Part 5 (2/2)

An examination of this painting is its best description. It is almost impossible to paint in words the scene which the great artist has here perpetuated with his brush. The water is incomparable and the effect of the s.h.i.+pping as a background, the bright afternoon sun, with the stars and stripes on the ”c.u.mberland,” and the stars and bars, the emblem of the Confederacy, on the stern of the death-dealing Southern monster, the crowded deck of the ”c.u.mberland,” in contrast with the apparently unmanned craft of the enemy, all add to the thrilling and vivid effect of the extraordinary combat itself.

When the news of the destruction wrought by the ”Merrimac” reached the North the general consternation was indescribable. At a hastily called Cabinet meeting the then Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, is reported to have said: ”The 'Merrimac' will change the whole character of the war; she will destroy every naval vessel; she will lay all seaboard cities under contribution; not unlikely we may have a sh.e.l.l or cannon ball from one of her guns in the White House before we leave this room.” But the fate of the ”Merrimac” was sealed, for while she was being moulded out of the old Federal hulk into the terrifying ram, with great ingenuity, by Constructor John L. Porter, with the a.s.sistance of Chief Engineer William P. Williamson, after some rough drawings prepared by Lieutenant John N. Brook, who originated the idea of her construction, all then of the Confederate navy--through a strange coincidence a genius had been at work in the North perfecting the world-renowned little ”Monitor,” which was soon to meet the formidable Southern iron-clad in battle, the history of which is suggested by the next painting of the series. It is also strange that in two of the most noted dramas in the records of our navy, the one above recounted, and that, already referred to, in which Lieutenant Hobson later bore so heroic a part, the most conspicuous objects were vessels which were both known as the ”Merrimac.” The valor of Lieutenant Morris, in the part which he bore in the defence of the ”c.u.mberland,” has been immortalized not only through this canvas, but also through a special message of Abraham Lincoln to Congress under date of December 10, 1862, as follows:

”In conformity to the law of July 16, 1862, I most cordially recommend that Lieutenant-Commander George U. Morris, United States Navy, receive a vote of thanks of Congress for the determined valor and heroism displayed in his defence of the United States s.h.i.+p-of-war 'c.u.mberland,' temporarily under his command, in the naval engagement at Hampton Roads on the 8th March, 1862, with the rebel iron-clad steam frigate 'Merrimac.'”

THE WHITE SQUADRON'S FAREWELL SALUTE To the Body of CAPTAIN JOHN ERICSSON

(_New York Bay, August 25, 1890_)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright, 1891, by Edward Moran.]

XII.

THE WHITE SQUADRON'S FAREWELL SALUTE TO THE BODY OF CAPTAIN JOHN ERICSSON.

_New York Bay, August 25, 1890._[O]

No more fitting funeral cortege could have been devised than the one which, on August 25, 1890, conveyed to Sweden, to their last resting-place, the remains of the great engineer, John Ericsson, whose inventive genius had clad the wooden navies of the world in armor of impenetrable iron and steel. Little had he dreamt when, in 1839, at the age of thirty-six (he was born at Vermland, Sweden, on July 31, 1803) he came to the United States in one of the old wooden s.h.i.+ps of that day after a weary journey of many weeks--as yet comparatively unknown to fame--that at the time of his death, on March 8, 1889, in the city of New York, almost twenty-seven years to a day after the epoch-making battle of his ”Monitor” with the ”Merrimac,” his name would be on every tongue in every land, and that the Government of the United States would deem it an honor to place the magnificent protected cruiser ”Baltimore”

of the United States Navy at the disposal of his native country on his farewell journey from our sh.o.r.es to his long home, amid the salutes, to their flag-s.h.i.+p, of the other giants of the White Squadron and the reverent tokens of grief and respect displayed on all the s.h.i.+pping in the harbor, as the funeral convoy slowly plied her way towards the ocean, with the flags of Sweden and the United States waving at half mast over her decks.

It is this impressive panorama which the artist spreads before us in this canvas, which was the sensation of the Spring exhibition of 1891 at the National Academy of Design in New York. In this picture he has delineated details of the s.h.i.+pping from sketches made by himself at the time and a careful study of our war vessels, as holds likewise true of the next succeeding and last picture of this series. There is something impressively grand and solemn about this painting, a.s.sociated as it is with the story of the great inventor. The sky is superb, and the water has that realistic motion without turbulence which only Edward Moran could depict, while the white gleaming sister s.h.i.+ps of the ”Baltimore”

in the background on the right, the s.h.i.+pping in the harbor of all descriptions and sizes in more sombre hue on the left, and the Statue of Liberty looming up in the rear, stand like sentinels on guard as the great white cruiser, with its flags at half mast and its stacks sending forth, like a veil of mourning, a cloud of black smoke--ploughs with foam encircled prow majestically through the water, like a great living, breathing, moving thing.

