James Barnes, author of David G. Farragut, Naval Actions of 1812, Yank ee Ships and Yankee Sailors, Commodore Bainbridge , The Blockaders, and other naval and historical works, The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 6: The Navy.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

[286] received large sums. If other vessels were in a certain radius of distance or attached to the same station, they also had a share in the money awarded by the prize-courts, and an escaping blockade-runner would remind one of a hare pursued by a heterogeneous pack of hounds — the swiftest to the fore, and then the lumbering, unwieldy boats bringing up the rear.

Of the fifty-one thousand men in the Federal Navy during the Civil War, not a third could have been called by the most elastic stretching of the term, sailors. A great majority rated as landsmen, were so in fact as well as name, and at least twelve or fifteen thousand of the men serving in the fleets along the coast and on the rivers had never set foot on a ship before enlisting.

On the gunboats in the Mississippi and the converted nondescripts that did such good service along the shores, there was very little chance for putting into practice the strict rules that governed life on the regular vessels. The men in some cases had greater comforts, and in others much less. It was a question of give and take and make the best of it between officers and crew.

With the introduction of the monitors there came into sea life an entirely new existence. At sea, if the weather was rough the men were corked up like flies in a bottle. Under a hot sun the sleeping quarters below became almost unbearable, and the iron decks so hot that they almost scorched the feet. This life in the ironclad, modified in a great measure with many comforts, is the life that has developed the seaman of to-day, for the old-time Jack has gone. A man must know more than how to make his mark when he enlists; his knowledge of arithmetic in fact must include the use of decimal fractions. The oncedespised duties of the soldier are his also. He must know his manual of arms like a marine, for the ship's crew is an infantry regiment, a light-artillery battalion. The individuality of the sailorman as a class began to disappear when the generation that had fought the Civil War forsook the sea.