Hampton Roads

Then far away to the south uprose

A little feather of snow-white smoke,

And we knew that the iron ship of our foes

Was steadily steering its course

To try the force

Of our ribs of oak.



Down upon us heavily runs,

Silent and sullen, the floating fort;

Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns,

And leaps the terrible deat , With fiery breath,

From her open port.



* * *



Ho! brave hearts, that went down in the seas!

Ye are at peace in the troubled stream;

Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,

Thy flag, that is rent in twain,

Shall be one again,

And without a seam!

--Longfellow





The naval battles of the Civil War possess an immense importance,

because they mark the line of cleavage between naval warfare under the

old, and naval warfare under the new, conditions. The ships with

which Hull and Decatur and McDonough won glory in the war of 1812 were

essentially like those with which Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher had

harried the Spanish armadas two centuries and a half earlier. They were

wooden sailing-vessels, carrying many guns mounted in broadside, like

those of De Ruyter and Tromp, of Blake and Nelson. Throughout

this period all the great admirals, all the famous single-ship

fighters,--whose skill reached its highest expression in our own

navy during the war of 1812,--commanded craft built and armed in a

substantially similar manner, and fought with the same weapons and under

much the same conditions. But in the Civil War weapons and methods

were introduced which caused a revolution greater even than that which

divided the sailing-ship from the galley. The use of steam, the casing of

ships in iron armor, and the employment of the torpedo, the ram, and the

gun of high power, produced such radically new types that the old

ships of the line became at one stroke as antiquated as the galleys of

Hamilcar or Alcibiades. Some of these new engines of destruction were

invented, and all were for the first time tried in actual combat, during

our own Civil War. The first occasion on which any of the new methods

were thoroughly tested was attended by incidents which made it one of

the most striking of naval battles.





In Chesapeake Bay, near Hampton Roads, the United States had collected

a fleet of wooden ships; some of them old-style sailing-vessels, others

steamers. The Confederates were known to be building a great iron-clad

ram, and the wooden vessels were eagerly watching for her appearance

when she should come out of Gosport Harbor. Her powers and capacity

were utterly unknown. She was made out of the former United States

steam-frigate Merrimac, cut down so as to make her fore and aft decks

nearly flat, and not much above the water, while the guns were mounted

in a covered central battery, with sloping flanks. Her sides, deck,

and battery were coated with iron, and she was armed with formidable

rifle-guns, and, most important of all, with a steel ram thrust out

under water forward from her bow. She was commanded by a gallant and

efficient officer, Captain Buchanan.



It was March 8, 1862, when the ram at last made her appearance within

sight of the Union fleet. The day was calm and very clear, so that the

throngs of spectators on shore could see every feature of the battle.

With the great ram came three light gunboats, all of which took part in

the action, harassing the vessels which she assailed; but they were

not factors of importance in the fight. On the Union side the vessels

nearest were the sailing-ships Cumberland and Congress, and the

steam-frigate Minnesota. The Congress and Cumberland were anchored not

far from each other; the Minnesota got aground, and was some distance

off. Owing to the currents and shoals and the lack of wind, no other

vessel was able to get up in time to take a part in the fight.



As soon as the ram appeared, out of the harbor, she turned and steamed

toward the Congress and the Cumberland, the black smoke rising from her

funnels, and the great ripples running from each side of her iron prow

as she drove steadily through the still waters. On board of the Congress

and Cumberland there was eager anticipation, but not a particle of fear.

The officers in command, Captain Smith and Lieutenant Morris, were two

of the most gallant men in a service where gallantry has always been

too common to need special comment. The crews were composed of veterans,

well trained, self-confident, and proud beyond measure of the flag whose

honor they upheld. The guns were run out, and the men stood at quarters,

while the officers eagerly conned the approaching ironclad. The Congress

was the first to open fire; and, as her volleys flew, the men on the

Cumberland were astounded to see the cannon-shot bound off the sloping

sides of the ram as hailstones bound from a windowpane. The ram

answered, and her rifle-shells tore the sides of the Congress; but for

her first victim she aimed at the Cumberland, and, firing her bow

guns, came straight as an arrow at the little sloop-of-war, which lay

broadside to her.



It was an absolutely hopeless struggle. The Cumberland was a

sailing-ship, at anchor, with wooden sides, and a battery of light guns.

Against the formidable steam ironclad, with her heavy rifles and steel

ram, she was as powerless as if she had been a rowboat; and from the

moment the men saw the cannon-shot bound from the ram's sides they knew

they were doomed. But none of them flinched. Once and again they fired

their guns full against the approaching ram, and in response received a

few shells from the great bow-rifles of the latter. Then, forging

ahead, the Merrimac struck her antagonist with her steel prow, and the

sloop-of-war reeled and shuddered, and through the great rent in her

side the black water rushed. She foundered in a few minutes; but her

crew fought her to the last, cheering as they ran out the guns, and

sending shot after shot against the ram as the latter backed off after

delivering her blow. The rush of the water soon swamped the lower decks,

but the men above continued to serve their guns until the upper deck

also was awash, and the vessel had not ten seconds of life left. Then,

with her flags flying, her men cheering, and her guns firing, the

Cumberland sank. It was shallow where she settled down, so that her

masts remained above the water. The glorious flag for which the brave

men aboard her had died flew proudly in the wind all that day, while the

fight went on, and throughout the night; and next morning it was still

streaming over the beautiful bay, to mark the resting-place of as

gallant a vessel as ever sailed or fought on the high seas.



