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Show AT OLD HAMPTON ROADS. That was a great spectacle off Hampton Roads on Friday. The naval display must have stirred the pulses of every, looker-on. "We notice the correspondents lay particular stress on the fact that it was there that the first two iron- clads met in battle, and so, in effect, sunk every wooden ship and changed the whole art of naval warfare. But there was something there vastly finer than the fight between the Merrimac and the Monitor; something vastly more impressive. It was there that the Merrimac came down upon the wooden fleet, sunk the Cumberland and set. fire to the Congress. . It was about the grandest tragedy of the sea that 7 history recalls. - The commander of the Merrimac and the commander com-mander of the Cumberland had been old friends in pre-secession days. Buchanan, commander of the Merrimac,-shouted through his trumpet to Morris, commander com-mander of the Cumberland, to surrender, threatening threaten-ing if he did not to sink his ship, and the answer went back across the waters, "Sink away." ..- The Merrimac was driven into the Cumberland, tearing a great hole from deck to keel. The ship immediately began to fill with water and in a few moments went down with its crew, its dying and its dead. But they went to their watery grave with a cheer on their lips and fired into the Merrimac a last broadside when the water was running into the muzzles muz-zles of their guns. Nothing finer was ever seen and what followed was. if possible, still more striking. The Cumber- land, with its dying and its dead, went out of sight, but the flag still waved above the surface of the water wa-ter and continued to wave until it was whipped to pieces by the winds. It was a symbol full of omens of disaster for the Confederates for, in a languageof its own, it said that while ships may be sunk and brave men perish, the old flag was still supreme, its stars gleaming over the dead below; a symbol that while armies might be destroyed, while brave men by the million might die, the flag was immortal and would, at la6t, surely, come to its own. Another most touching event was when the Merrimac Mer-rimac backed away frain the Cumberland and went to the attack of the Congress. The Congress had already been set on fire by the shots of the Merrimac, and when summoned to surrender her flag came down. She had been commanded by Lieut. Joe Smith, son of the old Commodore. He, from Fortress Fort-ress Monroe, was watching the progress of the battle through a glass, and. when he saw the flag of the Congress struck down,- turning, he lay down his glass and simply remarked : . "Joe is dead." And so it proved. He knew his boy. He knew Sn that place as the commander of that ship he would sooner die than surrender, and when he saw the flag hauled down it -was a notice to him that his boy was dead. His death, and the acts of Morris on the Cumberland Cumber-land and the waving of the flag above the sea, after the ship which supported it, had been engulfed, make of Hampton Roads a place more famous than is either Salamis or Actium. |