Home Brewed Mojo: DUEL IN HAMPTON ROADS

3/9/1862 - Changing forever the way that military vessels are built and fought, harkening the coming age of multi-ton dreadnoughts, the ironclad Union warship USS Monitor, and the Confederate warship CSS Virginia (made from the carcass of the captured USS Merrimack), ineffectively pound each other with shells for four hours in the wet where the Elizabeth and Nansemond Rivers meet the James River just before they flow into Chesapeake Bay, near the city of Norfolk, Virginia, at an eight mile long channel of water called Hampton Roads. No clear advantage gained for either side, at the end of the day both vessels withdraw, licking their wounds and the contest ends in a draw.

Monitor Vs. Virginia

The push into a new world of naval warfare is first driven by two men. On the Confederate side, the emphasis to come up with a weapon that can break the blockade on goods and supplies that the North has placed around the coastal areas of the southern states comes from Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen R. Mallory, the prewar Chairman of the United States Senate's Naval Affairs Committee. In May of 1861, Mallory proposes to the Confederate Committee on Naval Affairs that the U.S. Navy's huge advantage in ship's and sailors can be negated by the South building ironclads that the wooden hulled ships of the North won't be able to sink. For help, he turns to three imaginative fellow Southerners, ordnance expert Lt. John Mercer Brooke (responsible for the craft's iron plating and cannonry), naval engineer William Williams (Chief Engineer of the Navy, responsible for the vessel's machinery), and naval builder Lt. John L. Porter (with overall responsibility for the conversion project). Together, the foursome come up with a plan to get an ironclad in the water as soon as is possible by converting the bones of a scuttled U.S. warship into the blockade buster the South needs, the USS Merrimac (formerly a 350-ton, forty-gun frigate of the U.S. Navy). Not fully destroyed when the Gosport Navy Yard (now the Norfolk Naval Shipyard) is evacuated by the Union in April of 1861, the charred remains of the ship are raised out of the shallows of the Elizabeth River, where the ship has been for 40 days, and it's conversion to metal begins. Wounds repaired, atop the frigate's existing 22 foot draft, the vessel receives a new fantail and armored casemate, a massive V-shaped cast-iron bulwark at the bow weighing 1,500 pounds, and a new gun deck that gets covered by a fort-like structure of 20-inch pine timbers, planked by 4-inches of oak and plated with two layers of sheet metal, each two inches thick (railroad iron from the Tredegar Works in Richmond, Virginia). The sides of casemate are angled at 35 degrees to cause enemy shells to glance off the structure, and the iron protection extends two feet below the water line to protect against near-miss shells, torpedoes, and the vessel being rammed. For firepower, the ship houses 10 cannons in it's fortified casemate (there are firing ports for fourteen weapons) ... a 7-inch pivot gun at the bow and another at the stern (each weighing 14,500 pounds and capable of firing 104-pound shells), three 9-inch smoothbore Dahlgrens (weighing 9,200 pounds and capable of throwing a 72.5 pound shell over a distance of 1.9 miles), and one 6-inch piece on each side (also weighing 9,200 pounds and both fitted-out to fire furnace heated shot). Additionally, the vessel includes two 12-pound howitzers with anti-personnel ammunition to hold off any potential unwelcome boarders It is a formidable ship (though it is described as a "terrapin with a chimney on it's back"), but has design flaws in it's draft (22 feet, with the James River being only 24 deep in some spots), its weight will only allow its boilers to speed it along at 5 knots, and it has a turning radius of one mile, with completion of a full circle taking 45 minutes (one of her Confederate officers will describe her as "unwieldly as Noah's ark"). On February 17, 1862, after almost nine months of labor, the Merrimac is rechristened and launched as the CSS Virginia. With an officer's complement of thirty men, and a crew of 300 sailors, supplies loaded aboard, the Virginia is ready for her trial run on March 7th of 1862.

