-: Thank you for joining us today for our webinar,
Raising the USS Monitor Turret.
And the U.S. Navy's Role in the Monitor Exposition 2002.
Joining me today is Shannon Ricles,
the Education and Outreach Coordinator
for Monitor and Mallows Bay,
Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary.
And, I will be your host today, Mark Losavio,
the Media and Outreach Coordinator
for Monitor and Mallows Bay -
Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary.
This webinar today is brought to you by
NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary,
in collaboration with the
North Carolina Office of State Archeology.
Partnering since 1975,
NOAA, in the state of North Carolina, work to research,
honor and protect the hallmarks of North Carolina's
underwater cultural heritage, shipwrecks.
These shipwrecks hold information about the ever-changing
technologies and cultural and physical landscapes.
They serve as a uniquely accessible underwater museum
and a memorial to generations of mariners who lived,
died, worked and fought off of our shores.
This is one of the many webinars we will be hosting
this year, for this Submerged NC webinar series,
in collaboration with the North Carolina Office
of State Archeology.
Monitor is just one of 15 national marine sanctuaries,
soon to be more, and two marine national monuments
in the National Marine Sanctuary System.
This system encompasses more than 620,000 square miles of
marine and Great Lakes waters from Washington State,
to the Florida Keys and from Lake Huron to American Samoa.
During this presentation,
all attendees will be in listen only mode.
You are welcome to type questions for the presenters
into the question box at the bottom of your control panel,
which is on the right hand side of your screen.
This is the same area you can let us know about
any technical issues you may be having
that we can help you with.
And we'll do our best to respond.
We'll be monitoring incoming questions and technical issues
and I'll try to respond to them as soon as I see them.
We will also be recording this session
and we'll share the recording with all registered
participants via the webinar archive page
and a URL for all of this
will be provided at the end of the presentation.
So today, we welcome Captain Bobbie Schooley,
Captain, U.S. Navy Retired,
as she tells us about the expedition
NOAA did in partnership with the Navy
to raise Monitor's turret.
So without further ado, Bobbie",
I will give you control here.
All right.
[Bobbie Scholley] Okay, thank you so much Mark.
Excuse me, I want to thank NOAA and the
Marine Sanctuaries' program for
inviting me to this webinar today.
Like most sailors,
I really enjoy telling sea stories
and the Monitor Expedition's probably one of the best
sea stories that you can possibly imagine telling.
And today I'm gonna focus on the Navy's role
in Monitor Expedition 2002.
Because I think it's important to talk about
the sailors involved.
And as you can see there,
there's really not a whole lot of difference between
the sailors in the crew from 1862
and the sailors from the team
that were involved in the expedition from 2002.
They were all sailors.
And they were shipmates.
And that's really the way that we looked at ourselves
as members of the expedition in 2002.
What I'm not gonna talk about today is the
history and the discovery of
USS Monitor.
There are people that are far better at talking about those
topics than I am.
And one of those persons is Dr. John Broadwater,
who is a very good friend of mine.
And who I worked with quite a bit on
Expedition 2001 and 2002.
As a matter of fact,
he was my boss on those expeditions,
as the Superintendent of the
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, at that time.
And he did a webinar in August, on August 2nd, 2002,
that talked about those topics very well.
So if you haven't seen that webinar,
please go back to the archives and take a look at that
because it was excellent.
As we all know,
Monitor sank on December 31st, 1862,
off the coast of North Carolina.
And that's why we're here talking about her today.
That became NOAA's first National Marine Sanctuary,
when Monitor was discovered in 1973.
And she was deteriorating much faster than
most people considered.
And so, NOAA needed to come up with a preservation plan
that included stabilization of the Monitor site
and recovery of key artifacts,
including the iconic steam engine
and of course the gun turret.
Now the Navy became involved in part of that planning
and also in part of the execution of that plan,
most prominently in 1996
and then again in 1998 through 2002.
In order to
take that plan and put it into action,
there needed to be a partnership that took action on that.
And that partnership was NOAA,
who of course was the administrator
of the Monitor Sanctuary.
And then The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia,
would take custody of any artifacts that were recovered
and then take on the huge job
of conservation of those artifacts.
And then the Navy became the partner that would provide
assistance in planning
and then the execution of the salvage operations
that would help with the stabilization
and then the recovery of artifacts.
But you couldn't do anything along these lines
without funding of course.
And so, there needed to be a source of funding.
And so the partnership put together a crack team
to go to Capitol Hill and request funding.
