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Updated: April 30, 2025
The ships lay in three long, straight lines off Spithead; battleships, cruisers, lean destroyers, submarines. A hydroplane raced past us, flinging showers of spray and foam high on each side of her. Two naval aeroplanes, their canoe-shaped floats plainly visible, hovered and circled overhead. Pleasure boats were everywhere, moving in and out among the motionless ironclads.
We shall get big land ironclads which will smash towns. We shall get air offensives let the experienced London reader think of an air raid going on hour after hour, day after day that will really burn out and wreck towns, that will drive people mad by the thousand. We shall get a very complete cessation of sea transit. Even land transit may be enormously hampered by aerial attack.
The gunboat scheme had been first proposed in April; it was now June, and excepting these three wooden boats, nothing seemed to have come of it. So in July the quartermaster-general advertised for bids for ironclad gunboats. In 1861 ironclads were a rather new thing. France and England had a few of them, but at the time the Merrimac was begun no ironclad had been finished in America.
"Whack-bang, whack-bang," the guns resumed, but ironclads were not built to fight the zenith, and the only hits the Americans scored were a few lucky chances in a generally ineffectual rifle fire.
Colonel Henagan, of the Eighth, being in command of the brigade, ordered breastworks to be thrown up on the opposite side of an old road, in which the enemy lay and which they had partly fortified. The next day, about 3 o'clock, the enemy opened upon us a heavy fusilade with their siege mortars and guns from their gun boats and ironclads in the James.
"Now," he continued, "standing here on the deck of this battle-scarred vessel, the first genuine ironclad the victor in the first fight of the ironclads let me make a confession and perform an act of simple justice: I never fully believed in armored vessels until I saw this battle. I know all the facts which united to give us the Monitor.
Both on the breakwater and on shore are strong stone forts for the defence of the harbour, in which, in time of war, would also be stationed some heavy ironclads; so that a large squadron alone would venture to annoy the shipping within. The yachts brought-up, and we went on shore to walk along the breakwater and to inspect some of the fortifications.
The Peruvian ironclads steamed slowly along toward their prey, the Huascar firing her two 10-inch turret-guns as she came, but she was somewhat handicapped by the circumstance that there was great risk of her shot striking the town, which was, of course, still in Peruvian hands.
The fourteenth was another naval day. Foote's flotilla advanced gallantly, the four ironclads leading in line abreast, the two wooden gunboats half a mile astern. The ironclads closed in to less than a quarter-mile and hung on like bulldogs till the Confederates in the lowest battery were driven from their guns.
What do you do? Founder? Not a bit; you lower sections B, C, and D of Cullingworth's spring-shutter screen. Or you knock a hole on a rock. The same thing again. It's a ludicrous sight to see a big ship founder when so simple a precaution would absolutely save her. And it's equally good for ironclads also. A shot often starts their plates and admits water without breaking them.
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