On 8 August 2002, Naval History accepted an invitation to participate in an extraordinary news conference. It was being conducted from the deck of the derrick barge Wotan, which at the time was transporting the Monitor’s turret up the Atlantic coast the day before it arrived in Newport News, Virginia. The conference was unusual because it was conducted by way of remote telephone with 11 members of the press, including representatives from The New York Times and USA Today. Following are answers to questions posed by Naval History to Dr. John Broadwater, chief scientist for Monitor Expedition 2002 and manager of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Commander Barbara L. “Bobbie” Scholley, U.S. Navy, on scene commander of the expedition and commanding officer of the Navy’s Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two.
Naval History: What findings surprised you most during this expedition?
Broadwater: We have blueprints of what the turret was supposed to have looked like and how it was to have been built. But when the excavation got about halfway down, we noticed there were some features that didn’t show up on any of the blueprints. They eventually turned out to be some huge diagonal braces that had been added to the turret sometime after the ship’s launching. It appears that the braces were put in because of the weight of the guns, especially when they were run out and fired. They were causing stresses on the turret that were deforming it enough that it may have caused problems with the turret’s rotating mechanism. This is all speculation right now, but we do know these braces are not shown on the drawings.
We’re now also seeing all the linkages and the rods and levers involved in the rotation of the turret. And we know that there was a steering system added. The Monitor had a pilothouse forward but during the transit to South Carolina, for the trip when she sank, they had put a temporary steering station in or on the turret, and we think we’re now finding evidence of that steering station.
The amount of coal in the turret was definitely a surprise. We knew there were bits of coal down inside the turret. The Monitor’s coal bunkers were almost full. They had been topped off in Hampton Roads before the tow south. Even though the boilers were operating and steam pressure was up, the ship was not consuming a great deal of coal on the way down the coast. So we knew there was lots of coal there, and we were sure from the archaeological evidence that the Monitor sank stern first. So that probably would have driven the coal further aft. What we were surprised to find was just how much coal was inside the turret. That was not expected. In looking at the blueprints of the Monitor, it didn’t take long to discover that one of the coal scuttles—a circular hatch about 12 inches in diameter—ended up just above the Monitor’s turret, with the upside-down hull. It appears the coal came through the coal scuttle and poured down into the turret.
Naval History: Is it now Navy policy to raise human remains from sunken ships for conventional burial?
Commander Scholley: I’m not an expert on that, even though I’m a naval officer. In this case, we’re definitely treating these sailors as missing in action. We were so fortunate to have Eric Emery from the Army’s central identification lab in Hawaii, an expert in recovering service members’ remains. The fact that we found them in the turret was something we knew was going to be a possibility from the beginning. And we wanted to do this absolutely the right way. That’s why we got the experts out here to do this. So although I’m not a subject- matter expert on this, I think we handled this very appropriately. From my perspective as a sailor and a naval officer, I’m proud to be a part of this and to be able to bring these shipmates home and hopefully identify them and give them a proper burial here on the surface.
Naval History: Can we assume this will be the last artifact to be raised from the sanctuary?
Dr. Broadwater: That’s a tough one. Right now, it’s the last scheduled large object to be recovered from the Monitor. The long-range preservation plan called for a partnership between NOAA and the Navy to run from 1998 during the propeller recovery through 2002 or 2003 for the turret recovery. Both NOAA and the Navy have been so pleased with this partnership, and so much has been accomplished, that discussions already are under way, although informal at this point, about how we might partner on future projects. At this point, we’re keeping the options open for additional recoveries at the site. We know that everything forward of the midships bulkhead is relatively stable, but it’s still deteriorating. And there are certainly more stories to be told through additional archaeological work.