In 1973, the Duke University Marine Laboratory launched a two-week mission to find the Monitor. The night of August 27th, researchers saw a black squiggle on the ship's fathometer, a sonar instrument used to measure the depth under a ship. They then used a side-scan sonar and determined there was something doen there at 230 feet.
Was it the Monitor?
The next year, a US Navy ship using high-resolution deep water imaging techniques determined it was indeed the Monitor. It was sixteen nautical miles south and southeast of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.
Over the next thirty years there were many expeditions out to the wreck. Unfortunately, the ship had decomposed to the point the whole thing could not be lifted. But, the turret was good to go and raised in 2002. Two Dahlgren guns and two skeletons were found in it.
John Broadwaker was first to enter the turret once on land and found the first skeleton immediately. The second was found several weeks later.
The remains were sent to the U.S. Joint Prisoner of War/Missing In Action Accounting Command in Hawaii for analysis. Who were they?
It is now believed most likely they were 21-year-old Jacob Nicklis of Buffalo, New York, and Robert Williams, a first class fireman in his early 30s.
Nothing Like Good Historical Research. --Old B-R'er
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