John Broadwater witnesses raising of Monitor turret in 2002
John Broadwater, a maritime archaeologist and authorof the book "USS Monitor: A Historic Ship Completes Its Final Voyage," has been on numerous Monitor expeditions and is former superintendent of the Monitor Marine National Sanctuary. He will lead a webinar at 1 p.m. ET Aug. 31 (Thursday) about the ironclad. Broadwater will talk about several 1973 expeditions that tried to find the USS Monitor, including one that was successful. The Civil War Picket asked for his recollections and he submitted this essay.
In
1972, as a young scuba diver with a passion for diving on shipwrecks, I joined
Underwater Archaeological Associates, a group of avocational archaeologists in
North Carolina. We read a book called “Always
Another Adventure,” by famous underwater explorer Robert Marx.
We
were excited to read that he claimed to have discovered (in 1955) the famous USS Monitor lying in 45 feet of water
less than two miles from Cape Hatteras lighthouse. He wrote that he was never
able to confirm the discovery because shifting sands had covered the wreck.
We
decided to (locate) the Monitor
and become famous and respected among ocean explorers. After much networking
and begging, we were able to borrow a top-of-the-line Klein Associates side-scanning
sonar, an instrument that could locate object protruding from the ocean bottom.
We also obtained a high-quality magnetometer, capable of detecting very small
amounts of iron or steel. Our members contributed their own boats and dive
gear.
Before
the year was out, we discovered that “Monitor
fever” had spread to other adventurers. In all, at least seven different groups
conducted searches for the Monitor in what I began calling “the Year of the Monitor”.
The
team I led consisted of Underwater Archaeological Associates, Marine
Archaeological Research Services (a company I co-founded), and, eventually, the
USS Monitor Foundation of
Washington, DC. One day, another search team dramatically made itself known: a
U.S. Navy P-3 Orion flew low over our search boat at Hatteras.
The Orion is
designed to locate submerged submarines by detecting the metal in their hulls.
We later learned that it was searching for the Monitor in support of “Project Cheesebox”, a class project at the U.S. Naval Academy.
In
August, a former Naval Academy graduate announced that he was going to look for
the Monitor in deep water south of Diamond Shoals where the U.S. Navy had
detected a shipwreck in 1950 using a device called an Underwater Object
Locator. The Monitor had not
been so popular since its battle with CSS Virginia on March 9, 1862.
However,
we found nothing at all near the Marx location. No shipwreck or other debris of
any kind. In August 1973, I learned from Gordon Watts that the Monitor had been discovered 16 miles
southeast by the R/V Eastward,
from Duke University Marine Laboratory. We had failed in our quest because we
trusted Marx’s story. (Marx died in 2019).
'Discovering' Monitor in Gordon Watts’s living room
One
of my most prized recollections of the Monitor
discovery took place during a late December (1973) visit to Gordon Watts’s
home. I had been working part time in Gordon’s lab and we had become good
friends. He invited me to his house to show me his latest interpretation of the
many video views of the wreckage he believed was the Monitor. Because of the
poor quality of the video and the limited coverage of the site, most people
were skeptical of the identification.
Broadwater was on Alcoa Seaprobe on Monitor trip in April 1974
Gordon
led me into a room whose floor was completely covered with sketches,
photographs and videotapes, save for a narrow walkway leading to his television
and a tape player. He methodically showed me the video, which was so grainy and
confusing. I couldn’t make much sense of it. He then began to replay the video
while showing me the still photos he’s extracted from the video, along with a
number of sketches he’d made. I was still uncertain of what I was looking at.
Then
Gordon said, “OK, now look again, but this time assume the Monitor is lying upside down, lying
on top of its gun turret.” He showed me a hypothetical sketch he’d made of this
configuration, viewed from the stern.
My
mental image of the site almost instantly became clear: Monitor had rolled over, her turret had fallen to the bottom,
and her hull landed atop the displaced turret. It was obvious that Gordon has
solved the mystery! I was the first person Gordon had shared his theory with
so, in a sense, I’ve always felt like I played a small role in the “discovery”
of the Monitor.
