ironclads

ironclads, the early name for warships built of iron, or whose wooden hulls were protected by iron plates. The name was adopted as a generic description for such warships in warfare at sea after the action at Sinope in 1853 in which a Turkish squadron of wooden ships was set on fire and destroyed by Russian shellfire. It was this event which influenced all navies in the world to adopt iron as the main shipbuilding material. The world's first true ironclad warship was the French frigate Gloire, launched in 1859, but the British soon outbuilt her with HMS Warrior. In the following decades many ironclads were built with a ram. The first battle between ironclads took place during the American Civil War (1861–5) between the USS Monitor, which subsequently gave its name to the monitor type of warship, and the Confederate warship CSS Virginia (previously the USS Merrimac). The name continued as a generic description of iron or steel warships until 1906 when it was replaced by the term Dreadnought, the precursor of the modern battleship.