In drizzling rain, John Ericsson's new ironclad was lauched at ten in the morning in Greenpoint, New York. The U.S. Navy needed to counter the reported conversion of the Confederate's Merrimack into an ironclad and Ericsson won the contract with a controversial design. The keel was laid on October 28, 1861. The first sea-going U.S. Navy vessel built from scratch as an ironclad, she was finished in a remarkable three months and five days and turned over to the Navy on February 19, 1862. She famously saw action on March 9, 1862. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Bruce Linder, Tidewater's Navy: an illustrated history (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Navy Institute Press, 2005), 72.
Frank Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, Etc. (New York: G.P.Putnam, 1862), IV: 57.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Science/Technology