On January 30, 1862, amid the chaos of the American Civil War, a revolutionary vessel slid into the East River at the Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York. The USS Monitor, the Union Navy's first true ironclad warship, was launched to the cheers of a skeptical crowd—many of whom had wagered it would sink immediately under its own weight. Designer John Ericsson stood defiantly on the deck as the low, armored "cheesebox on a raft" floated perfectly, proving the doubters wrong a