“In the Turret”

Melville’s technique in “In the Turret” differs from that in “Donelson.” Whereas in “Donelson” he had strung together details to create a running account of the siege of the fort, in “In the Turret” he has assimilated the Baltimore American story and made of the poem something more than a series of events narrated in stanzas. “In the Turret” is an imaginative presentation of the ordeal undergone by Lieutenant Worden during the encounter between the two ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimac.

Lieutenant Worden was in command of the Monitor, and the hopes of all the North were resting on this ironclad after the havoc created by the Merrimac: “upon her performance was felt that the safety of their position in a great measure depended” (Doc. 267). Captain Van Brunt, in charge of the Minnesota, summed up the reliance on the Monitor when, in his official report of the Hampton Roads fight, he remarked that “At two a.m. the iron battery Monitor, Com. John L. Worden . . . came alongside and reported for duty, and then all on board felt that we had a friend that would stand by us in our hour of trial” (Doc. 267). Worden was aware of the confidence placed in him and his ship, and when he learned of the disaster that had overtaken the Cumberland, “though his crew were suffering from exposure and loss of rest from a stormy voyage around from New York, he at once made preparations for taking part in whatever might occur next day” (Doc. 275).

It is this sense of responsibility apparently felt by Worden that Melville capitalizes on, speaking of Worden’s “honest heart of duty” and of the way he “bore the first iron battle’s burden/Sealed as in a diving-bell.” The passage in which Worden in the ironclad is compared to “Alcides, groping into haunted hell/To bring forth King Admetus’ bride,” is a re-living with Worden, “Cribbed in a craft which like a log/Was washed by every billow’s motion,” of the tense night awaiting the historic battle. During the night Worden “marked the sunk ship’s flag-staff slim/Lit by her burning sister’s heart.” The flag-staff belonged to the Cumberland, and her “burning sister” was the Congress: “the Congress was in a bright sheet of flame fore and aft. She continued to burn until twelve o’clock at night” (Doc. 275).
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Before daylight on Sunday morning, the Monitor moved up, and took a position alongside the Minnesota, lying between the latter ship and the Fortress, where she could not be seen by the rebels, but was ready, with steam up, to slip out (Doc. 275).

Melville describes Worden’s thoughts at this time in stanza three:

A prayer went up—a champion’s. Morning
Beheld you in the Turret walled
By adamant, where a spirit forewarning
And all-deriding called:
“Man, darest thou—desperate, unappalled—
Be first to lock thee in the armored tower?
I have thee now; and what the battle-hour
To me shall bring—heed well—thou’lt share;
This plot-work, planned to be the foeman’s terror,
To thee may prove a goblin snare;
Its very strength and cunning—monstrous error!

Eventually, with both sides suffering from the long battle, the Merrimac withdrew. The turret did not prove to be a serious “goblin-snare” for Worden, although he was injured in the eyes while peering through the horizontal slits in the turret. A shot from the Merrimac caused “some scalings from the iron, and fragments of the paint to fly with great force against his eyes” (Doc. 276).