Her speed was not more than five knots an hour and she steered so badly the Beaufort was compelled to pull her into the main current of the channel more than once.
The Federal squadron lay off Newport News, the Congress and the Cumberland well out in the stream, the Minnesota, Roanoke and St. Lawrence further down toward Fortress Monroe. The Congress, Cumberland and St. Lawrence mounted one hundred and twenty-four guns, twenty-two of them of nine-inch caliber. Their crews aggregated more than a thousand men.
The new crack steam frigates Minnesota and Roanoke had crews of six hundred men each and carried more than eighty guns of nine and eleven-inch caliber. That any single craft afloat would dare attack such a squadron was preposterous.
It was one o'clock before the strange black looking object swung into the channel and turned her nose up stream toward Newport News.
The crews of the Congress and the Cumberland were lounging on deck enjoying the balmy spring air. It was wash day and the clothes were fluttering in the breeze.
They couldn't make out the foolish-looking thing at first. It looked like the top of a long-hipped roof house that had been sawed off at the eaves and pushed into the water. The two little river steamers that accompanied the raft seemed to be towing it.
"What 'ell, Bill, is that thing?" a sailor asked his mate on the Congress.
Bill scanned the horizon.
"I give it up, sir," he admitted. "I been a sailin' the seas for forty years—but that's one on me!"
A battle signal suddenly flashed from the Cumberland and down came the wash lines.