52 EVOIvUTION OF SCREW PROPULSION IN THE UNITED STATES. 



The Monitor was built by parties who had never built a warship and 

 had little experience with iron hulls. During its construction we were 

 requested to send men over to bend the keel pieces, which were dish-shaped 

 and bent hot, and other matters of difficult workmanship. 



This victory over the Merrimac, coming as it did while the whole 

 country was aroused over the sinking of the Congress and Cumberland, was 

 the cause of one of the greatest excitements in shipping circles that the world 

 has ever witnessed. Kricsson, with all of the officers who were on the 

 Monitor during the fight, became the subjects of the most extravagant 

 demonstration of hero worship. The Monitor craze carried everything 

 before it, and even those whom I have reason to believe were not stampeded 

 had to give way, so that, for a time, the Monitor was looked upon as the only 

 war vessel, and only monitors were contracted for by the Navy Department. 



It was common talk among contractors that the drawings supplied 

 them for machinery of Ericsson's own design were mere sketches, and that 

 he could not be induced to examine the contractor's detailed drawings or 

 the machinery itself while imder construction. Some were unkind enough to 

 say that this was a clever plan to avoid responsibiUty for the machinery if 

 anything went wrong, as he could claim that his drawings had not been 

 properly adhered to. His friends, of course, denied this; and some even 

 asserted that this practice was an evidence of the genius and greatness of the 

 inventor. 



The builders of these monitors accumulated fortunes in their work 

 owing to the high prices they had secured and in the easy time they had in 

 fulfilling their contracts. They believed it was owing to their own capa- 

 bility in money making and in shipbuilding. After the war some organized 

 new steamship companies, and some went into shipbuilding, both of these 

 occupations being busy in replacing ships that the Government had taken, 

 or had been lost; others went into railroad building in the west — all became 

 ruined financially. The railroad, shipbuilding, and steamship companies 

 that continued after the war were, with certain exceptions, those that 

 existed before it. 



TH^ FIRST IRON BOAT BUILT BY WM. CRAMP & SONS, THE) LEHIGH. 



Having been convinced at an early date that we should take up iron 

 shipbuilding, we commenced in it by building the side-wheel tow-boat 

 Aspinwall to take the place of the Lehigh. The engines of the Lehigh were 

 transferred to the new one by the I. P. Morris Company. The large coal 



