Sea History 156 - Autumn 2016

No . 156

NATIONAL MARITIME RISTO

THE ART, LITERATURE, ADVENTURE, LORE 17th National Exhihition-

American Society ofMarine Artists

Dahlgren's Genius Barque Peking Returns to Hamburg

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SEA HISTORY

No. 156

AUTUMN 201 6

CONTENTS 10 The National Maritime Historical Society Annual Awards Dinner, 2016, NMHS will recognize the contributions oftwo very special honorees this October and pay tribute to the late Peter Stanford, long-time editor ofSea History and president emeritus ofNMHS. 16 Peking is Homeward Bound, by Bill Bleyer After more than 40 years at the dock at South Street Seaport Museum in New York, the 377-foot Flying-P Liner Peking, madefamous in lrvingjohmon's mini-documentary Around Cape Horn, is preparing/or a voyage back home to Hamburg, where she will be restored and become the centerpiece for a new German Port Museum.

20 John A. Dahlgren-Lincoln's Seasick Naval Genius, by James H . Bruns As the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, the defense ofthe nation's capital fell to the lieutenant in charge of the Washington Navy Yard, John Dahlgren. A personal friend of President Lincoln, ~------------~ Dahlgren was a scientific and ballistics expert who would revolutionize gunnery for the Union.

26 Slave-ship Wrecked off Cape Town: The Slave Wrecks Project and the New National Museum of African American History & Culture,

by Deirdre O 'Regan, wi th Fleur Paysour and Abigail Benson The archaeological investigation ofas/,ave-ship wreck site offCape Town provides thefirst opportunity ~~~-mi!~ for researchers to learn more about this difficult part ofour history through shipwreck remains. Some ofthe artifacts will be on disp/,ay at the opening ofthe Smithsonian's newest museum this fall.

30 Whales' Tales: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the American Quest for the Northwest Passage, by John Grady In the race to find the fabled Northwest Passage across North America, US Navy Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury, superintendent ofthe National Observatory, collected mountains ofdata from the logbooks ofthousands ofwhalemen who sailed the world's oceans and recorded their observations on whales, weather, and currents, hoping to find clues that would lead him to it.

34 En Plein Air, by Neal Hughes Marine artist Neal Hughes discusses working "in the open air" and shows how the challenges of working outdoors in changing light and weather can pay offin the completed painting.

44 National History Day Prizes in Maritime History, Sponsored by NMHS This year's winners ofthe NMHS Special Prizes in Maritime History covered topics from Charles Darwin and Ernest Shackleton to the Panama Canal and the Lost Colony ofRoanoke; learn more about this annual event for middle and high school students and how NMHS encourages young scholars to pursue topics in maritime history for their entries.

Cover: Skirting the Reef, 18 x 24 inches, oil, by Don Demers. (This painting can be viewed at the J7 'h National Exhibition ofthe American Society ofMarine Artists. See "D eck Log" on page 4, and "Marine Art News" on pages 38-39 for details on the exhibition.)

DEPARTMENTS 46 SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS

4 DECK LOG 5 8 38

40

LETTERS NMHS: A CAUSE IN MOTION MARINE ART NEWS SEA HISTORY FOR Kms

57 CALENDAR 58 MARITIME HISTORY ON THE I TERNET 59 REVIEWS 64 PATRONS

Sea History and the National Maritime Historical Society

Sea History e-mail: seahistory@gmail. com; NMHS e-mail: nmhs@seahistory.org; Web site: www.seahistory.org. Ph: 914 737-7878; 800 221-NMHS MEMBERS HIP is invited. Afterguard $1 0,000; Benefactor $5,000; Plankowner $2,500; Sponsor $1,000; Donor $500; Parron $250; Friend $ 100; Comributor $75; Family $50; Regular $35.

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NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

DECK LOG American Society of Marine Artists Hosts the First N ational Maritime Art Conference s this issue of Sea H istory reaches your mailbox, our chairman, Ronald O swald; editor, D eirdre O 'Regan; trustee, Admiral Robert]. Papp Jr, 24th commandant of the U S C oast G uard and America's Special Representative to the Arctic; and I will venture to W ill iamsburg, Virginia, to participate in ASMA's first National Maritime Art C onference on 8- 11 September. Admiral Papp, a featured presenter at this inaugural event, wi ll give a talk on "The Arctic Ocean- The Case fo r Maritime Governance."

ASMA is debuting its 11 '" National Exhibition at the M uscarelle Museum at the C ollege of William and Mary on the second day of the conference.

M arine art chronicles maritime history in a way that enables us to visualize our past and present relationship with sh ips and the sea. In Ian M arshall 's portrayal of the merch ant vessels at the Eas t A frican port of Kilindini, he brings to life a world from a half century ago, of which few survive who have direct memories .

M arin e ar t can also transport us into a scene in a way the written word or even photography cannot.

In v iewin g Ron ald Lent's work, B reezing up at Ten Pound Light, a catboat sails Shipping at the Port of Kilindini, Mombasa 1953 up to a lighthouse on a

by Ian Marshall, 14 x 21 inches, watercolor sunny afternoon; suddenly I find myself back aboard my own catboat, catching the breeze and relish ing the sun with my children in a season some yea rs back before they grew up and spread their wi ngs fa r fro m home.

From our recent reader survey, we learned th at our members look forward to marine art features and rake extra time to study and enjoy the images and commentary that artists share with us in the pages of Sea H istory. Be sure to read this issue's marine art feature on painting en p lein air by artist Neal Hughes on pages 34-37. M r. Hughes will be presenting at the ASM A conBreezing up at Ten Pound Light by Ronald Lent, ference on this topic.

21 x 28 inches, transparent watercolor W e are very excited about attending th is inaugural ASMA conference in Williamsburg and meeting many of the artists whose works we have featured and admi red for yea rs. We are particularly appreciative that ASMA is awarding its first Lifetime Achievement Awa rd to M ary Burrich ter and Robert Kierlin, founders of the Minneso ta M arine A rt M useum. This couple has spent many years collecting important works of m arine and folk art and serving the museum they fou nded to share them with the public.

See "M ari ne A rt News" on pages 38-39 (as well as the ASMA website at www. americansocietyofmarineartisrs.com) for derails on the dares and venues for 11'" N ational Exhibition. Between reading about it in Sea H istory and , perhaps, traveling to one of the exhibition sites in person, you are sure to be captivated- for all the right reasons.

- Burchenal Green, president

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NATIONAL MARITIME

'V' HISTORICAL SOCIETY PUBLISH ER'S C IRC LE: Perer Aro n, G uy E. C. Maidand, Ronald L. Oswald OFFI CERS & T RUSTEES: Chairman, Ronald L. Oswald; Vice Chairman , Richardo R. Lopes; President, Burchenal G reen; Vice Presidents, Deirdre O 'Regan, Wendy Paggiotta, Nancy Schnaars; Treasurer, Howard Slotnick; Secretary, Jean Wort; Trustees: Charles B. Anderso n; Walrer R. Brown; W illiam S. Dudley; D avid S. Fowler; W illiam Jackson Green; Karen H el merson; Richard M . Larrabee; Guy E. C. M aidand; Capr.

Brian M cAllisrer; CAPT Sally Chin M cElwreath , USN (Ret.); M ichael W Morrow; Richard Patrick O 'Leary; Erik K. Olstein; ADM Robert J. Papp Jr. , USCG (Rer.); Timorhy J. Runyan; Richard Scarano; Philip ]. Shapiro; Capr. Cesare Sorio; Roben a Weisbrod; W ill iam H . W hite; Chairmen Emeriti: Wal ter R. Brown, Al an G . C hoate, G uy E. C. Maidand, Howard Slotnick FOUND ER: Karl Kortum (19 17-1996) PRESIDENT (1927-201 6)

EMERITUS :

Peter

Stan fo rd

OVERSEERS : Chairman, RADM D avid C. Brown, USMS (Rer.); RA.OM Joseph F. Callo, USN (Rer.); George W. Carm any Ill; James J. Coleman Jr. ; C live Cussler; Richard du Moulin; Alan D . Hucchison; Jakob Isbrandrsen; Gary Jobson; Sir Robin Knox-Johnston ; John Lehman; Capt. James J. McNamara; H . C. Bowen Smirh; John Srobarr; Phili p J. Websrer NMH S ADVIS ORS: Chairman, M elbourne Smi rh; Geo rge Bass, Oswald Brett, Francis Duffy, John Ewald, Timothy Foote, Steve n A. H yman , J. Russell Jinishian, Gunnar Lund eberg, Conrad Mi lsrer, W ill iam G . Mu ller, Smart Parnes, Nan cy Hughes Richardson, Bert Rogers, Joyce Huber SEA HISTOR Y E DI TO RIAL A DVISORY BOARD: Chairman, T imorhy Runyan; Norm an Brouwer, Robert Brow ning, W illiam Dudley, Dani el Finamore, Kevin Fosrer, John Jense n, Joseph M eany, Lisa No rli ng, Carl a Rahn Philli ps, Walrer Rybka, Q uentin Sned iker, Wi ll iam H. W hire NMH S STAFF : Executive Director, Bu rchenal Green; Membership Director, Nancy Schnaars; Marketing Director, Sreve Lovass-Nagy; Comptroller, Anjoel ine O suyah; Staff Writer, Shell ey Reid; Director of Public Relations, Li sa Fin e; Membership Coordinator, Irene E isenfeld; Charles Point Council Coordinator, Barbara Irry SEA HISTORY: Editor, Deird re O' Rega n; Advertising, Wendy Paggiotta Sea History is printed by The Lane Press, South Burlingto n, Vermont, USA.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 201 6

We Welcome Your Letters! P lease send correspondence to:

LETTERS

seahistory@gmail.com or Editor, Sea History, 7 Timberknoll Rd. , Pocasset, MA 02559

More to Lt. Robson's Story I am the grandson of Admi ral Richmond Hobson, w ho sunk the Merrimac in the Spanish American War and was the subject of an excellent article by Patrick Grant in the latest issue of yo ur magazine. I wanted to tell Mr. G ra nt he did an excellent job. I have assembled quite a bit of material on Admiral Hobson. If your readers are interested in lea rning more about him and the Spanish American War, I have posted much ofir on the bottom of my web page at http: // hhstokes. people. uic.edu/hobson/spanwar. html.

HOUSTON H . STOKES

C hicago, Illinois

Lt. Richmond Hobson in 1898.

Merrimac's Wreck Site I read with great interest the acco unt of the last sortie of the US Navy collier Merrimac at the harbor entrance to Santiago de C uba.

Ir brought me back to more than a decade ago, when I spent five years as host, working with a band of brothers as part of Clive Cussler's Canadian-based exploration team for National Geographic International Television's The Sea Hunters. In this capacity, we conducted the first archaeological survey of the Barde of Santiago, with personal approval by Fidel Castro.

We worked closely with the offices of the Historiador of both Havana and Santiago de C uba, and after tours of the va rious land battle sites-El Caney, Kerrie Hill, San Juan Hill, and others, as well as E l Morro rhar guards the entrance of the harbor (a nd the sire of the jail that held Lr. Hobson and his crew)-we prepared for a series of dives on the ships sunk by the US Navy-Pluton, Furor, Oquendo, Vizcaya, SEA HISTORY 156,AUTUMN 20 16

and Cristobal Colon. They were amazi ng dives, as the ships were untouched since the last salvagers left in the early twentieth century, and diving was not ordinarily permitted.

The highlight was relocating Merrimac in the main ship channel, just inside the harbor's narrow entrance. The C ubans told us of a wreck that harbor authorities blasted sometime around 1976 to clear the shipping channel for navigation. We were afraid that perhaps they had obliterated it, bur just the same, off we went. Diving into a stron g cu rrent and dropping down a weighted sh ot line, we fell into a green dark ness that suddenly clea red as we approached the bottom to reveal the stern of the ship. The rudder was knocked free, the propeller was missing a blade, and everywhere we saw shot holes that h ad been punched into the sides and deck. Hobson's postwar acco unt wrote of how Merrimac's steering had been shot away, making it impossible to m aneuver the ship, and we saw first-ha nd just how accurate and deadly Spanish fire had been that night.

The battle damage was everywhere, and gave vivid evidence, more than a cenrury later, of what Hobson described as the "striking of projectiles and fl ying fragments ...with the fine ring in it of steel on steel. The deck vibrated heavi ly, and we felt the full effect." And ye t it was easy to see that, despite the battle damage and the

reported h arbor clearance blasting, Merrimac was amazingly intact; the holds were still fu ll of coal. As we swam up to the bridge, sm ashed and partially collapsed, I fo und a broken champagne bottle. Hobson and his crew drank a champagne toas t before heading in, he wrote, a nd as I passed a nd left it in place, I wondered if a passing ship h ad tossed it over, or if it was indeed rhei r bottle.

Forward of the bridge, the hull disappeared into the mud , blasted and twisted by the 1976 harbor clearing efforts. Bur even so, the mangled stem sti ll rose up next to a half- buried anchor. It connected, with two lengths of anchor chain, to another anchor at rhe stern-exactly as Hobson described rigging them to help moor Merrimac in her final position when the charges were supposed to sink her a nd block the channel. The need to make some room for marine traffic was apparent when it suddenly grew very dark and the rumble of engines and the surge of water tossed us about, as a sh ip passed over us, propeller seemingly churning right over our heads as we grabbed hold of the wreck.

We came out of the experience w ith a fine episode of The Sea Hunters, a prelim inary plan of the wreck, and a clea r sense from the physical reality of the site, of what it must have been li ke aboard Merrimac on that night. The ship was ablaze, it seems, when it sank, as the coal had all turned to

Join Us for a Voyage into History Our seafaring heritage comes alive in the pages of Sea History, from the ancient mariners of Greece to Portuguese navigators opening up the ocean world to the heroic efforts of sa ilors in modern-day conflicts. Each issue brings new insights and discoveries. If you love the sea, rivers, lakes, and

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Yes, I want to join the Society and receive Sea History quanerly. My contribution is enclosed. ($ 17.50 is for Sea History; any amount above that is tax ded uctible.) Sign me up as: 0 $35 Regular Member 0 $50 Fa mi ly Member 0 $ 100 Fr iend 0 $25 0 Patron 0 $5 00 Donor 156 Mr./ Ms. ----------------------~ZI P ______ Return to : National Maritime Histo rical Society, PO Box 68, Peekskill , NY 10566

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coke, and the steel decks are warped from heat. Capt. Robley Evans, standing off with the rest of the US fleet outside the harbor, wrote that watching the Merrimac's ordeal that night was like was seeing "Hell with the lid off." Merrimac's wreck site, like the battle-damaged wrecks of the Spanish fleet, demonstrates graphically to us all why her crew, just like the men in the Spanish ships who fo ught through flame and shot, deserve the honor of being called heroes . ] AMES D ELGAD O

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Silver Spring, Maryland H onoring Bowdoin and MacMillan , As a follow- up to the "Historic Ship on a Lee Shore" article about the schooner Bowdoin, here are a few particulars about the vessel of which your readers might not be aware. When vessels sailing to the Arctic were generally painted black or other dark colors, Bowdoin's hull was painted white to match the official color of Bowdoin College, Don ald M acMillan's alma mater. This was a time when colleges were ofren identified by only one color- H arvard's crimson and Yale's blue, for example.

