No meow in the mix: USS Monitor conservators don't find bones of black cat inside two massive turret guns

The last moments of the USS Monitor

A USS Monitor legend apparently has used up its nine lives: No remains of a spooky black cat were found during recent work on the turret’s two big guns.

Francis “Frank” B. Butts, a crew member who survived the famed Union ironclad’s sinking during a Dec. 31, 1862, storm wrote years later that he stuffed his coat and jacket into one of two XI-inch Dahlgren guns as he frantically bailed water from the turret.

Butts said he had a terrified furry companion.

“A black cat was sitting on the breech of one of the guns, howling one of those hoarse and solemn tunes which no one can appreciate who is not filled with the superstitions which I had been taught by the sailors, who are always afraid to kill a cat. I would almost as soon have touched a ghost, but I caught her, and placing her in another gun, replaced the wad and tampion; but I could still hear that distressing yowl.”

Butts, 18, made his frantic escape before the Monitor went beneath the waves. Sixteen of his mates perished.

Over the past two weeks, USS Monitor conservators at The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Va., removed the last concretion from inside the barrels of the smoothbore guns. They used a special drill to remove the hardened mix of sediment and sea life.

The first gun yielded pieces of crab, seashells and coal.

The coal fell into the turret and the artillery pieces when the Monitor came to rest on the sea floor, upside down. The fact coal was found in the barrels appears to contradict Butts’ claim that he sealed one.

Earlier this week, the conservators took on the second massive gun. Could bones of a luckless kitty be somewhere in the concretion?

The museum on Friday provided a Facebook update: “Earlier this week, our conservation team tackled the second Dahlgren gun from USS Monitor. The most interesting artifact found was a square bolt! Between the two guns, we found lots of coal and lots of seashells, and a bolt, no cat 😆”

Despite an abiding interest in the legend of the mascot, the finding was hardly a surprise. Most of the barrel interiors had been searched and emptied a few years after the turret recovery – with no discovery of a cat.

"It's a great story. It's one of the things we get asked the most questions about. And I'll be jumping up and down if it turns out to be true," historian Jeff Johnston of Monitor National Marine Sanctuary told the Daily Press in 2005. "But at this point, truthfully, I kind of doubt it."

Frank Butts

Johnston said Butts “made a lot of claims that may be suspect.” In an article he wrote a few years before, Johnston said the landsman was the only crew member to ever mention the cat and that he was the only person inside the turret when he claimed to have seen it. (Butts, a native of Providence, R.I., served as an artilleryman before joining the Federal navy.  He died in September 1905.)

Since the turret was raised off Cape Hatteras, N.C., in 2002, all manner of artifacts have been found jumbled inside – a coat, personal items and cutlery, among them. The remains of two unidentified sailor discovered there were buried at Arlington National Cemetery in 2013.

Once conservation is complete, the two guns will go on display. They will help tell the story of the innovative warship that tangled with the CSS Virginia in March 1862 – the first battle between two ironclads.

David Krop, former director of the Monitor Center, told the Picket that efforts by the current team at the museum mark a “significant milestone” in the treatment of the Dahlgrens. “They never would have been fully desalinated or effectively treated for long-term stability without removal of the bore contents and concreted sediment. The conservators have continued to scale-up their treatments in recent years building upon previous experiences and successes working with smaller Monitor objects.”

So has the story of the doomed cat really hit a dead end?

(The Mariners' Museum and Park)

Laurie King, an assistant conservator, told the Washington Post that she loved the account anyway.

“Even if it turns out to not be true, I really like Butts, and the fact that he had such an imagination, and felt like, ‘Oh no one’s going to know the difference,’ ” King told The Post. “I don’t think he ever would have imagined that we could bring it up a hundred and fifty years later.”

Krop, who left as center director in September 2015, says he doesn’t believe the feline legend has been put to rest.

“Francis Butts described removing his coat and boots and placing them in one Dahlgren, then scooping up his feline friend and safely stowing it in the other Dahlgren. What did we find inside the turret many years ago? Remains of a wool coat and boots, confirming two key elements of Butts’ account,” Krop said. “Perhaps the lack of evidence of Monitor’s kitty is, in some strange way, proof of its existence; some cats are simply elusive by nature. And perhaps some legends were never meant to be tamed.”