Once in the South, Harmon encounters many key naval officers and learns that the armor test on 3 inches (76 mm) of iron plate is staged to offer misinformation to any Union spies—like him.

However, Betty has a change of heart upon learning that her childhood friend and lover, Lieutenant Catesby ap Roger Jones, has been reassigned as the second-in-command of Virginia and is now in danger of death due to the very intelligence she intended to send North.

At the commissioning ceremony for Virginia, she confesses to her now-fiancé Lt. Jones that she had helped Leslie Harmon infiltrate the shipyard and spy for the Union, warning him of the possible increase in firepower.

When informed that her fate is the gallows if she does not cooperate, she hopes for the courtesy and respect shown an executed spy the day before (whose hanging she witnessed).

During the night, Monitor sails in between the burning Congress and Virginia to protect USS Minnesota, which has run aground and is defenseless until high tide returns the next day.

In reality, Lt. Jones used Betty's confession the day before to send false intelligence to the Union, which resulted in the lesser powder charges used by Monitor.

A voice-over narrative indicates that Virginia was scuttled two months later after Union troops took Norfolk, and that Monitor sank off Cape Hatteras at the end of the year.

Also, Philip Casnoff's character in this film is quite similar in accent and personality to his role in the 1985 miniseries North and South a few years prior, but with Southern chivalry and without the sociopathy.

In 2017, Hyde-White gave an interview to the "A Word on Westerns" YouTube channel, in which he recalled that most of the film's extras were Civil War reenactors using their own gear.