Three Union answers to Confederate ironclads

USS New Ironsides, USS Monitor, and USS Galena represented three different Union approaches to armoured warfare during the American Civil War. Galena's vibrating-lever machinery sat exposed outside the protected hull, leaving a vital system vulnerable to gunfire. Monitor was a low-freeboard, single-turret vessel suited to sheltered coastal waters. New Ironsides was a larger, more conventional ironclad frigate with better seakeeping. The Union ordered her in response to CSS Virginia, but the two ships never fought, which helped leave New Ironsides outside the best-known version of the story. A meeting between the larger ironclads would probably have involved ramming as well as gunfire.