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Rh the coming of Admiral Sampson with a number of additional warships,—the New York, Oregon, Mayflower, Porter, and others. The New York, it may be added here, was a cruiser, similar to the Brooklyn, only somewhat smaller. The Oregon was a battleship of the first class, of over ten thousand tons' displacement, and carried four 13-inch, eight 8-inch, and four 6-inch guns in her main battery, over twenty guns in her secondary battery, besides several Gatling guns and three torpedo tubes. This noble vessel had just made a record for herself by steaming, at full speed, from San Francisco, around Cape Horn, to our eastern coast, without a break-down,—a journey without precedent for a heavy battleship, so far as our own navy was concerned. In the past, foreign critics had imagined that our vessels were not quite as good as theirs in thoroughness of build; now these critics were silenced, and they stood looking on, and wondering what those "clever Yankees" would do next.

The Merrimac had been under the command of Captain James Miller, but now she was eased of a large quantity of her coal, and turned over to Lieutenant Richmond P. Hobson, an assistant naval constructor. Hobson had his plans