The Arctic schooner saw service during World War II as USS Bowdoin (IX-5 0), one of a very small number of sail-powered naval vessels in that era. MacMillan was already in his 60s when the United States entered the war, but he nonetheless volunteered for active duty, serving initially as USS Bowdoin's commander before being transferred to the Hyd rographic O ffi ce in Washington . Lieutenant Stuart Hotchkiss relieved MacMillan and served as Bowdoin's co mmander fo r the rest of the war, assisting in establishing airfields in Greenland and performing hydrographic surveys.

About a decade later, on 25 June 1954, MacMillan was promoted to the rank of rea r admiral in the Naval Reserve retired list, in recognition of his service and achievements. As was mentioned in the Sea H istory article, Bowdoin participated in Operation Sail in New York in 1986. As a veteran WWII navy vessel, Bowdoin was accorded a pos ition of honor in the parade of ships and easily recognized by her "ice barrel " crow's nest on her fo remas t. This lookout platfo rm was installed during the days before radar to serve as a station alofr fo r watchmen scan ning the horizon for drifting ice, while providing some protection from the wind and cold. Today Admiral M acMillan's fo rmer fraternity at Bowdoin, Theta D elta C hi, is known as M acM illan H ouse. An oil painting of his beloved schooner underway adorns the mantle over its living room fi replace.

Lours A RT H UR NoRTON

Wes t Simsbury, Connecticut An interesting article [o n Schooner Bowdoin], but I thought it stran ge to see no mention of MacMillan Pier in MacMi llan's hometown, Provincetown, Massachusetts.

CHARLES E. STANFORD Liverpool, New York H istoric Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, is a major tourist destination in the summer months, and the hub ofactivity along the waterfront is the town's J,450 joot pier, named for hometown hero Rear Admiral Donald B. MacM illan in 1957 To learn more about the p ier and other buildings and structures in Provincetown, check out D avid D unlap's blog, "Building Provincetown," at https:llbuildingprovincetown.wordpress.com!

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

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NMHS: A CAUSE IN MOTION A Grave Injustice Corrected: Naval Architect John W. Griffiths Finally Receives a Proper Headstone John W. G riffiths (1809-1882) was a maverick of American shipbuilding. A renowned n aval architect in the mid-nineteenth century, when maritime traffic was transitioning from sail to steam, Griffiths designed steamships, war vessels, and the record-settin g extreme clipper ships Rainbow and Sea Witch. In 1849, Sea Witch set a speed record sailing from Hong Kong to New York in 74 days, 14 hours. This feat has ye t to be surpassed by a single-hull sailing vessel.

Griffiths lefr a lasting impression on ship design and construction through his published books, ship designs, innovations, and patents, ye t, despite his reputation as a "naval architect genius," he died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave at the Linden Hill United Methodist Cemetery in Queens, New York.

In 2012 , Matthew Carmel visited the cemetery to make a rubbing of Griffiths's headstone so he could give it to his friend, naval architect Melbourne Smith, chairman of the NMHS advisory committee. Smith specializes in designing replicas of historic ships, including the replica schooners Pride ofBaltimore, Spirit ofMassachusetts, Lynx, Californian, and the brig Niagara; he credits the development of his own skills to the study of]ohn Griffiths's plans. To Carmel's astonishment, there was no headsto ne marking the G riffiths grave, and further research revealed there had never been one. The two men set out to give the esteemed naval architect a proper headstone. They turned to N MHS chairman Ronald Oswald and asked the Society to undertake the project. Matt Carmel put together a committee to conduct further research, design a proper headstone, and raise funds to pay for it. Bruce Johnson, an accomplished naval architect, generously donated a gifr large enough to ensure the project could be completed . The new monument was then designed by Melbourne Smith.

This summer, Ronald Oswald, Matt Carmel, and the diligent committee that worked on the research and planning of the gravestone, and those who contributed to make the project a reality, met at the cemetery for a toast to celebrate G riffiths's life and for the unveiling of the headstone.

Remembering the Andrea Doria Sixty years after the sinking of the ocean liner Andrea Doria, NMHS partnered with the State University of New York Maritime College at Fort Schuyler to commemorate the maritime disaster by launching a restored Andrea Doria lifeboat from the waterfront at SUNY Maritime College. Excited participants, including survivors who once again got into a lifeboat, went out into Long Island Sound for a short excursion.

Mark Koch, a dive manager from outside New Orleans, acquired Andrea Doria's Lifeboat # 1 and had it restored at Scarano Boat Building in Albany, New York. The 28-foot boat has been totally renewed, except for a few of its historic dents and mystifying bullet holes. All of its mech a nical components have been reconditioned, and the human-powered cranks that drive the big brass propeller operate perfectl y.

To honor the occasion, historians, divers, preservationists, and other enth usiasts participated in a series of lectures and discussions abo ut the Andrea Doria, her collision at sea with the passe nger liner Stockholm, and the significance of that incident to th e shipping industry. Ramifications from that tragedy led to the passage of new maritime safety laws and the evolution of lifeboat technology.

Charles Point Council Seminar Series Autumn Line-up Our monthly seminar series is hosted by the Charles Point Council-named for the NMHS headquarters location on Charles Point on the Hudson River. We have three compelling speakers lined up for this fall: •3 December: James L. Nelson, author of •24 September: Author and historian Craig •12 November: Lawrence Brennan, vet1he Two Hu ndred Year Invasion: Vikings, Symonds will present "Operation Neptune: eran m aritime law litigator, will present 1heir Raids, 1heir Settlements, and the Ships The Allied Invasion of Europe and the "Operation Eagle C law: Rescue from the that Got 1hem 1here, will present "NorseD-Day Landings."

Sea-Iranian Hostage Crisis." man Saga."

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SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

Save the Date: NMHS 2017 Annual Meeting

'

Mark your calendars for 15-17 May 2017. NMHS will hold its annual meeting in the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, home to the Confederate submarine H L. Hunley, and USS Yorktown and USS Laffey at Patriots Point, among H. L. Hunley countless other historic sites. We will be joined this year by the North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) for three days of presentations, panels, and schola rly papers, tours, and receptions.

NASOH provides a forum H istoric Charleston, South Carolina for maritime history and is actively devo ted to the study and promotion of naval and maritime history. By par tnering with this esteemed group, we will have the opportunity to attend sessions with some of the great maritime teachers and scholars working today. Check www.seahistory.org for details, registration, and hotel information.

-Burchenal Green, president

NMHS Needs Your Help ...

Please make a Legacy Gift to the National Maritime Historical Society The National Maritime H istorical Society is asking for yo ur help. Would you please remember the Society in yo ur estate planning? Whether you designate a specific amount or a percentage of your estate, this mean ingful gift will help ensure the future of our organization. I am asking you to pass it forward to help keep our maritime heritage alive into the future, perhaps for someone you will never meet and who will never even know what they owe you. Yet, after these many years at the helm of this amazing organization, I know to whom I am making this request. NMHS members are some of the smartest, best informed, curious, interesting, and kind people you could hope to meet. You have thoroughly interesting lives, not always easy, and you have made a difference in our world. Your stories delight m e and keep me here late at night, more often than I like to think. But I see we are aging, a nd it is up to us to provide for the Society's future after we are gone. Please remember yo ur Society: Check with yo ur financial, legal, or tax advisor about how to establish your Legacy Gift. If yo u have included NMHS in your estate, wo uld yo u please let us know?

Make an IRA Charitable Rollover Gift in 2016 Congress has now extended the IRA charitable rollover, and made it permanent. This could be an easy way for yo u to support NMHS. The charitable IRA rollover, or qualified charitable distribution (QCD), is a special provision allowing taxpayers aged 70Yz or older to transfer up to $100,000 annually from their IRA accounts directly to a non-profit organization, including the National Maritime Historical Society, without having to recognize the distribution as income.

Certain donations can be excluded from taxable income, such as transfers from Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) made directly to public charities, including rhe National Maritime Historical Society.

IRA charitable rollovers can be beneficial to yo ur tax burden and cur yo ur adjusted gross income (the distribution is disregarded as income). In addition, your charitable deduction is in effect m aximized , because yo u can count yo ur gift as a required IRA distrib ution at rhe same rime. Please see your tax advisor to see if this is right for you and how you can support the Society while raking advantage of the QCD benefit.

Make a Donation to the Peter Stanford Memorial Feature Peter Stanford 's great passions were Sea H istory and saving historic ships. We have started a memorial fund to support that in perpetuity. Please send a gift to rhe "Peter Stanford Memorial Feature Historic Ships on a Lee Shore." This will provide the resources to help us to keep this as an ongoing feature in Sea History. Putting the plight of historic ships in the public eye has been a significant factor in saving many of our American treasures.

Thank You, Burchenal Green, NMHS president SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

9

The National Maritime Historical Society Honors Charles Townsend and Cesare Sorio, and Remembers the Late Peter Stanford at the 2016 Gala Annual Awards Dinner, 26 October The setting of the New York Yacht Club's famous Model Room will be particularly special for this year's National Maritime Historical Society's Annual Awards Dinner, as we honor the Yacht Club 's own former commodore, Charles H. Townsend, with the NMHS Distinguished Service Award.

NMHS trustee Cesare Sorio will be recognized with the David A. O 'Neil Sheer Anchor Award, and we will pay tribute to our late president emeritus, Peter Stanford. Dinner chairman George W. Carmany III invites you to join us for this wonderful evening; award-winning yachtsman Richard T. du Moulin will be master of ceremonies, and entertainment will be provided by the United States Coast Guard Academy Cadet Chorale, directed by Dr. Robert Newton.

The National Maritime Historical Society's Annual Awards Dinner is held in the fall each year in the fabulous Model Room ofthe New York Yacht Club in New York City. Not to be missed is the fantastically talented US Coast Guard Academy Cadet Chorale, which performs at the NMHS gala each year to the delight ofall in attendance.

Charles H. Townsend Charles H. Townsend is chairman of Conde Nasr, a position he has held since January 2016, after serving as the company's CEO for eleven years. He joined the company as publisher of Glamour in 1994, became an executive vice president of Conde Nast in 1995, and was promoted to chief operating officer in 2000.

Charles Townsend grew up sailing on Maryland's Eastern Shore. From infancy he was bundled up and taken along as his parents went sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. His grandfather had retired to the Eastern Shore, and Townsend spent his summers there. He learned to sail with his parents and grandfather and became involved with racing at an early age. As a youngster, he worked in a boatyard for 25 cents an hour and went crabbing and eeling with local fishermen.

Having spent his childhood immersed in the rich maritime culture of the Eastern Shore, his experiences on and about the waterfront would shape his entire life.

His enthusiasm for sai ling and racing carried into his college years, as he sailed on the Great Lakes as a student at the University of Michigan, and on into his adult life. He continues to sail competitively today, most recently taking two 2nds and a 1st-place finish in the 2016 Maine Classic Yacht Series.

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Charles Townsend (in white) at the helm of his beloved Fidelio, a Sparkman & Stephens 39, during the 2016 New Yo rk Yacht Club Race Week. Fidelio, built in Germany in 1956, is a sister to the famous Fi nisterre, winner ofthree consecutive Bermuda races (1956, 1958, and 1960). Mr. Townsend purchased her six years ago and has actively sailed her in races throughout New England. He has owned dozens of boats over the years, but Fidelio is his favorite. A creation of Olin Stephens, Fidelio is "a genius design"-beamy and not the traditional long lean hull of most ocean racers. According to Townsend, "she is shaped like a watermelon but fast as a rocket."

Mr. Townsend served as commodore of the New York Yacht C lub from 2007-2008. He is a strong supporter of the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS) in N ewport, Rhode Island. Founded in 1993, IYRS offers world-class experiential education through three accred ited schools: the School of Composites Technology, the School of Boatbuilding & Restoration, and the School of Marine Systems. Mr. Townsend, who has served as its trustee and vice chairman, was recently elected to lead IYRS as chairman. He is proud of the work that IYRS does, providing motivated students with valuable skills in the maritime industry and solid employment prospects: "It really works." In addition to his work with IYRS, he also serves as an advisory board member of the World Ocean Observatory, and actively supports the Herreshoff M arine Museum and the South Street Seaport Museum.

As chairman of Conde Nast, C harles Townsend has seized the opportunity to lead his readership to a wider appreciation of the world of sailing. The National Maritime Historical Society is honored to recognize his support, dedication, and leadership with the Distinguished Service Award . The award will be presented by fellow yacht racer, George W. Carmany III, recipient of this award in 2014.

Dinner chairman George Carmany III will present the NMHS D istinguished Service Award to Charles Townsend.

The International Yacht Restoration School has two campuses in Rhode Island, in downtown Newport and nearby Bristol. The school s Restoration Hall (right) is an 18,000-square-Joot waterfront building that serves as the school's main teachingfacility. It has been completely refitted as an open-space shop where students work on coursework and projects. An elevated catwalk allo ws faculty, family, and visitors to observe work in p rogress. !YRS provides the opportunity fo r students to learn by doing. In the boat restoration program, for example, students start out their first year restoring Beetle Cat boats and work their way up to larger projects. Each summer, selected students also get the opportunity to work as interns for Coronet Restoration Partners on the historic 1885 yacht Coronet. In addition to the boat restoration p rogram, students can concentrate in two other tracks: the School of Composites Technology, and the School ofMarine Systems. For those seeking a bachelors degree, partnerships with three area colleges allow fo r the transfer of !YRS credits to their undergraduate programs.

Post-IYRS employment rates are impressive. The school states that, on average, the job placement rate for each program is around 85%, though that number has been as high as 96% as recently as the Class of March 2014. (www.iyrs.edu)

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Captain Cesare Sorio The David A. O'Neil Sheet Anchor Award, given in recognition of extraordinary leadership in building the strength and outreach of the Society, will be presented to Captain Cesare Sorio. Graduating first in his class at the Italian Merchant M arine Academy in 1955, Captain Sorio then served aboard a passenger ship and sixteen oceangoing oil tankers, progressing from deck cadet to chief officer, staff captain, and mas ter.

In 1967 he accepted the offer of a career as hore, and in the years that followed he became involved in all aspects of shipbuilding and ship conversion and repair, vessel purchasing and sale, economics of transportation, and marine operations. After working for various international oil companies, he co-founded his own independent maritime consulting group, S. J. Marine, from which he eventually retired in 2011.

Captain Sorio continues to be involved with the industry, maintaining his affi liation with the Italian Masters and C hief Engineers Association a nd the Society of Naval Architects and Marine E ngineers (SNAME). He also is a member of the American Bureau of Shipping's Council and C lassification Committee and a commissioner of H arbor Management for the Town of G uilford, Connecticut.

Captai n Sorio joined NMHS as a member in 1993, and in 2007 he was elected to our Board ofTrustees. His knowledge and talent have been invaluable on the NMHS Executive Committee and as chairman of the Program Committee. Thanks to his leadership and outreach, NMHS is a stronger and more influential Society.

Captain Sorio loves maritime history, but he is no armchair sailor. He had a long career sailing the world's oceans in commercial ships. In the photos below, he was serving as staff captain of the 16, 000 gross ton Italian-flag passenger ship Flavia, ftom May of 1966 to July of 1967 (below left) A master at celestial navigation, he is shooting the sun for L.A.N (Local Apparent Noon) in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Tahiti and Auckland. (below right) Ready to go on a short shore leave, Port Darwin, Australia.

