ironclad, mid-19th-century wooden warship protected from gunfire by iron armor. The success of the ironclad when first employed by the French in the Crimean War Crimean War (krīmē`ən)
..... Click the link for more information. sparked a naval armor and armaments race between France and Great Britain. Ironclads were later used by both sides in the U.S. Civil War (see monitor monitor, type of turreted warship (no longer used) carrying heavy guns, having little draft, and lying low in the water. Monitors were so called from the first of the class, the Monitor, built for the Union navy in the U.S. Civil War by John Ericsson .
..... Click the link for more information. , Monitor and Merrimack Monitor and Merrimack, two American warships that fought the first engagement between ironclad ships. When, at the beginning of the Civil War, the Union forces abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Va., they scuttled the powerful steam frigate Merrimack.
..... Click the link for more information. ), although only the Union navy had at its disposal sufficient industrial resources to build a sizable fleet. The armored ship became obsolete with the introduction (1870–90) of all-metal warship construction.
Type of warship developed in Europe and the U.S. in the mid-19th century, characterized by the iron armour that protected the hull. In the Crimean War (1853–56) the French and British successfully attacked Russian fortifications with “floating batteries,” ironclad barges mounting heavy guns. In 1859 the French completed the first iron warship, the Gloire; its iron plates, 4.5 in. (11 cm) thick, were backed by heavy timber. Britain and the U.S. soon followed. Union forces launched armored gunboats on the Mississippi at the start of the American Civil War, and a flotilla captured Fort Henry (1862). The first battle between ironclads was the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack (1862). Later refinements led to the battleship. See also monitor.
ironclad
..... Click the link for more information. sparked a naval armor and armaments race between France and Great Britain. Ironclads were later used by both sides in the U.S. Civil War (see monitor monitor, type of turreted warship (no longer used) carrying heavy guns, having little draft, and lying low in the water. Monitors were so called from the first of the class, the Monitor, built for the Union navy in the U.S. Civil War by John Ericsson .
..... Click the link for more information. , Monitor and Merrimack Monitor and Merrimack, two American warships that fought the first engagement between ironclad ships. When, at the beginning of the Civil War, the Union forces abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Va., they scuttled the powerful steam frigate Merrimack.
..... Click the link for more information. ), although only the Union navy had at its disposal sufficient industrial resources to build a sizable fleet. The armored ship became obsolete with the introduction (1870–90) of all-metal warship construction.
ironclad
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French ironclad Gloire, engraving by Smythe after a painting by A.W. Weedon
(credit: Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.)
ironclad
a large wooden 19th-century warship with armoured plating
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