For is not history dead, and
is not the man who made a fortune out of a device for shelling peanuts
without causing the nuts to drop in two, still living?
[3] The _Merrimac_, originally a Federal vessel of wooden construction,
was sunk by the Union forces when they abandoned Norfolk. A Confederate
captain, John M. Brooke, raised her, equipped her with a ram, and
covered her with boiler plate and railroad rails. She is called the
first ironclad. While she was being reconstructed John Ericsson was
building his _Monitor_ in New York. The turret was first used on this
vessel. It is worth noting that at the time of the engagement between
these two ships the _Monitor_ was not the property of the Federal
Government, but belonged to C.S. Bushnell, of New Haven, who built her
at his own expense, in spite of the opposition of the Navy Department of
that day. The Government paid for her long after the fight. It should
also be noted that the _Merrimac_ did not fight under that name, but as
a Confederate ship had been rechristened _Virginia_. The patriotic
action of Mr. Bushnell is recalled by the fact that, only recently, Mr.
Godfrey L. Cabot, of Boston, has agreed to furnish funds to build the
torpedoplane designed by Admiral Fiske as a weapon wherewith to attack
the German fleet within its defenses at Kiel.
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