is new to me. I saw this battle from eight o'clock until
midday. There was one marvel in it which has not been mentioned--the
splendid handling of the _Monitor_ throughout the battle. The first bold
advance of this diminutive vessel against a giant like the _Merrimac_
was superlatively grand. She seemed inspired by Nelson's order at
Trafalgar: 'He will make no mistake who lays his vessel alongside the
enemy.' One would have thought the _Monitor_ a living thing. No man was
visible. You saw her moving around that circle, delivering her fire
invariably at the point of contact, and heard the crash of the missile
against her enemy's armor above the thunder of her guns, on the bank
where we stood. It was indescribably grand!

"Now," he continued, "standing here on the deck of this battle-scarred
vessel, the first genuine ironclad--the victor in the first fight of the
ironclads--let me make a confession and perform an act of simple
justice: I never fully believed in armored vessels until I saw this
battle. I know all the facts which united to give us the _Monitor_. I
withhold no credit from Captain Ericsson, her inventor, but I know that
the country is principally indebted for the construction of this vessel
to President Lincoln, and for the success of her trial to Captain
Worden, her commander."

THE MERRIMAC AND THE MONITOR

II

THE MERRIMAC AND THE MONITOR

_Told by H. Ashton Ramsay, Major C.S.A., Chief Engineer of the
"Merrimac"_

The _Merrimac_ was built in 1856 as a full-rigged war-frigate, of
thirty-one hundred tons' burden, with auxiliary steam power to be used
only in case of head winds. She was a hybrid from her birth, marking the
transition from sails to steam as well as from wooden ships to
ironclads.

I became her second assistant engineer in Panama Bay in 1859, cruising
in her around the Horn and back to Norfolk. Her chief engineer was
Alban C. Stimers. Little did we dream that he was to be the right-hand
man of Ericsson in the construction of the _Monitor_, while I was to
hold a similar post in the conversion of our own ship into an ironclad,
or that, in less than a year and a half, we would be seeking to destroy
each other, he as chief engineer of the _Monitor_ and I in the
corresponding position on the _Merrimac_.

In the harbor of Rio on our return voyage we met the _Congress_, and as
we sailed away after coaling she fired a friendly salute and cheered us,
and we responded with a will