Monitor and Merrimack fought a famous naval battle in the American Civil War (1861-1865). The two ships were called ironclads because they had been covered with iron. The battle, which ended with little damage to either the Union’s Monitor or the Confederacy’s Merrimack, focused worldwide attention on the importance of armor-plated ships. It was also the first sea battle in which the opposing ships were maneuvered entirely under steam power.
The Merrimack originally was a wooden frigate. Union troops sank it when they evacuated the Navy yard at Portsmouth, Virginia, after the war began in 1861. Confederate forces raised the ship and covered it with iron plates. They renamed it Virginia, though it is often referred to by its original name.
On March 8, 1862, the Virginia sank two Union ships at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and ran three others aground. The Virginia returned the next day, but it found a Union ironclad, the Monitor, waiting. The Monitor was built of iron as well as being ironclad. John Ericsson, a Swedish-American inventor, had designed this “cheese box on a raft” for the Union (see Ericsson, John ).
The two ships battled for more than three hours. But their shot and shells had little effect on either vessel, and the battle ended in a draw. Within the year, however, both ships were lost. The Virginia was destroyed to keep it from being captured by the Union. The Monitor filled with water and sank while being towed at sea in a storm.
In 1974, Duke University scientists announced that they had located the Monitor at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. They reported that the ship lay about 16 miles (26 kilometers) south of Cape Hatteras, off the coast of North Carolina.
In the late 1990’s, naval archaeologists began to retrieve and restore portions of the Monitor. Between 1998 and 2002, they recovered the ship’s propeller, engine, and gun turret, and thousands of other artifacts. The work was carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in cooperation with the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. In 2007, the USS Monitor Center opened in a new wing of the Mariners’ Museum. The center features a theater and exhibits dedicated to the Monitor and other ironclads.
