New York Times Museum Review: USS Monitor

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — As sacred relics go, it doesn’t seem too inspiring. In appearance, Nathaniel Hawthorne said, it “looked like a gigantic rat-trap.” In life, it had little more than a single day of major achievement, and in that it was less than triumphant. In death, it was even less grand, sinking into the Atlantic during a storm, not even a year after it first lumbered onto the scene.....Full Story