The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-04-04


son to doubt that she would have won.
The Monitors turret could hardly have
stood the hammering. If the Monitor,
on the other hand, had carried guns
equal to those we had, so that she
could have hurled her solid shot with
the greatest possible force she would
have cut us to pieces, Her projectiles
would have sliced through our armor
and dismounted our guns, killed our
men and wrecked our machinery. But
none of these things were to be.
This was one of the worlds great
naval battles in which both sides wore
the same uniform. The men on the
Merrimac were largely from the Uni
ted States navy, and still wore the
blue. Another reason for retaining this
color was the fact that it alone SEEM
ed to stand the action of salt water; at
least no satisfactory substitute had
been found for it.
1.-THE similarity of uniforms compli-
Gated our plans in the event of our
boarding the Monitor and taking her
by hand-to-hand fight, as we expected
to do. In such a miX-up there would
be little chance to distinguish friend
from foe. We prepared to board, how
ever, and marked ourselves by tying
on white sashes or white cloths around
our left arms. wore a SASH Once
we might have boarded the Monitor.
1t was when we n ade a feeble effort to
ram her and failed, our commander
fearing the effect of hard shock on
the Merrimacs frame and stopping
against the Monitor with gentle
hnf INV 81; o,,+
firing a shot or two, but there was no
ramming and no boarding.
During the progress of the fight we
learned to get our bodies out of the
way of the Monitors fire. We soon
grew expert at judging her intentions,
and could tell when shot was COM
ing and about where it was likely to
hit u.s. We cleared our ports whenever
she was bout to pay US one of those
compliments. Our poor smokestack
however, couldn't dodge, and it was
riddled with shot, large and small-in
addition to the perforations perpetrat-
ed by the fleet the day before-till it
was mostly holes. This interferred
with our furnace draught considerably,
but did no vital damage.
81 was out on deck but once. Our
pilothouse, well forward on our low
freeboard, had been taken away as a.
needless and cumbrous affair, and the
commander occupied a hatchway
where it had stood, thrusting his head
above the deck now and then to keep
survey of the scene / crept out of a
port and carried word of some kind to
him. A Yankee gunner on one of the
Oh wi, wa fha f1.o,1 la
of return to my station, missing me
not over four feet with a small piece at
good long range. I had been feeling
| very brave but lost no time getting
| under cover.
1T is another erroneous impression
| impression that the Monitor was all
| that saved Washington and New York
| and the other Federal seaports from
| the Merrimac. The Merrimac could
| never have reached any of them. She
dared not try the short ocean voyage,
and she drew too much water; besides
| which she must have eventually sue
| cumbed to the pounding she would
have got from the Federal fleet. She
| could never have lived through the
punishment of the guns of Fortress
| Monroe if she had tried to go to Wash
| ington, and the shallow Potomac would
| never have let her get there. She would
| have failed in the same manner to
reach New York.
| ''She could not even have defended
| the Confederate capital against the
Monitor If the Monitor had chosen to
| go there. The Monitors light draught
would have permitted her to proceed
up the James river and to shell Rich
| mond into ruins. For some reason she
| did not embrace this chance, and in the
meantime the Confederates blocked
| the river with distractions and torpe-
does, and that movement thereafter
became impossible. The Merrimac was
a terror to wooden ships, but she was
not ship herself, in the full sense of
| the terrn-nothing more than float
ing battery"
| Major Long was in the blockade run
| ming service of the Confederacy and
did duty duty in it's navy in other ca
| pacity-part of the time in engineering
work-till he was captured, near the
close Of the war. Soon after his release
at the close of hostilities he got a place
in the engineer corps of the United
States and he is there still. He is now
assistant engineer in charge Of the
eastern section of the Hennepin Canal
Chicago Record.