(now called Colón, Panamá). Roanoke arrived on 4 August and the ship was decommissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 24 September 1857. Recommissioned on almost a year later on 18 August 1858, Roanoke resumed her duties as flagship of the Home Squadron. For over a year, she was stationed at Aspinwall awaiting the arrival of the first Japanese embassy to the United States to ratify the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce. They reached Aspinwall on 25 April 1860 and Roanoke reached Hampton Roads on 12 May 1860 with the delegation and was again decommissioned. After the start of the Civil War, Roanoke recommissioned on 20 June 1861 and was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. She destroyed the schooner Mary off Lockwood Folly Inlet, North Carolina, on 13 July 1861. The ship subsequently helped to capture the schooners Albion and Alert and the ship Thomas Watson off Charleston, South Carolina, on 15 October 1861. Roanokes deep draft prevented her from engaging the Confederate casemate ironclad CSS Virginia (her former sister ) during the Battle of Hampton Roads on 8–9 March 1862. The ship ferried north survivors from the sailing frigates and which Virginia had sunk. She arrived at New York City on 25 March, and decommissioned the same day to begin reconstruction as a monitor. Ironclad reconstruction On 19 March 1862, 10 days after the Battle of Hampton Roads where the fought the Confederate ironclad to a standstill, John Lenthall, Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, and the Chief of Steam Engineering, Benjamin F. Isherwood, wrote a letter to Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy recommending that Roanoke be converted into a seagoing ironclad as that would be cheaper and faster than new construction. They suggested that the ship be cut down to the top of her gun deck, armoring her sides and deck and mounting four revolving Ericsson gun turrets, each mounting two or guns. This scheme would give her an ample of freeboard. Aside from reinforcing her hull to carry the weight of the turrets, the only other changes that they recommended were the elimination of the hoisting screw, replacement by a propeller smaller in diameter, and the addition of a ram. The wrought iron side armor would be a maximum of in thickness with a taper down to at its bottom edge, about below the waterline. The deck armor was to