This is a novel based on historical fact about the Civil War battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac. The main character is a young boy named Tom who has lost his father in the war. His family needs money badly so he goes to work at the ship yard that is constructing the Monitor.
Complicating his life is a Confederate spy who acts like he wants to make friend with Tom and offers him money for information on the Monitor. That situation gets worse until, later in the book, it erupts into violence.
Most of the book is about the work Tom was involved in, including the construction of the Monitor, people's opinions about the ship before it sailed (the opinions were almost all negative), the trial cruise, various problems the ship encountered, and then the actual battle with the Merrimac. It's all done in a very realistic and very interesting manner; it's no boring straight academic-type recounting but a telling of something well enough that you can picture the events as they are described.
A really good book.
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