“From an Address on the ‘Cumberland’ prepared by Admiral Selfridge,” 1885, page 4

Selfridge pays tribute to the seamen on board the Cumberland who continued to work their guns even as their comrades fell and their ship began to sink. He conveys the grisly chaos of nineteenth-century naval warfare: the noise of the guns, the smoke of the gunfire, the decks awash with blood and littered with the body parts of the fallen.

Of the 376 men known to be aboard the Cumberland on March 8, 121 were killed.

National Archives, Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library