Qualla: CSS Virginia

CSS Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fopseh, CC BY-SA 3.0. She was built from a corpse. When Union forces abandoned the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia, on April 20, 1861, they burned the steam frigate USS Merrimack to the waterline and sank her. The Confederates fished her out. Within ten days the wreck had been salvaged, towed into dry dock, and stripped to her undamaged lower hull and engines. What rose from that hull was something the world had never seen: a floating iron fortress, low in the water, bristling with ten heavy guns behind sloped armor plate. The Confederacy christened her CSS Virginia. On March 8, 1862, she steamed into Hampton Roads and single-handedly rewrote the rules of naval warfare, rendering every wooden warship on Earth obsolete in a single afternoon.

Read more: CSS Virginia on Qualla

Image: Fopseh | CC BY-SA 3.0

CSS Virginia: Resurrection in Dry Dock

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mwanner, Talk, CC BY-SA 3.0. The conversion was an act of desperation turned engineering marvel. Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory chose the sunken Merrimack because she was the only large vessel with intact engines available in the Chesapeake Bay area. Lieutenant John Mercer Brooke drew the ...

Read more: CSS Virginia on Qualla

Image: Mwanner | Talk | CC BY-SA 3.0

CSS Virginia: The Day Wooden Navies Died

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (Book authors)., Public domain. On March 8, 1862, Virginia steamed into Hampton Roads with workmen still aboard, accompanied by five support ships. Her first target was USS Cumberland, a wooden sailing warship. After a punishing cannon exchange, Virginia rammed Cumberland in her starboard bow. The impact tore a...

Read more: CSS Virginia on Qualla

Image: Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (Book authors). | Public domain

CSS Virginia: Iron Against Iron

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit W, Public domain. That night, the Union's answer arrived. USS Monitor, rushed down from the Brooklyn Navy Yard still incomplete, reached Hampton Roads by the light of the still-burning Congress. She was Virginia's opposite: small, nimble, with a single revolving gun turret and almost no freeboard ...

Read more: CSS Virginia on Qualla

Image: W | Public domain

CSS Virginia: No Harbor, No Escape

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexander C. Stuart, Public domain. Virginia spent April 1862 trying to lure Monitor into a rematch, but the Union vessel had orders not to re-engage. On April 11, Virginia and a Confederate squadron captured three merchant ships and hoisted their flags upside down to taunt the blockading fleet, but no Union ironcl...

Read more: CSS Virginia on Qualla

Image: Alexander C. Stuart | Public domain

CSS Virginia: Enough Iron for a Fleet

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kenneth Everett, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the war, salvage crews picked Virginia's bones clean. In 1867, Captain D.A. Underdown recovered 290,000 pounds of iron from the wreck site. In 1871, E.J. Griffith pulled up another 102,883 pounds. The remaining timbers were raised in 1876. Some of the iron was melted and re...

Read more: CSS Virginia on Qualla

Image: Kenneth Everett | CC BY-SA 3.0