His handling of the
vessel was daring almost to madness, but she became disabled and was
forced to surrender. Buchanan was taken prisoner, and never again took
part in any naval action.

Let us return to Hampton Roads.

The news of the disaster to the Union fleet spread gloom and
consternation throughout the North, and corresponding rejoicing
throughout the South. The remaining ships in Hampton Roads plainly lay
at the Merrimac's mercy, and after they had been destroyed, there was
nothing to prevent her steaming up the Potomac and attacking
Washington. It seemed as if nothing but a miracle could save the country
from awful disaster.

And that miracle was at hand.

Among the coincidences of history, none is more remarkable than the
arrival at Hampton Roads on the night of March 8, 1862, of the strange
and freakish-looking craft known as the Monitor. Proposed to the Navy
Department in the preceding fall by John Ericsson, in spite of sneers
and doubts, a contract was given him in October to construct a vessel
after his design. The form of the Monitor is too well known to need
description--"a cheese-box on a raft," the name given her in derision,
describes her as well as anything. She was launched on the last day of
January, and three weeks later was handed over to the Government, but it
was not until the fourth of March that her guns were mounted, two
powerful rifled cannon. At the request of Ericsson, she was named the
Monitor, and this name came afterwards to be adopted to describe the
class of ships of which she was the first. So dangerous was service in
her considered, that volunteers were called for, and Lieutenant John
Lorimer Worden was given command of her.

Worden had entered the navy twenty-seven years before, and at the
opening of the Civil War, had delivered the orders from the secretary of
the navy which saved Fort Pickens, in the harbor of Pensacola, to the
Union. Attempting to return North overland, he was arrested and held as
a prisoner seven months, being exchanged just in time to enable him to
procure command of the Monitor. Rumors of the construction of the
Merrimac had reached the North, and two days after her guns were aboard,
the Monitor left New York harbor for Hampton Roads. Just after she
passed Sandy Hook, orders recalling her were received there, fortunately
too late to be delivered. By such slight threads do the events of
history depend.

Meanwhile, Captain Worden was making such progre