James Russell Soley, Professor U. S. Navy, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, The blockade and the cruisers
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[57] she was built, the service would have called for no extraordinary sacrifice. But she was to go to sea; and many experienced officers, both in the navy and in the merchant service, doubted seriously her ability to keep afloat in any but the calmest weather, and regarded the enterprise as desperate— an opinion which the Monitor's subsequent career fully justified. If she sank, she would sink quickly; and there was small chance that any of the devoted men penned up in her submerged hull would escape. All this was well understood by her officers and men; and with a courage and self-devotion of no common order, they voluntarily accepted the conditions, and prepared to meet the danger.

The general plan of the Monitor, as originally invented by Ericsson, was little less than an inspiration of genius. But the first vessel of the type was by no means perfect in its details, and many improvements were made in those subsequently built. The defects, for grave defects they were, had a marked influence upon both her sea-going and her fighting qualities, and put her at a great disadvantage as compared with her successors. Her armored deck or raft was attached to the hull by a single set of rivets, which were unequal to the strain caused by a heavy sea striking the projecting bow from underneath. Her smoke-pipes and blower-pipes projected only a few feet above the deck, and could hardly fail to ship large quantities of water in a heavy sea. In action, her weakest point was the pilot-house. Its rude structure, that of an iron log hut, was ill-calculated to resist the blow of a heavy projectile. Its roof was detached, merely resting by its weight on the walls. Its position on the deck forward of the turret was disadvantageous, as it precluded end — on fire when the vessel was approaching an enemy, and reduced the circular sweep of the guns by nearly eight points. But the worst feature of the arrangement was the separation of the