A Yankee Ship Is Being Built In Newport News
By Scott C. Boyd
May 2006
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Yankee ship built in the South? Maybe not in 1862, but it’s happening now in 2006.
The ship in question is a full-scale replica of the USS Monitor being constructed behind the new USS Monitor Center at the Mariners’ Museum. The 172-foot replica is “a million dollar in-kind gift” from builder Northrop Grumman Newport News, according to Mariners’ Museum President and CEO John B. Hightower.
On March 28, Hightower unveiled the new logo and advertising campaign to raise the remainder of the $30 mil-lion needed to complete the 63,500-square-foot Monitor Center addition to the museum. “We want everybody to understand this is a part of the Mariners’ Museum, not a separate entity,” he added.
The USS Monitor Center, a partnership between the Mariners’ Museum and the National Oceanic and Atmos-pheric Administration (NOAA), is scheduled to open next year on March 9 – the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Hampton Roads where the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia clashed in the world’s first battle between ironclads.
“The purpose of today’s event is to launch the public phase of our capital campaign,” Hightower announced. More than $25 million has already been raised, $9.5 million of it federal funds via NOAA’s National Marine Sanc-tuary (NMS) Program.
The wreck of the Monitor was the declared the nation’s first NMS in 1975, and the Mariners’ Museum is the offi-cial repository for all artifacts recovered from the site off Cape Hatteras, N.C.
“It’s on schedule, on time, and, if not exactly, awfully close to being on budget,” Hightower said. “It’s 90 percent complete.”
“We do not subscribe to the notion, ‘if we build it, they will come,’” Hightower noted. “There are a series of 18 events leading up to the opening of the center in 2007.”
Curator Anna Holloway led a media tour of the still-under-construction USS Monitor Center.
The first area a visitor will see is a gallery with a multimedia display immersing the viewer in the experience of the Monitor sinking on New Year’s Eve in 1862. One of the last things seen will be the ship’s red lantern before she goes down in the storm.
Next visitors will see a display representing the location and recovery of the Monitor. The actual red lantern, the first object recovered from the wreck in 1977, will be prominently displayed.
There will be a “battle theater” where the 13-minute film “Iron Glory” will take visitors to the sights and sounds at the scene of the battle between the ironclads.
One special sight will be a partial recreation of the Monitor’s turret above the seats. Viewers will be able to look up and see what Union sailors saw when they looked up at the ship’s iconic turret from below during the fight.
“Wooden walls,” a moniker for the old naval technology going out of style in 1862, will be shown in a different gallery. Visitors will see a re-creation of part of the gun deck of the old wooden sailing ship USS United States.
State-of-the-art when she was commissioned in 1797, the frigate was rotting at the pier in April 1861 when Vir-ginia troops seized Norfolk and the Gosport Shipyard there.
In sharp contrast to the “wooden walls” will be a nearby mockup of the CSS Virginia, showing the first 50 feet in-side her armored casemate. Visitors will experience something of what it felt like to be inside that large ship when she dueled the smaller Monitor.
They will also learn how the gradual introduction of steam propulsion, exploding shells, and iron armor in the early-to-mid-19th century (personified by both the Monitor and Virginia) revolutionized naval technology.
An interactive game will let guests pick one side in the Battle of Hampton Roads and then match wits with the computer playing the other side.
A prototype of this game is already available in the museum’s Nelson Gallery, where the visitor takes command of a wooden sailing warship while fighting another like it played by the computer. Holloway said the ironclads ver-sion will have a similar look and feel.
Visitors will be able to cast their vote for which ship won the battle, something scholars still have not decided af-ter all these years.
A separate area will display the more than 1,000 artifacts recovered from the Monitor, such as the famous turret, the two large guns in the turret and the steam engine that propelled the ship.
These large artifacts are undergoing conservation and will not be ready for display outside of a water tank for a number of years. “When it opens next year, the big things won’t be done,” Holloway commented.
Artfully constructed placeholders will substitute for them on the display floor when the center opens.
The placement of the recovered Monitor artifacts is very intriguing. The real artifacts will be displayed inside the center, parallel with where they are or would be on the full-scale Monitor replica outside.
The replica is visible through huge, long windows along the north side of the exhibition area.
It is important to understand that the replica is only a copy of the exterior of the Monitor. Visitors cannot go down inside the replica – the interior of the ship will not be recreated. However, visitors can walk the full length of its deck and inspect its pilothouse and turret from the outside.
There is a door on the replica’s turret now (which was not on the original ship) so that the workers building the replica can go inside to inspect it, place supporting structures there and so on.
Two other things about the replica’s appearance are worth noting. Something most people immediately notice when they glimpse the real turret are the dents in its side, courtesy of the CSS Virginia. They will not be seen on the replica.