And that crack team was composed of Dr. John Broadwater,
who was an archeologist and a diver in his own right
and Captain Chris Murray,
who was the Navy's, probably best diving officer
and a former Naval Academy rugby player.
And this crack team went and
assaulted Capitol Hill
full force with the plan for this effort,
for the USS Monitor.
And they were so successful, that they were able
to get DoD legacy funds, that
would fund Monitor Expedition 2000, 2001
and 2002.
So, we're gonna concentrate on Expedition 2002.
The final expedition.
And, we're gonna look at the goals here,
from 20 years ago.
As you can see in the graphic, Monitor
sank and then flipped over as she settled
to the ocean floor.
And the turret, which was a midship when she was functional,
slid aft and ended up underneath
the Monitor, towards the stern.
And although you could see the turret a little bit,
she was still covered by the Monitor's hull.
So the goal was,
to clear part of the armor belt in the stern section
that was covering the turret, so we could expose the turret.
And then we had to excavate the turret
from around the outside of the turret,
so that we could lower the lifting mechanism,
which was called the SPIDER.
And I'll talk about that a little bit later.
And we also had to excavate inside the turret
and hopefully find the two Dahlgren guns,
which hadn't been seen yet.
And then rig the turret successfully and bring it
and the guns to the the surface.
How are we going to do that?
Well, we had this window,
over the summer of 2002,
that would be safe to operate
off the coast of North Carolina.
It was between the winter storm season and hurricane season.
And that gave us about 45 days to conduct safe operations.
But we needed a platform that we can conduct these
operations on, that would stay out there
and allow us to do the diving.
And we ended up renting an oil field
barge, the WOTAN barge, from Manson Gulf,
that we could conduct the operations off of.
And we needed it for two main purposes.
One, we needed that large 500-ton lifting crane,
that would eventually go down and lift the turret
off the bottom.
And we also needed the deck of the barge that would provide
housing for the whole team.
And it ended up being able to provide housing
for 116 team members.
That would include the divers,
the archeologists, the crew of the barge
and additional people that would support the operation.
We also had to
install both dive teams on board.
We ended up with a mixed gas dive team
and a saturation dive team
that would conduct all the diving and salvage operations.
And we would have that barge stay out there on station
at anchorage, for 45 days,
doing diving operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Now some people kind of envisioned us being out there
doing our operations during the day
and then we jump on the boats
and come back ashore in the evenings,
go to a restaurant, have some wonderful seafood,
go to our hotel, relax, go to sleep,
get on the boat the next morning at eight o'clock,
go out there and do operations.
That was not the case at all.
We were out there the entire 45 days,
operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
in order to get this job done.
Excuse me.
And what were our objectives?
Well, for the Navy,
our objectives were training navy divers in
deep ocean salvage operations for large scale operation.
And then our goals were
the four goals from the previous slide.
So to accomplish this,
we needed our team that was on board the barge,
to be the crack team with all the expertise
for the operation.
And that included the US Navy Divers.
Now the core team of the divers would be
the Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit II,
divers that were my command.
And they would stay on the barge for the entire 45 days.
They were involved in the planning efforts
and they were the core expertise.
We would also bring in divers from commands
all over the Navy, that would augment this original team.
We also had the Navy contractors, Phoenix International,
who would be the Navy's Salvage and Diving contractors
providing equipment and providing other subcontractors.
The Manson Gulf Barge, WOTAN
and Global Industries, which was the Navy contract
that provided the saturation dive system that we used.
The other component of the team was NOAA,
with its archeologists and expertise.
And The Mariners' Museum,
who also provided expertise in the history of the Monitor,
the design of Monitor
and historians with additional expertise.
The WOTAN barge also provided all the crane operators,
the riggers and the support staff
that provided the housing and the food service.
Now, the WOTAN barge came from Louisiana,
so of course the cooks came from Louisiana also.
So you've got to understand that we had fabulous cooks
and fabulous meals out there, which helped quite a bit.
So now let's talk about the diving.
We had two diving teams out there on the operation.
We had the saturation, excuse me,
saturation dive team.
And we had the mixed gas dive team.
And this was very important.
Because we only had 45 days to complete this operation
and we had a lot of work that needed to be accomplished
in order to get that turret
prepared to be lifted to the surface safely
and without any damage done to it.
And that would require a lot of man hours of diving work
on the bottom of the ocean on the Monitor.
So we had to maximize the amount of time that we could keep
divers working down on the ocean bottom.
And in order to do that,
we needed to use saturation divers
who could stay
working, actually on the bottom of the ocean on the Monitor.
