1847 - Navy leads successful amphibious assault near Vera Cruz, Mexico.
1862 - First battle between ironclads, USS Monitor and CSS Virginia.
At dawn on 9 March 1862, CSS Virginia prepared for renewed combat. The previous day, she had utterly defeated two big Federal warships, Congress and Cumberland, destroying both and killing more than 240 of their crewmen.
Today, she expected to inflict a similar fate on the grounded steam frigate Minnesota and other enemy ships, probably freeing the lower Chesapeake Bay region of Union seapower and the land forces it supported. Virginia would thus contribute importantly to the Confederacy's military, and perhaps diplomatic, fortunes.
However, as they surveyed the opposite side of Hampton Roads, where the Minnesota and other potential victims awaited their fate, the Confederates realized that things were not going to be so simple. There, looking small and low near the lofty frigate, was a vessel that could only be USS Monitor, the Union Navy's own ironclad, which had arrived the previous evening after a perilous voyage from New York. Though her crew was exhausted and their ship untested, the Monitor was also preparing for action.
Undeterred, Virginia steamed out into Hampton Roads. Monitor positioned herself to protect the immobile Minnesota, and a general battle began. Both ships hammered away at each other with heavy cannon, and tried to run down and hopefully disable the other, but their iron-armored sides prevented vital damage. Virginia's smokestack was shot away, further reducing her already modest mobility, and Monitor's technological teething troubles hindered the effectiveness of her two eleven-inch guns, the Navy's most powerful weapons. Ammunition supply problems required her to temporarily pull away into shallower water, where the deep-drafted Virginia could not follow, but she always covered the Minnesota.
Soon after noon, Virginia gunners concentrated their fire on Monitor's pilothouse, a small iron blockhouse near her bow. A shell hit there blinded Lieutenant John L. Worden, the Union ship's Commanding Officer, forcing another withdrawal until he could be relieved at the conn. By the time she was ready to return to the fight, Virginia had turned away toward Norfolk.
The first battle between ironclad warships had ended in stalemate, a situation that lasted until Virginia's self-destruction two months later. However, the outcome of combat between armored equals, compared with the previous day's terrible mis-match, symbolized the triumph of industrial age warfare. The value of existing ships of the line and frigates was heavily discounted in popular and professional opinion. Ironclad construction programs, already underway in America and Europe, accelerated. The resulting armored warship competition would continue into the 1940s, some eight decades in the future.
Visitors jam opening of Monitor Center in Newport NewsBy TERESA ANNAS, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 10, 2007
Last updated: 12:39 AM
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| Guests walk on the deck of the full-sized Monitor replica at The USS Monitor Center. Steve Earley / The Virginian-Pilot
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| Audio slide show: Join the opening ceremonies and go inside If you go What: USS Monitor Center at The Mariners’ Museum Where: 100 Museum Drive, Newport News Museum hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays Parking: Today (Saturday) and Sunday the public must park at Todd Stadium, 12465 Warwick Blvd. Free parking and shuttle. Cost: $12.50 adults, $7.25 ages 6-17, free for ages 5 and younger Call: (757) 596-2222 or (800) 581-7245 Old Navy re-enactment: Models of the ironclads will battle on Lake Maury at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. today (Saturday) and Sunday. Free with admission. Other special programs: Lectures, re-enactments, demos, fireworks; most free with museum admission. Visit www.marinersmuseum.org. |
NEWPORT NEWS - William Meusch, bearded and barrel-chested and looking every bit the tugboat captain he pretends to be, leaned on his cane and watched the first Union ironclad sink in rough seas.
Lighting effects made Meusch appear to be surrounded by reflective waters as he watched the video. In fact, he stood in the introductory gallery of the USS Monitor Center, less than an hour after it opened Friday.
The $30 million center is located inside The Mariners' Museum, which was jammed Friday morning with politicians, officials, maritime experts and authors, re-enacto rs in period dress and hundreds of others awaiting the chance to cross the threshold into the new center.
Developed by The Mariners' in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the center tells the story of the 1862 ironclads and the retrieval of parts of the Monitor from the deep through videos, displays and large-scale re-creations.
Meusch and his wife, Diana, came from Long Beach, Calif., with two other California couples for the opening. The three men make models of historic ships and call themselves Old Navy. Today and Sunday, they will engage their radio-controlled copies, 1/32 scale, of the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia in a battle on Lake Maury beside the museum.
Meusch, 59, will narrate the pint-size re-enactments and will be in charge of the Seth Lowe, the sidewheel tugboat he said brought the Monitor from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Hampton Roads.
The trio was primed to be passionate but particular as they cruised through the displays. They had seen the Monitor replica that's just outside the museum.
"That is no replica," Meusch said. "If you look at Steve's Monitor, you'll see an exact representation, down to the last rivet in the correct location."
"And the dents," added his cohort, Steve Lund, 57. " All eight of them."
As the introductory video ran, Meusch said in a stage whisper, "Monitor was never built to go to sea," and shook his head.
The video showed survivors watching the Monitor's red mast light flickering for nearly an hour before it finally was swallowed by the sea. "Mind you, that wasn't that big of a storm, just a typical gale off the cape," Meusch said as he moved toward another gallery that was round, painted black and contained a single object: the actual red lantern, brought up from the Atlantic Ocean in 1977.
Meusch walked in slowly and studied the lantern from all angles. After leaving the gallery, he did not speak for several minutes. When Diana asked him if he was OK, he turned his head from left to right, tears welling in his blue eyes. She hugged him.
As he turned into a large gallery, he came back to life. "There you go - there's the Merrimack as she was before the Union set fire to her," he said, eyeing a model under glass. "It's exceedingly well-built. Scale looks correct. There's a lot of rigging missing."
"When it was not under sail, this is how she would look," Lund told him.
As Meusch walked along a deck in a room re-creating the Gosport Navy Yard circa 1862, he looked up and saw a cannon hovering in midair. "Look at that son of a gun! " Lund pointed out that scholars aren't sure where certain guns were set on the Virginia, so showing them in the process of being installed "is a good solution."
Inside the in-progress Virginia, the men encountered Louis Guy of Norfolk, a descendant of one of the builders of the Confederate ironclad.
"He was 18 years old," Guy told them, "working in the Gosport shipyard."
Meusch later turned his attention to the half-built gun carriage inside the mock Virginia. "I love this," he said. "It gives you an idea how they built these things. It didn't take super technology."
"Steve, can you picture having been in a gun crew here?" Meusch said. "First thing that strikes me, along with the heat and the smoke... "
"The noise," Lund said, finishing the thought.
"Everybody and everything would've turned black," Meusch said, gaining momentum. "Look up. That's the only ventilation they would have had, other than through the gun ports. But it was crowded with violent motions, deafening noise, shouting.
"If you got in the way of a gun when it recoiled, you could lose a limb," he said, looking vaguely alarmed.
An hour or so later, having sat through a film of the battle and having seen many models and exhibits, not to mention the re-created turrets - one looking as it did when brought up from the sea, the other appearing shiny and new - the men were tired, their wives in need of lunch.
The men reluctantly pulled themselves away, having seen just more than half the center's offerings. The recovery theater was still to go, as well as the conservation room where the real turret rested in water in a tank.
"Personally, I am moved by all of this," Lund said. "This is the most spectacular museum I've ever seen, and I've been hanging around the Smithsonian all my life."
"I have no words," Meusch said. "Just seeing the mast light of the Monitor - it put me in touch with the fact of the wreck of the Monitor."
• Reach Teresa Annas at (757)446-2485 or teresa.annas@pilotonline.com.