<BR>When his father is killed fighting for the Union in the War Between the States, thirteen-year-old Tom Carroll must take a job to help support his family.&nbsp;He manages to find work at a bustling ironworks in his hometown of Brooklyn, New York, where dozens of men are frantically pounding together the strangest ship&nbsp;Tom has ever seen.&nbsp; A ship made of <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">iron</I>. <BR><BR>Tom becomes assistant to the ship's inventor, a gruff, boastful man named Captain&nbsp;John Ericsson.&nbsp;He soon learns that the Union army has&nbsp;very important&nbsp;plans for this iron&nbsp;ship called the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Monitor</I>. It is supposed to fight the Confederate “sea monster”--another ironclad--the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Merrimac</I>. But Ericsson is practically the only person who believes the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Monitor</I> will float.&nbsp;Everyone else calls it “Ericsson's Folly” or “the iron coffin.” <BR><BR>Meanwhile,&nbsp;Tom's position as Ericsson's assistant has made him a target of Confederate spies, who offer him money for information about the ship. Tom finds himself caught between two certain dangers: an encounter with murderous spies and a battle at sea in an iron coffin … <BR><BR><BR>&nbsp; <BR>