So we needed to provide for working saturation divers.
Unfortunately, at that time,
the Navy did not have a mobile Saturation Dive System.
We had plenty of qualified
and experienced saturation divers
but we didn't have the system
that we could use for this operation.
So we had to go to the Chief of Naval Operations,
to get a waiver to use a commercial Saturation Dive System,
with Navy divers.
And, we were able to get that waiver
and rent a saturation system from Global Marine.
We did some modifications to it
to bring it up to Navy standards.
And then the Navy divers operated that system
and then dove on it.
And this worked out quite well.
And it was a proof of concept for us,
that the Navy was able to use in other capacities.
So what did that give us?
Well, you can see there in the picture,
the blue and white system there,
was the entirety of the saturation system.
And a 20-man saturation team
operated this system and dove on it.
The system included a diving bell,
you can kind of see that in the front there.
It's a two man personal transfer chamber,
which would take the dive team down to the
the ocean's bottom
and allow them to go to work on the Monitor.
It also included two
six-man chambers,
that would stay on the barge
as habitats for the divers to live in
while they were saturated.
And then it had an independent generator that
would run the whole system and then a handling system
for the dive bell.
And what would happen is that
the divers would be pressurized or saturated
to the same pressure as the Monitor was at,
at 230 feet of seawater.
You can see here the control van,
that the dive supervisor was a Navy diver,
this is a chief petty officer,
would operate to keep the whole system running,
both the habitat and the divers in the bell
and the diver working on the Monitor.
And the other picture would be a picture of the habitat.
And that's a four-man saturation dive team there.
And that's where they would live for the duration
of their saturation dive.
Whether it be seven days or 14 days
or whatever the length of their dive would be.
They would live in that habitat
and that's where they would live on their shift
when they weren't working on their dive.
And then there's the dive bell that would take them to work.
It's kind of like an elevator.
They'd get in it and it would be lowered through the water
down to the Monitor and then they would climb out of
the dive bell and then go to work on Monitor.
So the way the saturation divers worked is,
a four-man saturation team would go into the habitat,
they would be pressurized down to the same pressure
as the Monitor, at 230 feet of seawater.
And they would be in the habitat,
and they would be divided into two-man teams.
And they would be working shift work 12 hours each,
into two shifts.
The first shift would be two divers,
would go into the dive bell,
that would be mated to the habitat.
They would climb into the dive bell.
The dive bell would be lifted off the habitat
and lowered over the side of the barge,
down into the water, down to Monitor.
One of those divers would climb out of the bell
and go to work on Monitor.
The second diver would stay in the dive bell
as a safety diver.
That first diver would work for six hours.
At the end of six hours,
he would go back up into the dive bell
and the two divers would swap places.
The second diver going out to be the working diver,
the first diver staying in as safety diver.
At the end of the second six hours,
both divers would be in the dive bell
and that would be the end of their 12 hour shift.
The dive bell would come back up through the water,
up to the barge and it would mate back up to the habitat
and that dive team would climb out of the bell,
into the habitat
and it would be time for their resting shift.
The other two divers would climb out of the habitat,
into the bell and it would be time for their working shift.
So for 12 hours they would go down to the Monitor
and they would do their 12 hour work shift,
six hours of work, six hours as safety diver.
And that would continue on for 24 hours a day,
seven days a week, rotating 12-hour shifts.
And they would continue doing that for
the duration of their saturation dive.
And then, once they were done with their saturation dive,
the next four man dive team would go in.
And that would allow us to have a saturation diver
working for six hours at a time,
on Monitor, almost continuously.
And that gave us the chance to have a saturation diver
doing those types of jobs
that we needed somebody working on without interruption.
And we needed more than just one diver down there
working on Monitor.
So we also had the mixed gas divers.
These are the divers that the Navy uses constantly
throughout the fleet.
They go and do all the dive jobs, ships husbandry,
underwater
salvage and diving recovery.
They are all over the fleet.
They have a flyaway mixed gas dive system that's portable.
It could be put on an airplane, it can be put on a ship,
it can be put in the back of a truck
and taken almost to any location.
And they are ready to dive.
They use helium oxygen mixture for these depths,
the same as the saturation diver.
They use the same helmet as the saturation diver.
But they have their own portable system
that they can take
and be mobile.
They operate in
two 25-man teams
in shift work.
But you can see that they do it a little bit differently.
They take two divers at a time,
go over the side in an open stage
and they dive with both divers working together
on the bottom on Monitor.
They have a third diver who stays on the barge,
fully suited up in a dive suit.
