> 6. There were tons of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.

And the fight they got was comically irrelevant to the ironclads they had.

I'm sure they had lots of great arguments trying to pull anything applicable out of it and apply the lessons to their own fleets.