Mallory

Brooke & Porter

CSS Virginia

Seeking to bring the North into the dawning age of the ironclads is 59-year-old U.S. Navy Secretary from Connecticut, Gideon "Father Neptune" Welles (from prominent politic families in both Connecticut and Massachusetts, he owes his position to his strong support of Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election). In 1861, he appoints an advisory board consisting of Commodore Hiram Paulding, Commodore Joseph Smith, and Commodore Charles H. Davis to look into the matter. Considering 17 different designs, the commodores narrow the field down to two designs, one, a steam frigate called New Ironsides, proposed by Merrick & Sons of Philadelphia, and another, an ironclad gunboat called Galena from the ship builders of Cornelius Bushnell & Company of New Haven, Connecticut, the chief of which is the company's owner, 32-year-old Cornelius Scranton Bushnell. In the running for the order, his patriotism wanting the best ship possible for the North, Bushnell meets with 58-year-old Swedish born engineer (he designs the first American warship, USS Princeton, to be driven by a screw propeller in 1842) and inventor, John Ericsson, to determine if the Galena design is viable ... a meeting in which Ericsson compliments Bushnell on his design for the Galena, but also shows the builder his own ironclad design (from 1854) for a craft he calls Monitor, which Bushnell will find he prefers to his own company's work. Funds of up to $1.5 million approved by Congress for the build in August of 1861, getting the Ericsson's design approved however requires considerable effort as the inventor and the U.S. Navy have been at odds for over a decade since a 12-inch gun designed and installed on the USS Princeton explodes in 1844, killing six people, two of which are members of President John Tyler's Cabinet, and cause the Navy to refuse to pay Ericsson for the work he has already done on the ship (which in turn causes the embittered Ericsson to vow never to set foot in Washington D.C. again). Design shot down by the Ironclad Board despite President Lincoln liking the craft Ericsson proposes, Bushnell convinces Ericsson to put aside his previous hurts and come to the capital to make a first hand pitch to the board. Dazzling the board with his thoughts and an hour-long lecture on the physical principles that cause a ship to float (Ericsson states of his Monitor, "The sea shall ride over her, and she will live in it like a duck."), the board gives Ericsson the contract for his ironclad design when the inventor states he can build the ship in just 90 days for $275,000 (the group is so impressed that they give Ericsson an extra ten days to complete the project, but Welles also demands that its cost be paid back from the builders if the vessel is not a "complete success"). Throwing himself totally into the project, Ericsson returns to New York and churns out over 100 detailed drawings of the ship and it's accoutrements (there will be over 40 patentable inventions aboard the finished craft) and gets work started on the vessel by the Continental Iron Works of Brooklyn, New York. The ship that makes it's maiden voyage on January 30, 1862 (18 days late to the contract, but done much sooner than anyone other than Ericsson thought possible, then goes back to port to correct the problems noted during her first trip out)) is unlike anything anyone has ever seen before (Welles is made aware of the construction of the conversion of the Merrimac by Mary Louvestre of Norfolk, a freed slave who works as a housekeeper for one of the Confederate engineers working on the project, at the risk of her life, she goes to Washington D.C., finds the Navy leader, who in turn, tells Ericsson to finish the work on the Monitor build as quick as is possible). The ship produced by the Continental Iron Works is 172 feet long and 41 feet and 6 inches wide, flat-bottomed, with her hull made of iron, with a flat wooden deck covered by two layers of half-inch thick iron plates that is only 18 inches above the water. The vessel can travel at 6 knots and needs water only ten feet and six inches deep to travel. Slightly off-center on the deck is a cylindrical revolving turret nine feet high with an inside diameter of 20 feet within which are two 11-inch Dahlgrens (the ship is crafted to hold two 15-inch cannons, but they have not yet been built when the ship is completed and steams south) weighing 16,000 pounds each, capable of firing a 136-pound round shot 3,650 yards. Guiding the vessel, 55 feet forward of the turret is a small iron pilot house with slits on all sides for the captain and his helmsman. Armor all over, including below the waterline, in locations deemed most critical, the iron is nine inches thick, and no area open to bombardment has less than five inches of metal density protecting it. Completed, the USS Monitor will be crewed by volunteers from the U.S. Navy ... sixty souls in all (with eight men to each of the turret's guns).

Welles & Ericsson

Diagram

"Cheese-box On A Raft"