He doesn't put the helmet on
but the helmet is right there next to him, ready to be
placed on his head, if need be, as the safety diver.
The two divers are lowered over the side, on the stage.
The stage doesn't go all the way to the bottom
'cause we don't want it banging up and down on the bottom.
And then the divers will jump off the stage, down to Monitor
and they'll go to work for approximately 30 minutes.
In this case, we were using a Navy dive table
called, Surface Decompression on O2.
This is a very safe table that the Navy uses all the time
for these sorts of diving operations.
And we're able to use this because we had a
recompression chamber on the barge that we could do
the surface decompression with oxygen,
right up on the barge.
So after the two divers are done working on Monitor,
the dive supervisor will bring them back up to the stage
and get them ready to come back up to the surface.
So these two divers work together for
approximately 30 minutes,
not to exceed 40 minutes on Monitor.
They work very quickly together.
They have a game plan before they ever leave the barge
to go down there and do that job.
Sometimes they work with the saturation diver.
They have the game plan in mind
and they know what the dive team before them
had been working on.
Because they have a camera on their dive helmet
that feeds real-time up to the surface
and they're able to watch what the team before them
had done, before they get suited up.
And they have the archeologists from NOAA
and the museum right there,
talking to them the whole time.
So, they will come back up to the surface
slowly through the water column,
making stops at different depths for one hour decompression
in the water.
Then when they get back up to the barge,
the tenders will help them get out of their diving equipment
and they have five minutes
to get out of the dive equipment and back into the chamber,
where they will have another
two hours and 15 minutes of decompression.
But they will be warm and dry and much safer in the chamber
where there's more control.
And we have a master diver there with them.
We have diving medical officers on the barge.
And we have the supervisors there,
controlling their decompression.
So it's a very safe environment for us to continue
the decompression for the divers.
We
had a very safe record on Monitor,
where we had absolutely no
diving illnesses or diving sickness.
The worst we had on Monitor, were a couple of ear squeezes
because we took safety precautions throughout the evolution.
So you can see here a very
short clip of a surface supplied mixed gas dive.
Sometimes the weather got a little bit rocky
but for the most part, our dives were very safe.
We made over 400 mixed gas dives.
And it was during daytime, it was at night.
The divers had a light on their helmet.
They had the camera there, with the archeologists talking to
them the whole time, guiding them if need be.
And,
it was very well executed and planned out.
So every dive was very efficient and very effectively made.
And it had to be that way, in order to maximize
the use of every dive hour that
was made during the operation.
So how did we actually conduct the operation
in order to make sure that we could get
the turret ready for lift?
Well, we broke it up into four phases.
And the first phase, of course was to clear the stern
so we could get access to the turret.
And that meant cutting that armor belt.
And of course the armor belt was designed
to prevent any damage to the Monitor,
especially from cannon balls and such.
So the armor belt was gonna be a real tough
thing to get through.
And you can see there that
it was a pretty big piece for us to go against.
48 feet, one ton per linear foot of armor belt.
Now most of the rest of the stern had kind of disintegrated
and there wasn't much left of that
for us to have to deal with.
It was this really that long piece of armor belt
that we needed to worry about.
And, based on the information that we had
from the historians, which was really good information,
it was a composite, and it was a three by five foot
of composite wood and iron beams,
with those five one inch thick armor plates.
So, we didn't have just one thing that we had to deal with.
We had a variety of things that we had to be able
to cut through.
And of course they had been in seawater for 140 years.
So although we had done some practice
before we got out there in the summer of 2002,
we just really weren't exactly sure of what it was gonna
take to get through that armor belt.
We all knew from experience that, you know,
salvage is not a precise art.
You have to plan and plan well.
But you also have to be flexible because you never know
exactly what you're going to run across when you get down
into the water.
So we used a variety of tools.
We used the Broco cutting torch,
which worked pretty good against the armor plates.
We used hydraulic chainsaws.
We used a high pressure hydro blaster,
which was the diver's favorite tool
but not necessarily the archeologist's favorite tool.
And then we ended up using a wire sling saw,
which is not necessarily something that
is normally in your tool belt.
And so, we got most of the way through the armor belt.
And then we kinda slowed down,
that last little bit.
And it was taking much longer than we had planned
in our schedule
but we just couldn't get that last little bit.
So one of the boatswain mate chiefs
came up with the wire sling saw.
And what we did is, we sent down a piece of
three quarter inch wire
and attached it to a wench up on the deck of the barge.
And we just started sawing back and forth with that wire.
