The ironclad USS Montauk sank the Rattlesnake at Fort McAllister. After delays, a 3D model of the Federal monitor is being produced for display at Georgia park

Early model of Montauk; section of blueprints (SCAD) and Professor Johnson describing its operations (Picket photo)

Jason Carter, site manager at Fort McAllister State Park in Richmond Hill, Ga., believes a model of the ironclad USS Montauk -- which prowled the waters and bombarded Confederate earthworks -- will be a cool educational tool at its visitor center.

Carter would like to see it positioned next to an old model of the CSS Nashville (Rattlesnake), a commerce raider the Montauk blew out of the water in February 1863.

Greg Johnson says completing and printing a precise 3D model of the Montauk -- one of 10 Passaic-class monitors -- will be a boon for graduate student Wilson Han, who is in his gaming class at the nearby Savannah College of Art and Design.

“A legacy piece,” Johnson says of the effort.

And Han (left), a native of China, is likewise excited by the project, which involves modern technology and a bit of old-fashioned model-making.

“I am always interested in history,” he says.

Now, five years after Johnson visited the park and met former interpretive ranger Mike Ellis, the dream of having a Montauk model is finally close to reality. Han has been working on the model design for the past couple months, using Autodesk Maya software. Han said April 1 the modeling is going well but slowly because of a busy college quarter.

The original goal of the project was to create compelling interpretive panels, a 3D ship model and film that explained the role of USS Montauk and other innovative Federal monitors in the siege of Confederate outposts on the Atlantic Ocean, specifically Fort McAllister.

The plan turned out to be too ambitious, given SCAD graduations and the complexity of work, which ran up against limited class time. Still, a half dozen wall panels and a schematic of the Montauk were created by SCAD students and installed in late 2022.

Work on a model stalled after that, but when I reached back out to Johnson, interactive design and game development professor at SCAD, back in December, he asked for contact information for park leadership (Ellis had left by then) and I connected him with Carter.

Jason Carter measures CSS Nashville exhibit to aid in model for Montauk (Picket photo)

Carter met with Johnson and Han at the park on Feb. 1 to discuss the 3D model, and I tagged along. The professor explained a previous student had made a 3D model for in-game simulation (for the film) but that aspect never came to fruition. Hence, the current effort to convert that to a printable 3D model.

Johnson stressed the work would be tedious, that Han would have to check all specifications and ensure the model was ready for printing.

“I have to be certain to do the job right,” Han told the Picket.

Accuracy is paramount, says Johnson, who located the likely paint scheme for the ironclad

“It will be down to the bolt,” he says of the reproduction.

The Nashville was trapped near this bend in the Ogeechee River (Picket photo)

Key to the whole effort – for the wall display and the model – is something Ellis found by chance several years ago.

Finding blueprints was a stroke of fortune

Ellis, now a guide and trainer for Old Towne Trolley Tours in Savannah, recalls being in a storage area at Fort McAllister in 2017. There were piles of documents and papers everywhere.

“As rangers come and go, things get lost to time,” he says.

Ellis went through some of them and found a matted long tube. Inside: A precious copy of the USS Montauk’s blueprints, manufactured in dozens of sheets.

One of numerous photos of blueprints shows turret (Courtesy Greg Johnson)

“I knew immediately what is was,” says Carter. Now the staff could upgrade the monitor exhibit, putting a facsimile of the blueprints on one wall.

Everything clicked during Johnson’s visit to the site. “Me and Greg spent a better part of the day taking photos of (the blueprints) in detail.”

They used a custom-built rig to slide dozens of sheets under a camera to obtain high resolution.

“These images were then processed, enhanced and stitched together using photo editing tools to make the panels,” Johnson says. The image could then be used for the wall, model or the film.

Showdown on the Ogeechee was one-sided

USS Montauk receives fire from Fort McAllister as it hammers the Nashville

Andy Hall, A Civil War naval expert and author, told the Picket the Passaic monitors were the first large-class of monitors and many of them served together, such as the campaign against the earthen Fort McAllister in 1863 and 1864.

The Union navy, as it continued its chokehold on Southern ports and readied for offensive operations, sent the Montauk and sisters Passaic, Patapsco and Nahant, supported by gunboats Seneca, Dawn and Wissahickon to bombard and capture Fort McAllister in January 1863.

