author
Best known for telling the Confederate side of the ironclads’ famous clash, this Civil War-era naval engineer appears as a contributor to a classic account of the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac. Very little biographical detail is easy to confirm, which only adds a little mystery to the name behind the memoir.
H. Ashton Ramsay is associated with The Monitor and the Merrimac; Both Sides of the Story, a 1912 volume that brings together firsthand perspectives on the Battle of Hampton Roads. In the HathiTrust catalog record for that book, he is identified as chief engineer of the Merrimac and listed alongside John L. Worden and Samuel Dana Greene.
That places him among the participants whose recollections helped shape later understanding of one of the Civil War's most famous naval encounters. His contribution is especially notable because it offers the Confederate perspective in a book built around accounts from both sides.
Reliable biographical information beyond that role was not readily confirmed from the sources I found, so it seems best to keep the picture simple: a naval engineer remembered chiefly through his connection to the CSS Merrimac and this enduring historical volume.