Ironclad Battleships Essay

I.5.2 Ironclad Battleships

‘The Napoleon’, commissioned by France in 1850, was the first steam-powered battleship in the world. The first ironclad battleship ‘La Glorie’ was launched by the French Navy in 1859. The British Royal Navy developed its ironclad battleships 'Black Prince' and ‘Warrior’ in 1861 and 1862. Ironclad ships were first utilized in the Crimean War and it transpired that they were formidable adversaries for traditional wooden warships of that time.

With the beginning of civil war in America both the belligerent sides developed a steam-powered ironclad warships – ‘CSS Virginia’ by Confederate States Navy, and ‘USS Monitor’ by the United States Navy. These two ironclad warships, supported by a fleet of wooden ships, fought a fierce battle near Virginia in 8-9 March 1861. A few wooden warships of both the sides were destroyed, but the ironclad warships survived opponents attacks and the result of the battle remained indecisive. While ‘Virginia’ was scuttled by the Confederates on May 1862, the ‘Monitor’ was lost at sea in December 1862.

I.5.3 Submarine Boats

During the

He photographed a Paris street scene from his apartment window using a camera obscura and his invented daguerreotype process. The same year, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), an Englishman developed a photographic process that produced paper negatives and prints. During the next twenty years, much before the civil war, photography was developed to a great extent in Europe and America. In 1847, during the Mexican -American War few daguerreotypes were taken of army officials and troop movements. The British Government, during the Crimean War, sent several photographers to document the war. Only one of them, Roger Fenton (1819-1869), could take some 350 images, but were mainly