How far this confidence was justified was proved by the event of the next day; but when one contrasts the apparent power of the two ships as they lay that night, the one at Sewell’s Point and the other at Newport News, the chance of the _Monitor’s_ accomplishing anything seems very remote. Consider her guns. They were eleven inches in bore, but ten-inch shot had been fired at the _Merrimac_ for hours that day without effect. The _Minnesota_ fired seventy-eight solid ten-inch shot and 169 solid nine-inch shot, with full service charges of powder, at the _Merrimac_ during the two days’ fighting. Only a few of these were fired on Saturday, but the _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_ had fired shot a-plenty of that size at her, and none had hurt her massive walls. The eleven-inch shot of the _Monitor_ was not so much heavier that her crew could be confident of piercing the armor where the ten-inch had failed utterly. The eleven-inch solid shot used weighed from 170 to 180 pounds, the ten-inch about forty pounds less. Moreover, the _Monitor_ had but two guns to the ten of the _Merrimac_. The weight of the _Merrimac’s_ broadside of five guns is not given in any of the authorities known to the writer, but her three Dahlgrens fired 270 pounds, her small rifle at least forty-five more, and, with one pivot counted in, the whole discharge was 465 pounds, or more than double that of the _Monitor_. The _Monitor’s_ crew numbered fifty-eight, all told, while the _Merrimac_ carried 320. Certainly if one may judge by the standards set up in English literature on the War of 1812, these differences in numbers of crews and weights of broadsides would make the result a foregone conclusion. Nor is that all to be said about the crews, for the men on the _Merrimac_ had had their usual rest and food, while the crew of the _Monitor_ had had scarcely a wink of sleep since leaving New York, and it had been impossible to make a fire in the galley and cook their food. They were served with food that night, but no one slept. “The dreary night dragged slowly on; the officers and crew were up and alert, to be ready for any emergency.” At daylight the Confederate ships were seen at anchor off Sewell’s Point, and at 7.30 o’clock they left their anchorage and headed across toward Newport News to begin anew their destruction of the Government ships. [Illustration: Deck View of the _Monitor_ and her Crew. _From a photograph._]