There
were still plenty of doubters, however, and it wasn’t until a photomosaic (above) of
the wreck was produced aboard the R/V Alcoa
Seaprobe in April of the following year that the question was put to
rest. I was honored to have helped develop that mosaic.
Cathryn R. Newton on Eastward in 1973 (Courtesy of MIT Museum). Her mother, Sunny, asked her father whether they found the wreck. He whispered, 'We think so'
Cathryn R. Newton found her career
calling while sailing as a teen on the RV Eastward with her father, John G. Newton, and other scientists. They located the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor
on Aug. 27, 1973. Since then, the Syracuse University dean emerita and
professor has conducted extensive research on shipwrecks and marine fauna and
environments. Newton, who was raised in Beaufort, N.C, recently led a
scientific team that traveled to Newfoundland. The Civil War Picket asked for
her recollections of the Monitor expedition and she submitted this essay.
50 years ago:
Just after noon, we found the wreck of the USS Monitor, the most
famous missing ship in America, on Aug. 27, 1973. Four investigators conducted
this two-week, blue-water expedition organized and funded through the work of
my father, John G. Newton, a Duke oceanographer and marine superintendent of
the oceanography program; Harold "Doc" Edgerton, strobe pioneer, inventor, and longtime
MIT engineering faculty who’d invented many of the instruments we used; Bob Sheridan of Delaware (later Rutgers), accomplished and hard-charging marine
geophysicist who had a nearby seismic survey funded; and Gordon Watts, the
brand-new marine archeologist at the state of North Carolina (the
inaugural one).
Duke University's research vessel Eastward
Our team
decided to take Monitor’s (+ towship USS Rhode Island’s)
mariners at their word --and search near the edge of the continental margin 16
miles off Hatteras. {All but one of many other Monitor searches
in summer 1973 were near shore). My father, Bob Sheridan and Doc Edgerton wrote
the proposals that had secured funding for the E-12-73 cruise from NSF and
National Geographic Society (NGS).
My father had
mapped the NC continental margin in a recent geological atlas and, with Orrin
Pilkey, published the first work on the Hatteras Submarine Canyon. This
background elevated our odds of success, but did not guarantee it.
I was a 16-year-old
Duke sophomore who’d worked all summer making cross sections and assembling
geological/bathymetric data for the upcoming cruise; my friends Paul Kelly and
Bob Springle were deployed in parallel. Shy, hardworking and unconfident, I
logged many hours at the Duke Marine Lab preparing cruise materials, and had
expressed an interest.
Yet the
expedition consisted principally of towering figures in ocean sciences, with a
few doctoral students. Then came a surprise: 24 hours pre-departure, a space
held for a woman member of the NGS Explorers Club came vacant. This young girl
leapt into the air with joy.
1973: Gordon Watts, front left, behind him John Harris; on right, from back, Robert Sheridan, John Newton, Cathryn Newton and Harold Edgerton (NOAA)
Following the
one best piece of advice ever from my mother Sunny Newton, I kept a journal of
the expedition, the only one extant. When my father died without notice at 52
of heart failure in 1984, I inherited every bit of planning material for the
expedition and all the files amassed while they (Dad, artist Sandy Belock and
Gordon Watts) tried to figure out what we were seeing in this complex
shipwreck. I have written a book manuscript on all this, with input from many,
and sent it to my superb editor.
As I write,
it is noon on August 27. Fifty years ago to the minute, our 12-4 midwatch came
on duty. My watch was headed by get-it-done geophysicist Bob Sheridan. Second
mate Tom Stout, a veteran Navy captain on loan from University of Rhode Island,
was on the bridge. The other three investigators were having lunch in the
galley. I was deployed to the Simrad recorder in the wet lab -- a basic depth
recorder, not as refined a view of things as on the vertical PDR (portable
diver recall) in the electronics lab.
Just after
noon, it recorded something that looked like a smudge. I was trying to figure
it out when veteran electronics technician Fred Kelly, one of my father’s
closest colleagues, was coming in to put his fishing gear away and told me this
could be it.
Bob and Tom Stout instantly reacted, and Stout remarkably brought
the ship about immediately over the wreck. A high-contrast target appeared
on the vertical PDR up above -- with the intensity expected for a metal wreck.
