The Battle of the Ironclads Changed Naval Warfare

March 9, 1862. CSS Virginia and USS Monitor fought for four hours in Hampton Roads. When they were done, every wooden warship in every navy in the world was obsolete. The battle was a draw. The revolution was total.

The Mariners' Museum in Newport News has the recovered turret of the Monitor — raised from the ocean floor in 2002 after 140 years. Corroded, encrusted, gun ports still visible. The vertigo of standing next to something that changed history and then spent a century and a half underwater.

The Hampton Roads channel is visible from Fort Monroe on the north shore. The water looks ordinary. That's the point — the future of warfare was decided in a tidal estuary that smells of salt and diesel. Naval Station Norfolk — the world's largest naval base — sits on the same water. Every ship through the channel sails over the spot where iron met iron and the old world sank.