooden ships were not rendered obsolete.
The fact is that both the USS Cumberland and the USS Congress were sailing ships. In the confined waters of Hampton Roads they were more or less sitting ducks. It was more naval incompetence that left them there while Goldsborough was attending to helping create the US enclave on the North Carolina. Not very surprisingly, the steamship USS Minnesota was successfully run aground. The next day, when the Monitor arrived the US navy rescued the Minnesota. It was repaired and saw further duty later in the Civil War.
The weak journalism that passed into history was simply war. The most powerful weapons in the US Civil War were the steam sloops. Their masts and sails gave them range. Their steam engines gave them power during combat and made them extremely durable. During a fight, they bolt on armor, which made them even more sturdy. The steam sloops fought forts, and ironclads, and their heavy pivot guns gave them great firepower.
Allowing the Virginia to fight sailing vessels, and not harboring those vessels under the protection of shore guns was in idiotic sacrifice.
But its likely that by March and April of 1862, everyone in the US navy that was thinking of modern fighting was engaged in a coastal operation, or in the western Gulf of Mexico, or patrolling in the Caribbean.
 
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War ships, not commercial shipping which used wooden shipping for a long time afterwards. New warships would not have wooden hulls.
 
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Here is an article about the wooden ships on the Great Lakes. It surprising that Woodenships on the Great Lakes had a short life of use...

Wooden Ship Building – Spring 1951 – National Museum of the Great Lakes

nmgl.org nmgl.org

In the days of wooden ships and ironmen, the wooden ship building industry attained gigantic proportions nearly all the way around the Great Lakes. It was the forerunner of our modern metal shipyards.

In the ’80 the scene started to change. Metal ships were replacing the wooden ones; more and more ships were needed for the expanding commerce; building of ships moved to the larger cities with good railroads, heavy machinery, and steel.

Our ships on the lakes were made of the finest white oak, framed and planked,1 whereas our Atlantic Coast clipper ships, the fastest ever built for sail, were oak ribbed and planked with southern pine. Even at that, our good oak ships were at their best only for 15 years. After that it usually cost nearly all the ship could clear to keep it seaworthy, as one winter the ship would need a repair on the port bow, then soon after probably the starboard quarter, and after that a new deck. When decay started there was no stopping It.

The difference in the life span between the wood and metal ships shows up in these facts. The engines and boilers in our wooden vessels were very often used in three different wood ships, due to the limited life of the wood. Also, a great many ships burned and their machinery would be salvaged and placed in a new hull. I can remember several engines that outlived three different hulls. Today some of our metal hulls are outliving two engines built of metal, just the reverse from the wooden-ship era.

I have heard old timers say that after 15 years, repairs were a constant source of trouble and expense. A wooden ship was very old at 20 to 25 years. Some did continue at that age and were known as tubs or floating crates, but did operate at times when freight rates were high.
 
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As 5Fish notes, it wasn't because of the ironclads that wooden hulls became obsolete. The building methods for using iron improved. There was virtually no size limit on a metal hulled ship, and once coal and steam took over, the efficiency ratios changed,
A line of masts on a sailing ship can generate only so much power. But a set of steam engines can propel a long ship just as fast as a short ship. Crew reductions were an interest in ship building, as that made the ships lighter, or allowed for more cargo space.
The problem of hull fouling on an iron ship was vexing. But that was solved too. The steam sloops in the US Civil War were not obsolete. And it was improvements in naval artillery, not ironclads, that eventually made big, heavily armored ships mandatory.
The US steamships scored several decisive victories after the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia.
 
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On a broader note, the US/Mexican war and the Crimean war had already demonstrated how naval power could be dominant.
Steam powered transports, and a secured water route made it unnecessary for the British and French to march across Europe to fight the Russians. And both McClellan and Grant were aware that water transport was both cheaper and more secure than land transport.
General Lee knew it as tactical necessity that he not fight battles on any navigable and that any crossing point of a river such as the Potomac had to be up river from any navigable portion of the river.
 
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Every modern development that appeared in the Crimean war was fully applied in the US Civil War, backed by industrial war complex that didn't have to send its production across an ocean.
 
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Union8448 said:
Every modern development that appeared in the Crimean war was fully applied in the US Civil War, backed by industrial war complex that didn't have to send its production across an ocean.
Click to expand...
However those developments showed up in England and France first so we were aware of them because both countries were possible adversaries.
 
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Here is an article about naval warfare in the Civil War and it explains Lee did avoid getting too close to navigational parts of rivers. It goes on to mention other aspects of naval warfare in the civil war. There are some little nuggets like if Lee could have cut the Reading railroad line, he would have cut the coal off for the Union Blockade fleet. Another nugget is the Appalachian mountains took the advantage of interior lines away from the Confederacy.

www.usni.org

Sea Power in the Civil War

The American Civil War was
www.usni.org www.usni.org

The fourth fact about sea power is its limitation. This Robert E. Lee never forgot. No matter how great it is, sea power must reach from navigable waters and it is effective only as far as that reach. Lee checked the sea power of the North by maneuvering his Army of Northern Virginia beyond the range of Union gunboats.

Had Lee succeeded in reaching the Schuylkill River and the Reading Railroad, he would have cut the entire supply of anthracite coal for the Union blockading squadrons which required three thousand tons a week.

In such actions, Northern officers had to fight their ships not on the high seas where they had been trained, but up rivers, between bluffs, head-on without being able to turn, through mine fields, and among innumerable shoals where grounding could mean destruction or capture. Opposing them were many of their former shipmates, denied service afloat for the Confederacy, but invaluable in the forts because of their hydrographic and ordnance knowledge.
 
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jgoodguy said:
However those developments showed up in England and France first so we were aware of them because both countries were possible adversaries.
Click to expand...
Correct. Steam powered naval vessels firing heavy explosive shot had already made bolt on armor a mandatory precaution.
And in siege warfare, the English had already built a siege railroad in Crimea. Originally their RR was powered by horses and winches. But eventually they shipped real engines to Russia.
Therefore, if Winslow was read up on modern naval combat, and Semmes neglected to be prepared, Semmes can only blame himself. Similarly, the use of a RR to maintain a siege was just kind of military news that Grant would follow in the St. Louis and Chicago newspapers.
At Petersburg. the US supplies arrived by boat at City Point. The US had absolute naval security on the Bay, and substantial security on the James River. From City Point the supplies were distributed by railroad, and the US railroad industry was at least the equal of the English railroad industry.
It may have been that while Delafield studied forts, and Mordecai studied artillery, and McClellan huddled with the young cavalry officers, Grant and Ingalls were studying how the British and French conducted their siege with plunging their nations into bankruptcy.
 
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