Definition of "ironclads" [ironclads]

• Plural form of ironclad. (noun)

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• "While this was being done, he observed that another smack -- one of the so-called "ironclads" -- was sailing so as to cross the bows of his vessel."
• "There were besides these a few other so-called ironclads near the city; but they took no part in the fight in the bay, and little, if any, in the operations before the fall of"
• "NEW YORK — For more than a century, tens of thousands worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, building some of the nation's most storied warships – sailing frigates, Civil War ironclads, gunboats, sloops and 20th-century warships and submarines."