The monitor Puritan was built between 1874 and 1896, the build time was astonishingly long and filled with controversy. There were five monitors building at various yards for years and in secret. These ships were proposed as "refits" to existing ships from the War between the States, but the wooden hulls were found to be in such bad shape that new steel hulls had to be built, and of course this required new machinery, then new guns and when the process was finished there was almost nothing remaining of the old ships used in the new refits. There was much consternation about the new ships not the least of which was the fact that the navy had new ships constructed without the knowledge of congress and the proper appropriations for new vessels.

Washington D.C. conducting it's business in secret, breaking or at the very least bending the rules and spending large sums of money for something that was in effect useless by the time it was in service is nothing new, as one can see in the late 1800's the small men who run the government were running it the way they wanted to regardless of what the American people wanted. One might have understood if when the ships were completed they had been of the latest most modern technology available, however when these outdated ships were completed they were of no value to the fighting navy.

By mid 1882 over $3.5 million had been spent on the construction of the monitors and by then the true nature of the project had been learned by the public, however Secretary of the Navy William E. Chandler insisted that these ships must be completed and he requested an additional $4.2 million for the project. One of the arguments Secretary Chandler made in favor of completing the ships was that "if they are completed they will be fully equal to any vessels of their class in any foreign navy". His statement may have been true providing that you read every word, the key words being "of their class", as no other navy had ships of this class they were of course equal, just another example of government double speak.

Problems with funding did not prevent the ship yards from continuing the work and on November 6, 1882 the monitor Puritan was rather unceremoniously pulled and shoved into the Delaware river at the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania. Her launch had been much anticipated in Chester and had been scheduled for Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 30), but on that day with the crowds and dignitaries present, Puritan refused to slide down the ways. After several hours Puritan had traveled only three feet and moved no further. It was thought that the cold weather had hardened the grease which trapped the ship on the ways, finally a week later the temperatures had risen and with the aid of several tugs and rams Puritan completed her first journey.

Puritan was not commissioned until Dec. 10, 1896, but by then she was an outdated relic of times gone by, one columnist suggested that these monitors be moved to inland rivers and used as museums for people interested in archeology and primitive shipbuilding. USS Puritan, primitive as it was, managed to sail to Cuba and served in the Spanish-American War, she later became a training and receiving vessel finally being scrapped in 1922. Miantonomah, another of the monitors, had been launched on Dec. 5, 1876 and similar comments had been made about her. (December 5, 2009 Daily Event)