On January 22, 1883 the New York Times lamented: It is a mockery of science and human skill that a ship so well-appointed and furnished with all the modern appliances, that the Cimbria should be run down and sunk, with nearly all on board.” Before the Titanic, there was the Cimbria, and the victims of the Cimbria disaster deserve to be remembered.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.