This is a recording of a presentation by Dr. Anna Holloway, Fleet Histories Team Lead at the Naval History and Heritage Command, as she presents "'With Her Colors Flying:' USS Cumberland Remembered." The presentation was recorded on March 8, 2022 at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.
On March 8, 1862, the Confederate ironclad ram Virginia slowly steamed into Hampton Roads and in short order sank the Union sloop-of-war Cumberland and set the frigate Congress ablaze - a horrifying defeat for the Union Navy. The next day, Virginia met the Union ironclad Monitor in an inconclusive battle that nonetheless captured the public imagination in the north and south. But as fascinating as the ironclads were, Cumberland held her own in public sentiment and became a tragic icon of the passing of an era. To many, this was the moment in which naval warfare forever changed. The wooden walls of the past were no match for the iron sides of the present and future. Yet it was not merely this passing of the torch from wood to iron that drove poets to write of the Cumberland. Quite simply, the ship was not surrendered. She went down with flags flying and guns blazing.
Lieutenant George Upham Morris’s famous, and perhaps apocryphal, command, “Give them a broadside, boys, as she goes,” captured the imagination of poets and artists like few other lines in the war. Immortalized first by Currier and Ives as a caption to their 1862 lithograph, “The Sinking Of The Cumberland By The Iron Clad Merrimac, Off Newport News, Va. March 8th 1862,” the phrase was a rallying cry to Union supporters and troops alike as they wearied of Southern successes. Congress, which surrendered, faced a very different public fate. This illustrated lecture highlights Cumberland's role and mythos in public memory throughout the 19th century.