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| A U.S. Navy diver works on the wreck of the USS Monitor. |
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For more than a century, the Monitor's resting place in the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" remained a mystery, despite numerous searches. Finally, in 1973, a team of scientists led by John G. Newton of the Duke University Marine Laboratory located the Monitor while testing geological survey equipment.
On August 27, 1973, after identifying twenty-one possible contacts, side-searching sonar found a long, amorphous echo. The first pass of the television camera revealed iron plates; a virtually flat, unobstructed surface (the bottom of the hull); a thick waist (the armor belt); and a circular structure (the turret). With each successive series of camera passes, evidence mounted that the wreck was that of the Monitor, but it would take an intensive study of the visual evidence over the next five months to confirm it.
A second visit to the site in April 1974 positively identified the Monitor, lying in approximately 230 feet of water about 16 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras. |
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| Wreck of the Iron Clad "Monitor". From Harper's Weekly, January 24, 1863. |
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