The New York Times Article dated March 14, 1862, THE NAVAL BATTLE IN HAMPTON ROADS.; THE GREAT NAVAL VICTORY.

 

The Battle of Hampton Roads.

Published: March 10, 1862

 

For a Sea-piece, that fulfills all the conditions of dramatic art as completely as it is possible for a real event to do, commend us to the recital of the battle of Hampton Roads, which we publish to-day. ARISTOTLE himself could not ask a nicer observance of the unities than it displays; and it needs no aid from the playwright's craft to throw the series of naval actions that took place off Newport's News, on Saturday, between noon and night, into the form of a dramatic composition, perfect in design and execution, with its beginning, middle and end, and its moral lesson all included.

The scene opens with the sudden appearance in Hampton Roads of that mysterious marine monster, the Merrimac, and two attendant rebel war-dogs. Down they come, belching fire and destruction, and heading straight towards the National fleet that lay at anchor in the Roads. Imagine the thrill of terror that ran through their wooden walls as the terrible mailed monster made his appearance. Such as had steam to aid their flight, hastily rushed, like herring chased by a shark, for the protecting guns of Fortress Monroe; but alas for those that had not! Two fine old sailing frigates lay at anchor off Newport's News -- the Congress and the Cumberland. Into the latter the iron-clad steamer plunged her steel plow, crashing through the frigate's bow, sinking her instantly, and it is said, carrying down half her crew of five hundred souls. Later accounts diminish this tragic catastrophe to one hundred men. Let us trust that further reports will show this to be still an exaggerated number. The other frigate, the Congress, was next attacked in turn, and after pouring in a shower of shot, which rained like pebbles on the mailed sides of the Merrimac, she surrendered. The events which immediately succeed are but obscurely reported in the telegraphic dispatches; but we catch glimpses of a scene that is painfully dark and disastrous. The National steamers that had taken to flight on the approach of the Merrimac appear all to have grounded on the way between Newport's News and Fortress Monroe; and it seems inevitable that the iron-sheathed annihilator shall go on destroying each in turn, and make her way out to sea, to descend in a new destroying avatar on the blockading fleet along the coast.

In the midst of this gloomy scene the exclamation which spontaneously leaps to the lips is, "Where is the Ericsson Battery?" It alone is able to cope with this destructive monster. Sudden as the realizations of a fairy tale the Battery makes her appearance. A deus ex machina! one may well exclaim. Here, indeed, is a knight in mail fit to cope with Sir Merrimac. At this most critical and interesting "situation" the telegraph becomes tantalizingly brief; but we learn that the Battery made its appearance late in the evening and put her iron sides between our vessels and the enemy. Yesterday morning the fight began, and the Battery, after engaging the Merrimac and the two rebel gunboats, in a five hours' action, put them all to flight, the Merrimac slinking off "in a sinking condition." The timing of the action is really so nice that it sounds like a romance, and one might well be incredulous, were not our tidings official, and were it not known that the Ericsson Battery sailed from New-York last week for Fortress Monroe, with the express purpose of going up to Norfolk and bearding the monster in his den. Her arrival was certainly in the very nick of time, and the result one which does honor not only to the officers and men, but to the ingenious inventor who shaped the victorious creation of naval art.

And this reminds us that we must not, in the contemplation of the merely aesthetic aspects of the battle of Hampton Roads, lose sight of the practical import of this brilliant affair. The Merrimac is undoubtedly a most formidable engine of war, and previously to the construction of Ericsson's iron-clad Battery, we had nothing in our navy that could begin to stand before her. The stories of her inefficiency and failure, that the Richmond journals have published at various times, were probably in great measure intended as a mask; the work on her has been done by Northern mechanics, and is no doubt well done. The rebels have thrown their whole resources into her, and, in despair of obtaining a navy of their own, thought to send out an engine of war that would utterly destroy ours. The vision was not altogether baseless. If they had been only a month earlier with the Merrimac, it is hard to set limits to what the might have done. That she would have been able to destroy every vessel in the Roads, brave the batteries of Fortress Monroe and the Rip Raps, and make her way out to sea may now be considered a demonstrated fact. Once out on the rampage, she would play the butt in the crockery-shop with our wooden blockaders; and it is difficult to see what would have prevented her going down the coast like a destroying angel and annihilating our whole fleet. The London Times not long ago threatened to lay the Warrior broadsides of New-York and Hoboken; what was there to hinder the Merrimac's realizing the threat? One can imagine how the rebel chiefs at Richmond will gnash their teeth over this fatal delay that has dashed their hopes of success on the sea, and put an end forever to their navy.

If the Battery had not arrived in time! -- one trembles to look along the line of this contingency. Suffice it to say that it did arrive in time, and that the National cause has had an escape and a triumph whose romantic form stirs the mind with mingled wonder and joy.

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