Product Description

During the winter of 1861-62, Confederate engineers transformed an old wooden steam frigate, the USS Merrimac, into a steam-powered ironclad warship, the CSS Virginia, capable of withstanding the fire of any other warship afloat. Overnight the CSS Virginia had rendered the old wooden fleets obsolete. While similar developments were taking place concurrently in Europe, it was in Hampton Roads, Virginia, that the first clash between two ironclads would take place. The result was one of the strangest naval battles of all time - a well-matched clash between two technically different and revolutionary warships. This book details why the battle of Hampton Roads has been seen as one of the most important navel battles in history, ushering in a new age of naval warfare and warship design.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #464323 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Angus Konstam hails from the Orkney Islands and is the author of over 15 books, many of which are published by Osprey. His other maritime titles include Elite 67: Pirates 1660-1730, Elite 69: Buccaneers 1620-1700 and Elite 70: Elizabethan Sea Dogs 1560-1605. Formerly the Curator of Weapons in the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London, he also served as the Chief Curator of the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida. He is now based in London, where he combines a freelance museum consultancy business with a career as a historian and writer. Adam Hook studied graphic design at art college and began his illustrating career in 1983. He has worked with a variety of educational publishers covering various subjects within the fields of history and natural history. For Osprey he has illustrated numerous Campaign and Warrior titles. Adam lives and works in Sussex, UK.

Customer Reviews

A really great book about a really great naval fight!
Well, even if the quality level in Osprey Campaign series dropped somehow this last time, some of the titles are still of great quality. And this is one of them. Osprey Campaign titles frequently reach the highest quality when describing smaller battles (good examples are Rorke's Drift, Monongahela and Alamo) and here this rule is confirmed again - this book, which is excellent, describes a battle fought in fact by only six ships: USS "Monitor", USS "Cumberland", USS "Congress", USS "Minnesota" and USS "Roanoke" on the Union side and CSS "Virginia" on the Confederation side. And what a fight it was! The horrible fate of valiant USS "Cumberland" and USS "Congress" and their gallant crews is very well described, the tactically inconclusive but strategically decisive fight between "Monitor" and "Virginia" is also well pictured and as a whole this book is very well written and well edited. Maps are very good, illustrations are good and colour plates are really not bad (I regret a little that the ramming of USS "Cumberland" was not chosen to be the topic of one of them, but after all it is a question of personal taste). All in all this is a great title and another success of Angus Konstam as Osprey author.