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The wooden vessels halted upon coming in view of the fort, and the ironclads, as they were called, moved slowly up stream abreast of one another, firing their bow guns in answer to the shots of the rebels. The latter had had the time to practice to acquire the exact range, while the boats had yet to find it.
I got another encore; and another, and another, and still another. When I had snaked five men out, things began to look serious to the ironclads, and they stopped and consulted together. As a result, they decided that it was time to waive etiquette and send their greatest and best against me. To the astonishment of that little world, I lassoed Sir Lamorak de Galis, and after him Sir Galahad.
The ironclads opposed to her had only smooth-bore guns, incapable of penetrating her side, and therefore only able to reduce her by a continued pounding, which might shake her frame to pieces.
When I was eleven I got a regular job that paid me fifty cents a day. So I quit school just where the Monitor had sunk the Merrimac in the "first fight of the ironclads." Thereafter my life was to be bound up with the iron industry. My job was in a nail factory. I picked the iron splinters from among the good nails that had heads on them. This taught me that many are marred in the making.
Against it were brought 5 ironclads with 18 guns, backed up by over 200 guns in the rest of the fleet. After a storm of shot and shell for three successive days, rising at times to "drum-fire," the barrage was lifted at a signal and troops and sailors dashed forward from their positions on shore. Even after this preparation the capture cost 1000 men.
But after all the honours were with the little Monitor, for she forced her big opponent to run away. It might almost be said that this battle saved the Union, for it showed the Confederates that they would not have it all their own way on sea, and that if they were building ironclads the Federals were building them also.
After five letters from Washington, in the first of which he had predicted that in a few days, for the first time in war, there would be the great contest between ironclads and forts, and the stroke of fifteen-inch shot against masonry, Carleton set off for salt water, determining to see the tug-of-war on the Atlantic coast.
As soon as the dusk began to fall, the launches of the two ironclads were hoisted out, their crews picked, and at half-past six Jim and his friend Terry took their places in the flagship's boat, which steamed off slowly in one direction round the harbour, while that of the Almirante Cochrane started, under easy steam, in the opposite direction.
It does not contain, it is true, any of the powerful cruising ironclads which make so much of the maritime strength of some other nations, but neither our continental situation nor our foreign policy requires that we should have a large number of ships of this character, while this situation and the nature of our ports combine to make those of other nations little dangerous to us under any circumstances.
But if it be true that poetry and romance must more and more cease to be associated with our navy, we must just accept the fact, for nothing is more certain than that, whatever the warships of the future may be, we can never again return to the days of the old wooden ships. Several opposing difficulties have now to be met in the construction of ironclads.
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