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 death, 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


HAMPTON ROADS


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 sailingship 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 steamfrigate 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, haraising 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 allimportant.

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.

****

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