Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[269] topic of violent comment in the Richmond newspapers. The famous ironclad Virginia, popularly said to be worth fifty thousand troops in the field, was destroyed by the orders of Commodore Tatnall, her commander. “The iron diadem of the South,” exclaimed the Richmond Examiner, “had been shattered by a wanton blow.”

The Virginia had been unable to bring on a fight with the enemy's fleet. When McClellan was encamped before Yorktown, she appeared in Hampton Roads, when the whole Federal fleet declined the combat, and with the vaunted Monitor took shelter beneath the guns of Fortress Monroe. On this occasion the Virginia, in sight of the enemy's fleet, carried off three schooners lying in the Roads almost within range of the guns of the fleet, and yet there was no movement to engage her; and this spectacle, so galling to the esprit du corps of the Federal navy, was witnessed by the French and English ships-of-war lying off Norfolk.

After the enemy's occupation of Norfolk, both shores of the James River came into possession of the Federal troops, who were therefore enabled to cut off the Virginia from her necessary supplies. Commodore Tatnall resolved to take the vessel up the river above the lines occupied by the enemy. According to his statement, he had been assured by her pilots that if the ship was lightened they would take her with a draught of eighteen feet of water within forty miles of Richmond. The ship was being lightened; Commodore Tatnall had retired to bed, when another message was brought him that the ship had been so far lightened that her wooden hull below the plating was exposed, and that the pilots (whom Commodore Tatnall charged with cowardice and an unwillingness to engage in action) now declared that the westerly wind had so lowered the water in the river that it would be impossible to take the vessel above the Jamestown Flats, up to which point the shore on both sides was occupied by the enemy. The commander, aroused from his slumbers, and acquainted with the decision of the pilots, ordered the vessel to be destroyed. Her decks and roof were saturated with oil, her crew were disembarked in small boats, trains of powder were laid from each port-hole to different parts of the vessel, and these were lighted at a given signal. Simultaneously the ship was on fire in many parts, and after burning several hours the flames reached the magazine, about four o'clock in the morning of the 11th of May, when the Virginia was blown up with an explosion heard many miles distant. Not a fragment was ever afterwards found of the only naval structure that guarded the water approach to Richmond.

“ The Virginia,” reported Commander Tatnall, “no longer exists. I presume that a court of inquiry will be ordered to examine into all the circumstances, and I earnestly solicit it. Public opinion will never be put right without it.” The court was ordered, and public opinion was “put right” by its decision that the destruction of the Virginia was unnecessary;