The ships are coming together bows on. The American commander causes his ship to swing to starboard a little so as to point her bow away from the approaching enemy.
The instant for action has come. He starboards his helm in order to lay his ship across the course of the enemy. "Prepare to ram" is telephoned by the aid at his side. The ship swings around. The pointer swerves from the direction of her starboard bow to dead ahead. Has he been too late? Will he pass across her wake, or will he cross her path in time to receive her ram prow in his own broadside? The needle points ahead when the huge side of the enemy looms up through the fog.
In a moment, with a terrific shock, the ram bow of the victorious Kearsarge enters the side of the enemy, cleaving armor and deck-plating as though it were wood.
Slowly the victor backs off from her sinking enemy.
The rammed ship commences to deliver death-dealing shots; but she is fast sinking.
She can no longer elevate her guns enough to strike the Kearsarge. She has heeled too far. The firing eases.
All the Kearsarge's boats that are not disabled are manned and ready to render assistance to the vanquished.
Not a moment too soon. The ill-fated ship heels to starboard, her stern rising high in the air, her screws thrashing the fog in their upward flight, the flag under which her brave defenders had so well fought still waving at her trucks, and slowly sinks beneath the waves, sending up columns of water from her hatchways, and engulfing her crew in the mighty suction.
But few survivors were saved of the few hundred that had had victory so nearly in their grasp.