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American Morning

Salvage Workers Retrieve Important Piece of History From Floor of Ocean

Aired August 06, 2002 - 08:55   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Salvage workers have retrieved a rather important piece of history from the floor of the ocean, the turret from the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. They worked 16 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, using a 500-ton crane to retrieve a turret that weighed 120 tons. The Union ship went down on a New Year eve's storm 140 years ago.

And by telephone today, John Broadwater, chief scientist on the project.

Sir, can you hear me OK? Good morning to you.

JOHN BROADWATER, EXPEDITION'S CHIEF SCIENTIST: Yes.

HEMMER: Listen, how did it go yesterday, and at any point were you concerned even though you had a 500-ton crane here, that it might not be able to do the job?

BROADWATER: We were concerned, and it turned out we had good reason. The turret turned out to be heavier than we had anticipated, but the crane handled it well, and everything went extremely well thanks to all the men and women of the U.S. Navy that were helping us out there.

HEMMER: You say the difficulty. Did it weigh more than 120 tons, or was it the water pressure, or a combination of both?

BROADWATER: Well, it was a little of both. We knew that the turret itself weighed 120 tons, but it had all the guns, and ammunition and other materials that were expected to go with the turret. Plus we had our lifting assembly, the steel flow (ph), our spider, as we call it, was used to grip the turret. Plus a platform that was placed underneath the turret to hold everything together. And when we finally got it out of the water, it weighed in at 235 tons.

HEMMER: Whoa. Holy cow. Hey, how important is this in terms of history? If you go back to the innovation of naval warfare, this was the first ship that had a gun that could swivel around and take aim as opposed to the old fixed guns or cannons rather that would literally have to turn the entire ship around in order to take aim on its target. BROADWATER: That's right. And the Monitor was the prototype for all gun turrets of the future, and you can still see them on warships today, so it was an important innovation at the time and turned out to be one of the most enduring Naval innovations in history.

HEMMER: Where does it go now, John?

BROADWATER: The turret will be transported up to Hampton Roads, Virginia. It will then be transferred to a small barge, and up to the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and then it will go through about 15 years, we estimate, treatment before it can be brought out.

HEMMER: Congratulations. Pass along to the team, too. John Broadwater, who helped head up that project on the coast of Cape Hatteras. Thanks.

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