Itself, rejecting its traditional commerce-raiding mission for a strategy based on fleet actions by armored capital ships. Following Mahan's precepts, the navy reinvented The writings of the American naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, which argued for the primacy of capital ships and were accepted worldwide, accelerated the navy's growth. Initially introduced in small numbers, these armored warships grew in number as the United States began expanding its international presence. Armor, for example, evolved from iron plates to compound plates of iron and steel fused together to new steel alloys to steel plates tempered by the Harvey and Krupps processes. These vessels reflected the substantial changes in naval technology introduced in Europe since the Civil War: breechloading steel cannon, steel hulls, more powerful engines, and stronger armor. Monitors remained the navy's only armored vessels until the late 1880s, when more modern battleships and armored cruisers were authorized and began joining the fleet. The period of naval retrenchment that followed the Civil War saw little innovation in the United States. Both sides employed several different armor schemes, depending on application, including thick wooden enclosures, cotton bales, sheets of tin on a wooden backing, layers of iron bolted to reinforced wooden hulls and superstructures, and laminated iron armor. The Confederate navy, whose paucity of industrial facilities limited experimentation, used fewer and simpler designs for the same purposes. The Union navy, although generally associated with monitors, the low-freeboard, large-gun, turreted ironclads that captured the public's imagination during the war, contained a variety of designs suited for both riverine and coastal operations. Navy during the Civil War, where they made their combat debut. ARMORED SHIPS, first developed in Europe by the French and British navies, entered the U.S.
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