John Luke Porter

John Luke Porter. Wooden ships became helpless shortly before noon on March 8, 1862 when the CSS Virginia, the world's first steam-driven iron-clad vessel to be used in warfare, floated out to do battle against them. The next day the Northern ship USS Monitor arrived for the record-setting "Battle of the Iron-clads" which was fought to a draw., The inventor of the CSS Virginia, Confederate Naval Constructor John Luke Porter had originally come up with an iron-clad design in the late 1840's but had been turned down. Then the war began in 1861, and Porter found that Stephen R. Mallory, confederate Naval Secretary, was receptive to his old brain-child. To save time and money, the frame for the CSS Virginia was made from the partially burned frigate Merrimack, one of the vessels damaged during the destruction of the Navy Yard by the Federal Authorities when they had departed in 1861., Porter became the Chief Naval Constructor in the Confederate States Navy and served in that position until the end of the war. He designed most of the iron-clads built in the south, as well as several seagoing iron-clads which the Confederate government had contracted to have built in England and France but which were stopped by those governments.