USS Monitor in distress

[Artful]

http://www.webpronews.com/uss-monitor-restoration-threatened-by-funding-cuts-2014-01


USS MONITOR RESTORATION THREATENED BY FUNDING CUTS
https://d22r54gnmuhwmk.cloudfront.net/photos/9/ly/wf/RWlywFUotWPgwIQ-800x450-noPad.jpg
The famed Civil War-era ironclad, the USS Monitor, is back in rough waters (http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/26/3566245/uss-monitor-work-goes-dark-as.html) after seeing significant dips in funding for its restoration. When the wreck was pulled from North Carolina coast in 2002, it was thought that restoration might take a total of 15 years to complete.

“But right now, if nothing was to change, 50 to 60 years is not out of the question,” David Krop, director of the USS Monitor Center, said.

That’s because funds have simply dried up.

The decline in funding comes largely from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which was tasked with overseeing federal involvement with the project after Congress designated The Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Va., the official conservator of the wreck.

James Delgado, director of NOAA’s Maritime Heritage Program, said the agency will support the museum’s work with the funds they have available: “We have been partners with the museum since 1987 when at their request they asked for the artifacts to be entrusted to them for conservation. That partnership continues, and the artifacts are not at risk.”

The Monitor, an innovative battleship with iron-plated hulls is best known for its battle with the CSS Virginia (nee USS Merrimack), another ironclad. Their confrontation at the battle of Hampton Roads in 1862 ended in a draw. The Monitor sank in bad weather later that year, killing 16 of the ship’s 62 crewmembers.

The remains of the Monitor, including its 120-ton turret, were hauled up in 2002. The bodies of two sailors were found in the turret and were buried in 2013 at Arlington National Cemetery.

The turret, its two 13-foot-long Dahlgren guns (each weighing 8 tons), and the steam engine that powered the vessel are now stored in massive tanks that contain treated water and chemicals intended to draw out the saltwater. Visitors to the museum previously could look down through windows into the museum’s so-called “Wet Lab,” which once boasted five full-time conservators. Now, with funding cut, they’re down to one remaining employee, and the tanks are covered with tarps. Tours of the lab have been suspended.

The Mariner’s Museum (http://www.marinersmuseum.org/) has initiated a push to reclaim funding, including a Change.org petition (http://www.change.org/petitions/united-states-congress-provide-funding-to-conserve-the-uss-monitor-collection) [https://www.change.org/p/united-states-congress-provide-funding-to-conserve-the-uss-monitor-collection], and a link through their website where supporters can send NOAA an email to urge funding for the project.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hWpY-xjN2g

http://www.marinersmuseum.org/uss-monitor-center/

http://education.jlab.org/scienceseries/restoration_uss_monitor.html


Donations
https://10123.blackbaudhosting.com/10123/200

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Lieutenant Greene's account of the sinking is contained in Century Magazine's series on the war, which was reprinted in four volumes as "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War". He thought the ship should have been safe if they had relied on the mechanical fit of the turret, rather than caulking the joint with oakum which partly fell out. I always wonder if they found any trace of the ship's cat, which someone put into the muzzle of one of the guns and replace the tompion, to keep it safe when water was coming aboard.

[Wayne Smith]

Artful found this a posted it at my request. This is a very real current need. I was listening to John Coursine on the radio this AM talking about it. He is the guy in charge of raising the money and has written several books on the USS Monitor, the CSS Virginia, and the Battle of the Capes. We have been to the museum before they closed the tanks. It is awsome to see the turrent, complete with dents from the cannonballs that hit it in the battle. The engines and the cannon were still in deep preservation and not on display.

According to John there is a cat in one of the cannons that has yet to be found. A sailor stated that one of the cats on board during the final storm was quite upset so the stuffed it in one of the cannons and put in the tampion. The ship sank, taking the cannon and cat with it. The cannon barrels have yet to be drilled out - one of the necessary steps in the preservation of them. Thus there is still a lot of work yet to be done on both the cannon and the engine.

[mold maker]

It's incredible that such a piece of history, has to depend on private funding for its preservation.
With all the waste and giveaways maintained by the feds why is this happening?

[M-Tecs]

It's incredible that such a piece of history, has to depend on private funding for its preservation.
With all the waste and giveaways maintained by the feds why is this happening?

Simply because spending money on this will not "buy" any votes.

[duckey]

I was stationed in the OBX of NC and we did quite a bit of back in forth from our station to the Grapple tha was anchored over the wreck. We also had a few navy folks living out of air conditioned containers with a decompression unit near parked next to them. It was about a 20 mile round trip for us. A dive cage/lift came back to our one day with several chunks of rusted iron from the wreck. Ended up keeping one of them after asking.

[salty dog]

Lieutenant Greene's account of the sinking is contained in Century Magazine's series on the war, which was reprinted in four volumes as "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War". He thought the ship should have been safe if they had relied on the mechanical fit of the turret, rather than caulking the joint with oakum which partly fell out. I always wonder if they found any trace of the ship's cat, which someone put into the muzzle of one of the guns and replace the tompion, to keep it safe when water was coming aboard.

