Nothing more could be done tonight. The tide was ebbing, and there was danger that Virginia would go aground along with everybody else, so at dusk the ironclad and her gunboats drew off to a safe anchorage at the mouth of the Elizabeth River, under protection of Confederate batteries, to send dead and wounded ashore and make emergency repairs. After dark the flames from burning Congress made a red glow in the night by Newport News Point. Toward midnight the flames reached the frigate's magazines and she blew up with a great burst of fire and sparks and a heavy concussion that went echoing off across the still water. With morning, Virginia would come out again to finish the job.

Then, at the last possible moment, hope for salvation returned to the Federal Navy; U.S.S. Monitor came steaming in past the Virginia capes after sunset, moved up into Hampton Roads, and anchored near Minnesota, which was still struggling to get afloat like a man trying to wriggle out of a straitjacket. Now the Federals had an ironclad of their own. With it they could turn overwhelming disaster into a face-saving, life-saving stalemate. When morning came, ironclad would fight ironclad . . . and every navy in the world would have to rebuild.

As a matter of fact the rebuilding had already begun. Both the British and the French navies already had ironclads in commission, with more under construction and still others under design; and Foote's gunboats on the western rivers were armored, even though they were armored too lightly. Virginia had simply dramatized the fact that an unarmored ship could not possibly fight an armored ship, and when the smoke from the burning frigate fogged the sunset on the evening of March 8 that lesson had been driven home once and forever. The next day's fight between Monitor and Virginia would supplement it; putting on display not the world's first ironclads, but just the world's first fight between ironclads.

In all of this there was acute embarrassment for the United States Navy, if the Navy had had time to reflect. Its professionals had been completely outthought and outmaneu-vered by the underrated civilian who served as Jefferson Davis's Secretary of the Navy, Stephen R. Mallory of Florida. Mallory had seen what the experts failed to see and he had acted on what he saw, and the United States Navy was extremely lucky to be getting out of this fix at all.

Less than a month after Fort Sumter, Mallory had seen the need for ironclads. Sadly deficient in shipyards, shipwrights, and naval architects, the South could not hope to build a seagoing fleet that would match the Federal fleet, and Mallory knew it. He knew, too, that wooden warships were obsolete anyway. Firing shell, he said, wooden ships would destroy one another so quickly that a sea fight would be nothing more than a contest to see which ship would sink first; and early in May he had urged the Congress to meditate on "the wisdom and expediency of fighting with iron against wood." When Merrimack was raised and rebuilt he saw to it that she was heavily armored, and the job was well under way before Secretary Welles's people got around to consider the question of using armor at all. Not until October did the Federal government contract for the building of Monitor, and the only thing that saved the day for the United States Navy was the fact that the North had an industrial plant that could handle a job like this with impressive speed.

In her own way Monitor was just as odd as Virginia. A heavily armored turret carrying two 11-inch guns stood amidships on a long, armored hull that had no more than a foot or two of freeboard; there was a little knob of a pilothouse forward and a smokestack aft, and nothing more. If the Confederate ship looked like a half-submerged barn, the Federal looked (as men said) like a tin can on a shingle. Built after the designs of the irascible genius John Ericsson, Monitor was as hard to live in as Virginia, and very little more seaworthy—she had come close to foundering, on her trip down from New York—but she drew much less water and answered her helm better; and, all in all, here she was in Hampton Roads on the morning of March 9, and Ericsson's idea would quickly be put to the test.⁷

Skipper of Monitor was Lieutenant John Worden. He reported to the senior naval officer present, Captain John Marston of Roanoke, who sensibly ignored Washington's orders to send the ironclad up the Potomac and told Worden to stand by Minnesota. Worden cleared for action and his crew turned in for the night, while tugboats continued their unavailing efforts to get Minnesota afloat. Dawn brought a fog, which thinned out toward eight o'clock to reveal once more that moving pillar of smoke down by the mouth of the Elizabeth; here was Virginia, ready for another battle. Monitor's men were called to battle stations, and Worden steered down to meet his opponent. The two vessels got to close range and opened fire, and for the next two hours the world's first fight between armored ships was on, the two ships so wreathed with clouds of coal smoke and powder smoke that they could hardly see each other.

