Early Ironclad

On March 9, 1862, two iron monsters met in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and made every wooden warship in the world obsolete before sunset. The USS Monitor — a low, revolving turret barely above the waterline — traded shots for hours with the CSS Virginia, each firing iron balls that had sunk wooden frigates the day before. Neither could penetrate the other's iron plating, but the lesson was unmistakable: the future belonged to iron. European powers had been experimenting with iron armor for years — France's Gloire (1858) was the first true ironclad — but Hampton Roads settled the argument. The great wooden fleets that had fought Trafalgar were scrap. Early ironclads were slow, prone to mechanical failure, and dangerous in rough seas, but their gun-proof hulls gave them complete immunity to unarmored adversaries. In the game the early ironclad dominates the waters of its era, immune to older vessels, but slow and vulnerable to later torpedo-armed warships.