%462.  The Monitor.%—­Early the next day the Merrimac sailed forth to finish the work of destruction, and picking out the Minnesota, which was hard and fast in the mud, bore down to attack her.  When lo! from beside the Minnesota started forth the most curious-looking craft ever seen on water.  It was the famous Monitor, designed by Captain John Ericsson, to whose inventive genius we owe the screw propeller and the hot-air engine.  She consisted of a small iron hull, on top of which rested a boat-shaped raft covered with sheets of iron which made the deck.  On top of the deck, which was about three feet above the water, was an iron cylinder, or turret, which revolved by machinery and carried two guns.  She looked, it was said, like “a cheesebox mounted on a raft.”

[Illustration:  HAMPTON ROADS]

The Monitor was built at New York, and was intended for harbor defense; but the fact that the Confederates were building a great ironclad at Norfolk made it necessary to send her to Hampton Roads.  The sea voyage was a dreadful one; again and again she was almost wrecked, but she weathered the storm, and early on the evening of March 8, 1862, entered Hampton Roads, to see the waters lighted up by the burning Congress and to hear of the sinking of the Cumberland.  Taking her place beside the Minnesota, she waited for the dawn, and about eight o’clock saw the Merrimac coming toward her, and, starting out, began the greatest naval battle of modern times.  When it ended, neither ship was disabled; but they were the masters of the seas, for it was now proved that no wooden ships anywhere afloat could harm them.  The days of wooden naval vessels were over, and all the nations of the world were forced to build their navies anew.  The Merrimac withdrew from the fight; when the Confederates evacuated Norfolk, they destroyed her (May, 1862).  The Monitor sank in a storm at sea while going to Beaufort, N.C. (January, 1863).[1]

[Footnote 1:  Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol.  I., pp. 719-750.]

[Illustration:  %An encounter at close range%]

%463.  Capture of the Coast Forts and Waterways.%—­Operations along the coast were begun in August, 1861, by the capture of the forts at the mouth of Hatteras Inlet, N.C., the entrance to Pamlico Sound; and by the capture of Port Royal in November.  A few months later (early in 1862) control of Pamlico and Albemarle sounds was secured by the capture of Roanoke Island, Elizabeth City, and Newbern, all in North Carolina, and of Fort Macon, which guarded the entrance to Beaufort harbor.  McClellan’s capture of Yorktown in May, 1862, was soon followed by the hasty evacuation of Norfolk by the Confederate forces, so that at the end of the first year of the war most of the seacoast from Norfolk to the Gulf was in Union hands.

Along the Gulf coast naval operations resulted in opening the lower Mississippi and capturing New Orleans in April, and Pensacola in May, 1862.