Commander John Worden, the Monitor's captain, felt that he was ripping the guts out of the enemy frigate with each shell. He had just identified the British ship as the Gorgon, the destroyer of the St. Lawrence, and both he and his crew appreciated the chance for revenge,
If only the Monitor's guns could be fired more quickly, he'd destroy the Gorgon and then move on to the other ships, But it couldn't be, The two guns had to be run into the turret for reloading, which was awkward and took precious time. To protect the gunners, the turret was rotated away from the Gorgon during the reloading process. This meant that the men of the Monitor were essentially blind during the five or so minutes this took,
Captain Worden was concerned that his very good luck could end quickly. They were almost in physical contact with the Gorgon and he had the sense that they were too far under her overhanging stern, It was a gorgeous place from which to shoot, but it was almost too good to be true.
“Mr. Greene,” he ordered, and Lieutenant Samuel Greene, his second in command, stepped forward, He was as grimy as everyone else in the stifling and noisy turret, but his eyes were bright with the emotion of the battle.
“Mr. Greene, go forward to the pilot house and see what is happening on the Britisher.”
Greene nodded and worked his way forward. The pilot house, a protrusion made of logs and heavy glass windows located on the Monitors bow, had been shot away early in the duel, This meant that he was going to have to stick his unprotected head up into the air to observe the Gorgon. It was not a duty that he relished. The world outside the sheltering iron walls of the Monitor was a hailstorm of metal.
He found the ruins of the pilothouse and pulled away enough debris to permit him to raise himself up and see. He gasped. The insides of the Gorgon were visible and a number of fires burned out of control. He could see bodies and chunks of gore lying about and blood running in rivulets along the deck. It was a vision of hell. For a moment he was fascinated by the fact that he could see British sailors moving about and that they hadn't seen him.
Then he sensed something above him and looked upwards. “Jesus:” he blurted. Ropes dangled from the stern of the Gorgon and a couple of them had come to rest on the deck of the Monitor. Heads appeared over the railing and it was obvious what was going to happen. Someone yelled and pointed at him.
Greene ducked back inside the hull of the Monitor and ran towards the turret. “Pull back!” he screamed. “We’re going to be boarded. Pull the ship back.” The din level in the turret prevented his voice from being heard, but sailors in his way relayed the message. Greene's shrieking left no doubt as to its urgency.
Worden quickly gave the order and the small Monitor slowly eased away from her dying prey. When they were about fifty yards from the frigate, he took a chance and squinted through the gun port just before the weapons were fired. A half dozen ropes hung down from the Gorgon and each one held sailors who were now being pulled back on board the doomed vessel.
“Too close,” Worden muttered. He had learned several great truths regarding his little ship. First, that it was damned near impregnable and, second, that the advantage of impregnability could be thrown away if he wasn't careful.
The Gorgon had commenced taking on water at an enormous rate. The pumps were overwhelmed and she was visibly settling by the stern. Weeping tears of frustration, Hawkes ordered his ship abandoned. His attempt to drop sailors on the Union ship had been a failure. So, too, had been an attempt to launch the ship's boats with men to board her.
However slow the Monitor was, she could move more swiftly than rowed boats. More important, those boats were needed to take men off the Gorgon, He ordered them back. Honor be damned, Hawkes thought bitterly. Now he had to save himself and his crew from a frigid death.
Hawkes watched as the Monitor turned and headed slowly back towards New York Harbor. The remainder of the blockading force attempted to close on her and they fired at her, virtually at once. Hawkes watched in dismay as several shells from British ships struck other British ships while the Monitor moved unscathed through the shower of metal.
A sloop of war, the Asp, steamed ahead to block the Monitor's return to the harbor. It was suicide. Hawkes wanted to yell to the captain of the Asp to back off, but could only watch the tragedy unfold. The eleven-inch guns of the Monitor spoke but once. They struck the Asp amidships and broke the back of the sloop. She immediately began to burn and sink while the Monitor disappeared into the sanctuary of New York Harbor.
Dozens of men from the Asp had either fallen or thrown themselves into the water. In just a few moments, most of them had disappeared under the waves. The combination of cold water and the sad but true fact that sailors were poor swimmers had killed them.
Hawkes had his own problems. Water was lapping at the stern and scores of wounded lay on the deck. Frantic signals to other ships brought more boats that took them off, the last of them just as the dying frigate slid beneath the waves. It was so close that both Hawkes and Freeland simply stepped off the deck of the Gorgon and onto a boat.
When Hawkes and Freeland were finally taken aboard another warship, everyone in the squadron knew that something more than the sinking of two ships had occurred. They had just seen the face of naval warfare change.
Captain David Glasgow Farragut was as happy as a naval officer without a command could possibly be. Months ago, he'd been appointed commodore of the squadron that was going to attack New Orleans, but that mission had been aborted when England entered the war. The sixty-year-old Farragut understood, but still hated it. He'd fought the British as a junior officer in the War of 1812, and now wanted an opportunity to strike at them again.
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles's exceptionally competent assistant. Gustavus Fox, was equally happy. Fox was the power behind Welles's throne, and Farragut understood that Fox was the path to getting a new command.
“Captain Farragut, please tell me how we can exploit the Monitor's victory.”
“Simple,” said Farragut, “build a lot more of the damned things and let me take them right at the British.”
Fox grinned. Farragut's directness was one of his virtues. “How many and how soon? Then tell me about the other new ships.”
The Monitor hadn't been the only ironclad under construction. Two others, the Galena and the New Ironsides, were also being built. These, however, were more traditional in that they were ordinary ship designs that were being sheathed in metal. In this, they were smaller versions of the British warship Warrior, and not radical innovations like the Monitor.
The Monitor's unique design had been the brainchild of Swedish inventor and shipbuilder John Ericsson. The Swede had been difficult, obstinate, stubborn, cantankerous, and brilliant. His design had performed flawlessly. Almost as important: it had taken only ninety days to build the Monitor.