The Monitor and the navy under steam

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

CHAPTER I OEIGIN AND PEOGKESS Or STEAM NAVIGATION

The Nineteenth Centniy a Period of Bemarkahle Progress and Change. These Changes dne to the Steam Engine. Complete Kevolntion in Kaval Armaments and Methods. Important Period marked by Ericsson's Monitor. Erolntion of the Ironclad. Beginning of Steam Navigation. Early Eiqierimenteis. Dr. Papin and the First Actual Steamboat, 1707. John AUen, 1729. Jonathan HuUs, 1736. Bninsey and Fitch in America. Miller and Symington, 1787-1789. Dnndas and Symington, 1802. John Stevens, 1802. Screw Propeller patented before 1800. Robert Fnlton and the Clermont, 1807. Steam first used in Navies. Influence of Fnlton. The Demologos, the First War-Steamer ever built. Early American and English Steam Vessels of War. Disadvantages of Side Wheels. John Ericsson. Application of the Screw Propeller. Wider Field for Naval Operations made possible by Steam. Services of Steam Vessels in the War with Mexico. Influence of Steam and Machinery in the Expedition to Japan. The First Atlantic Cable laid by American and English War-Steamers. The Paraguay Expedition. AfEair of the Pei-ho. Influence of Shell-Guns. The Question of Armor. The Stevens Circular Ironclad, 1812. The Timby Revolving Fort. The Stevens Battery. French Armored Batteries of 1854. Ironclads in Action at Kinbnm, 1855. First French and English Armored Frigates. Armored Battery proposed by Ericsson in 1854 1 vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER U

BUILDIKO AND BATTLE OF THE IKONOLADS

Beginning of Armored Shipbuilding in the United States. Opinions of Board of Naval Officers regarding Ironclads. Navy Department advertises for Armored Ships. Three Plans accepted. The Gunboat Galena. The New Ironsides. The Monitor. Origin of the Name. Energy of John Ericsson. Bmlding of the Monitor. Failure on First Trial. Vessel in Commission. The Frigate Merrimac. Efforts to save her from the Confederates. Scuttled and Upper Works burned. Raised by the Confederates. Converted into an Armored Battery. Race to complete the Ironclads of North and South. Importance of the Issue. Finished at the Same Time. Merrimac attacks and destroys Congress and Cumberland. Minnesota and other Federal Ships participate in the Action. Completeness of the Victory of the Merrimac. Dismay in Washington. The Crew of the Monitor. Perils of Her Voyage from New York. Her Timely Arrival in Hampton Roads. Ordered to defend the Minnesota. Battle with the Merrimac. Captain Worden disabled. The Merrimac abandons the Fight. Injuries of the Two Ships. The Monitor Successful. Far-reaching Influences of the Battle. The Advent of the Iron Age of Naval Construction. Subsequent History and Destruction of the Merrimac. Loss of the Monitor 69

Chapter III Some Naval Events Of The Civil War

Sailing- Vessels used to only a Limited Extent in the Civil War. Many Steamers added to the Navy. Importance of Naval Operations in the Mississippi River. Battle of the Forts below New Orleans. Loss of the Varnna. Farragut passes the Batteries at Vicksburg. Disaster to the Mound City. Encounter with the Ram Arkansas. Naval Battle at Port Hudson. Destruction of the Mississippi. Assam-

CONTENTS vii

Wing of Monitors off Chaileston. Unsuccessful Attack on the Charleston Batteries. Lack of Confidence in Monitors. Defeat and Capture of the Atlanta hy the Weehawken. Loss of the Weehawken. Injury to Commerce of the United States by Confederate Privateers and Cruisers. Career of the Alabama. Sinking of the Hatteras. Duel between the Kearsarge and the Alabama. Admiral Farragnt's Great Battle in Mobile Bay. The Tecumseh destroyed by a Torpedo. Capture of the Tennessee. Results of the Battle 146