Showing the importance the Confederacy carries for the CSS Virginia, the man assigned to skipper the vessel is 62-year-old Commodore Franklin Buchanan from Maryland (thinking Maryland will secede from the Union, he resigns his commission, then tries to rejoin the U.S. Navy when the state stays a member of the Union, but is unsuccessful when Welles tells him he doesn't want traitors in his navy), the man whose plans are used in 1845 to create the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland (known as the "Father of Annapolis, he is also the Academy's first superintendent), and the Confederacy's only full admiral. Taking the Virginia down the Elizabeth River on her initial steam (accompanied by two small gunboats, Raleigh and Beaufort, which do not play a part with what soon takes place), changing plans when he comes in sight of open water on Saturday afternoon, March 8, 1862, and sees five Northern fighting ships ahead in Hampton Roads, on blockade duty, Buchanan decides what better way to test his new command is there than attacking his Union foes (to the cheers and singing of "Dixie" by Confederate soldiers lining the banks of the river, and the consternation of the Federal sailors aboard the sailing, 50-gun St. Lawrence and Congress, the 24-gun sailing sloop, Cumberland, and the 40-gun steam frigates Minnesota and Roanoke). Moving slower than five knots to avoid grounding in the shallow waters, Virginia passes Craney Island, shrugs off her initial hits of the war from the Federal gunboat Zouave, and closes to within a mile of the Cumberland and opens fire with her bow gun. First shot a hit, as is the ship's second, the shells kill everyone in the ship's forward gun crew save the crew's powder boy and it's gun captain, who loses both his arms in the blast. Meanwhile, the Virginia's armor (made slippery with buckets of hot pork fat) rejects rounds from Cumberland, Congress, and the army batteries at the Union base of Newport News. Deciding to try out the effectiveness of his ram, Buchanan continues plowing forward and smashes through the barrier of timbers surrounding Cumberland's anchorage, and crashes into the frigate's starboard side, creating a death hole that will be described as "wide enough to drive in a horse and cart." It is a fatal blow to the Yankee ship, and almost also one for the Virginia; ram caught on it's victim, the ironclad begins to be drug down too, but with engines at full steam astern, the iron plow breaks off and Buchanan is able to continue his attacks (refusing to surrender when requested is made by Buchanan, the Cumberland's commander, Lt. George Morris, is still fighting the ship when the vessel gives a lurch and then plunges into the sand 54 feet below it's keel, a sinking that kills 121 sailors out of a compliment of 376 men). One Union ship spoken for, the Virginia then gives it's full attention to the frigate Congress.

Buchanan

Cumberland Vs. Virginia

Morris (With Speaking Trumpet And Sword At Right Center)

Fights The CSS Virginia

Moving a short way up the James River to gain enough water to come about, Buchanan makes for the the Congress as the ship is towed into the shoals, where the deep-draft CSS Virginia can't get at it, by the gunboat Zouave. The maneuver however is still in progress when Buchanan closes on his prey and begins firing round after round into the wooden ship while taking no punishment in return, and things become even worse for the Union frigate when she runs aground at an angle that will allow only 2 of it's 50 guns to continue firing on her opponent. Helpless, the ship's 35-year old commander, Lt. Joseph B. Smith killed, the ship strikes its colors, but Buchanan is prevented from taking possession of his prize by Yankee batteries ashore continuing to fire on the Virginia. Incensed, Buchanan decides if the crippled vessel won't be his, Davy Jones can have it and orders his men to fire red-hot shot into the frigate. Congress ablaze, Buchanan then makes the mistake of crawling out onto his ironclad's casemate to direct further operations against his foe and is struck in the thigh by a sharpshooter's bullet. Falling to the deck badly wounded, Buchanan is replaced by his executive officer, 40-year-old Lt. Catesby ap Rogers Jones (the "ap" is a Welsh patronymic meaning "son of"), and leaves the battle unaware that gunfire from the CSS Virginia has taken the life of his younger brother, Union officer Lt. McKean Buchanan. Burning into the evening, at 1:00 in the morning the USS Congress blows up when fire reaches one of her ammunition magazines. Ebb tide, by the time the CSS Virginia sends a shot into the Zouave (attempting to come to the aid of the Confederates' next target, the frigate Minnesota) that carries away her rudder and one of her propeller blades, Jones (by the war's end he will officially be a commander in the Confederate Navy), not wanting his ship to become grounded, like all three remaining Union warships have become trying to get into the action against Virginia, or get away from it, drops anchor off Sewell's Point, removes his wounded and dead, and readies the ironclad for high tide on the morrow when the Confederates believe they will finish the removal of the U.S. naval presence at Hampton Roads. It has been a good day for the Confederate Navy ... although the Virginia has been hit repeatedly by over 100 heavy Federal cannons, in four and a half hours of combat she has sunk two large Union warships, and damaged a gunboat, while inflicting over 300 casualties (261 are deaths) on the U.S. Navy, at the cost of a dented ship, two men killed, 19 more sailors wounded, and superficial damage that is fixed before dawn.

