THE "MERRIMAC'S" WORK OF DESTRUCTION. 23 



The national flag was sadly and sorrowfully hauled down, and a white flag hoisted at 

 the peak. The Merrimac did not for a few minutes see this token of surrender, and 

 continued to fire. At last, however, it was discerned through the clouds of smoke, and 

 the broadsides ceased. A tug that had followed the Merrimac out of Norfolk then came 

 alongside the Congress, and ordered the officers on board. This they refused, hoping 

 that, from the nearness of the shore, they would be able to escape. Some of the men, 

 to the number, it is believed, of about forty, thought the tug was one of the Northern 

 (Federal) vessels, and rushed on board, and were, of course, soon carried off as prisoners. 

 By the time that all the able men were off ashore and elsewhere, it was seven o'clock 

 in the evening, and the Congress was a bright sheet of flame fore and aft, her 

 guns, which were loaded and trained, going off as the fire reached them. A shell from 

 one struck a sloop at some distance, and blew her up. At midnight the fire reached 

 her magazines, containing five tons of gunpowder, and, with a terrific explosion, her 

 charred remains blew up. Thus had the Merrimac sunk one and burned a second of the 

 largest of the vessels of the enemy. 



Having settled the fate of these two ships, the Merrimac had, about 5 o'clock in 

 the afternoon, started to tackle the Minnesota. Here, as was afterwards proved, the 

 commander of the former had the intention of capturing the latter as a prize, and had 

 no wish to destroy her. He, therefore, stood off about a mile distant, and with the 

 Yorktown and Jamestown, threw shot and shell at the frigate, doing it considerable damage, 

 and killing six men. One shell entered near her waist, passed through the chief engineer's 

 room, knocking two rooms into one, and wounded several men; a shot passed 

 through the main-mast. At nightfall the Merrimac, satisfied with her afternoon's work 

 of death and destruction, steamed in under SewalFs Point. "The day," said the Baltimore 

 American, " thus closed most dismally for our side, and with the most gloomy apprehensions 

 of what would occur the next day. The Minnesota was at the mercy of the Merrimac, 

 and there appeared no reason why the iron monster might not clear the Roads of our 

 fleet, destroy all the stores and warehouses on the beach, drive our troops into the fortress, 

 and command Hampton Roads against any number of wooden vessels the Government 

 might send there. Saturday was a terribly dismal night at Fortress Monroe." 



But about nine o'clock that evening Ericsson's battery, the Monitor,'* arrived in 

 Hampton Roads, and hope revived in the breasts of the despondent Northerners. She 

 was not a very formidable-looking craft, for, lying low on the water, with a plain structure 

 amidships, a small pilot-house forward, and a diminutive funnel aft, she might have been 

 taken for a raft. It was only on board that her real strength might be discovered. She 

 carried armour about five inches thick over a large part of her, and had practically two 

 hulls, the lower of which had sides inclining at an angle of 51 from the vertical line. 

 It was considered that no shot could hurt this lower hull, on account of the angle at 

 which it must strike it. The revolving turret, an iron cylinder, nine feet high, and twenty 

 feet in diameter, eight or nine inches thick everywhere, and about the portholes eleven 

 inches, was moved round by steam-power. When the two heavy Dahlgren guns were 



* The original Monitor, from which that class of vessel took its name. 



