The "Monitor," however, was Ericsson's great contribution to the art of naval war, and with it his name will always be associated. It broke with the past in every way. It reduced the number of guns from many to few, two or at most four; it reduced the freeboard from the lofty topsides of the old ship-of-the-line to an insignificant two or three feet, and thus made of the target a circular fort and a low-lying strip of armor. It placed the guns in this circular fort and covered it with armor thick enough to insure safety against any guns then afloat, and thus, as perfectly as the engineering means of the day would permit, insured the combination of offensive and defensive features in maximum degree. It cleared away at one stroke masts, sails, and all the lofty top-hamper which since time immemorial had seemed as much an essential feature of the fighting ship as the guns themselves. It transformed the design of the fighting ship from the older ideals expressed in the American frigate "Constitution," or the English "Victory," to the simplest terms of offence, defence, and steam motive-power. It made of the man-of-war a machine rather than a ship, an engine of destruction to be operated by engineers rather than by officers of the ancient and traditional type. There is small wonder that in all quarters the idea of ships of this type was not received with enthusiasm. The break with the past was too definite and complete. The monitor type represented simply the solution of the problem of naval warfare worked out by a man untrammelled by the traditions of the past and determined only on reducing such a ship to the simplest terms of offence and defence as expressed by the engineering materials and possibilities of the day. Judged from this standpoint, the vessel seems beyond criticism. She filled perfectly the ideal set before himself by her designer, and represents as a complete and harmonious whole what must still be recognized as the most perfect solution of the problem in terms of the possibilities of those days.