Stockton, of the United States navy, and on their assurance
that the invention would be taken up in the United States, closed up his
affairs in England and sailed for this country.

His first experiment was disastrous--though through no fault of his. A
ship-of-war called the Princeton was ordered by the government and
completed. She embodied, besides screw propellers, many other features
which made her a nine days' wonder. A distinguished company boarded her
for her trial trip, and it was decided also to test her big guns. But at
the first discharge, the gun burst, killing the secretary of state, the
secretary of the navy, the captain of the ship, and a number of other
well known men. As a consequence, the experiment was stopped and
Ericsson was twelve years in securing from the government the $15,000 he
had spent in equipping the Princeton.

However, he was soon to render the country a service which will never be
forgotten. In 1861, he appeared before the navy department with a plan
for an iron-clad consisting of a revolving turret mounted upon an
armored raft. He secured an order for one such vessel, to be paid for
only in the event that it proved successful. The majority of the board
which gave the order doubtless laughed in their sleeves as the inventor
withdrew, for what chance of success had such a vessel? There were some
who even doubted whether she would float--among them her builders, who
took the precaution of placing buoys under her before they launched her
four months later.

Of the voyage of the little craft from New York to Hampton Roads, and of
her epoch-making battle with the Merrimac we have already told. Ericsson
had asked that she be named the "Monitor," as a warning to the nations
of the world that a new era in naval warfare had begun, and that she was
well-named no one could doubt after that momentous ninth of March,
1862. Honors were showered upon the inventor, whose great service to the
nation could not be questioned. The following ten years of his life were
devoted to the construction of his famous torpedo-boat, the "Destroyer,"
which, he believed, would annihilate any vessel afloat--the predecessor
of all the torpedo-boats, past and present, which have played so
important a part in naval warfare. He lived for more than twenty years
in a house in Beach street, New York, where he died, in 1889.

The Monitor's attack upon the Merrimac would have been ineffective but
for the remarkable guns with