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The new
steel ships now carried rifled, breach-loading artillery. What their
muzzle-loading predecessors had inflicted upon human flesh and bone had
already been demonstrated. Traumatic amputations, penetrating fragment
wounds, and horrific burns had become commonplace during that war. In the
age of the all-steel, all steam Navy, these injuries would increase
exponentially as would new kinds of injuries merely hinted at during the
Civil War--primary and secondary blast injuries, scalded skin and flesh
caused by ruptured steam pipes and boilers, toxic smoke inhalation--all the
products of fire below decks.
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