ear
the way for her intended attack on the capital of the nation--she was
surprised to discover a diminutive craft of peculiar construction,
almost sunk beneath the water line, with a strange-looking iron turret
in the centre, steaming boldly towards her from out the shadow of the
powerful frigate "Minnesota." The "Monitor" had sailed from New York
Harbor on March 6th, in tow of a tugboat, to brave the waters of the
Atlantic, although she was originally designed only for smooth inland
waters. Before she had passed Sandy Hook she received urgent despatches
to hurry to Washington and, after inconceivable hardships in the
towering seas of the Atlantic coast, arrived off Fortress Monroe about 9
o'clock in the evening of March 8th, where she heard for the first time
of the depredations of the "Merrimac" and witnessed the final
destruction of the "Congress" amid lurid flames and the bursting of her
own shells. Though worn out and disheartened in their own struggle for
life with the tempestuous billows of the ocean on this, her first trial
trip of thirty-six hours from New York until she reached the side of the
"Minnesota," the crew of the "Monitor," encouraged and reassured by its
heroic commander, Lieutenant John L. Worden, prepared for the expected
combat with their redoubtable opponent.

The eyes not only of the men in the shipping and on shore, both Union
and Confederate, but of the whole country, were anxiously centred on the
two iron-clads as they approached each other, and the little "Monitor"
hardly seemed a match for the huge craft of the Confederates, who looked
with contempt upon the diminutive "cheese box," as they called it, which
dared to take up the gage of battle with their formidable "Merrimac."
Soon, however, it became apparent that the prowess of the little Union
craft had been entirely underestimated, and in the combat which ensued
the very smallness of the "Monitor" gave her a great advantage, in the
swiftness of her movements, over her gigantic opponent, not unlike an
undersized but agile and skilful athlete in encounter with a large and
lumbering, though more powerful, antagonist. Lieutenant Worden was the
hero of the occasion in the rapidity of his manoeuvring, while
Lieutenant Jones, now in command of the "Merrimac," was surprised to
find that his shot made no impression on the "Monitor." After more than
two hours of incessant fighting, Lieutenant Worden having been
temporarily blinded through the pow