The Cat, Alas, is Not
Perhaps the most persistent of legends regarding the USS Monitor is that of the ship’s screeching cat being stuffed into the muzzle of one of the ironclad’s 11-inch Dahlgren guns as she was sinking on 31 December 1862. As with most legends, it is not fact. Conservators at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were able to debunk the 142-year-old legend with 90% confidence in September after spending most of August documenting and excavating the bores of both cannon from the Civil War ironclad’s iconic gun turret.
The legend began with a December 1885 article in Century Magazine entitled “The Loss of the Monitor,” by crewman Francis B. Butts, who claimed that during the night that the ironclad sank, he shoved his coat and boots into one cannon, and a cat into the other:
I occupied the turret all alone, and passed buckets from the lower hatchway to the man on the top of the turret. I took off my coat—one that I had received from home only a few days before (I could not feel that our noble little ship was yet lost)—and rolling it up with my boots, drew the tampion from one of the guns, placed them inside, and replaced the tampion. 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. As I raised my last bucket to the upper hatchway no one was there to take it. I scrambled up the ladder and found that we below had been deserted. I shouted to those on the berth-deck, “Come up; the officers have left the ship, and a boat is alongside.”
The Monitor researchers not only failed to find any trace of the cat, but also did not find any remnants of the boots or coat. “We’ve excavated and screened enough material from both cannons to say with certainty that neither cannon is loaded,” said the Mariners’ Museum Assistant Conservator David Krop. “We have also failed to find any trace of organic material such as leather, wool, or bone. Although we are still clearing concretion and sediment from inside both bores that may hide cat bones or organics, I seriously doubt anything will turn up.”
Monitor Sanctuary Historian Jeff Johnston noted that “The excavations confirmed my suspicion that Francis Butts fabricated the whole story.” Johnston has uncovered other instances in which Butts apparently stretched the truth in giving his account of his service aboard the Monitor.
The cannon were removed from the Monitor's gun turret in 2004 as part of an ongoing conservation process. While resting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for more than 142 years, the guns filled with concretions and sediment that must be removed as one of the first steps in the conservation process. Conservators used caution during this process in case Butts’ story proved true and because they could not immediately verify if the guns were or were not loaded.
“Sediment removal has been difficult due to the amount of coal in each barrel, but also because we are constrained by the dimensions of the conservation tank the artifacts are in,” said Eric Schindelholz, Monitor lead conservator. “We’ve improvised by creating a variety of tools that will help us in our efforts, and have partnered with our colleagues at Northrop Grumman to borrow a bore scope so that we can get a good look inside each cannon and see what we’re dealing with.”
The cannon will undergo a nearly five-year-long electrolytic reduction conservation process to reduce corrosion and remove chlorides from the iron. Conservators will also focus on saving the engravings that were carved into each cannon after the Monitor's historic clash with its ironclad foe, the CSS Virginia. One engraving reads “Worden Monitor & Merrimac” (in honor of the Monitor’s captain); the other reads “Ericsson Monitor & Merrimac" (in honor of the vessel’s designer).
In 1987, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on behalf of the federal government, designated the Mariners’ Museum as the repository for artifacts and archives from the Monitor. Working jointly with NOAA and the U.S. Navy, the museum has received more than 1,100 artifacts from the Monitor, including the steam engine, propeller, and revolving gun turret.
On 9 March 2007, exactly 145 years after the historic clash between the ironclads, the Mariners’ Museum and NOAA will open the doors to what promises to be one of the premier Civil War attractions—the USS Monitor Center, which is currently under construction. The Mariners’ Museum, in partnership with NOAA, broke ground for the facility in 2004-
The $30 million, 63,500-square-foot facility will present exhibits that put visitors face-to-face with history. It will also house state-of-the-art conservation labs and offer historians rich resources for research. For more information, visit www.monitorcenter.org.
Center Dedicated to Marine
On 7 October 2005 General Michael W. Hagee, 33rd commandant of the Marine Corps, officially named the Marine Corps History Center at Quantico, Virginia, in honor of Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Retired). When completed, the center, a wing of Marine Corps University’s General Alfred M. Gray Research Center, will include the Historical, Field History, and Historical Reference Branches, and the Editing and Design office.
The Historical Branch consists of the writing and oral history program, while the Field History Branch will gather the Corps’ history as it happens by deploying historians to major combat commands. The Historical Reference Branch will provide historical research and reference services to all interested individuals, and Editing and Design creates the Historical Division’s publications, texts, and illustrative materials. All library and archives functions reside with the Gray Research Center.
