It was built on the ruins of the little Town of Brunswick, destroyed by Cornwallis during the Revolutionary War.

We saw a monitor lying near it, and sought good positions to view this specimen of the redoubtable ironclads of which we had heard and read so much.

It looked precisely as it did in pictures, as black, as grim, and as uncompromising as the impregnable floating fortress which had brought the "Merrimac" to terms.
But as we approached closely we noticed a limpness about the smoke stack that seemed very inconsistent with the customary rigidity of cylindrical iron.

Then the escape pipe seemed scarcely able to maintain itself upright.

A few minutes later we discovered that our terrible Cyclops of the sea was a flimsy humbug, a theatrical imitation, made by stretching blackened canvas over a wooden frame.
One of the officers on board told us its story.