USS Monitor museum opens.

[Dreadnought]

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) - Exactly 145 years after the USS Monitor faced the Confederate ship CSS Virginia in the first clash of ironclads, a $30 million center dedicated to the Union vessel opened Friday.

The Monitor Center, a new wing of The Mariners' Museum, houses more than 1,200 artifacts from the Civil War ship and an interactive exhibition on both armored vessels.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony, said the center embodies the Old Testament phrase "beating a sword into a plowshare." A ship built as a weapon of war, he said, now is "the centerpiece of an educational museum in a reunited nation not at war with itself."

The Monitor, a new design, and the Virginia, built atop the burned-out hull of the Union steam frigate Merrimack, fought to a draw on March 9, 1862, near where the museum now stands. The battle made wooden warships obsolete.


The 63,500-square-foot center features 18,000 square feet of exhibition space and 20,000 square feet of conservation labs and classrooms.

Galleries tell how the ironclads were built and feature efforts to recover artifacts from the deteriorating wreckage of the Monitor, which sank, upside down, during a storm 16 miles off North Carolina's coast on Dec. 31, 1862. Sixteen men died.

The center's high-definition "Battle Theater" has 45 seats that swivel 360 degrees so viewers can experience the action as the fight is recreated through digital paintings, lights and sounds. Outside, visitors can stroll the deck of a 170-foot, full-scale exterior model of the Monitor.

[Michigan_Guy]

Sounds pretty cool. I heard about that awhile back but didn't know it was now open.