RECOLLECTIONS OF FOOTE AND THE GUN-BOATS.

to Washington, where I was introduced to the Secretary of the Navy, the Hon. Gideon Welles, and to Captain G. V. Fox, afterward Assistant Secretary. In the August following I was to construct 7 gun-boats, which, according to the contract, were to draw 6 feet of water, carry 13 heavy guns each, be plated with 2 1\2 inch iron, and have a speed of 9 miles an hour. The De Kalb (at first called the St. Louis) was the type of the other six, named the Carondelet, Cincinnati, Louisville, Mound City, Cairo, and Pittsburgh. They were 175 feet loaf, 51 1\2 feet beam; the flat sides sloped at an angle of about thirty-five degrees, and the front and rear casemate corresponded with the sides, the stern-wheel being entirely covered by the rear casemate. Each was pierced for three how guns, eight broadside guns (for on a side), and two stern guns. Before these seven gun-boats were completed, I engaged to convert the snag-boat Benton into an armored vessel of still larger dimensions.

After completing the seven and dispatching them down the Mississippi to Cairo, I was requested by Foote (who then went by the title of "flag-officer," the title of admiral not being recognized, at that time in our navy), as a special favor to him, to accompany the Benton, the eighth one of the feet, in her passage down to Cairo. It was in December, and the water was falling rapidly.

The Benton had been converted from the U. S. snag-boat Benton into the most powerful iron-clad of the fleet. She was built with two hulls about twenty feet apart, very strongly braced together. She had been purchased by General Fremont while he was in command of the Western Department, and had been sent to my ship-yard for alternation into a gun-boat. I had the space between the two hulls planked, so that a continuous bottom extended from the outer side of one hull to the outer side of the other. The upper side was decked over in the same manner; and by extending the outer sides of the two hull forward until they joined each other at a new stem, which received them, the twin boats became one wide, strong, and substantial hull. The new bottom did not extend to the stern of the hull, but was brought up to the deck fifty feet forward of the stern, so as to leave a space for