 I don't know how many people even remember the old cartoon Mighty Mouse, which was well before my time, but I do vaguely remember watching it as a kid. But this was the theme song for it, complete with the caped and costumed mouse flying off to fight bad guys. When the monitor, the Union's entirely iron warship that was unlike anything the world had ever seen before, was steaming in to rescue the gigantic wooden steam frigate, the Minnesota, I can't help but feel like the Mighty Mouse theme song would be the perfect accompanying music. In the words of Joseph McDonald, observing from a nearby ship, quote, the little monitor sailed right out around the Minnesota, right in between her and the Merrimack, and let go with her two guns as if to say, hold on, stop a minute, end quote. So I think of the image of Mighty Mouse flying off to save the day, as he did during the cartoon's theme song. As I've said about previous stories, if anybody ever adapts this for television, this is how you need to create this scene, you don't have to give me credit or anything. And it wasn't just that the gigantic Minnesota dwarfed the 172 foot long monitor. Because the monitor was almost entirely submerged, the only part that stuck up above water was the nine foot tall, 24 foot wide gun turret. When surgeon Shippen, who had survived the sinking of his ship, the Congress, saw the monitor steam in, he said, quote, no one in our camp seemed to know what it was or how it came there. But at last it was conceded that it must be the strange new iron clad which we heard was being built in New York by Erickson. She seemed so small and trifling that we feared she would only constitute additional prey for the Leviathan, end quote. It wasn't alone in his skepticism of how much help that this tiny ship could provide. Even on the monitor itself, the crew had their doubts. The monitor's paymaster, William Keeler, took a look at the Minnesota that towered above him and writing about the experience later, said, quote, the idea of assistance or protection being offered to the huge thing by the little pygmy at her side seemed absolutely ridiculous, end quote. The crew of the Minnesota wasn't thrilled about the pitiful help the Union had apparently sent to rescue them either. Paymaster Keeler, himself skeptical, wasn't happy at the ingratitude of the men he was there to help saying, quote, the replies from the Minnesota came curt and crispy. As the Merrimack approached, we slowly steamed out of the shadow of our towering friend, no ways daunted by her ungracious replies, end quote. In gratitude or no, the monitor was there to help and its crew could either prove that their little ship packed much more punch than its small size implied or they would go down swinging. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast Historical Controversies. In the previous four episodes, we've told the story of the race between the Confederacy and the Union to build an ironclad warship. The Confederacy pulled the sunken Union ship, the Merrimack, out of the water of the Gosport Naval Yard and rebuilt her with iron plating, renaming her the CSS Virginia, though most people still continued to call her the Merrimack. With their new ironclad, they destroyed two of the Union Navy's most powerful wooden ships on March 8th and they were prepared to finish off the Minnesota on the 9th. But word of the Merrimack leaked out to the Union and Gideon Wells, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, started working on a response, employing the brilliant but underappreciated Swedish engineer John Ericsson, the Union constructed an entirely iron ship that today would be classified as a semi-submersible submarine. This ship, dubbed the USS Monitor, employed upwards of 40 technological innovations, the most important of which I've detailed in the last two episodes, so those are worth listening to before today's episode if you haven't already. The ship was finished just in the nick of time and to quote Gustavus Fox, the Monitor sailed in to rescue the Minnesota at the moment the novelist would have produced her. As the small ship pulled up alongside the gigantic Minnesota, which already had holes blown in its hole from the previous day's battle, the Confederate Merrimack was already moving back in to finish her off. Now on March 9th, 1862, the battle of the iron clads would take place and the result would entirely alter the face of naval warfare going forward. We can probably point to March 9th, 1862 as the day that wooden ships became obsolete. As the Monitor waited to face the Merrimack, the tension was palpable. Paymaster Keeler described the mood in a letter to his wife, quote, a few straggling rays of light found their way from the top of the tower into the depths below, which was dimly lighted by lanterns. Everyone was at his point, fixed like a statue. The most profound silence reigned. If there had been a cowered heart to there, its throb would have been audible. So intense was the stillness. I felt a peculiar sensation. I do not think it was fear, but it was different from anything I ever knew before. We were enclosed in what we supposed to be an impenetrable armor. We knew that a powerful foe was about to meet us. Ours was an untried experiment, and our enemy's first fire might make it a coffin for us all, end quote. Captain Warden had his own concerns as he studied his ship with a coming battle in mind, quote, if a projectile struck the turret at an acute angle, it was expected to glance off without doing damage. But what would happen if