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Richmond, April 1865. "Battered smokestack from C.S.S. ironclad ram Virginia No. 2. Holes made by Federal batteries." Wet plate glass negative. View full size.
They don't lay bricks like that any more.
>> This is the stack from the famous duel of the ironclads known as the Monitor and the Merrimac.
Um, no. This was the stack of the CSS Virginia II (as the caption clearly states), an ironclad ram launched in June 1863 and commissioned May 1864. She was the lead ship of the James River Squadron and was severely damaged at the battle of Trent's Reach. Repairs were nearly completed when Richmond was evacuated and the ship destroyed by the retreating Confederates.
When I was in grade school the history books wouldn't even dignify the CSS Virginia by its name. They insisted on calling it the Merrimac. Which was the hull upon which the Ironclad Virginia was built.
This is the stack from the famous duel of the ironclads known as the Monitor and the Merrimac.
Look how ratty the middle guy's sack coat is!
I'm guessing that the Federal batteries were guns, or that a battery was a name for a gathering of soldiers with guns, or something like that, because if those holes were made by anything that people in 2009 would call a battery, look out!
It does indeed look battered.
And I can sort of see why the French call a drum a batterie.
You batter it to get a sound.
But then, how ever did the lead-acid or paste energy cell get called a battery?
["Battery" connotes multiplicity. Electrical storage devices started out as groupings or arrays of cells. A battery of cells, a battery of guns. - Dave]
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