It could be Monitor! Doc Edgerton’s side-scan sonar disclosed an arcuate piece
that might be the turret, but in the wrong orientation.
We spent
several days documenting the wreck, as the ship time ended on August 31. The
target was not what we’d expected -- rather than atop the wreck, the turret was
underneath, and had landed slightly to one side. But working with artist Sandra
Belock, a recent Rhode Island School of Design graduate, and replaying the
underwater television tapes again and again, and gaining input from Gordon
Watts, the three figured it out.
By January 1974,
Gordon confirmed their collective view that the ship had “turned turtle” as Doc
said aboard E-12-73. The turret, which was only loosely articulated to the hull
(in part to support the rotation) had fallen off as the ship inverted, and the
upside-down hull fell only partly atop the turret.
We announced
the find at a press conference at Duke University with then-president Terry
Sanford, one that Dad, Gordon and I attended in early March 1974. But that is a
story for another day. Walter Cronkite (CBS evening news broadcast) and The New
York Times (front page) covered the story -- not bad for a group of ocean
scientists out of Beaufort, North Carolina!
For my dear
friends and students, you now see the origins of my impassioned commitment to
undergraduate research. Being part of this changed my life. That is likely true
of everyone involved -- all 60 people on three research vessels, including
those of us on Duke’s RV Eastward. (Cathryn R. Newton at left)
There were
more than 60 or us at sea and dozens more on land. John Newton would be the
first to mention the tremendous contributions to finding Monitor from
the remarkable people of Eastward, as well as boatswain (bosun) Curtis Oden Sr.
of Beaufort or the stunning seamanship of Capt. Harold Yeomans of Down East in
deploying both underwater television and two cameras simultaneously. He would
mention the core contributions of historical cartographer Dorothy Nicholson of
NGS, and would note with pride that the first woman ship’s mate at Duke, Susan
Barker, was also part of this team.
These ocean scientists and Eastward's professional crew, both highly accustomed
to mapping at sea, acted in an interdisciplinary way to find something that no
marine archeologists at the time could have found -- they just were not yet
using these techniques of swath mapping that are now standard.
Moreover, I remain sincerely and deeply grateful to every
person who contributed -- both in E-12-73 and especially the stunning sanctuary, recovery and museum processes to follow. Let's honor the full
expedition as well those who've done such a tremendous job to keep Monitor
alive.
John Harris prepares for 1974 flight at Grandfather Mountain (UNC-Chapel Hill)
A year before
he reached for the sky, becoming the first person to jump off North Carolina’s
Grandfather Mountain with a hang glider, John Harris was focused on what lie
beneath the ocean’s surface east of Cape Hatteras.
Harris, then
working as an engineer for Western Electric in Winston-Salem, N.C., had heard
the exciting news of an expedition setting off in August 1973 to find the
legendary Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, which sank in rough seas in 1862.
Harris begged
his boss to let him take part and use the company’s underwater video system.
One little
problem: He knew nothing about the gear, one of two in use in the United Sates.
“Underwater
photography was brand new and underwater video (was) in its infancy. When
I asked for an operating manual for the system, my boss laughed and gave me a
wiring schematic, the only information they had.”
Harris, then
26, demonstrated the moxie that has long distinguished his life and career,
from the 1974 Grandfather Mountain adventure to forming a hang-gliding school
and Kitty Hawk Kites in the state’s Outer Banks.Today, 50 years after scientists on a Duke University research vessel located the USS
Monitor in about 240 feet of water, Harris savors the memory. “It was a great
adventure.” (Harris at left, with equipment he used,)
Relatively
few people know about this chapter in Harris’ life, despite its importance.
“I keep it mostly
to myself. I live in Monitor country but nobody knows that part of my history
except for Gordon (Watts) and John Broadwater and those guys.”
Watts, a
maritime archaeologist, was a co-leader on the 1973 trip and Broadwater is a
renowned USS Monitor expert and researcher. Harris went with Broadwater on a
subsequent expedition to the wreck site.
A few months
after the 1973 journey, Watts used photos, Harris’ video footage and other data
to help prove the team found the ironclad.