it was fired on a straight line to the center of the turret, which in that case would receive the full force of the blow? It might break off and blot heads on the interior, which flying across would kill the men at the guns. It might disarrange the revolving mechanism, and then we would be wholly disabled, end quote. With battle looming, every potential flaw on the untried ship started to look like glaring oversights. But it was too late to do anything now, except hope for the best. The Merrimack was still more than a mile away, but the Minnesota had already opened fire. Even knowing that their shots would fall far short of the ship coming to destroy them, Warden knew this was a useless display, and he instructed his gunners to hold their fire until he said otherwise. He didn't want to waste a single shot, but they didn't have to wait long. When the Merrimack moved in range, Warden gave the order, and the monitor fired its first shot at the Confederate ship. The battle of the ironclads had begun. The crew of the Merrimack spotted the monitor before it fired. Just as plans of the Merrimack had leaked into the Union, the Confederacy had also learned about Erickson's iron ship and its revolving gun turret. Through their spy glasses, the officers on the Merrimack watched as the turret turned its guns toward them and fired its first shot, which fell short of its target, landing harmlessly in the water. The men on the Merrimack were unconcerned with the presence of the new ship. As one of the Confederate sailors put it, quote, when we came out for the second day's fight, thinking we would clean up the Minnesota, Roanoke and St. Lawrence, we were not entirely surprised to find the monitor. For a while, we did not know exactly what to expect. We knew some craft had come in during the night. However, we had no doubt we could handle her easily, end quote. When the Merrimack returned fire, their aim was better. They landed their first shot against the monitor's turret, scoring the direct hit that Warden was afraid of. The turret shook from the blow, rattling the men inside, and it was left with a gigantic dent in its wall. With the men recovered from their surprise, one of the officers asked, did the shot come through? The gunner answered, no, sir, it didn't come through, but it made a big dent. Just look at there, sir. The officer nearly laughed, a big dent. Of course it made a big dent. That is just what we expected, but what do you care about that so long as it keeps out the shot? Seeing the men survive its first direct hit with only a dent to show for it, the men inside the monitor grew more confident. If a direct hit against the monitor's most vulnerable area couldn't get through, they had little to fear. They turned back to their guns, now much more eager to fight than they had been moments before. The second shot the monitor fired landed against the Merrimack, but it also failed to do any real damage to their target, even as the two ships were closing in on each other. When the two ships came close enough, they found that they were more evenly matched than the Confederates anticipated. As Ashton Ramsey, the Merrimack's engineer in chief described it, quote, we hovered about each other in spirals, gradually contacting the circuits until we were within point-blank range, but our shells glanced from the monitor's turret, end quote. Another engineer reflected the growing concern, quote, our only hope to penetrate the monitor's shield was in the rifled cannon, but as the only projectiles for that were percussion shells, there was barely a chance that we might penetrate our adversary's defense by a luck shot, end quote. The shells made more sense against the wooden ships they expected to fight because they would explode against the wood, causing larger holes and potentially setting the ship on fire. But facing an iron machine, shots would have made more sense, potentially giving the concentrated force of a heavy ball fired from the powerful Brooks rifle the piercing power needed to break through the iron plating, but they fell to anticipate this need and didn't bring solid shots for their rifled cannons. When the shells exploded against the iron turret, one union man exclaimed, the damned fools are firing canister at us. The canister was the shotgun-like fire that was designed to combat infantry and land battles by sending a widespread of small projectiles. He was wrong, of course, but that's what an exploding shell seemed like when it detonated harmlessly against the iron wall of the turret. The battle also showed how effective a fully iron ship was compared to one that simply covered wooden ships with iron plates. One shot from the monitor, quote, broke the backers to the shield of the Merrimack and sent a splinter into our engine room with about enough force to carry it halfway across the ship. End quote. The shot that did this actually didn't pierce the iron armor of the Merrimack, but the impact still broke the wood underneath and sent a dangerous slab of wood flying. The monitor did not have to worry about something similar happening to them, but that doesn't mean that the men on the monitor weren't facing their own tribulations. The men on the turret were drenched with sweat and the heat of the guns in their small container with smoke and powder engulfing them. They stripped down to only their pants to keep from suffocating in the heat, but they were still effectively enclosed in an oven as they tried to work their guns, hardly able to see from the mixture of sweat and smoke pouring into their