used as loopholes for musketry if desirable. In the place of chimneys bomb-proof gratings are set in the deck, and through these the smoke of the fires is driven out by the blowers; low temporary chimneys are however provided, which are removed in time of action. The deck is thus entirely free of all incumbrances, and the men who work the vessel and handle the guns are all entirely out of sight, beneath the invulnerable plating. All access into the interior is securely shut off, so that if the battery were boarded, the men could not be reached, and no harm could be done the vessel itself. Its sharp and powerful iron prow will enable it to sink with ease any wooden vessel it can reach, and its light draught allows of its running into shoal waters either for offensive operations or to retire, if necessary, to a distance from more powerful vessels of deeper draught. Her complement of men consists of 60 in all, of whom 11 are officers. The battery is evidently designed for harbor and river operations, and not for encountering heavy seas.
At the suggestion of Capt. Ericsson, her designer, the new ship was named the Monitor. Until the very hour of her departure from New York the workmen were busy upon her, and several things remained unfinished or incomplete when she sailed. The government was aware of the changes that had been made in the Merrimac, and there was great anxiety to have the Monitor at Hampton Roads at the earliest possible date. She left New York in the forenoon of March 6th in tow of the tug-boat Seth Low and using her own engine. She was commanded by Lieut. John L. Worden, and her executive officer was Lieut. S. D. Greene. During her entire career of less than a year Lieut. Greene remained the executive officer of the Monitor, though she had in the same period no less than five commanders. She had a full complement of other officers, and her crew was selected from the crews of the North Carolina and Sabine, then at the Brooklyn Navy-yard.
The Monitor narrowly escaped foundering during her
