Hampton Roads, Battle of
Hampton Roads, Battle of (1862).Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory believed ironclads could break the Civil War blockade by the Union navy. On 11 July 1861, he ordered the conversion of the captured USS Merrimack into the ironclad CSS Virginia. His Federal counterpart, Gideon Welles, on 4 October 1861 directed John Ericsson to build the ironclad USS Monitor. Although the Europeans had started to build iron ships, the battle between these two vessels on 9 March 1862 in Hampton Roads, Virginia, near Norfolk, was the world's first combat between armored warships.
The two vessels incorporated the latest naval advances: steam‐powered, screw‐propelled, and ironclad‐hull. The Virginia (Merrimack) carried ten major guns (four in each broadside, one bow and one stern gun) and an iron ram. The low‐silhouetted Monitor...
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