VI.

THE MONITOR AND MERRIMAC.

I.

PRELUDE TO HAMPTON ROADS.

COULD we fancy some ancient monarch of the quarter-deck, some Blake, DuQuesne, Tromp, Ruyter, nay, even a Jervis or a Nelson of our own century, risen from his bed of fame and escorted to a modern ship of war, what would not be his bewilderment at the scene! Amazed at his surroundings, he would accuse his own eyes of treachery, and declare himself delirious or dreaming: and when, after infinite wonder, the truth became clear to him, he would no longer recognize his profession, and would confess that he was but a novice in naval combat. In place of that majestic structure of oak and canvas, perfected by the elaboration of centuries, and beautiful in the form and finish of its multitudinous details, over which his admiral's pennant once floated, he beholds under his feet a long, low, iron-bound raft, rising but a few inches out of the water, and, fixed thereon, a stumpy iron cylinder. No cunningly-carved stern or quarter-gallery, no magnificent figure-head, no solid bulwarks surmounted with snowy hammocks, no polished and shining capstan, no neatly-coiled cables, nothing of all the paraphernalia of that holy-stoned deck he was wont to pace in great glory, now meets his eye: there is only a rusty, greasy, iron planking, stript of all

adornment, and indeed of everything once familiar. At each larger swell the ocean rushes over the deck, a result which his astonished gaze finds to be a matter of design. Instead of those clouds of canvas he was wont to see stretching far up into the sky, with all their attendant complexity of rope and spar, there is not only no sail visible, but no yard for a sail, nor a single mast for a yard. That vast apparatus of timber and rigging which marked the sailing-craft of less than twoscore years ago, is shorn clean to the hull, so that for this modern nondescript the whole art of navigation seems to be useless. Yet, since the structure moves, and with steady rapidity, our spectator searches, but in vain, for the motive power. When instructed that it is buried deep under water, safe from the reach of hostile shot, that it consists of a new agent, steam, operating a new instrument, the screw-propeller, his mystery redoubles: but when he extends his glance beneath the deck, and for himself descries the wondrous machinery collected there, toiling with its awe-inspiring strength and precision, his astonishment passes all bounds.

Nevertheless, a greater shock of surprise is in store. This uncouth marvel steams straight into the centre of a vast fleet of those enormous, three-decked wooden floating gun-boxes, such as might have won or lost the fight off Trafalgar, and instantly opens fire. Thunderstruck at her audacity, our resurrected admiral finds every one of her numerous opponents greater in bulk, with thrice her complement of men, and twenty or fifty times her number of guns. But the miracle is soon explained: the missiles of the whole fleet, pattering against the iron fortress-walls, break with the impact, or glance off, leaving a shallow dent in proof of their harmlessness. He misses the familiar music of battle, with shot flying through port-hole or crashing through hull, tearing rigging and bringing down masts, with guns dismounted and gunners slain by scores, with cockpit full and scuppers run

ning with blood: the crew are as safe behind an impregnable rampart as if on their pillows at home; and indeed most of them, no longer sailors but stokers, in lieu of manning the tops or standing at the deck batteries, are assigned the humble functions of tranquilly shovelling coal, far down below the water-line! Meanwhile, from within the ugly cylinder, a pair of monstrous guns, which to our astounded on-looker appear even more fabulous by their gigantic dimensions than aught else he has witnessed, hurl forth huge spheres, as the machinery of their wondrous gun-shield revolves them to every quarter of the compass. Each shot crashes a yawning cavern through the sides of some adversary, into which the waves pour in torrents; while, by another modern device, that of "horizontal shell-firing," such of the ill-starred wooden navy as are not sunk outright, are blown up, or clothed in flames. Confounded beyond measure at each moment's revelations, "what engine of destruction," at length he exclaims, "can this be, at once invulnerable itself, and annihilating to all around it? and what is this type of the war-ship of the nineteenth century?" The answer is quickly returned,— "It is the American Monitor."