eyes. Even if the fire from the Merrimack couldn't break through to them, every hit sent a violent tremor through the monitor accompanied by a deafening reverberation. A description from a sailor on a second generation monitor later in the war described the situation well, quote, the sounds produced by the shot striking our turret were far different from what I anticipated. The scream of the shot would arrive at about the same time with the projectile and then the air would be filled with that peculiar shrill, singing sound of violently broken glass or perhaps more like the noise made by flinging a nail violently through the air. The shock of discharge of our own guns was particularly especially hard on the ears of those on the turret, end quote. The explosion from their own cannon, which was already loud enough that artillerists commonly went in death, even in land battles, would echo painfully against the iron walls around it. At least the gunners on the Merrimack weren't crammed into a tight metal room to work their guns. Working the turret was also challenging. Referring to the gun's captain working the turret, a gunner wrote, quote, Stimers was an active muscular man and did his utmost to control the motion of the turret. But in spite of his efforts, it was difficult, if not impossible, to secure accurate firing. My only view of the world outside of the tower was over the muzzles of the guns, which cleared the port only by a few inches. When the guns were run in, the port holes were covered by heavy iron pendulums, pierced with small holes to allow the rammer and sponge handlers to protrude while they were still in use. The effect upon one shut up in a revolving drum is perplexing and it is not a simple matter to keep the bearings. White marks have been placed up on the stationary deck immediately below the turret to indicate the direction of the starboard and port sides and the bow and port sides and bow and stern. But these marks were obliterated early in the action. A careless or impatient hand during the confusion arising from the whirligig motion of the tower might let slip one of our big shot against the pilot house. For this and other reasons, I fired every gun while I remained in the turret, end quote. But the two guns on the monitor were able to match the combined force of the Merrimack's tin smoothbore guns. When the rotating turret was first introduced to naval warfare during the Crimean War, the logic was that it would render the number of guns on a ship unimportant because of its ability to fire in any direction. That logic seemed to hold true. In the words of John Eagleston on the Merrimack, quote, the monitor's two 11 inch guns, thoroughly protected, were really more formidable than our tin guns of from six to nine caliber. We never got side of her guns except when they were about to fire at us. Then the turret slowly turned, presenting to us its solid side and enabling the gunners to load without danger, end quote. So that was the way the turret was used. They turned to aim, opened the shutters to expose the guns, fired their shots, closed the shutters, and then turned the turret away so that any shot sent their way would be absorbed by the solid iron walls. As the two ships continued to exchange close range fire, the turret eventually did start taking real damage, largely due to the powerful Brooks rifle the Merrimack carried. As the iron walls became dented, they started to fracture. It seemed very likely that had the Confederates thought to bring solid shots for their rifled cannons, they could have destroyed the turret and sent the monitor home with its tail between its legs. So this is one of the many details we find in Civil War history that can raise a bunch of what if questions. But the Merrimack was running into its own problems, making it more vulnerable as well. If you remember from the very first episode, the design of the Merrimack, due largely to the scarcity of iron and time constraints the Confederacy faced, was to only armor the top truss of the ship, which contained the guns. The larger hole of the ship, which originally sat above the water before it was redesigned as an ironclad, was now designed to be entirely submerged not unlike the monitor. The hole was still entirely wooden, but it was protected by the water around it. But because the ship was too light to keep the hole safely submerged, the Confederates actually had to pile a mess of scrap metal onto the deck of the ship to weigh it down. Now as the Merrimack was sending all of its ammunition to the monitor, it was losing weight and sitting higher in the water. Part of its unarmored wooden hole was now rising above the waterline. If they were hit in the right spot, they could sink. Here again, we see the advantage of Erickson's ambitious design to do away with wood entirely. So by 10 in the morning, after both ships had battled to a stalemate, the officers on either side were weighing the vulnerabilities of their own ship against that of their enemy. But when the monitor ran out of ammunition and had to restock, they offered a break in the battle that the Confederates hoped to be able to take advantage of. They turned toward the Minnesota. But while the commander of the Merrimack, which was now Catsby Jones, since Franklin Buchanan was recovering from the bullet he took in his thigh the day before, wanted to take the opportunity to finish off the Minnesota, the pilot of the Merrimack was worried about the exposed hull. Although the officers thought it was an accident at first, he apparently