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Remembering Peter Stanford (1927-2016) Ar this year's Annual Awards Dinner, we will pay tribute to our late president emeritus, Peter Stanford. A graduate of H arvard and King's College, Cambridge, Peter was an advertising executive when he and his wife, Norma, began their journey to save the South Street waterfront neighborhood and recapture the spirit of Manhattan's fa mous "Street of Ships." H e had a passion for maritime pursuits: An old shipmate from his days in the US Navy said that Peter was "ship mad-always mad for ships." With Bob Ferraro, they founded the Friends of the South Street Seaport Museum-enticing new members with one-dollar memberships-and grew their volunteer base by leaps and bounds. By 1967 they had gained the support and financial backing to launch the new museum, opening in warehouse space on Fulton Street.

In 1971 Peter ass umed the presidency of the National Maritime Historical Society, soon raking on the position of edito r of it s fledgling quarterly magazine, Sea History. By 1976 Peter and Norma had left South Street Seaport M useum to devo te their fu ll attention to NMHS, which had moved our of South Street to set up headquarters in a defunct fireboat- house and pier in Brooklyn.

Peter was influential in th e founding of the World Ship Trust, the American Society of Marine Artists, the Council of American Maritime Museums, and the Wo rking Harbor Committee. He was also involved in effo rts to save many historic ships, such as the square-rigger Wavertree, the rug Eppleton Hall the barque Elissa, the schooner Ernestina-Morrissey, the rug Mathilda, the ferry Commander, and the Liberty ship john W Brown. He worked tirelessly for our maritime heritage, fighting for support for the struggling So uth Street Museum when it faced financial hardship in the years posr-9/ 11 and posr-Superstorm Sandy.

A prolific writer, Peter wrote countless articles in Sea History, both as editor and publisher and in the las t decade as editor-a t-large. In 201 3, Peter and Norma wro te A Dream of Taff Ships, sharing the story of Sourh Street Seaport Museum's origins and early yea rs.

Peter and Norma Stanford at South Street

You are cordially invited to the NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S ANNUAL AWARDS DINNER Wednesday, 26 October 2016 at the New York Yacht Club in New York City This affair is traditionally sold out and seating is limited, so early responses are recommended. Reservations are $400 per person; $10,000 spo nso rs a premium table for ten, plus a feature ad page in the dinner journal. Other sponsorship options available. Black tie optional.

Call 914 737-787 8, ext. 0, or em ail nmh s@seahistory.org, to make your reservation, or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Be sure to visit us online at www.seahistory.org for more information.

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SocIETY, PO Box

SEA HISTORY 156,AUTUMN 20 16

68,

P EEKSKILL,

NY 10566 13

Take an advance look at some ofthe fabulous items featured in our Annual Dinner Auction Private Charter Aboard Schooner America 2. 0 or Yacht Manhattan for up to 40 Guests Enjoy a 2-hour private charter aboard the schooner America 2. 0 or the yacht Manhattan for up to 40 guests and a standard open bar. Departs from Chelsea Piers, New York Harbor. Time to be mutually agreed upon. Not valid on Saturdays; expires December 31, 2017. Gratuity is not included.

Donated by Classic Harbor Line and Scarano Boat Building.

Value: $4,200.

Star Clipper Cruise for Two in the Carribean or Mediterranean Star Clipper ships reflect their proud heritage in every inch of polished brass. Each ship is intimate with spacious accommodations for just 170 passengers. Expansive teak decks provide ample space for relaxation and recreation. Enjoy an outside Category 4 cabin for 2 guests for a 7 nights' cruise. Port charges and gratuities are additional; air and transfers not included. Holiday sailings excluded. Based on space available; the requested date will not be confirmed before 30 days prior to departure.

Donated by: Scar Clippers. Value: Up to $5,220.

Voyage to Cuba Aboard Pearl Seas Cruises for 10 Nights for Two in 2017 This is the trip of a lifetime! Journey to Cuba on a 10-night, 11-day experience aboard the new Pearl Seas Cruises 210-passenger luxury ship, Pearl Mist. Enjoy access to Cuba's ports and regions, while exploring the rich fabric of Cuban culture. Experience the captivating history and heritage of Cuba from the historically significant capital city of Havana to the quaint mountainside villages. Round trip out of Miami, Florida. Air transportation, port charges and gratuity not included. Donated by: Charles Robertson and Pearl Seas Cruises. Value: $15,000.

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More Items to Come

* More Items to Come * More Items to Come *

Limited edition prints ... ship models .. . jewelry ... more cruises ... special gift items ... nautical collectibles .. . resort vacations ... exclusive museum tours ... great maritime reads ... and much more!

Keep ch ecking our website, www.seahistory.org, for an updated list!

If you are unable to attend NMHS's gala event on 26 O ctober, let us bid for you!

Call 800-22 1-6647, ext. 0, and we'll set yo u up with your own personal bidding representative.

All proceeds from the auction benefit the work of the Society.

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Renowned marine artist john Stobart has generously donated a spectacular original oil painting to honor his shipmate Peter Stanford

Aucoot Cove: The View to Converse Point by John Stobart Framed 28Vi'' long x 21 1,4" high Image 19 Yz" long x 12" high Value: $70,000.

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HISTORIC SHIPS ON A LEE SHORE

Peking is Homeward Bound

by Bill Bleyer hen the 1885 sailing ship Wavertree returns to South Street Seaport Museum in September after an $ 11 million restoration, she will occupy the berth that has been home to the fo ur-mas ted barque Peking for the last 41 years. Peking will trade places with Wavertree in Staten Island, where the massive square-rigger will undergo preparations fo r a tra nsAd antic voyage, pres umably her las t, onboard a heavy-li ft ship back to H amburg, Germany, where she was originally built. There, she will be restored to begin a new li fe as the centerpiece of a new m aritime museum being built by the G erman government.

After the Manhattan-based maritime museum determined it could not afford to maintain two massive tall ships, a conversation was initiated with the German government about its interest in raking possession of the ship. Although she has become a New York icon because of how long she has been berthed at South Street, Peking had no connection during her working life with New York. But she h ad a long career at sea and is emblematic of the great sh ipbuilding tradition in H amburg, and in time the Germans agreed to rake her. Last November, the German government allocated 30 million eu ros , approximately $3.3 million, to bring Peking home and resrore her as a dockside attraction. The planned Germ an Port M useum project is budgeted at 120 million euros ($13 million).

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Peking at her berth on South Street in New York City.

Captain Jonathan Boulwa re, executive di rector of South Street Seaport Museum, is working with the German government as it develops its plans fo r Peking. As of press time, Boulwa re said the shipyard that will prepare the ship for the transAd antic voyage h as not been selected ye t. But it's likely to be Caddell D ry D ock and Repair C o. , where the Wavertree restoration h as been underway, and where Peking has been drydocked and repaired in the pas t.

The trip to G ermany "will probably be sometime after hurricane season in late fall," Boulware said. "H er upper masts and rigging will be brought down. That's all very much in the planning process ."

The decis ion to give the ship away was nor m ade lightly and has saddened South Street officials and American maritime preservationists, bur Boulwa re sees the transfer as a win-win for his museum, Germany, and both Peking and Wavertree. "Ir's a choice between having one in good shape, or two in bad and deteriorating shape," he said.

"We've got 48 years of institutional history that shows that one big square-rigger is poss ible; two are not. Ir's simply too many tons, too many miles of deck seams, too many miles of rigging, too many square feet of varnish and paint for a museum to withstand. What we know from our history is that two ships together of that size tend to slide backwa rd together, but one we' ll be able to maintain."

Since the 1970s, this has been the view from the water of the ships at South Street, with Peking (in black, with buffmasts and yards) at Pier 16, andWaverrree offher port side in gray, black, and red with white masts and yards. The skyscrapers dwarf these massive sailing ships, but it was the commerce from ships Like these that built the City of New York.

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Boulware added, "Our role as a museum is to preserve artifacts, narratives and even skills that relate to the history of New York.

Peking doesn't actually h ave a New York history. The best possible scenario for any ship is to be the right ship for the place she's in. Wavertree is the right ship for New York; Peking is not. Peking is the right ship for Hamburg."

He continued, stating that, "Wavertree is exactly the kind of ship yo u would have seen at South Street on every single day of the week in the nineteenth century. She called at New York in her career. She is the prototypical tramp sailing ship that carried cargoes all over the wo rld. She carried all of the cargoes that were instrumental in building New York, everything from jute to coal to tea to molasses-you name it." With just Wavertree at the pier, he said, "enthusiasm for a ship that actually looks great is easier to generate." And volunteer help and financial support will follow the enthusiasm.

One of the famous "Flying-P Liners" of F. Laeisz Lines, Peking was built in 1911 at the famed Blohm & Voss shipyard, builders of hundreds of notable ships, including the Bismarck, the US Coast G uard's training ship Eagle (ex-Horst Wessel), five more FlyingP liners, White Star liners, and others. She was employed in the nitrate trade, making voyages from Europe to the west coast of South America with general cargo and returning with guano for making fertilizer and explosives.

Peking was in port at Valparaiso, Chile, when World War I erupted and was awarded to Italy in reparations. She was sold back to the Laeisz brothers in 1923 and continued in the nitrate trade until steamship traffic through the Panama Canal made her no longer economically viable. (above) Hauled out for repairs. Caddell D ry Dock and Repair Co. in Staten Island has hauled and repaired the ships at South Street over the years, including Peking, Waverrree, and the Ambrose lightship. Wavertree spent the last 15 months there undergoing a total hull restoration. (left) Peking under a full spread ofcanvas during her working life.

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Peking gained renown in the United States from Irving Johnson's film Around Cape Horn, which recorded his 1929 passage onboard around the southern tip of South America in hurricane-strength seas. To the tall ship community, watching Peking battle Cape Horn and memorizing lines from Johnson's lively narration is a rite of passage.

Johnson also recalled his adventures in the book, Round the Horn in a Square Rigger, later released by Sea History Press under the tide, The Peking Battles Cape Horn.

In 1932, the ship was renamed Arethusa II and was used as a school for boys in England, with the students sleeping in hammocks below deck. During World War II she served in the Royal Navy as HMS Pekin. By the 1970s, the vessel was in disrepair and appeared headed for the scrapyard, until Jack R. Aron, a US Navy lieutenant commander during WWII and a wealthy coffee and gold trader, bought her and had the ship towed to South Street in 1975 .

While trying to restore and maintain both Peking and Wavertree was always a heavy lift for the museum, its finances became more strained in recent yea rs. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, strangled tourism traffic to lower Manhattan and the Seaport. W hen Superstorm Sandy hit New York C ity in 2012 , the ships

Irving Johnson on Peking's royal yard.

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Irving Johnson'sfilm ofhis 1929 voyage in Peking around Cape Horn immortalized the ship to subsequent generations. Hisfoo tage showed a fan tastic performance by the ship during an "A '-number 1 first-class storm," but it also documented the day-to-day life of the crew onboard, f rom seaming sailcloth to sorting sp uds.

rode out the storm at the docks just fine, but the museum buildings ashore sustained considerable damage from flooding and further strained the museum's finances and ability to maintain her properly. Until the German government stepped up, there were fears that Peking might be scrapped.

In addition to Peking, three other original Flying-P Liners survive. Pommern is a museum ship in Mariehamn, Finland.

Passatwas purchased in 1959 by the Baltic Sea municipality of Lubeck and is now a yo uth hostel and museum ship in the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Padua, renamed Kruzenshtern, is still sailing as a Russian training vessel. The Flyingp ships were typically 377 feet long with

masts that reached 170 feet. They carried 44, 132 square feet of sail. J,

Bill Bleyer, after a long career as a reporter for the New York newspaper Newsday, is a freelance writer specializing in history and maritime issues and the author of books on Long Island history. You can contact him at billbleyer@gmail.com.

South Street Seaport Museum is located at 12 Fulton Street in New York. (www.south streetseaportmuseum.org). Irving Johnson's The Peking Battles Cape Horn is available through the NMHS Ship's Store at www. seahistory. org. The DVD Around Cape Horn is available through Mystic Seaport. www. store. mysticseaport.org.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

John A. Dahlgren: Lincoln's Seasick Naval Genius

by James H. Bruns ohn Dahlgren was one of President Abraham Lincoln's favo rite n aval officers.

Both he and the president shared much in common, most notably a fondness for gadgetry and a propensity fo r seasickness.

As a naval officer, John D ahlgren did not excel at sea. Prone to debilitating bouts of seasickness, h e fo und service at sea a miserable experience. But ashore, his expertise in metallurgy, m athematics, ballistics, and gunnery wo uld make him invaluable to Lincoln and the U nited States N avy. Before reporting to the Washington Navy Yard in 1847 as a lieutenant, D ahlgren served in the US Coast Survey, where he received training in mathematics, precision instruments, and scientific theory. At the navy yard, Dahlgren soon launched the Navy's first sustained scientific research and development program , which developed and tested revolutionary cannon designs, enhanced quality-control techniques fo r the manufacture of ship ordnance and naval ammunition, and tested the ballistic ch aracteristics of sh ip armor.

Dahlgren's scientific approach to ballistics resulted in the creation of a gunnery range to test-fire cannons, with shot and shells Hying down the Anacostia River. He also created ballistic test pits for scientifically testing the penetrating capabilities of large- and small-caliber weapons under an array of controlled conditions, fi ring the guns into a variety of different materials to gauge and improve their destructive capabilities .

The advent of armored ships in the C ivil War raised questions as to the best m eans of both protection and offen sive

This Mathew Brady image of j ohn Dahlgren on board USS Pawnee, taken on 21 April 1865, is perhaps the most fam ous image of the Rear Admiral. Dahlgren is shown leaning against one of his 50-pound rifles. The devastated remains of Fort Sumter appear over his shoulder. In November 1863 Dahlgren wrote a friend, saying: "Perhaps you might like to see what's before my eyes-Sumter crumbling away before our cannon, which sound incessantly. " By the time this photograph was taken, the fort had largely been reduced to a pile of rubble. firepower. D ebates raged over how thick to m ake iro n plating to cover a vessel, wh ether to employ one thick plate or a combination of thin armor plates, whether to slope armor or not, how much powder to use to penetrate iron, whether a ro und projectile was better than a Bat-point pro-

jectile, and whether shells were better than shot. O pinions and debates raged until practical experimentation and experiences provided definitive answers. For the Union Navy, these questions were largely put to John D ahlgren ro resolve.

A Near-death Experience Leads to Dahlgren's Soda-water Bottle Gun An accidental explosion of a 32-pound gun at h is experimental battery at the Washington Navy Yard on his 4 0th birthday in 1849 led to D ahlgren's greatest creationthe development of the U nion's most powerful and versatile heavy smoothbore cannon. The explosion at the test site killed the gunner and injured the gun crew and observe rs in close range, including D ahlgren, who was hi t by Hying pieces of the cannon.

D etermined to reduce the h igh fa ilure rates

Washington Navy Yard, circa 1862, as seen from above the Anacostia River.

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that plagued large naval guns at the time, Dahlgren put his genius to work.

In his diary for 12 November 1850, Dahlgren wrote: '1 have made an important discovery, which must end in the entire reorganization of our naval ordnance."

