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The Monitor's attack upon the Merrimac would have been ineffective but for the remarkable guns with which the little craft was armed two eleven-inch rifled cannon, the invention of John Adolph Dahlgren. Dahlgren had been connected with the ordnance department of the navy at Washington for many years, and his inventions had revolutionized United States gunnery.
Therefore, I took all possible precautions, and arranged with Admiral Dahlgren and General Foster to watch our progress inland by all the means possible, and to provide for us points of security along the coast; as, at Bull's Bay, Georgetown, and the mouth of Cape Fear River.
Nor was this an idle dream, as the country now knows, for even at this period General Kilpatrick was maturing his plans for that bold expedition for the rescue of the prisoners at Richmond and Belle Isle in which the lamented and heroic young cripple, Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, lost his life.
The 100-pound cannon of Dahlgren, with a range of 5,000 yards, gave their projectiles an initial speed of 500 yards a second." "Yes; and the Rodman Columbiad?" "The Rodman Columbiad, tried at Fort Hamilton, near New York, hurled a projectile, weighing half a ton, a distance of six miles, with a speed of 800 yards a second, a result which neither Armstrong nor Palliser has obtained in England."
In 1856 Admiral Dahlgren of the United States Navy designed the Dahlgren gun with shape proportioned to the "curve of pressure," which is to say that the gun was heavy at the breech and light at the muzzle. This gun was well adapted to naval use at the time.
But while the mode of placing and handling was essentially the same, the guns themselves had greatly increased in size and received important modifications in pattern. The system then in vogue was that associated with the name of the late Admiral Dahlgren.
We accordingly steamed down the Ogeechee River to Ossabaw Sound, in hopes to meet Admiral Dahlgren, but he was not there, and we continued on by the inland channel to Warsaw Sound, where we found the Harvest Moon, and Admiral Dahlgren. I was not personally acquainted with him at the time, but he was so extremely kind and courteous that I was at once attracted to him.
He had just come from Port Royal, expecting to find Admiral Dahlgren in Ossabaw Sound, and, hearing of the capture of Fort McAllister, he had come up to see me. He described fully the condition of affairs with his own command in South Carolina.
The Spanish screw corvette "Tornado," six guns, had sailed from Cartagena for Havana. Off Cape Trafalgar she encountered the "Lancaster," flag-ship of the United States European squadron, bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Nicholson. The "Lancaster" carried two-eleven-inch and twenty nine-inch old-fashioned smooth-bore Dahlgren guns. The action was short, sharp, and decisive.
The Department will learn the objects in view of General Sherman more precisely from a letter addressed by him to General Halleck, which he read to me a few days since. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, J. A. DAHLGREN, Rear-Admiral, commanding South-Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Major-General J. G. FOSTER, commanding Department of the South.
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