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Diver helps in 'Monitor' mission
By RICK GERSHMAN
About 16 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras -- and 240 feet underwater -- lay the upside-down wreck of the USS Monitor, the famous ironclad Civil War battleship that sank in a gale on New Year's Eve in 1862. Its location was confirmed in 1974. The possibility of visiting the Monitor is what prompted Garvey, the son of a Navy engineer, to become a deep-sea scuba diver. Earlier this month, he got his chance. "It was an opportunity I've been waiting years for," said Garvey, a scientific diver at the University of South Florida. USF diving safety officer Bill Dent invited Garvey to join him on the recent 45-day expedition in which U.S. Navy divers raised the Monitor's 150-ton gun turret. The pair were among a half-dozen Tampa Bay area divers who participated. Dent, 51, and Garvey, 41, also were appointed to perform a key duty following the turret's removal: The USF diving duo erected a "baseline," a tool that will allow future divers to determine the location of artifacts relative to where the turret was first discovered. Garvey downplayed the importance of the assignment, noting that he and Dent had arrived for the project's final week and were far less familiar with the site than divers who arrived in June. "It was really the simplest thing for us to do," he said.
Because of the current and the depth of the dive, the pair had to enter the water from a moving boat headed upstream and use the current to drift toward the wreck as they descended quickly. Had they entered the water directly above the wreck, Dent said, the current would have pushed them far off course. The USS Monitor has been the subject of intense investigation since its designation as the United States' first marine sanctuary in 1975. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the site, has led expeditions in recent years that recovered the ship's steam engine, propeller, propeller shaft, engine room floor and, most recently, the turret. The first U.S. warship built without masts or sails, the 987-ton Monitor is considered the prototype of modern Navy vessels. It was powered purely by steam and constructed almost entirely of iron, and it bore a revolutionary revolving gun turret with dual cannons. The Union warship was launched in January 1862. It was employed in only one significant battle, with the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia two months later. It survived that conflict, which ended in a draw, but sank at the end of the year as it was being towed to Beaufort, N.C. Sixteen crew members died. The 2002 expedition was the final phase in a five-year effort to recover Monitor artifacts. Navy divers rigged the sling that allowed a barge to pull the turret from the sand-covered ocean bottom. "I was awestruck to see the turret come up," Dent said. "That's been underneath the water for 140 years. I'm an engineer, so seeing how they did that was incredible." The turret was secured on the barge's deck and transported to The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Va., for preservation. It joined more than 400 other artifacts at the museum. A center specifically designed to display Monitor artifacts is scheduled to open in 2007. While Navy divers raised the turret, the project needed top-notch scientific divers for archaeological purposes. Scientific divers are defined as divers who perform scientific research tasks and not tasks associated with commercial diving, such as rigging heavy objects, construction or demolition. Scientific divers also are rated to dive at greater depths than recreational divers. Dent, who lives in New Port Richey, is the president-elect of the American Academy of Underwater Sciences, which oversees scientific diving certification and standards throughout the U.S. Garvey, a Lutz resident, is an engineer who builds life-support systems for military divers. Weather conditions limited the men to two dives, but once was enough to set the baseline, which is a line that stretches across the indentation where the turret once rested. Distance markers along the line will allow future divers to triangulate the position of artifacts they find in the area. To set the baseline, Dent and Garvey dove to the 18-inch-deep circular depression created by the turret. They drove two stakes into the ocean floor across from each other and ran the line between the two stakes, adding dive markers to the line at intervals of 10 feet. They used hand signals to communicate while on the wreck, and luckily, visibility was excellent, said Dent, who compared it to his brightly lit office. In the four days that remained on the expedition after Dent and Garvey set the baseline, scientific divers discovered several new items from the Monitor. They included a toilet and three medicine jars, two of which contained "an unknown white substance," Dent was told. Forensic scientists will work to determine what that is, he said. Garvey said he was disappointed that rough weather kept him and Dent from exploring the Monitor more often. "The North Carolinas are evil that way," said Garvey, who was able to do a little diving off the nearby coast and otherwise caught up on some rest. "I slept a lot. Ships put me to sleep, so I slept on deck. And I spent a lot of time on the beach, read a lot." That is not to suggest that Garvey was unimpressed by the occasion. "It was a big deal," he said. "It was a chilling moment when I saw the bow of that ship, and knowing what it meant in naval history."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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From the Times |
Growing up in Washington in the 1970s, Matt Garvey often vacationed with his family at nearby Hatteras Village, on the Outer Banks islands of North Carolina.