The skipper of the Montauk was John Worden (left), famous for being the USS Monitor’s captain when it clashed with the CSS Virginia in 1862.

Capable Confederate gunners at Fort McAllister hit the ironclad 13 times in its first action, but caused little damage. A second attack on Feb. 1, 1863, found the vessel, according to histories, pounded by 48 shells. The Montauk's sister ships also took part in the action.

Its big day came on February 28. The sidewheeler Nashville, which was bottled up and hiding under the guns of Fort McAllister for protection, tried to get away from the Federal ironclads via Seven-Mile Bend on the Ogeechee River, but apparently ran aground.

The 215-foot blockade runner commanded by Lt. Thomas Harrison Baker became a sitting duck because of its lack of maneuverability and deep draft in a tight area, and the Montauk pounced.

“All the monitors were designed for littoral or riverine operations, and so drew as little water as possible,” says Hall. “Nashville was built as an ocean-going steamship, so had a fuller, deeper hull.” That proved to be a disadvantage at McAllister.

Montauk’s XV- and 11-inch Dahlgrens were able to destroy the former commerce raider.

Worden was pleased with his destruction of ‘this troublesome pest’” wrote John V. Quarstein, director emeritus of the USS Monitor Center in a blog.

“However, Montauk suffered a huge jolt when it struck a Confederate torpedo en route down the Ogeechee River. Worden’s quick thinking saved his ironclad.” (Quarstein’s new biography of Worden will be published April 15).

The Union naval attacks on Fort McAllister itself were less successful. The low-profile earthen fort could withstand the shelling and repairs could be readily made.

While the Montauk was scrapped in the early 1900s, the park grounds and museum have a large number of CSS Nashville artifacts.

USS Montauk (left) and USS Lehigh in Philadelphia in 1902 (Wikipedia)

And in this corner, weighing in at . . .

On the afternoon of my visit, Carter, Johnson and Han -- who is majoring in game development and interactive design -- met in a conference room and a museum gallery that houses the wall panels, artifacts and the CSS Nashville model.

Carter used a tape measure to get the dimensions of the Nashville display case. That was to help ensure the Montauk 3D model would be built in the proper scale (1/78).

Wilson Han and Professor Johnson are working from this paint scheme (Courtesy Steven Lund)

“This makes the USS Montauk model 30 11/16th inches or 780mm in length,” Johnson wrote in a later email. The ironclad, he says was slightly asymmetrical

Carter provided these vital statistics for the two warships:

Montauk, 200 feet long, beam 46 feet, draft 10 feet

Nashville, 215 feet long, beam 34 feet, draft 20 feet

While the monitors were mass-produced, they did undergo changes during the service, and SCAD students wanted to be sure the appearance of the Montauk matched the time it prowled off Fort McAllister.

SCAD is working from a Montauk paint scheme described in the work “Modeling Civil War Ironclad Ships” by Steven Lund and William Hathaway. 

The deck is lead gray, the turret and pilot house black with a narrow white ring, and the smokestack black with the upper one third in dark green.

To distinguish them, all 10 Passaic ironclads had some color variations.

Sources for such information on paint schemes are difficult to find, says model maker and writer Devin J. Poore.

“Black is very popular, (while) gray and white were used in really hot areas.”

3D printing is not for the faint of heart

Converting an item intended for a game to a 3D printable object requires numerous revisions.

The former are designed with much higher resolution so they can be used in interactive entertainment. Former SCAD student Collin Drilling created the original image of the USS Montauk. It had about 10,000 “holes;” he worked from May and Zbrush software.

Han’s task was to bring down the resolution and fine tune the details. Johnson had worked on the turret, and his student used that as a guide.

A version of the Montauk model before Han's work to modify it for printing (Courtesy SCAD)

Preparing the model for 3D printing is one thing, but ending up with a worthy final product is another. Lots of things can go wrong in printing – and often do, the SCAD team says. Plastic can shrink during the process, the printer footing may be off and a misfeed can occur.

The printer is like a dot matrix and the artist must determine how many pieces he should make for the ironclad model and figure in joints for assembly. While Han wants to keep it to perhaps one to three pieces, some items require more, says Johnson.

