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.