'Our little vessel was lost,' wrote Grenville Weeks, a surgeon who survived. Dozens of crew survived to tell harrowing tales, excerpts of which were read during the service. The Monitor sank in a storm off Hatteras on New Year's Eve of 1862.

The Battle of Hampton Roads, the first between two ironclads, spelled the end of the era of wooden ships.

After the service, participants formed a procession to the burial site at Arlington.Ĭommissioned in February 1862, the Monitor engaged the Confederate ship Virginia less than two weeks later. 'But we do not hesitate to keep faith and to honor this tradition, even more than 150 years after the promise was made.'Īs the late-afternoon sun streamed into the chapel, Navy pallbearers, wearing peacoats and Dixie cups, carried two flag-draped caskets into the chapel for a service led by chaplains. 'This may well be the last time we bury Navy personnel who fought in the Civil War at Arlington,' he said.

'We brought them here, to the national military cemetery founded during the same great conflict for which they gave, in President Lincoln's words, their 'last full measure of devotion,' to provide these two sailors with a final resting place,' Mabus said at a funeral service held at the Fort Myer Memorial Chapel.

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