Chapter IV

Changes in War-ship Construction hastened by the Example of the Monitor. Revival of the Ram. Turret System of mounting Guns the Chief Legacy of the Monitor. Many Monitors bnUt for the United States Navy. The Passaic Class. The Dictator and the Puritan. The Miantonomoh Class. The Dunderberg. Influence of the Monitor in Europe. Captain Cowper Coles and his Cupola Ship. The Rolf Erake and other Coles Monitors. The Huascar. First Turret Ships for the British Navy. The Royal Sovereign and the Prince Albert. The Monarch. The Captain. The Devastation and the Thunderer. The Inflexible. Smaller English Monitors. Broadside and Box-Battery Ships versus Turrets. Later English Battleships. The Turret Ship in France. The Italian Duilio. Ericsson's Invention adopted by the Nations of Northern Europe. Russian Monitors. Circular Ironclads. Decadence of the United States Navy after the Civil War. Miantonomoh Class rebuilt. . The New Puritan. The Texas and the Maine. The Monterey. The First American Battleships. The Oregon and her Class. American and English Battleships compared. Remarkable Record of the Oregon. The Iowa. Latest • American Battleships. The Arkansas Class of Monitors. The Modern Battleship the Offspring of the Monitor and Typical of the Iron Worker's Progress during the Nineteenth Century 212 viii CONTENTS

Chapter V Pbincipal Acts Of The Uavt In The Wak With Spain

Different Character of Naval Operations in the Far East and in the West Indies. ProTOcation for the War. The Maine sent to Havana. Her Destruction. Finding of the Naval Conrt of Inquiry. War Preparations. The American Asiatic Squadron. Battle in Manila Bay. Its Results. The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Rear Admiral Sampson. North Coast of Cuba blockaded. Affair at Matauzas. The Spanish Cape Verde Squadron. Naval Expedition to Puerto Rico. Battle at San Juan. First Casualties of the War. Spanish Squadron appears in the West Indies. Efforts to find it. Located at Santiago de Cuha. Blockade of Santiago established. Sinking of the Merrimac. Mine Defenses of Santiago Harbor. Bombardments. Landing of the American Army. Naval Battle of July Third. The Battle the Decisive Point of the War. Surrender of Santiago. The Victorious Fleet comes Home 269

LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS

PAGE

John Ebicsson. From his Contributions to the Centennial Exhibition Frontispiece

TBiPiiE Hull Boat with Paddle Wheels, by Patkick MttTiFiB, 1787. From Woodoroft's Origin and Progress of Steam K^avigation 6

The Clebmont, 1807. From Woodoroft's Origin and Progress of Steam Navigation 10

United States Wab Steameb Demologos, 1814. After original drawings by Fulton 12

FiKST Fbench and English Abmoe- Plated Steam

Feigates 64

French Frigate La Gloire, 1859. After design in Sir

Thomas Brassey's The British Navy. Arrangement of Armor on H. M. S. Black Prince. After

design in Murray's Ship Building in Iron and Wood. English Frigate Warrior, 1860. After design in Sir Thomas Brassey's The British Navy.

United States Ibonclads, 1862 76

Gunboat Galena. . From volume viii. Official Records. Frigate New Ironsides. After a sketch, 1863.

Eeiosson's Ieonclad Cupola Vessel. Proposed to Emperor Napoleon II. in 1854. After design in " Contributions" 82

The Monitob, 1862. From " Contributions " 82

The Meeeimac 96

United States Steam Frigate, 1855. After a lithograph. Confederate Armored Steam Ram, 1862. From volume vii. Official Records.

Action between Monitoe and Mebbimao. From the painting by William F. Halsall, in the Capitol, Washington 130

U. S. S. Habteoed. From a photograph 152

X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

GROnp OF Portraits 170

Andrew H. Foote, David D. Porter, David G. Farragut, Franklin Buchanan, John L. Worden. From photographs in the collection of the Massachusetts Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States.

Action between the Kearsakge and the AiiABAMA. From the painting by H. Durand Brager in the possession of the Union League Club, New York, N. T 196

U. S. S. DuNDERBERG. After design in Sir Thomas Brasaey's The British Navy 220

Early Foreign Turret Ships. After designs in Sir

Thomas Brassey's The British Navy 232

Danish Ship Rolf Krake, Peruvian Ship Huascar, H. M. S. Royal Sovereign.

English Battleships, 1867-1871. After designs in Sir

Thomas Brassey's The British Navy 240

Devastation, Captain, Monarch.

H. M. S. Inflexible, 1876. After design in the Naval Annual. Edited by T. A. Brassey 242

Russian CiBCnLAR Stbam Battery Novgorod. After design in Sir Thomas Brassey's The British Navy . . 252

French Turret Ram Bouledogue. After design in Sir Thomas Brassey's The British Navy . 252

United States Monitor Passaic, 1862. After design in Ericsson's " Contributions " 256

United States Monitor Puritan, 1896. After Government drawings . 256

United States Second-Class Battleships. After designs in the Naval Annual ... 258

Texas, Maine.

