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captain who was manoeuvring the ship from the lieutenant who was working the turret and firing the guns.
Each was completely cut off from the other, except by a speaking-tube, which opened in the floor of the movable turret, and through which the sound would only pass when the turret was in its normal position.
The experience of the first Monitor led to the simple device of putting the pilot-house over the turret, a change that was suggested by
Newton, the engineer of the vessel.
Finally the machinery for turning the turret, a wheel and rod connected by gearing with the turret-engine, was so defective that the turret was equally slow in starting, and, once started, in coming to a stop; and there was hardly time to point the guns before the muzzles had swept by their target.
But considering the time in which she was built, the wonder is not that she was imperfect, but that she was in anywise ready; and it was well for the country that she did not wait another day to complete her preparations.
The first trial of the Monitor was made February 19, on the day that she was delivered at the Navy Yard.
She was put in commission on the 25th, when a second trial took place; but her steering gear was not in working order, and she did not go out of the East River.
At a third trial, a week later, she steamed-down to Sandy Hook, and tried her guns.
The mechanics were still at work upon her; indeed, the vessel was hardly completed when she left New York, though the workmen were busy during the night before she sailed.
Finally, at 11 o'clock on the morning of Thursday, March 6, she started down the harbor; and in the afternoon she was fairly at sea on her way to the Chesapeake.
The passage down was difficult and dangerous.
The Monitor was in tow of the Seth Low, a small tug, and was accompanied by two unseaworthy gunboats, the Currituck and Sachem.
The ten days between the commission, of the Monitor
