NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — The Mariners’ Museum has resumed work to conserve and restore the USS Monitor’s turret and other large artifacts from the Civil War ironclad.
The work is being done in the museum’s wet lab. The lab closed in January because of a shortfall in federal funding.
The museum says in a news release that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has committed $200,000 for the work after receiving its fiscal year 2014 appropriation. The museum and the federal agency are working to develop a long-term solution that would be based on a mixture of private and public funding.
Congress designated the private museum as the official repository of artifacts from the Monitor.
The Monitor sank off in rough seas off North Carolina’s coast on New Year’s Eve 1862.
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