USS Monitor: Navy recognizes Virginia museum for cleaning of ironclad's two Dahlgren guns, which are still being conserved

Erik Farrell uses special drill in Dahlgren bore in early 2020 (Mariners' Museum and Park)

The conservation team that cleaned the inside of the 13-foot guns of the USS Monitor has been recognized with a maintenance excellence award from the U.S. Navy and a video showcasing the exacting work that involved precision tools and a whole lot of muck.

The Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) awarded the Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Va., a Pennant of Excellence for helping to preserve the heritage of the armed service.

In February and March 2020, the conservators removed the last concretion from inside the barrels of the smoothbore 11-inch Dahlgren guns.

They used a special drill and spade bit to remove the hardened mix of sediment and sea life. The weapons were inside the USS Monitor turret that was raised from the Atlantic Ocean floor in 2002 and have been in their own treatment tanks since 2004.

The first gun yielded pieces of crab, seashells and coal while the second held a bolt. Neither contained the remains of a cat that legend holds was stuffed into a barrel by a sailor moments before the USS Monitor sank on Dec. 31, 1862.

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 ironclads.

"The guns still require additional work. Desalination has to be completed, followed by removal of the treatment solution, controlled drying, and the application of different coatings to strengthen and protect the guns,” Erik Farrell, an archaeological conservator, said in a statement to the Picket.

“Because of the fragility of the material, the guns cannot be dried until an environmentally controlled case is available. Funding dependent, the remainder of the conservation process is expected to take around three years," he said.

Farrell is among those showcased in the new video, which was produced by the museum and SoundVision Studios. It shows the boring process and includes interviews with those involved.

The museum team and Master Machine & Tool of Newport News built a custom boring apparatus and cradle support to clean the bores. The barrels had between 1" and 3" thickness of concretion covering them all the way down the bore and forward to the muzzle -- hence the need to clean the inside of the 8-ton guns and help remove harmful ocean salts.    

In 2018, Farrell and others traveled to a Naval History and Heritage Command facility to look at a similar Dahlgren -- one used by the USS Kearsarge, the sloop of war famous for sinking the Confederate raider CSS Alabama off Cherbourg, France, in 1864.

They were able to measure the interior of the gun and learned both the Monitor and Kearsarge barrels -- which were made at the same foundry – were built to a specific Board of Ordnance pattern. The measurements would help crews know exactly how far down to drill without causing damage.

(Photo at left: One of the Dahlgrens in its treatment tank. The Picket took this photo during a visit a few years ago)

During the project in early 2020, water was pushed inside the barrels as the drilling did its magic, forcing sediment and muck out. “Sludge in this operation is a sign of success,” said one speaker in the eight-minute video. The effort included chiseling hard material to see what was inside.

The NHHC maintenance award is presented to nonprofits that demonstrate the greatest improvement in an artifact’s conditions over the past year.

Conservators with the pennant honoring their work (Mariners' Museum and Park)

“Private museums are critical in telling the Navy story, and this award recognizes The Mariners’ Museum and its Conservation team as a force multiplier in informing the public of our Navy’s history,” NHHC Director Samuel Cox said in a press release. “Their efforts honor those that have served as they continue to inspire and educate our next generation.”

Conserving the thousands of recovered items is not work for those who want instant results.

The process can take anywhere from months to years. The turret, which has been in a treatment tank for nearly two decades, needs another 10-15 years of conservation to draw all the salts out, officials say.

The museum has a blog with posts by USS Monitor conservators about the ongoing work to prepare artifacts for possible display. Click here to see posts about the boring and the turret.

One of the barrels before the boring project (Mariners' Museum and Park)

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.”

Ball busters: Experts render safe ordnance recovered from CSS Georgia

A Dahlgren round is rendered inert (Photos by Jeremy Buddemeir, USACE)

While the Confederate ironclad CSS Georgia didn’t get to fire upon the enemy during the Civil War, her underwater graveyard was packed with potential peril for 150 years. That’s been remedied, thanks to a crew of technicians and engineers who rendered more than 100 artillery projectiles harmless after they were brought up by Navy divers.

Brooke shell will undergo conservation (USACE)

The 9-inch Dahlgren and 6.4-inch Brooke rifle rounds were recovered -- along with much of the scuttled ship’s wreckage -- from the Savannah River in Savannah, Ga.

The MuniRem Environmental crew used an array of technology and equipment to drill holes into each round and extract black powder, all the while ensuring they’d be safe during the “breaching” process. It used a chemical solution to flush black powder.

View from barrier with drill mechanism in background

The company said on its website: “Contrary to some expectations, less than 1% of the munitions had seawater seepage; the black powder main and primary charges were essentially dry and of high energetic hazard.”

By drilling a hole in the side of the munition, the crew was able to not disturb the fuze, the most hazardous part of the entire shell. “With the removal of the main charge the threat of a detonation and fragmentation of the munitions case was avoided,” the Georgia-based Muni Rem said. “The amount of explosives remaining within the projectile was contained within the fuze. Subsequently, the fuze was rendered safe by drilling directly though the fuze body to access and neutralize the explosives.”

A Dahlgren round resembles a bowling ball (USACE)

A fuze after removal from Brooke shell

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers district in Savannah has overseen the CSS Georgia recovery. The shells were sent to Texas A&M University’s Conservation Research Laboratory for conservation.

• More details of the delicate operation

A Dahlgren round is readied for breaching (USACE)

Surprise! Another gun from CSS Georgia is brought to the surface in Savannah

This Dahlgren was raised on Sept. 15 (USACE photo)

Recovery of the remnants of the CSS Georgia in Savannah has yielded another archaeological treasure: A third Dahlgren gun.

It’s known that the Confederate ironclad, which was part of the Georgia city’s defenses, had at least 10 guns at some point – but no one knew exactly how many were on board when the vessel was scuttled in December 1864.

Two guns were found years ago and sit outside Old Fort Jackson nearby. A U.S. Navy diving team this summer salvaged four guns, including one 9,000-pound Dahlgren, two Brooke rifles and a smaller gun.

Now there’s a seventh gun. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Russell Wicke said that the massive Dahlgren brought up Tuesday was a bit of a surprise because it apparently evaded earlier archaeological and sonar surveys because it was deeper in the muck. It was scooped up by a large grapple that went into use this week.

Jim Jobling, a project manager with Texas A&M University's Conservation Laboratory, theorized a second Dahlgren would be found, according to an Army Corps article. A wartime manifest of the ship didn't mention them.