war-steamer a quarter of a century later, all traditions of the “old navy” were ended—traditions that went back to the days of Drake. But who could have foreseen that this swift and momentous upsetting should come about, not through the efforts of the great sea powers of Europe,—the giants who had been struggling for the control of the ocean for three hundred years,—but from the brain and purse of landsmen in a country of the New World not taken into account as a naval power at all. You need not be told that it was Ericsson’s invention and Henry Grinnell’s building and Lieutenant Worden’s courageous fighting of the little _Monitor_ in Hampton Roads, on that fair March Sunday in 1862, that brought about this change. When her turret—the “cheese-box on a raft”—successfully withstood the assault of that heavily armed floating battery, the _Merrimac_ (or _Virginia_), all the war-ships of the world felt themselves beaten, too, and wise seamen saw that they must prepare to face a new foe. [Illustration: SIDE ELEVATION AND DECK-PLAN OF THE “MONITOR.”] At once all maritime governments began to build fighting-vessels which were castles of steel afloat, and smaller ships for various services that more resembled a Nootka war-canoe in outline than one of the frigates that used to do their work. So shapeless were they that a new term had to be used, and we began to call them _cruisers_. All war-ships, in fact, are now classified by their work, not by their shape or size or rig. First, fewest, and heaviest are the harbor-defense vessels—monitors and massively walled floating batteries, intended to remain in harbors, or close to the coast, as movable forts. Second, battle-ships—the strongest, most thickly armored, heavily armed style of ships that can be made, and still be able to go to sea; but these are not expected to leave their home ports for a long time, nor to go to any great distance unless compelled to do so in actual war. Third, cruisers. These take the place of the old-fashioned lesser fighting-ships, the seventy-fours, frigates, corvettes, and sloops, and vary greatly in size, model, speed, and power of armament. Fourth, small, swift, strongly armed but lightly armored, torpedo-boat chasers, small gunboats for use in rivers and shallow coastal waters, despatch-boats, dynamite-cruisers, such as our American _Vesuvius_, tow-boats, and similar minor craft—the run-abouts of the naval service. Fifth, torpedo-boats. The material of all these is steel. Wood is no longer permitted even in the fittings of their cabins, because wood will splinter and burn.