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.

[238] be manufactured in a day; nor can officers be expected to use them to advantage when they have had no previous opportunity to practise their use. ‘Our occupation,’ wrote Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, shortly after the war, ‘was formerly an instinct; now it is a science.’ The mastery of a science requires study; but while war is going on, men have little time to think, much less to study. They can only use as best they may the new tools that are put into their hands, if their government has not given them modern tools beforehand. Even admitting, though it should never be admitted for a moment, that it is too much to ask that provision should be made for keeping the material in the forefront of scientific progress, there is at least a limit to the distance which it may be allowed to fall in the rear. If we must be out of date, it is better to be four years behind the times than to be twenty years behind.

It is hard to see how the advocates of a policy of procrastination can reiterate the old arguments about the success of our naval operations in the war, to justify inaction. It was not really a naval war, for there was hardly a naval enemy. There were three or four cruisers at sea, some of which were captured or destroyed after having obliterated our commerce, and one of which, at least, never was captured. There was an extemporized fleet here and there, made up of anything that came to hand, such as drove the blockading squadron from the Head of the Passes. There was one steam-frigate that had been raised out of the water, and made in some sense a modern war vessel, which played havoc with her antiquated opponents, and for a month kept the force at Hampton Roads at bay. There were other ironclads which had been fitted out under almost every disadvantage that circumstances could create, and which had a short career at various points. In coping, not with this