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Mariners Museum

America’s naval tradition is as old as America itself, and an amazing number of the ships that forged it are still afloat.

Something about ships accentuates the human experience, most obviously because of the breadth of activity that has taken place within such small spaces.

After a century and a half, the warship that changed the world is back

On March 9, 1862, a naval engagement near Chesapeake Bay in Virginia ended with no decisive victor and without claiming a single life. Yet no one has ever doubted that the bloodless fight changed naval warfare forever. Now, only a few miles from the broad channel where the battle took place, it is changing something else: the way present-day visitors experience Civil War history.

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