It is chiefly within the last quarter of a century that naval warfare has been revolutionized by new inventions and devices, and the crowning act of progress, the introduction of the monitor iron-clad, dates from the War of the Rebellion. Under our own eyes have been consummated innovations which make all previous naval history merely the object of antiquarian research, and previous naval science profitless knowledge. The early annals of naval warfare have now little that is practically worthy of record. At a bound, the science of ship-fighting leaps to the heroic battles of immortal Greece. In two regards, at least, the naval contests of Greece and Rome are more worthy of our notice now than the ship-fighting of nearly twenty centuries thereafter; for those

ancient people give us in their galley-beaks the exemplars and models of the ram, revived in our day, after so long disuse they, too, were wise enough to protect from hostile missiles the motive-power of their war-ships, namely, the banks of oars and the slaves who sat and worked them. When sails came into vogue on war ships, the motive-power, especially after the introduction of gunpowder, was always exposed to the enemy's shot, and only the screw-propeller accomplished, in this respect, what the fleets of classic ages had achieved; so it happens that, for us, two thousand years of experience dwindle to a span, and Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar are as old and as far off as Salamis and Actium.

With the introduction of gunpowder, five hundred years ago, came the arming of war vessels with artillery, and therewith the first noticeable epoch in maritime warfare. It immediately wrought a change in the form of vessels, and in the art of ship-building; for, whereas, during the centuries preceding, the hulls bore up wondrous superstructures, including pent-houses and protections for the knights and archers who thence flung their spears and put in flight their arrows, now, being swept by the fire of cannon, the decks were stripped by degrees of these extra shields and adornments. The masts, the sails, the rigging, as well as the hulls, were thenceforth gradually modified, in view of the destructive weapons to which they were exposed. Nevertheless, war vessels were vulnerable, and not only as floating forts for combatants, but in their own motive-power. However, nearly five centuries passed without adding much either to the science of naval construction or to that of naval manœuvring in battle. Then, at length, in our time, a grand discovery was made in the use of steam as a motor, which opened a new era in shipbuilding, and wrought wonders in the navigation of the globe. But it was long after this novel locomotive had been tamed to the uses of commerce, and famous progress had been made in steam machinery, that the new agent was applied to naval

warfare. This tardiness may have been somewhat due to the peace then reigning over the greater part of the civilized world, which accordingly distracted inventive genius from the arts of destruction to those of traffic and national wealth; but it chiefly sprang from an intrinsic mechanical difficulty of application. The cumbrous paddle-wheels on the one hand interfered with the battery-power of the ship, and also with the employment of her sails, which for economy's sake it was desirable to use, whenever no emergency required steam; on the other hand, the steam machinery itself, and the whole motive-power, presented a fair target to the enemy, and the ship might lie a helpless log on the water from receiving a single hostile shot. This difficulty was overcome by the genius of Ericsson, who made the screw-propeller an instrument of practical utility. Then crossing from the old world to the new, that engineer built for America, in the year 1842, the first screw-propeller war vessel ever constructed, the admirable U. S. steamer Princeton. It was the forerunner of a mighty change in the armaments of maritime nations, and was the model on which all the screw navies have been constructed; all the great naval powers, the world over, destroying or revamping their sailing vessels, substituted the new motor. In England, this work was officially reported as complete only two years before the Southern insurrection. Thus, under our eyes, and as if but yesterday, modern warfare on the seas was thoroughly revolutionized, and, history repeating itself, once more as in the elder days, the motivepower of war vessels was shielded from the weapons of the enemy. It yet remained, however, for two screw-propelled vessels to manœuvre in actual combat; and that memorable spectacle took place for the first time in the battle of Hampton Roads.

Meanwhile another great change had occurred in naval warfare, of which this same matchless contest whereof I write, furnished, if not the very earliest, at least the fullest