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Butts gives a short history of John Ericsson, who is given credit for creating the Ironclad Monitor, and what course these plans took as the boat was built to be used in battle against the Merrimac during the Civil War. Also detailed in the narrative are how both the Merrimac and the Monitor were built and the battle that brought them briefly together. At the end of the account Butts includes the story of how each boat was destroyed. He pays special tribute to the Monitor by listing its crew members both surviving and deceased.
Butts, Francis (Frank) Banister [1843-1905] was born January 27 or 29, 1843, in Providence, Rhode Island. Butts had blue eyes, auburn hair, a rosy complexion, and stood five feet 9 ½ inches tall. He helped his parents, John W. and Mehitable Butts on the family farm in Cranston, Rhode Island, until he was old enough to enlist in the military.
He began his military career on September 16, 1861 as a corporal in Battery E, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery. Butts went on to enlist as a landsmen in October 1862, where he served on the North Carolina. On October 28, 1862 he was sent to the Washington station and then to the Monitor on November 7, 1862. Although Butts did not serve on the Monitor during its famous battle with the Merrimac, he wrote an account of the battle, "The Monitor and the Merrimac," and he spent a great deal of time collecting information on the Monitor. He claimed to have heard the story of the battle from everyone aboard the Monitor, including Samuel Howard, the Monitor's pilot during the battle. On December 31, 1862, the Monitor was on its way to Charleston, South Carolina, towed by a side-wheeled steamer, the Rhode Island, when off the shores of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the boat began to take on water and the crewmembers had to be rescued. Butts, one of the few saved, was the last to step off the boat.
After the sinking of the Monitor, Butts was transferred to the Stepping Stone on January 3, 1863, and discharged from the same ship nine months later on October 2. He was then appointed paymaster's steward on January 25, 1864 for the ship Flag, then was promoted paymaster's clerk on March 14, 1865. He was discharged on April 23, 1865.
Francis Butts married Helen Francis Battery in Scituate, Rhode Island. Nelson Luther, a local minister, performed the ceremony. Butts died on September 8, 1905. His wife died fifteen years later.
See a portrait of Francis Butts at http://www.mariner.org/monitor/06_monitojr/image_page/francis_butts.html