[central_va]

The CSS Nashville, built in Montgomery, Montgomery County, was one of the last ironclads constructed by the Confederacy during the Civil War and one of the last major Confederate ships to see action before the end of the war, and probably the only ironclad constructed in Montgomery. The Nashville was outfitted with the most advanced naval armaments of the era.

The construction of the CSS Nashville and other southern ironclads was prompted by Confederate secretary of the navy and former U.S. senator from Florida Stephen R. Mallory, who was greatly concerned about the South's lack of naval power. When the 11 southern states seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, they had the makings of an army but none of a navy. The new government had to improvise one largely from scratch and with little seafaring tradition and few warships or naval facilities, as compared with the United States. Stephen R. Mallory Mallory improvised a four-point maritime strategy: the Confederate Navy would forego existing naval shipbuilding doctrine in favor of new technology, including armored warships, submarines, and mines (then called "torpedoes"); it would build a fleet of ironclads to defend southern harbors and rivers and prevent invasions by the U.S. Navy into the southern interior; it would construct a fleet of swift blockade runners to bring critically needed arms and supplies into the Confederacy; and it would hire or commission raiders to destroy federal merchant vessels. The Confederacy contracted various shipbuilders for 50 armored warships and by extraordinary efforts 22 were commissioned and sent into battle. The most famous were the first CSS Virginia, the CSS Arkansas, the CSS Tennessee, and the CSS Nashville. The Confederate navy also possessed a different ship named the CSS Nashville, a blockade runner that was sunk.

[DiogenesLamp]

Were they built in an existing shipyard, or did they build the shipyard as a war effort in order to build the ships?

If it is the former, then I stand corrected.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Thank you for providing yet another example of how Southern shipbuilders, who had long specialized in building shallow draft river craft to take goods North up inland waterways, could have switched to building blue water craft there were a demand. It had always been easier to let Northern shipyards, which by 1860 which far more developed for that purpose, do it. Thus leaving more money to buy more slaves. Also dispelling the crazy idea that secession did not happen to protect the institution of slavery and the entire Southern economy which was built on it.