All that night there was the wildest exultation among the
Confederates, while the gloom and panic of the Union men cannot
be described. It was evident that the United States ships-of-war
were as helpless as cockle-shells against their iron-clad foe,
and there was no question but that she could destroy the whole
fleet with ease and with absolute impunity. This meant not only
the breaking of the blockade; but the sweeping away at one blow
of the North's naval supremacy, which was indispensable to the
success of the war for the Union. It is small wonder that during
that night the wisest and bravest should have almost despaired.

But in the hour of the nation's greatest need a champion suddenly
appeared, in time to play the last scene in this great drama of
sea warfare. The North, too, had been trying its hand at building
ironclads. The most successful of them was the little Monitor, a
flat-decked, low, turreted. ironclad, armed with a couple of
heavy guns. She was the first experiment of her kind, and her
absolutely flat surface, nearly level with the water, her
revolving turret, and her utter unlikeness to any pre-existing
naval type, had made her an object of mirth among most practical
seamen; but her inventor, Ericsson, was not disheartened in the
least by the jeers. Under the command of a gallant naval officer,
Captain Worden, she was sent South from New York, and though she
almost foundered in a gale she managed to weather it, and reached
the scene of the battle at Hampton Roads at the moment when her
presence was allimportant.

Early the following morning the Merrimac, now under Captain Jones
(for Buchanan had been wounded), again steamed forth to take up
the work she had so well begun and to destroy the Union fleet.