What Dahlgren devised was less the resu lt of trial and error than it was an epiphany. As Dahlgren described it in his personal journal in 1863, '1 have never made known the real principles of my cannon. Some day I will do so. They will be found curious and simple." Wh ile on a walk with a friend, he further elaborated when asked what led to his idea by saying: '1 observed a law of nature, and making a mathematical application of it, made a gun which was an innovation, and in no wise a result of experiments, but some day I will explain. " He never did fully explain, only confiding late in his life, "The models which I proposed [were] deduced-not from experiment as has been supposed-but from such principles as I believe were correct. I drew and completed the models witho ut assistance from anyone. " In reality his epiphany seems to have been based upon the simple observation that his gun tubes needed to be the thickest where the explo-

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USS Pensacola offAlexandria, Virginia 1861. USS Pensacola was towed to the Washington Navy Yard from her launch site at the Pensacola Navy Yard in 1859 for the installation of her machinery. The temporary presence of her single 11-inch smoothbore and her sixteen 9-inch Dahlgren guns served as a menacing reminder of Union occupation ofthe city, which took place on 24 May 1861. sive blast pressure was the greatest. By plotting our blast pressures, the resulting contours of the gun he devised resembled a common, round-bottom soda-water bottle of the era. Dahlgren's epiphany proved correct. Called the "soda-water bottle gun" because of its shape, Dahlgren's practical One of Dahlgren's early accomplishments in the 1840s was to create an interchangeable, lightweight boat gun and field howitzer. The gun's bronze barrel could be mounted as a boat gun in a ship's launch or switched out in a matter of minutes for use by a naval landing party as a field howitzer. A 12-pound Dahlgren howitzer mounted on an iron field carriage is on deck in this view of monitor USS Lehigh, probably taken on station in the James River in Virginia late in the war.

Behind the howitzer in Lehigh's gun turret is a 15-inch Dahlgren smoothbore gun.

The other gun in the turret is probably an 8-inch Parrott rifle. Lehigh also featured an armored pilothouse atop the turret and an armor ring around its base. These innovations were the result of combat experience.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

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smoothbore cannons came in sizes ranging from 8 inches up to 15 inches. Put into use in operations at sea, these guns would achieve a remarkable record of success.

By 1856 his 9-inch cannon had become the Navy's standard broadside battery, and his 11-inch model was the Navy's principal pivot gun. Dahlgren's success and accomplishments with ordnance resulted in a promotion. In 1861, he became the commandant of the Washington Navy Yard.

Dahlgren's Defense of the Capital "This Yard is of great importance, not only because of its furnishing the Navy so largely with various stores, but also as a position in the general defense of the city."

-john Dahlgren, 3May1861 On 12 April 1861, Confederate forces fired upon their own countrymen at Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina. Immediately, scores of southern naval officers resigned from the United States Navy.

Among the few loyal Navy officers remaining in Washington, John Dahlgren found himself in command of one of the largest military forces capable at the time of defending the District of Columbia from possible secessionist attacks from Maryland and Virginia.

With all the forces he could muster, Dahlgren was expected to protect Washington until northern regiments arrived to defend the capital. Dahlgren hastily mobilized all of the men available to him-in total, fewer than 350 marines, sailors, local militiamen and civilian Washington Navy Yard volunteers-and stationed them around the city. He sent some to fortify the navy yard, while others manned picket posts at bridges into the city, including the Washington Navy Yard Bridge. His sailors and marines also crewed a small naval Botilla to patrol the Potomac River to protect the Union's access to other northern port cities.

The riverine war around the nation's capital commenced almost as soon as President Lincoln was elected, beginning with the formation of a small Botilla under John Dahlgren's command. One of the Borilla's initial tasks was to clear the Potomac River of Confederate mines and land-based strong points, including Alexandria, Virginia, within sight of the Capitol Dome, still under construction. Dahlgren launched 22

the war's first amphibious operation, landing troops at Alexandria, Virginia, and capturing the city with barely a shot fired.

During these frantic early days of the war, Dahlgren established his command center in his office at the Washington Navy Yard, utilizing what was described by Lincoln's secretary, John Hay, as "a brain as active as a high-pressure engine" to defend the city.

Among the first Union troops to arrive in Washington were members of the 71st New York Infantry, arriving on 27 April 1861.

This unit was housed in the Washington Navy Yard as John Dahlgren's guests. While at the navy yard, the New York Militia was temporarily quartered on a steamboat and later in barracks from April to July 1861 ; the unit's officers were housed in John

Dahlgren's residence in the yard.

The New York infantry's arrival allowed Dahlgren sufficient breathing room to direct his creative genius towards other challenges, including producing munitions and making sure naval guns were ready for distribution following the destruction of the Norfolk Navy Yard, which at the time was the Navy's largest facility. The loss of the yard at Norfolk, which was burned on 20 April 1861 to prevent its use by Confederate forces, made the Washington Navy Yard the North's most important asset for naval munitions and ordnance.

The end of the crisis in the capital city created a threat to Dahlgren's command. After the initial threats to the nation's capital subsided, and with the

Potomac River Mine: The South employed its first-known use oftorpedoes, today referred to as "mines," on the Potomac River just below Washington, in July 1861. These early mines were time-fused "current mines, "which simply floated along with the current until they snagged an unsuspecting Union vessel and the burningfoses timed out, exploding the torpedo.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

arrival of other higher-ranking nava l officers, calls came to replace John Dahlgren as the commandant of the Washington Navy Yard with a more senior officer. President Lincoln would hear of no such thing, telling Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, ''1he Yard shall not be taken from [Dahlgren]."

Lincoln's reasoning was simple: D ahlgren had earned it, having taken charge there when no one else could or would, and now, with the danger passed , he could stay as long as he liked.

Lincoln was deeply appreciative of Dahlgren for his efforts in safeguarding Washington. He also valued his advice, and what was described by John Hay as his "wise and witty sai lor-talk ...." The president came to visit the Washington Navy Yard as often as possible to discuss naval matters and witness Dahlgren's many experiments.

Lincoln's visits became so frequent that many weekends were set aside for what was mockingly known by D ahlgren's military rivals as Dahlgren's "Champagne Experiments. " These weekend visits featured the president and other cabinet members or prominent Union leaders, enjoying a champag ne lunch and participating in some sort of sophisticated ballistics exp eriments, with Lincoln often firing off the ordnance himself.

Because of his special access to the W hite House, Dahlgren was widely disliked within naval circles. H e was also disliked because he was among a new breed of naval officers largely confined to a shore posting because of a Navy specialty. By focusing on naval ordnance and ballistics, Dahlgren enjoyed near permanent shore duty, which was seen as a pampered posting. Bur, this was precisely why Lincoln valued D ahlgren, because he was readily available as a sounding board and because his experiments were a pleasant diversion from the wartime burdens of the presidency. As an example, at Lincoln's urging, Dahlgren provided the president and Secretary of State Willi am H. Seward and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton with a two-hour demonstration of the Rafael rapid-firing machine gun on 7 August 1862, followed by a relaxing boat ride on the Potomac.

Unfortunately, not all such demonstrations went as well. One particular exp eriment in November 1862, involving firing off an experimental H yde rocket,

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

As part of his new quality control procedures, D ahlgren had cannons test-fired at an experimental test battery he designed at the Washington Navy Yard. This contemporary engraving shows the interior of his "experimental battery. " This "proofing" battery served as the model for Later Navy proving grounds.

ended in disaster. The rocket exploded on the launch pad, showering the president, Treasury Secretary Simon P. C hase, and Secretary Seward with debris. No one was seriously injured , but D ahlgren immediately cancelled the H yde rocker program and suffered the wrath of Navy Secretary G ideon Welles for nearly killing the president and two of his cabinet colleagues.

Despite the close call, Lincoln demanded that such demonstrations continue.

President Lincoln's love of gadgets and his fascination with D ahlgren's work infuriated Welles, who wrote in his diary that he had repeatedly cautioned Dahlgren not to indulge the pres ident, noting: "[Dahlgren] ass ures me he does restrain the President as far as respect will permit, but his 'restrai nts' are impotent, valueless.

H e is no check on the President, who h as a propensity to engage in matters of the kind, and is liable to be constantly imposed upon by sh arpers [swindlers] and adventurers."

Welles viewed D ahlgren as a shameless flatterer and self-promoter. Despite this, and without referring specifically to D ahlgren by name, Welles did recognize the officer's important contributions to the early war effort when he reported to Lincoln in April 1861 that, "For several months the Navy, without aid, succeeded, more effectively than could have been expected, in keeping (the Potomac River) open for

commercial purposes, and restricting, to a great extent, communications between (secessionists on the) opposite shores .... " This success was largely due to Dahlgren, and Lincoln knew it.

Lincoln and Dahlgren were both frequent visitors to the Navy Department's headquarters building, where they routinely conferred with Navy Secretary Welles and Assistant Secretary Gustavus V. Fox, as well as other naval officers. Lincoln often arrived wearing carpet slippers and a shawl.

Writing of one such visit in April 1863, John D ahlgren observed that the president talked a little about general matters and then jokingly announced, "Well, I will go home now. I had no business here; but as the lawye r said, I had none anywh ere else."

Although Welles was wary of Dahlgren's growing influence with the president, he begrudgingly encouraged it because Dahl gren always tended to keep Welles apprised of what Lincoln was thinking.

Lincoln liked the relationship too, because he used Dahlgren as his unofficial naval aide and constantly bounced ideas rega rding n aval strategy off him. This ultimately created an arrangement that satisfied all three men.

In addition to Welles's distain, other colleagues disapproved of Dahlgren for his politicking. Un ited States Senator James W. Grimes from Iowa, one of the most 23

powerful men in the government, as example, considered D ahlgren "the most co nceited man in the Navy."

In the summer of 1862 , Grimes proposed legislation to reorganize the Navy's management structure, authorizing eight distinct bureaus within the sea serv ice: Yards and Docks, Equipment and Recruiting, Navigation, Construction and Repair, Steam Engineering, Provisions and Clothing, Medicine and Surgery, and Ordnance.

Its passage allowed Welles to take command of the Washington Navy Yard away from D ahlgren, while at the same time giving him more autonomy over the Bureau of Ordnance, which pleased both Lincoln and D ahlgren.

On 22 July 1862, command of the navy yard was given to Captai n Andrew H arwood, but Welles clarified for the captain: "In assigning yo u this command , the D epartment in fo rms yo u that the Ordnance branch at the Washingron Navy Yard will be regarded by yo u as exclusively under the charge of Commander Dahlgren, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. Thi s change will embrace all buildings and appliances required for ordnance purposes; and, the buildings occupied in the Yard by the Lieutenants assigned to Ordnance duty, will also be continued as quarters for them."

Freed from his administrative burdens for the ya rd and for the operations of the Potomac Flotilla, D ahlgren was finally free to devote his full attention developing and producing weapons and ordn a nce for Union victory.

Between 1862 and 1863, John Dahlgren conducted a series of important ballistic tests at test firing pits to determ ine how best to defeat Confederate ironclads.

These tests revealed that by double-charging Dahlgren's 11- and 15-inch cannons, solid shot could penetrate up to nine inches of steel plating. The South never used steel for its armor, making their ironclads that much more vulnerable.

Dahlgren also used his tes t pits to determine the effects of can non fire on iron and steel armor plates using an array of different backing materials, such as thick laye rs of rubber, which were thought to prove helpful in absorbing the impact, but failed to furnish any significant benefi t.

Dahlgren remained in charge of the Bureau of Ordnance until the summer of 1863.

24

A photograph ofDahlgren's Largest gun, the 15-inch sheLL gun, reportedly taken at the Washington Navy Yard, circa 1865.

Dahlgren Goes to Sea John Dahlgren wanted a sea command as a pathway to promotion, and in 1863 he got his wish, thanks to his personal influence with President Lincoln. O n 24 June 1863, Rear Admiral Joh n D ahlgren was detached from the Washington Navy Yard, as well as relieved as the chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, with orders to rel ieve Rear Admiral Samuel F. DuPont in command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

This promotion was against the wishes of Navy Secretary Welles, but President Lincoln had the final say.

Among Dahlgren's new tasks were to continue to effectively blockade the southern coast and attempt to capture Savannah, Georgia, and C harleston, South Carolina, if at all possible. His assignment called for his squadron to blockade nearly 300 miles of coastline, including 21 ports. Savannah was Dahlgren's first major target, bur as the case with DuPont, Dahlgren would be unable to capture Savannah, much less take C harleston.

Throughout his Savannah campaign Dahlgren, like DuPont before him, faced one insurmountable problem- the climate.

On 10 Aug ust 1863, Dahlgren wrote his sister, "Our worst enemy here is the climate.

Officers and men break down daily and have to be sent away."

The water approaches to Savannah also proved a challenge, as they had been planted with submerged mines and obstacles. Dahlgren feared mines, then

called "torpedoes," and for good reason.

More Union vessels were sunk or damaged by torpedoes than by any other means. In all, 50 Union naval vessels were destroyed or severely damaged by mechanical or electrically detonated torpedoes.

Throughout much of the war, the federal governmem had little use for torpedoes, believing them a dishonorable way to fight. The north initially thought so little of torpedoes char federal authorities publicized chat they would hang or shoot anyone engaging in building or placing mines. Northern sentiments at the time dubbed torpedoes "infernal machinations of the enemy," "assassination in its worst form," and "mischievous things."

John Dahlgren believed otherwise.

H e reasoned that if torpedoes could be effectively employed to impede Union Navy access to key southern ports, they could also be used to effectively bottle up Confederate blockade-runners in those same ports, thus rendering them useless to the south. In time he would convince his superiors of their usefulness, and, in 1863, he asked Benjamin M aillefert, a mining engineer and underwater demolitions expert hired by the government to locate and disable Confederate mines, to produce 100 torpedoes of his own design for use by the Union Navy.

Another of Dahlgren's duties in assumin g responsibility for the Southern Blockading Squadron was to support General Sherman's "March to the Sea" in any

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

way possible. Dahlgren used his sailors and marines to create multiple beachheads along the coast to link up with Sherman's army and provide anticipated bases of support whenever and wherever Sherman's army emerged on the coast.

After marching across Georgia to the coast, where he knew John Dahlgren's squadron was waiting to provide supplies and support, Major General William T. Sherman's army occupied Savannah on 23 December 1864, offering it up to President Lincoln as a Christmas present.

Dahlgren was pressed to explain why rhe Navy was n't able to rake Savannah, and he responded meticulously and logically.

Dahlgren was a methodical planner. He appreciated well-drawn and accurate maps and nautical charts, having been derailed to the Office of Coast Survey in the 1830s.

When asked to justify why his efforts to rake Savannah had failed, he responded to the Navy Department on 31January1865 with a lengthy and well-documented report, complete with over 13 drawings, layo uts, and maps of the defenses of Savannah.

Dahlgren's submission concluded: "I think it clear from this that the city was not reducible in any of these directions, save by the united exertions of a competent land and sea force. Bur the shortest and best way was to rake it, as did General Sherman, by entering from the interior, where no attack was expected and no works had been previously prepared."

Part of Dahlgren's Navy report included maps of the southern navigation obstacles that blocked a sea approach to Savannah. Union Navy divers and rugs worked feverish ly to remove as many of the obstacles as possible, but most were defended by Confederate artillery, which greatly impeded the Union work parries' efforts. Almost as soon as Un ion sai lors harvested one obstacle by day, members of the Confederate Torpedo Bureau planted another by night.

In January 1865, Sherman's army moved north. While most of his troops marched overland or took to the rails, part of his army was transported by sea to a point just below C harleston, where it prepared ro attack that city.

With Sherma n's army squeezing Charlesron by land, on 16 February 1864, Dahlgren believed that the time had come ro deploy Mailleferr's rorpedoes, writing: SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

"Having witnessed the action of your time rorpedoes , I think they may be serviceable in operating against the rebels at Charlesron and elsewhere."

