by RockyMountainNavy, 12 March 2025
One of the earliest wargames I owned was the classic Wooden Ships & Iron Men designed by S. Craig Taylor and first published in 1974 by Battleline. My copy was the Avalon Hill 1981 second edition and it really fed my early appetite for naval wargames. At that time, however, I was also a big fan of Yaquinto Publishing given my first-ever wargame, Panzer by Jim Day, was published by them in 1979. So it was really not surprising that I ended up with a copy of The Ironclads: A Tactical level game of Naval Combat in the American Civil War, 1861-1865 designed by John W. Fuseler which was published by Yaquinto in 1979. As is obligatory, one must play the Battle of Hampton Roads scenario where USS Monitor meets CSS Virginia.
Having spent my early childhood growing up in Maryland, which is/is not of the American South, one of the earliest challenges I faced in understanding this battle was getting the names of the combatants right. When I was in early grade school we were taught about “Monitor vs. Merrimack.” That is correct but not correct. Once again, let us look to Helmut Pemsel’s A History of War at Sea to get a top-level view of the battle:
8 and 9 March 1862: Action in Chesapeake Bay. The South has converted the steam frigate [USS] Merrimack to an armoured ship in Norfolk docks, and re-named her [CSS] Virginia. On 8 March, she steams into Hampton Roads to attack the Northern blockade ships there. In a violent action, Virginia destroys the frigate Congress and the corvette Cumberland. Virginia is only lightly damaged. That same evening, the Federal states’ new armoured ship, Monitor arrives at Hampton Roads and, on 9 March, the first battle between armoured ships takes place. But the armour plate defeats the artillery; an attempted ramming by Virginia fails and, after 2 hours, the fight ends in a draw. (Pemsel, p. 91)
As deduced from Pemsel’s account of the battle, the Battle of Hampton Roads was actually fought in two parts. The first part of the battle was the attack on 8 March by the ironclad Virginia against the wooden sailing ships of the Union blockade force. Here Virginia was the clear victor with several blockading ship sunk or damaged. That night, however, the Union’s ironclad, Monitor, arrived and took up the battle the next day (9 March). That fight was to be a tactical draw.
William C. Davis in Duel Between the First Ironclads explains the outcome this way:
The battle was a curious one, bringing different results on different planes. In terms of the immediate missions of the two ships, it was an unqualified success for the Monitor. She had been ordered to protect the Minnesota, and protect her Worden did. The Virginia’s object was the destruction of that frigate and any other Federal warships she could engage. In this she failed.
…
From a tactical vantage point, assessing the fighting itself, the verdict appears different. The Virginia left the fight in almost exactly the same condition as when she entered it. Aside from some cracked plates and the leak in her bow, she was relatively uninjured, and reported no casualties other than a few walking wounded… . As for the Monitor, however, she took serious, though hardly incapacitating, damage in a vital spot, the pilothouse, and ended the fight with her captain badly wounded… . Clearly, in terms of damage done, the Virginia emerged slightly the victor. (Davis, p. 136)
Playing out the Battle of Hampton Roads in a wargame like The Ironclads one can usually replicate the historical outcome. On the first day Virginia will likely run amok amongst the blockading squadron; the biggest threat to the player controlling Virginia is perhaps to watch out for the shallows and not accidentally run aground. On the second day of the battle, if playing with rules that replicate the historical conditions, Virginia will likely discover, as Monitor did, that ironclad sides are proof against the artillery of the day. I recall when playing The Ironclads that a clear victory for one side or the other was only really possible if the historical situation was changed in some favorable but non-historic manner. In some ways the game was frustrating; how could it not produce a clearly superior victor?
What players seem to miss by playing a “Tactical level game of Naval Combat in the American Civil War” is that the most impactful outcome of the Battle of Hampton Roads was not tactical. Turning to Davis again:
As for how the battle of the two iron monsters influenced the broad strategic picture in Virginia, for the moment it seemed a draw. The Federals still controlled Hampton Roads; the Confederates still held securely to the James, Nansemond, and Elizabeth, and with the last, Norfolk. So long as the two ironclads remained afloat, the Monitor and her sister vessels stood no better chance of taking Norfolk by water and regaining the navy yard then did the Virginia and her consorts of escaping Hampton Roads to the Chesapeake to break the blockade.
But it was a draw whose real effects would be far-reaching, particularly for the Federal strategy in the months to come, and even more so for a world in which naval warfare would never be the same again. (Davis, pp. 136-137)
No better description of the impact of the Battle of Hampton Roads on naval warfare exists than the response of the Royal Navy upon hearing of the battle. As reported in the London Times: “Whereas we had available for immediate purposes one-hundred and forty-nine first-class war-ships, we have now two, those two being the Warrior and her sister Ironside” (Davis, p. 140).
James L. Nelson, author of Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack summarizes the outcome this way:
Each ship taught the world a unique and valuable lesson. Virginia, in her first day of battle, proved conclusively that wooden vessels were obsolete in the presence of an ironclad man-of-war. Monitor proved that an ironclad could fight an ironclad, and if she did not actually beat Virginia, she showed that with the right combination of armor and guns it could be done. More importantly, she showed that the new technology required an entirely new way of thinking about ship design. The old man-of-war paradigm, with high sides and guns arranged to fire in broadside, such as Virginia still sported, would soon be as antiquated as the wooden walls. (Nelson, p. 2)
To explore the implications of the rise of iron ships, Yaquinto thoughtfully (purposefully?) published in 1980 The Ironclads: Expansion Kit which covered naval warfare—at a tactical level—from the period of 1860-1867. My favorite scenarios were, of course, to play an alternate history where Union ironclads took on the iron hulls of the Royal Navy.
Davis in Duel of the Ironclads also points out another impact of the Battle of Hampton Roads; one that is rarely wargamed perhaps because it is too hard to express in game terms. Davis writes that in the battle between Monitor and Virginia: “The one combined the very latest in naval invention and technology. The other, formerly USS Merrimack, showed what ingenuity could do to correct for poor resources” (Davis, front dust jacket). There are almost certainly wargame practitioners of today who very much would like to explore that same phenomenon as it applies to new technology for the current battlefield or the near-tomorrow. Perhaps a review of the historical record on the development of both Monitor and Virginia may reveal some applicable insights.
Sources Consulted
- Davis, William C. (1975, 1994) Duel Between the First Ironclads. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books.
- Nelson, James L. (2004) Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack. New York: William Morrow.
- Pemsel, Helmut (1975) A History of War at Sea: An atlas and chronology of conflict at sea from the earliest times to the present. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
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