NORFOLK, Va. - It was pleasant, "clear and pleasant," as the Monitor prepared to leave Hampton Roads on Dec. 29, 1862, light winds out of the southwest.
The sailors were excited. After months of patrol duty that held none of the thrill of the great Battle of Hampton Roads, Va., they'd received orders to sail to Beaufort, N.C., then on to Charleston, S.C., for possible engagement with Confederate forces.
But this time they were being towed. An almost disastrous trip from New York 10 months ago convinced the Navy that while the Monitor might have been a scrappy fighter, it was plain unseaworthy in rough conditions. In early afternoon, the Rhode Island, a powerful wooden sidewheel steamer, took the Monitor in tow, two thick hawsers attached to a bollard on the Monitor's bow - imagine ropes looped around a trailer hitch.
About 2:30 p.m., the Rhode Island's paddle wheel began churning placid waters and the curious pair began their journey.
"Passed Cape Henry at 6 p.m., water smooth and everything working well," Cmdr. J.P. Bankhead reported.
Swell from south
Next morning, by then off the North Carolina coast, there wasn't much change, although the commander noticed a swell from the south and a slight increase in the southwesterly wind.
Even this posed a danger. The Monitor had only 18 inches of freeboard - the hull above water - and waves broke over the pilothouse and struck the base of the turret.
The turret was designed to seal itself with its 160 tons of weight against a watertight brass ring on deck. Now, with water striking it, caulking stuffed between turret and deck by the sailors was wearing unevenly, allowing sea water to seep below. Not a problem, though. The pumps easily handled the situation.
Assistant Paymaster William F. Keeler noticed cloudbanks rising in the south and west, gradually increasing until the sun was obscured.
The wind continued to build until, by midafternoon, it blew strongly, the sea rushing across the deck. Several large sharks cruised by.
By 7:30 p.m., heavy black clouds covered the sky. As the three-quarter moon glimmered through, men in the turret saw a line of white plunging foam rushing toward them.
"A gloom hung over everything," surgeon Grenville Weeks reported. "The moan of the ocean grew louder and more fearful."
Fireman George S. Geer reported to the commander that water was rising in the bilge faster than the pumps could handle it.
Bankhead told him to start the large steam pump. That did the trick for a while, throwing out a steady gusher of water.
But by 11 p.m., Geer said, "the water rose very fast and I was satisfied that it was all up with her.
"I stayed by the pump until the water was up to my knees," he continued, "and the cylinders to the pumping engines were under water and stopped. She was so full of water and rolled and pitched so bad I was fearful she would roll under and forget to come up again."
The water had risen above the engine room floor. The coal heavers threw wet coal into the engine, raising an acrid smell. Sea water hit the engine fires and there was an explosion of steam.
Sometime after 10:30 p.m., Bankhead gave the order to hoist the lantern.
The cry went out to the Rhode Island as it drew near: "Send your boats immediately, we are sinking."
61 sailors on board
There were 61 sailors on board the Monitor, including crew and officers.
Many of the crew were recent immigrants, like William Allen of England, 24, with gray eyes and black hair.
There were three black men, including Siah Carter, first assistant to the cook, a former slave who escaped and clambered on board one night while the Monitor was anchored on Hampton Roads.
When the men had sat down to dinner about 5 p.m., they were downright jovial. With waves breaking overhead, they boasted how the little ship would again distinguish itself in battle.
But as the wardroom stewards cleared the table, a few of the officers climbed to the turret. They'd just rounded Cape Hatteras light, and the wind was blowing violently.
Keeler observed the ship rising on a wave, then falling into the hollow, its bow, plunging into the trough, "would go down, down, down, under the surging wave" until the turret was all that remained above water. Then as the bow rose sullenly, another wave crashed into the pilothouse, sending a torrent of water to the top of the turret.
Worse, Commander Bankhead observed that when the ship came crashing down from a swell, the protecting armor landed "with great force, causing a considerable shock to the vessel and turret, thereby loosening still more the packing around its base."
Just before dark, the Monitor pulled alongside the Rhode Island.
Bankhead, using a chalkboard, scrawled a message to his counterpart, Cmdr. Stephen Trenchard. If the ironclad ran into trouble during the night, Bankhead wrote, he'd send a signal - a red lantern from the turret mast.
Agony of the end
On board the sinking Monitor, the crew passed buckets of water from below, up to and out the turret, but most knew it was useless. With the sea crashing over the boat, hope was awfully thin.
"Words cannot depict the agony of those moments as our little company gathered on the top of the turret, stood with a mass of sinking iron beneath them, gazing through the dim light over the raging waters with an anxiety amounting almost to agony," Keeler would write.
Seconds seemed like hours, minutes like years.
A sagging towline was now the problem, making the ship unmanageable. When Cmdr. J.P. Bankhead asked for volunteers to cut the line connecting the Monitor to the steamer Rhode Island, the first to grab the ax was quarter gunner James Fenwick, a Scottish immigrant from Boston whose wife, Mary, waited at home with a baby on the way. A wave caught him as he made his way forward, and he was lost overboard.