Simmons is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Silver Star, three Legion of Merit medals with combat “V,” two Bronze Stars, and the Purple Heart. He has written more than 300 articles for numerous military and general publications including two articles about Marines in World War I in the December issue of Naval History. He has also written two non-fiction books, The United States Marines and Marines in Vietnam, and the critically acclaimed Dog Company Six, a fictional account of the Korean War. He has contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Dictionary of American History, and other standard works.
The Gray Research Center is designed to support the professional military education and academic needs of the students and faculty of the university and is the central research center for all Marines. It now consists of the Archives Division, library, conference center, and the Horner Chair of Military Theory, which provides for a scholar-in-residence with expertise in military history, strategy, and art.
New Old Skyhawk Reborn
The Virginia Aviation Museum, a division of the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, is expecting to receive a Navy A-4C Skyhawk by the first of the year. The airplane, BuNo 148543, will be on long-term loan from the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida. When displayed, the plane will be painted in the Black Diamond colors of VA-216 as flown by Commander Paul E. Galanti, U.S. Navy (Retired), before he was shot down in 1966 and became a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Galanti is a recent inductee into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame.
The aircraft will honor not only people such as Commander Galanti, the late Vice Admiral James Stockdale, U.S. Navy (Retired), and the many others who flew Skyhawks, but also will anchor future exhibitions illustrating naval aviation’s long history in Virginia and the science behind that history.
The Virginia Aeronautical Historical Society and private donors are funding the project. The Skyhawk will be disassembled at Pensacola, transported to Virginia, and reassembled at Richmond International Airport by Worldwide Aircraft Recovery. Volunteer members of the Attack Fighter Squadron 106 (VFA- 106) Corrosion Control Shop will paint the aircraft.
First at Shanghai
The SS American Victory is steaming again after many idle years and has become a mariners’ memorial and merchant marine museum. The apex of her long career came shortly after her birth.
In late 1945, Dan Pinck was a young OSS agent working his way home from a lengthy mission behind Japanese lines. Among the information he was bringing back was a Chinese newspaper clipping that noted: “The first American cargo ship to enter Shanghai since 1938 arrived at this great coastal port on September 22 and began unloading cargo originally intended for combat operations, it was announced today. The ship, the USS [sic] American Victory, brought many supplies including a cargo of trucks and aviation gasoline.”
Shanghai, that exotic star of the East and gateway to the mysteries of China, was a magnet to young American sailors of the 1920s and '30s and a frequent destination for U.S. naval and merchant vessels until the city fell to the Japanese. Shanghai became a major port for the Japanese Empire, denied to U.S. ships for the duration of the war.
The SS American Victory, first at Shanghai after the Japanese surrender, was not a ship of the U.S. Navy. She was a recently launched merchant vessel built by California Shipbuilding Co. on her maiden voyage, controlled by the War Shipping Administration (WSA). The ship was operated by Hammond Shipping Co., under what was known as a General Agency Agreement. Stafford S. Harlow was the master with a crew of civilian merchant seamen. Immediately after delivery to the WSA, American Victory was ordered to Fort Mason in San Francisco to load a cargo destined for the Philippines. She arrived in Manila on 26 July 1945. When the war ended on 15 August, priorities changed. The ship was sent to Japan and became among the first U.S. merchant ships to dock there when she arrived in Yokohama on 4 September with cargo assigned to the occupation troops. Next came Shanghai and the honor of being first.
After a month in China, the American Victory began a 35,576-nautical-mile 236- day odyssey that would take her home via the Philippines, Singapore, India, the Suez Canal, and Egypt. It was the longest voyage the ship ever made. The freighter remained active after the war, transporting cargoes all over the world under the Marshall Plan until laid up in reserve in 1947.
She was reactivated in 1951 for service during the Korean War, then promptly retired again in 1954. Once more placed in service, in 1966 for her third war, the American Victory made 11 trips to Vietnam. She went back into reserve in 1969, awaiting an uncertain future. She never returned to Shanghai. Most likely her story would have ended with her being recycled from the James River, Virginia, ghost fleet if not for a group of dedicated volunteers.
Tampa Bay, Florida, harbor pilot John C. Timmel and marine surveyor Charles A. Harden organized an effort to save the ship and create a mariners’ memorial, a merchant marine museum, and a reliable platform for cruises. With the help of Florida Congressman Jim Davis, the ship was transferred from the Maritime Administration to the Victory Ship, Inc., a not-for-profit organization founded to secure, restore, and operate the ship as the American Victory Mariners Memorial and Museum Ship.
