Posted on 03/09/2014 5:17:12 AM PDT by Master Zinja
On this date in 1862, the first naval battle between two ironclad ships took place as the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia fought to a draw over the course of three hours in the Battle of Hampton Roads near Chesapeake Bay. The battle changed naval warfare practices around the world almost immediately, as naval powers started constructing ironclad ships and incorporating other advances seen in the battle into the new ships in their navies.
I am reminded that the Korean people invented the ironclad ship, called the turtle boat.
World of difference. The Brits had ironclad barges in the Crimea, but even they were not steam powered propeller driven, and certainly didn't have John Ericsson's rotating turret.
This kind of thing should remind us that it is not "invention" per se that advances societies but freedom of millions of small innovations. Germans had a steam powered car before Ford popularized the internal combustion engine; Hiram Maxim had an airplane (without human control) before the Wrights; and John Fitch invented a steamboat but had no business sense of how to make it profitable, hence Robert Fulton.
Interestingly, as late as the 1870s steam powered ships still sported full rigging with sales.
"Backup" using an earlier generation technology. Kind of like the early combination gas/ electric light fixtures.
What a wonderful reminder, and what I would have given to have been an eyewitness, or even better, a participant! Like virtually everytning else that is useful in the defense of liberty, it was all invented here. The Battle of the Ironclads was only possible because of another American idea, i.e. Fulton’s Folly on the Hudson River in the early 1800’s. By the year 1900, the registration of steel hulled steam prowered ocean vessels outnumbered wooden vessels for the first time, and never looked back. In the same year came John Holland’s submarine launched at Elizabeth NJ, and within a few years came the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. Before anyone points to Werner Von Braun’s V2 rockets, let us remind them of the Father of Modern Rocket Science, Robert Goddard, an American, upon whom Braun based all his work. Nothing will ever defeat a free people, defending their liberty.
And with all those “sales”, they still couldn’t get rid of their “sails”! :-)
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