I claim no credit for the originality of this suggestion, well knowing that the ancients in their sea fights dashed their sea-galleys with great force one upon the other, nor am I ignorant of the plan of a steam prow suggested some years ago by Commodore Barron.[[9]] My proposition is simply the renewal of an ancient practice by the application of the power unknown in early times, and, as many believe, in the beginning of its usefulness.
With great respect, I have the honor to be,
Your most obedient servant,
M. C. PERRY.
The Hon. Wm. A. Graham,
Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D. C.
Twenty years later in the river of her own name, the war steamer Mississippi became a formidable ram, though before this time in 1859, the French iron-clad, La Gloire had been launched. It had been said of the British Admiral, Sir George Sartorius, that “He was one of the first to form, in 1855, the revolution in naval warfare, by the renewal of the ancient mode of striking an adversary with the prow.” It will be seen that Perry anticipated the Europeans and taught the Americans.
Other points in this letter of Perry’s are of interest at this time. First, last, and always, Perry honored the engineer and believed in his equal possession, with the line officers, of all the soldierly virtues, notwithstanding that the man at the lever, out of sight of the enemy, must needs lack the thrilling excitement of the officers on deck. He felt that courage in the engine-room had even a finer moral strain than the more physically exciting passions of the deck.
We may here note that Perry really had part in the naval victories of our civil war. The method of ramming action, as used by Farragut in his brilliant victories of wooden steamers over Confederate iron-clads, was that out-lined by Perry years before.
Perry also made a thorough study, so far as it was then possible, of the problems of resistance and penetration, of rifled cannon and of iron-clad armor.