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.
