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166 Chapter Eight  MONITOR COMPLETES ITS FINAL VOYAGE TURRET RECOVERY PLANNING Monitor Expedition 2002 was our last scheduled recovery mission to fulfill the objectives of the comprehensive , long-range Monitor preservation plan. In 1998, Navy divers recovered Monitor’s propeller, which reduced stresses on the hull. NOAA and the Navy conducted additional survey and site preparation work in 1999 and 2000, and deployed the Engine Recovery Structure over Monitor’s hull. In 2001, we successfully recovered the engine and began preparing the armor belt and turret for the final season. Now it was time to put our skills and experience to work on the most challenging expedition yet. The Legacy Program came through for us once again, awarding the funds requested for turret recovery during the summer of 2002. NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program and Office of Ocean Exploration contributed significant matching funds and The Mariners’ Museum provided conservation staff, Curtiss Peterson and Gary Paden, who were already tending the artifacts previously recovered. The Apprentice School at Newport News Shipbuilding fabricated a conservation tank of sufficient size to contain the turret. Other organizations and individuals provided additional support. Before the expedition began, we had obtained adequate funding and assets to conduct the mission, to house and conserve all recovered cultural material securely, and to analyze and report on expedition results. Expedition Planning The sequence of events for 2002 included removing a section of armor belt and hull from atop the turret , partially excavating the turret, then rigging and recovering the turret and all its remaining contents. The key partners remained the same: NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program; the US Navy Supervisor of Salvage (SUPSALV), Naval Sea Systems Command; US Navy, Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit TWO; Phoenix International Inc., the Navy salvage contractor; and The Mariners’ Museum. Newport News Shipbuilding and the US Coast Guard provided additional support. The decision to cut and remove the section of armor belt and decking that blocked access to the turret was not without controversy. Years before, NOAA received several proposals for raising the turret . One called for supporting the armor belt with steel jacks, then digging a deep pit into which the turret would slide, leaving it clear of the armor belt. Another recommended using heavy cables and pul- m o n i t o r c o m p l e t e s i t s f i n a l v o y a g e 167 we were certain it contained the guns and other artifacts that would reveal important details about the ship and its crew in their final hours. None of us wanted to damage any part of this historic site, but in the end we had rejected all other proposals as unsatisfactory. Therefore, we developed a recovery plan specifying removing a section of armor belt and overlying structure followed by lifting the turret directly to the surface. We submitted our plan to the scrutiny of state and federal authorities and received approval to proceed. With that decision behind us, we now turned our attention to “how” we would raise the turret. Thanks to the removal of several plates from the armor belt during 2001 we had a clear plan for completing that task, but recovering the turret presented new challenges . The most obvious suggestion was to place the Engine Recovery Structure back over the wreck and use it to rig and raise the turret. Jim Kelly, our Phoenix engineer, explained that unfortunately the ERS could not support the much larger weight of the turret and contents, which was three to four times as heavy as the engine. Even with more steel added to leys to pull the turret out from under the armor belt. There were other, less feasible proposals as well. From the beginning, however, I argued that we should remove the obstructions rather than try to move the turret laterally. My reasoning was simple: the turret was constructed from 192 individual iron plates, riveted and bolted together to form a cylinder almost twenty-two feet in diameter. Now, the turret was displaced and inverted; we had no way of knowing how much deterioration those rivets and bolts had suffered over the years, but we had already observed that some of the large bolt heads on the turret wall had disintegrated. Attempting to pull the turret sideways would place tremendous stresses on the fasteners, which could cause the plates to pull apart, leaving the turret and contents strewn on the seabed. (My greatest...

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