On May 15, 1862, Monitor took part in the First Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, but was unable to elevate its guns enough to reach the Confederate positions, and the Union effort to advance up the James River to Richmond ended in failure. After that, the summer months settled into a monotonous routine that started each day at 5:30 a.m., when petty officers roused the crew from their hammocks. The ship was swept, bright metalwork polished and clothes scrubbed. Later on the sailors were kept busy standing watch and drilling at the cannons, while the firemen served the engines.

The happiest day for the Monitor Boys came on September 30, 1862, when the ship was ordered up the Potomac to the Washington Navy Yard for extensive repairs. Furloughs were granted to many men, and the remaining crew members enjoyed a change of routine — better food and female visitors.

On November 5, a notice in the newspapers stated that the public was allowed to enter the Navy Yard to visit the ship. Carriages lined the wharves, and the vessel’s deck was jammed with people for hours. Keeler wrote: ‘They rushed in by thousands. Our decks were covered and our wardroom filled with ladies[,] and on going into my stateroom I found a party of the ‘dear delightful creatures’ making their toilet before my glass, using combs and brushes.’

The crewmen were understandably distracted by the women visitors. One man wrote: ‘We couldn’t go to any part of the vessel without coming in contact with petticoats. There appeared to be a general turn-out of the sex in the city, there were women and an extensive display of lower extremities was made going up and down our steep ladders.’

As the day ended, the men discovered that the visitors had taken souvenirs. ‘When we came up to clean that night,’ wrote one man, ‘there was not a key, doorknob, escutcheon — there wasn’t a thing that hadn’t been carried away.’The recently published letters by Monitor’s 25-year-old first-class fireman, George S. Geer, are moving documents of life on board Monitor. Geer enlisted from New York City, less out of interest in saving the Union than in earning money for his family. But he soon became an ambitious crew member. In November 1862, he wrote his wife, Martha:

Dear Wife
You should feel very proud to think your Husband is not a Coward at home, but is fighting for a country for his Wife and Children. And at the same time be thankful that I am not in some of these old Wooden tubs.

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They are fixing the Monitor up much bettor than she was before. They will make a perfect little Pallace of her. The workmen work nights and Sundays. I can hear them hammering away as I am writing. They have named her Guns Worden and Ericsson, and have the names engraved on them in very large lettors, and also have engraved every shot mark where it come from, so People do not have to ask so many Questions…’

Your loving George.

Before departing from Fort Monroe on their final voyage south, the Monitor Boys enjoyed a Christmas celebration. Together they feasted on turkey, fish, oysters, a selection of meats, apples, figs, plums, jellies and wines — much of which had been sent from the men’s homes. When they left port, they had high expectations for new adventures. Those expectations soon ended in tragedy. Shortly after midnight on December 31, 1862, Monitor sank in a gale off Cape Hatteras. Sixteen crew members were lost.

The 49 survivors returned to Fort Monroe on the steamer Rhode Island. They would not forget their service on the famous little ‘cheese box on a raft.’ Monitor was gone, but its crewmen were proud to have served aboard the famous vessel, and continued calling themselves the Monitor Boys. George Geer broke the sad news to his family:

I am sorry to write you we have lost the Monitor, and what is worse we had 16 poor fellows drownded. I can tell you I thank God my life is spaired.

You must not think because we have lost the Monitor that Vessels like her cannot be built to stand, as the Pasaic was in the same gale and stood it furst rate. You need not worry for me, as I am always looking out for No. 1 and I am not going to get killed or Drowned in this War.

Surgeon Grenville Weeks summed up Monitor’s loss this way:

Our little vessel was lost, and we, in months gone by, had learned to love her, felt a strange pang go through us as we remembered that never more might we tread her deck, or gather in her little cabin at evening. The little ‘cheesebox on a raft’ has made herself a name which will not soon be forgotten by the American people.

The Union’s ill-fated iron ship has not been forgotten in the ensuing decades, thanks to the efforts of schoolteachers, Civil War buffs and naval historians — as well as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists, who orchestrated the raising of Monitor’s gun turret from the waters off Cape Hatteras in 2002 and are working to preserve it at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va. The ironclad’s crew would no doubt approve of the renewed publicity accorded their beloved ship so many years after its fabled battle at Hampton Roads.

Raising Monitor

Until recently, James Gibson’s series of wartime photographs provided the only way to examine Monitor. But in 1973, a research ship discovered the ironclad’s remains near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Just nine months after its four-hour clash with CSS Virginia, Monitor foundered during a New Year’s Eve storm 16 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras. It settled upside down in a wreck-strewn area of the ocean floor known as the ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic.’ After discovery of Monitor’s watery grave, separate operations salvaged the ship’s propeller and its 30-ton steam engine. Raising the turret early in August 2002 brought to fruition a conservation plan submitted to Congress several years before by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The U.S. Navy assisted NOAA with the turret lift known as ‘Monitor Expedition 2002,’ which first required a six-week effort to remove 30 tons of iron plating shrouding the turret. During the project, more than 200 artifacts were recovered, including Civil War-era naval instruments and the remains of several crew members who perished in the wreck. Among the most significant artifacts salvaged were the two 11-inch Dahlgren guns that engaged in the fabled duel with Virginia. The turret, which had been resting at a depth of 240 feet, was hoisted to the surface by a privately owned 500-ton crane. A platform trailer transported it to the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va., which is working to ensure that parts of Monitor can be seen and appreciated by future generations thanks to its efforts to preserve the turret and other elements of the historic ironclad. The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary protects the hull of Monitor, which remains in the Atlantic Ocean. Jim Weeks

Olav Thulesius, who writes from Sweden, recommends for further reading: Raiders & Blockaders, by W.N. Still Jr.; War, Technology and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor, by D.A. Mindell; The Battle of the Ironclads, by J.V. Quarstein; and The Monitor Chronicles: One Sailor’s Account, by W. Marvel.

This article was originally published in the December 2004 issue of Civil War Times Magazine. For more great articles, be sure to subscribe to Civil War Times magazine today!

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