Fighting The USS Congress

Lt. Joseph B. Smith & Lt. Catesby Jones

On Fire

Congress Blows Up

A disaster for the North, the news of what has taken place at Hampton Roads is soon telegraphed to Washington D.C., where President Lincoln calls for a special 6:30 Sunday emergency morning meeting with his cabinet to discuss how the government should react to the crisis. At the meeting, the president frets, the secretary of state is glum, the secretary of the treasury is petulant, and the secretary of war, Edwin McMasters Stanton, almost becomes unhinged, ranting about "Ericsson's folly" letting the Union down and how, speaking of the CSS Virginia, he believes it, "Not unlikely, we shall have a shell or a cannonball from one of her guns before we leave this room " (though with her draft, there is no way the ironclad could ever get up the Potomac to achieve such an aim), and after the meeting he sends off telegrams to the governors of seacoast states that warn: "MAN YOUR GUNS. BLOCK YOUR HARBORS. THE MERRIMAC IS COMING." Only Welles is at peace and seems composed during the meeting, believing the USS Monitor will soon arrive on the scene to blunt the Confederate's stunning new weapon (he has been advised that the vessel left New York on Thursday). When the meeting ends, the cabinet adjourns to pray for miracle to save it's fleet, not knowing that the miracle has already begun at Hampton Roads.

Stanton

At dawn of Sunday, March 9, 1862, as a light fog is lifting off the waters of Hampton Roads, Lt. Jones brings the CSS Virginia out of her anchorage, moves the ironclad slowly into the channel and makes his way towards the Minnesota as excited Confederate spectators watch from shore, expecting more favorable Southern fireworks. In range to begin shelling Minnesota, the lieutenant instead receives a surprise when the USS Monitor, a vessel that will be called "a tin can on a shingle," comes out from behind the Minnesota and places itself between the Virginia and her next target. Commanded by 44-year-old Lieutenant John Lorimer Worden, a veteran of 28 years with the Navy (he is fresh out of a Confederate prison where he has been kept for seven months, awaiting a prisoner exchange, after being arrested running secret dispatches to the Union fleet at Pensacola, Florida), the Union ironclad has arrived in time for battle (entering Hampton Roads on Saturday evening, Worden boards the USS Roanoke, acting fleet headquarters of the Union's North Atlantic Blockading Squadron of it's commanding officer, Captain John Marston, where the lieutenant receives orders to protect the Minnesota) after almost sinking in heavy seas on its journey south (she is accompanied by the tow ship, Seth Low, and the gunboats Currituck and Sachem), saved largely by the efforts of Chief Engineer Alban C. Stimers, First Assistant Engineer Isaac Newton Jr. and a handful of sailors that clear toxic air from the engine room. Guided by the light cast by the burning Congress, the exhausted crew (no one has eaten more than hardtack or slept a wink during their two day journey south) of the USS Monitor drop anchor behind the Minnesota at midnight and await the coming day (they get little rest, readying for battle, they are horribly disturbed when the Congress violently explodes at around 1:00 in the morning). Shortly after 8:00 a.m., the Monitor fires on the Virginia as she approaches, and the second day of the two-day Battle of Hampton Roads begins (missing, the round hits the Minnesota, which responds with a broadside at the CSS Virginia.).