purposefully ran the ship aground on the way to the Minnesota. According to the Merrimack surgeon, quote, through fear of passing through the Minnesota's terrible broadside, end quote. But by running the ship aground, they had only set it up to be an easy target for the quote, unquote, fierce dog that the monitor had proven itself to be once it returned. The engine crew threw everything that burned faster than coal, oiled cotton and pieces of wood to try to force the Merrimack back into deeper waters. It took a while, but this apparently worked. And the Merrimack returned to the water as the monitor was returning. The delay cost to them their chance at the Minnesota or perhaps it saved them from being sunk by it as the pilot intended. We obviously can never know what would have happened if the pilot hadn't been worried about the vulnerable hull. The two iron ships started firing on each other again, but this time the crew of the Merrimack thought that if they could board the monitor, their superiority in numbers could turn the battle in their favor. They had trouble getting close enough to the more maneuverable monitor. And the Merrimack was starting to run out of powder to continue returning fire. As a last resort, Jones gave the order to ram the ship. As one of the crew described the last ditch effort, quote, for an hour, we maneuvered for position. Now go ahead, now stop, now a stern. The Merrimack was as unweldy as Noah's Ark, end quote. Seeing the Merrimack turning to ram them, Paymaster Keeler ordered the monitor's gunners to keep firing with everything they had. Having been informed of the fate of the Cumberland from the previous day's fight, Keeler later wrote of his mindset as the Merrimack charged toward them, quote, this was the critical moment, one that I had feared from the beginning of the fight. If she could so easily pierce the heavy oak beams of the Cumberland, she surely could go through the half inch iron plates of our lower hull, end quote. But when the Merrimack had rammed the Cumberland, their ram had broken off. It was now at the bottom of the ocean, still stuck inside of the sunken Union's loop of war. Apparently neither side was aware that the Merrimack was trying to ram without any weapon to ram with. Warden ordered the monitor to move to the side to avoid the blow. He didn't get completely out of the way, but he was able to avoid a direct collision. When the Merrimack made contact, it tossed the crew of the monitor off their feet, but the iron ship was unharmed. The Merrimack actually took more damage from the collision than its target. The section of their wooden hull that came into contact with the monitor sent shards of wood flying and water started to pour in through the openings. The Merrimack was also now sandwiched between the monitor and the Minnesota. A small Union tug, the dragon, was also nearby, now stuck in the crossfire between the two behemoths, the Minnesota and the monitor. The crew of the dragon tried to get their measly ship out of harm's way, quoting one of the crew members. We were in the way of the lower tier of guns. I sprang for one of the lines to cast it off. Just then I met my fate. One of the Merrimack's shells went directly through our boiler. The explosion that followed drove a board with great force against my shoulder and head, partly stunning me and throwing me toward the shell. A piece of that got to me, ripping up my left leg and splitting the thigh bone. The air over me was so full of burning powder, steam and smoke that in my half-stunned condition, I thought I was suffocating in the water and struck out as if to swim. But strong hands pulled me through a porthole of the Minnesota and laid me out on the deck. The row of the battle continued, but my fighting was over. The long of the short of it is that one of my burial places is in Old Virginia, as I told a friend. There is where I left my leg, end quote. The sailor may not have survived at all had it not been for the monitor on the other side of the Confederate ship, keeping it from finishing off the Minnesota. As the monitor maneuvered around the Merrimack, trying to distract it from the Minnesota while it looked for weak points to fire on, it came within 20 yards of the Confederate's devastatingly powerful Brooks Rifle. With a pull of the lanyard, the Merrimack sent a close-range shell toward the monitor as described by Paymaster Keeler, quote. A heavy shell struck the pilot house. I was standing near, waiting in order, heard the report which was unusually heavy, a flash of light and a cloud of smoke filled the house. I noticed Captain Warden stagger and put his hands to his eyes. I ran up to him and asked if he was hurt. My eyes, he said, I am blind, end quote. Their captain collapsed as he was caught by his nephew, who was also serving on the ship. But the sight of their injured captain significantly affected the crew, described by the captain of the guns, quote. He was aghastly psyched with his eyes closed and the blood apparently rushing from every pore in the upper part of his face. He told me that he was seriously wounded and directed me to take command. Before passing over command, Captain Warden gave his final order, quote. Gentlemen, I leave it with you. Do what you think best. I cannot see, but do not mind me. Save the Minnesota if you can, end quote. But the damage to the gun turret was significant, leaving an opening large enough to allow shrapnel to make it through to the gunners. Their armor had finally been pierced. The monitor had no choice but to retreat. Seeing