Were Union riverine ironclads copies of Southern ironclads?
No. James B.Eads submitted his first plans for a riverine gunboat mere days after Fort Sumter was fired on. On 16 May 1861, Commander John Rodgers and Naval Constructor Samuel M. Pook were ordered to Cincinnati, Ohio and Cairo, Illinois, to oversee thecreation of a riverine fleet. In late June 1861, Pook greatly revised an earlier design by Chief Naval Constructor John Lenthall, and this became the plan for the “City” class ironclad gunboats, which went under contract for construction on 7 August 1861, with Eads as low bidder on the contract; the first of these was launched in October 1861, four months before the Virginia’s completion. Meanwhile, the rough sketches and models for a possible Southern ironclad (not yet connected with the hulk of the Merrimack) had been presented to Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen R. Mallory on 23 June 1861. It is impossible that Pook knew about the details of these plans. At any rate, the resemblance is a superficial one, deriving entirely from the sl
