Robert MacBride - Civil War Ironclads; The Dawn of Naval Armor (1962).jpg

The battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (nee Merrimack), at Hampton Roads was neither the beginning nor the end of the story of the ironclad warships in the Civil War. Both the Union and the Confederate navies not only had other ironclad ships in commission at the time of the battle, they already had used them in combat. The months following saw the appearance of squadrons of monitors and casemate ironclads of the general design of the Virginia. It is with the sequels to the Battle of Hampton Roads that this book is primarily concerned.

Although more than a century has elapsed since its beginnings, the conditions which gave rise to the ironclad warship were the same which later were to bring about the development of the dreadnought, the aircraft carrier, and the nuclear submarine: the responses of a burgeoning industrial technology to the demands of particular strategic requirements.

The ironclads, in fact, were among the very first products of the modern age of technology, along with the railroad and the telegraph, and they were unquestionably the first of the melancholy procession of modern tools of war. As such, they were a whole era ahead of any weapons in use ashore, save the revolver. The armies of the Civil War really differed relatively little from the armies of Marlborough, or even Cromwell, but even the crudest of the navies' armored vessels would have seemed familiar to a seaman of today.

The first contribution to the development of armored warships was most certainly the marine steam engine, which had been in use since about 1815 and, by the beginning of the Civil War, had reached a relatively high state of development, although it was used at that time only as a primary means of propulsion for riverboats and tugs. While essential to the creation of ironclads, the steam engine in no way dictated or forced their adoption; nor, for that matter, did the second necessary factor: the availability of large amounts of relatively cheap wrought iron ( brought about by the rise of the railroads).

The decisive factor in their birth was the development of the heavy naval gun, and especially of the heavy shell gun.

The War of 1812 had demonstrated, to the United States Navy at least, that a few heavy, long-range guns were more effective than many smaller lighter guns. While the great frigates such as the Constitution generally carried more guns than their opponents, it was remarked that it was usually their heavy chase guns which were decisive. Similar experiences during the same period led French and British naval architects to the same conclusions, and in the 182-'s and '30's the trend in warship design began to turn toward smaller, faster vessels mounting only a few heavy powerful guns.