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male narrator: To the untrained eye,
this aged metal might appear
to be destined for the scrap heap,
the end of its story.
But fortunately, this is not the scrap heap,
and these are not untrained eyes.
These seemingly insignificant pieces of metal,
these artifacts, played a vital role
in the history of Hampton Roads, Virginia,
and the United States of America.
Once thought lost to the ocean's depths,
their story did not end there, nor will it end here.
In fact, skilled conservators here at The Mariners' Museum
are working to preserve their history
for future generations to explore and investigate.
But where did this story begin,
and what can it tell us?
The year was 1861.
Conflict and change were in the air,
and the Civil War had begun.
While battles like Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, and Bull Run
were waged on American soil,
an equally important theater of war
was being waged at sea.
As they did with land troops,
the North also held the advantage
in the size of its naval fleet.
But size is not everything.
At the time, wooden ships reigned.
But with the Industrial Revolution,
the age of iron was dawning.
When word reached Union leaders
that the South was constructing an ironclad ship,
the Union navy quickly set a high priority
on building its own.
Solicitations for design for "iron-clad steam vessels of war"
were placed in Northern newspapers,
and several proposals were received.
Ultimately, the navy selected the design
of a Swedish-American inventor, John Ericsson.
The unique design was referred to
as the "floating battery."
It was almost completely submerged,
with no superstructure except for its armored gun turret
and a small raised iron pilothouse forward.
Once the contract for the construction of the ship
was awarded to Ericsson on October 4, 1861,
he guaranteed that his ship would be delivered in 100 days,
and construction began in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York.
The new year brought about a new era in naval warfare,
with the Confederacy launching its first ironclad,
the CSS Virginia, on January 10, 1862,
and with Ericsson's ship, USS Monitor,
launching on January 30th.
After some minor issues, which were quickly remedied,
the Monitor set sail on the 6th of March,
bound for action in Hampton Roads, Virginia--
and not a moment too soon.
On March 8th, as Monitor sailed into Hampton Roads,
the destruction that met the crew was devastating.
Then on the morning of the 9th, the CSS Virginia
came down the Elizabeth River and was met by Monitor.
And for the first time, iron met iron.
The two ships fought for over four hours,
firing upon each other from close range.
The ironclads seemed impenetrable,
and eventually both sides withdrew,
each claiming victory but ultimately stalemating.
While a rematch would have seemed inevitable,
President Lincoln ordered the Monitor
to avoid another fight with Virginia,
maintaining the Federal blockade was the highest priority.
And while the ironclads never again clashed,
their battle had forever changed the face of naval warfare.
The age of iron had begun.
The USS Monitor participated in two smaller battles,
at Drewry's Bluff and Sewell's Point.
Then on December 29, 1862,
it set sail from Hampton Roads, towed by the USS Rhode Island,
on what would be its final voyage.
Even after extensive preparations,
Monitor was no match
for the violent storm off Cape Hatteras.
For hours, the crew valiantly tried to save the ship,
but their efforts were for naught.
Shortly after midnight on December 31, 1862,
the ship sank beneath the waters,
with 16 crewmen perishing.
And there, it seemed, Monitor would stay forever,
its exact location unknown, to be lost to time
and the harsh environment beneath the waves.
The legend of the little ironclad,
as Monitor came to be known,
grew even as its location remained a mystery.
Technology simply was not sufficient
to determine its whereabouts,
and no major attempts were made to find it.
But after World War II, deep-sea technology improvements
fueled thoughts of finding and even recovering Monitor.
Several expeditions were mounted,
but none were successful--
none, that is, until August of 1973,
when John Newton and researchers
from the Duke University Marine Laboratory,
on board the research vessel Eastward,
were evaluating a new suite of remote sensing instruments.
Due to Monitor's unique shape,
it was an ideal subject for testing this equipment.
With only a few days left in their expedition,
the crew imaged what they believed to be
the remains of Monitor.
- Right there!
- Right there. Hold it right there.
narrator: After careful examination of the video,
the team was baffled by some of the recorded images,
which did not match Monitor's expected appearance.
But after further study, it was realized
that the images would match Monitor
if she had somehow flipped upside down during the wreck
and the turret had been displaced.
And so in April of 1974,
a crew aboard the U.S. Navy's Alcoa Seaprobe,
co-funded by the National Geographic Society,
were able to fully document the entire hull.
The images they captured
led to a photomosaic of the ironclad,
putting to rest any remaining debate
concerning the positive identification
of Monitor's remains,
and thus began the next chapter in Monitor's story.
