Word: merrimac
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Monitor v. Merrimac...
Editor Victor E. Lawson of the Willmar (Minn.) Tribune, in his letter published in TIME, May 24, p. 2, reiterates the fiction that the Confederate ship Merrimac (Virginia) was defeated by, and "fled" from, Ericsson's Monitor...
...editor should be sufficiently informed and honest not to perpetrate such an arrant canard in a matter of history. The oft repeated contention that the Monitor defeated the Merrimac is refuted even by Federal historians themselves. Without vouching for the records (which I shall be glad to do for you or for Mr. Lawson), it seems sufficient to the purposes of this brief letter to quote Ericsson himself. He did not consider that the Monitor won the fight, and said in a letter written...
...Monitor's crew claimed bounty for the destruction of the Merrimac. A congressional committee investigated the facts and rejected the claim on the ground "that the Merrimac, so far from being seriously injured, was enabled after the engagement to protect the approaches to Norfolk and Richmond until after the evacuation of Norfolk". (H. R. Reports, 1725, 48th Congress, 1st Session...
...Lawson's contention is sound, one wonders why the Monitor did not capture the Merrimac, and why the Monitor herself fled to shoal water and to the protection of Fortress Monroe when the Merrimac twice came down the river and offered fight...