Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/333

 The Virginia's Great Fight on Water. 325

Catesby Jones and Hunter Davidson that the Monitor retired from the engagement before the Virginia did.

The following items as to the anchor and beams of the first iron-clad, which revolutionized naval warfare, may be of interest to add:

"NORFOLK, VA V January 25. As the result of her mud hook getting afoul of something in Hampton Roads yesterday a fishing schooner was the innocent cause of the discovery of the lost anchor and chain of the Confederate armor clad 'Mer- rimac/ or 'Virginia'.'*

The stock in the anchor is black walnut. Live Oak was gen- erally used, but this material ran out during the war, and other kinds of wood had to be used. The stock is of two pieces, shaped in the centre to fit around the shank, between the shoul- ders, and the two pieces are held together by stout iron bands. The shank is fourteen feet long, and a foot thick. The stock is two feet through in the middle, and was originally fourteen feet long, but part of one of the arms is gone.

It is stated that the Jamestown Department of History and Education will endeavor to obtain the anchor for exhibition.

Some years ago the propeller shaft of the "Virginia" was raised and placed in front of the Confederate Museum, which building was the residence of President Davis, the White House of the Confederacy, in Richmond.

This elicited the following, which appeared in the Portsmouth Virginia Star of June 27, 1907:

"The finding of the anchor of the Merrimac a few days ago off Craney Island, and the interest that has been awakened in relics of the old ship thereby, makes doubly interesting the fact that in a house in Portsmouth are two of the great ship's beams of the first ironclad. They are still in a good state of preservation.

They have been in the possession of the family of Mr. Peter