Poore (photo below) told the Picket the quality of any model, handmade or 3D designed and printed, depends on the skill of the modeler.

“3D models come off the printer needing sanding, priming, assembly, etc. Depending on how much work you put into the process depends on the result. There are certain benefits that 3D printing can have over hand making, such as pretty much guaranteed right angles and symmetry, but then again you have to worry about how to actually print a piece so that it comes out cleanly, and so that it won't warp in the future,” he says.

This project is a mix of newer and old technology. While the printing will produce the frame of the ship, finer pieces such as chains and rigging will need to come for a model kit or the like.

And the painting is definitely old school; Johnson said he expects to assist with that.

Passaics were primo, but had limitations

For Fort McAllister, the Montauk model will help further its education of visitors on the fort and various Federal attempts to subdue it.

Lund said the innovation and quality of the Passaic class made for the best monitors.

“Although two of the 10 produced were lost, some of them soldiered on into the 20^th century. At least two were recommissioned to serve as harbor defense vessels in the Spanish-American War. One of them, the USS Camanche, guarded the San Francisco Bay during that conflict. She was sold for scrap in 1908 and her hull functioned as a coal barge as late as WW II.”

A model of the U.S.S. Carondelt being made for 3D printing (Courtesy Devin J. Poore)

Poore says the Passaic monitors were a stepping stone in warship development but were underutilized and not appropriate for most situations they encountered..

“For the work needed on the Atlantic coast, i.e. reducing forts, they weren't the best candidates. They were built to fight Confederate ironclads, and simply didn't see much action in that regard, due to the limited number of Confederate opponents.”

Poore is in the process of making his first full-blown printed ironclad, the city-class U.S.S. Carondelet. The vessel had notable service in the Western Theater.

Devin J. Poore's model of the USS Weehawken (Courtesy of the creator)

USS Montauk, other monitors get bigger story at Fort McAllister in panels created by gaming and interactive design students in Savannah

Wall panels at the museum at Fort McAllister (Picket photos)

Students at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) dreamed big in a project they hoped would add some pizzazz for visitors to Georgia’s Fort McAllister State Historic Park in nearby Richmond Hill, Ga.

Their goal was to create compelling interpretive panels, a 3D ship model and film that explained the role of USS Montauk and other innovative Federal monitors in the siege of Confederate outposts on the Atlantic Ocean, specifically Fort McAllister.

The plan turned out to be too ambitious, given graduations and the complexity of work that ran up against limited class time. Still, a half dozen panels were installed late last year in an exhibit dedicated to the clashes between Federal ships, the fort and the Rebel raider CSS Nashville, which was sunk by USS Montauk near the fort in 1863. I paid a visit to the site a couple weeks back.

The new panels in the park museum cover these topics: Civil War monitors, the Passaic class of monitors, armament, ironclads versus an earthen fort, commanders of Confederate and Union vessels and what happened to the Montauk and the others at Fort McAllister after the fighting. Near the panels are enlarged blueprints of the USS Montauk.

The panels feature photographs, drawings and illustrations. Park officials created a dock scene (left) with cotton bales to increase the effect.

The Picket, which first wrote about the SCAD project in March 2022, recently contacted Greg Johnson, interactive design and game development professor at SCAD, to get his perspective on the endeavor. The responses have been edited. 

Q. Were you pleased with how the panels worked out? How do they complement the rest of the exhibit on the monitors and the Nashville?

Greg Adams: Yes, I was pleased by how that portion of the project turned out. The new panels do a much better job of teaching the public about the fort and the historic events there than the previous displays did.

Q. What are the key takeaways on all the work, planning and production to create the panels? Was it harder than the team first thought?

Greg Adams (right): It was much harder than the team first thought, mainly on a time management level. Partly this was due to classes being only 10 weeks long. Partly due to students graduating from SCAD. Partly it was due to simply trying to do too much in too short of a time. I was very pleased by the persistence of the student teams who worked on the wall panels. That group of students truly went above and beyond the expectations of the class.

Q. What skills from this project will most benefit your former students in the years ahead?

Greg Adams: The most beneficial thing was the chance the students got to work on a professional project with such a fine institution. The project really demonstrated to all of my students how they can apply their skills in ways they had never considered before.

Q. The large blueprint/sketch and top view of the Montauk, both on the wall near the panels. How specifically did you and your team produce those?