this, Catsby Jones on the Merrimack was surprised but elated. Writing about it later, he said, quote, to us the monitor appeared unharmed. We were therefore surprised to see her run off into shoal water where our great draft would not permit us to follow and where our shells could not reach her, end quote. Jones ordered the crew to turn their attention back to the Minnesota. Seeing the Merrimack coming back toward them with the monitor no longer around to offer its protection, the captain of the Minnesota ordered his men to prepare to sink the Minnesota themselves. They knew they couldn't win the fight, but they could keep their beloved steam frigate from falling into enemy hands as the Merrimack had done so many months ago. At this time, the Merrimack was too far away from the Minnesota for any of its guns except the Brooks Rifle to reach it, but they were laying into the Minnesota as the iron clad closed in on it. But then it stopped. The pilot of the Merrimack, still worried about the exposed wooden hull, said that he was unwilling to bring the Merrimack within fighting range of the Minnesota because the captain of the Minnesota had already resigned himself to defeat. The pilot had little to worry about and they almost certainly would have watched the frigate sink to the bottom of the ocean, either by the Merrimack or its own men or both. But of course they had no way of knowing what the enemy officers were thinking. Almost all of the officers on the Merrimack agreed with the pilot's concern. Jones gave the order to return to safer territory for repairs and resupply. Much did the dismay of the Confederates on board who wanted to finish the job they thought was going to be so easily accomplished, the Minnesota would live to fight another day. When the crew of the monitor, wallowing in their apparent defeat, saw the Merrimack retreating, their mood turned ecstatic. Henry Wise, a different Henry Wise than the former Virginia governor who now served as a Confederate general. This Henry Wise was an official in the Union Navy Department. He came on board the monitor and went to see Captain Warden who was having the blood wiped away from his face. The Union's Henry Wise gave the blinded Captain a hug. Warden wasn't expecting this. Have I beat her off? He asked, Wise answered. Jack, you saved your country. Have I saved that fine ship, the Minnesota? Yes, Wise answered again and whipped the Merrimack to boot. Then I don't care what happens to me, Warden replied. The sense of defeat immediately turned into a celebration of victory. Their goal was to protect the Minnesota and they had done exactly that, even if it was by the skin of their teeth. Warden would forever enjoy the unflinching loyalty of the crew who fought with him that day and he would eventually regain sight to one of his eyes though the other was permanently blinded. The Confederates would also count the battle as a victory. They had sunk two major Union warships as well as some minor vessels and had tangled with the best the Union Navy had to offer and they survived. In history, the battle is generally regarded as a stalemate or a mixed victory. The Confederate winning a tactical victory while the Union won a strategic victory. But whatever little worth my opinion may be, I actually kind of side with the Union on this one. I think they deserve credit for the victory. This is partly because the Minnesota was the target of both ships when the fighting commenced. The Confederates wanted to destroy it and the Union wanted to save it. In that respect, the Union accomplished their goal and the Confederates failed at theirs. So a tactical victory, which is often credited to the Confederates would suggest that they sink the Minnesota, but that wasn't the case. So I don't think they deserve credit for a tactical victory on March 9th, maybe on March 8th before the monitor showed up, but not on March 9th. More importantly though, and this is why the battle is more likely to count as a strategic victory for the Union, the Union did not have to completely defeat the Confederate ironclad. For their purposes, a stalemate actually was a victory. Kind of like a chess tournament where one player is already in the lead, he only needs to get a draw in the final match to win the tournament. In the war on the waters, the Union was clearly in the lead in March of 1862. The hope of the Confederate ironclad was to be able to destroy the larger wooden navy that gave the North such an advantage. Had it not been for the monitor, they likely could have done this. So the Union does deserve credit for their strategic victory, but I think it's an overstatement to say that the Confederacy won a tactical victory. The battle of the ironclads then can provide a number of what if questions for those who enjoy that sort of thing. Had the information about the ironclad not leaked out to the press, the North may never have started on one of their own in time to stop the Merri-Mac from destroying the nascent blockade that proved so important to the Union war effort. Had John Erickson, the Swedish genius, not been working on the design for the monitor, a tremendous technological achievement that nobody else was even considering at the time, the outcome may have been entirely different as well. These kinds of counterfactuals are fun to think about, but of course, we really can only speculate on what may have happened had all of these variables not come together as they did. The ironclad Merri-Mac very much was a super weapon by the standards of the day, but the monitor