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USS New Ironsides. By William H. Roberts. (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1999. Pp. xiii, i88. $21.00.) .
She was an ugly ship. Judged against her contemporaries, even the recently built steam frigates such as Wabash and Merrimac she stood out for her flat hull and plumb stem. Despite her name, USS New Ironsides bore little resemblance to her elegant ancestor.
New Ironsides slid into the water at the Cramp yard in Philadelphia on May to, 1862. Barely two months before the world had witnessed the first battle between ironclads at Hampton Roads; New Ironsides, however, was not like her curiously shaped ironclad cousins, Monitor and Merrimac. She was built along the lines of the French ironclad Gloire, that is, she was a seagoing vessel with her armament mounted broadside.
Design and construction of New Ironsides proved a considerable challenge.
With few precedents to rely on, and urgent demands to get her finished, the Cramp yard rushed to launch. As soon...