DOCUMENTING THE USS MONITOR
Any history student soon becomes familiar with the “great man” theory of history. Those individuals interested in maritime history only need to make a slight adjustment to accommodate the “great ship” theory of history. In doing so, there is no question that the USS Monitor is a member of that select group.
The fascination that the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, or USS Merrimack depending on your preference, holds for historians, students of history, and the general public is evidenced by the tremendous amount of research materials available on these vessels. A summary of the scope of this material shows the extent of this infatuation. It also demonstrates how the interest that people and historians have had in the Monitor has helped to encourage a whole new area of research and literature on the study of underwater archaeology and submerged cultural resources.
The types of sources available include artifacts, prints and paintings, as well as bibliographic and archival materials. In terms of bibliographic and archival materials, For this presentation, I will focus on library and archival sources, many of which you can find at large academic or research libraries. At the same time, I will highlight some manuscript collections that are available only at The Mariners’ Museum. Finally, some attention should be given to describing what can found in NOAA’s Monitor Collection, which is located in the Archives of the Library at The Mariners’ Museum. All of these materials are available to researchers who visit the Library, and those individuals who cannot come can submit requests for photocopies of certain materials through interlibrary loan. The Library is open to the public 10 – 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Researchers should check the Museum’s website (http://www.mariner.org) for changes in schedule and holiday closings.
It is important to know that the value of the information on the Monitor applies to a broader audience than just individuals interested in the battle between the Monitor and Virginia, or the Civil War. Students and scholars studying naval history, military history, the history of technology, and even social history will find ample material for their research. In addition, scholars interested in historiography and in the iconography surrounding particular topics in our nation’s history will find sources to explore.
The amount of the literature surrounding the Monitor is overwhelming. Primary source materials include vessel plans; correspondence on the construction of the vessel; contemporary accounts of the Battle of Hampton Roads from aboard ship and ashore, as well as later reminiscences of the battle, contemporary and after-the-fact illustrations; photographs taken on board ship, official naval records; and following the discovery of the Monitor wreck site, documentation on recovery efforts and conservation. The secondary sources are even more numerous. Over one thousand monographs and articles have been written on the ship and the battle. Similarly, there is a corresponding body of literature on the CSS Virginia.[1]
It should surprise no one that the vast majority of the literature covers the Battle of Hampton Roads. In terms of primary sources, there are numerous published eyewitness accounts, in addition to several personal reminiscences written years after the fact. The information on the battle still keeps coming in. New eyewitness accounts have just been recovered in the last few years.
The list of secondary sources is too long to enumerate. To aid researchers, The Mariners’ Museum will be mounting an extensive bibliography on the Monitor on our website by early 2002. This bibliography, while not complete, is the most comprehensive resource available and was compiled from other sources by Dina Hill and Benn Trask, formerly of NOAA and The Mariners’ Museum respectively.[2]
Prior to the battle, however, researchers can, through select sources, enter the minds of the men who participated in the authorization and construction of the Monitor. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the U.S. Navy, during the Civil War, kept a diary and recorded his thoughts and fears that led to the burning of the Naval Yard in Norfolk and his support for building the Monitor. (A warning here: Welles’ diary reads as though he is writing with the perspective of hindsight, giving rationalizations for his actions, not just penning a few thoughts at the end of the day.) Alban Stimers, Chief Engineer for the US Navy who was assigned to the Monitor, kept letters that Commodore Joseph Smith sent him containing construction specifications of the vessel, which were later published. Researchers interested in the revolutionary design and technology that Ericsson employed in the Monitor can consult the Isaac Newton papers, recently acquired by The Mariners’ Museum, which contain dozens of John Ericsson letters written to Newton, the engineer aboard the vessel, describing various design elements.[3]
On a more personal note, crewman George Geer, fireman aboard the Monitor wrote several letters to his wife Martha, describing life on the ship. As a brand new sailor enlisting for the money, his layman’s account of naval life and homesick letters provide a glimpse of daily activities on board ship as well as the inner thoughts and emotions naval seaman were experiencing. Geer’s letters form the basis for The Monitor Chronicles, which was published last year by The Mariners’ Museum.[4]
The Geer Papers at The Library at The
Mariners' Museum.
