Forensic Reconstructions Reveal the Faces of Civil War Sailors

One-hundred-fifty-year-old ghosts rarely look so detailed.

In 1862, two ironclad warships from opposing sides of the American Civil War blasted each other silly in the Battle of Hampton Roads. Although neither vessel could inflict much damage on the other, the Union?s USS Monitor and the Confederacy?s CSS Virginia opened a new era in naval technology as wooden sailing frigates gave way to armored warships with steam engines. The Monitor, however, didn?t have long to live; it sank in rough seas on December 1862 and sat for more than a century.

Eventually, divers turned up the legendary ship in the waters off North Carolina. And now, to mark the 150-year anniversary of the battle, forensic scientists in Washington, D.C., have brought the past back to life: This week they unveiled three-dimensional reconstructions of the faces of two sailors found onboard the wreckage of the Monitor.

Divers discovered the remains of the sailors in the Monitor?s gun turret in 2002. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which excavated the ship in a joint operation with the U.S. Navy, commissioned the three-dimensional reconstruction of the sailors? faces in the hope of identifying them. Using precise replicas of the sailors? skulls and hip bones, a team at Louisiana State University?s Faces lab built clay likenesses, photographed their work, and digitally enhanced the images. The results are the images above, which the scientists released this week.

John Broadwater, a retired NOAA archaeologist and former manager of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, was one of the first to dive to explore the ship?s turret and recently published a book about the work called USS Monitor: A historic ship completes its final voyage.

"The ultimate goal, which may not ever be reached, is to try to identify the men and try to locate any of the descendants," he says. "We?re dealing with a death of a century and a half, so the chance of identifying these men and finding family relatives is much diminished. But somebody might just come forward and say ?he does have the Broadwater nose? or ?the Smith chin,? and if that?s the case, we have DNA and can test the validity. It would be more than we?d hoped for, but something we?d really cherish if somebody could come forward. Short of that, [the reconstruction] gives us the faces of these two heroes."

The sailors? remains are with the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) at Hickam Air Force Base near Honolulu, Hawaii. Anyone who thinks they recognize features of the sailors can contact JPAC.

Sunken Ironclad

Although the Monitor and its armored adversary probably suffered little more than dents in their plating during exchange of point-blank gunfire in March 1862, the Monitor wouldn?t last long. Nine months after intercepting the Virginia to halt its destruction of Union sail ships, the Monitor, still in good repair, foundered in a storm off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina on Dec. 31, 1862. "We don?t have a 100 percent assessment of what happened that night; there are so many conflicting reports," Broadwater says.

The ship?s gun turret and low-slung profile may have made it unfit for choppy seas. The 360-degree rotating turret housed two 11-inch Dahlgren cannons?innovative at a time when ships still employed side cannons. But at 21.5 feet in diameter and 9 feet tall, the turret was huge and heavy and dominated the 174-foot ship?s deck. The ship sank in a storm, taking 16 of her 62 crewmen with her.

In 1973, a Duke University search team discovered the Monitor after a systematic sweep with side-scan sonar of a 5 x 14?mile swathe of the Atlantic floor near the ship?s last sighting. Excavating the ship has gone on for nearly four decades. In 2001 and 2002, NOAA and U.S. Navy divers hauled up the Monitor?s unique steam engine and turret. The artifacts were built to take a beating in their day, but 140 years of exposure to seawater have weakened their joints and made them fragile. To raise the pieces, the researchers had to stabilize them with straps and an external framework.

Dive teams worked the wreck with a combination of conventional scuba gear, remote-operated vehicles, and a Saturation Fly-Away Diving System. In the saturation system, divers lived for two weeks in a chamber pressurized to match the environment 240 feet underwater where the wreck resides. A crane lowered their diving bell to the wreck site and hoisted it back up to change shifts. The arrangement allowed the divers to work for longer periods at high pressure without suffering the effects of decompression and repeated pressure changes.

"We had Navy salvage divers down there and we had to ask them to take it slow and become archaeologists," says Broadwater, who wrote about lifting the engine.

Faces of the Past

To reconstruct the faces of Civil War-era sailors, the LSU forensic anthropologists applied all their techniques for fleshing out the skeletal remains of modern-day accident and crime victims. Mary Manhein, director of the LSU lab, says the only difference was the 150-year-old age of the skeletons.

The researchers placed tissue depth markers cut to specific lengths all over replicas of the sailors? skulls provided by JPAC. The markers serve as guides for sticking the clay to the skull, like a three-dimensional connect-the-dots picture. "For example, the depth of tissue just above the eyes on the center of the forehead is about five millimeters," Manhein says. "The width of the nasal opening tells us how wide to make the nose. Lips stretch from canine to canine."

The sailors? hip bones, which JPAC also copied and sent over to the LSU team, can give clues about how old the men were. The pubic bone and auricular surface change throughout our lives to reflect our general age, Manhein says. The evidence indicates that one of the sailors was in his early 20s and the other was in his early-to-mid 30s.

Once the LSU scientists built the reconstructions, they had to move their creations to Washington, D.C., which proved a challenge. UPS built custom shock-proof boxes for the heads and deployed a team of 50 flight engineers, security, drivers, and others to transport them from Baton Rouge, La. to Washington.

"The heads are so fragile (they are not built to be moved) that even a slight bump could cause damage," UPS spokesperson Dan McMackin says. "I?ve been with UPS for 34 years and have never seen these kinds of special needs and special care before." The company plans to put a detailed video of the process on its YouTube channel later this week.

Seeing the replicas of the sailors? faces was a cathartic moment for Broadwater. "It was really quite moving. I?ve been involved now 40 years doing historical research on the Monitor, and to actually see these two faces staring back?it?s a feeling that?s hard to describe."

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/3d-reconstructions-reveal-the-faces-of-150-year-old-civil-war-sailors-7161475?src=rss

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