And that turned out to be quite effective.
And so on July 5th, 2002,
we were able to make
that last little bit through the armor belt.
Of course we had the armor belt attached to the
100-ton crane on the deck of the WOTAN barge
because it was quite heavy
and we didn't want it landing on the top of the turret.
So, before we got all the way through the cut,
we took the weight on the crane and then the crane lifted it
off and set it down gently onto the ocean floor,
right next to the Monitor, where it is still sitting.
And, hopefully at some point we'll be able to go back,
take a piece of that armor belt, not the whole thing
but just a piece of it and recover it,
as one of the artifacts that are brought to the surface.
Phase two then.
We needed to excavate on the outside of the turret
so we could lower the lifting device called, the SPIDER,
that will eventually bring it up to the surface.
So, the lifting device
was
devised
and fabricated
by our Phoenix team.
And it took us a while to come up with this concept.
I remember sitting around the conference table
at our command, during the planning phase
and looking at all the different ideas about
how we were going to safely and successfully
lift the turret without crushing it.
And if you think about a soda can
and trying to lift it up
with some sort of device by squeezing it,
without squeezing it and crushing it in the middle,
that was kind of the concept of what we were trying to do.
If we had just gotten some sort of mechanism
that was gonna hold it tight enough
around the middle, without, you know,
we didn't know how fragile the turret was gonna be.
But we didn't want to, you know, do any damage to it.
So we had to come up with something that would be strong
enough to bring it to the surface without squeezing it.
And eventually, a couple of our very smart engineers,
one of them being my executive officer
and another one being the engineer at Phoenix,
came up with this plan.
And you can see the rough drawing there, next to it.
And, it obviously was named the SPIDER, as you look at it.
But the legs of the SPIDER would be out 15 degrees
before we lowered it down.
And then once we lowered it to the turret,
then the divers would operate the legs with a hand-operated
hydraulics, to bring the legs back in
and underneath the bottom of the turret,
so that the turret would set on those
feet or those claws
and then lift it up without
putting pressure on the sides of the turret.
But in order to do that,
we had to excavate around the outside of the turret.
Because the turret was
buried partially down in the sand and the silt.
So we had to get that excavated out so that the legs
of the SPIDER could fit around the outside of the turret
and then get down underneath the turret.
And some of that sand and silt was packed in very hard.
So, again, we had to use different tools
to excavate that sand
and silt carefully from around the outside.
We didn't wanna knock anything off of the turret.
There's concretion, which is a word
that I had never heard before
but the archeologists were educating us on these terms.
We didn't wanna knock any concretion off the side.
and we wanted to make sure that we got the area cleared
where the legs needed to go down along the edges.
At the same time, phase three,
we needed to excavate the inside of the turret as well.
Because we had to lighten the load.
We couldn't lift the turret when it was filled.
You can see there that it was filled with sand, silt
and there was some coal there also that had fallen out
of a coal bunker when the ship landed on top of it.
And we had to get a lot of that out, not all of it
but we had to get a vast majority of it out,
to make it light enough for it to safely be lifted by
the 500-ton crane.
And we needed to do it carefully inside the turret.
Because we knew that there were some artifacts in there
and possibly some remains of some of the missing sailors.
So,
to do the excavation inside the turret,
we had to use special techniques and
primarily an adapter,
which is like vacuuming it out and taking all that sediment
and material from inside the turret
and putting it into a salvage basket,
which was then lifted to the barge,
where the archeologist and the museum personnel
would sift through it by hand
and then find these treasures, as small as a button.
And they found all sorts of things in that sediment.
Which, are on display at the museum now.
And just incredible stuff that we found,
including the two sailors that were found in the turret.
We also, fortunately, did find the Dahlgren guns
and that was
a wonderful feeling to find those guns still in there.
So we finally got the outside of the turret
excavated, and we got the inside excavated.
And it was time to install the SPIDER.
So, we slowly lowered the SPIDER down.
And I have to say that the crane crew
on the WOTAN barge were incredible.
Can you imagine lowering that SPIDER down 230 feet
through the water column, in a precise manner,
with the crane operator and his
rigging crew, giving hand signals,
based on the diver being down there with his helmet camera,
showing the
crane
operator, the crane crewman, the crane rigger,
who was giving hand signals to the crane operator,
on how to maneuver the hook,
to get the SPIDER carefully onto the turret
without damaging the turret.
It was amazing and very well done.
So the SPIDER came down onto the turret
and then the divers got there and operated the hydraulic
legs to bring them in,
to get underneath the edges of the turret.
