when were ironclads first used in the civil war
Ironclad warship On 12 October 1861, the CSS Manassas became the first ironclad to enter combat, when she fought Union warships on the Mississippi during the Battle of the Head of Passes. She had been converted from a commercial vessel in New Orleans for river and coastal fighting. In February 1862, the larger CSS Virginia joined the Confederate Navy, having been rebuilt at Norfolk. Constructed on the hull of USS Merrimack, Virginia originally was a conventional warship made of wood, but she was converted into an iron-covered casemate ironclad gunship, when she entered the Confederate navy. By this time, the Union had completed seven ironclad gunboats of the City class, and was about to complete the USS Monitor, an innovative design proposed by the Swedish inventor John Ericsson. The Union was also building a large armored frigate, the USS New Ironsides, and the smaller USS Galena.[22]
Bolt action The first bolt-action rifle was produced in 1824 by Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse, following work on breechloading rifles that dated to the 18th century. Von Dreyse would perfect his Nadelgewehr (Needle Rifle) by 1836, and it was adopted by the Prussian Army in 1841. However, it was not the first bolt-action weapon to see combat, for it was not fielded until 1864.[1] The United States purchased 900 Greene rifles (an under-hammer, percussion-capped, single-shot bolt action that utilized paper cartridges and an ogivial-bore rifling system) in 1857, which saw service at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, during the American Civil War;[2] however, this weapon was ultimately considered too complicated for issue to soldiers, and was supplanted by the Springfield Model 1861, a conventional muzzle-loading rifle. During the American Civil War, the bolt-action Palmer carbine was patented in 1863, and by 1865, 1000 were purchased for use as cavalry weapons. The French Army adopted its first bolt-action rifle, the Chassepot rifle, in 1866 and followed with the metallic-cartridge bolt-action Gras rifle in 1874.