The CSS Virginia was an ironclad ship in the Confederate navy during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The first American warship of its kind—prior to 1862, all navy vessels were made of wood—it was constructed in order to attack the ever-tightening Union blockade on the Confederacy's major Atlantic ports and harbors. The CSS Virginia's launch in March 1862 provided one of the first truly unmistakable signs of a revolution in naval warfare that would transform the conduct of war at sea during the nineteenth century. It quickly met its match, however, in a hastily constructed, Swedish-engineered Union ironclad, the USSMonitor, at the Battle of Hampton Roads (1862). By April 1862, the Confederacy's 3,500 miles of coastline were largely lost (only Wilmington, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina, remained under Confederate control), and in May of that year, the Virginia was intentionally destroyed.
The CSS Virginia was constructed from the burned hulk and salvaged machinery of the USS Merrimack, a ship imperfectly scuttled by retreating Union forces and subsequently salvaged at Norfolk's Gosport Naval Yard in April 1861. A steam-powered frigate constructed in Massachusetts in June 1855, the Merrimack had once carried forty guns and had seen service in the West Indies and Pacific before being sent to Norfolk for repairs and refitting early in 1860.
The CSS Virginia was an ironclad ship in the Confederate navy during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The first American warship of its kind—prior to 1862, all navy vessels were made of wood—it was constructed in order to attack the ever-tightening Union blockade on the Confederacy's major Atlantic ports and harbors. The CSS Virginia's launch in March 1862 provided one of the first truly unmistakable signs of a revolution in naval warfare that would transform the conduct of war at sea during the nineteenth century. It quickly met its match, however, in a hastily constructed, Swedish-engineered Union ironclad, the USS Monitor, at the Battle of Hampton Roads (1862). By April 1862, the Confederacy's 3,500 miles of coastline were largely lost (only Wilmington, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina, remained under Confederate control), and in May of that year, the Virginia was intentionally destroyed.
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