Had good machinists and founderies existed in the South, in number proportionate to that of Confederate naval officers, the story of Mobile Bay and the Mississippi river might have been different. With no lack of courage or skill in the northern sailors and their leaders, their greatest ally lay in the poor machinery of the Confederate iron-clads. These were true testudos in armor, but fortunately for the Union cause they were tortoises in speed also. Or, to change the metaphor, though meant to act as swordfish, they behaved as sluggishly as whales. They fell a prey even to wooden vessels able to obey their helms but moving rapidly with sinking force. With the old system of tactics under sail, no ramming was possible, as the vessel under propulsion would expose herself to a raking fire while slowly working up to position. Gunpowder rendered obsolete the trireme ram. Steam, by its gigantic propelling force, had now in turn overcome gunpowder. The model of the machine-ram, made by Captain Samuel Barron in 1827, and referred to by Captain Perry is now at Annapolis Naval Academy. So far as we can gather, Perry had not seen this at the time of his first writing of the ram in 1839. His valuable paper was duly read, laid aside and bound up with other “Captain’s Letters” in 1839 and forgotten. When in 1861, the _Merrimac_, steaming out from Norfolk, by one thrust of her iron snout turned the grand old wooden frigate, _Cumberland_, into a sunken hulk, she revealed the powers of the ram to the whole world. The curtain then fell on the age of wood and ushered in the age of iron. ----- [9] Commodore James Barron’s model of his “prow-ship” was exhibited in the rotunda of the capitol in Washington in 1836. As described by him in the Patent Office reports, it was a mere mass of logs, white pine, poplar, or gum-tree wood. Perry meant to use a real ship always available for ramming. CHAPTER XV. LIGHTHOUSE ILLUMINATION, LENSES OR REFLECTORS?