On October 12, 1861, CSS Manassas became the first ironclad to see combat at the Battle of the Head of Passes on the Mississippi River. Protected by iron or steel armor plates, ironclads held a ...

A Currier and Ives lithograph of the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images As dawn broke over Hampton Roads, Virginia, on March ...

If technology has become key, then so are the resources that support it. Eighteenth-century Britain fought wars to ensure that it had access to naval supplies such as wood, hemp and tar. In the ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The idea of armoring ships was ancient, and gained serious attention from the dawn of muskets and cannons at sea. In the 16th and ...

For almost all of human history, boats were made of wood. Sure, today we've got amazing ships built from steel and composites, but people have been sailing for thousands of years, so almost every ship ...

Here’s What You Need To Remember: If the South could break the Union’s blockade using ironclads, the Confederacy would win the war. If the U.S. Navy’s wooden ships were helpless against ironclads, so ...

On March 9, 1862, Confederate Navy ship CSS Virginia and Union navy ship USS Monitor met in battle off the coast of Virginia. Their clash was inconclusive, but the battle was the first time metal ...