During the American Civil War, huge metal monsters roamed the Mississippi ... I created a database of 559 separate episodes where gunboats attacked a target, southerners shot at a federal boat ...

Peter Fix, an associate research scientist in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M, stands near pieces of a Revolutionary War gunboat on Tuesday, May 20, being rebuilt at the museum in Albany.

To reclaim the Mississippi River during the Civil War, the Lincoln Administration ... him a contract to build and equip for the navy seven gunboats in 63 days. Known as the city-class ironclads ...