Paul R. Clancy

I am the author of a new book on the career and fate of the most famous Civil War ship: Ironclad, The Epic Battle, Calamitous Loss, and Historic Recovery of the USS Monitor. I've been a journalist for more than 30 years, always nursing a passion for the water. Being able to watch the recovery of the Monitor's turret in August 2002 from a barge off Cape Hatteras inspired me to begin the research on how the plucky little Union ship was lost. I was amazed at how little has been published about that fateful New Years Eve, 1862. I was also just knocked over at how the people who recovered the turret, NOAA archaeologists and Navy divers, trusted me with the excruciating details of how they wrestled the 200-pound turret and cannons off the ocean bottom with zero bottom time left and storms heading their way.