Customer Reviews

The Monitor Chronicles : One Sailor's Account. Today's Campaign to Recover the Civil War Wreck

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The biggest disappointment is that Greer does not write about the most interesting parts of the Monitor's history: the trip down to Hampton Roads and the battle with the Virginia. He mostly writes about his shipboard life and details his illnesses and money making schemes done to augment his pay which was not paid out to him in full thus causing financial hardship at home. Mostly of interest for its insights into a sailor's life, less so for info on the Monitor. It's a decent book to supplement other info on the Monitor but not the book to get if you get only one.

An interesting information source for life aboard the Monitor. There aren't alot of books out there about the ship, and I think this book was very interesting and needed. Also George Geer's actual letters are very interesting to read, as he tells everything that happened aboard the ship.

The Mariner's Museum has done a commendable job in putting together such an attractive collection of letters from Monitor sailor George Geer to his wife. Through his eyes, we see a more human perspective on the Civil War and the famous battle between the Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia than is available through most other sources. However, at times this perspective is altogether too human, as Geer devotes page after page of his letters to more mundane esoterica such as selling merchandise to his fellow crew members. The Mariner's Museum also used the needlessly repetitive and districting format style of putting some of the very same passages from Geer's letters in text, in bold, oversize text, and/or in actual illustrations of Geer's letters -- as a result, the reader constantly finds himself/herself reading duplicate passages. I also felt a little short-changed by the brevity of the discussion on the current state of the Monitor wreck and the plans for its future recovery and conservation. A few more illustrations of the wreck itself, and a few less of Geer's letters, would have been welcome. Other than these quibbles, it was a very enjoyable and informative look at a revolutionary ship through the eyes of someone who was there when history was made at Hampton Roads.