WHRO explores battle of ironclads

It took a lot of searching the archives to illustrate the documentary, says Cynthia Pardy, who produced ''Civil War in Hampton Roads: Battle of the Ironclads.'' (Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot)

By larry bonko
The Virginian-Pilot

What I like best about WHRO's new documentary on the Civil War battles in Hampton Roads is the blow-by-blow account of the four-hour clash of the ironclads Monitor and Virginia on March 9, 1862.

Producer Cynthia Pardy took what could have been just another stodgy history lesson and turned it into something remarkable by using nifty special effects while applying sharp, crisp pacing to the scenes of the ironclads battling practically bow to bow.

She added an element of suspense: Which of the armorclads would prevail?

Pardy brings back to life the words of the participants who recalled shot bouncing off the ironclads "as if they were mere pebbles or peas from a pod."

"It took a lot of searching the archives to illustrate the documentary," Pardy said of "Civil War in Hampton Roads: Battle of the Ironclads," which premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday. It will be aired in high-definition, the station's first documentary in that format. (WHRO will televise it on Channel 15 as well as on its high-def channel.)

With precious few photographs available from the early 1860s, Pardy and her WHRO colleagues had to improvise in retelling the epic adventure that unfolded off Sewells Point. "We used illustrations and three-dimensional animation to re-create the battle at sea," she said.

Well done.

My second-favorite thing about "Civil War in Hampton Roads: Battle of the Ironclads" was learning of the colorful descriptions that were given to the Confederate ironclad Virginia (resurrected from the burned-out hull of the Union frigate Merrimack ) and the Union Army's Monitor. The Monitor, with its flat-as-a-pancake deck and single turret, was described as a cheese box on a raft.

"A peculiar little apparition," one Confederate officer called it. Another said it was the most peculiar craft he had ever seen.

The Virginia had been compared to "the roof of a very big barn belching forth smoke as if from a chimney on fire."

To another observer, the Virginia suggested a half-submerged crocodile.

In truth, the Virginia was a deadly floating battery that on March 8 demolished two wooden Union warships out on Hampton Roads - part of a Union blockade - and surely would have done much more the next day. Instead, the Monitor arrived that night, and the two warships fought each other for four hours the next day, iron against iron.

The two ships that fought to a draw on that fateful day in 1862 altered the course of naval warfare.

"They left in their wake a powerful legacy of ship design and heroic service which still guides naval operations today," says the narrator as the 60-minute program concludes.

The era of iron men in wooden ships gave way to the era of iron men in steel ships.

Sunday's special is the second of four Civil War documentaries planned by Channel 15 - an ambitious effort for a public television operation of limited resources, and a commitment to a focus on education with a local focus. This episode, Pardy said, carried a price tag of $90,000 to $95,000.

The first episode premiered in late 2005, with Pardy setting the stage for events to come by focusing on Hampton Roads' strategic importance to both sides in 1861. Next up: the Peninsula Campaign, most likely next year.

Historian John V. Quarstein, who hosted the 2005 program, "Civil War in Hampton Roads," also contributes to Sunday's documentary, reporting at times from near the famous moat at Fort Monroe in Hampton. He's the director of the Virginia War Museum in Newport News.

Pardy, borrowing a bit from the Ken Burns technique of mixing talking heads with vintage photographs, old maps and aging parchment, supplies a history lesson in "Civil War in Hampton Roads: Battle of the Ironclads" that is easy to digest - like a light dessert.

Watch. Be educated.

Who knew that the world's navies were building ironclads at a fast clip before the Confederate navy and Union forces got into the act? Who knew that the politicians in the 1860s, ignorant of the physics of displacement, feared that both iron-sheathed ships would sink upon launching?

Who knew that the sailors could be so heroic as to risk their lives aboard newfangled, uncomfortable, unwieldy, untested ships? Who knew that after the Virginia (commanded first by Franklin Buchanan and later by Catesby R. Jones) almost destroyed the Union's wooden blockade fleet in Hampton Roads, President Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet fell into a state of panic? They feared that the tide of war was changing in the South's favor.

The secretaries were calmed by word that help was on the way, in the form of that cheese box on a raft.

And as promised, there in the waters of Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862, was the Monitor, commanded by John L. Worden, firing upon the Virginia, opening a new era in naval warfare.

Pardy and her WHRO chums put the viewer right smack in the middle of all that.