When the Confederate government decided to build
an ironclad, it resurrected the sunken USS Merrimack,
cut it down to its berth deck, added a sloped roof
of pitch-pine and oak twenty-four inches thick,
and covered it with four inches of iron plate. The
finished product, rechristened the CSS Virginia,
reminded some of a huge turtle and others of a steel
coffin. Meanwhile, on the federal drawing board,
John Ericsson was designing an ironclad vessel with
a tabletop deck and a round center turret, which
one officer described as “the image of nothing
in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the water
under the earth.”
On March 9, 1862, these two vessels clashed in
combat at Hampton Roads, Virginia. Although the
four-hour engagement ended in a draw, it ushered
in a new era in naval warfare. The success of
the Merrimack in sinking part of the federal
fleet and the arrival of the Monitor, which
saved the rest, demonstrated the vast superiority
of iron over wood in ship construction.
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