I heard the same show. What made an impression on me was that sailors got concussions just from standing to close to the armor near the points of impact.

[Artful]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmnnqJm_4Pc

[Multigunner]

I hadn't heard of them raising the Monitor. Last I heard they were declaring it a wartime grave site not to be disturbed. They did the same for the Hunley at one time but too much surface traffic was causing the Hunley to break up.

[Artful]

There isn't enough to raise the complete USS Monitor
they are trying to salvage what remains...

http://articles.dailypress.com/2004-07-08/news/0407080186_1_john-broadwater-uss-monitor-monitor-national-marine-sanctuary


Uss Monitor Suffers Severe Damage
July 08, 2004|By Mark St. John Erickson, merickson@dailypress.com | 247-4783
NEWPORT NEWS — Recent video from the wreck of the pioneering Civil War ship reveals unexpected deterioration.

A large section of the historic USS Monitor has been "obliterated" by unknown causes, archaeologists said Wednesday, following a two-week-long Navy and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expedition to the famous Cape Hatteras, N.C., wreck.


FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran on Friday, July 16, 2004
A headline on a story about the USS Monitor in the front section July 8 might have led some readers to think that a trawler net found at the site damaged the underwater remains of the ironclad. Archaeologists are studying the damage and are trying to determine what caused it. (Text deleted.)


Conducting the first survey of the pioneering Civil War ship since last summer, Navy divers discovered that a significant number of iron plates have been stripped from the upside-down hull, leaving its boilers and galley fully exposed to the damaging currents. Adjacent to this gaping wound, a critical structural member known as the midships bulkhead appears to have collapsed, setting the scene for future and perhaps accelerated deterioration.

"It was pretty shocking to see what had happened," said underwater archaeologist John Broadwater, head of the Newport News-based Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.

"It looks much worse than it did just a year ago."
Sanctuary historian Jeff Johnston said the damage was discovered when a Navy diver from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two, which operates out of Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, attempted to return a 2002 time capsule that had washed a short distance away from the ship.

Climbing up on the vessel's armor belt, he scanned the wreck with his helmet camera, sending a stream of unexpected video footage to the NOAA scientists on board the salvage vessel USS Grasp.

"I shouldn't have been seeing what I saw," Johnston said Wednesday, still stunned by the extent of the damage. "Believe me, it wasn't a pretty sight."

Despite the murky conditions on the bottom, additional Navy video showed the hull plates displaced in at least one "big chunk" as well as numerous smaller pieces, leaving a debris field strewn across and away from the vessel. It also revealed that a commercial trawling net had become entangled on the remains of the midships bulkhead.

In 1990, the Monitor sustained serious damage when an illegal anchoring by a commercial fishing vessel loosened the ironclad's skeg -- the aft portion of the keel -- leaving its massive propeller and propulsion shaft poorly supported. Sometime later, the skeg tipped over completely, ripping out the stern end-plate and exposing the ship's engine room to the currents. The dangling propeller continued to strain the deteriorating hull until the Navy and NOAA recovered it in 1998.

Broadwater fears that the same type of domino effect may have started again because of the recently discovered damage. But he said it was too early to pin the origin of the problem on the trawling net, whose owner has not yet been identified.

More information may be available later this summer after two planned expeditions by a private dive group, Scuba Training and Technology Inc., based in Tucson, Ariz.

"They've always been good about sharing copies of their pictures and video," Broadwater said Wednesday. "So we may be able to learn more about what happened."

Recent conservation work at The Mariners' Museum, which is the official federal repository for artifacts recovered from the wreck, suggests that some parts of the Monitor may be in worse shape than believed when the gun turret was recovered in a $7.1 million expedition in 2002.

"Some of the iron castings we're getting from the turret are so brittle and so soft. They've convinced me that the recovery was the right thing to do," Broadwater said. "We've saved some things that weren't going to be there much longer." *

IN SUNDAY'S PAPER

The Daily Press presents "Rescuing the Monitor: the struggle to save a legend." The special project is a six-part series about the USS Monitor and the NOAA archaeologists and Navy divers who braved some of the sea's most treacherous waters in a daring attempt to save it.




News PDF from 2002
http://navsource.org/archives/01/pdf/monitor3d.pdf

[TXGunNut]

It's incredible that such a piece of history, has to depend on private funding for its preservation.
With all the waste and giveaways maintained by the feds why is this happening?


Many of us touch history every day with our work with leverguns, BP cartridges and our beloved boolits. We understand. The importance of history is lost on folks who can't grasp what is going on around them today.

[Wayne Smith]

Nicely done film, but must have been done before they got a look at the Monitor turrent. Their dents are too big!

