and he now applied this model to the rebuilding of the Merrimac.
He first cut down everything above the water line, except the gun
deck, which he converted into a regular citadel with flat top,
sides sloping at thirty-five degrees, and ends stopping short of
the ship's own ends by seventy feet fore and aft. The effect,
therefore, was that of an ironclad citadel built on the midships
of a submerged frigate's hull. The four-inch iron plating of the
citadel knuckled over the wooden sides two feet under water. The
engines, which the South had no means of replacing, were the old
ones which had been condemned before being sunk. A four-foot
castiron ram was clamped on to the bow. Ten guns were mounted:
six nine-inch smooth-bores, with two six-inch and two seven-inch
rifles. Commodore Franklin Buchanan took command and had
magnificent professional officers under him. But the crew, three
hundred strong, were mostly landsmen; for, as in the case of the
Army, the men of the Navy nearly all took sides with the North,
and the South had very few seamen of any other kind.

To oppose the Merrimac the dilatory North contracted with John
Ericsson the Swede, who had to build the Monitor much smaller
than the Merrimac owing to pressure of time. He enjoyed, however,
enormous advantages in every other respect, owing to the vastly
superior resources of the North in marine engineering,
armor-plating, and all other points of naval construction. The
Monitor was launched at New York on January 30, 1869., the
hundredth day after the laying of her keel-plate. Her length over
all was 172 feet, her beam was 41, and her draught only 10--less
than half the draught of the Merrimac. Her whole crew numbered
only 58; but every single one was a trained professional naval
seaman who had volunteered for dangerous service under Captain