The use of larger guns with more penetrating power and explosive shells made armour plating imperative. Among early experiments were floating armoured batteries built for the Crimean War. Heavy wrought-iron plates over a thick wooden backing gave these flat-bottomed vessels outstanding protection as they carried large-shell guns close inshore.

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Other developments followed swiftly. The British soon built the first iron-hulled floating batteries. The French followed in 1860 with the Gloire, the first seagoing armoured warship, protected throughout her entire length by a wrought-iron belt of 4.3- to 4.7-inch (10.9- to 11.9-cm) armour backed by 26 inches (66 cm) of wood. Displacing 5,617 tons, she mounted 36 large shell guns and could steam at 13.5 knots; a three-masted sailing rig supplemented the engines. Gloire was the first of a series of ironclads laid down by Napoleon III; 13 similar ships soon followed, then two-decker armoured rams. In 1861 Great Britain countered with the Warrior, the first iron-hulled, seagoing, armoured man-of-war. Much larger than the Gloire, she displaced 9,210 tons, mounted 28 seven-inch (18-cm) shell guns, had slightly lighter armour, carried sails, and was one knot faster.

These first ironclads were commissioned on the eve of the American Civil War, in which ironclads were destined to take a decisive part. The war itself produced several spectacular developments, including pioneer submarines, the first aircraft carriers (to handle balloons for observation), and the torpedo boat, one of several means the Confederates explored in trying to break the blockade. These little craft had weak steam engines and mounted a torpedo lashed to a spar projecting from the bow. Called Davids, they were weak but definite forerunners of the torpedo boat and the versatile destroyer.

Ironclad warships were crucial, perhaps decisive, in the North’s victory over the South. Partial ironclads appeared early on the western rivers and spearheaded Union general Ulysses Grant’s victories in 1862. River and coastal ironclads (ultimately, mostly monitors) dominated the war against the South in attacks from the sea and in decisive support of land operations from the Mississippi system to the Chesapeake Bay and James River. Most memorable of the combats was the duel between the Monitor and Virginia (better known as the Merrimack). When the Federal forces lost Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, in April 1861, they burned several warships, including the heavy steam frigate Merrimack. The Confederates raised the Merrimack, installed a ram and slanting casemates made from railroad track over thick wooden backing, as had been done in the Gloire, and renamed it Virginia. Mounting 10 guns, including four rifled ones, the Virginia, with yard workers still on board finishing up, sailed on March 8, 1862, for its trial run. Defying concentrated fire of ship and shore batteries, it sank two ships of the Union’s wooden blockading fleet before retiring with the ebbing tide. In this dramatic moment John Ericsson’s Monitor arrived from New York during the middle of the night. Displacing fewer than 1,000 tons, less than one-third of the Virginia, the Monitor had a boxlike iron hull supporting an iron-plated wooden raft on which revolved the turret. The 172-foot- (52-metre-) long vessel had little freeboard except for the thickly armoured rotating turret within which were mounted two 11-inch (28-cm) smoothbores.

The Monitor had many deficiencies. Not really a seagoing warship, it had nearly sunk on its voyage down from New York and did sink on its next sea voyage. Yet it proved the equal of its rival in their duel on March 9. The battle ended in a draw with neither ship seriously injured, but the repercussions of this first duel between completely ironclad warships swept the world.

On April 4, scarcely more time than required for a ship to cross the Atlantic, Great Britain ordered the 131-gun ship of the line, the Royal Sovereign, to be cut down, armoured, and fitted with turrets. Only three and a half weeks later Great Britain laid down the Prince Albert, the Royal Navy’s first iron-hulled turret ship, mounting four turrets.

The Union Navy ordered 66 coastal and river monitors; these were low freeboard ships that were unsuitable for high-seas action and rarely suitable for long voyages. Many were not completed in time for war service. Besides the Virginia, the Confederates began a number of other ironclads. Several of these rendered valuable service and probably lengthened the war, but most had to be destroyed before completion. Out of a combination of characteristics of the Monitor and Virginia types evolved the battleship, which was next to rule the sea.