New Year's Eve 1862 was not a time for revelry on USS Monitor. Atlantic Ocean waves, whipped up by gale-force winds, pummeled the ship, roaring over its low deck. Francis Butts, a sailor on the Union ironclad, recalled that harrowing night and claimed that a "black cat was sitting on the breech of one of the guns, howling one of those hoarse and solemn tunes which no one can appreciate who is not filled with the superstitions which I had been taught by the sailors, who are always afraid to kill a cat. I would almost as soon have touched a ghost, but I caught her, and placing her in another gun, replaced the wad and tampion; but I could still hear that distressing yowl."
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