USS Monitor

Type

Ironclad

Period

19th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: USS Monitor was the U.S. Navy's first ironclad warship, built during the Civil War to counter the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia, and is famous for its revolving gun turret, an innovation designed by Theodore Timby that gave rise to the entire "monitor" type of warship. Specifications: The ship carried a beam of about 41.6 feet and a draught of 10.5 feet, with a displacement of roughly 987 tons. Her armament, mounted in the revolving turret, consisted of two 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbore guns. She sat extremely low in the water, with only a small portion of the hull above the waterline, giving her the famous "cheesebox on a raft" profile. Service History: Monitor fought CSS Virginia to a tactical draw at the Battle of Hampton Roads on 9 March 1862 under Lieutenant John L. Worden, the first engagement between ironclad warships. Later that year, while under tow by the paddle steamer USS Rhode Island south along the Atlantic coast, she was swamped by heavy seas in a storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and sank on 31 December 1862, with sixteen of her sixty-two crew lost. Notable Facts: The wreck was discovered on the seafloor in 1973, and the site was designated the first U.S. National Marine Sanctuary in 1975. Extensive archaeological recovery efforts since then — including raising the ship's iconic turret in 2002 and her engine in 2001 — have been described as the largest marine archaeological metals conservation project ever undertaken, and recovered components are conserved and displayed at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia.