The Monitor and the Merrimack: Minnesota

The Monitor now hauled off, for the purpose of hoisting more shot into her turret. Catesby Jones thought he had silenced her, and that he might make another attempt on the Minnesota. He, however, changed his course as the Monitor steamed up, and it was seen that the Merrimack was sagging down at her stern. She made the best of her way to Crancy Island. The battle was over; the turreted Monitor had driven her from the field and won the victory.

The Minnesota had fired two hundred and forty-seven solid shot, two hundred and eighty-two shells, and more than ten tons of powder. The Monitor fired forty-one shot, and was struck twenty-two times. The last shell fired by the Merrimack at her struck her pilot-house opposite the peep-hole, through which Worden at that moment was looking. He was knocked down senseless and blinded by the explosion. When consciousness returned, the first question this brave officer asked was, "Did we save the Minnesota?"

The sharttering of the pilot-house was the greatest injury that the Monitor received. One of the iron logs, nine inches by twelve inches thick, was broken in two.

On board the Merrrimack two were killed and nineteen woulded. She had lost her iron prow, her starboard anchor, and all her boats; her armor was dislocated and damaged; she leaked considerably; her steam-pipe and smoke-stack were riddled; the muzzles of two of her gunds were shot away; the wood-work round one of the ports was set on fire at every discharge.

In his report on the battle, Buchanan states that in fifteen minutes afte the action began he had run the Cumberland down; that he distinctly heard the crash when she was struck, and that the fire his ship received did her some injury; that there was great difficulty in managing the Merrimack when she was near the mud, and that this was particularly the case in getting into position to attack the Congress. It was while firing the red-hot shot and incendiary shell by which that ship was burnt that he was himself wounded.

This engagement excited the most profound interest. Throughout the civilized world. It seemed as if the day of wooden navies was over. Nor was it alone the superiority of iron as against wood that was settled by this combat: it showed that a monitor was a better construction than a mailed broadside ship, and that inclined armor was inferior to a turret.

This opinion does not take into account the defects of the monitors as sea-going vessels, which have prevented their coming into extended use. The original Monitor foundered in a storm off Cape Hatteras during the same year. The Merrimack was blown up on the abandonment of Norfolk, on May 11, 1862.