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Section 2: Hampton Roads Enters the War (Lite)
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen R. Mallory, realizing the the Confederacy could never match the Union in numbers of ships focused on a recent innovation: ironclad steam-powered warships.
The former USS Merrimac, now christened the CSS Virginia, was commissioned in February 1862. In addition its iron sheathing, Virginia was designed to ram enemy vessels.
Meanwhile, the Union, learning of the Confederacy’s new naval strategy, developed their own ironclad, the USS Monitor.