There probably isn't any way to resolve the moral or historical questions here but no reason not to restate what ever peference we might have. I do hope whatever human and feline remains are recovered are identified and reburied, rather than exhibited with the other artifacts. Whatever interesting hardware they can recover I believe would be of public interest; there just arn't that many monitors around and this was the first one, and a radically different design from earlier iron clad warships.

As an aside, during the Texas war of independence from Mexico, I seem to remember reading that the Mexican Navy had a small fleet of French designed ironclads which were reduced to junk by the conventional wooden ships of the Texas revolutionary navy, back in the 1830's.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble