Loss At Sea
While the design of Monitor was well-suited for river combat, her low freeboard and heavy turret made her highly unseaworthy in rough waters. This feature probably led to the early loss of the original Monitor, which foundered during a heavy storm. Swamped by high waves while under tow by Rhode Island, she sank on 31 December 1862 off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. 16 of the 62 crewmen were lost in the storm.
The name Monitor was given to the troop carrier USS Monitor (LSV-5), commissioned late in World War II. She served primarily in the Pacific theater, and was later scrapped.
Read more about this topic: USS Monitor
Famous quotes containing the words loss and/or sea:
“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The Sea Tiger was built to fight. She deserves a better epitaph than “Commissioned 1940. Sank 1941. Engagements, none. Shots fired, none.” Now you can’t let her go that way. That’s like a beautiful woman dying an old maid.”
—Stanley Shapiro (1925–1990)