ABSTRACT
The exceptionalist nature of nineteenth-century American warship design with its historical emphasis on hull strength, gun power and endurance was acknowledged by the leading naval architects in Britain, Professor J. Harvard Biles of the University of Glasgow. This chapter presents the Institution of Naval Architects (INA) on American warship designs, Biles reported that American battleships 'have more powerful guns and more of them than in other battleships'. The strategic shift the US Navy undertook was a significant discontinuity within the intellectual history of the American naval profession. American naval officers had to re-invent the technological basis of their profession to function within a new strategic framework different from that which had prevailed for most of the nineteenth century. This required the continual pursuit of exceptionalist warship designs within the American naval tradition. The American Civil War brought about many ad hoc warships especially in the area of harbour defence for the Confederacy and the river campaigns for both sides.