Ownership of the wreck was a major concern.
16 miles off the coast,
it was out of jurisdiction of the U.S. Coast Guard,
and federal antiquities legislation did not apply.
Fortunately, the Marine Protection, Research,
and Sanctuaries Act
had been enacted into law in 1972
and authorized the Secretary of Commerce
to designate and manage marine protected areas,
called National Marine Sanctuaries.
On January 30, 1975, Monitor National Marine Sanctuary
was signed into existence by President Gerald Ford,
setting a precedent for the use of the Sanctuaries Act
to protect America's most precious and fragile
underwater treasures.
In July of 1977, NOAA conducted its first expedition to Monitor,
using small research submarines
to obtain video and deploy scientific divers.
On the very first dive, the red signal lantern
that had sat atop Monitor
and been the last portion of the ship to go underwater
was discovered half buried in the sand near the turret.
As it was in danger of being swept away by currents
or being otherwise damaged,
it was brought to the surface
as the first artifact of Monitor to be retrieved.
In addition, the expedition produced significant data
on the condition of the Monitor's hull and artifacts
and demonstrated that submersible-based
scientific diving operations at Monitor's depth
were feasible, safe, and productive.
Whether it would be best
to continue underwater study of Monitor
or attempt to raise the ship was debated,
but it was decided that in situ preservation
was the best option so that it could be preserved
and enjoyed into the future.
Expeditions continued to Monitor,
most conducted by NOAA and partners.
In 1979, NOAA divers and submersibles
were able to support archaeological investigation
and test excavation within Monitor's hull.
This expedition found that the ship
was in various stages of deterioration.
1983 saw another NOAA expedition to the Monitor Marine Sanctuary,
with the purpose of continuing site assessment
and retrieving a large iron artifact.
The ship's anchor was selected as an ideal object to recover,
for it would be easy to locate,
sturdy enough to recover without concern for damage,
and it had special historical significance.
The anchor was retrieved successfully
and sent to East Carolina University
to begin the lengthy process of conservation.
A pair of expeditions in 1985,
one by Eastport and Ocean Search International
and the other by NOAA and the U.S. Navy,
continued to document the shipwreck,
developing a grid of the entire site
and measuring seafloor, current, and water conditions.
In 1987, NOAA and the U.S. Navy located and photographed
all archaeological artifacts and features
within the site boundaries.
NOAA dives continued to document the wreck.
The data obtained indicated that Monitor
was deteriorating at an accelerated pace
and was in danger of becoming a degraded archaeological site.
By 1995, concern over the Monitor crisis
had become widespread,
and NOAA was tasked with producing
a long-range, comprehensive plan
for the management, stabilization,
preservation, and recovery
of artifacts and materials of the USS Monitor.
By the fall of 1997,
NOAA had completed the draft of this plan.
As luck would have it,
the U.S. Navy's Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit TWO,
stationed in nearby Norfolk, Virginia,
was in need of a realistic training exercise,
and so they partnered with NOAA
to recover the Monitor's propeller.
The expedition was successful.
Over the next few years, NOAA, U.S. Navy,
and other partner efforts
to conduct expeditions to Monitor intensified.
These yielded significant data
and recovered many artifacts in 2000
and Monitor's engine and numerous other components
and artifacts in 2001.
And in 2002, perhaps the most significant recovery
from Monitor was made when,
working alongside the U.S. Navy MDSU TWO,
the Monitor's turret broke the surface of the water
for the first time in 140 years.
Several smaller expeditions followed,
cleaning up the site
and providing post-recovery surveys,
but the objectives of the long-range preservation plan
had been completed.
The heavy lifting was done.
Recovering an artifact from a shipwreck is,
in some ways, the simplest part of the process of preservation.
It is challenging, to be sure,
but it also has a definite ending.
Conservation, on the other hand, is a never-ending process.
Therefore, NOAA continues the conservation of the Monitor
so that its story can be understood
for generations to come.
In 1986, NOAA determined that a partner organization
was needed to provide a secure, publicly accessible archive
for the rapidly growing collection of artifacts
from the Monitor.
And so in 1987, after a formal request for proposals,
The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia,
was selected as the principal museum
for management and curation of Monitor-related materials.
- We're in the business of basically taking something
that's highly unstable from the ocean here,
these Monitor artifacts, and making sure
that when they're through our processes,
they're able to be displayed
in a climate-controlled setting indefinitely
so that future generations can see them.
Artifacts can be recovered from a wreck site
with some difficulty and, in some cases, fairly easily,
but the important thing
is what happens to them after that.
