This Month's Story

What I’m about to write about occurred in the middle of the Civil War.

In December 1862, the USS Monitor was foundering in a fierce storm about 16 miles southeast of Cape Hatterus. The Monitor was then and is now a famous warship that was the harbinger of the battleships of today’s navies. As proof of its capability, earlier that year, the Monitor had fought to a standstill the Confederate iron-clad, CSS Virginia (or CSS Merrimac).

Now it was sinking and the crew, after fighting for hours to save the ship, were trying desperately to save their own lives.

There are many stories about the sinking. I am in the process of writing a book about the Monitor’s short life. With a little luck and no help from the present pandemic, “The USS Monitor versus the CSS Virginia” will be published in 2022. What follows is a modified version of a segment in the book.

There is an anecdote that speaks of an incident that occurred just before the Monitor sank. It was a story that had been told many times by the Monitor’s helmsman Francis “Frank” Butts. In fact, the story was told so often and thus, was so well known that it was quickly addressed when the Monitor’s turret was recovered from its grave in August, 2002.

Butts was one of the men bailing in the ship’s turret in the last minutes of the Monitor. There came a point where every one of the men realized that what they were doing was hopeless. However, help was suddenly on hand. Now, if one-by-one they climbed to the top of the turret and then ascend on the turrets lee side, a USS Rhode Island cutters would ferry them to the safety of the Rhode Island.

It would take a minute or two for Butts to assume his place in the line of men climbing the ladder. Butts would later write that in those few moments, he took off his bulky boots, rolled them inside his weather coat and stuffed the bulky package into one of the gun barrels.

He then adds, the key part of his tale by writing that, as he jammed his work clothes into the barrel of the gun, he heard the sound of a wailing cat. Turning, he saw the ship’s black cat sitting on the breach end of the other of the iron-clads two guns.

He finishes his story by writing:

“I caught her, and, placing her in another gun, replaced the wad and tompion, (sic) but I could still hear that distressing howl.”

The Monitor sank that night in the storm. Frank Butts escaped but for years later, he told the story about the two guns that went down in the dark depths with some good clothes in one gun and a noisy cat in the other.

There is no question, Butts action with the terrified cat was not a feat to be applauded. Nevertheless, it begets a question: Is his story true? Did his coat, boots, and the ship’s noisy cat, along with sixteen members of the Monitor’s crew go down with the ship?

In 1973, a little over a century and a half later, the wreck of the Monitor was located on the seafloor off Cape Hatteras. The distinctive turret was found virtually untouched, sitting on top of the wreckage of the hull.

The turret with its two large Dahlgren guns were raised from the bottom in 2002 and brought to the archeological conservators at the NOAA Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, who started cleaning the concrete like mass of sediment, corrosion, and marine growth, from the two gun barrels.

So what of Butts’ coat, boots, and the ship’s cat?

The cleaning found only half an answer. The remains of a firmly stuffed wool coat and boots were found in one of the guns, but not the relatively loose placed remains of the ship’s cat in the other.

There are many ghosts that roam the 200 feet deep wreckage of the Monitor besides the sixteen men who were lost. It seems that one of them may well be a cat.