“A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight"

In “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight,” Melville was indebted to the Baltimore American for the third stanza, a description of the maneuvering of the two ironclads:

Yet this was battle, and intense—
Beyond the strife of fleets heroic;
Deadlier, closer, calm ‘mid storm;
No passion; all went on by crank,
Pivot, and screw,
And calculations of caloric.

The same characteristics of the battle—”intense,” “deadlier,” “closer”—are brought out in the American account:

. . . this distance was subsequently reduced to fifty yards, and at no time during the furious cannonading that ensued, were the vessels more than two hundred yards apart.
The officers of the Monitor, at this time, had gained such confidence in the impregnability of their battery, that they no longer fired at random nor hastily. The fight then assumed its most interesting aspects. The Monitor ran round the Merrimac repeatedly, probing her sides, seeking for weak points, and reserving her fire with coolness, until she had the right spot and exact range, and made her experiments accordingly (Doc. 276).