“To our Dear and Honored Captain.
“Dear Sir: These few lines is from your own crew of the Monitor, with their kindest Love to you their Honored Captain, hoping to God that they will have the pleasure of welcoming you back to us again soon, for we are all ready able and willing to meet Death or anything else, only give us back our Captain again. Dear Captain we have got your Pilot-house fixed and all ready for you when you get well again; and we all sincerely hope that soon we will have the pleasure of welcoming you back to it.... We are waiting very patiently to engage our Antagonist if we could only get a chance to do so. The last time she came out we all thought we would have the Pleasure of sinking her. But we all got disappointed for we did not fire one shot and the Norfolk papers says we are cowards in the Monitor—and all we want is a chance to show them where it lies with you for our Captain We can teach them who is cowards. But there is a great deal that we would like to write to you but we think you will soon be with us again yourself. But we all join in with our kindest love to you, hoping that God will restore you to us again and hoping that your sufferings is at an end now, and we are all so glad to hear that your eyesight will be spaired to you again. We would wish to write more to you if we have your kind Permission to do so but at present we all conclude by tendering to you our kindest Love and affection, to our Dear and Honored Captain.
“We remain untill Death your Affectionate Crew
“The Monitor Boys.”
The stories of the Monitor and the Merrimac may soon be completed. The Merrimac was overhauled at Norfolk. Commodore Josiah Tattnall relieved Admiral Buchanan in command. On the 11th of April he took the Virginia (Merrimac) down to Hampton Roads, expecting to have a desperate encounter with the Monitor. “Greatly to our surprise, the Monitor refused to fight us. She closely hugged the shore under the guns of the fort, with her steam up. Hoping to provoke her to come out, the Jamestown was sent in, and captured several prizes, but the Monitor would not budge.” That is from a Confederate account, and it is truthful. The Monitor was under strict orders from Washington not to engage the Merrimac unless forced to do so. A great fleet, that included a number of vessels which were supposed to be able to sink the Merrimac by ramming, had gathered at Hampton Roads. Commodore Goldsborough was in command of the fleet. The prizes mentioned, two brigs and a schooner, were taken from Newport News and in plain sight of the fleet. Professor Soley’s history says very truly that this incident was “humiliating.” For about a month after that nothing was done, but “on the 8th of May a squadron, including the Monitor, bombarded our batteries at Sewell’s Point. We immediately left the yard for the Roads. As we drew near, the Monitor and her consorts ceased bombarding, and retreated under the guns of the forts, keeping beyond the range of our guns. Men-of-war from below the forts, and vessels expressly fitted for running us down, joined the other vessels between the forts. It looked as if the fleet was about to make a fierce onslaught upon us. But we were again to be disappointed. The Monitor and the other vessels did not venture to meet us, although we advanced until projectiles from the Rip Raps fell more than half a mile beyond us. Our object, however, was accomplished; we had put an end to the bombardment, and we returned to our buoy.”
As the reader observes, this is also a Confederate account. Commodore Goldsborough’s report says, on the contrary, that “the Merrimac was more cautious than ever”; and that the “Monitor was kept well in advance so that the Merrimac could have engaged her without difficulty had she been so disposed.” But the unprejudiced reader will say that a Farragut was needed at the head of the Union force.
The Merrimac remained unmolested until government operations ashore compelled the Confederates to evacuate Norfolk and the battery at Sewell’s Point. Tattnall wished to retreat with the Merrimac up the James River, but his pilots said it could not be done, and accordingly, on the night of May 10, 1862, he ran her ashore “in the bight of Craney Island,” not far from where he had, as a midshipman in his teens, led the sortie from the little fort built there to keep the British from Norfolk—led the sortie that drove the boastful Pechell’s men helter-skelter back to their ships. On Craney Island he fired the Merrimac and retreated ashore, leaving her to blow up on the morning of the 11th at 5 o’clock.
The Monitor lasted a few months longer. She was ordered to Beaufort, North Carolina, in tow of the Rhode Island, and sailed from Hampton Roads on the afternoon of December 29, 1862. The Passaic, in tow of the State of Georgia, went along. On the morning of January 2d a long swell set in with a wind that grew to a gale, and just before midnight she foundered, although not until all but sixteen of her crew were saved.
Destruction of the Merrimac off Craney Island.