Fibst-Class Battleships. After designs in the Naval

Annual 202

U. S. S. Oregon, H. M. S. Centurion.

U. S. S. Oregon. From a photograph 264

U. S. Protected Cruiser Olympia. From a photograph 280

Manila Bay. Adapted from Government Chart .... 286

Admirai, Dewey. From a photograph 292

Rear Admiral Sampson. From a photograph .... 292

U. S. Armored Cruiser New York. From a photograph 298

Entrance of Santiago Harbor. After Sketch in Proceedings U. S. Naval Institute, December, 1898 .... 332

THE MONITOR AND THE NAVY UNDER STEAM

CHAPTER I OEIGESr AND PROGRESS OF STEAM NAVIGATION

The steam engine has made the nineteenth century a period of such marvelous advancement that it is not unusual to claim for it greater progress than was witnessed by the five or even ten centuries immediately preceding it. If we look back one hundred years and compare the surroimdings of life with the conditions that we are familiar with to-day it is easy to realize that this is true. The eighteenth century ended with the world in practically the same condition as at its beginning, and the same may be said of the seventeenth century, and the sixteenth, and the others that went before. But in what a wonderful world of change we are living now ! At the beginning of the present century no locomotive had ever turned a wheel upon a rail ; there were no steamboats except here and there a rude affair that had not successfully emerged from the experimental stage ;

2 ORIGIN OF STEAM NAVIGATION

the telegraph, the telephone, the dynamo, the electric motor and the electric light, and a multitude of other mechanical appliances, so familiar that they seem a natural and necessary part of our daily life, were absolutely unknown, and for the greater part not even thought of as within the bounds of human possibility.

In all this great transformation no change has been more complete and striking than that of naval armaments. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, and for many years afterward, the taU wooden sailing ship-of-the-line was regarded as the invincible sovereign of the seas and the embodiment of the best work that man was believed capable of. It had been developed by several centuries of slow growth, in which was much labor, experiment, experience, study, and patience ; yet the grand result was swept away in a very small part of the time that had been necessary to produce it, and it was supplanted by a fabric a hundred fold more formidable, representing in infinitely greater variety the product of man's ingenuity, and so different in outward appearance and internal economy that it is difficult to imagine the one filling the sphere of the other.

It wiU be the purpose of this volume to describe this naval transformation, with special reference to its influence upon the history of our own country. Though young among the nations, we had the beginning of a navy and the beginning of

THE MONITOR AN EPOCH MAKER 3

naval liistory before the advent of steam, and were thus in a position to accept and deal with it under the same considerations that appealed to older naval powers. The history of our navy under steam divides itself into two parts, rather sharply separated by a pecuHar war-vessel forced into the field of action in advance of its natural time by the demands of a great war and destined suddenly to change by its example the naval armaments and methods of all nations. The first part deals with the early use of steam at sea ; of its slow introduction for naval purposes ; of the efforts to take advantage of its aid without giving up the outward appearance or established characteristics of the conventional ship of war, and of the extent to which it influenced and enlarged naval tactics and opportunity. Then came, abruptly and born of peculiar conditions, John Ericsson's Monitor, the central figure in a series of events that cast hopeless discredit upon the old-estabhshed type of war-ship, and was the beginning of the new naval history that has iron and steel and steam for its agencies.

The first attempts to make practical use of the power of steam and the earHest efforts to apply that power to boat propulsion were the beginnings of an evolution that ultimately produced the ironclad steamer and the greater battleship that sprang from it. A narrative of those early experiments belongs to the technical history of the

4 ORIGIN OF STEAM NAVIGATION

steam engine, and will not be undertaken here except to mention briefly the more important steps in the development, which is necessary that we may better understand the connection of events that follow.

Leaving out of consideration, then, the earliest attempts at steam navigation, it will answer for a beginning to say that the first authentic instance of a boat actually moved by steam power was in the year 1707, when Dr. Papin, the eminent French scientist, conducted a successful experiment at Marburg, in Upper Hesse, where he was a professor of mathematics. His efforts in the direction of science were so poorly appreciated that a mob of boatmen destroyed his boat and evinced such hostihty to its inventor that he had to leave the country for personal safety.

In 1729 Dr. John Allen in England obtained a patent " For the apph cation of certain powers to give motion to Engines whereby a Ship may be navigated in a calm, from whence innumerable advantages will accrue in Sayling, and he a great preservation in Engagements at Sea." The specification of this invention describes the principle of jet propulsion, that is, moving a boat by the reaction of a stream of water forced out of the stern by pumps in the boat. The inventor proposed various engines for this duty and described one actuated by the explosion of gunpowder ; he also suggested that steam might be used as the forcing power.

