Having settled the fate of these two ships, the _Merrimac_ had, about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, started to tackle the _Minnesota_. Here, as was afterwards proved, the commander of the former had the intention of capturing the latter as a prize, and had no wish to destroy her. He, therefore, stood off about a mile distant, and with the _Yorktown_ and _Jamestown_, threw shot and shell at the frigate, doing it considerable damage, and killing six men. One shell entered near her waist, passed through the chief engineer’s room, knocking two rooms into one, and wounded several men; a shot passed through the main-mast. At nightfall the _Merrimac_, satisfied with her afternoon’s work of death and destruction, steamed in under Sewall’s Point. “The day,” said the Baltimore _American_, “thus closed most dismally for our side, and with the most gloomy apprehensions of what would occur the next day. The _Minnesota_ was at the mercy of the _Merrimac_, and there appeared no reason why the iron monster might not clear the Roads of our fleet, destroy all the stores and warehouses on the beach, drive our troops into the fortress, and command Hampton Roads against any number of wooden vessels the Government might send there. Saturday was a terribly dismal night at Fortress Monroe.” But about nine o’clock that evening Ericsson’s battery, the _Monitor_,(20) arrived in Hampton Roads, and hope revived in the breasts of the despondent Northerners. She was not a very formidable-looking craft, for, lying low on the water, with a plain structure amidships, a small pilot-house forward, and a diminutive funnel aft, she might have been taken for a raft. It was only on board that her real strength might be discovered. She carried armour about five inches thick over a large part of her, and had practically two hulls, the lower of which had sides inclining at an angle of 51° from the vertical line. It was considered that no shot could hurt this lower hull, on account of the angle at which it must strike it. The revolving turret, an iron cylinder, nine feet high, and twenty feet in diameter, eight or nine inches thick everywhere, and about the portholes eleven inches, was moved round by steam-power. When the two heavy Dahlgren guns were run in for loading, a kind of pendulum port fell over the holes in the turret. The propeller, rudder, and even anchor, were all hidden.