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Updated: May 19, 2025
When the unwieldy rebel turtleback, with her slow, awkward movement, tried to ram the pointed raft that carried the cheese-box, the little vessel, obedient to her rudder, easily glided out of the line of direct impact.
This was Ericsson's "cheese-box on a raft," named by him the Monitor. The Union officers who had witnessed the day's events with dismay, and were filled with gloomy forebodings for the morrow, while welcoming this providential reinforcement, were by no means reassured. The Monitor was only half the size of her antagonist, and had only two guns to the other's ten.
"Dose shkvarehet shkippers vould dake a cheese-box to sea mit a cargo of le't," commented Steve. "All dey care for is de havin' de yob. De owner he don't care if de vessel sink mit de insurance." When Alex had shuffled out of the cottage, I gave the Dutchman the course of his narrative again.
The form of the Monitor is too well known to need description "a cheese-box on a raft," the name given her in derision, describes her as well as anything. She was launched on the last day of January, and three weeks later was handed over to the Government, but it was not until the fourth of March that her guns were mounted, two powerful rifled cannon.
As the gray dawn began to break, she passed under the quarter of the "Minnesota," and cast anchor. The tars on the great frigate looked curiously at the strange craft, and wondered if that insignificant "cheese-box on a raft" was going to do battle with the dreaded "Merrimac." Small hopes had they that their noble frigate would be saved by any such pygmy warship.
It was the first place to which they had set torch. "I thought I heard some one running up the sail on our sail-boat," said the light-house keeper. "No telling what these fellows may do. If they go to meddling with me in my little Government office, they'll find me as stubborn as the Mormons did." "Oh, Ludlow, look at the tabernacle, like a big red-hot cheese-box on the high ground!
I handled a gun on the Merrimac in Hampton Roads when that cheese-box of a Monitor rattled her solid shot on our slippery sides. I was two years in that damned un-Civil War, and as I started on the Southern side, I stayed on it. I left the navy to go with John Mosby and burn houses.
This unique naval structure was promptly nicknamed "a cheese-box on a raft," and the designation was not at all inapt.
His championship earned the Monitor the name of Lincoln's "cheese-box on a raft." The assistant secretary of the navy, knowing all the facts, observes: "I withhold no credit from Captain John Ericsson, her inventor, but I know the country is principally indebted to President Lincoln for the construction of this vessel, and for the success of the trial to Captain Worden."
In a moment we knew it for the Ericsson the looked-for other iron-clad we knew to be a-building. The Monitor, they call it.... The shingle was just awash; the cheese-box turned out to be a revolving turret, mail-clad and carrying two large, modern guns 11-inch.
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