EARLY INVENTORS 5

Jonathan Hulls, a clockmaker of Campden, in England, was granted a patent in 1736 for mechanism to drive a hoat by steam power. There is no record that a trial was ever made with an actual boat, but the fact is of importance, as it is the first record of a patent of a steamboat.

In America James Eumsey and John Fitch were rival inventors and early experimenters with steamboats. Rumsey's boat, first tried in Virginia in 1784 and later in England, was constructed on the principle of Jet propulsion. Fitch experimented with various propelling devices : an endless chain running over pulleys on the sides of the boat ; paddle-wheels ; long paddles operated in a manner similar to the motion of propelling a canoe, and a rude form of screw propeller. Some of his attempts were attended with a fair measure of success, but were not carried beyond the stage of experiment because of skepticism on the part of the public and lack of funds to make a commercial enterprise of steam navigation.

A very important stage in the development of the steamboat is marked by certain experiments under the direction of Patrick Miller in Scotland from 1787 to 1789. Miller was a gentleman of wealth, and first became interested in the subject by amusing himself with odd forms of boats on a lake on his estate. He built several small boats, or more correctly rafts, composed of two or three boats or huUs arranged parallel to each other and

6 ORIGIN OF STEAM ISfAVIGATION

propelled by paddle wheels placed in the spaces between them. Men were at first employed to turn these wheels, but it having been suggested that a steam engine might be used for the work, Miller engaged a Scotch engineer, William Symington by name, to make an engine and fit it in one of the boats. A small boat thus equipped was tried with such success in 1788 that a much larger craft and engine were built and experimented with the next year on the Forth and Clyde canal. A sj)eed of seven miles an hour was realized, and the performance assured the future of steam afloat ; but very strangely Mr. Miller, the patron of the enterprise, lost interest in it about that time and ordered the boat dismantled and laid up. His experimental zeal turned to the cultivation of exotic grasses, and the cause of steam received no more aid from him.

The benefit of these experiments was not lost, for in 1801 Lord Dundas employed the engineer, Symington, to apply the experience he had gained with Miller to the problem of substituting steam power for horses for towing purposes on the Forth and Clyde canal. In 1802 Symington completed a tow-boat named Charlotte Dundas that proved its fitness for the desired work by towing two barges, of seventy tons each, twenty miles in six hours against a strong head vsdnd. This boat had one paddle wheel located in a well-hole near the stern, turned by a single-cylinder engine very

Bow View

Section

MILLEE'S TRIPLE-HULL BOAT, 1787

THE SCREW PROPELLER 7

similar in its general form to the simpler types of steam engine now in use. No practical use of the boat was ever made, as it was feared the banks of the canal would be destroyed by the swash of water from the paddle wheel.

Meanwhile, another step toward practical steam navigation was being made in the United States. John Stevens, a native-bom American who had taken a prominent part in the War of the Eevolution and who owned a large estate at Hoboken, across the Hudson River from New York city, was by instinct an engineer, though his education had been for the law. As early as 1791 he had taken out a patent for a multi-tubular boiler, and another for a method of driving boats by jet propulsion. His mechanical experiments continued uutU, in 1802, he navigated the river bordering his estate with a small boat fitted with a steam engine and screw propeller much like the present form of that instrument. Brunei, the famous French engineer, then a royalist exHe, was associated with him in some of his experiments.

This boat was a mere skiff only twenty-five feet long, but is important because it made successful use of the screw propeller. The idea of that instrument was then not novel, as its principle of operation was simply a reversal of the principle of a form of windmill and waterwheel that had been in use for centuries. In 1752 the French Academy of Sciences had awarded a prize to Daniel

8 ORIGIN OF STEAM NAVIGATION

Bernouilli for an essay on the manner of impelling boats without wind, in which he proposed the propeller. In 1785 Joseph Bramah had obtained a patent in England for a mode of propelling vessels by " a wheel with inclined Fans or Wings, similar to the fly of a Smoke-jack, or the vertical Sails of a Windmill," and patents for similar inventions were granted in England in 1784 to William Lyttleton and in 1800 to Edward Shorter. David BushneU, an ingenious American, had actually made practical use of a screw propeller during the Revolutionary War by applying it, worked by hand power, to a submarine torpedo boat with which he designed to blow up a 50-gun British ship. These early instances of the screw propeller are particularly referred to because it will save many words when we come to a period much later when John Ericsson and several other engineers were claiming and disputing in the law courts the invention of that instrument. The name of Robert Fulton stands foremost in the list of Americans who have been distinguished in the field of the mechanic arts during this century. He was a native of Pennsylvania, and in early life took up the profession of artist, in which while yet a youth he achieved reputation and pecuniary success by his skill in miniature j^ortrait painting. In 1786, when twenty-one years of age, he went to Europe to study art with the distinguished American painter, Benjamin West, and