Greg Adams: That was created by photo documenting the blueprints at a high resolution. We used a custom-built camera rig to enable us to slide the blueprints underneath a high-end camera. These images were then processed, enhanced and stitched together using photo editing tools to make the panels.

Renderings of USS Montauk and other items meant for film (Courtesy of SCAD)

Q. Is the Montauk 3D model still in production? I know you expected it to be completed by now. Why has it not been finished?

Greg Adams: That part of the production is paused. The student(s) responsible for making the model graduated and are now working full time and no longer have the time to work on the project. While the model got quite far along, it remains unfinished. If the museum is interested, that portion of the project may yet be able to be completed, but it would require an investment in a new group of students.

Q. Same for the film. Will that happen at some point?

Greg Adams: Unfortunately, the film production crew did not get very far and the students simply ran out of time. While a number of wonderful assets, such as the CSS Rattlesnake, were built, the film itself was nowhere near finished by the end of the class at which point these students graduated. 

Q. Any other thoughts?

Greg Adams: Overall, the results were good. The students got the most critical elements, the wall panels that the museum needed, produced and these have been installed at the museum.

The whole project was a wonderful learning experience for all of the students involved and everyone greatly enjoyed working with the museum on the project. I am very pleased that SCAD was able to help the museum create a new display.  

(Civil War Picket photos)

High-tech talent: Savannah College of Art and Design students bring wow factor to story of USS Montauk, other monitors at Fort McAllister

Renderings of the USS Montauk, tent, cabin base, home and cannon (Courtesy of SCAD)

A couple years back, Greg Johnson and his family traveled just south of Savannah, Ga., to visit Fort McAllister State Park home to well-preserved Confederate earthworks that withstood naval bombardments before the post fell to a Federal land attack in late 1864.

Johnson, interactive design and game development professor at the renowned Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), struck up a conversation with interpretive ranger Michael Ellis.

Ellis had a vision for an enhanced museum exhibit dedicated to the Rebel raider CSS Nasvhille (Rattlesnake), which was destroyed by the Union Passaic-class monitor USS Montauk near the fort. Ellis hoped for wall panels about the monitors, a model of the Montauk and a film about the day it encountered the famed Rattlesnake, causing a fire and massive explosion.

Greg Johnson

But money was tight, and there was a question about who could provide the technology and do the work.

An idea was born during the chat.

Johnson pitched it to his bosses at SCAD as a way for students to get real-world experience. SCAD students study all forms of graphic design, gaming and other technology. Administrators signed on – and donated thousands of dollars -- and Johnson and his students got to work.

The efforts are about to pay off in the park’s museum, with the interpretive panels and 3D model of the Montauk expected to debut this spring or summer, followed by the movie, likely next year.

Visitors will encounter compelling information on the innovative monitors and the students will take skills gleaned from this and other projects to the workforce.

“It is a real production opportunity. Students often work on their own projects and group projects,” Johnson told the Picket during a phone call involving him and student Rachel Langley. “It is another level to take student work and turn it into a professional production.”

Rendering of the CSS Nashville/Rattlesnake (Courtesy of SCAD)

Students in a SCAD class developed a script, graphic images and models for the film, which at first they hoped would have a gaming-type style.

“This serves as a real world example and using this for a very different, purpose -- for education. You can work for a museum. Not just for games,” said the professor.

Judd Smith, a Georgia parks historian who is overseeing the project, said it’s an opportunity to tell the story of these ironclads.

“A lot of people think about the Monitor and the Merrimack,” he said. “This is an opportunity to bring that story to Georgia, because these ships were there, part of the blockading squadron.”

Research, research, research

Langley, who took a leadership role in the early 2021 class, grew up in the town of Richmond Hill, home to Fort McAllister. “The project is very near and dear to my heart,” she told the Picket.

The USS Montauk receives fire from Fort McAllister as it pounds the Nashville

Among the first tasks was launching intensive research on the USS Montauk and other Passaic-class monitors that saw action at Fort McAllister and later in the Charleston, S.C., area.

Park staff and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources assisted and have provided oversight on all aspects.

The class took place in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, so many meetings were on Zoom. Students met three or four times at the fort, consulting with staff and doing research. “We went out one time for a cannon firing to record audio,” Langley said.