A couple other things had to be done
to shore up the top of the turret so that things didn't fall
out of the bottom as we lifted it.
But eventually all that was done
and the turret was ready to be lifted to the surface.
Now all we had to do, was make sure that
the weather was
right for this lift.
The last thing we wanted to do
was endanger any of our people
or break the turret as we were bringing it to the surface.
It was early August, we were getting into hurricane season.
The weather was not getting any better.
We were seeing higher winds, we were seeing higher currents,
and it wasn't getting any nicer out there.
On top of that, we had a lotta media attention.
So we had a lotta media on board.
And the day that we were looking at
possibly lifting the turret,
we of course had a lot of attention from,
what we referred to as VIPs.
But these were people that were very big supporters and,
you know, wanted to be there to see history in the making.
So it was only natural
that we'd have a lot of interest that day.
So,
it was a lot of stress.
And Dr. Broadwater and I
had to make some hard decisions.
Unfortunately, the weather was just not
good enough for us to,
in good conscious, make the decision
to lift the turret off the bottom on August 4th.
And a lot of people were disappointed
but obviously, they understood that we had to be safe.
So, many people left
that day.
Then on August 5th,
Dr. Broadwater and I got up early
and we looked at the weather
and we talked to a lot of our experts.
And, the weather was better
but we still had a very strong current.
We ended up moving the barge around a little bit,
which took a while.
But, we decided to go slowly,
step-by-step and reevaluate after each step of the way
and started the process.
And, our people
were very well trained,
very professional, went slowly
and looked at it each step of the way.
It took a lot longer than we anticipated
because we did go very slowly.
And,
at 5:47 on August 5th,
the Monitor's turret came to the surface
and it was intact and it was an incredible feeling,
and I
think everybody was just overjoyed.
And John Broadwater and I were so proud of that crew.
And it was a history making moment.
So, what were the Navy's benefits
from this entire expedition?
I can say in hindsight that the training and the experience
that the sailors
received from the Monitor expeditions
were just unparalleled.
I look back at names and faces that were out there on
the barge and on the Monitor expeditions
and there were so many of them that went on to become
leaders within the diving community.
There were young sailors, young divers,
that were out there making their very first dives,
from dive school.
That went on to become master divers
and chief warrant officer divers and diving officers,
over the 20 years since then.
And maybe they would've anyway
but I think there were a considerably higher percentage
of those young men and women who did that.
And the middle grade divers
who went and immediately became diving leaders
from that operation, were much higher.
So I think that this operation
created a whole generation of diving leaders
within the diving community.
This also provided field testing for new equipment
and definitely new procedures within the dive tables
and dive medicine, that
were
just incredible.
And it definitely rejuvenated the
Navy saturation capability to
the position that it is today.
But, also equally important is,
being involved in this historic moment.
It wasn't just a part of U.S. history
but this was a part of naval history.
And it was so appropriate that the Navy be a part of this
piece of naval history.
So the Monitor's turret came up and went to The
Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia.
Shortly afterwards, the museum was able to build
and open the USS Monitor Center,
which holds the artifacts that came from Monitor,
with the turret being the cornerstone of the center.
It's not out of the conservation tank yet
but it's part of the conservation part of the center
and it's still fabulous to go and visit,
if you haven't been there to see it, I encourage you to go.
It is an amazing place and its educational value
cannot be overstated.
It's a wonderful place
to take the younger generation and even those of us
of the older generation.
And I think it'll be fabulous for generations to come.
Not only teaches history but is a wonderful place
to teach science.
We also were able to
take the two crew members that were recovered
from the turret.
And on March 6th of 2012 [Sic 03/08/2013],
they were in turn in Arlington National Cemetery,
in an amazing
service,
as well as a plaque that was dedicated to
honoring all 16 members that were lost on Monitor.
The service was incredible.
The Secretary of the Navy and the Director of NOAA
spoke at the service, with just heartfelt remarks.
And it was an inspirational
service
and
something that
will
be
remembered by everybody who attended.
As I mentioned before,
I wasn't pleased about having all the media on board.
It was kind of irritating to have those people
roaming around, that I kept bumping into.
But, I have to say that I'm so glad they were there, because
I think it's important that the expedition was documented,
and I'm glad that they were the ones that documented,
they were actually very wonderful people,
now that I think about it.
I highly recommend the two books that I have on the screen.
I think they did a fabulous job of
talking about the expedition
and other areas of Monitor history.
We had two film crews on board,
a National Geographic Explorer and Discovery Channel
and they were fabulous.
