This Day In History | Civil War March 8, 1862 C.S.S. Virginia terrorizes Union navy

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[mainepatsfan]

This Day In History | Civil War

March 8

1862 C.S.S. Virginia terrorizes Union navy

The Confederate ironclad Virginia wrecks havoc on a Yankee squadron off Hampton Roads, Virginia.

The C.S.S. Virginia was originally the U.S.S. Merrimack, a forty-gun frigate launched in 1855. The Merrimack served in the Caribbean and was the flagship of the Pacific fleet in the late 1850s. In early 1860, the ship was decommissioned for extensive repairs at the Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia. It was still there when the war began in April 1861, and Union sailors sank the ship as the yard was evacuated. Six weeks later, a salvage company raised the ship and the Confederates began rebuilding it.

The project required $172,000 to build an ironclad upon the Merrimack's hull. A new gun deck was added and an iron canopy was draped over the entire vessel. The most challenging part of the construction came in finding the iron plating. Richmond's Tredegar Iron Works finally produced it, but the plant had to alter its operations to roll more than 300 tons of scrap iron for the two-inch thick plating.

[fredhead]

It continues to irritate me that when they built a bridge tunnel across the James River here in Hampton Roads, the State of Virginia named it the "Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel", ignoring the fact that at the time of the battle, the ship was no longer the USS Merrimac, but the CSS Virginia.

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

The battle between the two ironclads, The Merrimack and The Monitor, showed that North and South were at an impasse, regarding the strength of each side.

[mainepatsfan]

It seems it has always been called the Merrimac in the history books I've read as well. My opinion is since it was in the service of the Confederacy it should be called by it's rebel name.