The Virginia museum that holds the famous turret of the sunken Civil War ironclad warship USS Monitor says it is closing the laboratory that houses the artifact because of a lack of federal funding.
The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va., has been the congressionally designated repository for Monitor artifacts since 1987. It also houses, among other things, the legendary ship’s two giant guns, propeller and steam engine.
The private museum, which charges $12 admission, says it is taking the action because the federal government, which it says owns the artifacts, has failed to pay a proper share for their conservation.
The museum also says visitation had fallen far short of projections.
Artifact conservation for the Monitor cost about $500,000 last year, the museum said in a statement.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has a Monitor partnership with the museum, provided 10 percent of conservation costs last year and no conservation funding in 2012, the museum said.
“These are federal government artifacts,” museum President Elliot Gruber said in the statement. “Providing the funds for their well being should be the responsibility of the federal government.”
The situation “has placed a tremendous strain on our budget over the last several years,” he said, and it “has limited funds we have available to conserve our own 35,000 artifacts … [and] our ability to develop new exhibitions and to maintain our facility.”
A spokesman for NOAA responded in an email:
“NOAA recognizes the importance of these artifacts and will continue to support [them] as appropriations allow. These … artifacts are owned by the people of the United States and, at the request of the Mariners Museum, entrusted to the museum for conservation.”
The Monitor is famous for its March 9, 1862, slugfest with the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia, also known as the Merrimack, not far from the museum.
The battle, which was a draw, was history’s first between ironclad warships and was probably the most important naval battle of the Civil War.
The Monitor sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras 10 months later, killing 16 of its 62-man crew.
The wreck was located in 1973 by a Duke University research ship. NOAA was worried that the ship was crumbling on the bottom and with the Navy’s help began retrieving parts of the vessel to save them.
The propeller was pulled up in 1998, and the 20-ton engine in 2001. In an amazing feat of maritime archaeology and engineering, the 120-ton turret was pulled up in 2002.
The turret contained the ship’s two guns and the skeletal remains of two of its sailors. The sailors were buried in Arlington National Cemetery last March.
In 2007, the museum and NOAA opened the $30 million USS Monitor Center, a large extension of the museum built to house the ship’s artifacts.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/19/2014