After the Cumberland sank, the ram turned her attention to the Congress.

Finding it difficult to get to her in the shoal water, she began to

knock her to pieces with her great rifle-guns. The unequal fight between

the ironclad and the wooden ship lasted for perhaps half an hour. By

that time the commander of the Congress had been killed, and her

decks looked like a slaughterhouse. She was utterly unable to make

any impression on her foe, and finally she took fire and blew up. The

Minnesota was the third victim marked for destruction, and the Merrimac

began the attack upon her at once; but it was getting very late, and as

the water was shoal and she could not get close, the rain finally

drew back to her anchorage, to wait until next day before renewing and

completing her work of destruction.



All that night there was the wildest exultation among the Confederates,

while the gloom and panic of the Union men cannot be described. It

was evident that the United States ships-of-war were as helpless as

cockle-shells against their iron-clad foe, and there was no question

but that she could destroy the whole fleet with ease and with absolute

impunity. This meant not only the breaking of the blockade; but the

sweeping away at one blow of the North's naval supremacy, which was

indispensable to the success of the war for the Union. It is small

wonder that during that night the wisest and bravest should have almost

despaired.



But in the hour of the nation's greatest need a champion suddenly

appeared, in time to play the last scene in this great drama of sea

warfare. The North, too, had been trying its hand at building ironclads.

The most successful of them was the little Monitor, a flat-decked, low,

turreted, ironclad, armed with a couple of heavy guns. She was the first

experiment of her kind, and her absolutely flat surface, nearly level

with the water, her revolving turret, and her utter unlikeness to any

pre-existing naval type, had made her an object of mirth among most

practical seamen; but her inventor, Ericsson, was not disheartened in

the least by the jeers. Under the command of a gallant naval officer,

Captain Worden, she was sent South from New York, and though she almost

foundered in a gale she managed to weather it, and reached the scene

of the battle at Hampton Roads at the moment when her presence was

all-important.



Early the following morning the Merrimac, now under Captain Jones (for

Buchanan had been wounded), again steamed forth to take up the work she

had so well begun and to destroy the Union fleet. She steered straight

for the Minnesota; but when she was almost there, to her astonishment

a strange-looking little craft advanced from the side of the big

wooden frigate and boldly barred the Merrimac's path. For a moment the

Confederates could hardly believe their eyes. The Monitor was tiny,

compared to their ship, for she was not one fifth the size, and her

queer appearance made them look at their new foe with contempt; but the

first shock of battle did away with this feeling. The Merrimac turned on

her foe her rifleguns, intending to blow her out of the water, but

the shot glanced from the thick iron turret of the Monitor. Then the

Monitors guns opened fire, and as the great balls struck the sides of

the ram her plates started and her timbers gave. Had the Monitor been

such a vessel as those of her type produced later in the war, the ram

would have been sunk then and there; but as it was her shot were not

quite heavy enough to pierce the iron walls. Around and around the two

strange combatants hovered, their guns bellowing without cessation,

while the men on the frigates and on shore watched the result with

breathless interest. Neither the Merrimac nor the Monitor could dispose

of its antagonist. The ram's guns could not damage the turret, and the

Monitor was able dexterously to avoid the stroke of the formidable

prow. On the other hand, the shot of the Monitor could not penetrate the

Merrimac's tough sides. Accordingly, fierce though the struggle was, and

much though there was that hinged on it, it was not bloody in character.

The Merrimac could neither destroy nor evade the Monitor. She could not

sink her when she tried to, and when she abandoned her and turned to

attack one of the other wooden vessels, the little turreted ship was

thrown across her path, so that the fight had to be renewed. Both sides

grew thoroughly exhausted, and finally the battle ceased by mutual

consent.



Nothing more could be done. The ram was badly damaged, and there was

no help for her save to put back to the port whence she had come. Twice

afterward she came out, but neither time did she come near enough to the

Monitor to attack her, and the latter could not move off where she would

cease to protect the wooden vessels. The ram was ultimately blown up by

the Confederates on the advance of the Union army.



Tactically, the fight was a drawn battle--neither ship being able to

damage the other, and both ships, being fought to a standstill; but

the moral and material effects were wholly in favor of the Monitor. Her

victory was hailed with exultant joy throughout the whole Union, and

exercised a correspondingly depressing effect in the Confederacy; while

every naval man throughout the world, who possessed eyes to see, saw

that the fight in Hampton Roads had inaugurated a new era in ocean

warfare, and that the Monitor and Merrimac, which had waged so gallant

and so terrible a battle, were the first ships of the new era, and that

as such their names would be forever famous.