Las Animas - Bent County Library District

You are living through a pivotal time in the history of the United States. The North and the South are waging a bloody civil war. The North and the South are waging a bloody civil war. The heaviest fighting is on the ground. But the battle goes on at sea as well. Both sides are at work on secret naval weapons -- ironclad ships. You will need all of your wits to survive the coming battle.

Swedish-born engineer and inventor Captain John Ericsson was ahead of his time. His sleek fire engine could shoot gallons of water as high as ninety feet. His steam locomotive could fly down the tracks at the unheard of speed of thirty miles per hour. But was such a quantity of water necessary? Was such speed advisable? Neither the starched lords of the British Admiralty nor the snooty London Fire Brigade were ready for his strange and wonderful inventions....

Recounts the construction, battles, and historical impact of the Civil War battleships, the Monitor and the Virginia, known to Union forces as the Monitor and the Merrimack, focusing on the Battle of Hampton Roads.

"The Monitor Chronicles brings shipboard experience to life through the words of Civil War sailor George S. Geer, whose never-before-published letters home to his beloved wife, Martha, faithfully chronicle the events of that dramatic year. Like many men of his station, George S. Geer had joined Abraham Lincoln's navy less to help save the Union than to earn money and learn a reliable trade, so his accounts are unflinchingly honest - at times colored...