‘It’s Fantastic’: Monitor’s Gun Turret Recovered

After nearly 140 years of resting on the ocean bottom off North Carolina, the massive gun turret of the Monitor--the first modern warship--was brought to the surface Monday evening along with its two large Dahlgren cannons.

Strong undersea currents and bad weather Saturday had delayed the effort for two days, and another storm threatened the expedition today. But on Monday afternoon, Navy divers were able to hook massive cables to the eight-legged claw they had previously attached to the turret and begin the process of winching it 240 feet to the surface.

The 150-ton turret broke water at 5:55 p.m. EDT to cheers and whistles from the crew of the barge Wotan, which has been anchored at the site 16 miles offshore since late June. Under a Civil War-era American flag, a crane operator then lowered it gently onto the barge for transport to Newport News, Va.

“It’s fantastic,” said John Broadwater, director of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. “It’s sitting on the barge, and we are looking at dents that the [Confederate ironclad] Virginia put on it March 9, 1862.”

Once the turret reaches shore Wednesday, it will be submerged again, this time in a tank where it will be chemically treated to remove the salt that has built up over the decades. If the turret is not treated, the salt will crystallize inside the iron, destroying the metal.

After it is cleaned and treated--a process that can take as long as 10 years--the turret will go on display along with the previously recovered engine and about 600 other artifacts at a new $30-million museum in Newport News, Va., not far from the location of its history-making counterpart, the Virginia.

“Future generations will not have to rely on paintings and faded photographs to remember the Monitor,” Broadwater said.

The Monitor and the Virginia, originally a Union vessel named the Merrimack, made nautical history when they engaged in the first duel of ironclad warships on that long-ago March day. Although the fight ended in a draw with neither ship suffering significant damage, the Monitor was able to drive the Confederate attacker away from wooden warships in the area.

“It was a milestone in the history of the Navy,” marking the end of the era of wooden warships, said historian Mark Hayes of the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C. “From then on, naval technology was a race between developing stronger guns and better-protected ships.”

The Monitor saw no further action and sank in an ocean storm on New Year’s Eve later that year while being towed by a Union ship, the Rhode Island. Sixteen officers and seamen died in it. The wreckage was discovered in 1973; to protect the wreck, its site was designated the nation’s first marine sanctuary.

The ship itself is too fragile to be recovered intact. “It was literally falling apart in front of our eyes,” Broadwater said.

Last year, the team, sponsored by the Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, brought up its 36-ton steam engine and 9-foot propeller. The turret is the last major section that will be raised, but future expeditions will search for smaller artifacts to join those already recovered.

The turret is considered the most important and innovative piece of the ironclad. Both the Confederacy and European nations had already built ironclads, but the Monitor was the first to feature a rotating gun turret that allowed it to fire its cannons in any direction.

While other warships had to undertake difficult maneuvers to be able to fire broadsides at their opponents, the Monitor could fire its cannons while steaming in any direction, giving it an enormous advantage. And its armor enabled it to withstand any broadsides that could be brought to bear.

But retrieving the turret proved to be a formidable task. As it sank, the Monitor rolled over and the turret broke loose, crashing to the ocean floor only to have the main body of the ship land on top of it.

Extricating the turret was like rescuing “a little old lady trapped under a building,” noted one of the divers from the Navy’s Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two, which performed the bulk of the undersea work.

Because of the wreck’s depth, conventional divers could work on the ocean floor for only 30 minutes at a time before returning to the surface and undergoing two hours of decompression.

To get around this constraint, the team used a technique called saturation diving, in which the divers lived for up to two weeks at a time in a pressurized chamber on the Wotan. Each day, the divers would put on their suits and be lowered to the bottom in a diving bell. This technique allowed them to work on the bottom for six-hour periods, so that round-the-clock shifts could be maintained.

More than 150 divers participated in the work, which Navy officials said was a valuable training exercise. The divers, whose work has been featured in the movie “Men of Honor,” routinely participate in the salvage of shipwrecks and plane crashes at sea.

The divers spent weeks cutting away the bulk of the ship that blocked access to the turret, removing silt from the turret to lighten the load, and attaching the specially designed, eight-legged “spider” that would be used to lift it. On Monday, that spider was used to lift the turret and place it on a nearby platform, which was then hoisted to the surface.

“This is truly a historic day,” said Cmdr. Bobbie Scholley, who was in charge of the dive team.

More than 200 artifacts were recovered during the 41-day expedition, including a glass button, hydrometers, working thermometers, an intact lantern chimney and two stanchions. Archeologists expect to find many more artifacts when the turret is examined because many of the sailors were known to have brought their sea bags to the turret when abandoning ship, only to leave them behind.

On Saturday, the divers retrieved what appears to be a nearly intact human skeleton from the turret. After it is examined, it will be buried with full military honors.

This summer’s project cost $6.5 million and was funded by the government.