Seafaring Life, Excavations - U.S. - Archaeology, United States - Naval History, Ships - Military Vessels, United States Civil War - Naval Operations, Union - Armed Forces - Civil War History, Archaeology - General & Miscellaneous, U.S. Civil War - Confed

The Monitor chronicles

Name: The Monitor chronicles
Author: William Marvel
ISBN: 9780684869971

by William Marvel

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Overview

The short, fabled life of the USS Monitor began on January 30, 1862, at Green Point, Brooklyn, New York, and ended on December 31 of that same year, when the legendary Civil War ironclad sank in 230 feet of water off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Serving on the Monitor -- where engines and living space lay completely below the waterline and the iron deck rose a scant eighteen inches above it -- was like no other duty in the U.S. Navy.

The Monitor Chronicles brings shipboard experience to life through the words of Civil War sailor George S. Geer, whose never-before-published letters home to his beloved wife, Martha, faithfully chronicle the events of that dramatic year. Like many men of his station, George Geer had joined Abraham Lincoln's navy less to help save the Union than to earn money and learn a reliable trade, so his accounts are unflinchingly honest -- at times colored by the bravado of a man at war, at others tinged with the pathos of a man in danger and far from home.

When, on the morning of March 9, 1862, the Monitor and the CSS Virginia fought the first battle between ironclad warships, Geer recalled, "I often thought of you and the little darlings when the fight was going on and what should become of you should I be killed....But I should have no more such fears as our ship resisted everything they could fire at her as though they were spit balls." Whether he sweated in the searing heat or simply waited while the Monitor danced a strategic minuet with the enemy, his words confirm and amplify the proud legacy of the vessel whose very existence brought an end to the era of wooden warships.

On January 2, 1863, Geer reported, "I amsorry to have to write you that we have lost the Monitor." He survived, but sixteen men were lost in a raging sea that seemed to have claimed the ship for eternity. But the story told in The Monitor Chronicles doesn't end there. The book captures a piece of living history, as men and machines attempt to recover the wreck even as it begins to succumb to the elements after 136 years on the ocean floor. Because The Mariners' Museum serves as the official repository of the USS Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, readers will be treated to spectacular underwater views of the Monitor, as well as to an unprecedented look at the salvage efforts. Although more than a century has passed since the ship itself sailed into history, The Monitor Chronicles provides not only a fresh, uniquely intimate view of the Monitor's fateful year as the world's first iron warship but also a provocative glimpse of her uncertain future.

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Editorials

Library Journal

In 1862, George Geer boarded the U.S.S. Monitor as a fireman and engineer and stepped into history. In regular correspondence with his wife back in New York, he recorded the workings of the machinery and crew on the newfangled "cheesebox on a raft," as the Union ironclad was called. He also described the famous battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac, the posturing of commanders, and the sinking of the Monitor off the coast of North Carolina during a storm in 1863. This book collects Geer's very readable and revealing letters and augments them with an intelligent commentary on Union naval technology as well as the combined naval and military operations during the Peninsula campaign of 1862. A biography of Geer is included, while a concluding chapter surveys recent efforts to raise the Monitor from her watery grave. Whatever the success of the latter enterprise, this book triumphs as the best inside-the-hull account of life aboard an ironclad and gives Civil War sailors a rare voice in a subject area crowded with soldiers' accounts and the preoccupation with the war on land. Highly recommended for college and major public libraries.--Randall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Kirkus Reviews

During the Civil War, some 172 feet of seagoing iron, with a deck a mere foot-and-a-half above the water line, made the world's navies instantly obsolete. That's maritime history, retold here. The human story, too, is told by one of the ship's crewmen. The Monitor, the Union's "cheesebox on a raft," was the brainchild of the brilliant, feisty John Ericsson. It changed naval warfare forever, and it changed the lives of its sailors. Civil War historian Marvel's (Burnside, 1991) text is composed largely of letters from the Monitor's fireman George Geer to his wife in New York. They date from the time Geer boarded the newly commissioned warship in January 1862 through its foundering in rough seas the last day of the same year. Within weeks of her launching, the Monitor engaged in its historic duel with the Confederate Merrimack (rechristened the Virginia), which withdrew. Each ship's guns were unable to penetrate the other's armor. Marvel's exposition is clear and succinct, as are Geer's letters, in beautiful penmanship and atrocious spelling. Though his depictions of events occasionally tend to be wrong (elevating routine siege fire to major battles and exaggerating casualties), his narrative of the heat and fumes, the crew's bad food, and the scourge of Confederate sharpshooters on shore is remarkably interesting, with a mordant wit often evident. His occasional dispirit, his money worries, his efforts to gain a promotion, and his regular husbandly assurances of his well-being (especially after his survival of the sinking of his ship) attest to the conflict's human concerns. We learn nothing of Geer's postwar life, andMrs.Geer's letters did not survive (although it is interesting to note that the mails went through with more dispatch then than they seem to today). A final chapter deals with continuing efforts to recover the wreck of the historic ship. A unique history, unusually accessible because it is taken largely from the pen of a long-dead sailor. No prior knowledge of maritime practice or Civil War arcana necessary. (100 b&w and color illustrations)