Producing
the video wasn’t easy.
'Nothing worthwhile is ever easy'
Visibility could
be very limited and Harris often encountered electrical problems. “I’d splice
the cables and seawater kept seeping in and shorting out.”
The young
engineer, who grew up and received his schooling in Missouri, would turn to
Harold “Doc” Edgerton – famous for developing side-scan sonar and equipment for
deep-sea photography – for advice when things went wrong.
“I would tell
him what failed. ‘What should I do?’ And he would come back every time and say,
‘John, nothing worthwhile is ever easy.’”
Harold Edgerton onboard RV Eastward (Courtesy of MIT Museum)
The team
worked from a grid, dropping sonar first and then camera equipment at about a
dozen wreck sites -- mostly boats from the World War I or World War II era --
Harris recalls.
“In most
cases, we would see … that there was a bridge or deck structure that definitely
was not the Monitor. We could discount them fairly quickly.”
As the days
and searches ticked by, the crew was getting a bit anxious.
“We were
running out of time. We knew our window was closing. The (ship) Eastward had to
be back and we were running out of resources,” Harris recalls.
Then, a week
and a half in, on Aug. 27, sonar pinpointed what turned out to be the Monitor.
“We tried our
best to hover over the wreck, which was hard to do because of current, drop it
(cameras) over the side, and get as much data as we could,” Harris told the
Picket, adding he had a small monitor that allowed him to view what his camera
was seeing.
1973: Gordon Watts, front left, behind him John Harris; on right, from back, Robert Sheridan, John Newton, Cathryn Newton and Harold Edgerton (NOAA)
The team made
numerous passes, and something that looked like the ironclad’s famous turret
appeared -- a feature that was very different from anything else they had come
across.
“Everybody
gasped because it did look like the edge of the turret. We thought we had it,
but the rest of the wreck made no sense. We could not understand why the hull
was upside down.”
There was
only about 10-feet visibility and the cameras couldn’t give high enough to see
the whole turret. It was only months later, that Watts determined the Monitor
had flipped when it went to the bottom during the storm and rested on a portion
of the turret.
Harris felt there
was 80 percent probability the team had found the vessel. Watts and others
could not definitively claim success until 1974, after further research and the
construction of a photo mosaic of the rusting wreck.
Hang gliding, kites and a big business
Harris
returned to Winston-Salem and Western Electric after the nearly two-week
expedition. His original plan was to start an engineering company that would
focus on human activities in the ocean.
He had always
been interested in flying, but his true career path began when he picked up a
copy of the local newspaper and saw a photo of a hang glider.
“It was so
simple and inexpensive. It was a cheap way to fly. … I got really excited about
it.”
John Harris and wife Sandra Allen at The Mariners' Museum and Park in Newport News.
He traveled later
in 1973 to Jockey’s Ridge on the Outer Banks, near where the Wright Brothers
made flight history. “We started to hear stories of other people coming down to
fly there.”
Harris was
planning to return to graduate school at Old Dominion University to study physical oceanography, but the lure of hang gliding proved too much. He dropped
out of school.
From a leased
space, working with business partner Ralph Buxton, Harris grew the hang-gliding
instruction business and then branched out into other outdoor sports and retail
goods, including kites. Kitty Hawk Kites today operates about 15 stories and
has a second hang-gliding school in New Hampshire, according to Our State magazine.
The sport is
made for thrill seekers, and an article about him in Our State says his July
1974 jump from Grandfather Mountain would result either in his death or making
history. Obviously, he won out.
Harris rarely
flies these days, but the memories are etched in his mind.
“When you launch, it’s like throwing
your fate to the wind or Mother Nature,” he told the magazine. “But if you do
the right things, you can stay up for a while and you feel like you’ve mastered
Mother Nature or maybe life for a moment.”
Looking back on a trip that made history
At age 76,
Harris is a famous figure in the Outer Banks still leads Kitty Hawk Kites. The grandfather lives in Southern Shores about a dozen miles north of Jockey’s Ridge. He’s looking
forward to another 50th anniversary celebration next year -- his
company’s. “It’s a fun business.”
