Update On The Mariners’ Museum Conservation Projects
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - Conservation developments featuring the vibrating side-lever steam engine of the USS Monitor, a Wellington leather boot and one of the IX-inch Dahlgren guns from the CSS Virginia were featured in a 2010 Battle of Hampton Roads Weekend presentation at The Mariners’ Museum. Since 1987 the museum has housed the artifacts recovered from the wreck of the iconic Union ironclad. It rests in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Monitor National Marine Sanctuary off Cape Hatteras, N.C., where the ship sank on Dec. 31, 1862. To put the scope of the preservation effort in perspective, Mariners’ Museum Monitor Conservation Project Manager David Krop noted that they had fewer than 200 artifacts from NOAA in 1999. That number increased to 850-900 after the turret’s recovery in 2002. By 2009, the artifact count had grown to 1,400, almost all of the additional items coming from inside the turret as it was systematically excavated. One of the Monitor’s steam engines and condensers was recovered in 2001 and “we’re starting to really make some big headway on these artifacts,” said Eric Nordgren, senior conservator with the museum. The strategy has been to “scale up work” on mechanical components by starting with smaller items like the Worthington bilge pumps and ventilation blower engines before tackling the larger and more complex vibrating side-lever steam engine and condenser, Nordgren explained. He said the 400-horsepower vibrating side-lever steam engine is in excellent stable condition and has been kept in a sodium hydroxide solution which causes a slow removal of soluble salts. Nordgren said, “We have corrosion rate monitors in the tank telling us that there is essentially zero corrosion happening on the iron or copper alloy components.” He said historically there has been a lot of corrosion of the iron and probably some weakening of the cast iron components, which will be concerns as they do disassembly. “We are going to have to disassemble most of the components in order to get enough access for the solution to have adequate desalination removal of salts to stabilize everything,” he said. One of the smaller mechanical pieces which has completed conservation and is on display at the USS Monitor Center at the museum is the Monitor’s engine room clock. Nordgren said the clock was made by Victor Giroud in New York City out of brass and copper/nickel alloy, with steel shafts. The museum worked with a clockmaker to make some replacement steel shafts, however they are not planning to run the clock. Museum conservator Elsa Sangouard described conservation of a recovered Monitor crewmember’s size 9½ Wellington leather boot. “The front of the sole was held together with brass nails and the heel was wooden pegged,” Sangouard said. “It was heavily stained by the iron surrounding it for 140 years.” The rust-brown boot was restored to its natural black leather appearance and is on display in the museum. Not all the artifacts at the USS Monitor Center are from its Union ironclad namesake. One of the largest new items to complete conservation and be displayed is a IX-inch Dahlgren shell gun from the Monitor’s nemesis at the Battle of Hampton Roads, the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia. Museum assistant conservator Will Hoffman said that the gun was made at Tredegar Ironworks in Richmond, Va., in 1859. In April 1861 fleeing Union troops at the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth damaged the smoothbore in hopes of disabling it so that it would be useless to the Confederacy. “When viewing the gun, one can instantly see the fruits of their labor in the form of chisel marks, hammer hits, as well as the chipped edges on the trunnions, the smashed sight mounts, hammer lugs and cascabel,” Hoffman said. “After viewing these damages for just a few moments one can feel the intensity and urgency of the soldiers’ work.” Two of the six IX-inch guns on the Virginia were damaged on the first day of the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8, 1862. “We do not know which gun we have,” Hoffman said. It was removed the day after the battle and was captured when Norfolk fell to Union forces. The gun was sent to the Washington Navy Yard where “Trophy number 1” was stamped on top. In 1960, the gun and another IX-inch Dahlgren from the Virginia were moved to Trophy Park at the Naval Weapons Laboratory in Dahlgren, Va. In 2003, the gun went to downtown Fredericksburg, Va., for display at Market Square until it was moved to The Mariners’ Museum in 2009 for conservation. The various inscriptions, markings and damage were partially obscured by several layers of paint, Hoffman said. That paint was removed by mechanical cleaning, which was very labor-intensive. Hoffman said a special tool had to be fabricated to help clean inside the long gun barrel. He showed the “automatic gun sweeper” invented by museum artifact handler Gary Paden. It is a chimney sweeper brush attached to a rod which runs in a shaft connected to a hand-held power drill. The original gun weight was 9,164 pound, Hoffman said. After conservation, the gun weighed 8,210 pounds — the missing 954 pounds lost with the shot-off muzzle. A new gun carriage resembling the original Marsilly carriage was custom-built at the museum. It holds the conserved gun at the entrance to the USS Monitor Center. Krop closed the presentation by inviting the public to take advantage of direct links to their work through the Monitor Center Blog, which is updated by five staff members, and also by the three live Webcams in the conservation lab. Go to www.mariner.org/blogs/ussmonitorcenter/
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