Virginia Historical Society Podcast

On November 12, 2009, Anna Gibson Holloway delivered a lecture entitled 'So Ends This Day': An Illustrated Update on the Life and Times of the USS Monitor, from 1861 to yesterday.' Although the Union ironclad Monitor may have ended her working career in a gale off Cape Hatteras in December 1862, her story does not end there. Discovered in 1973, established as a National Marine Sanctuary in 1975, and the subject of intense recovery operations by NOAA and the U.S. Navy since then, the curious "cheesebox on a raft" still has stories to tell. Anna Holloway brought the Monitor to life in this lively, illustrated presentation by combining log entries, official correspondence, personal letters from officers and crew, and material evidence found in the ship itself. Holloway serves as vice president of museum collections and programs at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, where she recently curated the award-winning exhibition Ironclad Revolution at the USS Monitor Center. (Introduction by Paul A. Levengood)