ROBERT FULTON 9

remained abroad twenty years before retuming to his native country. During this period he devoted much time to mechanical investigation, and patented various machines for iadustrial purposes, gradually abandoning his art work and giving his whole time to engineering, which was his true field of labor. He became interested in the problem of steam navigation, and built one fairly successful steamer in France ia 1803, which had to be given up for lack of means. He visited Symington in Scotland ; and from seeing the Charlotte Dundas he became convinced that steam navigation was practicable, and resolved to devote himself to it until he had proved it successful.

The United States Ambassador to France at that time was Mr. Robert Livingston, who was interested in steamboats from having been associated with the experiments of John Stevens in America, and who decided, with Fulton's aid, to attempt to iutroduce steam navigation in his native country. As the agent of Livingston, Fulton went to England in 1804 and ordered from Boultou and Watt a large steam engine suitable for use in a boat. In 1806 he returned to the United States, and his engine soon followed him. It is worth mentioning that a special order from the king in council had to be obtained before this engine could be shipped from England, the exportation of machinery being then prohibited by law. A hull for the engine was built in New York and launched

10 ORIGIN OF STEAM NAVIGATION

early in 1807. This vessel, named Clermont after the home manor of Mr. Livingston on the Hudson River, was 133 feet long, 18 feet vs^ide, and 9 feet depth of hold. In August the machinery was all fitted in place and the boat ready for trial.

While being built this steamer was ridiculed by the pubhc as " Fulton's Folly ; " about half a century later the public again made merry at the expense of an engineer, and enjoyed newspaper tirades against " Ericsson's Folly." On the 7th of August, 1807, the Clermont got up steam and got under way. A large crowd watched the proceeding with interest, and indulged in cat-caUs and jeers whenever Mr. Fidton appeared in sight. Our modern public is more accustomed to great inventions, and possibly better bred, though we may easUy imagine that a trial trip of a flying-machine, for instance, might now be attended with signs of skepticism, if not outspoken rudeness. Instead of furnishing amusement for the crowd, the Clermont swung into the stream and steamed up the river one hundred and ten miles without stopping, until she arrived at Clermont, the home of Livingston. Twenty hours later she continued to Albany, forty mUes further up the river. The average speed for the whole time under way was about five mUes an hour. The next day she left Albany and returned to New York in thirty hours by a continuous trip.

The success of this trip of the Clermont led to

OUR DEBT TO THE CLERMONT 11

her being advertised within a month as a regular packet to run between New York and Albany. The schedule time was thirty-six hours and the fare was seven dollars, with lesser rates for intermediate stopping-places. Thus for the first time in history was navigation by steam established on a commercial basis and beyond experiment. The next year the Clermont and two other steamboats that had been built during the winter began regular traffic on the rivers about New York city, and from them the business extended within four years to the Delaware River, Long Island Sound, and even to the Mississippi Eiver and its tributa^ ries. In the latter region, then a vast wilderness infested with wild beasts and wilder men, the steamboat played a very important part by penetrating its waterways and distributing settlers who conquered and civilized a great territory that could not have been reached for many years by any other means.

To Fulton, therefore, and to the steamboat that sprung from his vigorous brain, the United States owes a debt of incalculable magnitude. We cannot fairly claim that he invented the steamboat, because, as we have seen in this hasty review, that invention had been growing slowly for more than one hundred years ; indeed, it was just one hundred years from the time that Dr. Papin operated a crude steamboat in Germany in 1707 until Fulton achieved success with the Clermont in 1807. The steamboat grew under manyhands and many minds, and Fulton happened to be the first to put together the best work of his predecessors and make a combination tliat succeeded. Tliat he had the judgment and mechanical talent to do this is sufficient to keep his name prominent for all time in the history of mechanical progress.

