one of 5.82 calibre, bore upon the channel. “In the waters of the bay there was a little Confederate squadron under Admiral Franklin Buchanan, made up of the ram _Tennessee_ and three small paddle-wheel gunboats, the _Morgan_, _Gaines_, and _Selma_. They were unarmored, excepting around the boilers. The _Selma_ was an open-deck river steamer with heavy hog frames; the two others had been built for the Confederate Government, but were poorly put together. The batteries were: _Morgan_, two VII-inch rifles and four 32-pounders; _Gaines_, one VIII-inch rifle and five 32-pounders; _Selma_, one VI-inch rifle, two IX-inch, and one VIII-inch smooth-bore shell-guns. Though these lightly built vessels played a very important part for some minutes, and from a favorable position did much harm to the Union fleet in the subsequent engagement, they counted for nothing in the calculations of Farragut. “The _Tennessee_ was the most powerful ironclad built, from the keel up, by the Confederacy, and both the energy showed in overcoming difficulties and the workmanship put upon her were most creditable to her builders. The work was begun at Selma, on the Alabama River, one hundred and fifty miles from Mobile, in the spring of 1863, when the timber was yet standing in the forests, and much of what was to be her plating was still ore in the mines. The hull was launched the following winter and towed to Mobile, where the plating had already been sent from the rolling mills of Atlanta. “Her length on deck was 209 feet, beam 48 feet, and when loaded, with her guns on board, she drew 14 feet. The battery was carried in a casemate, equidistant from the bow and stern, whose inside dimensions were 79 feet in length by 29 feet in width. The framing was of yellow pine beams, 13 inches thick, placed close together vertically and planked on the outside, first with 5½ inches of yellow pine, laid horizontally, and then 4 inches of oak laid up and down. Both sides and ends were inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees, and over the outside planking was placed the armor, 6 inches thick, in thin plates of 2 inches each, on the forward end, and elsewhere 5 inches thick. Within, the yellow pine frames were sheathed with 2½ inches of oak. The plating throughout was fastened with bolts 1¼ inches in diameter, going entirely through and set up with nuts and washers inside. Her gunners were thus sheltered by a thickness of five or six inches of iron, backed by twenty-five inches of wood. The outside deck was plated with two-inch iron. The sides of the casemate, or, as the Confederates called it, the shield, were carried down to two feet below the water line and then reversed at the same angle, so as to meet the hull again six to seven feet below water. The knuckle thus formed, projecting ten feet beyond the base of the casement, and apparently filled in solid, afforded a substantial protection from an enemy’s prow to the hull, which was not less than eight feet within it.