A century-and-a-half ago, as the divided nation was engaged in the bitter Civil War, the fields of battle included not only land but also the sea. In response to President Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of a naval blockade of the Southern coast from Virginia to the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Navy began a buildup to enforce it. Off Hampton Roads, Virginia, the Navy’s ships were in a position not only to blockade, but potentially to enter the James River and push up to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates blocked the river with sunken ships and other obstructions, including underwater mines then known as torpedoes. They also raised and repaired the half-burned and sunken hulk of the former USS Merrimack, converting it into a new type of ironclad warship. Commissioned as the CSS Virginia, on 8 March 1862, the ironclad wreaked havoc on the Union Fleet at Hampton Roads.
In a one-sided battle, the Virginia sank the USS Cumberland and set the USS Congress afire, destroying her. The age of the wooden warship was over. Fear that the Virginia might not be stopped, and that the river approaches to Washington, D.C., also accessible from Hampton Roads, might now be open to Confederate assault, Union military and political leaders were alarmed. Their only hope was a tiny, experimental craft, the Union’s ironclad USS Monitor. Built hastily in just 100 days in a Brooklyn suburb, the Monitor was untested and not trusted by some. But at the heart of that iron ship was more than steam power and two mighty guns. There were men, the type of individuals who had served and who continue to serve in the Navy and the other armed forces.
Arriving by the light of the burning Congress that evening after a harrowing voyage in which she nearly foundered in heavy seas, the Monitor took position the next morning as the Virginia returned to finish the fight. In a battle that raged for hours, the two ships, each with brave and staunch crews, hammered at each other in this first clash of armored ships. While the battle ended in a draw, a new age had dawned in naval warfare. The withdrawal of the Virginia was heralded as a victory in the North, and the Monitor became known as the ship that saved the Union. The tiny ironclad’s iconic status remained throughout the rest of her brief life, and beyond her loss on 31 December, less than a year after her launch. Under tow of the USS Rhode Island to a new field of battle, the Monitor sank in high swells off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, that night. The stormy seas also claimed 16 of the Monitor’s crew.
Rediscovered in 1973, the sunken ship became America’s first National Marine Sanctuary, a National Historic Landmark, and the subject of several expeditions by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Navy, and other partners. At the request of Congress, the Monitor’s anchor, engine, propeller, and finally her armored turret, with its two massive Dahlgren guns, emerged from the sea for conservation treatment and public display at the USS Monitor Center at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, in sight of where her epic battle was fought.
When the turret was raised in 2002, the remains of two of the ship’s crew were found inside. Respectfully recovered, they were sent to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. There, scientists and archaeologists learned a great deal about those two men, extracted DNA, and began a long and as yet unresolved quest to learn their identities.
Genealogy also played a role, as descendants of the lost crewmen were sought to obtain DNA for a possible match. Working with Louisiana State University’s Faces Laboratory in Baton Rouge, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries has now revealed to the nation just what these two men looked like, although which of the crew they were is still undetermined even after a decade of a meticulous and dedicated quest by JPAC.
What should happen now, especially in this 150th anniversary year? I believe the time has come for the nation to recognize and honor that crew with the interment of the two Monitor sailors at the hallowed Arlington National Cemetery. NOAA has proposed, and I agree, that a monument to all 16 who paid the ultimate sacrifice be erected there, with each sailor’s name, rank, and hometown. Beneath it the two who have been found would be laid to rest at last with all due dignity, ceremony, and recognition.