William Monaghan, a federal soldier assigned to Fortress Monroe, describes the battle and its aftermath in a series of letters written to his brother in New York City. Monaghan’s letters also contain other valuable information, such as his report of Abraham Lincoln’s visit to the troops at Fort Monroe. These eyewitness reports can be compared with reporters’ accounts that appear in contemporary newspapers such as Harper’s Weekly, Illustrated London News, and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.[5]
The William Monaghan Papers, The
Library at The Mariners' Museum.
Harper's weekly drawing.
One aspect of the literature of these personal accounts is how they build on one another. For over fifty years after the battle, individuals publish their personal reminiscence of the famous encounter, and of course, their perspective on the outcome. Almost without exception, eyewitnesses who viewed the battle from on board the Monitor and Virginia issued these reminiscences--frequently published by a vanity press--to refute the previous one that had just appeared. Depending on the source consulted, researchers can read of the Battle of Hampton Roads as being an overwhelming victory for the Union or a rout for the Confederacy. What readers will discover is a continuation of the battle waged on paper. To no one’s surprise, the opinion now generally held, that the battle was fought to a draw, does not appear in these accounts.
Researchers can find a more objective account of information regarding the Monitor and Virginia in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, published by the Government Printing Office in 1894. This multi-volume set, which should be available in academic and research libraries that collect materials on the Civil War, contains a detailed index with numerous listings for both the Monitor and CSS Virginia. Additional contemporary information on these vessels and on requests to Congress for reparations for the crew and officers of the Monitor appears in the Congressional Record from the period.[6]
Those individuals interested in the technology of monitor-type vessels should know that The Mariners’ Museum owns original plans for parts of several other Civil War monitor-class vessels. They can study architectural and engineering features such as turrets, freshwater makers and tanks, and crew’s quarters, as well as reviewing such specific elements as bell pulls or anchor hoisters. Researchers in this area have been further helped by a report written by Ernest Peterkin and published by NOAA, listing locations for original plans of the USS Monitor. Ericsson was not the only naval architect experimenting with new design ideas, and researchers may wish to look at some of the De Rohan drawings in The Mariners’ Museum Archives, which display design features that were revolutionary for their time.[7]
One cannot study the Monitor without studying the CSS Virginia as well, and the literature reflects that fact. Obviously, some sources contain information on both vessels, but there are many that focus solely on the Virginia. Researchers studying that vessel will learn that the history of its renovation was not without its own controversy. They can decide for themselves who deserves credit as designer of the Virginia, John L. Porter, a naval ship constructor for the Confederacy, or John M. Brooke, an ordnance specialist working for Stephen Mallory, the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, since both men take credit, with Brooke refuting Porter’s earlier assertions.[8]
In keeping with this tradition of setting the record straight, Colonel William Norris’s The Story of the Confederate States’ Ship Virginia (Once Merrimack): Her Victory Over the Monitor provides a rejoinder to previously published accounts of the battle. Notable in these accounts is the respect that the Confederate sailors show to the captain of the USS Cumberland and to John Worden, captain of the Monitor and their admiration of these officers’ bravery. Researchers can also evaluate other controversial subjects surrounding the Virginia by reading the differing accounts of Commander Tatnall’s actions and determining for themselves whether or not its destruction was necessary.[9]
The importance of the battle to its participants is evident in other ways. Captain John Worden coveted his command of the Monitor. Several years later he compiled a photograph album of his crewmembers. Although most of the photos are studio portraits, he collected a few images of the crew aboard ship. You can see one where the cannon from the Virginia dented the turret.[10]
John Worden Album, The Library at The
Mariners' Museum.
