Abstract
On March 9th, 1862, in a largely uneventful and inconclusive battle near Hampton
Roads, Virginia, the course of naval warfare throughout the world was forever changed. It was
during this Civil War battle that the world’s first two iron ships, the USS Monitor and the CSS
Virginia (or Merrimack), engaged one another. During the course of this engagement, neither
ship was able to sink or even heavily damage the other. The battle as a whole did not have a clear
victor, and it did not heavily impact the course of the Civil War. Despite its seeming
insignificance, the Battle of Hampton Roads carried tremendous historical weight. The
indestructibility and effective offense of the iron ships, which was the main cause of the battle’s
uneventful nature, immediately altered the paradigm of naval warfare by proving the iron ship’s
indisputable superiority over traditional wooden ships.