The decision by both the north and the south ro use rorpedoes introduced a new concept in the strategy in naval warfare, one that remains in use roday.

Dahlgren's Great Frustration Charlesron proved to be the Union's toughest coastal port ro assail, much ro Dahlgren's regret. Ir was one on the most heavily fortified port cities in the south, including having heavily mined shipping channels . General P. G. T. Beauregard, the city's chief defender, used every means available to thwart Union progress, including coastal fortifications, submerged torpedoes, floating and submerged obstacles, and rorpedo boats, ro fend off every attempt to attack the city by sea. These defenses included the use of H. L. Hunley, the first submarine ro be used successfully in combat, sinking USS Housatonic off Charlesron on 17 February 1864.

Heavy Columbiad cannons also protected C h arlesron. While such big guns were a significant determinant ro the Union Navy, General Beauregard preferred ro put his faith in the destructive power of submerged rorpedoes, saying that each rorpedo was worth five of his big shore-mounted Columbiad cannons.

On 17-18 February 1865, Confederate troops evacuated Charleston after enduring four yea rs of a blockade, including 567 days of continuous attacks by sea. The final fa ll of Charlesron signaled an end tO the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

On 24 February 1865, Secretary Welles informed Dahlgren: "The Department is of an opinion that the fa ll of Fort Fisher and Charlesron will enable it ro reduce the expense of the maintenance of the Navy."

By that rime, 471 Union vessels were engaged in the massive blockade of the entire southern coast. In May 1865, the Un ion's blockading squadrons were cur in half, and at month 's end, further reductions were made, cutting the entire naval fleet to less than 100 vessels. On 23 June 1865, Dahlgren received orders from Secretary Welles ro "haul down your flag, and regard yo urself as detached from the command of the Sourh Atlantic squadron, and awaiting orders." That June, the North and South

Atlantic Squadrons were merged and renamed as the Atlantic Squadron. By July 1865, the number of ships was further reduced ro 29 warships, spread out along the Atl antic and Gu lf coasts.

As the naval war waned, ships were once again deployed around the globe tO protect American commercial interests.

This included the reestablishment of naval squadrons in E urope, Brazil, the Pacific and East Indian Ocean. These reformed foreign squadrons typically comprised the Navy's most modern steamers.

These new foreign squadrons were far-ranging. The Brazilian squadron, for example, consisted of ten warships that patrolled the entire coast of South America, as well as the coast of Africa. The Pacific squadron, initially comprising eleven ships, cruised the entire Pacific Ocean. The European squadron, consisting of seven ships, roamed the coasts of Europe and North Africa.

On 9 June 1865, John Dahlgren was ordered back to Washington . Happy to return to the Washington Navy Yard, he was also pleased with his accomplishments, recording in his diary on 17 June, "And so ends a command of two years of one of the largest fleets ever assembled under American colors-as many as 96 [ships] at one time." By that time, with Lincoln's death in April, Dahlgren lost any further leverage over Gideon Welles. After the war, Welles assigned Dahlgren ro command the South Pacific squadron in 1867. He served in the Pacific until 1869, the year Welles left office as Secretary of the Navy. With Welles gone, Dahlgren was once agai n placed in charge of the Bureau of Ordnance back in Washingron . He died of heart fai lure in 1870 at the Washington Navy Yard, and was buried in his hometown, Philadelphia . ..t James H. Bruns is the director of the National Museum of the United States Navy, located in the Washington Navy Yard. The museum is open to the public, Monday-Friday, 9AM-5PM; weekends, 10AM-5PM. The Navy Yard is a secure military facility; visitors should call ahead to verifj what identification they need and what restrictions are in place during the time oftheir intended visit. (805 Kidder Breese Street SE, Washington Navy Yard, DC 20374; Ph. 202 433-4882; www. history. navy. millmuseums/NationalMuseuml org8-1.htm)

25

Slave-ship Wrecked off Cape Town The Slave Wrecks Project and the New National Museum of African American History & Culture

T

by Deirdre O'Regan, with Fleur Paysour and Abigail Benson

wenty-four days into its 7,000-mile voyage, the Portuguese slave ship Sao Jose Paquete d'Africa had just rounded the Cape of Good Hope and altered course to the north and west as she entered the South Atlantic. According to her captain, Manuel J oao, they tacked in closer to shore seeking protection from the strong winds and rough seas that kicked up as they rounded the Cape-bur they were too close.Just 100 yards off the beach at Clifton, just outside Cape Town, the ship ran hard aground on submerged rocks and began breaking up on the reef Packed in her hold were more than 400 Africans who h ad been captured and sold into slavery in Mozambique. The ship was bound for South America, where slaves were in demand to work the sugar plantations in Brazil. Because slaves were considered a valuable commodity, the crew made considerable efforts to save the human cargo, but only about half their number survived. The other 212 Africans were lost with the ship. In time, their story was lost altogether.

The Sao Jose wrecked so close to the beach near Cape Town, South Africa, that her crew was able to alert p eople ashore via cannon shot to signal for help.

Nearly two centuries later, a group of treasure hunters found remains of the shipwreck, but it was misidentified as a Dutch vessel from 1756 and the site was not pursued for an archaeological survey.

A report was filed with the National Monuments Council, and people, for the most part, forgot about it.

Enter the formu lation of the Slave Wrecks Project, a collaboration between

Table Bay, Cape Town, Table Bay as depicted in the 1790s by Thomas Luny (1759-1837).

The slave ship Sao Jose Paquete d 'Africa wrecked very close to this location in 1794.

26

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

the Smithsonian National M useum of African American H istory and C ulture (NMAAHC), the Iziko Museums of South Africa, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, George Washington University, and a core group of international partners. The Slave Wrecks Project was created in 2008 with the initial goal of assisting developing p ar tners in the advancement of cultural resource management programs ro preserve and protect

irreplaceable heritage related to the historical slave trade and Africa's global diasporas. Since that time, the organization has expanded the geographic scope of its mission to reflect the global reach and impact of the African slave trade, with added focus on sites in the Americas.

Around the same time, plans to build the National M useum of African American History and C ulture on the National Mall in Washington were coming together, and

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PLAN OF LOWER D[Ck WIT H THE noWACE Of 2'8.!: SLAV ES I .J O or THU IE 8 EINC STOW ED U!!.2!..R TH E 6HlLVU A& SHEWN IN flC URC D Ul(;UfU'.J_

its founding director, Lonnie Burch, wanted to include artifacts from a slave-ship wreck site as part of what he was sure would be a compelling exhibit at the new museum.

The problem was that, he discovered, no slave ship h ad ever been discovered and excavated. Purists will argue that this is not quite accurate. Four wrecks of slave ships have been found, but none of them was actually engaged in slaving when it wrecked.

In the m eantime, Jaco Bosh off, an archaeologist from the Iziko Museums in Cap e Town, made two discoveries that would renew interest in the shipwreck off the beach at Clifton: On subsequent dives to the site in 2010 and 2011 , Boshoff and his team fo und iron ballast and copper fastenings and sheathing, which ruled out the previous Dutch-ship theory-the use of copper on ships' hulls did nor come into common practice until later in the 18'h century. Time spent in the archives paid off as well, when Boshoff discovered the records from the inquest of Captain Joao, in which he describes the loss of his ship.

Further archival research in Portugal produced a document staring that the Sao Jose had loaded iron ballast before she departed for Mozambique; bars of iron ballas t were some of the first artifacts found and recovered from the shipwreck site.

Copper fastenings, used to bolt the ship's timbers together, and copper sheathing, used to p rotect the hull below the waterline from teredo worm damage, were both recovered from the Sao Jose slave ship wreck. ,_,,,.,,.,No. .....,.,,.. ,,.,,.,.,.

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Stowage of the British slave ship Brookes, circa 1789. Examining this diagram of how slavers arranged their human cargo below decks makes it easy to see how so many would be lost when the ship wrecked. Enslaved people from parts ofEast Africa had long been brought overland to the Cape of Good Hope to be sold and shipped across the Atlantic. In the 1790s, slavers began shipping their human cargoes directly from ports in East Africa. The Sao Jose was one of the earliest slaving voyages sailing the route between Mozambique and Brazil, which would develop into a massive trade that would continue well into the 19th century.

Voyages often took two to three months, and death among the Africans shackled in the hold was rampant. More than 400, 000 East Africans are estimated to have traveled this route between 1800 and 1865.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

27

The Sao Jose started its voyage in Lisbon, where it took on 1,500 bars of iron ballast. These iron bars were recovered from the wreck site and have been conserved. They will be exhibited at the opening ofthe National Museum ofAfrican American History and Culture.

Between the physical evidence on the seafloor and documentary evidence coming out of the archives, the Slave Wrecks Project stepped up its efforts to assist Boshoff's work. Full documentation of the site began in 2013, with archival research continuing

in archives from Europe to Mozambique and Cape Town ro Brazil.

In 2014 and 2015, some of the first remains of the shipwreck were recovered through a targeted retrieval process, in accordance with archaeological and pres-

ervation best practices. Archaeologists used CT scan technology to identify the remains of shackles on the wreck site. This aspect has proved a difficult undertaking, as these artifacts on the seafloor are in a fragile state, and, in the 200 years the ship has been underwater in a particularly turbulent environment, extreme iron corrosion has taken place.

With the opening of the NMAAHC planned for September 2016, the lziko Museums and Slave Wrecks Project recently sent artifacts from the Sao Jose shipwreck-including the iron ballast bars, remnants of shackles, and a wooden rigging block-to Washington to be featured in the museum's inaugural exhibition, Slavery and Freedom. The artifacts will remain on loan to the museum for ten yea rs, while archaeological and archival work continues.

Despite the rapid proliferation of historical, anthropological, and archaeological studies of vario us aspects of the global African slave trade, it is remarkable how few archaeological studies of the remains of the ships engaged in that trade have been conducted to date. Over 590 vessels engaged in the slave trade are known to have been

Maritime archaeologists on the site ofthe Sao Jose slave ship wreck, near Cape Town, South Africa. The site is located just offthe beach at Clifton, in a turbulent underwater environment, making documentation and recovery of artifacts a difficult process.

28

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

shipwrecked during the four centuries (16'h-19'h) during which the African slave trade ran its course. Many others whose fates remain unknown undoubtedly became part of the archaeological record as a result of being lost at sea. Yet material evidence of the maritime slave trade has been collected from only four shipwreck sites. On two of these sites-the Henrietta Marie in the Florida Keys and the Whydah off Cape Cod, Massachusetts-all or most of the work was conducted by treasurehunting teams that collected artifacts in an ad-hoc and largely unsystematic manner without appropriate reference or concern with context or association. As intriguing as the findings have been, because the context of the process of searching for commercially valuable items did not conform to accepted archaeological standards, the usefulness of these material remains is greatly curtailed.

The only other completed studies of known slavers are that of the Danish wreck Fredensborg, and the fames Matthews (in Australia), carried out using accepted methods of archaeological and historical documentation, contextualization, and preservation. However, not one of the wrecks examined to date involved a vessel in the actual "slaving" leg of the trade. The Henrietta Marie and the Fredensborg wrecked after having sold their slaves in the Caribbean, and while carrying other cargo back to their respective ports of origin in Europe.

Meanwhile, the Whydah,james Matthews, and the Queen Anne's Revenge wrecked after having been converted to other ends.

In contrast, at least five of the most promising of the wreck sites of initial interest to this project involve ships that foundered while carrying slaves. The rigorous study of any one of these wrecks would thus represent a significant contribution to the study of the global slave trade. The scientific documentation of wrecks such as these may offer unique opportunities to study specific aspects of the global slave trade, about which too little is known . .:t

Fleur Paysour and Abigail Benson are the media specialists at the Smithsonian Institution and handle communications for both NMAAHC and the Slave Wrecks Project. (www.nmaahc.si. edu)

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

Opening on 24 September-the National Museum of African American History and Culture The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It was established by an Act of Congress in 2003, foll~wing decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African Amencans.

To date, the museum has collected more than 36,000 artifacts. When the NMAAHC opens this fall, it will be the nineteenth and newest museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian broke ground for the museum in February of2012 on a five-acre site on Constitution Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets, NW, Washington, DC. The 400,000-square-foot building has five levels above ground and four below, with exhibition galleries, an education center, a theater, a cafe and a store, as well as staff offices. Among the building's signature spaces are the Contemplative Court, a waterand light-filled memorial area that offers visitors a quiet space for reflection; the Central Hall, the primary public space in the museum; and a reflecting pool at the museum's south entrance, with calm waters meant to invite all to approach.

The museum also features a series of openings, or "lenses," throughout the exhibition spaces that frame views of the Washington Monument, the White House, and other Smithsonian museums on the National Mall. These framed perspectives will serve to remind visitors that the museum presents a view of American history through the lens of the African-American experience.

The museum will open with eleven inaugural exhibitions feat uring some of the more than 36,000 artifacts collected since the museum's conception in 2003. The collections are designed to illustrate the major periods of African American histor~.

Highlights include: a segregation-era Southern Railway car(~. 1920); N~t Turners Bible (c. 1830s); Michael Jackson's fedora (c. 1992); a slave cabin from Edisto Island, SC, plantation (c. early 1800s); Harriet Tubman's hymnal (c. 1876); works of art

by Charles Alston, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden and ~enry 0. Tanner: and,, of course, the Slavery and Freedom exhibition, featuring am facts from the Sao Jose shipwreck.

For more information about the museum, visit nmaahc.si.edu. (NMAA HC, 1400 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, between Madison and Constztutzon Avenues, and 14th and 15th Streets, NW lhere are two entrances to the museum: one on Madison Avenue and another on Constitution Avenue.)

29

Whales' Tales: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the American Quest for the Northwest Passage

by John Grady rom rhe end of rhe Mexican War in 1848 umil rhe srarr of rhe nexr American conflicr in 1861, Lieurenam Marrhew Fontaine Maury used his internarional repurarion in maririme affairs as superimendem of rhe Narional Observatory to shepherd rhe Navy imo an unprecedemed age of exploration. Though bound to a desk in Washington from a disabiliry incurred in a sragecoach accidem, Maury "sailed rhe globe by proxy and pen." 1 Maury did more rhan any ocher individual ro ensure char rhe fifreen naval exploring expedirions undertaken during his warch would ser our wirhour rhe delay or fuzziness of mission and command char had plagued rhe narion's firsr grand explorarion, rhe "Sourhern Ocean" expedirion, as ir was firsr known, evemually led by Lieurenant Charles Wilkes. No expedirions better demonstrare how rhe Unired Scares Navy underrook rhese missions, despire a parsimonious Congress's willingness to invesr in explorarion, rhan chose to rhe Arcric. The imperus to send naval expedirions to rhe Arcric sremmed from rhe highly publicized imernarional efforts to find rhe remains of Sir John Franklin and his crew, who had lefr England in 1845 on a mission to find rhe elusive Norrhwesr Passage, never ro be heard from again. While rhe search for Franklin was rhe scared goal, chose involved in rhe planning and operarions were jusr as-if nor more-imeresred in rhe Unired Scares winning rhe race to find a navigable sea roure across rhe top of North America.

Matthew Fomaine Maury became heavily invesred in chis quesr.

