Island.

In a couple of days at the end of August, 1861, the Confederate
forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, were compelled to
surrender to a joint naval and military expedition under
Flag-Officer Stringham and Major-General B. F. Butler. The
immediate result, besides the capture of seven hundred men, was
the control of the best entrance to North Carolina waters, which
entailed the stoppage of many oversea supplies for the
Confederate army. The ulterior result was the securing of a base
from which a further invasion could be made with great advantage.


The naval campaign of the following year was truly epoch-making;
for the duel between the Monitor and Merrimac in Hampton Roads on
March 9, 1862, was the first action ever fought between ironclad
steam men-of-war.

Eleven months earlier the Federal Government had suddenly
abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard; though their strongest garrison
was at Fortress Monroe, only twelve miles north along a waterway
which was under the absolute control of their navy, and though
the Confederates', had nothing but an inadequate little untrained
force on the spot. Among the spoils of war falling into
Confederate hands were twelve hundred guns and the Merrimac, a
forty-gun steam frigate. The Merrimac, though fired and scuttled
by the Federals, was hove up, cut down, plated over, and renamed
the Virginia. (History, however, knows her only as the Merrimac.)
John L. Porter, Naval Constructor to the Confederate States, had
made a model of an ironclad at Pittsburgh fifteen years before;