Here is the story dozens of interactive multi-media presentations will present to visitors during the USS Monitor Exhibition.
At the start of the Civil War, the Union had abandoned the Norfolk Navy Base at Portsmouth, VA and burned one of their most powerful frigates, the steam-powered USS Merrimack, to prevent her from falling into Confederate hands. The Confederates raised the ship from the mud and turned it into an ironclad vessel with a wooden tent-like structure covered with iron bars that sloped at a 35 degree angle almost to the waterline. The Confederates christened their ship the CSS Virginia. The Union quickly nicknamed this new threat, the "Monster."
The Union went into panic mode, advertising for new designs for an iron clad ship. They accepted the design from a Swedish engineer and built the USS Monitor in a matter of weeks. The Monitor resembled a modern day submarine with a 172-foot long deck topped by a revolving turret with two cannons. The unlikely shape earned it the unofficial and unflattering title, "Cheesebox on a raft."
March 8, 1862
Franklin Buchanan, new captain of the CSS Virginia, stood on the deck of his ship growing more nervous with each moment. The day was calm and sunny with a Federal fleet just a few miles away blockading the Hampton Roads harbor. He knew these wooden vessels were vulnerable to his powerful cannons and that the ironclad Virginia was virtually invulnerable to cannon fire. But he had also just heard that the Union's answer, the USS Monitor, was steaming toward the harbor. He couldn't know that this Federal ship was delayed by a fierce squall that almost sank her.
Finally a tugboat pulled the Virginia away from the dock and into the harbor. Captain Buchanan steered his "floating iron house" at the most powerful frigate in the Union fleet, the USS Cumberland.
Despite many advance warnings, the Cumberland was caught off guard. After the ship's drums sounded the alarm, her sailors manned the guns that sent dozens of shells flying at the Virginia. The shells bounced off the armored ship leaving only scratches.
The Virginia returned fire and then unleashed an even more deadly weapon. Traveling at more than 7 knots, the Mariner buried an iron ram into the wooden heart of the Cumberland. In moments the ship began to list and sink.
Several Union ships near the shore tried to come to the rescue. But sailing without the aid of tugs around the sandbars, they were quickly grounded.
Now the other major Union ship, the Congress, faced the "monster." Soon its shattered deck was lined with splinters and dead and dying sailors. Later the raging fires reached the magazine and the ship exploded into thousands of pieces.
March 9, 1862
The CSS Virginia resumed its deadly cruise of the harbor, on the hunt for the Union's grounded ships. Suddenly a sailor at the front of the boat began to shout when he saw a strange ship, low in the water with a turret swinging slowly around and around. It was the Monitor, headed right for the Virginia.
For several hours each ship flung shell after shell at each other, almost a warlike tennis match with the shells bouncing off iron casings like errant serves.
Then it was over. Both ships finally sailed away from each other, not in victory or defeat. But this "no win-win" battle became part of history, proving that the wooden ships of every navy in the world would become obsolte in the near future, unable to stand assaults by ironclads. It was the birth of modern iron battleships.
During the Exhibition visitors can visit a battle theater where scenes of the ironclads clash are projected on the walls with the sounds of cannon fire and wind vibrating the floors. Other rooms show a life size CSS Virginia under construction. You can walk on the deck of a lifesize Monitor model right outside the museum. Visit a "storm room" and experience the fateful night the Monitor sank in a storm, with readings of reporters by the surving crew heard above the wind.
You can participate in a contest to design your own ironclad ship. "Captain" a ship in an interactive game that lets you lead a frigate into battle, deciding how to handle your sails according to wind direction, steer your ship into firing position, and then fire the cannons at the right second to try to disable the enemy ship. You can see various artifacts of the Monitor recovered from the sea floor, including the turret now being preserved in the conservation area.
The Viriginia Hospitality Suite has created a special Jamestown 2007 Web Feature that features descriptions of all the exhibits with numerous drawings and photographs of the exhibit. The Mariners' Museum is located in Newport News, Virginia at the intersection of J. Clyde Morris and Warwick