[Artful]

http://www.dailypress.com/features/history/dp-nws-uss-monitor-quarstein-20150508-story.html


Fundraiser tapped for USS Monitor Center

e Mariners' Museum has named former Virginia War Museum Director and prominent preservationist John V. Quarstein as chief development officer of a new foundation designed to generate funding for the financially strapped USS Monitor Center.

lRelated (http://www.dailypress.com/features/history/dp-nws-uss-monitor-quarstein-20150508-story.html#)
http://www.trbimg.com/img-54176977/turbine/dp-news-ussmonitorpix-thumbnail/105/105x105 (http://www.dailypress.com/news/military/dp-news-ussmonitorpix-photogallery.html)
MILITARY (http://www.dailypress.com/news/military/dp-news-ussmonitorpix-photogallery.html)

USS Monitor (http://www.dailypress.com/news/military/dp-news-ussmonitorpix-photogallery.html)
[/URL]

The USS Monitor Foundation will become "a conduit to raise awareness and funding" for the center's exhibits and conservation lab, Quarstein said Friday, describing the critical need to make up for recent cuts in support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that temporarily shut the lab down in early 2014.

[URL="http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-monitorcenter-storygallery.html"]http://www.trbimg.com/img-54180e40/turbine/dp-monitorcenter-thumbnail/140/140x79 (http://www.dailypress.com/features/history/dp-nws-uss-monitor-quarstein-20150508-story.html#)The Monitor Center: An insider's guide (http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-monitorcenter-storygallery.html)

"The story of the ironclads is one of the greatest stories in American history," Quarstein added, recounting the Monitor's historic clash with the armored CSS Virginia — also known as the Merrimack — in the pivotal May 9, 1962, Battle of Hampton Roads.

"And this is a great opportunity to help insure that this great moment in naval history continues to be remembered in the manner it should be — and that the great work this lab is doing to preserve these irreplaceable artifacts from the Monitor has the wherewithal to continue operating during this long conservation process."

Quarstein led the City of Newport News' Virginia War Museum for 37 years, during which he led a series of high-profile Civil War preservation projects that resulted in the protection of Lee Hall Mansion, Lee's Mill Battlefield Park and Endview Plantation.

He also served as an adviser to the USS Monitor Center during the exhibit development phase of the project.



http://www.trbimg.com/img-5491e5b9/turbine/dp-pictures-uss-monitor-sailors-coat-20141217-002/750/750x422CAPTIONUSS Monitor sailor's coat ready for exhibit(Courtesy of The Mariners' Museum) /
This photo of the USS Monitor's turret was taken shortly after the sailor's coat was recovered from the interior in 2002.

CAPTIONUSS Monitor sailor's coat ready for exhibitJOE FUDGE / JOE FUDGE
Archaeologists are making progress excavating the interior of the USS Monitor's turret at Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Va. (Inside the Turret) Resting on the roof of the turret next to the two cannons, Jeff Johnston-Historian Monitor National Marine Sanctuary is pulling out the mud and muck from the roof of the turret. He's standing on railroad rails that was used to support the roof of the turret.

The author of 15 books and six PBS documentaries, Quarstein has written three volumes about Civil War ironclads for The Mariners', and his critically acclaimed work, "The Monitor Boys: The Crew of the Union's First Ironclad," received the 2012 Henry Adams Prize for excellence in historical literature.

He also has won numerous other awards, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 1993 President's Award for Historic Preservation, the United Daughters of the Confederacy's 1999 Jefferson Davis Gold Medal and a 2007 Silver Telly for his "Civil War in Hampton Roads" film series.

"John Quarstein's deep passion for Civil War naval history, particularly the Battle of Hampton Roads, made him the right person to develop greater awareness and new funding sources for the USS Monitor," said Mariners' Museum President Elliot Gruber in Friday's announcement.

"John Quarstein brings his vast museum and fundraising experience, but more importantly, an unmatched passion for the Monitor and the need to preserve her story," added David Alberg, Superintendent of NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.

[Garyshome]

I guess it's less distress then when it was on the bottom of the Atlantic.

[Elkins45]

It's incredible that such a piece of history, has to depend on private funding for its preservation.
With all the waste and giveaways maintained by the feds why is this happening?

Why shouldn't it have to depend on private funding? If no one is willing to fork up their own money for it, then that's evidence that not many people care. Granted, I would rather pay for this than Obama phones, but I would really prefer to get my tax dollars back so I can spend them as I please.

Let some private concern pay for the restoration and then they can charge admission to see it.

[brtelec]

You would not have believed how much money the Navy spent doing this recovery. I was there as part of the civilian saturation diving unit that did the first year recovery of the engine and drive. The Navy leased our saturation system and the support people and used their own divers. It was a horrifying waste of money. It took weeks instead of days and took place over two years when we went back for the turret the next year. The weather window each year was very narrow. If they had just paid us to do the job we could have recovered both units in a week to 10 days. This is not a meant to be a shot at our Navy divers, this is just not the kind of work they normally do and the learning curve was steep. It is however what we did everyday.