It was a strange fight. Neither ship could really hurt the other. Solid shot clanged against the iron plates and ricocheted far across the bay; shell burst with spectacular but ineffective explosions against iron turret and slanting citadel; Virginia tried to ram, but was far too sluggish, and gave Monitor no more than a nudge. In each ship the seamen quickly learned to refrain from leaning against the bulkheads; if a shot struck the armor while a man was touching the wall just inside the man could be killed or stunned. One of Monitor's men was knocked unconscious for ten minutes because his knee touched the turret wall when shot hit the armor outside.

Once Virginia hit a corner of Monitor's pilothouse with a heavy shell, breaking ironwork and leaving the structure somewhat insecure; and a moment later a shell exploded against the face of the pilothouse, driving flecks of paint, iron and powder in though the sighting slit, stunning and blinding Lieutenant Worden and putting him out of action. Until the youthful executive officer, Lieutenant Samuel Dana Greene, could be called from the turret Monitor was without a commander, and she drifted off into the shallows, temporarily out of the fight. Virginia promptly turned on Minnesota and opened a fire which set that luckless frigate ablaze and sank one of the tugs that had been trying so unsuccessfully to get the ship afloat.

Captain G. J. Van Brunt, Minnesota's commanding officer, suddenly found that he had the ironclad where every gun would bear, at easy range, and he fired an enormous broadside—two 10-inch guns, fourteen 9-inch and seven 8-inch: a weight of shot and shell which, as he said, would have blown any wooden ship clear out of the water. The missiles struck Virginia and bounced away, and Captain Van Brunt suddenly realized that the day of ships like his was over forever. When he came to make his report on the fight he wrote, as if bemused: "Never before was anything like it dreamed of by the greatest enthusiast in maritime warfare." It seemed to him that Minnesota was not merely out of date but immediately doomed, and he made preparations to destroy the ship and abandon it; but then Monitor got back into action, and it was ironclad against ironclad once more. Once Virginia ran aground, but her engine room crew tied down the safety valves, piled oil-soaked rags into the furnaces, raised a perilous head of steam, and the ungainly fighting machine floundered off into deeper water.⁸

Somewhere around noon the fight died down as if by mutual consent. Because she had lost her ram and had consumed so much fuel, Virginia was riding higher at the bow than she normally would, and Lieutenant Jones was well aware that if the Yankees fired at her unarmored water-line, forward, they could riddle her. Her leak was troublesome, and the channel where she fought was narrow, and there was always the danger that she would become stranded again and hang there helpless. Monitor, in her turn, was in no mood to insist on a finish fight. She was under command of a junior officer, and orders were to play it safe and take no chances; Monitor's assignment today was strictly to save Minnesota from destruction, and this had been done, by the narrowest margin. In addition, Greene feared that if another shot hit the pilothouse where the first one had struck, the ship's steering gear would be disabled—Worden had always believed the pilothouse was Monitor's most vulnerable spot. So when at last Virginia steamed back to her base, Monitor stayed close to Minnesota and made no attempt to pursue.

The battle was over. It had been a complete stand-off, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox said the most that could be said when he telegraphed McClellan that night that the battle showed "a slight superiority in favor of the Monitor." He added that the Confederate ironclad "is an ugly customer, and it is too good luck to believe that we are yet clear of her"; and a few days later he warned the Navy Department that although Monitor was more than a match for her opponent she might easily be put out of action in her next fight and it was unwise to place too great dependence on her. Monitor's chief engineer, Alban C. Stimers, was more optimistic, and he telegraphed congratulations to Ericsson, telling him that "you have saved this place to the nation by furnishing us with the means to whip an ironclad frigate that was, until our arrival, having it all her own way with our most powerful vessels." ⁹

In a way, Monitor had won something important; she had at least restored the status quo. As long as she remained afloat, McClellan could bring his army down in transports and put men and supplies ashore near Fort Monroe. The army's campaign against Richmond could go ahead, even though Virginia's presence would impose certain handicaps. But the weight of the whole campaign rested on this queer, mastless warship with the revolving turret. Monitor could not be risked; she could neutralize Virginia, but she could do nothing more than that; dared do nothing more, because of all the ships in the United States Navy this was the one that must not be lost.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mallory had a nice answer for the impatient men in the Confederate Congress who had been demanding that he leave the cabinet because he had not given the Confederacy a navy.