Editing USS Monitor (section)

==Legacy==
{{See also|Monitor (warship)}}
''Monitor'' gave her name to a new type of [[mast (sailing)|mastless]], low-freeboard warship that mounted its armament in turrets. Many more were built, including [[river monitor]]s, and they played key roles in Civil War battles on the Mississippi and James Rivers. The [[breastwork monitor]] was developed during the 1860s by Sir [[Edward James Reed|Edward Reed]], [[Chief Constructor]] of the [[Royal Navy]], as an improvement of the basic Monitor design. Reed gave these ships a superstructure to increase seaworthiness and raise the freeboard of the gun turrets so they could be worked in all weathers. The superstructure was armored to protect the bases of the turrets, the funnels and the ventilator ducts in what he termed a [[breastwork (fortification)|breastwork]]. The ships were conceived as harbor defense ships with little need to leave port. Reed took advantage of the lack of masts and designed the ships with one twin-gun turret at each end of the superstructure, each able to turn and fire in a 270° arc.<ref>[[#Parkes|Parkes, 1990]], p. 166</ref> These ships were described by Admiral [[George Alexander Ballard]] as being like "full-armoured knights riding on donkeys, easy to avoid but bad to close with".<ref>[[#Ballard|Ballard, 1980]], p. 219</ref> Reed later developed the design into the {{sclass|Devastation|ironclad|4}}, the first ocean-going [[turret ship]]s without masts, the direct ancestors of the [[pre-dreadnought battleship]]s and the [[dreadnought]]s.<ref>[[#Chesneau|Chesneau & Kolesnik, 1979]], p. 23</ref>