By calling old ironsides the "eagle of the sea" in the poem's second stanza, holmes uses

hyperbole to exaggerate the importance of the ship to the united states

onomatopoeia to link the ship to the sounds it makes when moving in the water

symbolism to associate the ship with the strength of the united states

personification to give the ship, an inanimate object, human traits and qualities

lets none because you provide no details.

the answer to "what does the narrator realize by the end of the story" is b.

very interesting story but where is the question what is actually a question i don't understand

it was surely an odd creature that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and elegance and charm,   in a kitchen chopping up suet. but these creatures, monst'r however entertaining to the imagination, hast no existence in fact. what one might doth to bringeth h'r to life wast to bethink poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment,   thus keeping in toucheth with fact—that the lady is mrs martin, ag'd thirty-six, did dress in blue, wearing a black coxcomb and brown shoeth; but not losing sight of fiction eith'r—that the lady is a vessel in which all s'rts of spirits and f'rces art coursing and flashing p'rpetually. the moment, howev'r, yond one tries this method with the elizabethan mistress, one brancheth of illumination fails; one is did hold up by the scarcity of facts.   one knoweth nothing detailed, nothing p'rfectly true and substantial about h'r.   hist'ry scarcely mentions h'r.   and i did turn to professeth'r trevelyan again to seeth what hist'ry meanteth to that gent.   i hath found by looking at his chapt'r headings yond t meanteth.