They did a great job of filming without
actually getting in the way, which was kind of amazing.
They were there on the day of the lift.
And I have to say, I had two mics on me
on the day of the lift,
which was a pretty stressful day.
And I had to really watch myself,
that I didn't say any bad words
during that day, with those two mics on
because, at the time I didn't have any children,
I have children now, and I'm glad that those documentaries
don't show me saying anything bad.
But, I'm glad that they were there and they did a good job.
We recently just had a reunion,
celebrating the turret's 20th anniversary of the recovery.
The Mariners' Museum hosted the reunion
and did a amazing job.
It was just a fabulous
event.
And we had over 100
members of the
Expedition 2002
team and other expedition team members.
And,
it was a wonderful evening.
And then the next day the museum opened up for Family Day,
with VIP behind the scene tours.
And we're hoping that we will have another reunion,
maybe sooner than 20 years from now.
But it was definitely
an event to remember.
I started out my presentation talking about
the crew members
of both the Monitor and the Monitor Expedition 2002.
And I will end it talking about
the people that made this happen.
These are just a few of the dive team
from 2002 that were responsible for
making it a successful
mission.
Just a fraction of them.
There were so many more,
that I couldn't possibly
put on this slide.
These just happened to be some of them that
are very important to my career.
But,
I am a
big believer that
nothing can be accomplished without
a team working together and making it so.
And these are part of the team.
And I thank you very much
for this opportunity to talk about my team.
Thank you.
-: All right, thank you so much for an amazing presentation.
I heard you say that
some people's first dives were on the Monitor
and I could not even imagine having my first dive
be on the Monitor.
So now we are going to take questions.
Remember, at the bottom of your toolbar,
on the right hand side of your screen,
you can type in your questions into the chat,
and we will answer them one by one.
And I will go ahead and start with a question.
Actually, can you just tell us a little bit more about
what it was like to live on that barge?
I don't really think of barges as being a place to live
for a month and a half.
Tell us more about that.
-: It was like living in an industrial area.
It was, you know, a big steel, well, it was pretty big
but it didn't feel very big
because it was crammed full of equipment everywhere.
And, we had these trailers that were packed
full of our, you know, our bunks.
So it was pretty crowded
and it was noisy.
I mean, it had compressors running,
it had generators running and so it was noisy
the whole time.
So, you were living in an industrial area
and you had to wear a hard hat all the time
because of the cranes operating.
And there was no place to, you know,
there was no privacy anywhere
because there were people all over the place.
But there was such a high level of energy and excitement
all the time, that, you know, you didn't care that,
you know, that it was noisy and it was loud
and it was hot and it was, you know,
you were sweaty and, if you look at the pictures,
we're all running around in a t-shirt
and the green shorts or the tan shorts or, you know
or, the divers with no t-shirt.
But it was so exciting to be a part of this historical
moment that nobody cared.
So, it wasn't pleasant but it didn't matter
because it was just wonderful.
And people were,
I don't want to say they were dying to be part of this.
But I got so many calls from people saying,
how can I get out there?
So, people were fighting to be part of that operation.
-: I would be too.
Another question about the diving,
you said that the saturation divers were down there for
12 hours at a time, with six hour shifts.
And the mixed gas divers were out there for,
I think you said 30 minutes at a time, right?
-: Yes.
-: My question to you is, how long does it take to get from,
say like the deck of WOTAN to the Monitor?
Like, how long of an actual dive is it?
-: It takes, oh, I wanna say,
somewhere in between,
I don't know exactly off the top of my head,
the rate of descent but I'd say,
three or four minutes to descend to Monitor,
you know, going down to Monitor.
So, depending on how quickly the diver
can clear their ears.
So, if somebody's having trouble
clearing their ears,
we slow down the rate of descent.
It's easier in the diving, for the saturation divers
because they're already at pressure.
So the bell can go down much faster than the dive stage
for the mixed gas divers.
So, you know, will take three or four or five minutes
for the mixed gas divers to get down to the Monitor.
And so that counts as bottom time
for the mixed gas divers.
So that counts all towards the 40 minutes of total bottom
time for the mixed gas divers.
And then, on the way back up it'll be much slower
because you're doing the decompression stops.
Which doesn't count as bottom time for the mixed gas divers.
-: Wow, interesting.
We do have another question here
that's talking about the wildlife.
Were there any dangerous fish
that you needed to watch out for?
-: Well, not on the wreck.
Not on the Monitor, the sea life on Monitor was amazing.
You know because Monitor's got growth on it
and it's like a natural reef.
