I couldn't get a high enough resolution to read that,
Augusta, Ga. Chronicle & Sentinel, August 10, 1864, page 1
A Formidable Confederate Ironclad Complete
By way of the North, we obtain the annexed account of a formidable ironclad, now laying at Columbus, Ga.:
For the past year, the agent of the Confederate Navy Department have been busily at work at Columbus, Georgia, in construction of an iron clad vessel, which they intend shall pay an important part in clearing the Florida waters of our fleet. This monster is now completed, and ready to engage in the work of destroying blockaders, or assisting in an attack upon our monitors, whenever Mr. Davis or Mallory shall give the word. The name of the vessel is the Muscogee. She is a light draft boat, notwithstanding the immense weight of her armor. Her dimensions are: Fifty-six feet beam; forth-two feet floor, flat bottomed. She has a center-wheel of a diameter of twenty-four feet. Like the Merrimac, Arkansas and Louisiana, and, in fact, all the rebel iron-clads and rams, that portion of her above water is angular in shape -- the rebels never having deviated from the rule adopted at the beginning of the war in regard to the construction of the exposed portions of their offensive vessels.
Like her predecessors, she is clad with railroad iron; but the bars are not attached, as were those of the earlier efforts of the Confederates in this line. Formerly it was customary to lay a roofing on their iron clads of common rails. Upon these another layer of inverted rails was placed, thus closing up the interstices. But it was found upon subjecting the vessels mailed in this manner to the ordeal of a cannonade, that the shot in striking loosened the upper layer, causing it to fly off. Therefore a change in the manner or armoring their vessels became necessary, and the rails are now rolled into bars two inches thick and four inches in breadth. Two of these bars are welded together, forming an armor four inches in thickness, which is placed upon their vessels. The Muscogee, as well as other late productions of Confederate naval ingenuity, is mailed in this manner. She is furnished with five or six high pressure river boats as tenders. These last are fortified with cotton bales. It is intended that this new iron monster shall come out of the Apilachicola river, to join Buchanan in a simultaneous attack against Farragut's fleet, now off Mobile. How far this programme will be changed, of course depends on circumstances.
Bringing the