It took forty-five minutes for the Merrimac to finish off the Cumberland, and she now turned her ram towards the Congress, which spread all sail and endeavoured to get clear away.
But at this moment the Congress grounded and became helpless. The gunboats of the Confederates were still firing heavily at her from a respectful distance, but as they saw the Merrimac approaching they too drew near under her protection.
The Merrimac chose her position at about 100 yards’ range, despising the guns of the Congress, and raked her fore and aft, dismounting guns and covering her deck with mangled limbs. In three places the Congress burst into flames, and the dry timber crackled and blazed and smoked like a volcano. The men could not stand by the guns for the fervent heat. The wounded were slowly burned alive. The officers could not bear this sight, and hauled down the flag.
A tug was sent by the Confederates to take off the prisoners from the burning wreck, but, unfortunately, some sharpshooters from the shore still kept up a hot fire upon the Southern vessels. In consequence of this the Merrimac fired another broadside into the sinking Congress, and killed many more of her crew. The Congress, being deserted, still burned on till darkness fell, and the ruddy glare lit up the moving waters as if they had been a sea of blood. At midnight the fire reached her magazine, and with a thunder of explosion the Congress blew up into a myriad fragments. The Northern warship Minnesota had also grounded, so had the frigate St. Lawrence, and the Merrimac, while it was still light enough to aim a gun, steamed towards them to see what little attention she could bestow upon them. The Merrimac was, perhaps, a little overconfident in her coat of mail. Anyhow, she risked receiving a broadside at very short range from the heavy guns of the Minnesota.
A shot seems to have entered her porthole and damaged her machinery, for she hesitated, put about, and returned to safe anchorage behind Craney Island.
Meanwhile, a very natural terror was gnawing at the hearts of the Federal crews and garrison in Hampton Roads.
They had listened to the sounds of the conflict and seen the dire results in wonder, almost in despair. The Merrimac, they said, was invulnerable. Not a shot could pierce her. On Sunday morning she would return and destroy the whole Federal fleet at her leisure. She would shell Newport News Point and Fortress Monroe, at the entrance of Hampton Roads, set everything on fire, and drive the garrisons from their guns. Nay, as the telegraph wires flashed the news to Washington, it was foreseen with an agony of horror that the Merrimac might ascend the Potomac and lay the capital in ashes. Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, were in a state of panic. No one knew what might not follow. It was a blind horror of a new and unknown danger. For the experience of one hour had rendered the shipbuilding of the past a scorn and a laughing-stock. Wooden frigates might go to the scrap-heap now. With the Cumberland had gone down morally all the great navies of Europe. A new order had to be found for ship and battery, and steel must take the place of planks of oak.
Such a night of anxiety and alarm the Northern States had never experienced. It was ten o’clock at night when the look-out in the garrison thought he saw lights out at sea in Chesapeake Bay. He called his mate. By-and-by they made them out to be two small steamers heading for Old Point Comfort. An eye-witness from Fort Monroe thus describes what happened:
“Oh, what a night that was! I can never forget it. There was no fear during the long hours—danger, I find, does not bring that—but there was a longing for some interposition of God and waiting upon Him, from whom we felt our help must come, in earnest, fervent prayer, while not neglecting all the means of martial defence. Fugitives from Newport News kept arriving. Ladies and children had walked the long ten miles from Newport News, feeling that their presence only embarrassed their brave husbands. Sailors from the Congress and Cumberland came, one of them with his ship’s flag bound about his waist, as he had swum with it ashore. Dusky fugitives came mournfully fleeing from a fate worse than death—slavery. These entered my cabin hungry and weary. The heavens were aflame with the burning Congress. But there were no soldiers among the flying host. The sailors came only to seek another chance at the enemy, since the Cumberland had gone down in deep waters, and the Congress had gone upward, as if a chariot of fire, to convey the manly souls whose bodies had perished in that conflict upward to heaven.
“The heavy night hung dark the hills and waters o’er,”