FIVE FLAGS: The Warship That Reshaped The World

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Details the history of the ironclad warship, Stonewall. Its career spanned high politics and secret diplomacy, arms dealers and royal courts, spies, sailors, and samurai across three continents. Details how it was originally made by Napoleon III for the Confederacy, but then sold to Denmark and then smuggled to Prussia. The Stonewall reached Cuba in May 1865, too late to change the Civil War, before being sold to the Queen of Spain, and a handover to a newly reunited America. Further discusses the Stonewall's service to the Japanese that would set them on a path of modernization, industrialization, and expansion that would end in World War II.