W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2012 Ironclad Revolution: The History, Discovery and Recovery of the USS Monitor Anna Gibson Holloway College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the Military History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Holloway, Anna Gibson, "Ironclad Revolution: The History, Discovery and Recovery of the USS Monitor" (2012). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623591. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-6ta9-r518 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ironclad Revolution: The History, Discovery and Recovery of the USS Monitor Anna Gibson Holloway Hayes, Virginia Master of Arts, The College of William and Mary, 1997 Bachelor of Arts, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1990 Bachelor of Arts, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1986 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History The College of William and Mary January 2012 Copyright 2012 Anna Gibson Holloway APPROVAL PAGE This Dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Committee, De~ember 2011 ~of &.A Committee Chair Professor Carol Sheriff, History The College of William and Mary Professor Scott Nelson The C of William and Dr. John Broadwater Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA ABSTRACT PAGE On the afternoon of March 8, 1862, the Confederate ironclad ram Virginia, built upon the burned-out hulk of the steam screw frigate Merrimack, crawled slowly into Hampton Roads to challenge the Union blockade of the Confederate coastline. Before nightfall, the Virginia had wreaked havoc upon the Union blockading fleet: the USS Cumberland lay at the bottom of the Roads, her flags still defiantly flying while the surrendered USS Congress blazed ominously in the harbor until exploding spectacularly in the early morning hours of March 9. The USS Monitor-a vessel of a radical new design and completely untried in battle-arrived too late to make a difference on the 8th, but met the Virginia on the morning of the 9th in a contest that signaled the first time ironclad had met ironclad in combat. While their four-and-a-half-hour battle ended in a draw, it changed much of the future course of naval warfare. Within days of the engagement, navies around the world were declaring an end to wooden construction and moving forward with their own ironclad building programs-many of which predated both the Monitor and the Virginia. Furthermore, the Monitor's rotating gun turret design freed vessels from the strictures of broadside tactics by allowing the guns, rather than the entire vessel, to be turned, and ushered in a new element of battleship design. Neither the Virginia nor the Monitor lived out that year, however. The Virginia was destroyed in May of 1862 by her own crew to keep her from enemy hands, while the Monitor succumbed to a nor'easter on New Year's Eve off the coast of Cape Hatteras. Discovered in 1973, the Monitor was designated a National Marine Sanctuary in 1975 under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Since 1987, The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA has served as the principal repository for artifacts recovered from the wrecksite and is currently conserving over 210 tons of the Union ironclad in the Batten Conservation Complex. This dissertation serves as the text for the catalogue of the award-winning exhibition, Ironclad Revolution, which opened at The Mariners' Museum in 2007. The author serves as curator of the USS Monitor Center. Drawing from artwork, archival material and the recovered artifacts themselves, this work seeks to tell the full story of the Monitor: her history, discovery, recovery, and conservation. Table of Contents DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: SETTING THE STAGE 21 CHAPTER 2: THE SEEDS OF WAR 35 CHAPTER 3: "A CLASS OF VESSELS HITHERTO UNKNOWN TO NAVAL SERVICE" 48 CHAPTER 4: "THE NAVY DEPARTMENT WILL RECEIVE OFFERS ... " 59 CHAPTER 5: THE BATTLES OF HAMPTON ROADS 107 CHAPTER 6: AFTER THE BATTLE 130 CHAPTER 7: THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MONITOR 164 CHAPTER 8: DISCOVERY AND RECOVERY 179 EPILOGUE 200 APPENDIX A: RECOVERYTIMELINE, 1974-1995 204 BIBLIOGRAPHY 211 VITA 223 For Mama and Daddy 11 Acknowledgments If someone had told me fifteen years ago that I would one day trade in wooden ships for ironclads, and square sails for steam, I would have told them that they were crazy and clearly did not know me well. That was before I met the Monitor. This curious little ironclad and the men