Iron Dawn: The Monitor, the Merrimack, and the Civil War Sea Battle that Changed History

From acclaimed popular historian Richard Snow, who “writes with verve and a keen eye” (The New York Times Book Review), the thrilling story of the naval battle that not only changed the Civil War but the future of all sea power. No single sea battle has had more far-reaching consequences than the one fought in the harbor at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in March 1862. The Confederacy, with no fleet of its own, built an iron fort containing ten heavy guns on the hull of a captured Union frigate named the Merrimack. The North got word of the project when it was already well along, and, in desperation, commissioned an eccentric inventor named John Ericsson to build the Monitor, an entirely revolutionary iron warship—at the time, the single most complicated machine ever made.