Inside the Monitor’s turret there are a series of thin wrought iron plates that covered the rows of nuts and bolts that held together the turret armor. The purpose of these plates was to prevent the nuts from breaking off of the bolts and flying around inside the turret when the armor took a hard [...]

A while ago, conservators, archaeologists, shipyard employees, and a corrosion expert removed a core sample from Monitor‘s revolving gun turret armor. Although long-term analysis is ongoing, yesterday we utilized a portable XRF analyzer to perform additional elemental analysis. We’ll let you know what our results are after we have a chance to review them. In [...]

Elsa and Laura are treating fragments of a wool coat recovered from the turret. The coat would be similar to a 4-button pilot coat, and was made of dark blue felted wool. Below, Elsa is pointing out a button hole and a pocket opening in the coat. Even after 140 years on the sea-floor, some [...]