Show NAUTICAL NOVELTIES THE MIRACLE THAT CHANGED AMERICAS HISTORY HI STORY it was six of a sunday morning in washington seventy seven years ago the cabinet hastily roused from sleep clustered c pale and shaken around the president who held a te telegram legrain just received from hampton roads virginia the day before the confederate ram merrimac had appeared suddenly among the union fleet with deadly deliberation aw aal utter immunity she had destroyed two of the biggest ships in the union navy then withdrawn at nightfall today she would begin again on the remaining helpless wooden ships the cabinet was appalled some of them were close to panic inevitably it seemed this monster and others then building would destroy the union navy ship by ship lay washington in ashes reduce the seaboard cities and dictate peace on the terms stanton himself a hard realist said the war is lost nothing can save us but a miracle well as everyone knows the miracle happened according to the letter of history it happened that very sunday the monitor which had arrived in the night battered the merrimac back into norfolk and saved the day and the war for the union but actually the mi miracle was not in the monitors performance in action she was the better ship it lay in her happening to be there at all on that blackest of days in a chain of accidents of narrow shaves sli aves of queer coincidences of one inspired lie and of superhuman endeavor by a number of unsung heroes the miracle was in the sheer incredibility that il these could combine to put the monitor in hampton Hamp tori roads on that sunday morning of march 9 1862 to begin with the monitor came close to never being heard of at all by our government ericsson Erics sor had designed his device for aqua aquatic attack in 1854 and had tried to sell the idea to france failing he had cast it aside the union governments call f for or armored ship proposals in 1861 found ericson with neither faith in the navy department with which he had some unpleasant experiences noi no interest in his own idea the model of the monitor lay dusty beneath a pile of rubbish in erics sons office and there it woula have stayed except for an accident there came to see ericsson one day a man named C S bushnell he had submitted an idea for foi an ironclad and got it accepted now he wanted to consult ericsson professionally in a matter of engineering gi detail his own ship the galena was later to prove a fail ure but his visit to ericsson was worth every cent the government paid mr bushnell for that unhappy vessel for in the course of talk ericsson burrowed into the trash heap and resurrected hs his little model bushnell instantly saw its possibilities and tried to get ericsson to submit it to the government but the crusty swede had had enough of naval boards so bushnell all on fire with enthusiasm thusia sm took the model to the capitol himself he interviewed the president cajoled the officials ot or the navy department and got a hearing before a board of experts things began to loo 1001 bright but on the second day of his hearing bushnell found the doard board had gone bonef suddenly cold from two of them he could get no response at all the third told him merrily that he could take the little thing home and worship it as it would not be idolatry because it was in the image of nothing in the heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth so ripe a raspberry would have discouraged most men but not bushnell rushing back to new york he implored ericsson himself to have a try at the board the designer said no so bushnell painted the picture in bright er colors than the facts warranted he told ericsson that the idea was as good as accepted that it needed only the masters touch for corn com success if ever a lie was to prove justified this was the one ericsson packed up and went but when he faced the board the inventor was quickly disillusioned they received him coldly eold cold him that his proposal had already been rejected he turned to go in that moment the whole monitor idea was again close to ax extinction then by chance and at the last minute one of the closemouthed close mouthed admirals let fall a casual remark disparaging the stability of the projected ship it is curious that so ragile fragile a thing as one unguarded eJ remark should have been a link in the chain that saved the union instantly ericsson was aroused ire he defended his idea so hotly and eloquently that before he drew breath a hostile board of skeptical old line wooden ship officers was completely won over yet the monitor was built ony only r against continued e on linued opposition the board had no sooner authorized ler ier than they began to get cold beet they hampered ericsson with i contract of unnecessary harsh less when the press ridiculed the on a raft as she was i building they wriggled uneasily considered onside red how they might renege aly the pertinacity of ericsson md ind the firmness of gideon welles secretary of the navy ever got the little ship into the water |