other ship, except in size; and in every
ship the organization was simple and based mostly on the necessities
of handling the ship by sails.

The first important change from this condition followed the departure
of the Confederate ironclad _Virginia_ (_Merrimac_) carrying 10
guns and 300 men from the Norfolk Navy Yard on the 8th of March,
1862, and her sinking hardly two hours afterward the Union sloop of
war _Cumberland_, carrying 24 guns and 376 men; and then destroying
by fire the Union frigate _Congress_, carrying 50 guns and 434 men.
The second step was taken on the following day, when the Union
_Monitor_, 2 guns and 49 men, defeated the _Merrimac_. These two
actions on two successive days are the most memorable naval actions
in history from the standpoint of naval construction and naval
ordnance, and perhaps of naval strategy; because they instituted
a new era--the era of mechanism in naval war.

The next step was the successful attack by the Confederate "fish-torpedo
boat" _David_, on the Union ironclad _Housatonic_ in Charleston
harbor on February 17, 1864; and the next was the sinking of the
Confederate ironclad _Albemarle_ by a spar torpedo carried on a
little steam-launch commanded by Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S.
N., on October 27, 1864.

These four epochal events in our Civil War demonstrated the
possibilities of mechanism in naval warfare, and led the way to
the use of the highly specialized and scientific instruments that
have played so important a part in the present war. During the
half-century that has intervened since the _Monitor_ and _Merrimac_
ushered in the modern era, since the five brave crews of the _David_
lost their lives, and since Cushing made his amazing victory, a
contest between the sailor and the scientist has been going on,
as to which shall be deemed the ultimate master of the sea. As in
many contests, the decision has gone unqualifiedly to neither; for
he who sails the sea and braves its tempests, must be in heart and
character a sailor--and yet he who fights the scientific war-craft of
the present day cannot be merely a sailor, like him of the olden kind,
but must be what the _New York Times_, a few years ago, laughingly
declared to be a combination quite unthinkable, "a scientific person
and a sailor."

Each year since the fateful 8th of March, 1862, has seen some addition
to the fighting machinery of navies. Some appliances have been
developed gradually from their first b