The Atlantic Theater

When the war began, the U.S. Navy’s blockade fleet consisted of about three dozen ships to patrol more than 3,500 miles of southern coastline, and rebel merchant ships were able to slip in and out of southern ports nearly at will. Taking on cargoes in the Caribbean, sleek Confederate blockade runners brought in vital supplies—guns and medicine. But with the U.S. Navy commissioning a new blockader almost weekly, the naval fleet eventually numbered 150 ships on duty, and the Union navy dramatically improved its score.

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Unable to build a conventional navy equal to the expanding U.S. fleet, the Confederates experimented with a radical new maritime design: the ironclad warship. At Norfolk, Virginia, the wooden hull of the Merrimack was layered with two-inch-thick armor plate. Rechristened Virginia, the ship steamed out in March 1862 and sank two wooden federal ships (see Map 15.2). When the Virginia returned to finish off the federal blockaders the next morning, it was challenged by the Monitor, a federal ironclad of even more radical design, topped with a revolving turret holding two eleven-inch guns. On March 9, the two ships hurled shells at each other for two hours, but the battle ended in a draw.

The Confederacy never found a way to break the Union blockade despite exploring many naval innovations, including a new underwater vessel—the submarine. By 1865, the blockaders were intercepting about half of the southern ships attempting to break through. The Union navy, a southern naval officer observed, “shut the Confederacy out from the world, deprived it of supplies, weakened its military and naval strength.” The Confederacy was sealed off, with devastating results.

Major Battles of the Civil War, 1861–1862

April 12–13, 1861 Attack on Fort Sumter
July 21, 1861 First battle of Bull Run (Manassas)
February 6, 1862 Battle of Fort Henry
February 16, 1862 Battle of Fort Donelson
March 6–8, 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge
March 9, 1862 Battle of the Merrimack (the Virginia) and the Monitor
March 26, 1862 Battle of Glorieta Pass
April 6–7, 1862 Battle of Shiloh
May–July 1862 McClellan’s peninsula campaign
June 6, 1862 Fall of Memphis
June 25–July 1, 1862 Seven Days Battle
August 29–30, 1862 Second battle of Bull Run (Manassas)
September 17, 1862 Battle of Antietam
December 13, 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg