On This Day In The American Civil War, 9th of March 1862 :: The first duel between ironclads ends in a draw. One of the two ships was ridiculed before the fight, but performed well. There is a lesson in that.

When a Confederate ironclad threatened to tear into the Union’s wooden blockading fleet John Erickson quickly came up with a response. They called the Swedish engineer’s invention ‘a tin can on a shingle’. The USS Monitor did not look impressive. Yet with only a small revolving turret there was not much to shoot at. The CSS Virginia by contrast looked like a huge armored crocodile. With plenty of surface to shoot at.

The result was sort of the same. Shots bounced off the slanted armored sides of the CSS Virginia and a lucky hit managed to blind the commander of the USS Monitor as he was observing the fight.
After hours of lobbing shells at each other the CSS Virginia tried to ram The Monitor, but when that failed as well, it withdrew to resupply.
The Union would build more monitors, the Confederacy would cannibalize some of its railroads to create more ironclads, which were often plagued by technical issues.

The lesson: a not so impressive weapon can counter a daunting weapon. Kinda like cheap drones versus very expensive tanks.