The News from Newport News

expedition, had returned with supplies. But I prefer a more likely theory, that one William Newce, a knighted Irishman, arrived shortly after the 1607 settlement and established a seaport that came to be known as New Port Newce. It was just off this point of land, two-and-a-half centuries later, that two ungainly ironclad warships, the U.S.S. Monitor and C.S.S. Virginia (nee U.S.S. Merrimack) battled to a draw on a fog-shrouded morning in March 1862, marking the beginning of the end of wooden fighting ships. Every time I pass this way I think of that battle, and how so many naval ships, “ironclads” all, are now built just over there, on that near shore, practically within hailing distance; Also not far from here, perhaps the distance of a cannonball’s flight, are the hoary remains of the Monitor itself, resting in a world-class museum. I’m traveling by sailboat—my Tartan