You're taking them from a very specific environment
of harsh conditions,
bringing them up on land, and putting them out on display,
and in order to do that
and guarantee their long-term safety and survival,
a lot of work has to go into preserving those materials.
The really neat thing about working with the artifacts
is that they really add to and flesh out
or, in some cases, even change the history that we learn.
We're able to learn about how they lived,
what they thought,
how they interacted with each other,
how the technology at the time
influenced Monitor's construction, its design.
We learn about food.
We learn about clothing.
We learn about culture.
We learn about the society that produced the vessel.
When people come here to The Mariners' Museum
and they look inside of the conservation lab,
they see the gun turret and the steam engine.
Those are the pieces that most people are familiar with.
But what they may not realize
is that we have over 200 tons of the USS Monitor here.
About 1/5 of the overall ironclad is in this lab.
That equates to roughly 1,600 different artifacts.
So it's a massive, massive volume of artifacts.
This is the largest marine metals project
going right now for archaeological conservation.
Certain small, simple items can be completed
from start to finish in the span of a few weeks to a few months,
whereas something like the main steam engine,
that's gonna be 15 years of work.
To operate this facility, to promote the conservation,
the history, the stories, the artifacts,
it's about $1 million a year.
Even though we do our best efforts here
with state-of-the-art equipment
and an international team of experts,
we cannot 100% guarantee
the long-term health of the artifacts
if they aren't properly exhibited and stored
in a climate-controlled environment.
So we could pour in a few million dollars
into this project to stabilize the artifacts,
but if they were to be displayed with improper temperature
and irregular humidity controls,
they would potentially continue to degrade over time.
So the most important thing is to understand
that conservation is never finished.
We do the artifacts here in the lab.
We stabilize them at The Mariners' Museum.
We exhibit them here at the museum
or put them out on loan.
But the critical element
is to guarantee long-term health of the artifacts.
narrator: Today many of the original artifacts
from the Monitor are on display in The Mariners' Museum
alongside replicas such as this,
a re-creation of the Monitor's iconic turret.
The turret, one of the most intriguing aspects
of Monitor's design, held a great surprise
for the archaeologists who excavated it.
- When the gun turret was recovered,
it was filled with about eight feet
of really thick sediment and hard marine concretion
as well as big artifacts like the guns and carriages.
And as the archaeologists began to excavate
the layers of sediment,
they found the remains of two of the heroes of the Monitor
of the 16 who went down with the ship,
fully articulated skeletons.
narrator: To date, these are the only human remains
that have been discovered
of the 16 men who died when Monitor sank.
NOAA and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii
are working to identify the sailors,
to research all 16 sailors who went down with the Monitor.
In addition, forensic anthropologists
at Louisiana State University's
Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhanced Services,
FACES, volunteered their efforts.
Using casts of the skulls provided by JPAC,
they created these facial reconstructions
of the two skulls.
The facial reconstruction models
are on display at The Mariners' Museum.
After ten years and exhaustive efforts
to identify the two sailors,
the Secretary of the Navy authorized their burial.
On March 8, 2013, under gray skies
and with Monitor descendants in attendance,
the two unknown sailors were finally laid to rest
at Arlington National Cemetery.
The remains were interred by the U.S. Navy
with full military honors.
Though only two were recovered and buried,
these sailors represent all 16 crewmen who perished.
A marker placed at the grave site
honors these brave men
who gave their last full measure of devotion.
But this is not the end of the story.
Today Monitor's story lives on through the combined efforts
of NOAA and The Mariners' Museum.
On March 9, 2007, with funds donated by NOAA
and raised by the museum,
the Batten Conservation Laboratory
and USS Monitor Center opened its doors.
Visitors to the Monitor Center can view major artifacts,
including the propeller and the Monitor's anchor,
as well as numerous small artifacts.
Visitors can also watch conservators in the lab
as they work on the turret,
Dahlgren guns, and the steam engine.
And so the little ironclad that could,
upon which this full-sized replica is based,
continues its journey today.
From preventing a Confederate onslaught in Hampton Roads
that could have changed the tide of the Civil War
to its almost certain loss to the elements
to its discovery and classification
as the first National Marine Sanctuary
and even now as its artifacts
are preserved, studied, and enjoyed,
the waters it has traveled have been turbulent.
But just as Monitor protected the Union
in the Battle of Hampton Roads,
so, too, does NOAA now protect and extend
Monitor's life and stories,
preserving our nation's rich maritime heritage
for all.