Iron Thunder

After his father is killed fighting for the Union, thirteen-year-old Tom Carroll takes a job at a Brooklyn ironworks to support his family. He quickly learns that they are building an iron-clad, "unsinkable" ship to be called the Monitor to finally sink the Confederates' "unsinkable" ship, the Merrimac. This is a brilliantly written description of a major sea battle through the eyes of a teenaged boy who both helped build the Monitor as well as fight on it.