as replaced by a
cramped room, with the roof hardly high enough to let the jolly tars
skylark beneath without banging their skulls against some projecting
beam. Truly it may be said, that, if the great civil war made naval
architecture more powerful, it also robbed the war-vessels of all
their beauty.

It is hard to appreciate now the immense difficulty experienced in
getting those first seven river-gunboats built by the appointed time.
The war had just begun, and a people accustomed to peace had not yet
found out that those not actually at the seat of war could continue
their usual course of life unmolested. Rolling-mills, machine-shops,
founderies, saw-mills, and shipyards were all idle. Working-men were
enlisting, or going to the Far West, away from the storm of war that
was expected to sweep up the Mississippi Valley. The timber for the
ships was still standing in the forests. The engines that were to
drive the vessels against the enemy were yet to be built. Capt. Eads's
contract called for the completion of the seven vessels in sixty-five
days, and he went at his work with a will. His success showed that not
all the great services done for a nation in time of war come from the
army or navy. Within two weeks four thousand men were at work getting
the gunboats ready. Some were in Michigan felling timber, some in the
founderies and machine-shops of Pittsburg, and others in the shipyards
at St. Louis, where the hulls of the vessels were on the stocks. Day
and night, weekdays and Sundays, the work went on; and in forty-five
days the first vessel was completed, and christened the "St. Louis."
The others followed within the appointed time. Before the autumn of
1861, the river navy of the United States numbered nearly a score of
vessels, while nearly forty mortar-boats were in process of
construction. Of this flotilla, Capt. A. H. Foote, an able naval
officer, was put in command, and directed to co-operate with the land
forces in all movements.

The first service to which the gunboats were assigned was mainly
reconnoitring expeditions before the front of the advancing Union
armies. They were stationed at the junction of the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers; and the country about Cairo was occupied by a
large body of Union troops under the command of Gen. Grant, then a
young officer little known. The opening fight of the river campaign
was little more than a skirmish; but it proved the superiority of the
gunboats over a land-