[Illustration: LOADING A NAVAL CANNON IN THE CIVIL WAR. Contemporary drawing.]
FOOTNOTES
[1] The first Confederate privateer to get to sea was the Savannah. She took one prize and was captured. Another, the Beauregard, was taken after a short cruise. A third, the Petrel, mistook the frigate St. Lawrence for a merchantman and attempted to take her, but was sunk by a broadside. After a year the blockade stopped privateering.
[2] Captain Wilkes was congratulated by the Secretary of the Navy, thanked by the House of Representatives, and given a grand banquet in Boston; and the whole country was jubilant. The British minister at Washington was directed to demand the liberation of the prisoners and "a suitable apology for the aggression," and if not answered in seven days, or if unfavorably answered, was to return to London at once.
[3] Early in the war an agent was sent to Great Britain by the Confederate navy department to procure vessels to be used as commerce destroyers. The Florida and Alabama were built at Liverpool and sent to sea unarmed. Their guns and ammunition were sent in vessels from another British port. The Shenandoah was purchased at London (her name was then the Sea King) and was met at Madeira by a tender from Liverpool with men and guns. On her way to Australia, the Shenandoah destroyed seven of our merchantmen. She then went to Bering Sea and in one week captured twenty- five whalers, most of which she destroyed. This was in June, 1865, after the war was over. In August a British ship captain informed the commander of the Shenandoah that the Confederacy no longer existed. The Shenandoah was then taken to Liverpool and delivered to the British government, which turned her over to the United States.
[4] Read Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. IV, pp. 600-614.
[5] In 1864 a Confederate ironclad ram, the Albemarle, appeared on the waters of Albemarle Sound. As no Union war ship could harm her, Commander W. B. Gushing planned an expedition to destroy her by a torpedo. On the night of October 27, with fourteen companions in a steam launch, he made his way to the ram, blew her up with the torpedo, and with one other man escaped. His adventures on the way back to the fleet read like fiction, and are told by himself in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. IV, pp. 634-640.
[6] The hole made in the Cumberland by the Merrimac was "large enough for a man to enter." Through this the water poured in so rapidly that the sick, wounded, and many who were not disabled were carried down with the ship. After she sank, the flag at the masthead still waved above the water. Read Longfellow's poem The Cumberland.
[7] The Monitor was designed by John Ericsson, who was born in Sweden in 1803. After serving as an engineer in the Swedish army, he went to England; and then came to our country in 1839. He was the inventor of the first practical screw propeller for steamboats, and by his invention of the revolving turret for war vessels he completely changed naval architecture. His name is connected with many great inventions. He died in 1889.
[8] When the Confederates evacuated Norfolk some months later, the Merrimac was blown up. The Monitor, in December, 1862, went down in a storm at sea.