Question: What is the name of the iron-plated gunboat proposed by a Texas inventor during the Civil War?
Answer: The Sea King. Designed by mapmaker Robert Creuzbaur, the wood and iron vessel was to be equipped with a “submarine cannon” that would wreak havoc on the Union fleet and break its blockade. Despite an appropriation of $500 by the Texas House to build the Sea King, plans to do so were eventually scrapped after the historic 1862 conflict between the Confederacy’s Merrimack and the Union’s Monitor—the first battle between ironclad warships.