He recalls
the 1973 trip with fondness. “I learned so much from that trip. It was an honor
to work onboard with Dr. Edgerton.” He kept up with the late Edgerton, a
renowned professor at MIT.
“He thought I
was crazy starting a hang gliding school but he would drop by and see me and
would … occasionally send me one of his famous postcards.”
The
expedition was led by the late John Newton of the Duke University Marine Laboratory. Harris said Newton was
passionate about his work and very dedicated to making the research and work first-rate.
The RV Eastward was a well-maintained vessel. There was
always a diesel smell onboard, the businessman said. “It was fun sitting around the table
with those people,” he said, adding they were fed well. “It was great chow.”
The team
usually had a beer at the end of the day; Harris can’t recall how the turret
find was celebrated.
50 years later, the trip of a
lifetimes still resonates with Harris.
“The Monitor
experience is right up at the top. For anyone who enjoys adventure and the
outdoors, you just can’t beat it. It was a great team.”
Gordon Watts' sketch of turret and hull; Harold Edgerton top right with sonar; Watts (sketch courtesy of Watts; other photos courtesy of the MIT Museum)
Gordon Watts was only 23 when he set off
for the adventure of a lifetime – trying to locate the legendary USS Monitor. He
and a field of experts in the field were competing with a half dozen
groups that also were intent on snaring the prize.
But Watts and expedition leader John
Newton of the Duke University Marine Laboratory had done their homework,
carefully reading records, letters and the log of the ship that was towing the
famous Union ironclad when it sank in a storm on Dec. 31, 1862, 16 miles off
Cape Hatteras, N.C. They had a bead on the wreck’s likely location about 240
feet down while others searched elsewhere in 1973 and 1974.
Using relatively new technology, the team
on RV Eastward dropped side-scan sonars and photo and video cameras in the
water (photo of cameras, courtesy of MIT Museum), coming up against very limited visibility as they searched a grid. They
had ruled out other wrecks, many dating to World War II, until the somewhat
dispirited team made a hit on Aug. 27, 1973, shortly before they would have run
out of time.
Sonar showed something that looked like
the Monitor’s turret – which made history during its clash with CSS Virginia in
March 1862 during the Civil War. But the rest of the wreck made little sense – no one knew before
the trip that the ironclad had landed upside down, partially covering the
turret, which was separated from the hull.
While there was elation on the Eastward,
there was no firm finding and the expedition was unable to confirm it found the
vessel when it returned to port. Watts, today the last surviving member of
the primary discovery team, got back to work and went on another trip to
confirm the Monitor’s location.
Sunday marks
the 50th anniversary of the initial discovery. We asked Watts, who
has a distinguished career studying and diving shipwrecks, to talk about the
experience and how he went about identifying the Monitor.
1973: Gordon Watts, front left, behind him John Harris; on right, from back, Robert Sheridan, John Newton, Cathryn Newton and Harold Edgerton (NOAA)
“50 years: Whodathunkit??” the legendary underwater archaeologist wrote,
when we asked him to recall the adventure.
It’s important
to remember the Monitor was no ordinary shipwreck. The ironclad revolutionized
naval warfare, ending the era of wooden ships plugging away at each other. The
war machine was a marvel of engineering and technology and has intrigued
conservators and historians who have pored over components retrieved since 1973.
Today the turret, ordnance, steam machinery and associated artifacts are
available to the public at The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Va.
Watts’ responses to emailed questions about the anniversary
have been edited for brevity and in some cases combined.
Q. As among the very few who discovered the Monitor wreck in
1973, what do you recall about the expedition? What were the highlights? Who
else was with you?
A. The three principals in the RV Eastward cruise that located
the remains of USS Monitor were John Newton at the Duke University Marine
Laboratory, Dr. Harold Edgerton with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
myself, then the North Carolina state underwater archaeologist. Dr. Robert E.
Sheridan, a geologist from the University of Delaware, was also on board
Eastward to carry out a geological project.
In retrospect and by comparison
with today's technology, my most permanent recollection is associated with how
we were able to use Dr. Edgerton's side-scan sonar to locate the wreck and
adapt underwater camera and video systems to document significant features of
the wreck remains (team's search and location map at right).
