r shell. The shell is made of pitch pine and oak, and
it is covered with two-inch thick plates of Tredegar iron. The beak is
of cast iron, standing four feet out from the bow; that, with the rest
of the old berth deck, is just awash. Both ends of the shell are rounded
for pivot guns. Over the gun deck is an iron grating on which you can
walk at need. There is the pilot-house covered with iron, and there is
the smokestack. Below are the engines and boilers, condemned after the
Merrimac's last cruise, and, since then, lying in the ooze at the bottom
of the river. They are very wheezy, trembling, poor old men of the sea!
It was hard work to get the coal for them to eat; it was brought at last
from away out in Montgomery County, from the Price coal-fields. The guns
are two 7-inch rifles, two 6-inch rifles, and six 9-inch smoothbores;
ten in all.--Yes, call her a turtle, plated with iron; she looks as much
like that as like anything else.

"When we eighty men from the Warwick first saw her, she was swarming
with workmen. They continued to cover her over, and to make impossible
any drill or exercise upon her. Hammer, hammer upon belated plates from
the Tredegar! Tinker, tinker with the poor old engines! Make shift here
and make shift there; work through the day and work through the night,
for there was a rumour abroad that the Ericsson, that we knew was
building, was coming down the coast! There was no chance to drill, to
become acquainted with the turtle and her temperament. Her species had
never gone to war before, and when you looked at her there was room for
doubt as to how she would behave! Officers and men were strange to one
another--and the gunners could not try the guns for the swarming
workmen. There wasn't so much of the Montgomery coal that it could be
wasted on experiments in firing up--and, indeed, it seemed wise not to
experiment at all with the ancient engines! So we stood about the navy
yard, and looked down the Elizabeth and across the flats to Hampton
Roads, where we could see the Cumberland, the Congress, and the
Minnesota, Federal ships lying off Newport News--and the workmen
rivetted the last plates--and smoke began to come out of the
smokestack--and suddenly Commodore Buchanan, with his lieutenants behind
him, appeared between us and the Merrimac--or the Virginia. Most of us
still call her the Merrimac. It was the morning of the eighth. The sun
shone brightly and the water was very blue--blue and still.