As Robert Fulton was the first successfully to apply steam to navigation for commercial purposes, so was he the first to apply it to purposes of naval warfare. In 1813 he submitted to President Madison plans for a steam battery to be used against the ships of England, then at war with the United States. His project was favored, and in March, 1814, Congress authorized the building of one or more such batteries for the defense of the coast. One vessel was built in about four months at Brown's shipyard on the East River, in New York city, and received its machinery at Fulton's engine works, on the North River. Mr. Fulton was the engineer in charge, or superintendent, of the whole construction. He named his battery Demologos, — " Voice of the People," — but it was afterward called Fulton in his honor. Because of the aj)pearance of the same name in our list of ships at a later period this first war-steamer is known in naval records as Fulton the First.

The conventional form of a ship of war was discarded by Fulton, who proposed simply a huge floating battery that coidd be moved from place to n

THE DEMOLOGOS, 1814

FULTON'S WAK-SHIP 13

place by its own steam power. In this conception he was ahnost half a century in advance of the time, as will be seen as this review progresses. His vessel was large compared with the largest war-ships then afloat : the length was 156 feet ; width, 56 feet ; depth, 20 feet, and measured tonnage, 2,475 tons. The frigate Constitution was 175 feet in length, 43 feet 6 inches beam, and measured 1,576^ tons. The Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar ten years before, was 226 feet 6 Luehes long from flgurehead to taffrail ; length of gun deck, 186 feet ; extreme beam, 52 feet, and measured tonnage, 2,162 tons. The hull of the Fulton was double, as shown by the di-awings, which are copies of the originals made by Fulton. The combination of two hulls with the paddle wheel revolving in the channel between them may perhaps be traced to Fulton's visit to Scotland and his observations there of the experimental work of MLUer and Symington, previously described. The total cost of the Fulton was |320,000, or about $17,000 more than the first cost of the Constitution.

In June, 1815, the steamer was completed and successfully tried in the harbor of New York. On the 4th of July she made a trip to the ocean and back, steaming 53 miles in 8 hours and 20 minutes. In September, when fully armed and equipped, she made another trial trip to the sea, averaging with and against the tide 5^ miles per hour. This was more than Fulton had promised, as his offer to the government had specified a speed of 3 to 4 miles an hour only.

Very deplorably, Mr. Fulton did not live to know the success he had achieved. A sudden illness caused by exposure while traveling resulted fatally ; liis death, which occurred February 24, 1815, being mourned as a national calamity. The Coast and Harbor Defense Association, having direction of the building of war -vessels, referred as foUows to this sad event when reporting the completion of the steamer : " Their exertions were further retarded by the premature and unexpected death of the engineer. The world was deprived of his invaluable labors before he had completed his favorite undertaking. They will not inquire, wherefore, in the dispensations of a Divine Providence, he was not permitted to realize his grand conception. His discoveries, however, survive for the benefit of mankind, and will extend to unborn generations.^^

The war with Great Britain ceased a few months before the completion of the Fulton, and that novel craft therefore missed a conclusive trial of her worth by battle. But for this lack it is probable that her name would be famous in history as a victor, and as marking the date of an abrupt and complete change in naval armaments and sea tactics. In the design prepared by Fulton were all the elements that are essential for a battleship of

ARMAMENT OF THE DEMOLOGOS 15

the present day, — positive motive power, heavy battery, and impregnable armor. The armor was of wood, it is true, but it was heavy enough to resist the fire of any ordnance then in use, and that is as much as can be hoped for now. At its thickest part this wooden armor was 5 feet through, diminishing below the water-line, as the drawings show. Beside the main battery of guns, Fulton proposed to have a submarine gun in each bow, to discharge a 100-pound shot at a depth of 10 feet below the surface. A furnace was supplied for heating shot, and there were pumps for throwing water on an enemy's deck to disable him by wetting his ordnance and powder, and dampening the ardor of his men.

The original plan contemplated a mastless steamer or movable battery only, but this was altered greatly in bidlding. Captain David Porter, just home from his disastrous cruise with the Essex to the South Pacific, was assigned to the command of the steamer while she was being built. He was a sailor, and a good one, but his nautical mind could not grasp the idea of a ship without sails, and he accordingly caused a heavy mast, rigged to carry lateen-sails, to be stepped in each hull ; bowsprits were also set in the ends of the hulls to carry jibs or head sails. To protect men required on the upper deck to handle these spars and sails it then became necessary to buUd up the sides, originally flush with the spar deck, to form bullet-proof bulwarks, thus adding much to the weight of the structure. All this top hamper meant just so much more weight for the machinery to transport, and detracted from the efficiency and character of the battery without adding at all to its fighting qualities.