It cleared away at one stroke masts, sails, and all the lofty top-hamper which since time immemorial had seemed as much an essential feature of the fighting ship as the guns themselves.  It transformed the design of the fighting ship from the older ideals expressed in the American frigate “Constitution,” or the English “Victory,” to the simplest terms of offence, defence, and steam motive-power.  It made of the man-of-war a machine rather than a ship, an engine of destruction to be operated by engineers rather than by officers of the ancient and traditional type.  There is small wonder that in all quarters the idea of ships of this type was not received with enthusiasm.  The break with the past was too definite and complete.  The monitor type represented simply the solution of the problem of naval warfare worked out by a man untrammelled by the traditions of the past and determined only on reducing such a ship to the simplest terms of offence and defence as expressed by the engineering materials and possibilities of the day.  Judged from this standpoint, the vessel seems beyond criticism.  She filled perfectly the ideal set before himself by her designer, and represents as a complete and harmonious whole what must still be recognized as the most perfect solution of the problem in terms of the possibilities of those days.

It is proper here that due reference should be made to the claims in behalf of Mr. Theodore R. Timby as an inventor of the turret and of the monitor idea as expressed thereby.  These claims and the main facts in the case have long been known, and there should certainly be no attempt to take from any one his due share in the developments which gave to our nation a “Monitor” in her hour of need.  It is well known that Mr. Timby between 1840 and 1850 conceived the idea of a revolving fort of iron mounted with numerous guns and intended to take the place of the masonry or earth-structures in common use for such purposes.  He seems also to have conceived of a similar structure for use on a ship of low freeboard, and a model showing such a design was constructed.  In 1843 he filed a caveat for the invention of the revolving turret.  Here the matter apparently rested until 1862, and after the battle between the “Monitor” and “Merrimac,” when he took out a patent which was dated July 8, 1862, covering “a revolving tower for defensive and offensive warfare, whether on land or water.”  Ericsson’s associates in the business of building monitors for the Government acquired these patents of Timby, presumably as shrewd business men, in order to quiet any claim on his part, and to have the plan available for land forts, should the opportunity arise to push the business in this direction.  There is no question but that Ericsson was antedated by Timby in the suggestion of a revolving turret, at least in so far as public notice is concerned.  Ericsson frankly admitted this, and stated that he made no claim to absolute originality in this respect.