"Engineering, both in operating the shipboard machinery and in the design and construction of ships, became critically important with the outbreak of the Civil War.
On the day of battle, steam engines drove the Monitor and the Merrimack, the Kearsarge and the Alabama, as well as the gunboats which supported Grant before Fort Donelson and Vicksburg.
In addition, American naval leadership rested upon ingenious civilian engineers and inventors such as John Ericsson, who designed and built the Monitor.
[2] The consolidation with BuEng into BuShips had its origins when USS Anderson, first of the Sims-class destroyers to be delivered, was found to be heavier than designed and dangerously top-heavy in early 1939.
Initially, Acting Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison proposed consolidation of the design divisions of the two bureaus.