Bring History Alive: Creating a Replica Worthington Steam Pump from USS Monitor

Summary

USS Monitor conservation staff are often asked, "What was the goal for recovering artifacts from the ironclad’s wreck site?" The answer is to use the artifacts as mediums to tell the stories of the ship and crew. Two Worthington steam pumps recovered in 2001 are good examples of this concept. Both pumps are complex machines which led to extensive research to understand how they operated and physically changed during burial to be able to safely conserve them.  As the conservation of the pumps progressed, discussion on display also began. How do we covey the grandeur of live moving steam engines which are now too fragile to operate? This led to an ambitious project to create an operational replica of the pumps using the information gathered during conservation.This paper will provide an overview of the reproduction process and describe the outreach potential of a project of this scale.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Caring For The Past: Connecting To Archaeological Collections   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 708