Worden & Marston

Protecting Minnesota

For the next four hours, with a break of some thirty minutes when the USS Monitor goes into the shallows to restock the ammunition for its two turret guns, the two ironclads move about each other like boxers seeking to deliver a knockout blow, and fire on each other from ranges of a few yards away to a half a mile (the CSS Virginia can fire and reload her guns every five minutes, while it take the USS Monitor eight minutes to reload and fire her twin cannons). Neither ironclad is able to hurt the other decisively (chastised by Lt. Catesby for not continuing to fire on the Northern ironclad, the captain of the ship's gun crew, Lt. John Eggleston will declare in answer, "Why, our powder is very precious and after two hours' incessant firing, I find that I can do her about as much damage by snapping my thumb at her every two and a half minutes), but in retrospect, the battle is a near thing for both vessels. The Monitor loses the voice tube that allows Lt. Worden in the pilot house to communicate with his executive officer in the turret, Lt. Samuel Greene, and Greene is forced to aim by looking out over the muzzles of his two guns (and with each shot, he must make sure that he doesn't misaim and hit the forward pilot house), chalk marks on decks used in targeting the guns can't be seen through the smoke of battle, screwheads breakoff and whiz around inside the turret after direct hits, and Acting Master Louis Napoleon Stodder becomes the USS Monitor's first casualty when leaning against the interior of the turret, it takes a direct hit and the mariner is knocked unconscious for over an hour. Also, unbeknownst to it's builder, instead of being powered by a 30-pound dose of powder, fearing that the turret might blow up, the Monitor fires her rounds at the Southern ironclad using only 15-pound charges (it will later be demonstrated that had 30-pound charges been used, the iron of the Confederate vessel would have been penetrated). On the Virginia, her sailors also suffer from the concussive forces pounding away on her armor, many bleeding from their ears and noses, thinking she will be fighting wooden frigates, she brings the wrong ammunition into the battle, and her lack of speed and need for deep water cause problems all day (at one point in the clash, the Virginia will run aground and be pummeled by the Monitor at an angle at which the Southern ironclad can not respond, but the vessel, running it's boilers hotter than recommended, manages to pull out of her predicament after 15 hair-raising minutes of taking hits).

Battle

Inside The Turret

Up Close And Personal

At the mid-point of the battle while the USS Monitor is in the shallows restocking it's turret guns (Lt. Worden uses the time to refresh himself by taking in the fresh sea air while he walks the deck of his ship), the Virginia is able to make one of her slow turns and closes once more on the Minnesota, hitting the still grounded ship with a shell from her bow gun (she also destroys the nearby Union tugboat, Dragon), but as she readies to deliver a devastating broadside on the wooden frigate, the Monitor once again interposes herself between the two ships and begins sending 180-pound shells at the Confederate ship once more. Deciding to try something different, though it's ram is still at the gravesite of the Cumberland, Lt. Jones attempts to ram the Monitor (for his guidance of the ship and avoiding the Virginia's efforts to ram the Union ironclad, seaman Peter Williams, will receive a Congressional Medal of Honor on April 3, 1863), but the faster, more maneuverable vessel is able to dance away, taking only a glancing blow from the heavier, slower Confederate ship (and he also contemplates going to pistols and cutlasses and having a boarding party take the vessel, a form of attack that the Northerners are prepared to thwart by venting burning steam from the ship's boilers on to the deck of the ironclad). Shortly after noon, the Virginia fires the most damaging shot of the battle from a distance of only ten yards, a 9-inch shell that explodes on the forward side of the Monitor's pilot house as Lt. Worden is looking out one of the eye slits in the structure. Knocked backwards, stunned enough to believe the damage to his ship s worse than it is (the explosion cracks a crossbeam and partially lifts the iron lid off the top of the pilot house), ears ringing, beard singed, and partially blinded in his right eye, and permanently in his left, the lieutenant calls for his ship to shear away from the Confederate vessel and return to the relative safety of the nearby shallows. Brought to his cabin, grimacing in pain as he turns command over to Lt. Greene, Worden asks, "Have I saved the Minnesota?" and when told his ship has whipped the Merrimac, states, "Then I don't care what happens to me," as the ship's doctor begins working on the lieutenant's wounds (battle survived, when Lincoln finds out that the lieutenant is recovering from his wounds at a local Washington D.C. home, he visits Worden, who recognizes the President's voice despite his still bandaged eyes, and tells him, "Mr. President, you do me a great honor by this visit," to which Lincoln instantly responds, "Sir, I am the one who is honored."). Finally free of it's assailant, the Virginia once more turns towards the Minnesota, but discovers that once more the tide has turned and the waters in Hampton Roads are not deep enough again for the Confederate ship to get within range of it's prey. Battle over, she heads south once more for her anchorage at Norfolk, as the Monitor comes out of the shallows, ready and willing again to do battle with the Southern vessel.

