524 TRANSACTIONS OP THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



respect, or are worse in the heavy fifteen inch guns that give a velocity of 

 650 feet per second and a greater range, except by the ricochet of 500 

 yards. 



If any iron-clad frigate, with two tiers of heavy guns, say 68-pounders, 

 or 11-inch, were alongside a Monitor, she could sink her in one minute. 

 She could depress her guns and fire through deck and bottom at every shot 

 from every gun on the contact side. She would be sunk so quickly, being 

 biit a few inches above the water, that the crew could not be rescued 

 through her iron hatches, bolted down as they are in action. 



When the Monitor was in the James River, before Fort Darling — a fort 

 on an elevated bluff" of a narrow river — she exhibited another weakness. 

 She could not elevate her guns to reach half way up the bluff. She was 

 helpless for assault and had to retire. The guns of the fort also could as- 

 sail her on her most vulnerable point. No improvement has been added to 

 any of her class to meet such important emergencies. Let us suppose a 

 Monitor stationed at the junction of two narrow rivers with high bluffs on 

 either side, on blockade duty. If the current were five miles an hour, she 

 would have to anchor. (The time to be July, the place Virginia.) Then 

 suppose a squad of gueriUas, with target rifles determined to break the 

 blockade, should come at night to the brink of the bluff", and each dig a rifle 

 pit behind the stump of a tree. The first officer or man who should put his 

 head above the hatches in the morning, for fresh air, would be shot, and the 

 formidable iron clad would be unable to repel or resent the insult. She 

 could not elevate her guns to reach the assailants, and her crew would find 

 confinement below decks in the heated foul air, unendurable, while to come 

 on deck would be certain death. The blockade would have to be raised; 

 it would be only a question of time. None of the Monitors can fight head 

 or stern, as its concussion through the chimney and air openings affects the 

 men below seriously, when guns are fired over the decks forward and aft. 

 Five small rams, no larger than some of our harbor tugs, having powerful 

 engines and boilers well below the water line, with stems like the Dunder- 

 berg, made solid one-third their length with timber and with iron, shot 

 proof pilot house, could destroy the whole fleet of Monitors, whether in har- 

 bor or at sea, in spite of their utmost efforts, if the whole five should assail 

 one at a time in succession. But five ihinutes would be required for each 

 Monitor, if the assault was well managed. 



Ten such rams could be constructed and fitted for service for ten per 

 cent, of the cost of one Monitor, and in a tithe of the time in which a Mon- 

 itor could be built. 



With the facilities for ship-building possessed by New York harbor, I 

 had rather, as a commercial transaction, take a contract to build the fleet 

 of rams to destroy the whole iron clad navy, in spite of their utmost efforts, 

 than to build one Monitor. 



And what have we in Charleston harbor today for our expenditure of 

 $40,000,000? An ironclad navy carrying less than forty guns, and these 

 guns capable of projecting only four shots an hour, each; the ships obliged 

 to anchor when in action before the enemy's batteries, that the tide may 

 not sweep them into the eneuiy's harbor, on their torpedoes, or prematurely 

 ashore. 