who built her, served on her, and died with her, as well as the men and women who discovered, recovered, and now maintain and conserve her have become as much a part of my everyday existence no matter how many miles and fathoms, or decades and centuries separate us. And yes, the Monitor is a she, no matter what the current Navy custom is today. To me it seems somehow wrong to take that pronoun away from "our little Monitor." Relegating her to an "it" somehow removes the soul from a vessel, though she was not a delicate girl by any means. She drank, smoked, belched, roared, reeled and staggered like a drunk man, if you read the words others used about her. She went by the names Ericsson's Folly, Tin can, rat trap, cheesebox. Yet she became the hope of a nation, the home for some 108 men over her brief life above the waves, and the nursery for countless creatures aquatic over the course of a century and a half, serving proudly as America's first National Marine Sanctuary under the auspices of NOAA. She first came into my life in 2000, when I became Director of Education at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News. Little did I know that she and her officers and crew would become as familiar as old friends, or seem like long lost members of 111 my family. To the 108 men who sometimes called themselves "The Monitor Boys," I give my eternal thanks. But this dissertation would never have seen the light of day had it not been for Professor Carol Sheriff and Professor Jim Whittenburg from the Department of History at The College of William and Mary. They had been there with me at the beginning of my "gradual school" career and were determined to see me through to the end. They, along with Professor Scott Nelson, convinced me to switch time periods, and dissertation topics mid-stream. And they were right to do it! I cannot thank them enough for all of their continued support, cheerleading and expertise, as well as the rest of the faculty and staff of the Lyon Gardner Tyler Department of History. My colleagues at The Mariners' Museum have gone above and beyond any call of museum duty to make it possible for me to complete this work. Thanks to Mary Ann Cleary and John Hightower for seeing my potential as curator of the Monitor story, Tim Sullivan and Dr. Bill Cogar for making sure that this work could get done, as well as the incredible staff here at The Mariners' Museum and my colleagues past and present at NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. Thanks to Dr. John Broadwater for his assistance and insightful comments in preparing this manuscript, and in teaching me to love the little cheesebox. Thanks to John as well as David Alberg and Jeff Johnston from NOAA, and Captain Bobbie Scholley and MDSU TWO for letting me tag along on some of the expeditions (and not laughing at my sad little seasick self) and for providing me access to these national treasures. Thanks also to the staff of The Mariners' Museum Library and Archives at IV Christopher Newport University, and especially Bill Barker, Tom Moore, Bill Edwards-Bodmer, and Dr. Jay Moore, for helping me paw through primary source documents from the 19th, 2Qth and 21st centuries. One of our fabulous volunteers, Lana Ross, likely does not realize how important all of her incredibly insightful questions were to me were in preparing for this. I thank her for keeping me on my toes with the minutiae of the 19th century. Thanks also to Collections Technician Cindi Verser for her love of early telegraph history which is truly infectious. Priscilla Hauger, Anne Marie Millar, Jeanne Willoz­ Egnor, Frederick Wallace, and Lyles Forbes have all put up with my distractions with good humor, and have been massively supportive! I want to thank David Krop, Marcie Renner, Curtiss Peterson, Eric Nordgren, Elsa Sangouard, Will Hoffmann, Tina Gutshall, Gary Paden, Michael Saul and all of the staff and volunteers of the Monitor Conservation Project in years past for all of the phone calls in the past decade that began with the words, "Anna, you need to come over here and see this!" My co-curator JeffJohnston, along with Len Soccolich, Judy Vannais, Scott Guerin, David Lenk, the groovy John Quarstein, Sara Johnston, David Dwyer, Sidney Moore, Kimberly Hansin, Two Rivers Studios, Pyramid Studios, Batwin + Robin, Susannah Livingston, and a cast of thousands all played major roles in creating the USS Monitor Center exhibition. Their good humor, incredible skills and willingness to do some pretty bizarre things for the sake of the exhibition are the stuff of legend.