It is probable that the Monitor would, in firing at such close quarters, have completely broken up the Merrimac’s armor plates, if a knowledge had existed of the endurance of the Dahlgren gun. The fear of bursting the 11-inch guns, in the small turret, caused the use of the service charge of fifteen pounds of powder. After that time thirty pounds were often used. Then we must remember that the crew had only been exercised at the guns a few times, and that the gun and turret gear were rusty, from having been kept wet during her late passage from New York.
The Monitor was 124 feet long, and 34 feet wide in the hull. The armor raft was 174 feet long, and 41 feet wide. Her stern overhung 34 feet, and her bow 15 feet. Her side armor was of five one-inch plates, backed by twenty-seven inches of oak. Her deck armor consisted of two half-inch plates, over seven inches of plank. The turret was twenty feet in inside diameter, covered with eight one-inch plates, and was nine feet high. The top of the turret was of railroad bars, with holes for ventilation. The pilot-house was built of bars eight inches square, and built up log-house fashion, with the corners notched. She was very primitive in all her arrangements, compared with the monitors Ericsson afterwards produced.
She carried two 11-inch guns, which threw spherical cast-iron shot, weighing 168 pounds. The charge of powder has been mentioned.
In this engagement she was struck twenty-one times; eight times on the side armor; twice on the pilot-house; seven times on the turret, and four times on deck.
The Merrimac carried ten heavy guns; sixty-eight-pounders, rifled. One of these was broken by a shot from the Cumberland, which shot entered her casemate, and killed seven men. Captain Buchanan was wounded on the first day, by a musket-ball, it is said; and the Merrimac was commanded, in her fight with the Monitor, by Lieutenant Catesby Jones, formerly of the United States Navy, as were, indeed, all her other officers. On the second day the Monitor injured many of her plates, and crushed in some of her casemate timbers.
From the day she retired before the Monitor to the 11th of May, when she was blown up by her own people, the formidable Merrimac never did anything more of note. There was, indeed, a plan concocted to capture the Monitor, as she lay on guard, in the Roads, by engaging her with the Merrimac, while men from two small steamers boarded her, and wedged her turret. Then the crew were to be driven out, by throwing balls of stinking combustibles below, by her ventilators. But nothing came of it.
The end of the Monitor must be told. After doing good service up the James River, during the eventful summer of 1862, she was sent down to Beaufort, South Carolina. On the night of the 30th of December, when off Hatteras, she suddenly foundered. About half of her officers and crew went down in her; the rest making their escape to her escort. The cause of her sinking was never known; but it was conjectured that the oak timbers which were fitted on the top rim of her iron hull had shrunk under the hot summer sun of the James River, and when she once more got into a rough sea, admitted the water in torrents.
Before we quit the subject of the Merrimac and Monitor, it may be of interest to mention that just about the time the Merrimac retired from the contest the head of Magruder’s column appeared on the river bank. But the camp at Newport News was too strong and well entrenched to be attacked without aid from the water. Magruder was just a day too late, and had to march back again. His troops were the same which, a few weeks later, were opposed to McClellan, in the earthworks at Yorktown.
FARRAGUT AT NEW ORLEANS.
