“Like in the Eads Bridge? The one that connects St. Louis with East St. Louis, Illinois?”
“The same. And Eads is a river-salvage expert, an engineer who knows every twist and turn of the river. He gets a contract to build a flotilla of ironclads for the Union, heavily armed and shallow draft so they can operate up and down the river, steam right up all the other rivers and tributaries that flow into the Big Muddy.”
“So what are the Rebs doing to counter that? I know they had a Navy of some kind.”
“Yeah, but not much of one compared to the Union, which has got a lot of industrial might supporting their shipbuilding efforts. By mid-war, most of the bigger Confederate ships were down south or off the southeastern shore trying to run the Union blockades. The Rebs understood they likely coul