As this creation of the artist perpetuates the tribute of national grat.i.tude to the great inventor of the first ”Monitor,” so, it may be said, a fitting tribute has been paid to the picture itself through its reproduction in a superb etching by another great American artist, his own brother, Thomas Moran.

That the United States Navy should take so deep an interest in paying the last honors to John Ericsson, with an Admiral of the Navy, Daniel L.

Braine, superintending the ceremonies, and a future Admiral, Winfield Scott Schley, commanding the funeral convoy, is not surprising, for to Ericsson it owed not only the bomb-proof floating fortresses of the ocean, but the screw propeller, first applied in the construction of the United States man-of-war ”Princeton,” with propelling machinery under the water line out of the reach of shot. The first steam fire-engine ever constructed in the United States was also the work of Ericsson in 1841, and many and varied were the other inventions of his creative brain. But the greatest service rendered by Ericsson was in the construction of the ”Monitor,” not only on account of the immediate, almost inestimable benefit which it conferred in saving the United States Navy from destruction by the Confederate iron-clad ”Merrimac,” in 1862, but also, still more, in view of the impetus which it gave to the development of marine craft to their present perfection and in almost revolutionizing the entire science of naval warfare.

When, at 8 o'clock on March 9, 1862, the ”Merrimac,” after the havoc which she had wrought with the Federal s.h.i.+ps on the evening before, including the burning of the ”Congress” and the sinking of the ”c.u.mberland,” steamed out from the sh.o.r.e in order to continue her work of destruction--which contemplated successively the annihilation of the ”Minnesota,” the ”Roanoke” and the ”St. Lawrence,” and would thus clear the way for her intended attack on the capital of the nation--she was surprised to discover a diminutive craft of peculiar construction, almost sunk beneath the water line, with a strange-looking iron turret in the centre, steaming boldly towards her from out the shadow of the powerful frigate ”Minnesota.” The ”Monitor” had sailed from New York Harbor on March 6th, in tow of a tugboat, to brave the waters of the Atlantic, although she was originally designed only for smooth inland waters. Before she had pa.s.sed Sandy Hook she received urgent despatches to hurry to Was.h.i.+ngton and, after inconceivable hards.h.i.+ps in the towering seas of the Atlantic coast, arrived off Fortress Monroe about 9 o'clock in the evening of March 8th, where she heard for the first time of the depredations of the ”Merrimac” and witnessed the final destruction of the ”Congress” amid lurid flames and the bursting of her own sh.e.l.ls. Though worn out and disheartened in their own struggle for life with the tempestuous billows of the ocean on this, her first trial trip of thirty-six hours from New York until she reached the side of the ”Minnesota,” the crew of the ”Monitor,” encouraged and rea.s.sured by its heroic commander, Lieutenant John L. Worden, prepared for the expected combat with their redoubtable opponent.

The eyes not only of the men in the s.h.i.+pping and on sh.o.r.e, both Union and Confederate, but of the whole country, were anxiously centred on the two iron-clads as they approached each other, and the little ”Monitor”

hardly seemed a match for the huge craft of the Confederates, who looked with contempt upon the diminutive ”cheese box,” as they called it, which dared to take up the gage of battle with their formidable ”Merrimac.”

Soon, however, it became apparent that the prowess of the little Union craft had been entirely underestimated, and in the combat which ensued the very smallness of the ”Monitor” gave her a great advantage, in the swiftness of her movements, over her gigantic opponent, not unlike an undersized but agile and skilful athlete in encounter with a large and lumbering, though more powerful, antagonist. Lieutenant Worden was the hero of the occasion in the rapidity of his man[oe]uvring, while Lieutenant Jones, now in command of the ”Merrimac,” was surprised to find that his shot made no impression on the ”Monitor.” After more than two hours of incessant fighting, Lieutenant Worden having been temporarily blinded through the powder from an exploding sh.e.l.l which struck a sight-hole in the pilot-house of the ”Monitor,” through which he was watching the enemy, its command devolved upon Lieutenant Greene.

As in the ensuing confusion the ”Monitor” had drifted into shoal water, where the ”Merrimac” could not follow, the latter s.h.i.+p retired to the sh.o.r.e, and although refitted and repaired for further combat she did not again meet the ”Monitor” in battle, and, on the evacuation of Norfolk by the Confederates on the 10th of May following, they consigned her to destruction.

The courage of Lieutenant Worden in the handling of the novel and untested craft under his command, and his brave words--even when blinded and wounded by the powder and particles from the sh.e.l.ls of the enemy and suffering intense pain--when he was told that the ”Minnesota” had been saved: ”Then I can die happy,”--stamp him as worthy of a place in the long list of our naval heroes.

It is not surprising that Abraham Lincoln, with his quick perception of genuine merit, caused the following communication to be sent to Lieutenant Worden:

”NAVY DEPARTMENT, _March 15, 1862_.

”_Lieutenant John L. Worden, United States Navy, Commanding United States Steamer 'Monitor,'

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