The Confederates wanted to nullify the Union’s advantage of naval power, while the Union wanted to take away any strategic economic support the Confederacy might obtain from its remaining ports. The Union’s version of the ship would be called the USS Monitor.Įach side raced to complete their design before the other. The first of these vessels was made by the Confederacy and was named the CSS Virginia. This technology served the navy first in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads. With the invention of steel plate technology, both Union and Confederate warships would make the wooden seafaring vessels of the world obsolete. It was these ships, more so than any other wartime naval innovation, which would revolutionize naval warfare and have long standing effects after the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865. īy the middle years of the war, the Confederacy and Union both had introduced ironclads in order to overcome the wooden fleets that each country maintained. In stopping the Virginia’s rampage, the Monitor, prevented a Confederate naval attack on the national capital, protected the Atlantic blockading squadron and offered a workable model for other ironclad vessels to be used by the Union Navy.
The significance of the Monitor in American naval military and technological history cannot be overstated. Ironclad vessels revolutionized warefare at sea
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