One of the mistakes made by Ericsson was the placing of the conning tower, from which the vessel is fought, aft of the turret instead of on its top, as the plans called for. Because of this the officer in charge was compelled to swing the bow forty-five degrees out of her course in order to see ahead. This delayed the fight greatly and also caused Lieut. John L. Worden, who fought the Monitor, to be almost blinded by smoke and burned powder. This fact led to the transferring of Dr. Grenville M. Weeks to the Monitor, as it was necessary to relieve Lieutenant Worden and the Monitor’s surgeon, Dr. Daniel C. Logue, went with him to the Brandywine, while Doctor Weeks, who was surgeon on the Brandywine, was ordered to replace Dr. Logue. CAPTAIN BANKHEAD IN COMMAND. Captain Bankhead succeeded Lieutenant Worden in command of the Monitor and, as the Doctor says, there was a certain poetical justice in the succession of Captain Bankhead to this command. It seems that a board consisting of General Bankhead, the Captain’s father, and Colonel Thornton of the army, and Joe Smith of the navy, had been appointed some years before to determine whether this was a great piece of folly, as the Europeans thought, or whether it was of value, as the inventor believed. Thornton and Smith reported against the invention, while General Bankhead made a minority report in its favor. The Bankheads were Southern men, but loyal when the Civil War came. SINKING OF THE MONITOR. The Monitor was ordered to Charleston, S. C., and on December 29, 1862, was taken in tow by the Rhode Island, a powerful side-wheel steamer. A West India hurricane was raging up the Atlantic Coast, and two days after the start that very thing happened to the Monitor that was predicted by Ericsson, the tremendous lift of the seas under the long overhang of twenty-five feet caused the deck to break away gradually from the hull, and soon the cabin was awash and the heavy dining table was crashing into the stateroom doors and cabin sides as the rolling of the clumsy little vessel rushed the water from side to side. At this point the Doctor went below for something and found an engineer so sick in his stateroom that he did not realize their perilous position, and when the man refused to move the Doctor attempted to force him out, but now a wave swept over the deck and the Doctor, supposing the Monitor was going down, sprang for the companionway and had to fight his way up through a solid wall of water. Once outside he sought the top of the turret with the Captain; in the meantime rockets had been set off to notify the Rhode Island that her tow was sinking and the latter had cut her loose. By this time the fires were nearly out and the Monitor was so waterlogged that she did not rise to the seas, but dived into them, while her officers and men could with difficulty hang on, shutting eyes and mouth until the flood had swept astern.