Boatswain's Mate John Stocking, 27, from Binghamton, N.Y., tried, and his fate was the same. Finally, Master Louis Stodder hacked through the thick line.
Then, the trailing line became tangled in the Rhode Island's paddle wheel, and there were frantic moments as the disabled steamer drifted dangerously close.
At one point, the two ships touched. A rescue boat was caught between them and badly damaged, but it managed to make it back to the Rhode Island with several Monitor crew members.
Now, with towlines cut, the ships began drifting apart. What had been just yards separating the vessels became several boat lengths, then much more.
As rescue boats approached, Keeler decided to fetch his ledgers and personal items. He stumbled down the ladder, felt his way around the cannons in the turret and across the deck and into the wardroom. A dim lantern lighted his way through the darkness, steam and gas.
Water rose nearly to his waist, sloshing from side to side as the ship rolled. But he made it through the narrow passage to his stateroom, where he grabbed the books and papers before realizing it was foolish to take them with him.
Terrifying scene
Still, he fumbled for the keys to the safe with the idea of saving the ship's cash, but he couldn't operate the lock under water.
At last, he settled for rescuing his watch. He grabbed it from where it was hanging, on a nail, and stuffed it in his pocket.
Keeler realized that he could be in deep trouble if he didn't get out fast, and he lurched back through the passageway and up the stairs to the turret. He saw men climbing down the ladder to the rolling deck, some of them swept overboard.
The scene was terrifying: "the howling of the tempest, the roar and dash of the water; the hoarse orders through the speaking trumpets of the officers the shouts of encouragement and words of caution; the bubbling cry of the strong swimmer in his agony and the whole scene lit up by the ghastly glare of the blue lights burning on our consort."
Francis Butts, a crew member, was still in the turret, passing buckets to those on top. He took off his coat, a new one he'd just received from home, and stuffed it in one of the cannons.
All the while, a black cat that had been on board since the vessel left Hampton Roads was howling mournfully.
Without remorse, Butts caught the cat and thrust it into the barrel of the other cannon, followed by a wad of packing that sealed the animal inside. He could still hear its "distressing yowl."
Then Butts raised another bucket, but there was no one on deck to take it.
The storm raged
The storm raged as Butts scrambled to the top of turret and saw a boat loaded with shipmates.
The ladder was gone, so he let himself down by rope just in time for a wave to knock him over. He was thrown around like a rag doll, clinging to the ship's lifeline, swallowing sea water and sputtering.
"Now or lost," he realized as the rescue boat started to pull away, and leapt on board.
Keeler was swept overboard. What saved him was the backset of the wave, which threw him against the side of the ship. He grabbed a stanchion and, with adrenaline pumping, hauled himself back on deck. He worked his way along the lifeline and slumped into the lifeboat.
Geer, who had just left the failed pumps, looked down from the turret at the chaos and paused.
He could drown trying for the rescue boat, but better that than go down with the Monitor, he decided. He leapt to the deck. A wave struck him and threw him across the deck, but he caught a rope and hung on. When the wave passed, he raced to the safety of the rescue boat.
It was after 12:30 a.m., now New Year's Eve 1862. The commander, Bankhead, told the engineer and his men to leave the Monitor's engine room. "It is madness to remain here any longer," Bankhead said. "Let each man save himself."
By this point, the crew of the Rhode Island could see only the Monitor's turret. And then only as the vessel rose on the crest of a wave.
A handful of men still clung to the turret, apparently so traumatized at the sight of comrades being swept to their deaths that they couldn't move.
Even cries of encouragement from the others failed to budge them. Bankhead ordered quartermaster Richard Anjier, who had stayed on his post at the wheel, into the last boat.
"No, sir; not till you go," came the reply.
The commander jumped into the crowded rescue boat and left the Monitor, "whose sluggish motion gave evidence that she could float but a short time longer."
Last rescue boat
With men still in the turret, Masters Mate Rodney Browne, in charge of the last rescue boat, shoved off reluctantly but vowed he'd be back.
The Rhode Island had drifted a full 2 miles from the Monitor, making the crossing in heavy seas risky and exhausting. What's more, after unloading his last boat, Browne had only seven rowers available for a boat that required 14.
Stephen Trenchard, captain of the Rhode Island, ordered him to wait, but Browne and his crew were already fighting the waves back toward the Monitor.
The Monitor's surgeon, Grenville Weeks, now on the Rhode Island, watched the lonely light from the Monitor's turret for more than an hour. A hundred times he thought it was gone forever, a hundred times it reappeared.
Browne and his men watched the red lantern as they made slow progress. But before they could reach the Monitor, its light disappeared.
All they found at the spot where the light had shown was swirling water.
On its way down through the depths of the sea, stern first, the ship did a slow roll near the ocean floor. As it struck, the turret separated from the hull and landed upside down. The iron ship's aft deck slammed on top of it. One hundred forty years later, still intact, shedding tons of water and muck, the cheese box would rise again.