The underwater video system used to collect image data at the site was
assembled aboard Eastward by John Harris, subsequently the founder and
president of Kitty Hawk Kites.
Film and video data collection was crudely controlled by maneuvering RV
Eastward back and forth over the wreck.
Q. What
was it like on board the Eastward and can you describe the project?
A. John
Newton and I joined the Eastward in Savannah. The trip to Hatteras was my first
aboard a ship. The entire trip can be characterized by rough seas, many over 20
feet. An East Carolina University prehistoric archaeologist along with us
to identify prehistoric cultural material in dredge samples we recovered off
Cape Fear spent the entire trip very and disgustingly sea sick. At Cape
Hatteras, he abandoned ship. Dr. Edgerton joined us and afforded the incredible
opportunity to work with someone for whom I had, and will always have, the utmost
respect and admiration. That was certainly the opportunity of a lifetime.
Off Cape Hatteras, we shared ship time with Dr. Sheridan.
When he was not conducting his geological research and sample collecting, we
ran remote sensing in the area I had identified based on historical and environmental
research. After locating a clearly modern WWII vessel, we subsequently
discovered a wreck with side-scan sonar that appeared to have a potential for
association with Monitor.
Armor belt near turret provided a big identification clue (NOAA)
Using Eastward's 35mm drop camera and the underwater
television rigged by for documenting the wreck by John Harris we were able to
collect sufficient almost random images that ultimately identified Monitor. The
Eastward cruise ended at the Duke University Marine Laboratory dock in
Beaufort, N.C., where the waiting press was disappointed to learn we had not
located and identified the Monitor.
Following a brief synopsis of the cruise and our, at that
point, less than dramatic conclusions, I packed up to head back to my office at
Fort Fisher. For two hours I was surprised and much disappointed to
discover that while never seasick aboard Eastward, the lack of motion of the
ocean resulted in my first and so far ONLY case of landsickness.You had to be there.
Q. What
convinced you that you had found the Monitor? When was that epiphany?
A. Using
the RV Eastward photo and video data I was able to construct crude mosaics and
identify features of the armor belt, skeg and propeller shaft and confirm the
diameter and wall thickness of the exposed portion of the turret.
One of the Monitor mosaics put together by Watts, others (NOAA)
From those data I was able to make a drawing of the wreck
profile to confirm the hull was upside down and resting on the displaced
turret. Even
with crude image mosaics and drawings, confirming my conclusion that we had
indeed found (John) Ericsson's first ironclad was a hard sell.
I informed John Newton of my conclusions in a letter on 14
January 1974. Those conclusions were not universally accepted until,
thanks to Dr. Edgerton, we were able to return to the site with Alcoa Seaprobe.
That much more sophisticated and systematic investigation generated
comprehensive image data that confirmed my conclusions. Q. How many times have you dived at the Monitor site since?
What stands out?
A. I would have to go back to my project logs to be sure how many dives I made on Monitor. However, my first dive was aboard a Harbor
Branch Oceanographic Institute Foundation submersible. That first dive was made
all the more exciting by identifying the red lantern that was the last evidence
of the historic ironclad that was observed by personnel aboard the USS Rhode
Island (which was towing Monitor when the latter sank). My lockout divers
from the Harbor Branch submersibles focused on an excavation within the officer
quarters forward, documenting the steam machinery inside the hull aft of the
boilers and investigating the gun ports in the turret underneath the hull
remains. It was exciting to be inside Monitor's engine room a century
after the ship was lost.
Q. The red lantern (right) was found in 1977, the first artifact
recovered, I believe. What do you remember most about its recovery?
A. Harbor Branch diver
Richard Roesch locked out of the Johnson Sea Link submersible and recovered the
lantern. I think it remains as one of the most significant artifacts from
the USS Monitor. The fact that it was the first evidence of the wreck we
found on the first submersible dive at the site is beyond ironic. Q. Anything else about your work on the USS Monitor recovery
and what it means today?
