Civil War "Monitor" below the waterline color.

Quite a few years back I got hired by the Monitor Foundation to design a paper model of the ship - suitable for assembly by kids, but as accurate as I could make it within the limitations of a reasonable number of paper parts.  (The Monitor makes an excellent subject for a paper model, because her basic shape contains no compound curves.)  I got in touch with one of the archaeologists who had dived on her, and read all the published works I could find.  (The drawings that got the highest recommendations were the ones made by Allan Chesley for a book entitled, if I remember right, U.S.S. Monitor:  The Ship That Launched a Modern Navy.) 

The color scheme I was instructed to use was quite simple:  above the waterline - black (or mighty close to it).  Below the waterline - lead oxide red.  In practice I made the hull above the waterline a very dark grey, so the black plating lines, air ports, etc. would be visible.  The red below the waterline, as it was explained to me, was a surprisingly bright, slightly orange-ish shade - not the dull red anti-fouling paint we're used to seeing on more modern ships.

This was a long time ago (about 1985, if I remember right).  A lot of additional research has taken place since then; I wouldn't be at all surprised if somebody had found out something different about the color scheme.  On the other hand, nobody with any credentials has ever told me there's anything wrong with the scheme I used - and I believe the Monitor Center (at the Mariners' Museum) is still selling the little paper model.

Hope that helps a little.

Thank you so much for the info, it is a great help! Dave.

I dug out my copy of "The Ship That Launched a Modern Navy"  - Leeward Publications, Inc., 1978, ISBN: 0-915268-10-8.  There is a color rendering by Chesley of the U.S.S. Monitor on page 31 which does indeed show the hull below the waterline being a shade of red somewhat brighter than Oxide Red - including the propeller!

 Good luck with your build.

Carmike,

please don't take this as a gospel, but I would imagine if the propellor was fabricated from iron castings rather than bronze, I assume iron oxide paint would be used to protect it just like the rest of the hull. In which case the red paint on all of the underwater hull inc. propellor would be correct.

Will

All of the above is consistent with what I was told (by folks who knew more about the subject than I do) back in the mid-eighties.  The only caution I would offer is that a great deal of research on the Monitor has been done since then, and I suspect at least some details have been cleared up that had to be guessed about in those days.  We now know, for instance, considerably more about the top of the turret than we did then.  We had a most interesting discussion of that particular point here in the Forum a few years ago, when the turret was brought up and the conservators exposed its roof - for the first time since 1862:  /forums/t/58860.aspx?PageIndex=1 .

For such a simple-looking ship, she makes a fascinating model subject.  I suspect it won't be long before we get another book about her - complete with drawings that will change some, at least, of our previous assumptions.

One of the many advantages of a lack of genuine historical documentation,"It's right because that's my best guess!" I have to do that all the time with my WW II cargo ships, despite having a ready reference source only a phone call away. Unfortunately about half the time the ready reference's response is, "Christ, son, that was 60 years ago!"