Can We Ever Raise The Monitor? - June 1997 Civil War Times Feature

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Can We Ever Raise The Monitor?

The fate of a legendary ironclad is about to be decided.

BY BERT HUBINGER

The mighty U.S.S. Monitor drifted helplessly on the stormy sea some 16 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The scene at midnight on December 30, 1862, seemed “well calculated to appall the boldest heart,” wrote William F. Keeler, paymaster of the ironclad. “The wind was blowing violently; the heavy seas rolled over our bows dashing against the pilot house & surging aft, would strike the solid turret with a force to make it tremble…. Again came the report that the water was gaining…. Her bow would rise on a huge billow & before she could sink into the intervening hollow, the succeeding wave would strike her…like thunder & a violence that threatened to tear apart the thin sheet of iron bottom & the heavy armor which it supported…. Our Captain now gave the order to make the signal for assistance.”

Some small boats answered the call for help and attempted to rescue the Monitor’s crew from the doomed ironclad. Survivors were transferred to the sidewheel steamer Rhode Island, which had been towing the Monitor to Beaufort, North Carolina. The rescue scene radiated a bluish “ghastly glare,” wrote Keeler. It was “a panorama of horror which time can never efface from my memory….”

Sixteen of some 60 men aboard the Monitor did not survive. The last anyone saw of the wildly pitching ironclad was a falling red lantern. The historic ship capsized during the early hours of December 31 and was gone.

One hundred and ten years later, scientists using recently improved sonar and long-distance photographic technology discovered what they believed to be the Monitor’s wreck. In 1974 they confirmed their beliefs.

Ever since, underwater archaeologists have grappled with the difficult questions of what should be done next–and what could be done. Should the Monitor be raised and preserved ashore? Was that possible? Should key parts of the vessel be salvaged and the rest left to decompose? Should the wreck site be excavated for artifacts without raising any of the ship? Now, 24 years after the Monitor’s discovery, an action plan is being formulated for proposal to Congress. Whether the plan is accepted or rejected may very well determine the Monitor’s fate once and for all.

The ironclad lies upside down in 230 feet of water. The port stern of the capsized hull rests on the turret, which had detached from its base and landed on the ocean floor upside down. The vessel then came to rest on top of it. The starboard side is partially buried under sand, except for about 15 feet forward and a few feet at the stern. The wreck’s maximum profile (height off the bottom) is 17 feet, and its maximum length, about 100 feet.

Examination of the wreck revealed that most of the hull is wrought iron, with some wood underneath the armor belt. A full-size wooden pattern was used as a plating model. Rivet holes were marked to line up eight layers of one-inch-thick iron plates. By contrast, the five-foot-high armor belt around the hull, extending a few feet above and below the water line, was six inches thick, and the iron plates covering the deck and bottom were only one inch thick. Given this information, it is no surprise that the Monitor was top-heavy.

When she was in service in 1862, the Monitor was 172 feet long with a 41-foot beam. The revolving gun turret was 21 feet in diameter and rose nine feet off the deck. How ill-suited the vessel was to the open sea can be judged quickly by the fact that she extended only 10.5 feet below the water line and displaced 1,000 long tons. Its freeboard–the distance between the deck and the water line–was all of 18 inches.

When underwater archaeologists first examined the wreck in 1974, it showed extensive damage to the stern, probably inflicted by depth charges detonated in the area during World War II. Still, “the hull had survived remarkably well,” says John Broadwater, manager of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, a federally protected site.

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