“At this time, the beginning of the war, farming and business in country towns being very slack, all suitable trees in the forests of Bucks, Berks, Delaware, and Chester counties and some counties more remote were prospected by the country-people and farmers, who worked very hard utilizing moonlight nights as well as daytime in cutting and shipping this timber. These counties were traversed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad, and the various stations from Quakertown down were soon gorged with logs that had to be delivered at our shipyard on or before the first of January to meet our requirements. By the first of January we had logs sufficient to make all the floors of the ship, and quite a number were left at the stations where they had accumulated too rapidly for the railroad to handle them, and they could not be delivered within our time limit. This timber was afterward bought at a reduced price. “Not being able to get yellow pine, the beams and water-ways were made of white oak. Some of these pieces were sixty feet long and were sided up to sixteen inches. But notwithstanding these difficulties and the fact that all the frame-timber was standing in the forest when we took the contract, yet the vessel was launched in six months after it was signed. “The region traversed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad in furnishing the frames, water-ways, and beams became exhausted in its turn, so that toward the termination of the war white oak for the beams of the light-draught monitors had to be procured chiefly in Columbia County, in the interior of the State of Pennsylvania. “There was also difficulty in securing timber for the curved futtocks, which were principally made of roots and were obtained from Delaware. “The frames were fitted together solidly and caulked before ceiling or planking was secured, and the outside planking below the lower edge of armor was twelve inches thick, tapering off to the lower turn of the bilge to five inches. So the ship in her defensive capabilities was a war machine of no mean type. “If the ship had been built of steel instead of wood, she would have been sunk when she was struck by a spar torpedo off Charleston.