was a super weapon in its own right that kept the balance of naval power tilted in the Union's favor. The result of it was that neither side at this point doubted the efficacy of iron ships, and that became the focus for both navies going forward. The Union immediately ordered a fleet of iron warships to be built, which would be referred to as monitors, now the name for a category of ships, even though they were modified, improved upon, and designed to be larger than Erickson's original design. Several of these ships would see combat during the Civil War. Erickson, now finally enjoying the admiration he felt had been unjustly denied him for decades, designed a new ship as well, which would also be built dubbed the Pisaic class of warships, equipped with the 15 inch guns he'd originally wanted to put on the monitor. The Confederacy too would continue to pursue an ironclad navy. Both sides knew that in the new age of iron warfare that they had just ushered in, building wooden ships was futile. The Merri-Mac and the monitor would hover around Hampton Roads for another month, but they would never again face close range of extended combat the way they did on March 9th. The test to that day was enough to show that such fighting was pointless. So they contented themselves with firing pointlessly at each other from a distance, neither ship willing to fully engage. But when the Union Navy entered Norfolk in May, the Merri-Mac was brought out to keep them at bay. But transport ships carrying troops to reinforce McClellan's Peninsula campaign were able to slide past the Merri-Mac and onto the James River. While the Confederate ship was occupied at the Union warships, they wanted to chase them, but their ship couldn't typically maneuver in shallow waters like the James River. But the pilots of the Merri-Mac thought it could. The ship was sitting high, much like it was at the end of the battle of the ironclads, and they assured the captain of the Merri-Mac, Commodore Josiah Tatnall at this point, that they could pursue the transport ships in the river without running aground. They were wrong. The Merri-Mac got stuck. Tatnall also received word that the Union forces in Norfolk had fled despite promises that they would stay for at least a week. When they realized that they were not going to be able to get the Merri-Mac free and knowing that the Union forces were closing in on them, Tatnall gave the order to set the ship on fire, preventing it from falling back into Union hands. Thus was the inglorious conclusion to the Confederacy's famous ironclad, having only been in service for a few short months. The monitor survived only a bit longer, but it saw its demise before the year's end as well. On the very last day of 1862, it was caught in a storm while it was moving south to participate in an attack on South Carolina's coast. To tackle the rough waters, it was going to have to make it through. The monitor was going to be towed by another ship, the sidewheel steamer, the USS Rhode Island. The sidewheeler pulled the monitor through the stormy waters. Since March, the new captain of the monitor had also caulked the gun turret with oakum as part of the repairs for its previous battle damage, which was a type of loose fiber that was used to hold wooden ships together. But this wasn't suitable for the new iron machines. As a result, the monitor was not as watertight as Erickson originally designed it to be as he never would have used oakum. As the storm raged while the monitor was being towed, water leaked into the ship. The two ships had agreed to use a red lantern signal to alert the Rhode Island if the monitor was in trouble, but in the storm, the Rhode Island couldn't see the monitor waving their lantern signaling that they were sinking. The Rhode Island kept plugging on through the storm, unaware of the disaster taking place behind them. Helpless, the crew of the monitor crammed together in the top of the ship. Paymaster Keeler was still among them, and he survived to write about the terror, quote. Words cannot depict the agony of the moments as our little company gathered at the top of the turret, stood with a mass of sinking iron beneath them, gazing through the dim light over the raging waters. For some evidence of succor, from the only source we could look to for relief, seconds lengthened into hours and minutes into years, end quote. Eventually, the skies cleared enough that the Rhode Island was able to see what was happening, but it was too late to save the beloved vessel they were towing. The most they could do was try to rescue as many of the minutes they could, including Paymaster Keeler, which is why he lived to describe the experience. Others were not so lucky. In 1973, the monitor was located 240 feet below the waters of Cape Hatteras Inlet off the coast of South Carolina. Three decades later, in 2002, the ship was recovered and placed in the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia. When the recovered gun turret was examined, skeletal remains from the unfortunate men who were not rescued were still inside. The war on the waters will continue over the course of the war, and we will, of course, return to it many times, but even before the Battle of the Ironclads took place, Ulysses S. Grant was earning his fame in the West by capturing Fort Henry and Donaldson in Tennessee. The emergence of Grant in these battles will be the subject of the upcoming episodes. Historical Controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. 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