“Shall we give them a broadside, my boys, as she goes?
Shall we send yet another to tell,
In iron-tongued words, to Columbia’s foes,
How bravely her sons say ‘Farewell?’ ”
The word was passed for each man to save himself. Even then, one man, an active little fellow, named Matthew Tenney, whose courage had been conspicuous during the action, determined to fire once more, the next gun to his own being then under water, the vessel going down by the head. He succeeded, but at the cost of his life, for immediately afterwards, attempting to scramble out of the port-hole, the water suddenly rushed in with such force that he was washed back and drowned. Scores of poor fellows were unable to reach the upper deck, and were carried down with the vessel. The Cumberland sank in water up to the cross-trees, and went down with her flag still flying from the peak.[19] The whole number lost was not less than 120 souls. Her top-masts, with the pennant flying far above the water, long marked the locality of one of the bravest and most desperate defences ever made
“By men who knew that all else was wrong
But to die when a sailor ought.”
The Cumberland being utterly demolished, the Merrimac turned her attention to the Congress. The Southerners showed their chivalric instincts at this juncture by not firing on the boats, or on a small steamer, which were engaged in picking up the survivors of the Cumberland’s crew. The officers of the Congress, seeing the fate of the Cumberland, determined that the Merrimac should not, at least, sink their vessel. They therefore got all sail on the ship, and attempted to run ashore. The Merrimac was soon close on them, and delivered a broadside, which was terribly destructive, a shell killing, at one of the guns, every man engaged except one. Backing, and then returning several times, she delivered broadside after broadside at less than 100 yards’ distance. The Congress replied manfully and obstinately, but with little effect. One shot is supposed to have entered one of the ironclad’s port-holes, and dismounted a gun, as there was no further firing from that port, and a few splinters of iron were struck off her sloping mailed roof, but this was all. The guns of the Merrimac appeared to have been specially trained on the after-magazine of the Congress, and shot after shot entered that part of the ship. Thus, slowly drifting down with the current, and again steaming up, the Merrimac continued for an hour to fire into her opponent. Several times the Congress was on fire, but the flames were kept under. At length the ship was on fire in so many places, and the flames gathering with such force, that it was hopeless and suicidal to keep up the defence any longer. [pg 23]The national flag was sadly and sorrowfully hauled down, and a white flag hoisted at the peak. The Merrimac did not for a few minutes see this token of surrender, and continued to fire. At last, however, it was discerned through the clouds of smoke, and the broadsides ceased. A tug that had followed the Merrimac out of Norfolk then came alongside the Congress, and ordered the officers on board. This they refused, hoping that, from the nearness of the shore, they would be able to escape. Some of the men, to the number, it is believed, of about forty, thought the tug was one of the Northern (Federal) vessels, and rushed on board, and were, of course, soon carried off as prisoners. By the time that all the able men were off ashore and elsewhere, it was seven o’clock in the evening, and the Congress was a bright sheet of flame fore and aft, her guns, which were loaded and trained, going off as the fire reached them. A shell from one struck a sloop at some distance, and blew her up. At midnight the fire reached her magazines, containing five tons of gunpowder, and, with a terrific explosion, her charred remains blew up. Thus had the Merrimac sunk one and burned a second of the largest of the vessels of the enemy.
Having settled the fate of these two ships, the Merrimac had, about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, started to tackle the Minnesota. Here, as was afterwards proved, the commander of the former had the intention of capturing the latter as a prize, and had no wish to destroy her. He, therefore, stood off about a mile distant, and with the Yorktown and Jamestown, threw shot and shell at the frigate, doing it considerable damage, and killing six men. One shell entered near her waist, passed through the chief engineer’s room, knocking two rooms into one, and wounded several men; a shot passed through the main-mast. At nightfall the Merrimac, satisfied with her afternoon’s work of death and destruction, steamed in under Sewall’s Point. “The day,” said the Baltimore American, “thus closed most dismally for our side, and with the most gloomy apprehensions of what would occur the next day. The Minnesota was at the mercy of the Merrimac, and there appeared no reason why the iron monster might not clear the Roads of our fleet, destroy all the stores and warehouses on the beach, drive our troops into the fortress, and command Hampton Roads against any number of wooden vessels the Government might send there. Saturday was a terribly dismal night at Fortress Monroe.”
But about nine o’clock that evening Ericsson’s battery, the Monitor,[20] arrived in Hampton Roads, and hope revived in the breasts of the despondent Northerners. She was not a very formidable-looking craft, for, lying low on the water, with a plain structure amidships, a small pilot-house forward, and a diminutive funnel aft, she might have been taken for a raft. It was only on board that her real strength might be discovered. She carried armour about five inches thick over a large part of her, and had practically two hulls, the lower of which had sides inclining at an angle of 51° from the vertical line. It was considered that no shot could hurt this lower hull, on account of the angle at which it must strike it. The revolving turret, an iron cylinder, nine feet high, and twenty feet in diameter, eight or nine inches thick everywhere, and about the portholes eleven inches, was moved round by steam-power. When the two heavy Dahlgren guns were [pg 24]run in for loading, a kind of pendulum port fell over the holes in the turret. The propeller, rudder, and even anchor, were all hidden.