This Civil War story centers on the events leading up to the fateful battle between the two ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimac. When a Union Naval officer sinks rather than burning the Merrimac and it falls into Confederate hands, he is discharged from the Navy. Later, he is reinstated and made a member of the crew for the USS Monitor, which is assigned the task of hunting down and destroying the re-commissioned Merrimac, now the CSS Virginia. Aboard the Confederate vessel is the brother of the Union officer's fiancee and this confrontation has tragic results for one of these two men.