The lengths of plate iron running vertically along the shield gleamed black with the coat oftallow smeared on them to help enemy shot bounce off. All that the citizens watching could see was a wedgeshaped false bow, barely breaking the surface, and her ironclad shield, like a barn roof floating on the river, 8 feet high. Most of Virginia was underwater, not only her massive hull, but also her afterdeck, the last 50 feet or so of the ship, which was 6 inches below the surface. They had been waiting eight months for this moment. Word spread fast, and people rushed to the riverbank to see her go. With black smoke rolling out of her tall stack she edged away from the dock, heading into the stream. She was 38 ½ feet on the beam, and though the crowds watching from the shore could not see this, she was burdened by a ponderous 22 feet of draft. Virginia was a monstrous vessel, 275 feet long. Not even Virginia's crew knew where they were bound.īut there was no concealing her movements. In the interest of military security, the Gosport Naval Shipyard had been closed to visitors for months.

The Confederate States Ship Virginia, an ironclad built on the burned-out hull of the old USS Merrimack, was getting under way. In Norfolk and Portsmouth, towns that faced one another across the Elizabeth River, excitement was spreading like fire, just as it had the year before, in the days leading up to secession and the burning of the shipyard. A day more like May than March, many people felt. A gale had blown itself out the night before, and behind it came clear, warm weather, a high-pressure system on the tail of the storm. Saturday, March 8, 1862, was a beautiful day in Virginia. The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack Chapter One Sink Before Surrender 17: 'An Iron-Clad, Shot-Proof Steam Battery.'Ģ1: 'Do You Really Think She Will Float?'Ģ2: Monitor-Person or Device for Checking or Warningģ1: 'And Thus Commenced the Great Battle.'ģ4: 'Merely Drilling the Men at the Guns'

Reign of Iron by James L. Nelson