DATE: Monday, March 10, 1997                TAG: 9703100045

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:  103 lines

BATTLE OF THE IRONCLADS USS MONITOR VS. CSS VIRGINIA RE-ENACTMENT OFFERS AVENUE TO LEARN HISTORY.

Many things Sunday were just like March 9, 1862, the day that the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia met head on in Hampton Roads for the first ironclad battle in naval history.

The battle occurred on a Sunday.

And the weather was almost identical, said Marion ``Hank'' Morris, the man who headed the weekend commemoration of 135th anniversary of the Battle of Hampton Roads.

``The records show the temperature was about the same and the sun was shining,'' he said. ``There might have been a little less wind than we have today on the water.''

The wind did not deter interest. The mock battle of the ironclads was staged by scale replicas in an inlet off the Elizabeth River between City Hall and the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

About 1,000 people lined the waterfront for the first battle and hundreds more turned up for a second battle. When the Virginia left the shipyard 135 years ago on March 8 to take its place in naval history, Portsmouth townspeople stood on the same waterfront cheering for the Confederate sailors.

Sunday, when the mock shooting started, the children and their parents who were gathered around re-enactors in a nearby field rushed to the waterfront. Many visitors carried still and video cameras to capture the battles at close range.

``I read about this and thought it would be a good time to get a movie of the battle,'' Al Cuthrell of Chesapeake said. For past re-enactments, the replicas owned by Bill Wharton of Norfolk have staged the mock confrontations off Fort Norfolk, closer to the site of the real battle but further from the shore.

The day for remembering history began with a worship service at Trinity Episcopal Church, the same place the men from the CSS Virginia stopped on their way to the ship on that historic day.

With re-enactors filling the front of the sanctuary, the Rev. Geoffrey M. Hahneman intoned the prayers and offered communion using the same service heard by the congregation in 1862.

``I sat there and thought about my grandfather,'' Martha Haralson Tyson, 78, of Houston, Texas, said. Tyson is the granddaughter of Catesby Jones, the executive officer of the Virginia, who took command March 9 after Capt. F. Buchanan was wounded in battle March 8.

``I came here this weekend to honor him,'' Tyson said.

The family has done a lot of research into the events of the historic Civil War battle, according to Tyson's son, Mabry Tyson, a scientist at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.

Jones was in the U.S. Navy and served aboard the USS Merrimac, one of the ships that was sunk by Union forces when they abandoned the shipyard. It was later retrieved by the Confederates, who used the hull for the Virginia.

``The day Virginia seceded from the Union, he resigned from the Navy,'' Mabry Tyson said. ``He felt loyal to Virginia even though he had two brothers in the Union forces.''

One of the brothers was aboard the USS Congress, which ran aground in Hampton Roads while trying to get away from the Virginia on March 8, the day before Catesby Jones took command of the Confederate ironclad.

``We have a lot of pride in family history,'' Mabry Tyson said.

So does William Finlayson, 42, of Long Island, N.Y.

John L. Worden, the commanding officer of the Monitor, was his great-great-great uncle.

``And my great-great grandfather, Daniel Toffey, was the clerk on the Monitor,'' Finlayson said. ``He was a young boy and his uncle (Worden) gave him a job on the ship. He wound up part of history.''

Finlayson said he read about the commemoration and decided to come to Portsmouth to learn more about the battle fought by his ancestors.

Assistant Secretary of Navy John W. Douglass also thinks he's found a family connection to the Virginia.

``There's a William W. Douglass on the roster of the boat,'' Douglass said. ``I think he's my great-great cousin. Anyway, I'm impersonating him today. Quite a few of the double-S Douglasses from North Florida came to Norfolk to join Confederate units when the war broke out. I think this man was one of them.''

Douglass and his wife, Susan, are ardent re-enactors. They were married three years ago in a Civil War ceremony in Leeds Episcopal Church in the Shenandoah Valley, the same church where Gen. Robert E. Lee stopped to pray on the way to Gettysburg.

Douglass is affiliated with the 28th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as well as the 42nd Virginia Infantry. In real life, he retired from the U.S. Air Force as a brigadier general.

Re-enacting, he said, is ``a wonderful way to understand the past.''

Douglass said he came to Portsmouth ``to show support for this area and this shipyard,'' the nation's first and oldest naval shipyard.

``The fact that Captain (William) Klemm has made it accessible to the public is a good thing,'' Douglass said. ``It is an important part of our national heritage.''

Klemm, also a history buff, has been the commanding officer of the shipyard for two years. He frequently invites the public to visit Trophy Park, an area on the site of the original yard that contains cannon and other artifacts from ships that fought in every war in the nation's history. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN photos/The

Virginian-Pilot

Michael Duffey, dressed as a Confederate States Marine, points to

other re-enactors as he talks to Daniel Jackson. Both men are from

Hampton.

The CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor circle one another off the

Portsmouth waterfront during Sunday's re-enactment of the historic

ironclad Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862.

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