On March 9, 1862, two unusual-looking iron-clad warships faced each other inbattle and changed naval warfare forever. When the American Civil War began, warships were still made of wood. Early in the war the Southern Confederates salvaged the sunken Union ship Merrimack, built an iron structure on the deck, and renamed her the CSS Virginia. When they were finished she was a brand new kind of warship-an ironclad. The Northern Union had also been secretly racing to build their own ironclad, the USS Monitor. The two ships were born almost simultaneously and met just one day after the unstoppable Virginia single-handedly destroyed two of the Union's mightiest wooden warships. By the time their historic showdown was through, the age of wooden warships was shattered forever.