The Long Roll
or ram, and she carries ten guns. On the whole, she's the ugliest beauty
that you ever saw! She's almost ready to send to Davy Jones's locker a
Yankee ship or two. Commodore Buchanan commands her, and you know who he
is! She's got her full quota of officers, and, the speaker excepted,
they're as fine a set as you'll find on the high seas! But man-of-war's
men are scarcer, my friends, than hen's teeth! It's what comes of having
no maritime population. Every man Jack that isn't on our few little
ships is in the army--and the Virginia wants a crew of three hundred of
the bravest of the brave! Now, I am talking to Virginians and
Louisianians. Many of you are from New Orleans, and that means that some
of you may very well have been seamen--seamen at an emergency, anyhow!
Anyhow, when it comes to an emergency Virginians and Louisianians are
there to meet it--on sea or on land! Just now there is an emergency--the
Virginia's got to have a crew. General Magruder, for all he's got only a
small force with which to hold a long line--General Magruder, like the
patriot that he is, has said that I may ask this morning for volunteers.
Men! any seaman among you has the chance to gather laurels from the
strangest deck of the strangest ship that ever you saw! No fear for the
laurels! They're fresh and green even under our belching smokestack. The
Merrimac is up like the phoenix; and the last state of her is greater
than the first, and her name is going down in history! Louisianians and
Virginians, who volunteers?'
"About two hundred volunteered--"
"Edward, what did you know about seamanship?"
"Precious little. Chiefly, Unity, what you have read to me from novels.
But the laurels sounded enticing, and I was curious about the ship.
Well, Wood chose about eighty--all who had been seamen or gunners and a
baker's dozen of ignoramuses beside. I came in with that portion of the
elect. And off we went, in boats, across the James to the southern shore
and to the Gosport Navy Yard. That was a week before the battle."
"What does it look like, Edward--the Merrimac?"
"It looks, Judith, like Hamlet's cloud. Sometimes there is an appearance
of a barn with everything but the roof submerged--or of Noah's Ark,
three fourths under water! Sometimes, when the flag is flying, she has
the air of a piece of earthworks, mysteriously floated off into the
river. Ordinarily, though, she is rather like a turtle, with a chimney
sticking up from her shell. The shell is made of pitch pine and oak, and
it is covered with two-inch thick plates of Tredegar iron. The beak is
of cast iron, standing four feet out from the bow; that, with the rest
of the old berth deck, is just awash. Both ends of the shell are rounded
for pivot guns. Over the gun deck is an iron grating on which you can
walk at need. There is the pilot-house covered with iron, and there is
the smokestack. Below are the engines and boilers, condemned after the
Merrimac's last cruise, and, since then, lying in the ooze at the bottom
of the river. They are very wheezy, trembling, poor old men of the sea!
It was hard work to get the coal for them to eat; it was brought at last
from away out in Montgomery County, from the Price coal-fields. The guns
are two 7-inch rifles, two 6-inch rifles, and six 9-inch smoothbores;
ten in all.--Yes, call her a turtle, plated with iron; she looks as much
like that as like anything else.
"When we eighty men from the Warwick first saw her, she was swarming
with workmen. They continued to cover her over, and to make impossible
any drill or exercise upon her. Hammer, hammer upon belated plates from
the Tredegar! Tinker, tinker with the poor old engines! Make shift here
and make shift there; work through the day and work through the night,
for there was a rumour abroad that the Ericsson, that we knew was
building, was coming down the coast! There was no chance to drill, to
become acquainted with the turtle and her temperament. Her species had
never gone to war before, and when you looked at her there was room for
doubt as to how she would behave! Officers and men were strange to one
another--and the gunners could not try the guns for the swarming
workmen. There wasn't so much of the Montgomery coal that it could be
wasted on experiments in firing up--and, indeed, it seemed wise not to
experiment at all with the ancient engines! So we stood about the navy
yard, and looked down the Elizabeth and across the flats to Hampton
Roads, where we could see the Cumberland, the Congress, and the
Minnesota, Federal ships lying off Newport News--and the workmen
rivetted the last plates--and smoke began to come out of the
smokestack--and suddenly Commodore Buchanan, with his lieutenants behind
him, appeared between us and the Merrimac--or the Virginia. Most of us
still call her the Merrimac. It was the morning of the eighth. The sun
shone brightly and the water was very blue--blue and still. There were
sea-gulls, I remember, flying overhead, screaming as they flew--and the
marshes were growing emerald--"
"Yes, yes! What did Commodore Buchanan want?"
"Don't be impatient, Molly! You women don't in the least look like
Griseldas! Aunt Lucy has the air of her pioneer great-grandmother who
has heard an Indian calling! And as for Judith--Judith!"
"Yes, Edward."
"Come back to Greenwood. You looked a listening Jeanne d'Arc. What did
you hear?"
"I heard the engines working, and the sea fowl screaming, and the wind
in the rigging of the Cumberland. Go on, Edward."
"We soldiers turned seamen came to attention. 'Get on board, men,' said
Commodore Buchanan. 'We are going out in the Roads and introduce a new
era.' So off the workmen came and on we went--the flag officers and the
lieutenants and the midshipmen and the surgeons and the volunteer aides
and the men. The engineers were already below and the gunners were
looking at the guns. The smoke rolled up very black, the ropes were cast
off, a bugle blew, out streamed the stars and bars, all the workmen on
the dock swung their hats, and down the Elizabeth moved the Merrimac.
