page_title: Ironclad warship
section_title: First battles between ironclads: the U.S. Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: Ironclad warship / Early ironclad ships and battles / First battles between ironclads: the U.S. Civil War
caption_attribution_description: "Fifteen officers on deck of the original 'Monitor'". Photograph.
context_page_description: An ironclad is a steam-propelled warship protected by iron or steel armor plates used in the early part of the second half of the 19th century. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. The first ironclad battleship, Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in November 1859. The British Admiralty had been considering armored warships since 1856 and prepared a draft design for an armored corvette in 1857; in early 1859 the Royal Navy started building two iron-hulled armored frigates, and by 1861 had made the decision to move to an all-armored battle fleet. After the first clashes of ironclads took place in 1862 during the American Civil War, it became clear that the ironclad had replaced the unarmored ship of the line as the most powerful warship afloat. This type of ship came to be very successful in the American Civil War.
  Ironclads were designed for several roles, including as high seas battleships, coastal defense ships, and long-range cruisers.
context_section_description: The first use of ironclads in action came in the U.S. Civil War. The U.S. Navy at the time the war broke out had no ironclads, its most powerful ships being six unarmored steam-powered frigates. Since the bulk of the Navy remained loyal to the Union, the Confederacy sought to gain advantage in the naval conflict by acquiring modern armored ships. In May 1861, the Confederate Congress appropriated $2 million for the purchase of ironclads from overseas, and in July and August 1861 the Confederacy started work on construction and converting wooden ships.
  On 12 October 1861, CSS Manassas became the first ironclad to enter combat, when she fought Union warships on the Mississippi during the Battle of the Head of Passes. She had been converted from a commercial vessel in New Orleans for river and coastal fighting. In February 1862, the larger CSS Virginia joined the Confederate Navy, having been rebuilt at Norfolk. Constructed on the hull of USS Merrimack, Virginia originally was a conventional warship made of wood, but she was converted into an iron-covered casemate ironclad gunship, when she entered the Confederate Navy. By this time, the Union had completed seven ironclad gunboats of the City class, and was about to complete USS Monitor, an innovative design proposed by the Swedish inventor John Ericsson. The Union was also building a large armored frigate, USS New Ironsides, and the smaller USS Galena.
  The first battle between ironclads happened on 9 March 1862, as the armored Monitor was deployed to protect the Union's wooden fleet from the ironclad ram Virginia and other Confederate warships. In this engagement, the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads, the two ironclads repeatedly tried to ram one another while shells bounced off their armor.  The battle attracted attention worldwide, making it clear that the wooden warship was now out of date, with the ironclads destroying them easily.
  The Civil War saw more ironclads built by both sides, and they played an increasing role in the naval war alongside the unarmored warships, commerce raiders and blockade runners. The Union built a large fleet of fifty monitors modeled on their namesake.  The Confederacy built ships designed as smaller versions of Virginia, many of which saw action, but their attempts to buy ironclads overseas were frustrated as European nations confiscated ships being built for the Confederacy – especially in Russia, the only country to openly support the Union through the war. Only CSS Stonewall was completed, and she arrived in American waters just in time for the end of the war.
  Through the remainder of the war, ironclads saw action in the Union's attacks on Confederate ports.  Seven Union monitors, including USS Montauk, as well as two other ironclads, the ironclad frigate New Ironsides and a light-draft USS Keokuk, participated in the failed attack on Charleston; one was sunk. Two small ironclads, CSS Palmetto State and CSS Chicora participated in the defence of the harbor. For the later attack at Mobile Bay, the Union assembled four monitors as well as 11 wooden ships, facing the CSS Tennessee, the Confederacy's most powerful ironclad and the gunboats CSS Morgan, CSS Gaines, CSS Selma.
  
  On the western front, the Union built a formidable force of river ironclads, beginning with several converted riverboats and then contracting engineer James Eads of St. Louis, Missouri to build the City-class ironclads. These excellent ships were built with twin engines and a central paddle wheel, all protected by an armored casement. They had a shallow draft, allowing them to journey up smaller tributaries, and were very well suited for river operations. Eads also produced monitors for use on the rivers, the first two of which differed from the ocean-going monitors in that they contained a paddle wheel (USS Neosho and USS Osage). 
  The Union ironclads played an important role in the Mississippi and tributaries by providing tremendous fire upon Confederate forts, installations and vessels with relative impunity to enemy fire.  They were not as heavily armored as
caption: Officers of a monitor-class warship, probably USS Patapsco, photographed during the American Civil War.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "1000", "Image YResolution": "1000", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.10.20", "Image DateTime": "2021:04:07 19:38:02", "Image Artist": "Library of Congress", "Image ExifOffset": "180", "Thumbnail ImageWidth": "256", "Thumbnail ImageLength": "154", "Thumbnail BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail PhotometricInterpretation": "6", "Thumbnail SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "330", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9137", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4682", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3766"}