The next stop for the day was the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, advertised as the largest maritime museum in North America. It's star exhibit is of the Monitor and Merrimac.  This exhibit was so large, interactive and interesting, that in 4 hours we almost completed the tour.  I suspected this would happen, so we got season passes. We'll come back another day and finish this exhibit and look at the other interesting things. They also have a wooded nature trail, about 5 miles long to explore, boats to ride, etc.  It is an interesting museum in a lovely spot.

     Since we had studied the Civil War last spring, one of the major battles we had read about was of the Monitor and the Merrimac. Even though we are not Civil War buffs, this is an extremely interesting piece of history. The Monitor and Merrimac revolutionized battles at sea. Originally built as wooden ships, they were redesigned with new and improved weaponry, and reshaped so they could be covered in iron.  They faced off at Hampton Roads, the waterway where the James River, York River, and Chesepeake Bay converge near the Atlantic Ocean.  Hours of fighting ended in a draw.  The worthiness of iron clad ships was proven, more iron clads were constructed and wooden ships were phased out.  This is why this is the first exhibit we toured in the museum.

     After looking at various colorful paintings of the iron clads, and reading period letters of the men who were on the ships, we saw a movie about the sinking of the Union ship, the Monitor, months after the infamous battle at Hampton Roads. The Monitor sunk during a terrible storm off Cape Hatteras.    In recent years, scientists and historians joined forces to bring up the Monitor. Parts of it are in the museum now.  Then we saw some interesting displays about this. This was the hook that reeled us in. What was the Monitor exactly?  How was it developed? 

     To fully understand the Monitor, we looked at the history of warfare at sea, the methods of fighting and the types of ships. For this we walked in a room decorated like a space below deck, where the cannons protrude out of their windows.  Looking up at the ceiling, was like looking up towards the deck, even to the detail of the gratework where you could see the sailors walking above. Beadboard was on the walls, just like the interior of the ship it was portraying. There were different displays.  We learned how the cannons were used on board, the space they took up to manuever.  We saw a model of a very early iron clad from Asia, that looked like the back of a turtle. There was a kiosk where we could read a timeline of events of warfare, and then see historical pictures come to life, as actor interpreters (some of whom we recognized from Colonial Williamsburg) told their story.  At the end of the story, they'd pose and became the historical picture they were portraying. These were real people with real stories, fraught with drama and emotion and opinion.  Kiosks like this were throughout the museum.

     There were interactive computer programs for us to try out our skills. The one I remember best was to design our own ironclad.  Would it be seaworthy? Would it float? Would it repel attack?  Would it effectively attack another ironclad?  The first one my son designed this, he sunk his ship. Undaunted, he continued working on it while I toured the officer's cabins below deck.  When I came back  he had it figured out and had successfully designed an effective iron clad.

     There was another movie we watched about the Battle of Hampton Roads.  That was more complex than I had realized. It began with the Merrimac attacking all the Union wooden ships. As they were getting destroyed, the Monitor arrived and assessed the situation. The next day they faced off and the battle ended in a draw. This was a highly strategic location, because if the Union could take control of the James River, then they could reach the capital of Richmond by sea and cripple the Confederacy. A few months after this battle, the Peninsular Campaign began with the Union troops arriving in Hampton Roads and marching up Hampton and Yorktown to Williamsburg. This is when the Battle of Williamsburg was fought. 

       There was a life size model of one of the ships being remade into an iron clad. We were even able to go inside of it. Outdoors there is a life size model of the Monitor. 

Indoors there are models of the recovered rotating gun turret nd lots of information on how that worked.

For a great media presentation, showing some of the stuff we got to see and experience, the museum has this great website on the Monitor.  It covers the building of the ironclads, the historic battle and the sinking of the Monitor during a storm months later.