The venerable veteran of three wars arrived in Tampa on 16 September 1999. She had endured a long and rough tow from the James River Reserve Fleet, dodging Hurricane Floyd in transit. Gulf Coast Transit contributed more than $200,000 for the tow, and Tampa Bay Shipbuilding and Repair donated more than $350,000 for dry-docking, sandblasting, and painting. Other bay- area marine services continue to donate substantial sums for the ship’s restoration. The mainstays of this program, however, are the dedicated volunteers from all walks of life who have worked more than 80,000 hours for the resurrection of this historic vessel.
The Victory ship completed sea trials on 6 March 2003 to the satisfaction of her crew and the U. S. Coast Guard. The 6,000-horsepower Allis Chalmers marine turbine hummed like a youngster instead of a 60-year-old senior. Although floating high with part of her rudder and propeller exposed, she responded handily. It was a glorious day for the volunteer steaming crew and Captain Bill Moran who used vacation time from his tanker command to serve as temporary master. Timmel served as pilot for the occasion, which was the first time the ship had been under way under her own power since an evaluation of mothballed Victory ships in 1985.
The American Victory has conducted three passenger cruises in Tampa Bay since she successfully completed sea trials. The first, on 20 September 2003, embarked 250 passengers for a seven- hour cruise from Tampa. World War II re- enactors defended the ship from a strafing aircraft and period bands played 1940s tunes on the well decks.
The second cruise, on 16 April 2005 with 650 passengers, was a replica of the first after a hiatus for major renovation. A third trip was made on 12 November 2005 with approximately 550 passengers. Additional cruises are planned for 14 January and 11 March 2006.
For more information about the program, visit the ship’s Web site at http://www.americanvictory.org
by Charles M. Fuss, Jr.
Smallest and Biggest Discoveries
The Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL), established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Hawaii, is making a name for itself in the world of underwater archaeology. While its mission is to study deep-water marine processes in the Pacific Ocean, within the last three years its researchers, using state-of-the-art submersibles, have made two significant discoveries of importance to World War II historians. In August 2002, they discovered a Japanese midget submarine, perhaps the smallest of Japan’s warships, and in March 2005 they located the site of the Japanese I-401, the largest diesel submarine ever built.
On 28 August 2002, the Pisces IV and Pisces V, two deep-diving submersibles operated by HURL, found the Japanese midget submarine believed to be the first vessel sunk in the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The sub was located during the last in a series of annual test and training dives off the port. The discovery has been described as the most significant modern marine archeological find ever in the Pacific, second only to locating the Titanic in the Atlantic. The sub was one of five attached to five I-class mother submarines launched within a few miles of Pearl Harbor just hours before the aerial attack. All five submarines were sunk or captured; one has not yet been found.
This discovery appears to confirm the account radioed to the Pearl Harbor naval command at 0645 on 7 December by the USS Ward (DD-139). A Japanese submarine was shot through the conning tower and then depth charged while trying to enter Pearl Harbor behind a cargo ship.
After 61 years of searching by various organizations, photographs from the two HURL subs reveal that the submarine sits upright, 1,200 feet down about five miles off the mouth of Pearl Harbor. She is in very good condition, with her torpedoes still in place and shows no apparent depth charge damage but does have shell damage on both sides of her conning tower. The port side of the tower exhibits what one analyst identified as shrapnel holes. These would presumably have come from the first shell fired by the Ward, which exploded near the sub. The starboard side of the tower has a hole from a second 4-inch shell, which apparently did not explode.
Last August, a team that included representatives from the Naval Historical Center, NOAA, and the National Park Service participated in an expedition to the midget submarine. Their main objectives included collecting data on the wreck’s condition and gathering information on the conditions of the boat’s environment to determine the best way to protect her remains.
On 17 March 2005, during a training exercise, the Pisces subs discovered the wreck of the I-401, sunk during target practice in 1946. The 400-foot long, aircraft-carrying sub was found about 2,800 feet down off Barbers Point, Oahu. She was one of three built in 1944 with the mission of attacking the Panama Canal. She was sunk to prevent her technology from being surrendered to the Russians under a war-end agreement.
In addition to these two submarines, two days before they found I-401, the HURL subs discovered the S-19 (SS-124) in 1,300 feet of water. The boat, laid down near the end of World War I, was scuttled off Pearl Harbor 18 December 1938, in accordance with the terms of the Second London Naval Treaty.