How did Maury, who grew up far from rhe coasr (in Tennessee), end up as rhe driving force behind American naval explorarion? Ir began wirh rhe stories of advemure and derring-do oflife in rhe Navy char his older brorher John regaled him wirh as a boy. John Minor Maury had particularly rhrilling stories to bring home from sea. He had survived two years marooned on a remote island in the Pacific before being rescued by Captain David Porter in USS Essex during the War of 1812.

Porter was in the Pacific on a mission to decimate the British whaling Beet, which

F

30

along his own rale of a great white whale he had seen in the Pacific that he called "Mocha Dick."

Maury's seagoing naval career was cur short when he was left permanently lame by a sragecoach accident in 1839. He was pur in charge of rhe Navy's Depoe of Cham and Instrumems in Washington, where he plunged himself into the study of mereorology, navigarion, and oceanography.

When the office was changed to rhe US National Observatory, Maury was made superimendem.

During this rime, Maury began compiling data and observations on ~ prevailing currents and winds for a given ~ season of the year from the hundreds of 8 o ship's logbooks stored in rhe Depor's library and ser up a sysrem for shipmasrers to report on wind, currems, and other observations Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury, USN, 1853 rhey made ar sea. Seeking support from he did quite successfully. His efforts both Congress, in 1847 Maury wrote to John destroyed the economy related to the British Quincy Adams, then serving in rhe House whaling industry and sem a clear message of Representatives, to explain that he could to London that its ships were not safe from create track charts chat would serve "to American sea power anywhere around rhe generalize rhe experience of navigators in globe. John Maury was second in command such a manner chat each may have before of one of the seized whalers during Porter's him, at a glance, rhe experience of all."

1814 showdown with two British warships Maury presemed the idea of rhe charts in a battle off Valparaiso, Chile. to rhe Navy hierarchy as a navigational tool When younger brorher Matthew came and an opportuniry to free Americans from of age, he wem off to sea as a nineteen-year- rheir reliance on British-made charts. old midshipman in the Navy and would Having published a book on navigarion add his own experiences to the family trove chat rhe Navy was currently using aboard of sea stories. its ships, he made an easy sell on borh In 1833, Matthew Maury was ordered counts. Bur whar the Narional Observatory to report to the frigate USS Potomac, under began producing wasn'r rhe usual chart the command of John Downes. Also with hydrographic d ata, as historian onboard the Potomac was newspaper editor Penelope Hardy has nored, but instead and explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds, who showed "accumulated wind, current, had been picked up by Downes in temperarures, and ocher biological data Valparaiso and was now serving as his graphically." The emphasis on graphics to secretary fo r the remainder of Potomac's srudy "rhe phenomena of rhe ocean" made hisroric circumnavigarion. Maury and rhese charts more understandable and Reynolds became friends, as their shared useful to mariners, ship owners, insurance imerests were far-ranging and similar-the underwrirers, and sciemists. By the fall of need for a great American naval sciemific 1849, the observatory had sent to its expedition and the recognition of whaling's engraver eight 36-by-24-inch sheets for track charts covering the North Atlantic centrality to economic well-being.

Maury, an invererate note-keeper, Ocean. In rhe years leading up to the Civil shared his observations on whales in the War, the observatory would publish "unknown west." In turn, Reynolds, who addirional track charts for the South would lacer become rhe most vocal salesman A tlantic, rhe Indian Ocean, the North for American naval explorarion, passed Pacific, and finally the South Pacific.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

Collectively, these charts would become "Series A." Other chart series would follow, including "Series F," the Whale Chart, which Maury deemed critical to the efforts to find Franklin and the No rthwest Passage, which had become a priority for both the British and the Americans.

While the search for Franklin and his party was the official primary goal, not to mention good for publicity, the ulterior motive to beat G reat Britain in the race to find the Northwest Passage wo uld drive Maury 's research and work. His methodology could not h ave been more different from how the British would pursue the same goal.

It all began with the right whale.

Maury asked the whalers if the right whales they chased in the Southern Hemisphere were the same species they observed in the Northern Hemisphere? No, the whalemen said. They reported that the whales differed slightly in size and color and that they had never seen a right whale within a thousand miles of the equarnr. With that, Maury concluded that the equator is a "wall of fire," through which no whale could pass.

What about Atlantic versus the Pacific?

Was the species of whale they hunted in the Bering Strait the same as those in Baffin's Bay? Their answers were more equivocal. "So far as we ca n judge, they are the same fi sh ." Although he termed it a "so-called Northwest Passage," Maury laid out the line of inquiry h e intended to pursue-if he could secure fundin g.

Maury also benefitted from h aving fam ily in New York who were active players in the cotton trade. Their livelihoods depended on knowledge of shipping and sea routes, and they could provide current news on maritime practices and waterfront gossip, which was not to be dismissed. His cousins' business connections on both sides of the Atlantic would prove tremendously helpful in developing charts and Sailing Directions, which delineated "steamer lanes" to help ships avoid collisions at sea.

Maury's work was starting to generate interest within the business community of New York. His cousin relayed the following in an April 1851 letter: "I saw a paper of yo urs about Whales in one of our d aily Journals lately & Mr. Hurlbut [E . D .

Hurlbut & Co.] came to see me on charge to say som ething about yo ur theory or opinion being correct & went on to tell me how successful (his I think) ships had been in Whaling in the vicinity of Behring's Straits-how they went to work anchored under a ridge & the whales merely sounded & then remained still without turning or kicking about until they were killed for fear of striking their fins or tails agai nst the lee." 2 Public financing of naval explorations of any kind was far down the list of priorities on Capitol Hill in the post-Mexican War years. Congress was tied in knots trying to decide controversial questions on how to m anage new territories won from Mexico and, specifically, the question of whether they wo uld be slave or free territory.

Complicating matters in Washington was the d eath of President Zachary Taylor, putting the executive branch in a state of flu x.

Nevertheless, as perceptive as Maury was at reading the politics of his time, he wrote: "Seeing that water runs through Behring's Straits from the Pacific, as well

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as around rhe Capes, into rhe Atlantic, where, therefore, is the escape-current from the Atlantic?"

To generate interest and, importantly, funding for expeditions, Maury looked to the British model created by Sir John Barrow, the long-serving Second Secretary to the Admiralty. Barrow had a keen interest in Arctic voyages ro find the Northwest Passage and promoted multiple expeditions over his long tenure with rhe Admiralty. To man these expeditions, however, Barrow looked down his nose at whalers, deeming them unfit to lead or command expeditions. He wanted navy men-officers who had served heroi cally in battles from Copenhagen to Trafalgar to New Orleans. In peacetime, these naval heroes had been rudely dumped ashore at half pay and faced dank prospects. Years after Waterloo, many were eager to prove their worth anew.

Officers such as Commander John Ross, Lieutenant William Edward Parry, Captain David Buchan, and Lieutenant John Franklin "were hand-picked and certain to succeed."9 As heroic as they might have been in naval combat and rejoicing to be back on full pay when called to lead an expedition, none had spent much time in rhe Arctic. By restricting the field ro naval officers, Barrow disregarded rhe potential expertise of whalers , men like W illiam Scoresby, who had navigated waters in the Arctic for years and understood what it rook to survive and succeed there.

Barrow ordered his commanders to write about their experiences in hopes of inspiring the Royal Society to persuade Parliament to spend more on the navy, and the navy to spend more of its budget on exploration. Barrow fanned the flames of public interest in exploration through his own writings in the literary and political journal Quarterly Review. He understood the power of publicity from the popularity enjoyed by Baron Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian geographer and botanist who chronicled his journeys through Larin America to wide acclaim.

It was a model Maury would follow religiously on the other side of the Atlantic, starting with the publication of the Narrative ofthe United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea in 1850 by his friend W illiam Lynch, who had

32

commanded rhe expedition . Maury focused his at tention on promoting and planning for the first Grinnell Expedition, which set out in 1850 to search for Franklin. Named for Henry Grinnell, who underwrote the costs, the expedition was first commanded

by Lieutenant Edwin J. De H aven, a veteran of rhe US Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes and considered an authority on meteorology. Maury knew him well, as De Haven served for a rime as an aide at the observatory, and endorsed him as "the best man for the position."

The superintendent had signaled his intention to use whaling information to explore the Arctic Ocean in a letter to von Humboldt in Germany, when he sent him a copy of his navy charts. In the accompanying letter, he cryptically noted that in the Arctic there was "occasionally a water communication from [Bering] strait to [Davis] strait." While the British Admiral dismissed the Americans as amateurs for their reliance on data from the whaling fleer, Maury pressed on with the work on the Whale Chart. He was convinced that whalers could be central to the Navy's ability to become a rising power by providing firsthand knowledge of distant waters. He also boasted rhar the Whale Chart's value would prove immense to a fishery rhar draws "annually from rhe depths of rhe oceans, property, in real value of which far exceeds that of the gold mines of California." The whaling chart, however, was singled our for derision by the landbased scientific community, who viewed rhe collection of whaling logbooks as being filled more with "fish stories" than with reliable information.

Maury, De H aven, and the Navy were fortunate to have Eli sh a Kent Kane detached from Coast Survey duty to serve as the expedition's medical officer. The short, slender man was already a wellknown war hero when he reported to D e Haven in New York. H e had been seriously wounded by a lance while trying to deliver diplomatic dispatches to General Winfield Scott during the Mexican war, bur his taste for advenrure was well-known and ex traordinary. He had climb ed the Himalayas, explored craters in the Philippines, ventured our to archaeological digs on the Upper Nile, and set out to report on W es t African slave marke rs, bur was

Elisha Kent Kane, MD

thwarted in this last effort by fever he picked up along rhe African coast. His health-the lingering effects of a childhood bout with rheumatic fever-remained questionable, bur his value to the expedition would outweigh any of these concerns.

Historian Michael Robinson summed up Kane as a "man of many talents" with almost "perfect pitch" in dealing with the audiences of his rime.

With Kane on the crew, a man possessing "zeal, intelligence , and perseverance," the public felt confident rhar the expedition was bound to succeed. The first expedition returned in 1851 almost empty-handed, and Congress refused to pay for rhe publication ofirs results. Bitter soup, to be sure, for Maury and Kane. De Haven was too ill from the effects of snow blindness to continue. He also had fobbed off on Kane the chore of writing up the acco unt of the expedition.

In the meanrime, Maury received reports from mariners that harpoons thrown by whalers in Greenland had been found in whales killed in the Bering Strait.

Likewise, harpoons from whalers in the Pacific were pulled from whales taken in rhe North Atlantic. Maury was eager to get another shot at the Northwest Passage.

With public interest in the fare of rhe lost Franklin expedition still running high, he could use rhar as the hook to gain support for a second voyage. The superintendent also adopted a new explanation on why the

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

passage was proving so elusive. The "open sea in the Arctic Ocean is probably not always in the same place, as the Gulf Stream is not always in one place." 3 The end of government-financed expeditions during tight budget times and roiling congressional distraction would not mean the end of exploration, only that the funding would have to rely more on private sources.

The New York-based American Geographical and Statistical Society, loosely patterned on the Royal Geographical Society, proved the perfect vehicle. When the government hesitated, the Society became the conduit for Maury, its "strategic adviser," to employ for maritime exploration.

Its members were men of station and wealth. Henry Grinnell, the financier of the Franklin expeditions, became a longtime officer. John Aspinwall served as a vice president, and his partner John Howland of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company was an active member, as was the restless Cyrus Field, the driving force in the laying of the transAtlantic telegraph cable. Notable editors and writers were counted among its founders: George Bancroft, the historian, former Navy secretary, and diplomat; Charles Dana, soon to be the editor of the New York Sun; Henry Raymond, founder of the New York Times; and Freeman Hunt, editor of the business publication Hunt's

appeal was so effective that the Smithsonian secretary pledged more equipment than proposed for the first attempt, and the Coast Survey would do likewise. The endorsement of the American Philosophical Society followed.

When Congress ignored Representative Hamilton Fish's request for a second expedition, Navy Secretary John Pendleton Kennedy approved the transfer of provisions and kept Kane and his men on active duty in orders received in December 1852. No one publicly challenged the maneuver. 4 With Kane as commander, a surprising selection to many because he was a physician and not a line officer, the Second Grinnell Expedition set out from New York in May 1853 aboard the 144-ton brigantine, the Advance. Expectations of finding Franklin and the Northwest Passage were high. Little did they know that events in the Arctic had beaten them to both.

To the expedition's lasting credit, the meteorological data collected was meticulously recorded. In addition, Kane, a superb artist, provided a powerful visual record of the expedition. Like others before them, Kane's men came up empty in their efforts to find the Franklin expedition.

But the secondary mission, the one dearest to Kane's and Maury's hearts, would crown the expedition's achievements. As summer 1854 began, Kane sent a sledge party northward. After days on the ice Merchant Magazine.

Like Maury, Kane was bursting to take looking for the boundary between the land another shot at the Arctic. To keep interest and water under the ice, two of the crew alive, Kane produced the very popular book reached the top of a 480-foot cliff, later The US Grinnell Expedition in Search ofSir named Point Constitution. From this john Franklin and hit the lecture circuit, vantage point, they saw "a boundless waste theorizing that Franklin had drifted into of water" stretching out forty miles towards the "Open Polar Sea." Maury's ambitions, the North Pole. Kane believed they had Kane's eagerness, and the Society's influence found the "open polar sea." converged in "a mutuality of interest in What Kane's men likely spied was one naval exploration on the seafaring frontier." of the waterways that form a Northwest Grinnell was onboard for a second try.

Passage, but it was the Royal Navy's LieuKane was deft , determined, and tenant Robert McClure who is credited for diligent in his dealings with the scientific discovering it first. On his second expedicommunity, with Congress, and men of tion to search for Franklin, he and his crew influence and means . He had served in the in HMS Investigator crossed the region from Coast Survey, a plus with Alexander Dallas west to east, first aboard ship and then over Bache, its long-serving superintendent and the ice in sledges.

McClure was fered back in Great Britgreat grandson of Benjamin Franklin.

Kane's father was a federal judge and active ain. He was knighted and awarded considin the American Philosophical Society. Both erable reward money by Parliament. A New Bache and the Smithsonian's first secretary, York Times reporter concurred that McJoseph Henry, were fellow members. Kane's Clure had found the passage, and while his

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

article noted McClure's achievement and included a nod to Kane and his crew, he also wrote: "It is to be hoped that we shall not have many more Arctic Expeditions ...

[They have] resulted in a great increase of human knowledge and the gratification of a wholesome curiosity." 5 They also left a trail of starvation, madness, and death.

The Age of Polar Exploration would, of course, continue. History remembers well the feats of men who ventured to the Arctic, like Hudson, Peary, Franklin, Ross, Amundsen, and others, not to mention the heroics of those who sought the South Pole.

But the regular work of the whalers and their contributions to discovery and science would get no credit at all. While M atthew Fontaine Maury clearly understood their valuable role in the mission , the last word, perhaps, belongs to whaleman William Scoresby in a 1817 letter to his friend Sir Joseph Banks, the great natural scientist who had sailed with Captain James Cook: "Had I been so fortunate as to have had the command of an expedition for discovery, instead of fishing, I have little doubt but that the mys tery attached to the existence of a northwest passage might have been resolved."6 ,!,

john Grady served as managing editor of Navy Times and has been published previously in Naval History, the New York Times' Disunion series, the Times' collection ofessays on the Civil War, and the Civil War Monitor's Front Line. He is a contributor to the Naval History and Heritage Command's Civil War blog. This article is based on aspects ofhis book, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Father of Oceanography: A Biography, 18061873, published in 2015 by McFarland &

Co., Inc ..

