As it happened, the gunners on the Merrimac, when firing red-hot shot at the Congress, aimed high, and the shot were lodged in the upper part of the hull. The flames quickly spread over the bulwarks and up the rigging, but were slow in eating down toward the magazine. For hours the flames illuminated the whole region, while now and again a gun that had been left loaded was fired by the growing heat. It was a scene that attracted thousands of eyes ashore and afloat until, soon after midnight, the fire arrived at the magazine, and the exploding powder hurled the huge mass of blazing timbers high in air. A thunderous roar shook all the region round about, and then “the stillness of death” followed.
But while the men on the Merrimac watched the fruition of their day’s work, one of them, a pilot, saw “a strange-looking craft brought out in bold relief by the brilliant light of the burning ship, which he at once proclaimed to be the Ericsson.” The pilot was right. The Monitor had arrived after a fearsome passage, during which the water had poured in through the hawse-pipe where the anchor chain led, and even down the smoke-stack, until the fires were all but extinguished. The belts on the fans got wet, so that it was not possible to keep up the draft, and the engineers and firemen were all but suffocated. The water dashed through the lookout slats of the pilot-house with such force as to knock the pilot over the wheel. The water gained in the hold until there was imminent danger of sinking. Nevertheless, it was an offshore wind, and the tug that went with her got her inshore, where the water was quiet, and at 4 o’clock on the afternoon of Saturday, March 8th, she passed in at Cape Henry and headed north for Hampton Roads. She was commanded by Capt. J. L. Worden, with Lieut. S. D. Greene as executive officer, and A. C. Stivers and Isaac Newton as chief and first assistant engineers. The roar of the guns of the Merrimac as she fired hot shot into the Congress twenty miles away, fell upon the ears of the Monitor’s crew, and the ship was at once cleared for action. After a little they “could see the fine old Congress burning brightly, and soon a pilot came on board to tell the direful news.” The Monitor was then driven at full speed to the Roanoke, where Flag Officer Marston directed her to go to the assistance of the Minnesota, then aground not far from the scene of the day’s conflict. In doing this Marston disobeyed orders he had received from Washington to the effect that the Monitor was to be sent there, presumably to protect the capital; and this is to be remembered because it shows that the authorities at Washington were as loath to trust in aggressive warfare in 1862 as they were in 1812 when they ordered Hull to keep the Constitution in Boston harbor.
J. L. Worden.
From a photograph.
Steaming over to where the Minnesota lay, the Monitor came to anchor, an officer reported on board the big frigate, “and then all on board [the Minnesota] felt that we had a friend that would stand by us in our hour of trial.” So wrote Captain Van Brunt of the Minnesota.
How far this confidence was justified was proved by the event of the next day; but when one contrasts the apparent power of the two ships as they lay that night, the one at Sewell’s Point and the other at Newport News, the chance of the Monitor’s accomplishing anything seems very remote. Consider her guns. They were eleven inches in bore, but ten-inch shot had been fired at the Merrimac for hours that day without effect. The Minnesota fired seventy-eight solid ten-inch shot and 169 solid nine-inch shot, with full service charges of powder, at the Merrimac during the two days’ fighting. Only a few of these were fired on Saturday, but the Congress and the Cumberland had fired shot a-plenty of that size at her, and none had hurt her massive walls. The eleven-inch shot of the Monitor was not so much heavier that her crew could be confident of piercing the armor where the ten-inch had failed utterly. The eleven-inch solid shot used weighed from 170 to 180 pounds, the ten-inch about forty pounds less. Moreover, the Monitor had but two guns to the ten of the Merrimac. The weight of the Merrimac’s broadside of five guns is not given in any of the authorities known to the writer, but her three Dahlgrens fired 270 pounds, her small rifle at least forty-five more, and, with one pivot counted in, the whole discharge was 465 pounds, or more than double that of the Monitor. The Monitor’s crew numbered fifty-eight, all told, while the Merrimac carried 320. Certainly if one may judge by the standards set up in English literature on the War of 1812, these differences in numbers of crews and weights of broadsides would make the result a foregone conclusion. Nor is that all to be said about the crews, for the men on the Merrimac had had their usual rest and food, while the crew of the Monitor had had scarcely a wink of sleep since leaving New York, and it had been impossible to make a fire in the galley and cook their food. They were served with food that night, but no one slept. “The dreary night dragged slowly on; the officers and crew were up and alert, to be ready for any emergency.” At daylight the Confederate ships were seen at anchor off Sewell’s Point, and at 7.30 o’clock they left their anchorage and headed across toward Newport News to begin anew their destruction of the Government ships.
Deck View of the Monitor and her Crew.
From a photograph.