ODU'S COOK TO GET HISTORIC USS MONITOR SAMPLE Conservators
working on the 120-ton turret of the USS Monitor will take a
core sample from 8-inch-thick wrought iron plating on Wednesday,
Jan. 31, to find out just how difficult their job will be to
complete the conservation of the historic artifact. Among the
questions they hope to answer is one that dates to 1862: In the
rush to build the ironclad vessel near the start of the Civil
War, did shipbuilders in Brooklyn leave out a rust treatment
that would have been common in the 19th century? If so, Old
Dominion University physicist Desmond Cook, a corrosion expert
who is part of the conservation team, expects to find trouble
between the eight, one-inch plates that were bolted together to
form the shell of the armored turret. The Monitor sank in
December 1862 and the turret was not raised until 2002, so the
famous, above-water portion of the vessel had 140 years of
exposure to Atlantic Ocean saltwater at its wreck site off the
North Carolina Outer Banks. Chloride