She moved slowly enough with her poor old engines, and she steered
badly, and she drew twenty-two feet, and she was ugly, ugly, ugly,--poor
thing!
"Now we were opposite Craney Island, at the mouth of the Elizabeth.
There's a battery there, you know, part of General Colston's line, and
there are forts upon the main along the James. All these were now
crowded with men, hurrahing, waving their caps.... As we passed Craney
they were singing 'Dixie.' So we came out into the James to Hampton
Roads.
"Now all the southern shore from Willoughby's Spit to Ragged Island is
as grey as a dove, and all the northern shore from Old Point Comfort to
Newport News is blue where the enemy has settled. In between are the
shining Roads. Between the Rip Raps and Old Point swung at anchor the
Roanoke, the Saint Lawrence, a number of gunboats, store ships, and
transports, and also a French man-of-war. Far and near over the Roads
were many small craft. The Minnesota, a large ship, lay halfway between
Old Point and Newport News. At the latter place there is a large Federal
garrison, and almost in the shadow of its batteries rode at anchor the
frigate Congress and the sloop Cumberland. The first had fifty guns, the
second thirty. The Virginia, or the Merrimac, or the turtle, creeping
out from the Elizabeth, crept slowly and puffing black smoke into the
South Channel. The pilot, in his iron-clad pilot-house no bigger than a
hickory nut, put her head to the northwest. The turtle began to swim
toward Newport News.
"Until now not a few of us within her shell, and almost all of the
soldiers and the forts along the shore, had thought her upon a trial
trip only,--down the Elizabeth, past Craney Island, turn at Sewell's
Point, and back to the dock of the Gosport Navy Yard! When she did not
turn, the cheering on the shore stopped; you felt the breathlessness.
When she passed the point and took to the South Channel, when her head
turned upstream, when she came abreast of the Middle Ground, when they
saw that the turtle was going to fight, from along the shore to Craney
and from Sewell's Point there arose a yell. Every man in grey yelled.
They swung hat or cap; they shouted themselves hoarse. All the flags
streamed suddenly out, trumpets blared, the sky lifted, and we drank the
sunshine in like wine; that is, some of us did. To others it came cold
like hemlock against the lip. Fear is a horrible sensation. I was
dreadfully afraid--"
"Edward!"
"Dreadfully. But you see I didn't tell any one I was afraid, and that
makes all the difference! Besides, it wore off.... It was a spring day
and high tide, and the Federal works at Newport News and the Congress
and the Cumberland and the more distant Minnesota all looked asleep in
the calm, sweet weather. Washing day it was on the Congress, and clothes
were drying in the rigging. That aspect as of painted ships, painted
breastworks, a painted sea-piece, lasted until the turtle reached
mid-channel. Then the other side woke up. Upon the shore appeared a blue
swarm--men running to and fro. Bugles signalled. A commotion, too, arose
upon the Congress and the Cumberland. Her head toward the latter ship,
the turtle puffed forth black smoke and wallowed across the channel. An
uglier poor thing you never saw, nor a bolder! Squat to the water,
belching black smoke, her engines wheezing and repining, unwieldy of
management, her bottom scraping every hummock of sand in all the shoaly
Roads--ah, she was ugly and courageous! Our two small gunboats, the
Raleigh and the Beaufort, coming from Norfolk, now overtook us,--we went
on together. I was forward with the crew of the 7-inch pivot gun. I
could see through the port, above the muzzle. Officers and men, we were
all cooped under the turtle's shell; in order by the open ports, and the
guns all ready.... We came to within a mile of the Cumberland, tall and
graceful with her masts and spars and all the blue sky above. She looked
a swan, and we, the Ugly Duckling.... Our ram, you know, was under
water--seventy feet of the old berth deck, ending in a four-foot beak of
cast iron.... We came nearer. At three quarters of a mile, we opened
with the bow gun. The Cumberland answered, and the Congress, and their
gunboats and shore batteries. Then began a frightful uproar that shook
the marshes and sent the sea birds screaming. Smoke arose, and flashing
fire, and an excitement--an excitement--an excitement.--Then it was,
ladies, that I forgot to be afraid. The turtle swam on, toward the
Cumberland, swimming as fast as Montgomery coal and the engines that had
lain at the bottom of the sea could make her go. There was a frightful
noise within her shell, a humming, a shaking. The Congress, the gunboats
and the shore batteries kept firing broadsides. There was an enormous,
thundering noise, and the air was grown sulphurous cloud. Their shot
came pattering like hail, and like hail it rebounded from the iron-clad.
We passed the Congress--very close to her tall side. She gave us a
withering fire. We returned it, and steered on for the Cumberland. A
word ran from end to end of the turtle's shell, 'We are going to ram
her--stand by, men!'
"Within easy range we fired the pivot gun. I was of her crew; half naked
we were, powder-blackened and streaming with sweat. The shell she sent
burst above the Cumberland's stern pivot, killing or wounding most of
her crew that served it.... We went on.... Through the port I could now
see the Cumberland plainly, her starboard side just ahead of us, men in
the shrouds and running to and fro on her deck. When we were all but on
her, her starboard blazed. That broadside tore up the carriage of our
pivot gun, cut another off at the trunnions, and the muzzle from a