Monitor’s Carriages Are Right-side Up For First Time Since 1862
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The USS Monitor’s two gun carriages were recently turned right-side up for the first time since the ship sank on Dec. 31, 1862. On Nov. 9 and 10, a heavy crane carefully lifted one carriage a day from the conservation tanks in which they sit in the Batten Conservation Laboratory Complex at The Mariners’ Museum, home of the USS Monitor Center. Each was carefully attached to a special A-frame cradle and then rotated to a right-side up orientation. Within minutes, each carriage was hoisted and returned to its tank. The carriages for the iconic Union ironclad’s two XI-inch Dahlgren Shell Guns were pulled from the ocean’s depths in 2002 when the Monitor’s turret was recovered. Everything in the turret was left with the same upside-down orientation it had in 230 feet of water at the wreck site off Cape Hatteras, N.C. When it arrived at The Mariners’ Museum in 2002, the turret and all its contents were kept in the same upside-down orientation, even when the huge gun barrels and carriages were removed from the turret and placed in their own individual conservation tanks. The rigging or various frames, cradles and other objects used for the rotation were custom-designed and built by Gary Paden, artifact handler for the museum’s conservation department. “I designed the rig, fabricated everything, set up all the rigging, and directed the operation when we got going,” he said, after he came up with the concept of how to rotate the carriages. He also crafted the rotation of the massive Dahlgren gun barrels (see December 2007 issue), but with the help then of the Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding Apprentice School, which had some special equipment the museum lacked. This time Paden did it all in-house. David Krop, conservation project manager for the Monitor, supervised the rotations and praised Paden’s work, saying he “spent countless hours fabricating and designing these awesome rigs that we used.” “The rig that Gary designed was phenomenal – never a worry for the artifact,” concurred Jeff Johnston, program specialist and historian for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary (guardian of the wreck). Preserving the artifact is always foremost, whether it is a small bottle of mustard or a 3,200-pound gun carriage. He said, “The gun carriages are probably the one piece of the Monitor that there’s the most complete information on.” Patent drawings made when the carriages went to the Washington Navy Yard survive. “So far, everything we’re seeing is matching the patent drawings.” Krop explained that the rigs Paden designed were positioned on the upside-down gun carriages and were then connected to some other supporting devices. “It was holding the carriage, but we were lifting the structure, so we weren’t making any hard physical contact with that carriage,” he said. After the carriages were turned right-side up , the cradles on top became the new bases on the bottom to hold them. By rotating the carriages conservators can access a part of the huge artifacts they couldn’t get to previously. “We didn’t have access to treat the top side of the carriages until today,” said Eric Nordgren, senior conservator with the museum. Unlike the massive iron gun barrels, the carriages are made of composite materials, both wood and metal. “They’re very complex because its organics and metals. It makes it very, very tricky to treat,” according to Krop. “We’re starting a process of removing the sediment and some of the marine concretion, which is a calcium-rich crust that forms on the artifact,” Nordgren said. “Once we do that, a lot of the surfaces will have much greater access to the treatment solution.” Conservators will be able to remove chloride salts, which are a big challenge in conserving marine artifacts. “If we’re able to successfully remove the chlorides, then we can be fairly sure that when we carefully dry and stabilize the gun carriages that we’ll be able to put them on display in the museum and we won’t have a lot of problems with corrosion in the future,” said Nordgren. Don’t look for the Monitor’s gun barrels to rest on their original carriages years from now when the conservation process for the four large artifacts is complete. Given their age and condition from being underwater for more than 140 years, the carriages can never again safely hold the eight-ton gun barrels, according to Nordgren. He expects the barrels and carriages will be displayed side by side rather than mounted for safety reasons.
|
