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.

The Merrimac, which had been a sister ship of the Minnesota and Roanoke, was now completed and in commission at Norfolk, under her new name of the Virginia. She was to all intents a new vessel. Her masts had been removed, and her casemate, which sloped at an angle of forty-five degrees, and resembled the roof of a house, had been armored with two layers of wrought-iron plates, each two-and-a-half inches thick, with a seven-inch wooden backing. She was armed with six Ix-inch Dahlgren guns and two 32-pounder Brooke rifles in broadside, and Vii-inch Brooke rifles on pivots in the bow and stern; and a cast-iron ram projected eighteen inches from her bow.

The Congress and Cumberland had been lying off Newport News for several months. Their ostensible duty was to blockade the James River; but it is not very clear how a sailing-vessel at anchor could be of any use for this purpose. Most of the old sailing-vessels of the navy had by this time been relegated to their proper place as school-ships, storeships, and receiving-ships, or had been sent to foreign stations where their only duty was to display the flag. Nothing shows more clearly the persistence of old traditions than the presence of these helpless vessels in so dangerous a neighborhood. Although the ships themselves were of no value for modern warfare, their armament could ill be spared; and they carried between them over eight hundred officers and men, whose lives were exposed to a fruitless sacrifice.¹

Commander William Smith, who had commanded the Congress for six months, had been detached early in March. He turned over the command to his executive, Lieutenant Joseph B. Smith, but remained on board while waiting for his steamer, and during the engagement of the 8th he