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Monitor and Merrimack

(Encyclopedia)Monitor and Merrimack, two American warships that fought the first engagement between ironclad ships. When, at the beginning of the Civil War, the Union forces abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard at Ports...

Merrimack, ship

(Encyclopedia)Merrimack: see Monitor and Merrimack. ...

Virginia, ship

(Encyclopedia)Virginia, Confederate name for the ironclad Merrimack. See Monitor and Merrimack. ...

Worden, John Lorimer

(Encyclopedia)Worden, John Lorimer wûrˈdən [key], 1818–97, American naval officer, b. Westchester co., N.Y. Appointed midshipman in 1834, he saw varied service before the Civil War. Worden was captured (Apr., ...

ironclad

(Encyclopedia)ironclad, mid-19th-century wooden warship protected from gunfire by iron armor. The success of the ironclad when first employed by the French in the Crimean War sparked a naval armor and armaments rac...

monitor, type of warship

(Encyclopedia)monitor, type of turreted warship (no longer used) carrying heavy guns, having little draft, and lying low in the water. Monitors were so called from the first of the class, the Monitor, built for the...

monitor, in zoology

(Encyclopedia)monitor, any of various, mostly tropical lizards. A monitor lizard has a heavy body, long head and neck, long tail that comes to a whiplike end, and strong legs with sharp claws. Its slender, forked t...

National Marine Sanctuary Program

(Encyclopedia)National Marine Sanctuary Program, federally owned marine and Great Lakes reserves, administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The program consists of 13 marine sanctu...

Buchanan, Franklin

(Encyclopedia)Buchanan, Franklin byo͞okăˈnən [key], 1800–1874, American naval officer, b. Baltimore. Appointed a midshipman in 1815, Buchanan rose to be a commander in 1841. He was chief adviser to Secretary ...

Newport News

(Encyclopedia)Newport News, independent city (1990 pop. 170,045), SE Va., on the Virginia peninsula, at the mouth of the James River, off Hampton Roads, near Norfolk; inc. 1896. It is a port for transatlantic and i...