Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/17

Rh captured in the yard were a permanent acquisition, the yard itself was lost when the war was one-fourth over. The South was without any large force of skilled mechanics, and such as it had were early summoned to the army. There were only three rolling-mills in the country, two of which were in Tennessee; and the third, in Alabama, was unfitted for heavy work. There were hardly any machine shops that were prepared to supply the best kind of workmanship; and in the beginning the only foundry capable of casting heavy guns was the Tredegar iron works [at Richmond, Va.], which, under the direction of Commander Brooke, was employed to its fullest capacity. Most deplorable of all deficiencies, there were no raw materials except the timber that was standing in the forests. Under these circumstances no general plan of naval policy on a large scale could be carried out, and the conflict on the Southern side became a species of partisan, desultory warfare.

In spite of all these difficulties, so plainly stated by Professor Soley, we shall see that the Southern navy was nevertheless built ; and, incredible as it now appears, the South constructed during the war a fleet of ironclad vessels which, had they been assembled in Chesapeake bay, could have defied the navy of any nation in Europe. They were not seagoing vessels ; but in smooth water the navy of Great Britain, at that time, could not have successfully coped with them.