Williams

Officers And Some Of The Crew Of The USS Monitor

CSS Virginia

A draw, in the aftermath of the battle both sides will declare victory; the CSS Virginia for sinking two major fighting ships of the North (by battle's end, the Southern ship has had her port side anchor shot off, lost her iron ram, and has so many holes shot in her smokestacks that they draw almost no air to her boilers so that her already slow speed is cut in half, has two of her broadside cannons put out of commission by Union shells, both of her 22-foot cutters are shot away, and numerous iron plates on the ship have been loosened), and by the USS Monitor for remaining in Hampton Roads to keep the North's blockade intact (iron, speed, and low profile, in the four hour battle the Union ironclad takes 22 hits, including nine to the turret and two to the pilothouse, and survives them all). The future seen and demonstrated, wooden warships now deemed obsolete, the Confederate Congress votes to give Secretary Mallory two million dollars for the purchase and construction of ironclads for it's Navy, and by February of 1863, eight are completed and several more have begun to be built, while on the Northern side, Secretary Welles receives thirteen million dollars for a U.S. Navy order of 56 monitors. Though both ships have brought into being a new age of ship building and fighting, and have survived their battle with each other, neither vessel will survive the year of 1862. Events on land influencing it's fate, on May 10th, when Southern troops withdraw from the area and the Grosport Navy Yard falls back into Union hands, the Virginia, after attempts to lighten her for a run to Harrison's Landing fail (the vessel is now commanded by Commodore Josiah Tattnell III, who will be court-martialed for the act, but acquitted), is set fire and scuttled near Craney Island to prevent her from becoming a Northern asset again.

Tattnell

The End Of CSS Virginia

The USS Monitor lives a little longer, lasting until the evening of December 30, 1862. After four changes of command, unsuccessful participation in the Battle of Drewry's Bluff (the Monitor's guns can not be elevatd enough to hit Confederate batteries ashore), and a period of harbor time for repairs and a refit, the Monitor, commanded now by Captain John Pyne Bankhead, is ordered on Christmas Day (the men of the ironclad will enjoy a holiday meal of chicken stew, stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, plum pudding, and apple fruitcake), to join USS Passaic and USS Montauk off North Carolina in the Union's efforts to blockade the Confederate harbor of Charleston. Remembering how the vessel almost sunk on her first sea voyage, members of her old crew are extremely worried about putting into the Atlantic Ocean again ... and with good cause. Under tow from 236-foot long USS Rhode Island (under the command of Commander Stephen Decatur Trenchard), the two ships move south into the heavy storming seas off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Waves breaking over the ironclad, all of the vessel's pumps soon prove inadequate at keeping water out of the ship, and a red lantern sends a distress signal to the Rhode Island for help, while Bankhead asks for volunteers to cut the tow rope with their side-wheel steamer companion. Three men volunteer, Acting Master Louis N. Stoddard, seaman John Stocking, and seamen James Fenwick. Climbing down from the turret, Stocking and Fenwick are almost instantly swept overboard, while Stoddard manages to hang on to a safety line, and eventually accomplishes the task of cutting the 13-inch towline with a hatchet. Going under, former commander (for a few hours), Lt. Greene, Stoddard, and finally Bankhead leave the floundering craft barely in time (the U.S. Navy will not press charges against any of the officers and crew of the Monitor, despite it's designer claiming that the ship went down because it's personnel was drunk ... a charge Stoddard and the others will vehemently deny) as the ship sinks 16 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras. In all, sixteen men, including four officers, will perish in the tragedy (most suffering from exposure, the Rhode Island will rescue 49 men from the icy Atlantic.

Looking Down At Drewry's Bluff

Bankhead

The Death Of The USS Monitor

Resting on the bottom for over a century, in August of 1973, an expedition funded by Duke University, the National Geographic Society, and the National Science Foundation finds the disintegrating Union ironclad upside down off Cape Hatteras. Announcement of the find made on March 8, 1974, so the site will not be plundered by private divers for personal gains, the wreck and the area for .5-nautical miles around it, in 1975, is designated to be the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, the first U.S. marine sanctuary, and in June of 1986, the Monitor is officially designated a National Historic Landmark. Deemed too expensive an enterprise (in 1978, Captain Willard F. Searle Jr. will estimate raising the wreckage would cost between $20 to $50 million), it is decided to leave the Monitor where she rests, but some artifacts are raised. To date, raised items include an engine, a condenser, a propeller (it takes three years to bring it to the surface), the two Dahlgren guns, and most importantly, the vessel's 120 iron turret (the artifacts reside at the Monitor Center of the Mariner's Museum of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Raised after 41 days of effort, the heavy iron turret structure is found to have two skeletons inside (one wearing a gold ring). Though all the best modern forensic techniques are used (including flying the remains to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii for testing), the remains are never fully identified, with the possibilities narrowed down to the bodies being either crew members Jacob Nicklis, Robert Williams, and William Bryan. Whoever the two skeletons were, on March 8, 2013, the remains are buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.