The U.S.S. Monitor was an indestructible marvel of engineering of its time. When the majority of ships were still built of wood, it boasted six layers of inch-thick steel plates, with overlapping joints for extra hull strength. The Monitor dueled the Confederate ironclad Merrimack, shrugging off cannon fire that sent wooden ships to the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay — the battle that augured in a new era of steel battleships. But it was not indestructible — what the Merrimack could not do, the rough open seas did, and the Monitor went down, with sixteen hands, off the shore of Cape Hatteras.

On this day, August 5, in 2002, a gun turret from the Monitor was pulled out from the ocean floor. In charge of the operation was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, regularly only concerned with studying weather, climate and ocean patterns, but brought on due to the historic nature of the ship.

The Monitor’s exact resting place was uncovered in 1973, when technology did not yet allow for its extraction, but the spot was designated a protected area by NOAA. By 2000 studies of the ship revealed that its hull was in danger of collapsing, which would effectively destroy the ship and leave no chance for recovery. The Navy, along with NOAA and the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia organized a series of mission to raise first the ship’s steam engine, then the guns and turret, which were studied and put on display at the museum in Virginia.