The other thing concerns the Monitor’s small pilothouse at the bow of the ship. It was the Achilles’ heel of the Monitor when she fought the Virginia. The voice tube between the pilothouse (where her captain conned the ship) and the turret broke down, requiring the use of a man as a runner to convey messages between the two positions.
A direct hit on the pilothouse, which temporarily blinded the captain, forced the Monitor to pull away from the Virginia. After the battle the pilothouse was reinforced with sloping armored walls on each side, to deflect future Confederate shot.
This modification to the Monitor will not be seen on the replica, which will instead show the pristine appearance of the Monitor before she met the Virginia on the morning of March 9, 1862.
In the future, when the real turret is displayed inside the building after completing its conservation, the replica’s turret will be beside it when one looks through the glass windows to the outside.
Likewise, when one looks at the real steam engine on display (after completing its conservation), it will be inside the building in the same relative position where it would be found in the replica outside if the interior of the replica were to be recreated.
The original turret will be shown resting on a large ring on the main floor of the exhibition area. Visitors will be able to go down to the floor beneath it and then climb stairs or a ladder so they can peer inside the 20-foot diameter of the actual turret.
The guns will not be displayed inside the turret. They were removed in the fall of 2004, said Mariners’ Museum Chief Conservator Marcie Renner. After completing conservation, the guns will be displayed separately from the turret.
Does this mean there will be nothing inside the real turret when it’s finally on display? “We’re still debating whether to have dummy guns,” Holloway commented.
The gun carriages that supported the massive cannons have been removed for separate treatment and conservation as well. They are said to be beautifully designed and custom-crafted, like so many of the things Swedish designer John Ericsson created in the ship.
The two XI-inch Dahlgren Shell Guns each had its own name carved on the top of the barrel by the crew, and fu-ture visitors will be able to read the inscriptions.
One is engraved “MONITOR & MERRIMAC WORDEN,” in honor of the ship’s captain during its history-making battle, Lt. John Lorimer Worden. The second has “MONITOR & MERRIMAC ERICSSON,” in honor of her designer.
Despite her conversion to and commissioning as a Confederate ironclad, the CSS Virginia was frequently referred to as the “Merrimac” by men from the North and South, thereby omitting the “k” that properly belongs at the end of the name of the ship originally commissioned as the USS Merrimack in December 1855.
The USS Monitor Center will give the Union ironclad’s worthy opponent her due. There is more than the 50-foot section of the CSS Virginia’s casemate inside a gallery. Outside, next to the exhibition area containing the actual Monitor artifacts, will be a courtyard with a full-scale image of the CSS Virginia painted on the wall.
If visitors face north, they will see the real Monitor artifacts in the exhibition area and the Monitor replica outside. If they face south, they will see the image of the Virginia.
The walkways in the CSS Virginia Courtyard and the USS Monitor Drydock by the replica will each be covered with approximately 5,000 paving stones. These provide a funding opportunity for the USS Monitor Center and a way to recognize contributors to the capital campaign.
For a $200 tax-deductible gift, contributors can have their name or message inscribed on a small bronze plaque mounted on a paving stone.
Donors may select either the Union or Confederate area for their engraved paver stone. The inscription will ac-commodate two lines, each with up to 16 letters (spaces count as one letter).
Officials at the museum welcome the gift of pavers from organizations such as reenactor units, Civil War Round Tables, and heritage groups such as Sons of Confederate Veterans and Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War camps. Group orders of 12 or more pavers will get them at the discounted price of $150 each.
Other areas inside the Monitor Center include a large “wet” conservation space. This is where the huge tanks of water holding the recovered artifacts will sit. The turret, steam engine and condenser are already in enormous vats there. Visitors will be able to view the objects and learn about the science behind conservation.
“The building was built around the turret,” conservator Renner said during the tour. Previously, the turret rested in its 90,000-gallon tank behind the Mariners’ Museum, exposed to the elements and the varying temperatures throughout the seasons.
As the center was being built, they hauled the turret and its tank into the conservation space before completing the last wall.
There will be a “dry” conservation area as well, including X-ray and other imagining equipment, along with office space for the staff.
Two full-size classrooms will round out the USS Monitor Center. In-state students will be able to learn things that pertain to the Virginia Standards of Learning. Elder hostel activities are also planned.
“This is the least exciting looking room,” Holloway commented about the unfinished classroom space, “but we think some of the most exciting things will take place here.”
The next big milestone for the USS Monitor Center at the Mariners’ Museum is the christening of the Monitor replica at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 11. Author Clive Cussler, the shipwreck explorer who found the H.L. Hunley, will be the guest speaker. The event is free and open to the public.
Hardhat tours are available at 3:30 p.m. weekdays and 1 p.m. weekends. They are free by reservation with paid admission to the museum. For further information, call (757) 596-2222 or e-mail info@mariner.org.
