USS Monitor: A Historic Ship Completes Its Final Voyage

Notes

217 the name “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” but a mariners’ guide published in 1900 (Hoyt 1900, 161), and a government document issued in 1904 (War Department 1904, 1432) applied the term to Hatteras. An article published in Technical World Magazine in 1907 stated, “[Cape Hatteras is] the terror of the mariner—the Diamond Shoals, the ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic,’ being so feared by sailors that comparatively speaking there is no coastwise trade up and down this stretch of coast except by steam vessels. . . . As for barge towing, for freight, it is hardly thought of ten months in the year and the rest of the time essayed with fear and trembling” (Claudy 1907, 402–03). 13. Logbook, USS Passaic, 30Dec1862. 14. Determining latitude and longitude were timeconsuming exercises in the nineteenth century, requiring accurate fixes on landmarks or celestial bodies at a specific time of day; however, a small line, marked with distances and weighted by a “sounding lead” provided the depth of water and, therefore, a quick estimate of the distance from land. Charts often displayed depth soundings, but depths in areas such as Diamond Shoals were known to change without warning by as much as several fathoms. 15. Logbook, USS Rhode Island, 30Dec1862; The Beaufort Scale, developed in England in 1805 by Sir Francis Beaufort , this system is still in use today. 16. Logbook, USS Rhode Island, 30Dec1862. 17. Logbook, USS Passaic, 30Dec1862. 18. Logbooks, USS Passaic and USS Rhode Island, 30Dec1862. chapter one “The Monitor Is No More” 1. Confidential order dated December 24, 1862, from Acting Rear Admiral S. P. Lee, commanding the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to Commander Joseph P. Bankhead, US Navy, Commanding U.S.S. Monitor, Hampton Roads, Virginia. 2. Keeler (1862–1863, 232). 3. Letter from Lt. Dana Greene to his father and brother, March 14, 1862. 4. Weeks (1863, 367). 5. Geer letters, January 13, 1863 (Geer 2000). 6. There remain some inconsistencies about the turret transit position and the type of caulking—if any— placed beneath it. Bennett (1898, 297) states that a plaited hemp gasket was used, against Ericsson’s instructions , and as the seas washed the hemp out of the seam, it opened wide gaps for water to enter. 7. Bankhead report, 1January1863. 8. No details have been found concerning the method of sealing the hawse pipe, but since the anchor chain had to remain attached, it must have been difficult to effectively seal the opening with the chain running through it. Water pulsing up the anchor well would have created tremendous hydraulic forces, as evidenced by Green’s description of the March leak, and most types of packing would have been blown out. 9. Logbook, USS State of Georgia, 30Dec1862. 10. Keeler (253). 11. Logbook, USS State of Georgia, 30Dec1862. 12. There is no evidence for when Hatteras was first given NOTES  218 N o t e s t o p a g e s 9 – 1 4 crew of the Monitor seized the ropes . . . and started to climb up her side, but only three reached there.” None of the other sources corroborate this account. 42. Reports from Bankhead, Trenchard, and other accounts . 43. Neither Bankhead’s nor Trenchard’s official report mentioned the fouling of Rhode Island’s wheel by Monitor’s severed hawser; however, the incident is reported later in articles by Weeks and Butts of Monitor, and William Rogers and H. R. Smith of Rhode Island. It seems reasonable to assume that these later reports are correct , since it is difficult to imagine any other reason for Rhode Island’s officers letting the ship drift so far from its own boats and from Monitor. 44. Bankhead report, 1January1863. 45. Watters, report of 1 January 1863, appended to Bankhead report of the same date. 46. Ibid. 47. Rodney Browne report, 10 January 1863 48. Bankhead report, 1January1863. 49. Rodney Browne. In the darkness and heavy seas, the cutter became separated from its ship. Rhode Island searched for hours, “throwing up rockets and burning blue lights,” but the cutter was not located. Fortunately, Browne and his crew were picked up the next day by a schooner and taken to Beaufort, North Carolina. 50. Weeks (1863). 51. Keeler letters, January 6, 1863, 253. State of Georgia and Passaic saved themselves by turning north and running with the storm. Of the sixty-three men aboard Monitor that night, four officers and twelve crewmen lost their lives, many of them washed overboard while attempting to reach Rhode Island’s boats...