That the United States Navy should take so deep an interest in paying the last honors to John Ericsson, with an Admiral of the Navy, Daniel L. Braine, superintending the ceremonies, and a future Admiral, Winfield Scott Schley, commanding the funeral convoy, is not surprising, for to Ericsson it owed not only the bomb-proof floating fortresses of the ocean, but the screw propeller, first applied in the construction of the United States man-of-war "Princeton," with propelling machinery under the water line out of the reach of shot. The first steam fire-engine ever constructed in the United States was also the work of Ericsson in 1841, and many and varied were the other inventions of his creative brain. But the greatest service rendered by Ericsson was in the construction of the "Monitor," not only on account of the immediate, almost inestimable benefit which it conferred in saving the United States Navy from destruction by the Confederate iron-clad "Merrimac," in 1862, but also, still more, in view of the impetus which it gave to the development of marine craft to their present perfection and in almost revolutionizing the entire science of naval warfare. When, at 8 o'clock on March 9, 1862, the "Merrimac," after the havoc which she had wrought with the Federal ships on the evening before, including the burning of the "Congress" and the sinking of the "Cumberland," steamed out from the shore in order to continue her work of destruction--which contemplated successively the annihilation of the "Minnesota," the "Roanoke" and the "St. Lawrence," and would thus clear the way for her intended attack on the capital of the nation--she was surprised to discover a diminutive craft of peculiar construction, almost sunk beneath the water line, with a strange-looking iron turret in the centre, steaming boldly towards her from out the shadow of the powerful frigate "Minnesota." The "Monitor" had sailed from New York Harbor on March 6th, in tow of a tugboat, to brave the waters of the Atlantic, although she was originally designed only for smooth inland waters. Before she had passed Sandy Hook she received urgent despatches to hurry to Washington and, after inconceivable hardships in the towering seas of the Atlantic coast, arrived off Fortress Monroe about 9 o'clock in the evening of March 8th, where she heard for the first time of the depredations of the "Merrimac" and witnessed the final destruction of the "Congress" amid lurid flames and the bursting of her own shells. Though worn out and disheartened in their own struggle for life with the tempestuous billows of the ocean on this, her first trial trip of thirty-six hours from New York until she reached the side of the "Minnesota," the crew of the "Monitor," encouraged and reassured by its heroic commander, Lieutenant John L. Worden, prepared for the expected combat with their redoubtable opponent.