Battle of Hampton Roads

On 8 March 1862 the Confederate ironclad Virginia steamed into Hampton Roads and destroyed two of the Union's wooden warships, shrugging off their shot. That night the Union's new Monitor, a low hull with a revolving turret, arrived from New York. On 9 March the two ironclads fought for hours at close range, neither able to seriously hurt the other. The Virginia withdrew and the Union blockade held. Many navies took it as proof that wooden ships were finished.

The battle is often taught as the end of the wooden warship, and in the long run it was, but the lesson was not instant: navies had been building armoured ships since the 1850s, and the French and British had already launched ironclads of their own. What the day really showed was the weakness of the old smoothbore broadside against armour. Neither of the two ships long survived. The Virginia was destroyed by her own crew in May 1862 when Norfolk fell, and the Monitor sank in a gale off Cape Hatteras that December.