USS Monitor Fights at Hampton Roads
Poet involved
What happened
USS Monitor fought CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 9 March 1862 in the first battle between ironclad warships. Neither vessel decisively defeated the other, but their engagement signalled a fundamental change in naval warfare. Monitor later sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras in December 1862.
Literary impact
Herman Melville examined the ironclad in poems including The Monitor and A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight. He treated its ungainly machinery as evidence that modern war had replaced picturesque heroism with impersonal industrial power.
Source: Wikipedia
