Fact #1: The CSS Virginia and USS Monitor were not the first ironclad warships, but they were the first ironclads to battle against one another
The CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor were not the first ironclad warships. In November 1859, the French navy had launched La Glorie, the first ironclad battleship. The Royal Navy, in response to the new French warship, had launched HMS Warrior, an iron-hulled frigate, in October of 1861.
Even in the American Civil War, the Virginia and Monitor were not the first ironclads. To support Union naval operations on the rivers in the western theater, ironclad river gunboats (City Class gunboats) had been built, launched, and deployed by January 1862. These gunboats played an important role in the battles for Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February of 1862.
Fact#2: The Confederacy had great difficulty in sourcing the iron plating needed for the CSS Virginia
In October of 1861 it was determined that the CSS Virginia (the converted ex-USS Merrimack) would require two layers of two inch iron armor plate covering its entire casement. Requiring upwards of 800 tons of iron, there simply was not that much iron available. To make up for this painful shortage, the Confederacy was reduced to scavenging old scrap iron, melting down old smoothbore cannon and iron tools, and even ripping up hundreds of miles of railroad track. The delays in obtaining and shaping these iron plates gave the Union more time to construct their counters to the growing menace of the CSS Virginia...
When I was younger, like seven years old, I got my hands ahold of a magazine that detailed the ironclads and their first battle.
I must have read it fifty times. And it’s still as fascinating to me today.
I found a detailed, high resolution cross-section image of the Monitor.
The iron work was done at Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond.
Not one ton of iron ore was mined anywhere in the South until 1864 near Birmingham, AL.
155 years ago. It seems like yesterday.
