JOHN ERICSSON. 381 



for destroying ships of war," and had a plan matured for it in 

 1835 ; and the idea of protecting war engines for naval pur- 

 poses was as old with him, he wrote, as his recollection. He 

 had become satisfied also that armour plates that a vessel 

 could carry could not be forged which a gun could not be con- 

 structed to penetrate if fired directly at them. From these 

 ideas was developed the plan of the submerged vessel carrying 

 a turret, which was embodied in the Monitor. In August, 

 1861, he proposed to President Lincoln to build a vessel for 

 the destruction of the Confederate war craft, declaring that 

 his purpose was not private profit but only to serve his country. 

 No settled purpose or idea of what was to be done seems to 

 have existed in Washington ; but Ericsson, after presenting 

 his plans, was directed to construct the Monitor according to 

 them, within a hundred days. The result of the first experi- 

 ment with this vessel constitutes one of the sensational incidents 

 of history. The Monitor's guns were not allowed to be 

 charged in that action as heavily as Ericsson desired they 

 would have borne, in fact, a charge three times as great as 

 was given them consequently the Merrimac was not de- 

 stroyed, as it probably might have been. Nine other moni- 

 tors were built for the Government by Ericsson and his busi- 

 ness associates, of which the Dictator was completed, as he 

 reported to the Navy Department, with a displacement of a 

 fraction of an inch less than he had calculated. 



In 1869 Captain Ericsson contracted to furnish the Spanish 

 Government with thirty gunboats after his own designs, for 

 use against Cuban insurgent blockade runners. They were all 

 afloat within four months, two months before the time they 

 were to be called for by the contract, and half of them had 

 their engines and boilers on board. Several novel features 

 were introduced upon them ; they proved admirably adapted 

 to their purpose ; and in recognition of his service the Span- 

 ish Government conferred upon Ericsson the decoration of 

 Isabel la Catolica. 



Captain Ericsson's ideas of a war vessel for submarine work 

 more seaworthy than the monitors were embodied in the De- 

 stroyer, which was launched in 1878. " It is an iron vessel, 

 one hundred and thirty feet long, seventeen feet wide, and 

 eleven feet deep, protected by a wrought-iron breastwork of 

 great strength near the bow," carrying a submarine sixteen- 



