The Express.
London, England, 1862-03-29 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 29.

IT is impoesible to read the account of the
dashing exploit' of the Merrimac and the brave
struggle of her wooden victims, the Cumber-
land and the Congress, without seeing that
the stanchest fighting qualities and the beet
training are of no avail against the appliances
of the new warfare of iron and steam. Fortu-

!vilely, we have in theory been pretty well pre-
pared for this result, and now comes the test of
actual 'orrice to confirm all that has been pre-
dicted. And something more ; for in this brilliant
affair of the James River a form of war ♦essel was
tried in the Monitor which had been rejected

by the authorities at Whitehall aii useless and
impracticable. At the same time this novel
kind of floating battery proved to be most
effective with her revolving deck-fort--a con-
trivance which, though tardily sanctioned by
our Admiralty in the earlier invention of Captain
Cow rim Cots.' cupola, wanted the proof of real
. .

service. There can be no doubt now of its im-
portance, at least for river service, and the
approaches of the great dockyards and harbours,
although for the open sea it may be a questionabis
form of vessel, as even the Americans appear to
have been aware, for it was feared that the
EbIICIINON battery might " turn turtle" in a
seaway. The protective plating of this Monitor
also affords some important points for the
consideration of our iron shipbuilders ; the
fort or cupola is made of six thin plates
bolted together in layers, while in the hull
of the vessel 26 inches of timber are laid
between the thick armour plates and the
akin of the inner vesseL This method el
construction appears to have resisted all the
bombarding the Merrimac could inflict, though
it must be remembered that the Monitor showed
only two feet above the water, and without a rpm
or mast of any sort. We confess to some per-
plexity in reconciling all the numerous expo&
nients in which targets of every kind and
degree of resisting power have been so easily
demolished by our engineers and artillerists,
with this invulnerability of Captain Eairssoir's
battery. If our target experiments were to
be trusted, 68-pound shot, at the close quarters
at which the fight between the Monitor and the
Merrimac was kept up for five hours, should have
penetrated the cupola on the deck of the Monitor;
and if the Merrimac carried either Aaisivraoxo or
BLAISLET guns such a result would have been still
more certain ; yet the examination of the sides of
the Monitor after the action showed no pene-
tration, and nothing more than a few severe
bruises and scratches, as the damage inflicted
by incessant broadsides. Possibly a more
efficient armament in the Merrimac would have

changed the argument, which at present is
so strongly in favour of a vessel constructed as
the Monitor was ; at any rate, it is clear that
a floating battery of that character mast become
part of our national defences. We may hays
been rather late in adopting Captain Count' plan,
but the decision proves now more important than at
first expected, u it will better enable us to apply
this cupola battery to vessels almost entirely sub-
merged, as the EILIOVON battery is. The Moni-
tor, ill-favoured as she looked to a seaman's eye,
proved quite as impossible to deal with as the un-
fortunate wooden sloop and frigate bad found their
iron-prowed conqueror of the day before ; she was
boarded but not taken, and no sooner were
the men of the 3lerrimac on her deck,
expecting to settle the business by a hand-to-
hand encounter, than the two heavy Dahlgrens
began to turn upon them without a hand be'ng
seen, and in another moment every soul would
have been swept off by a charge of grape, if they
had not perceived the manoeuvre, and made the
best of their way back again. It was no
wonder that the Merrimac gave up the fight with
an enemy that could neither be sunk nor boarded,
and yet kept firing as fiercely as ever without
losing a man ; she was glad enough to sheer off
crippled, with more than one shot through her iron
plates.
. . .

The question that arises is, how would any iron
ship deal with a catamaran of such deadly powers
and so indestructible itself ; especially, too, if con-
structed upon a larger and stronger scale, with two
or three cupola batteries on deck I The Warrior
would have simply to get out of the way of such
an unworthy antagonist—that is, with her present I
armament; for nothing short of the most ponderous
missiles could be trusted to snake any impression
npon it. to this view, then, Sir WILLIAM A a memos o
is quite right in pointing to ordnance of enormona
weight for future warfare, and no doubt it will be
necessary to provide at least one of these large
weapons for every ship, while for shore defences
they are even more necessary. We have only to
Inpoes one of these submerged batteries armed
with guns of greatfr penetrating power than the
Dahlgrens, to see that It :night run alongside the
strongest iron frigate and certainly disable her,
though it might not be able to take her,
simply because this would bring the fight
back to the old hand•to-hand system. The