Remains from USS Monitor oldest identity ever sought
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
The heavy lifting to recover the turret of the Civil War-era USS Monitor is over, and the detective work has begun.
Associated Press
Who were the sailors who never made it out of the ironclad's gun room 140 years ago when the ship went down in a storm?
The 120-ton turret from the USS Monitor arrived at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Va., yesterday, resting on the barge that brought it up the James River.
The answer, if it comes at all, might rest with the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory, Hawai'i, which has received a portion of a "fairly complete" skeleton from the Monitor's turret for analysis and is expected to receive other remains as they are recovered.
Lab officials say making a positive identification as far back as the Civil War will be a challenge — even using scanning electron microscopes, X-rays and mitochondrial DNA analysis.
"It's hard to tell — I think we're kind of into a little bit of a pioneering adventure here," said lab archaeologist Eric Emery, who spent 30 days on a Monitor recovery barge off Cape Hatteras, N.C., before returning Wednesday.
Based at Hickam Air Force Base, the lab's mission is to search for, recover and identify missing service personnel. Since 1973, the lab has made more than 1,055 identifications.
"Predominantly we work with 20th-century cases from Vietnam, from World War II, from the Korean War," Emery said. "(But) our mandate is to recover and identify all American personnel that never returned from harm's way."
Earlier this year, a forensic anthropologist from the lab assisted the Smithsonian Institution with remains recovered from the Civil War Confederate submarine Hunley, which sank off the coast of South Carolina in 1864.
The boiler plateicovered submarine, raised from Charleston Harbor in 2000, was found to contain the well-preserved remains of eight crew members. Only Lt. George E. Dixon has been positively identified as being on the sub. It is believed that DNA tests could lead to the names of the others, but a burial is planned for 2003.
The earliest identification made so far by the Hawai'i lab — which was asked in April to develop a "protocol" for handling any remains found on the Monitor — dates to World War II.
A portion of one set of remains found by Navy deep submergence divers July 26 already has been transported to Hawai'i. A crew member was found pinned beneath one of two 11-inch Dahlgren cannons that fired from the Monitor's unique revolving turret.
It was shortly after Emery had finished his 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift on the 300-foot barge that he got the news.
"I was woken up at 9 o'clock in the morning and they were like, 'Hey, we think we're going to need you up in the communications van,' " Emery said. "I go up there and they show me a video screen and it definitely appeared to be possible human remains ... I don't think I got any sleep from that day forward."
John Broadwater, who manages the Monitor marine sanctuary for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Friday that the remains of a second, and possibly a third, sailor were found in the turret after it was raised from 240 feet of water Monday.
"In one case, I think we have a fairly complete individual skeleton," Broadwater said. The second set of bones also appears relatively intact. The additional bones could be from a third crew member or part of the first two sets, he said.
Broadwater said all remains would be turned over to the lab. Bits of wool cloth believed to be from a uniform, buttons and a pocketknife also were found.
The flat-topped Monitor with its rotating turret — which gave the ship its nickname, "cheese box on a raft" — changed the course of the Navy when it fought to a duel with the Confederate ironclad Virginia, formerly the Merrimack, on March 9, 1862, at Hampton Roads, Va. Until then, most warships were made of wood.
The Monitor sank in a storm on New Year's Eve the same year. Sixteen of her crew of 62 were lost. Of those who died, three were believed swept out to sea.
The ironclad came to rest upside-down on the ocean floor. Because the remainder of the ship was too decayed, only the turret — buttressed by eight layers of one-inch plate — was raised.
Two hatches on top provided the only entrance and exit, Emery said, and it is believed that sailors waited at the highest point of the cramped, 9-foot-tall, 20-foot-diameter gun tower to be rescued as heavy seas washed over its decks.
Some underwater sites have yielded remains in very good condition, Emery said.
"You can find amazing preservation in underwater sites," he said. The Monitor's turret was filled with silting clay, coal and metal.
The process of trying to identify the remains will include putting together a biological profile using a series of measurements and "landmarks" on the body to estimate physical appearance, he said.
"We can tell age, oftentimes; we can tell sex; we can tell biological affinity — in other words, were they African American, were they Caucasian. You can also tell certain disorders that might have existed inside the person's bones," Emery said. "Did they have diseases in the past, like osteoporosis or syphilis or dietary deficiencies? So it's more of a physical outline of what the person appeared like."
Mitochondrial DNA has been recovered from remains older than those on the Monitor, Emery said, but to make a match in this case, a matrilineal relative would have to come forward.
"That in itself may be a pretty difficult thing to achieve," he said.
Broadwater said a group called the Monitor Research and Recovery Foundation, which is no longer in existence, had done genealogical work on the crews of the Monitor and Virginia and contacted as many descendants of crew members of the ships as it could find, about a decade ago. "We're hoping some of those records might help us," Broadwater said.
The U.S. Navy casualty office also may be tapped. Ultimately, burials with full military honors are planned, Broadwater said.
The Monitor's gun turret was expected to arrive yesterday at its final resting place at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News.
"As we proceed with the analysis and proceed with the recovery of remains, we really do hope we can locate direct descendants and identify these people by name," Broadwater said.
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
