fence of the United States
ship-of-war 'Cumberland,' temporarily under his command, in the
naval engagement at Hampton Roads on the 8th March, 1862, with the
rebel iron-clad steam frigate 'Merrimac.'"

THE WHITE SQUADRON'S FAREWELL SALUTE
To the Body of
CAPTAIN JOHN ERICSSON

(_New York Bay, August 25, 1890_)

[Illustration: Copyright, 1891, by Edward Moran.]

XII.

THE WHITE SQUADRON'S FAREWELL SALUTE TO THE BODY OF CAPTAIN JOHN
ERICSSON.

_New York Bay, August 25, 1890._[O]

No more fitting funeral cortege could have been devised than the one
which, on August 25, 1890, conveyed to Sweden, to their last
resting-place, the remains of the great engineer, John Ericsson, whose
inventive genius had clad the wooden navies of the world in armor of
impenetrable iron and steel. Little had he dreamt when, in 1839, at the
age of thirty-six (he was born at Vermland, Sweden, on July 31, 1803) he
came to the United States in one of the old wooden ships of that day
after a weary journey of many weeks--as yet comparatively unknown to
fame--that at the time of his death, on March 8, 1889, in the city of
New York, almost twenty-seven years to a day after the epoch-making
battle of his "Monitor" with the "Merrimac," his name would be on every
tongue in every land, and that the Government of the United States would
deem it an honor to place the magnificent protected cruiser "Baltimore"
of the United States Navy at the disposal of his native country on his
farewell journey from our shores to his long home, amid the salutes, to
their flag-ship, of the other giants of the White Squadron and the
reverent tokens of grief and respect displayed on all the shipping in
the harbor, as the funeral convoy slowly plied her way towards the
ocean, with the flags of Sweden and the United States waving at half
mast over her decks.

It is this impressive panorama which the artist spreads before us in
this canvas, which was the sensation of the Spring exhibition of 1891 at
the National Academy of Design in New York. In this picture he has
delineated details of the shipping from sketches made by himself at the
time and a careful study of our war vessels, as holds likewise true of
the next succeeding and last picture of this series. There is something
impressively grand and solemn about this painting, associated as it is
with the story of the great inventor. The sky is superb, and the water
has that realistic