Matt's Model Boats

USS Keokuk , propelled by twin screws and armed with two 11-inch Dahlgren guns as well as a ram, was an ironclad that served in the United States Navy during the War of the Great Rebellion.   The steam battery was assigned to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron and was ordered to buoy the Charleston bar on the 6th of April, 1863, by Rear-admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont. USS Bibb , a United States Coastal Survey vessel, assisted the ironclad while two  monitors of the Passaic class  guarded the buoys during the night.  USS Keokuk joined  USS New Ironsides and seven Passaic-class monitors during the first bombardment of Fort Sumter on the 7th of April, 1863, but withdrew after its hull was perforated by Confederate shot. The First Battle of Charleston Harbor, as the bombardment is also known, caused some interested parties to question the effectiveness of iron-plated warships. Lieutenant-Commander Alexander Colden Rhind, who commanded  USS Keokuk  during the battle, lost faith in ironc

Six Pará-class river monitors were built for the Imperial Brazilian Navy during the Paraguayan War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, and participated in several key operations during the conflict. These fighting vessels, like the ten Passaic-class monitors that were constructed for the United States Navy, were built to the same general plan. Thompson, on page 246 of The War in Paraguay , explains that the monitors were built in Rio de Janeiro and that they were propelled by twin screws. The iron plates that protected the hull, Thompson continues, had a depth of 4-inches while the armour protection that surrounded the turret was 6-inches in thickness. Richard Burton, writing in Letter XVII of Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay , claims that the iron plates that sheathed the monitors were pitted by the blows of solid shot. Afonso Celso de Assis Figueiredo, Viscount of Ouro Preto and author of A Marinha D'Outr'Ora , provides details about the construction of

Silvado was a monitor of the Imperial Brazilian Navy, serving during the reign of Pedro II, that played an important role in the Paraguayan War. Pedro II, the last reigning monarch of Brazil, modernized his navy by replacing its wooden sailing vessels with steamships that were propelled by paddle-wheels or screws. It would be necessary, also, to arm these modern fighting vessels with the latest weapons while the emergence of the ironclad raised the prospect of warships that were impervious to the blows of enemy artillery. Ironclads, which received their baptism of fire during the Crimean War, represented the pinnacle of naval technology in the middle of the nineteenth-century and were named after the thick plates of wrought iron that protected their hulls from explosive shells and solid shot. Rising tensions in South America persuaded the Brazilian government to equip the navy with protected fighting vessels, whether constructed at the naval arsenal at Rio de Janeiro or purchased from

Passaic-class monitors, designed by John Ericsson, were single-turreted warships that served in the Union Navy during the American Civil War. The new class of ironclad represented an improvement to the design of USS Monitor , invented by Ericsson, and there are a variety of written sources of information about the technical details of these ships as well as their service histories. John Johnson, author of The Defense of Charleston Harbor , explains that the thickness of iron that protected the turret was increased from 8 inches to 11-inches and that the the pilothouse was moved from the foredeck to the top of the turret. Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships , covering the years from 1860 until 1905, claims that the length of the monitors was 200-feet and that the beam was 46-feet. Monitors of the U.S. Navy, written by Richard H. Webber and spanning the era from 1861 until 1937, explains that ships of this class were equipped with two vibrating lever engines and a pair of Ma