One other event of importance remains to be recorded in this chapter. When the Confederates seized upon the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, opposite Norfolk, Virginia, the Federal forces there destroyed all they could of valuable materials and adjuncts of war. But there was left a ship, the _Merrimac_, burned in part and sunk. The Confederates raised this ship, cut her down and armored her with railroad iron. She was the first iron-clad ship that ever assailed other ships, the pioneer of all modern naval armaments. At the same time Captain John Ericsson at the North was experimenting upon somewhat similar lines and producing the _Monitor_, the first iron-clad, turreted ship ever built. On the eighth of March the Confederate iron-clad ram the _Merrimac_--or the _Virginia_ as the Confederates had newly named her--steamed out into Hampton Roads and promptly destroyed two United States ships of war, the _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_. Her performance created the greatest consternation. It was obvious that no wooden ship could live in conflict with such a craft as this. With such guns as were then in use her sides were impenetrable by shot or shell. With her steel nose it was easily possible for her to ram and sink any ship of any type then in use without danger to herself. It was the plan of the Confederates to have this ironclad destroy the wooden fleet in Hampton Roads, as it was obviously and easily possible for it to do, proceed at once to New York and work havoc there, and then steam south to raise the blockade by sinking, one after another, the wooden ships of the blockading fleet. But just after the _Virginia's_ first success was achieved, there steamed into Hampton Roads Captain Ericsson's iron-clad, turreted ship, the _Monitor_. The next day these two armored vessels tried conclusions with each other. At the end of the fight the _Virginia_ retired to Portsmouth damaged and discredited. The _Monitor_ had proved to be more than her match, and while it had not succeeded in destroying her it had demonstrated its own superiority as a marine fighting machine. More important still was the fact that while the South had no shipyards in which new and improved _Virginias_ could be built, the North was abundantly able to reproduce the _Monitor_ in other ships of like kind without number or limit and to better her type and construction in the light of experience. This conflict is historically interesting as the birth scene of modern naval armaments. It was the first direct conflict of armored ships. It was the first instance in history in which ironclad met ironclad. It marked the dawn of a new era in naval construction, the natal day of all modern navies. It was the beginning from which have sprung the battleship, the armored cruiser, the protected cruiser, the gunboat and the torpedo-boat destroyer, as we know them now.