motion without turbulence which only Edward Moran
could depict, while the white gleaming sister ships of the "Baltimore"
in the background on the right, the shipping in the harbor of all
descriptions and sizes in more sombre hue on the left, and the Statue of
Liberty looming up in the rear, stand like sentinels on guard as the
great white cruiser, with its flags at half mast and its stacks sending
forth, like a veil of mourning, a cloud of black smoke--ploughs with
foam encircled prow majestically through the water, like a great living,
breathing, moving thing.

As this creation of the artist perpetuates the tribute of national
gratitude to the great inventor of the first "Monitor," so, it may be
said, a fitting tribute has been paid to the picture itself through its
reproduction in a superb etching by another great American artist, his
own brother, Thomas Moran.

That the United States Navy should take so deep an interest in paying
the last honors to John Ericsson, with an Admiral of the Navy, Daniel L.
Braine, superintending the ceremonies, and a future Admiral, Winfield
Scott Schley, commanding the funeral convoy, is not surprising, for to
Ericsson it owed not only the bomb-proof floating fortresses of the
ocean, but the screw propeller, first applied in the construction of the
United States man-of-war "Princeton," with propelling machinery under
the water line out of the reach of shot. The first steam fire-engine
ever constructed in the United States was also the work of Ericsson in
1841, and many and varied were the other inventions of his creative
brain. But the greatest service rendered by Ericsson was in the
construction of the "Monitor," not only on account of the immediate,
almost inestimable benefit which it conferred in saving the United
States Navy from destruction by the Confederate iron-clad "Merrimac," in
1862, but also, still more, in view of the impetus which it gave to the
development of marine craft to their present perfection and in almost
revolutionizing the entire science of naval warfare.

When, at 8 o'clock on March 9, 1862, the "Merrimac," after the havoc
which she had wrought with the Federal ships on the evening before,
including the burning of the "Congress" and the sinking of the
"Cumberland," steamed out from the shore in order to continue her work
of destruction--which contemplated successively the annihilation of the
"Minnesota," the "Roanoke" and the "St. Lawrence," and would thus cl