'Everybody gasped': John Harris, who went on to fly hang gliders and start Kitty Hawk Kites, recalls moment 1973 team saw Monitor turret

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 50^th 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.”

 PICKET COVERAGE OF USS MONITOR

-- Cathryn Newton: At 16, she was the youngest crew member. She says the find was a group effort.
-- Gordon Watts: How he confirmed the location of the shipwreck
-- Go deep for 50th anniversary of USS Monitor discovery: Printable 3D artifacts, webinar and a 360-degree video of ironclad's resting place
-- USS Monitor: Navy recognizes Virginia museum for cleaning of ironclad's two Dahlgren guns, which are still being conserved
-- The USS Monitor overcame doubters. Its crew trusted the ironclad, even during the terrible storm that sank the famous ironclad.
-- What do USS Monitor, Jimmy Fallon have in common? Saugerties, NY. This town morphed from industrial 'Inferno' to a cool tourist spot