Johnson went to archive.org and dug up official histories of the Civil War. “We scoured the internet for every image of the Montauk.”

While the monitors were mass-produced, they did undergo changes during the service, and the class wanted to be sure the appearance of the Montauk matched the time it prowled off Fort McAllister.

"The Montauk had gone through a lot of changes by the time it had the battle with the Nashville,” said Langley (above).

The park has blueprints of the Montauk and Johnson used a special camera rig to take photographs of the large sheets to help in modeling the craft.

Greg Johnson used a special rig to take photos of giant blueprints (Courtesy of SCAD)

They produced a graphic of the Rattlesnake for the movie, but there were no known photos or blueprints to work from. Students studied a 3-foot wooden model in the museum and reached out to experts and online resources.

Langley pored over the Montauk’s ship’s log, which included some descriptions of the Confederate raider.

Ships, fort pounded away

Before we get into what the SCAD students are producing, first a little more background on the single-turret USS Montauk and the CSS Nashville.

The Union navy, as it continued its chokehold on Southern ports and readied for offensive operations, sent the Montauk and sister monitors Passaic, Patapsco and Nahant, supported by gunboats Seneca, Dawn and Wissahickon to bombard and capture Fort McAllister in January 1863.

Consider it a trial run of sorts for the armored vessels, which effectively brought to an end the day of the wooden fighting ship.

The skipper of the Montauk was John Worden (left), famous for being the USS Monitor’s captain when it clashed with the CSS Virginia in 1862.

Capable Confederate gunners at Fort McAllister hit the ironclad 13 times in its first action, but caused little damage. A second attack on Feb. 1 found the vessel, according to histories, pounded by 48 shells. The Montauk's sister ships also took part in the action.

Its big day came on February 28, 1863. The sidewheeler CSS Nashville, which was bottled up and hiding under the guns of Fort McAllister for protection, tried to get away from the Federal ironclads via Seven-Mile Bend on the Ogeechee River, said Smith.

"The Ogeechee River is a tidal river, with lots of sand bars,” he said. “It ran aground just past the fort.”

The 215-foot ship commanded by Lt. Thomas Harrison Baker became a sitting duck.

“During the February 28, 1863 attack, Montauk’s XV- and 11-inch Dahlgrens were able to destroy the former commerce raider CSS Nashville. Worden was pleased with his destruction of ‘this troublesome pest’” wrote John V. Quarstein, director emeritus of the USS Monitor Center in a blog post.

“However, Montauk suffered a huge jolt when it struck a Confederate torpedo en route down the Ogeechee River. Worden’s quick thinking saved his ironclad and he, the hero of USS Monitor,  received even greater laurels for his newest decisive actions.”

Limitations of the monitors

The Union naval attacks on Fort McAllister were less successful. The low-profile earthen fort could withstand the shelling and repairs could be readily made. This proved to be the case when the monitors later challenged Confederate fortifications in the Carolinas.

Earthen fortifications were a plus for fort defenders (Georgia DNR)

After the USS Montauk returned to Port Royal, S.C., Worden advised Adm. Samuel Du Pont that that monitors’ rate of fire was too slow and that shells could do little against earthen forts, according to Quarstein.

“While monitors had adequate armor to protect themselves, Worden noted that these warships had several weak points, such as an exposed pilothouse and the unprotected link between the turret and deck that could be jammed by solid shot. He also reported that monitors were vulnerable to Confederate torpedoes as their hulls had only one-inch boilerplate. While Worden had not destroyed Fort McAllister or the railroad bridge over the Big Ogeechee, he was able to destroy the CSS Nashville, adding luster to this outstanding leader’s already impressive legacy.”

USS Montauk (left) and USS Lehigh in Philadelphia, about 1902 (Wikipedia)

The Federal Navy made some improvements to the monitors to shield them from plunging, or arc, fire. They remained targets of Confederate snipers who tried to shoot through openings in the armor.

(Interestingly, the Montauk was a temporary prison for accused Lincoln assassination conspirators in 1865 and the body of John Wilkes Booth was examined there.)

While the Montauk was scrapped in the early 1900s, Fort McAllister State Park’s grounds and museum have a large number of CSS Nashville artifacts and facsimiles, said Ellis, who now works at Fort King Georgia State Historic Site in Darien, Ga.

