PROCEEDINGS OP THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 523 



A good iron-clad ship has never yet been made. I shall endeavor to 

 specify the qualities necessary, giving precedence to the qualities in the 

 order of their excellence. 



1st. Means of ofTence as rams and with heavy projectiles, from guns giv- 

 ing precision, rapidity of firing, and high velocity. 



2d. Means of defence; impenetrability to projectiles, to rams, or torpe- 

 does, and protection to boilers and engines from injury in any manner.^ 



3d. Speed to chase or to retreat. 



4th. Facility of manoeuvring, viz: to start back or come about quickly. 



5th. Steadiness in sea way, with ability to use guns or ram in a mode, 

 rate storm. 



6th. Affording well-lighted and well-ventilated quarters for oflSccrs and 

 men. 



Ith. Capacity for fuel and stores. 



8th, CapacUy for large crews of men and marines,* so as to be able to 

 make a formidable assault by boarding. 



9th. Means of landing a formidable shore party for assault of works on 

 shore. 



10th. Simplicity and cheapness, that they may be produced rapidly and 

 at low cost. 



Great efforts have been made by interested parties to create a public 

 opinion that our Monitor iron-clads excel in all these qualities, or that they 

 are nearly perfect in them, by unceasing praises of them and of their pro- 

 jector, in newspapers and magazines, and through the eloquence of unsci- 

 entific politicians and sanguine, self-constituted semi-scientific men, on the 

 stump, in the pulpit, and before learned societies, until an iron-clad mania 

 has taken possession of us as a people, with so much method in it that we 

 have. assured ourselves, confounded the rebels, and made European nations 

 doubt and hesitate — the grandest result of boasting, I believe, ever at- 

 tained; but the advantage is but temporary and will soon recoil upon us. 



Had the first Monitor gone down on her way to Fortress Monroe, and 

 had the Minnesota been commanded by the brave John Worden, instead of 

 being run aground in the cowardly manner that she was, she would have 

 laid alongside the unwieldy Merrimac, and with her tremendous broadsides 

 from depressed guns, have smashed her frail casemates before she could 

 have returned as many shots as slie planted between her decks as she lay 

 ingloriously aground. The Minnesota would have captured the Merrimac 

 in ten minutes if at close quarters, or could have easily run her down if she 

 had failed to do so in that time. 



The first Monitor failed in an important point, when she made but five 

 and a half miles an hour, she being new and her bottom not foul. 



She proved to be utterly unseaworthy on her first trip to Fortress Monroe. 



Her crew were nearly suffocated during the same trip, and again during 

 her encounter with the Merrimac. 



She required a tender to go to sea at all. 



Not one of her class of gunboats j^et made is much better in these quali- 

 ties. When she fought the Merrimac, her battery proved insignificant; 

 two guns is a small armament for a ship that costs, equipped, one and a 

 half millions of dollars. All of her class are equally inefficient in this 



