The Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia attacked Union warships at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in March 1862. USS Cumberland continued firing until Virginia's ram tore open its hull, causing the wooden ship to sink with many crew members still fighting. The battle demonstrated the vulnerability of traditional sailing warships to ironclads.

Longfellow commemorated the doomed vessel in The Cumberland, emphasising refusal to surrender even as the ship went down. The poem preserved an older heroic ideal at the very moment naval technology was making the wooden warship obsolete.