It's got this amazing amount of sea life.
We saw so many beautiful fish and,
you know, it's a beautiful dive,
both, daytime and nighttime.
I loved making the night dives.
The light on my helmet would illuminate
just the area around me and you could see
the growth on the wreck.
Not that I had time to lollygag and,
you know, look around as a tourist.
But as you're coming down and you see the Monitor
as the stage is lowering,
you get a chance to kinda watch as you're coming down.
And then you get off the stage and you go to work
and you don't get to watch.
But,
having said that,
that it's beautiful on Monitor,
as you're coming up on the stage
and you're stopping at your decompression stops,
then you see the barracuda.
And so, we didn't see sharks, at least I never saw a shark.
I don't remember anybody seeing sharks.
There were a lot of barracuda and they always
would come around when we'd stop at our 50-foot stop
for our decompression.
And, you know and I think everybody knows that barracuda
like shiny objects.
And the face
mask of our dive helmet has a nice
shiny silver ring around the front of the face mask, so.
They never did anything.
I mean the barracuda left us alone
but it was always kinda, little creepy,
as they would circle the stage.
-: Wow.
So,
I'm sorry,
so you, as kind of like the head honcho of this operation,
I'm sure it was very busy for you
but you got to have a chance to dive?
-: Yes.
My job really was top side, being overall
in charge of the operation.
But I made sure that I also got in the water and dove,
you know, whenever I could, for a couple of reasons.
One, I wanted to make sure I knew exactly
what the conditions were like down on Monitor,
so I knew what my divers were
experiencing.
So, it was important for me to understand
what was going on on the dives.
And two,
I wanted also, for my divers to know
that I was willing to do what they were doing.
That, you know, I wasn't going to subject them to something
that I wasn't prepared to do.
But,
they were,
you know,
most of my divers or at least the senior ones,
were much better equipped to do the work down there
than I was.
I mean,
I didn't have as much hands-on experience
doing what they were doing.
But also, I just wanted to make dives
because it was such an incredible dive.
And also, just a piece of history.
So, I tried to get in the water whenever I could,
which wasn't very often.
But, I still tried to get in the water whenever I could.
So, I have a total of 19 dives on Monitor,
over the course of three years, three summers,
which is pretty good for the captain.
-: Yeah, I mean, 19 more dives than I have, that's amazing.
So, I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen,
there are so many questions in the chat box
and we just don't have time to get to all of them.
So please, if you really still want your questions answered,
you can email Shannon or I.
Or you can rewatch the webinar,
which we will put on our website soon.
So thank you again Captain and
amazing job.
So now, just a few closing statements here.
If you haven't downloaded Bobbie's bio in the chat box,
over there on the right side of your screen,
you may want to do so now.
In this bio you'll find way more information about Bobbie
than we covered here and links that might be of interest
of you to learn more.
And, if we did not get to your question today
or if you have any more dying questions,
you can always send them
to Shannon or I
and the email address listed here.
And you can also learn more about the
Women Divers Hall of Fame,
at the URL listed here on this slide.
A video recording of this presentation will be available
on the Sanctuaries' Webinar Archive page,
found at the URL listed here at the top.
And, in addition, the webinar will be archived on
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary's website.
Click on the multimedia section in the toolbar
to access the webinar box.
You will also find future webinars in that same section,
as well as previous archived webinars,
like Dr. Broadwater's webinar, last August.
Don't worry, all of this information will be sent to you
in a follow-up email, once the recording is ready to view.
They will be posted on.
These are the upcoming webinars
that are slated for the Submerged NC.
We actually just added another one for March,
with Alison Ropp.
But join us February 13th.
I can't think of anything more romantic than joining me
here, to talk about, with Kamau Sadiki,
from Diving With a Purpose,
as he talks about connecting ancestral memory
through history and archeology of slave ships.
And these will also be posted on the website,
so make sure you check that out.
And of course, we invite you to follow us on social medias
to stay in touch with what's happening in the sanctuary.
And we will also be posting about those future webinars
and when the webinar is uploaded onto the website.
Lastly, as you exit the webinar,
there is a short survey for formal and informal educators.
If you are an educator,
NOAA would really appreciate it if you would take a minute
or two to complete this survey.
Your answers will help develop future webinars
that meet your needs.
Your participation is voluntary
and your answers will be completely anonymous.
Once again, we want to thank Bobbie
for an excellent presentation.
And thank you for taking the time to join us today.
Have a wonderful day, a wonderful week.
And this concludes the presentation.