A pavilion houses several pieces of the engine (above) and the interior collection includes part of a cannon, ship fixtures, fittings, cargo tag, personal items and much more.

The wall panels: Telling the story

The five new wall panels in the museum will cover these topics: Civil War monitors, the Passaic class of monitors, armament, ironclads versus an earthen fort, and what happened to the USS Montauk and he others at Fort McAllister after the fighting.

SCAD students wrote the initial text and they were reviewed by park staff and Smith and others.

“It was back and forth and back and forth several times,” said Adams, adding the class made sure the style was current for the museum and that the information was neutral and appealed to a broad audience.

The 3 feet by 5 feet panels -- which feature photographs, paintings and drawings -- are being printed this month Savannah and the park staff will install them. (Detail of one panel, at right, courtesy of Georgia DNR)

“The quality of the panels (is) above and beyond,” said Ellis.

The model: Born from a 3D printer

The SCAD class used a variety of programs, including Adobe Illustrator, Maya and Unreal Engine, for the Fort McAllister project. Raw images were put through Illustrator.

For the model and other graphics for the film, the team needed to convert files from pixel based to mathematical vector-based images. Once a 2D image file was created, another student worked on the 3D model from those images, according to Johnson and Langley.

“It turned into a much more extensive project than we estimated at first,” Johnson said. “It looks great.”

One of several computer-generated Montauk renderings (Courtesy of SCAD)

The rendering of the Montauk has to be high resolution for the printable model but a lower resolution for a game-style application. “A game can’t handle the level of detail that a 3D printer can handle,” Johnson said.

The 3D printer will produce a couple dozen pieces that must be glued and painted using Adobe Substance 3D Painter. Each of the navy monitors had a slightly different paint job.

"The Montauk model is in the process of being adapted for 3D printing and should be ready by the end of the month," Langley said. "I’m super excited to get to paint this beautiful model."

The state is paying for a case for the 3D model so that it can be next to the CSS Nashville model. The USS Montauk will be about 3 feet long, a tad shorter than that of the Nashville.

The film: Maybe more like Ken Burns 

Cue up images of artillery pieces and a cannon ball. One bell sounds, 2 bells sound, three bells and then narration to a bird’s-eye views of the Confederate blockade runner.

“The year is 1863. It’s a cool February morning, the 28^th. The CSS Nashville, a war-forged Confederate ship, had been refitted and renamed to run the powerful Union blockade stretching down the Georgia coast and over the Ogeechee River.”

Lifeboat rendering for movie (Courtesy of SCAD)

So begins the SCAD script to the planned five-minute film at Fort McAllister. It covers the action and destruction of the Nashville, with music fading out.

Langley said the class created the script, story board and an animation animatic that depicts every scene. “It is a very first rough draft of what eventually will be produced,” said Johnson.

While the original hope was to do a video-game look inside the Unreal Engine program, reality soon set in. The students were way too ambitious.

One class was not near enough to accomplish such a large task and several of the 15 or so students graduated or had to take other classes.

The team might adapt the Ken Burns style instead, using some of the graphic features that were produced, such as the cannons, a house, tent and the Rattlesnake. Another class or two will be needed to finish the film, which could turn out more documentary than video game.

“Movie work has not resumed yet, but we are hoping for it to resume next year with a new class of students and a proper production schedule to help them fulfill their goal," Langley said this week.

Model of CSS Nashville at the museum (Fort McAllister State Historic Park)

Burns’ documentaries are known for the presentation of high-resolution photos, with the camera moving over the photos -- creating motion from static images. “We are changing the graphics a little bit. Rather than one year, it can be done in one quarter,” said Johnson, adding there will be voices in the presentation.

“It will still look extremely good,” with live action and digital effects.

“It is going to look really slick, the closest thing you can get to building a monitor and a Confederate ship blasting themselves to smithereens,” added Johnson.

Park manager Jason Carter told the Picket that he is happy with the film being more of a movie or documentary, given game technology changes so fast. He is pleased that it will include 3D images and other CGI (computer generated imagery).

“It is using technology we did not have 20 years ago,” Smith said.

Weehawken, Montauk and Passaic fire on Fort Moultrie in Sept. 1863 (Wikipedia)