Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[593] longer admits of protecting every part effectively. Ericsson, on the contrary, sought to solve the problem by reducing, so far as it could be done, the surfaces exposed to the fire of the enemy, and presenting them under an angle which gave them the greatest possible capacity of resistance. He discarded the system of vertical sides, concentrated the guns upon the axis of the ship, and placed them inside of one or more turrets. He was thus enabled to increase both the calibre of the guns and the thickness of the sheathing which sheltered them, without overloading the hull. While the curved faces of the turrets presented but one mathematical line where a cannon ball could strike them normal to the surface, the deck, lowered nearly to a level with the water, could not be reached by projectiles except under an extremely sharp angle. The turret, supported at once upon rollers placed under the base and by a central axis put in motion by a cog-wheel, turned easily with the two guns it contained. They could thus point in every direction, and a prismatic glass permitted this to be done without opening the port-holes. Thus the ship projected by Ericsson could easily be constructed, and at a moderate expense; in case of a reverse, but few lives were exposed, as it only presented a small number of surfaces to the enemy; with the whole horizon as the range of shot for each of the guns she carried; in short, this vessel combined the double advantage of being encased in a thicker armor and of carrying more powerful guns than the largest high-decked vessels. It is true that her flat bottom and slight elevation would not permit her to make long voyages on the high sea; and Captain Coles had intended to remedy this difficulty by proposing a ship with a keel, whose inclined sides should be surmounted by the turrets. But we believe that Ericsson was right in designing iron-clad vessels exclusively for the coast service. He saw, what experience will demonstrate more and more conclusively, that a mixed vessel, built to carry an armor and at the same time to undertake long voyages, will always be less powerful in a fight than the coasting-vessels she will find at the entrance of the enemy's ports, and less buoyant on the waters than the wooden or plated vessels that will elude her to scour the seas.

When the civil war broke out, it was as easy for both parties