When the ironclad CSS Virginia first steamed down the Elizabeth River on 8 March 1862, she made for a scary sight: Here was a monstrous new kind of war machine, hard-shelled, heavily armed, a fleet-destroying futuristic-looking nightmare. After sinking two wooden U.S. Navy vessels and sounding the death-knell of the Age of Fighting Sail that day, the Virginia, of course, famously met her match on the 9th when the U.S. Navy’s own modernistic ironclad, the Monitor, showed up at Hampton Roads in the nick of time to stop the Virginia from getting past the James River environs. While their names remain forever intertwined in that turning-point moment, both the Monitor and Virginia were fated to be short-lived, the Monitor sinking in heavy seas—and the Virginia dying of self-inflicted wounds.
Rather than let their Civil War–era version of an advanced naval weapon system fall into the Yankees’ hands, the Confederates put the Virginia to the torch at Craney Island on 11 May 1862 as Union forces pushed toward Richmond. Thus ended a threat that had given officials in Washington a serious case of the shakes; before the Monitor made it to the rescue, the Rebels’ ironclad had appeared unstoppable. The relief when the Virginia was blown to bits had to have been profound—and who wouldn’t want a souvenir of that moment, a trophy from the beast that had terrified you? When the U.S. Revenue Cutter Miami anchored at Washington on 18 May, it indeed came bearing just such a gift for President Abraham Lincoln: the safety valve from the destroyed Virginia.
Another prominent Union figure who received a Virginia gift was none other than the esteemed inventor, civil engineer, and ship designer James Buchanan Eads (pictured at right). Presented to him by U.S. Attorney General Edward Bates, this stout oak walking cane was fashioned from Virginia timber recovered by the U.S. Navy two days after the ironclad’s demise. The relic, which at press time was going to auction at Woolley & Wallis in the U.K., sports an elegant gold top with a presentation inscription referring to the Virginia by her original name, in her earlier incarnation as the U.S. steam frigate Merrimack (spelled with the “k” dropped here, as often was the case).
Eads was a fitting recipient for such a memento, being quite the ironclad pioneer himself. In fact, it was Eads-built ironclads that were helping Union forces raise hell out in the Western theater, and among other things, they had been key to the U.S. forces’ capture of Fort Henry on the Tennessee—more than a month before the more famous Monitor-vs.-Virginia clash at Hampton Roads. Those two headline-grabbing titans may have gained more glory, but Eads’ ironclads were busy gaining something else—results.