It took one hundred days to build the Monitor. During those three months Ericsson scarcely slept, and even in his dreams he went over the details of the new-fangled war-engine he was building. He named her Monitor because, he said, she would warn the nations of the world that a new era in naval warfare had begun. The story of his untiring activity has been told almost as often as that of the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac. He was at the ship-yard before any of the workmen, and was the last to leave. In the construction of so novel a craft difficulties of a puzzling nature came up every day. If Ericsson could not solve them on the spot, he studied the matter in the quiet of the night, and was ready with his drawings in the morning. The result of the naval battle in Hampton Roads, on the 9th of March, 1862, between the little Monitor and the big Merrimac made Ericsson the hero of the hour. Had no David appeared to stop the ravages of the Confederate Goliath, it is hard to say what might not have been the injury inflicted upon the cause of the Union by the terrible Merrimac. The United States Navy was virtually panic-stricken when the Monitor, this "Yankee cheese-box on a plank," as the Southerners called her, came to the rescue. Notwithstanding the tremendous service rendered the country, Ericsson declined to receive more compensation for the Monitor than his contract called for. In reply to a resolution of the New York Chamber of Commerce calling for "a suitable return for his services as will evince the gratitude of the nation," Ericsson said: "All the remuneration I desire for the Monitor I get out of the construction of it. It is all-sufficient." Our grateful nation took him at his word. But honors of another and less costly kind were showered upon him. Chief Engineer Stimers, who was on the Monitor during her battle with the Merrimac, wrote to Ericsson: "I congratulate you on your great success. Thousands have this day blessed you. I have heard whole crews cheer you. Every man feels that you have saved this place to the nation by furnishing us with the means to whip an iron-clad frigate that was, until our arrival, having it all her own way with our most powerful vessels." [Illustration: Fac-simile of a Pencil Sketch by Ericsson, giving a Transverse Section of his Original Monitor Plan, with a Longitudinal Section drawn over it.] [Illustration: Interior of the Destroyer, Looking toward the Bow.]