NOTES 1

David G raham Burnett, Matthew Fontaine Maury's "SeaofFire"(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005), 129.

2 Matthew

Maury (cousin) ro MFM, 30 April 1851 , letter and tran scriprion by R . W. Hooper Jr., The Pathfinder Papers (private co llection).

3 Matthew Fonta ine Maury, Physical Geography ofthe Sea, H arper & Brothers, New York, 1855), 148.

4 Harold D. Langley, "Kennedy," in Paolo Coletta, American Secretaries ofthe Navy, 1775-1913, 1:271.

5 Anon., "Th e Arctic Voyagers," New York Times, 13 October 1855.

6 Robert Ed mund Scoresby Jackson, The Life of William Scoresby, (Lo ndon and Edinburg: T. Nelson and So n, 1861), 123-24.

33

En Plein Air

by Neal Hughes

aiming "en plein air" is a French term, which means to paint "in the open air." The plein air movement is credited to the French impressionists of the nineteenth century, although there were other schools of artists at that time who were involved in this prac tice. Advances in technology, such as the development of modern rube paints and man-made pigments, made it easier for artists to travel with their supplies and a lot easier and less time consuming to set up and prepare to paint on location .

P

Port Clyde Harbor, 12 x 16 inches, oil on linen (painted at the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport for the "behind the canvas series"demonstration.

This painting will be featured at the Williamsburg Gallery during ASMA conference in September 2 016).

Uncovered, 12 x 16 inches, oil on linen (painted during Plein Air Painters ofthe Maritime Gallery, 2 0115, at Mystic Seaport Museum).

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SEA HIISTORY 156, AUTUMN201 6

Night Light, 12 x 16 inches, oil on Linen (painted during the 2015 Plein Air Easton Competition, Easton, Maryland).

Boatyard, 11x14 inches, oil on Linen Today, this impressionistic approach is taking on the status of another "movement" across the United States, with more artists painting in the open air than ever before. Numerous plein air competitions and festivals are scheduled each year, with many artists participating who make their living competing at these events.

My personal journey has been that of an illustrator, who transitioned to the world of fine art and more recently as an artist whose output is mostly done outdoors. My work is about seeing the beauty in creation-making a connection between art and nature. I am constantly exploring new ways of working outdoors, while attempting to share my personal vision of the subject I am painting. Avoiding copying nature like a camera, I strive to make a personal interpretation or convey

SEA HISTORY 156,AUTUMN 2016

35

Island Fog, 14 x 28, oil on linen. I was camping at Warren Island State Park in Penobscot Bay, Maine, and awakened to the island completely surrounded in fog. lhis painting depicts a schooner that was anchored nearby, with Sp ruce Island in the background. my impression of the subject. M y goal- and the job of every artist-is to elevate the everyday and the ordinary and to allow the viewer to see beauty that might otherwise be missed . My hope is that all who see my work will experience the joy and beauty that I experience while creating it. I feel very blessed to be an artist. And as Plato once put it, I believe that "when we experience beauty, we are given a glimpse of the divine." -!,

"lhere are certain advantages and disadvantages to working outdoors. lhe biggest challenge is the quickly changing conditions and lighting. lhis can also be an advantage in that you see the subject in different lighting and can pick the best lighting situation for your painting, but r-..-----------~---.----------- most of the time I kn ow what lighting I am after and do not make changes to shadows, etc. when the light changes. I have worked on sustained paintings, where I will work on the same canvas for a number ofdays in a row, at the same time ofday if necessary. lhis is especially helpful if it is a large painting or complicated subject to avoid "chasing the light" as the sun moves across the sky. Very often, I will start a morning painting and a different p ainting in the afternoon and will work on both for consecutive days. lhis practice also applies to a sunrise or sunset painting, when the light changes really fast.

Nocturnes present a different challenge: I sometimes will start a nocturne at twilight so that I can see things that may become unclear or not visible at all once it goes completely dark. For example, ifyou begin painting when has already gone totally dark, you may not see the trees on the horiz on or the edge of a roofagainst the sky or other elements that might be helpful in your composition.''

Checkup, II x 14, oil on linen (Cape Porpoise, Maine).

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SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

Neal Hughes is a graduate of the Philadelphia College ofArt (University of the Arts) and resides in the historic town of Moorestown, New j ersey. A forme r illustrator, he has been painting professionally for more than thirty years. His paintings have been accepted into many local and nationaljuried exhibitions, where he has won more awards for both plein air works and paintings in oil than we can print here. Ofparticular note, however, was his entry in the Utrecht 60th Anniversary Art Competition in 2009, which won the top prize out ofover 12, 000 works. His art has been featured in Plein Air Magazine, American Artist Magazine, and other publications. Neal Hughes was elected a Fellow ofthe American Society ofMarine Artists and is also a member ofMid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association.

National Marine Art Conference The National Marine Art Conference gets underway on 8 September in Williamsburg, Virginia, where Neal Hughes will give a presentation on working en plein air and discuss his approach to quickly capture the essence of the subject, while emphasizing strong

Fish Houses, 18 x 24 inches, oil on linen (Monhegan Island, Maine).

Up For Repairs, 12 x 20, oil on linen (painted during Plein Air Easton 2015, Easton, Maryland). design elements to ensure a successful painting. Len Tantillo, John Stobart, and other award-winning contemporary artists will also present at the multi-day conference.

ASMA will open its 17th National Exhibition on 9 September, the second day of the conference, at the Muscarelle Museum in Williamsburg. Included in the exhibition is Neal Hughes's Island Fog (rop of page, at left).

You can learn more about the artist and view his works online at www. nealhughes. com. To learn more about the American Society ofMarine Artists, visit www. americansociety ofmarineartists. com.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

37

Maritte Art News Michael Kahtfs "Photographs of the Sea'' at Mystic Seaport There is still rime to catch rhe special exhibition (and sale) of internationally renowned photographer Michael Kahn's Photographs of the Sea at the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport, until 25 September. A practitioner of traditional techniques, Kahn travels extensively to photograph the world 's finest boars and pristine seascapes. Using his 1950sera camera, he collects images on black-and-white film and produces luminous silver gelatin prints in his darkroom. He uses a printmaking technique that incorporates an elaborate, predetermined combination of exposure sequence, exposure time, and varied enlarger settings. "Michael Kahn's old-school technique united with his distinctive sense of form, vision, and composition has made him one of the memorable photographers of our rime," said Monique Foster, the director of the Maritime Gallery. Kahn's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world and has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes Life, Coastal Living, Architectural Digest, Sailing Magazine, WoodenBoat, and Historic Preservation, among many others.

He is also the author of three books: Over the Dunes (2015), The Spirit ofSailing (2004), and Brandywine (1990). For more information on the Maritime Gallery and other exhibitions, visit www.mysricseaport.org/gallery.

J. Russell Jinishian Gallery Aututttn Marine Art Exhibitions National Maritime Historical Society advisor and a leading authority on contemporary marine arr, ]. Russell Jinishian invites Sea History readers to two new marine arr exhibitions this fall. Marine Art of Today and Yesterday will be on display at the Union League Club in New York City during the month of September. The gallery will feature paintings by world-renowned artists with paintings depicting every aspect oflife in and around the water, including yachting scenes

by Willard Bond, The Wooden Walls of England by Patrick O'Brien, 24 x 36 inches, oil Nicholas Berger, Peter Arguimbau, Marc Castelli, Carl Evers, Len Mizerek, Patrick O 'Brien, and Robert Sticker. The Union League Club is located at 38 East 37rh Srreet in New York City.

(Ph. 212 685-3800) Also presented by Mr. Jinishian is Marine Art at the Ocean House, with more than 30 paintings by some of the world's leading marine artists. The exhibition opens on Labor Day at the Ocean House Resort, located at 1 Bluff Ave, Watch Hill, RI, and continues through 5 December. (Ph. 855 678-0364; www.oceanhouseri.com) The ]. Russell Jinishian Gallery in Fairfield, Connecticut, s>pecializes in marine and sporting arr. (1899 Bronson Road, Fairfield, CT; www.jrwsselljinishiangallery.com; Ph. 203 259-8753) Sally Caldwell Fisher's Three Sheets to the Wind will be on display at the Ocean House Resort (18 x 24 inches, acrylic).

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SEA HISTOIRY 156, AUTUMN 2016

fhe 17th National Exhibition of the Attterican Society of Marine Artists The American Society of Marine Artists kicks off its 17th National Exhibition on 9 September in Williamsburg, Virginia, with the exhibition traveling to five museums through 26 January 2018. Featured paintings, drawings, scrimshaw, and sculptures were selected from more than 500 entries by signature members and fellows of the Society.

The Muscarelle Museum in Williamsburg, VA, 9 September through 2 December 2016. (603 Jamestown Road, Williamsburg, VA; Ph. 757 221-2700; www. muscarelle.org)

Quinlan Visual Arts Center in Gainesville, GA, 13 April through 3 June 2017.

(5 14 Green Street, NE, Gainesville, GA; Ph. 770 536-2575; www.quinlanarts center.org) Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, ME, 26 June through 23 September 2017. (800 Riverview Drive, Winona, Minnesota; Ph. 507 474-6626; www. mmam.org)

South Lake Union by Paul Mullally, 14 x 24 inches, oil on linen Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD , and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, MD, 10 December 2016 through 2 April 2017. (AAM; 106 South St., Easton MD; Ph. 410 822-2787; www.academyartmuseum.org. CBMM, 213 North Talbot St., St. Michaels, MD; Ph. 410 745-29 16; www.cbmm.org)

USS john Paul Jones (DD 932) by Richard Moore, 27 x 36 inches, watercolor Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT, 14 October 2017 through 26 January 2018. (75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572-0711; www.mysticsea port.org)

The Brig Desire by Len Tantillo, 20 x 30 inches, oil on canvas

Details on the venues, plus images of the works in the exhibition, can be fo und online at www.americansocietyofmarineart ists.com.

Coos Art Museuttt 2grd Annual Maritittte Art Exhibition Awards Two artists have been awarded top honors at Coos Art Museum's 23'd Annual Maritime Art Exhibition, which runs through 24 September.

Best of Show was awarded to Austin Dwyer of M ukilteo, Washington, for his oil, The Stockwell: Pool of London, and, in an independent vote by the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay, he received the Port Award for the same work. Sebastien Richard of Scottsdale, Arizona, received the Directors' Award for his work in oil, Fishing Spoon. The Directors' Award is selected through a vote by the Coos Art Museum Board of Directors.

The Best-of-Show juror and featured artist of the 23'd Annual Maritime Art Exhibition is William A . Selden of Coos Bay. Selden is a past participant and winner of many awards from the museum's annual maritime exhibitions. He received a formal art education at the California Institute of Arts (Chouinard) and the Art Center College of Design. He is a member Austin Dwyer with award winning painting, of the American Society "The Stockwell: Pool of London." of Marine Artists.

Selden commented that Austin Dwyer's painting combined flawless rendering with strong composition and that he admired it for "telling a story."

Coos Art Museum's Annual Maritime Art Exhibition is the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA) regional competition for the entire western United States. It is the oldest continuous maritime art competition on the West Coast.

(235 Anderson Ave., Coos Bay, OR; Ph. 541 267-3901; www.coosart.org) Fishing Spoon by Sebastien Richard

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

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Getting Rid of Marine Debris "All drains lead to the ocean."

That's the critical piece of information that Nemo learns from Gill, when he finds himself stuck in a fish tank at a dentist's office. From there, Nemo eventually makes his way back to the ocean via the dentist's spit sink. Finding Nemo takes a lot of liberties in telling the story of Nemo, Marlin, and Dory, but what about what Gill said? Is that true?

Yes. It might not be a direct path, but sooner or later what we put down a drain makes its way into a waterway, which leads to the oceans. Hopefully, it will have been filtered and treated before it gets there, but a lot of our everyday garbage ends up in the ocean, and it is becoming a global crisis.

According to the famous oceanographer Sylvia Earle, "With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live." When you consider that more than 70% of the planet is covered by water, and up to 60% of the adult human body is made up of water, it isn't hard to grasp how important water is to us as individuals and to our planet.

For hundreds of years, what slipped below the surface of the water was deemed gone. Gone forever. After all, you couldn't see it anymore. As a result, people have used the oceans as a dumping ground for a very long time. The oceans are so huge that most people thought a little dumping here and there would not matter. Only in recent years have we learned that everything that goes in the water affects the health of the oceans permanently, which affects the earth's ecosystem, which in turn affects us.

In 2006, Congress passed the Marine Debris Act to deal with part of this problem. The Act authorizes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to "identify, determine sources of, assess, prevent, reduce, and remove marine debris and address the adverse impacts of marine debris on the economy of the United States, marine environment, and navigation safety."

What is Marine Debris?

Marine debris is anything man-made, including garbage and fishing gear, which is lost, dumped, or abandoned in the marine environment. The most common types of materials that make up marine debris are plastics, glass, metal, paper, cloth, rubber, and wood. Plastics are a huge problem because we use them so much in our daily lives, and they too often make their way into the oceans. It isn't always intentional. Sometimes the wind carries away your plastic bag or water bottle, sometimes the plastic caps from containers fall out of the garbage can. Commercial fishers often lose nets Marine animals consume plastic or gear from equipment failure or when they get snagged on something in the water. when they confuse it for food.

Intentional or not, it all has the same result.

How does marine debris hurt the oceans? Increasing ocean temperature and acidification of the water resulting from human behavior affect all the marine life in the oceans. The problem of debris is more obvious. Fishing gear, designed to catch fish, keeps on doing that even when it is lost at sea or dumped there. Nets can cover entire sections of coral reefs, effectively smothering them, or entangle marine animals. Small plastics and floating objects often look like food to aquatic animals and sea birds.

When they eat plastic, it often gets stuck in their digestive system, making them feel full and unable to eat proper food. They die from starvation.

1his dead albatross on Midway Atoll in Hawaii had a belly full ofplastic items it had swallowed.

What can YOU do?

First, do what you can in our own home to reduce the amount of waste you and your family produce. Recycle. Bug your parents if they don't agree. Take your own tote bags to the grocery store or other shopping excursions; fill your reusable water bottle from home-don't buy plastic disposable bottles. Be careful with your garbage and, when you are outside, pick up garbage you see and dispose of it properly. When you are buying products of all kinds, look at the materials they are made from and decide if an alternative might be a better choice.

While NOAA is taking care of deep-ocean marine debris removal, it also organizes local projects where volunteers and NOAA personnel work together to remove litter and garbage from coastal areas and monitor the amount of debris they find there. NOAA also funds grants to help communities tackle more in-depth programs working towards this goal.

You can find out about what is happening in your community online at www.marinedebris.noaa.gov and clicking on "In Your Region" at the top of the homepage.

In a single month in 2 014, a team of seventeen NOAA divers removed approximately 57 tons of derelict fishing nets and plastic Litter from the waters and tiny islands northwest of Hawaii.

Among the debris they collected were 7,436 hard plastic fragments, 3,758 bottle caps, 1,469 plastic beverage bottles, and 477 Lighters and an I I-ton "super net. " NOAA sends out teams to remove marine debris from this region every year.