The battle between the Monitor and the Virginia represents one of the most significant engagements in modern naval warfare. The victory of ironclad ships transformed naval production in all the developed countries. The vast difference in size in the contest itself between the little untried Monitor and the massive Virginia was enough to capture people’s imaginations, whose interest had been previously whetted by several newspaper accounts of the construction and renovation of these vessels. Therefore, it is not unusual that immediately following the battle in which both sides claimed victory, there grew a mythology regarding these vessels, especially the Monitor that seized the public’s attention.
Researchers can find specific evidence of this in musical pieces composed after the event, and in various printed ephemera. In April 1862, less than two months after the battle, a Committee of Arrangements for the citizens of New York, published an account of a reception they gave for the survivors of the officers and crews of the US frigates Cumberland and Congress, Union vessels guarding the Hampton Roads harbor, who were attacked by the Virginia on March 8, the day before its encounter with the Monitor. The printed programme shows that the event included music by the band of the US Ship North Carolina, several songs by crewmembers and other singers, a formal welcome and recognition, and a detailed account of the battles of March 8 and 9 by crewmembers. The myth making regarding the Monitor and the Battle of Hampton Roads was only just beginning.[11]
1890s Taylor &
Huntington stereograph from The Monitor Collection, NOAA, at The Library at The Mariners' Museum.]
The aura surrounding the ship was enhanced by its untimely end, sinking on December 31, 1862 in a storm off Cape Hatteras. She did not face any other naval encounters after her battle with the Virginia, so her reputation stayed intact. Having the vessel rest on the floor of the Atlantic for the next one hundred and forty years prevented it from suffering the fate of the Virginia, or being cannibalized for parts for future naval vessels. It is with the discovery of the site of the ship and the subsequent recovery efforts that the story continues.
To provide some background, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administers the nation’s marine sanctuaries. This program, which is just over 30 years old, began with the establishment of the Monitor wreck site as the nation’s first marine sanctuary. To help in managing the site, the branch administering the Monitor site has established the Monitor collection, a growing archive of documents, photographs, videotapes, and historical material.[12]
Jeff Johnston, who is a member of the NOAA staff, states that in his opinion, the value of the Monitor collection is in its construction specifics on the vessel, which have been invaluable for the Navy’s recovery efforts. The collection has even more broad applications. Its detailed recording of coordination with different agencies, correspondence, reports, proposals, documentary photography and videotapes serves as a primer for underwater archaeology of submerged cultural resources.
Early NOAA administrators were smart in building this research collection, working with several institutions, such as Duke, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, and an army of volunteers to conduct a dragnet for information. They also recognized the need for historical material and secured copies of documents from the National Archives on a variety of topics. Included are lists of construction materials and expenses from the original monitor, several letters from Joseph Smith, a Commodore in the US Navy and one of the three officers who had been assigned to review the first proposals for a Union ironclad, to John Ericsson on construction details and ordnance. In addition, researchers can see copies of early patents filed by Ericsson in England in the 1830s for furnaces of steam boilers, locomotive engines, rotary steam engines, and propelling vessels. The collection also has copies of Ericsson’s American patent applications for steam engines, screw propellers, and gun carriages. In addition, there are copies of letters from Ericsson to Joseph Smith, Gideon Welles, and Cornelius Bushnell. Finally, researchers can read Ericsson’s own account of his work in copies of articles he published in the 1880s in Scientific American and Century Magazine.[13]
Other useful resources exist. The Library at The Mariners' Museum is fortunate to own a thirty-nine volume index of articles, some contemporary, others more recent on the Monitor and Merrimack that was compiled by Weldon Hester. An index to each volume facilitates retrieval of information. In addition, there are several websites that offer varying degrees of information on these vessels. Researchers can easily find them using a standard Web search engine. Artifacts, prints, and paintings provide other pieces of research necessary for a complete study of the topic.
The Mariners’ Museum is fortunate to have a partnership with NOAA to recover, conserve, and interpret the USS Monitor. Because of the documentation surrounding the Monitor, the vast literature written about it, and NOAA’s concerted efforts to recover the vessel, anyone interested in this part of our history will be able to explore almost any aspect of this subject.