XI THE "VIRGINIA"
On a morning that was like ideal May, the 8th of March, 1862, I sat on my horse by the river bank at Blinkhorn, opposite Newport News. My uncle, Colonel J. J. Phillips, was stationed there, and I had come to the camp and was one of the hundreds gathered on the bank of the Nansemond River at that point, all eyes turned with eager interest toward Hampton Roads, where lay our new battleship, the Virginia.
Like a phœnix, she had arisen from the wreck of the old frigate Merrimac. Grim, solemn, weird, builded low upon the water, she was not boat nor ram nor submarine, nor anything else hitherto known to the waves. Newly clad in her robe of iron, she was a veiled mystery, a forlorn hope, a theory, an armed engine, a steam battery protected by armor, an experiment destined to change the course of naval warfare. Being the first ship built in the Old Dominion, she was named for her State, Virginia. Commanded by Captain Buchanan and manned by a crew composed largely of landsmen who had volunteered from the Army, she had waited in Hampton Roads for the dawning of her day.
Through my field-glass I watched the Virginia gliding like a great white bird hovering between the pulsing, scintillant blue of the heavens above and the waters beneath. Accompanied by the gunboats Raleigh and Beaufort, she passed along amid the cheers of the enthusiastic onlookers thronging both banks and of the troops at the batteries around the harbor. An awesome feeling took possession of me, holding me silent until the enthusiasm of the crowd thrilled me and I waved my handkerchief in messages of Godspeed to the brave new craft.
Slowly she rounded Craney Island, lying like a blue-gray cloud over the water, her batteries turned toward the Norfolk shore. The troops waved their caps and sent up lusty cheers for the strange craft that looked, as some one afterward said, "like a huge terrapin with a large round chimney about the middle of its back." Having passed the island, she turned into the south channel and slowly moved on toward Newport News until, coming within firing range of the United States frigates Congress and Cumberland, she was greeted with broadsides from both. A flash of fire, pale against the white day, a puff of smoke, widening, drifting, wreathing around the mouth of the gun and floating off into space, a deep roar of thunder showed us that our Virginia was bearing well her brave old name.
The enthusiasm which had greeted her appearance was as nothing compared with the excitement that thrilled us now. Yells of encouragement and defiance rent the air. Handkerchiefs fluttered; hats were thrown aloft. Some of the men danced; others turned somersaults of enthusiasm. One soldier rushed to Colonel Phillips shouting, "Say, Colonel, say; can't we do something? Can't we help? For God's sake, let us do something to help them!"
Fortunately there was no bridge from the shore to the scene of action. Otherwise every man, woman and child among that seething crowd might have rushed into the fight, to the embarrassment of the plucky little Virginia. We could do our part only by going into paroxysms of patriotism, in which we all excelled.
The Virginia went on up the channel, turned and, coming back, ran full against the Cumberland, penetrating her side with the sharp prow of the Confederate ironclad. The frigate reeled, shuddered, and began slowly to settle, her guns roaring from her deck. The Congress came to her assistance, but the shots which rained from the two frigates fell harmlessly from the slanting sides of the Virginia.
With fascinated eyes I watched the Cumberland tossing upon the waves, gradually sinking, firing another volley as her bow went down, then disappearing under the water, the flag that floated from her masthead still fluttering above the sea.