At ten o’clock on the night of December 30, 1862, a red lantern climbed above the turret of USS Monitor. It was not a battle signal. It was a plea for boats. The ironclad that had changed naval warfare was drowning off Cape Hatteras, and the only road to safety crossed a deck being swept clean by the Atlantic.
Most histories remember Monitor for her fight with CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads. Her final watch deserves equal attention. It is a sailor’s story of a ship built for one kind of water meeting another, of engineers fighting for steam, and of small-boat crews pulling into a gale because shipmates were trapped aboard a sinking vessel.
The ironclad that changed the horizon
Designed by Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson, Monitor looked unlike any major warship Americans had seen. She rode low, carried a rotating armored turret, and presented little target above the water. Built at Continental Ironworks in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, she launched on January 30, 1862, after roughly 100 days of construction.
On March 9, she met the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads. For more than four hours, the two armored ships hammered each other without a decisive result. The tactical outcome was a draw, but the larger verdict was unmistakable: wooden fleets had entered a new age.
The design that made Monitor so difficult to hit also made her vulnerable offshore. Her deck sat barely above the water. At sea, waves could sweep the entire ship, find openings around the turret and fittings, and pour into a hull that depended on steam-driven pumps.
Orders south around Cape Hatteras
On December 29, 1862, Monitor left Hampton Roads under tow by the side-wheel steamer USS Rhode Island. The ironclad was headed toward Beaufort, North Carolina, and operations farther south. Commander John P. Bankhead commanded Monitor; Commander Stephen Decatur Trenchard commanded Rhode Island.
The next day, the weather deteriorated as the ships approached Cape Hatteras. Heavy swells broke across Monitor’s low deck and struck the turret hard enough to make it tremble. By 7:30 p.m., one towing hawser had snapped. The ship rolled violently, oakum worked loose beneath the turret, and seawater began reaching the spaces below.
Bankhead ordered the Worthington pumps started. Water soaked the coal, steam pressure fell, and the crew brought the larger centrifugal pump online. The sea kept coming. By 10 p.m., water stood more than a foot deep in the engine room and the blowers were spitting spray.
The red lantern goes up
Bankhead raised the agreed distress signal: a red lantern beside the ship’s white running light. Slowing the engines to preserve steam for the pumps made Monitor even harder to control. The towline sagged and threatened both ships as they rolled toward one another.
Three men went forward to cut the hawser. Quarter Gunner James Fenwick and Boatswain’s Mate John Stocking were swept overboard. Acting Master Louis Stodder held the safety lines, worked at the thick cable with a hatchet, and finally cut it through.
At 11 p.m., Monitor sent the message that left no doubt: “Send your boats immediately, we are sinking!” Rhode Island stopped her engines and launched a boat under Ensign A.O. Taylor and another under Acting Master’s Mate G. Rodney Browne. In the darkness, the side-wheeler fired rockets and burned blue lights while the rescuers searched for the ironclad between the waves.
A road across a drowning deck
The only practical escape led through the top of the turret. Men climbed out, descended the outside ladder, and crossed the exposed deck to the boats. The timing was brutal: step at the wrong moment and a wave could carry a sailor over the side before anyone reached him.
The boats were overloaded, battered, and nearly crushed when the two larger vessels drifted together. Surgeon Grenville Weeks had three fingers crushed and his shoulder dislocated when his hand was caught between rescue boats. He still survived and later returned to the rail aboard Rhode Island to watch the operation.
Paymaster William Keeler was swept off his feet while crossing the deck. A wave threw him back against the ship, where he seized a lifeline and was hauled into a boat. Others removed heavy clothing and shoes before making the attempt. Some could not bring themselves to leave the turret; others never emerged from below.
Shortly after midnight, seawater extinguished the fires and the pumps stopped. The ship’s machinery fell silent. Bankhead ordered every man to save himself. Forty-seven men ultimately escaped. Sixteen were lost—washed overboard or carried down inside the ironclad.
The last light disappears
From Rhode Island, survivors watched the red and white lights above Monitor appear and vanish behind the seas. Near 1:30 a.m. on December 31, the lights disappeared for the final time. The celebrated ironclad had served for less than a year.
One rescue boat remained separated from Rhode Island after the sinking. Trenchard searched through the night, firing rockets and burning signal lights, but eventually had to leave the area. The schooner A. Colby found Browne and his men the following day.
The loss became more than a naval footnote. Seven members of Rhode Island’s crew received the Medal of Honor for their actions. The wreck was located in 1973, and in 1975 the site became the nation’s first national marine sanctuary. The turret was raised from about 240 feet of water in 2002 and taken to The Mariners’ Museum for conservation.
Iron changed warfare; sailors made the rescue
Monitor is remembered as a machine ahead of its time. Her final night is a reminder that machinery has limits. Pumps need steam. Towlines part. Iron hulls still answer to weather. When all of that failed, the outcome depended on sailors volunteering for an exposed deck and small boats pulling toward a distress light.
That same thread runs through the stories of USS Conestoga, Carpathia’s race to Titanic, and every rescue launched when the sea says no. Technology changes. The obligation between shipmates does not.
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