Yesterday while at the NARA in DC I ask the leading authority on naval warfare if he had ever heard of this engagement during the WBTS. He reminded me of the original monitor that went down off of the North Carolina coast during a gale in the war. He said he rather doubted the newspaper article because of the distance from the United States to Japan across the mighty Pacific Ocean. I quickly turned my efforts to Camp Chase once again and about an hour later the gentleman ask if I had time to chat. Sort of rare for anyone working at NARA to seek out a visitor in reference to a question. He said he had to read it three times to be sure he was understanding what the documents stated but it was all there.

The newspaper article turned out to be true. A United States class monitor during the WBTS did go to Japan and was blown off course and ended up in Nagasaki Bay and was fired upon a number of times before returning fire and setting parts of Nagasaki on fire and this happened in 1864. Lincoln's State Department got involved over this issue.

The name of the monitor was the "Le Pang" and if my memory is correct the archivist said it had been built in San Francisco, California during the war. I had no idea that California was building "cheese boxes on a rafts" during the WBTS and sending them across the Pacific.

The monitors seemed to be a little more seaworthy than I had given them credit for.