“Having received our contract, we promptly visited New York to get the details of construction and engines in order to begin work and procure materials. The demand for materials was greater than the supply, and all were in a feverish state of excitement. To get our orders out quickly, I immediately made application to Mr. Stimers for plans, and had a long and detailed conversation with him and Theodore Allen over what plans they had developed, and numerous alterations were made to the plans as drawn.
“Their first plan permitted the boilers to come within three and one-half inches of the bottom plating of the ship, practically landing the boilers on the three and one-half inch angle-bars, which had at that time no floors.
“I suggested in a rather strong way that this would not do, and after considerable discussion they concluded to make the vessels a little deeper, give the deck more spring, and put shallow floors in. Other important alterations were made as the work progressed.
“We would have had our vessel overboard first, but the northward march of General Lee previous to the battle of Antietem interfered with the furnishing of materials, and also with our own working force in the shipyard.
“Our employees, with those of the rolling-mills supplying materials near Philadelphia, organized themselves into military companies for the purpose of defence. Two companies were formed in our establishment.
“While these delays affected us, they did not interfere with the progress of the monitor which was building in Boston; but when this vessel was launched, she sank to the bottom from lack of buoyancy, and a halt was called on the nineteen other vessels.
“These vessels had been constructed on very vague plans and conditions. Mistakes were made in the original design, and weights added without investigating the correctness of the original sketch, which, with the so-called ‘calculations,’ were furnished by Mr. Ericsson; at least they had been examined, approved, and signed by him. They were not furnished to bidders.
“The day after this launch, the ‘Monitor Ring’ was in a state of collapse! Mr. Lenthall and Mr. Isherwood now reasserted their proper authority. They ordered Mr. Stimers and Mr. Allen to reduce the weights in the turrets, and wherever else it was possible to do so sufficiently to make the vessels float.
“These reductions in equipment, outfit, etc., were communicated to the builders at Chester, before they launched the ‘Tunxis’; but these vessels, by the reductions, were rendered entirely useless for their designed service, or any other.
“Finding that the Boston vessel and the ‘Tunxis,’ built at Chester, notwithstanding the alterations, lacked efficiency to a serious degree, they decided to rebuild most of the others by deepening them, and the whole matter was placed in my hands by Chief Engineer King, who with some others were designated by the Secretary of the Navy to investigate and prepare plans for the deepening, and to ascertain the cost of the alterations.