Q. Why should we care today about the
USS Monitor and its conservation? A. Today, most Americans are
probably unaware of USS Monitor and the brief role it played in the War Between
the Confederate States of America and the United States of America. For those
who are aware of the ironclad role, they likely also recognize the more
significant impact (John) Ericsson's first and subsequent ironclads vessel
played in the development of the modern turreted capital steam
warship. That role was indeed pivotal.
COMING
SOON: Recollections from John Harris, who operated the underwater video system
during the trip and became a hang gliding proponent and founder of Kitty Hawk
Kites in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and Monitor explorer, expert and author John Broadwater.
Watts during work on the CSS Georgia in Savannah in 2017 (Picket photo)
A shark roves over the Civil War wreck in a new 360-degree video (NOAA)
With
printable virtual artifacts and a 360-degree video from the ocean floor, NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary is adding a wow factor to the celebration of
the discovery of the famed ironclad USS Monitor 50 years ago this month.
The last days
of August are the culmination of a yearlong effort to mark the anniversary. Offerings will include a webinar led by USS Monitor expert John Broadwater.
“We had planned for all of our celebrations to be virtual (in
order) to reach a national audience,” said Tane Casserley, the sanctuary’s
research coordinator. “Keeping
in the spirit of USS Monitor being
a marvel of technology and innovation, the sanctuary plans to continue that
theme by using the newest technologies to celebrate the 50th
anniversary.”
The USS Monitor, which fought the ironclad CSS Virginia in March 1862, ending the
supremacy of wooden ships in combat, sank months later off Cape Hatteras, N.C.,
with 16 lives lost. The ironclad was located by a team of researchers on Aug.
27, 1973. The signature turret and hundreds of other artifacts have undergone
conservation in recent years.
3D models of worm wheel, boot and gun tool (MNMS)
Virtual artifact collection – available
now
NOAA now offers
two web links (here and here) for accessing a selection of artifacts that have undergone or are
still receiving treatment at the Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News.
A hammer,
anchor, powder scooper, Wellington-style leather boots, various gun tools, wheel and other iconic artifacts were scanned
earlier this year at the museum in a collaborative project involving the
University of West Florida.
“The completed scans are available for viewing
online and as a download for home 3D printing,” said Casserley.
“Monitor’s artifacts are quite fragile
after their conservation process has been completed and by virtually recreating
and 3D printing the artifacts, (the sanctuary) can quite literally put history
in people’s hands all while ensuring the safety of the original artifact.”
Visitors to
the web pages can load the models and then rotate them. The models can be downloaded as STL files.
Virtual model of turret allows viewers to rotate image and press numbers for details (NOAA)
360-degree video – debuted Friday (Aug.
25)
The immersive experience brings people “virtually down to the ocean floor to see the
shipwreck itself and its incredible marine life.”
The video shows multiple angles of the
ironclad, which landed upside down, teeming with colorful marine life.
“Transformed from a weapon of war to an island
of marine life, Monitorcontinues to serve as habitat for a wealth of
marine life. Dive in to see sand tiger sharks, sea turtles, and more,”
NOAA says.
“If you're on a desktop, click and drag to experience in 360
degrees, or pair your phone with your virtual reality headset. For the best
viewing experience, watch the video in high-definition: click the gear symbol
in the lower right corner, then select any of the HD options that pop up when
you click ‘Quality.’”
John Broadwater
webinar – 1 p.m. ET Aug. 31
Broadwater, a maritime archaeologist and author, has been on numerous
USS Monitor expeditions and is former superintendent of the sanctuary. An overview of the webinar includes this description:
“Discover why the shipwreck was difficult to locate and learn
about the expeditions to find it. Go back in time to August of 1973, when John
G. Newton led a team of scientists in search of the elusive shipwreck. Learn
why it continued to be difficult to identify once they thought they found it
and what finally convinced the team it was indeed the USS Monitor.”
Broadwater told the Picket he will speak on the webinar about high interest in the Monitor back then. “The moon and planets must have been aligned, because at least three
different groups chose 1973 to search for the Monitor,” he said in
an email. “I was in charge of one of the groups looking in the wrong place,
because we believed the story published by Robert Marx, who claims to have found
Monitor near Cape Hatteras lighthouse in the 1950s.”
