Howard J. Fuller takes a unique international look at the naval history of the Civil War. He argues that British naval power represented a far more serious threat than the Confederate Navy to the success of the Union blockade, the safety of Yankee merchant shipping, and operations against the South.

Combining extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, this work offers an in-depth look at how the Union Navy, through a combination of high-tech ironclads armed with monster guns, intensive coastal fortifications, and a new fleet of high-speed commerce raiders, achieved a stunning—and crucial—diplomatic victory over the British. Fuller addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the Union monitors were for and why they failed in some roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War.

Howard J. Fuller is Senior Lecturer of War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, U.K, the 2002-3 Fellow in U.S. Naval History through the Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Naval History. The hardcover edition of Clad in Iron was awarded Honorable Mention for the John Lyman Book Award in U.S. Naval History in 2008.

Praise for Clad in Iron:

"Greatly expands our understanding of how technology influences history."

–Craig Symonds, author of Lincoln and his Admirals

"Told with great scholarship and sophistication…in many ways a model of how this sort of history ought to be written."

—N.A.M. Rodger, author of Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649­-1815

"By placing the early ironclad fleets of Britain and America in their diplomatic context, Fuller provides an altogether more persuasive explanation of naval technology and the war of words between Admirals, engineers and politicians that swept both countries. A work of the first importance."

—Andrew Lambert author of The Gates of Hell: Sir John Franklin's Tragic Quest for the North West Passage