LINKS
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2007 Annual Meeting of the Division of Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society
October 10-13, 2007
Marriott Newport News at City Center
Newport News, VA USA
The USS Monitor Center
The USS Monitor Center at the Mariners' Museum opened to the public on March 9, 2007 - exactly 145 years after the famous Battle of the Ironclads on Hampton Roads that no side won yet changed naval warfare forever. The Center is the home of all artifacts that have been recovered from the Monitor wreck site, 16 miles off Cape Hatteras and 240 feet below the surface of the sea. Neither the CSS Virginia (originally the USS Merrimac) nor the USS Monitor survived the year in which each was commissioned. The CSS Virginia was blown up by its crew in May 1862. The USS Monitor foundered and sank during a storm in an area of the ocean known as The Graveyard of the Atlantic early on December 31, 1862.
The Monitor Center is a 63,500-square-foot exhibition and conservation complex that includes the Monitor's iconic revolving gun turret. Many of the 6,000 artifacts have been conserved and are on display throughout the Center. Other artifacts, including the turret, will take twelve more years to stabilize before being installed in the Center's exhibit galleries.
These are not static 19th Century galleries. The Battle Theater condenses the famous clash of the ironclads into a dramatic and riveting account of the CSS Virginia's deadly rampage of the blockading Union ships and the USS Monitor's arrival in the Hampton Roads anchorage the morning after "the nation's worst loss of naval ships until December 7, 1941."
When the action turns to the recovery of the turret under the guidance of NOAA archaeologists and Navy divers in 2001, the drama is no less fraught with similar demons of timing, weather, tides, and rapidly dwindling funds. The Recovery Theater puts the viewer into the actual white knuckle scenes on the deck and underwater during the recovery effort.
Throughout the galleries the underlying history of the Civil War and the technological sea change from wooden ships to iron ships is captured with real objects, archives, and interactive digital games. A full scale replica of the USS Monitor is also on view and open to visitors.
The USS Monitor Center is housed in The Mariners' Museum which was designated by Congress in 1998 as America's National Maritime Museum. Throughout the Museum's extensive galleries, displays of international small craft and maritime themes from the role of the US Navy in the nation's history to the voyages of discovery in the 16th through 19th Century dominate the global emphasis of its collections and permanent exhibits. The Chesapeake Bay is also emphasized as well as paintings, figureheads, Chris Craft, steam powered engines, and the exquisitely detailed model ships by the acclaimed August Crabtree.