Yankee cheese-box

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Noun

Yankee cheese-box (plural Yankee cheese-boxes)

1. (slang, dated, US) The USS Monitor, USS Montauk and similar American Civil War-era ironclad ships.
   • 1866, William O. Blake, Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion‎^[1], volume 2, page 228:

     The old description of her departed predecessor, " a Yankee cheese-box on a raft," will give one a better idea of her external appearance than any chapter which could be written.