Each year, tons of plastics and other litter are tossed into rivers, left on beaches, or dumped overboard from recreational and commercial v811811. Litter not only looks bad, but can put people and wildlife in danger. Marine debris can last a long time. Let's keep our oceans and beaches safe and beautiful. Do your part to prevent trash from becoming marine debris. For more Information, visit: http://www.scdhec.gov/environment/ocrm/outreach/marine_debris.htm

Animals in Sea History

by Richard King

u ast issue, I wrote about the pelicans described by Louisiana journalist Martha Field, who wrote under the pen name of Catharine Cole for the Daily Picayune in the late 1800s. Field was exceptionally popular in her time. Her writing was elegant, detailed, and anthropological, so it now serves as a window into a variety of maritime trades and daily lives in the coastal regions of Louisiana.

In 1888 Field chartered a little schooner, the Julia, run by a small family and crew. They toured the Gulf islands to the south of New Orleans. They fished, captured seabirds, and explored ashore.

Toward the end of the voyage , they

'-

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anchored off Timbalier Island West. Today this island and Timbalier East are a quarter of the size they were in the 1880s, but even then they were thin, barely-inhabited barrier islands with few trees, mostly only "expanses of sea-marsh."

Field wrote, "Shrimp are to be had by the barrelful just for seining, and on Timbalier and other islands equally flat and dreary the Chinese make their camps:' She explained that the catching and drying of shrimp was a "great industry" that the Chinese understood "to perfection:' Field wrote on this Louisiana dried shrimp industry in other travel essays for the Daily Picayune. Walking around the inland town of Houma, Field described the "great pink crescents piling high" for sale. The dried shrimp was bound for shipment to China via New Orleans. Field also sailed to a larger shrimp-drying camp near Grand Isle, in Barataria Bay, which was the center of the industry and home to at least a half-dozen large camps. Here she visited with one of the ~ women who lived in that community. l]:lft~~~~'t~-'--...1-¡Field reported Chinese and Filipino fishermen living and working together in "rush-thatched" homes and wood platforms that they had built onto pilings they'd driven by hand into the marshland and low island areas.

Field explained, "The method of shrimp-drying is apparently simple enough . It is said, however, the Chinese have a secret formula." She suspected it had to do with the method of salt preservation with saltpeter (potassium nitrate) . The fishermen caught the shrimp with surface nets and later bottom trawls operated under sail. The entire community then boiled the shri mp and spread them on the platforms in the sun. "When lll".Ylil6 \ti~ t-\"(TS f',N\1 1"-1>-~ 1 !-l!o \\.\t: Bo\'-8:> S\-\~IMj'S 1Z> \l'?-Y dry," Field wrote, "they are salmon-red, and as li-1 \\\~ svt-l, â&#x20AC;˘tJ\.\IL.'C: /\\lo'\+\'E~ MP.N \J~E.':> ,,,.. Oja l t T tJE"T \~ \)-\~ "15-A'( . hard as bullets. They are then raked up and

42

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put into white canvas bags. The shells are threshed off, either by walking on the bags or by beating them on a board:' Filipino and Chinese immigrants had settled and formed communities in this region in the 1800s, bringing their skills in catching and drying shrimp from similar villages and ecosystems in Asia. Perhaps two of the most famous of these communities, comprising mostly Filipino immigrants, were known as "Manila Village" and "Saint Malo:' Neither of them exists today, because of land loss and hurricanes.

the demand is smaller, shrimp is dried by only a few fishermen, such as those of the Louisiana Dried Shrimp Company, based on Grand Isle. The father of the owner of this company learned the craft from his Chinese neighbors in an area of the island that was then known as "China Town:' They no longer dry it in the sun on vast platforms, but inside a shed with heaters. For a brief oral history of this company, go to SouthernFoodwaysAlliance.org. You can still buy little packets of dried US shrimp in local stores in Louisiana, Texas, and California, and the product is still sold to China and other overseas markets. Or you can order a packet on line: it still "ships" well !

In the next issue, I'll spin the yarn of the deep-sea calamari of Joseph Banks. For more "Animals in Sea History" go to www.seahistory.org. ,!,

Saint Malo as depicted in 1883

At this time the fishermen of the Louisiana Coast probably captured mostly White Shrimp (Litopenaeus setiferus), which are actually a light bluish-grey in color. White Shrimp favor more shallow, warmer, lower-salinity areas. They swim around the Louisiana islands and bayou all year, but are most common in the warmer summer months. Today, along with the similar Brown Shrimp (Farfantepenaeus aztecus) that prefer deeper waters, White Shrimp account for the majority of the shrimp caught off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

With the growth of refrigeration technologies, the development of coastal trawlers with engines, and the building of highways, fresh and frozen shrimp caught off the Louisiana coast became a more popular product than dried shrimp. Today, because the practice is labor-intensive and SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

Shrimp "dancers" from one of the Filipino settlements in south Louisiana at work in th e 1950s. Fresh shrimp were placed on raised platforms to dry in the sun. Walking on the sun-dried shrimp would crumble the shells and separate them from the shrimp meat. The resulting dried shrimp were then packaged and sold.

41

NHD

National History Day Prizes in

NATIONAL HISTORY DAY

N

atio nal History Day (NHD) is an educational program for middle and high school students in which students prepare a history project on a designated theme. Each year, more than half a million students, encouraged by thousands of teachers nationwide, participate in NHD contests, starting at the regional level with opportunities to advance to the state and national competitions. Students select historical topics related to the theme and conduct primary and seco ndary research through libraries, archives, museums, oral history interviews, and historic si tes. Students present their original work in papers, websites, exh ibits, performances and documentaries-either individually or in gro ups. This year's theme was "Exploratio n, Encounter, Exchange."

To encourage students to learn about maritime history, the National (left to right) Evan Lankford of Ma ry Ellen Henderson Maritime Historical Society offers special prizes for maritime-related projMiddle School in Falls Church, Virgi nia;]ean Wort, NMHS ects in several National History Day state contests. We at the National Trustee; Reesey DuPont ofGeorge Washington Middle School Maritime Historical Society wo uld like to extend our congratulations to in Alexandria, Virginia; and Ron Oswald, NMHS Chairman, this year's winners and a shout-out to all the hard-working teachers, coorat the conclusion ofthe Virginia National History Day event dinators, and judges who make the events such memorable and rewardi ng on 23 April 2016 Lankford and DuPont were the winners experiences. of the NMHS prizes in maritime history.

Prizes are awarded in both seni or and junior categories for high school and middle school students. Award winners in each category get a one-year membership in the National Maritime Historical Society (that includes Sea History magazi ne!), a certificate of achievement, plus recognition in Sea History and on the NMHS websi te. The mentoring teacher also receives a one-year membership in NMHS and recogni tion in Sea History. In addition, first-place prize winnining projects receive a $ 150 scholarship.

The 20 17 National History Day theme is "Taking a Stand in History." Now is the time co get started! The National Hiscory Day competition finals will be held on 12-15 June 2017 at the University of Maryland, but the preparation starts now. Regional competitions are held between March and May, depending on the state. The coordinacors fo r each state are listed on the N HD website at www. nhd.org, which is also the best place co find resources for students and teachers, from how to pick a copic, co how co conduct research, and much more. Students: as k yo ur hiscory or social studies teachers if they will help yo u. If yo u choose a maritime-related copic, yo u'll aucomatically be considered for the National Maritime Hiscorical Society's special prize at the state competitions in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maine, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington. If yo ur state is not listed here, please contact NMHS to get your state involved .

Historians and educacors-if yo u wo uld like co learn abo ut how yo u can participate (volunteer as a judge, for example), please contact NMH S at 1-800-22 1-NMHS (6647), or via email at nmhs@seahiscory.org.

Congratulations to the 2016 National History Day Maritime History Prize Winners Delaware Senior 1st P lace-Website: "The Shacklecon Expedition" Students: R ebecca Green a nd Owen H ughes, Cab Ca lloway School of the Ans, Wilmingcon.

Teacher: Erin Sullivan

Florida Senior 1st Place-Paper: "Deutsches Kolonialreich: Exploring the Lesser-Known Colonial Power" Student: Lucas Broems, State College of Florida Collegiate Sch ool, Bradenton.

Teacher: Latonia DeCambre

Junior 1st Place-Documentary: Depths ofthe Bermuda Triangle Unleashed Student: Ryana R ajesh, Dupont Middle School, Wilmingcon.

Teacher: Kelly Whitaker

Junior 1st Place-Website: "Beacons of Hope: Lighthouses of Southeast Florida" Students: Alexander Kolondra and Rishi Patel, American H eri tage School, Plantation. Teacher: Leslie Porges

44

Maine Senior 1st Place-Website: "Jacques Cousteau" St udents: Azalea C or m ier and Jaco b Hackett II, Buckfield Junior/Senior High School, Buckfield. Teacher: Linda Andrews

Senior 2nd Place-Website: "Cod-The Fish that Changed History" Students: Ray Horne, Jaxson Monroe, and Jarrod Rudis, Noble H igh School, North Berwick.

Teacher: Adina Hunter

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

Maritime History sponsored by the National Maritime Historical Society Maine (continued) Junior 1st Place-Paper: "Exploration into Atlantic Sturgeon Populatio n" Student: AlecJansujwicz, James F. Doughty School, Bangor.

Teacher: Ka thryn Kennedy Massachusetts Senior 1st Place-Exhibit: The Nantucket Whaling Industry Students: Grace Moroney and Grace Tymann, Hamil ton-Wenham Regional High School, South H amilton .

Teachers: Robert Emmet & Johann Knees Senior 2nd Place-Website: "Charles Darwin: Explorer \Vho Started a Revolution" Students: Caroline Conway & Elizabeth Ehl, School: W inches ter High School, W inchester. Teacher: Katherine Donahue Junior 1st Place- W ebsite: "Boston Tea Parr y: Exchange of Goods; Encounter Leads to Confl icts; Exploration of Liberty" Students: John Lessard, Dylan Liu, and David Yu, Applewild School, Fitchburg Teacher: Todd Goodwin

Mississippi Senior 1st Place-Exhibit: Croatian Immigrant Exploration of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the Hardships They Encountered Students: Grace Cuevas and Nya Laurie School: Pass Christian H igh School, Pass Christian. Teacher: H eidi Byrd Junior 1st Place-Website: "Jean Lafitte: The Pirate Patriot G roup" Students: Haley Mager and D'Asia Williams, Trent Lott Academy, Pascagoula.

Teacher: Jana Ha rry

New Jersey Senior 1st Place-Exhibit: Jacques Cousteau: Exploring and Protecting the Ocean Realm. Students: Trusha Gavankar and Kaylyn Tong, Freehold High School, Freehold. Teach er: Carissa Sandoval Senior 2nd Place-Documentary: Vikings: Scourge of the North. Student: Justin Dorsch, International High School, Paterson. Teacher: Christopher W irkman SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 201 6

New Jersey (continued) Junior 1st Place-Exhibit: Exploration of North Carolina (continued) Antarctica.

School, G reenville. Teacher: Stepha nie Srudent: Amanda Dunleavy, Woodglen Noels M iddle School, Califon.

Teacher: James Peralta Junior 1st Place-Website: "Mys teries of The Bermuda Triangle Group" junior 2nd Place- Documentary: Jacques Students: Brady Farlow and Lauren FritCousteau: Surfacing the Secrets ofthe Ocean zsche, Oak Grove Middle School, W inston Students: Annika Agarwal, James Tang, Sa lem. Teacher: Kim Vines Sophie Zhang, and Annie Zhou, Marlboro Middle School, Marlboro.

Junior 2nd Place- Documentary: From Teacher: Lisa W ittman Savings to Saving History: Save Our Ship Campaign New York Students: Frederick Brooks Meine, Senior 1st Place-Exhibit: Shackleton's William Lewis, and Evan Zhang, Cape Incredible Voyage: Exploring the Limits of Fear Academy, W ilmington.

Teacher: N athan Gergel H uman Possibility and Endurance Student: Eleanor Lavin, H ome School, New York C ity. Teacher: Lisa Greenwald Rhode Island Senior 1st Place-Exhibit: Commodore Senior 2nd Place-Exhibit: Through Matthew Perry the Eyes of an Underwater Lens: Jacques Srudents: Matthew Marshall and Molly Cousteau Whitaker, Rogers H igh School, Newporr.

Student: Charles Ehrman, H untington Teacher: Coleen Hermes High School, Huntington .

Teacher: Kenneth Donovan Junior 1st Place-Exhibit: The Panama Canal: Conduit to Becoming a World Junior 1st Place-Documentary: Charles Power. Students: Joel Brady, James FioDarwin: From the Finches ofthe Galapagos rillo, and Matthew Rocchio, Narragansett Pier School, Narragansett. to the Theory ofEvolution Student: Benjamin Joseph, Stimson Mid- Teacher: Vanessa M iller dle School, Huntington Station.

Teacher: Karen Schmitt Junior 2nd Place-Exhibit: Ellis IslandExchange, Encounter and Exploration Junior 2nd Place-Perfo rmance: "Roa- Srudent: Macie Donahue, Saint Philomena School, Portsmouth . noke: Exploring a Lost Colony" Students: Shane Beckwith, Christopher Teacher: Mary Fitzgerald Chin, Josh Phillip, and Tyler Wilcox, Nyack Middle School, Nyack. Teachers: Virginia N ina Labrada and Robert W isner Junior 1st Place- Documentary: Into the Unknown: The Beginning of Deep Sea Exploration North Carolina Senior 1st Place-Exhibit: Navigation Student: Reesey DuPont, George Washington M iddle School, Alexandria.

Through Time: Stars to Satellites Students: Parker Chatham, Jessee Steele, Teacher: Stacy Palmer and Taylor Steele, Swain County High Junior 2nd Place- Performance: "DigSchool, Bryson City. ging the Big Ditch: Exploration, EncounTeacher: Billie Clemons ter and Exchange in the Panama Canal Senior 2nd Place-Websi te: "Matthew Zone." Student: Evan Lankford, Mary Perry: Paving the Way fo r Japanese Trade" Ellen H enderson M iddle School, Falls Student: Sam O'Rourke, J. H. Rose High Church. Teacher: Rory Dippold 45

.SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS San Salvado r is under way and m ak ing way! The M aricime Museum of Sa n Diego's newes t vessel, a recreation of a 500-year-old Spanish galleon chac explored che California coasc in 1542 under the command of Ju an Rodriguez Cabri llo, is fully rigged and her crew has been craining all summer to learn the ways of the sh ip. While the museu m ac tively operates San Salvador

Conceptual graphic of the cofferdam around USS No rth Carolina

other saili ng vessels in its fleet, the handling of a 16 th-century rig differs from the 19th- and 20'h-century rigs their crews are used to sailing (the barque Star ofI ndia, the to psa il schooner Californian, and the full-rigged ship HMS Surprise). W hen she isn't sailing, the vessel is dockside and a crew has been working on the complecion of her engineering system s and interior spaces. In O ctober, San Salvador will leave San Diego on her inaugural Paci fi c H eritage Tour, where she wi ll visit ports in southern California and sail out to Catalina Island-and you can go with them!

The publi c is welcome to purchase tickets for a single leg of the trip, or fo r multipl e legs . N ot m any people have sailed on a vessel with an authentic 16th-century sa iling rig. No experience is necessary. (1492 North Harbor Drive, Sa n Diego, CA; Ph. 619 234-91 53; www.sdmaritime.org) ...

Construction of an $8 million cofferdam has begun around the battleship USS No rth Carolina in W ilmin gton, NC. Once it is completed, in approximately 18 months, the cofferdam will allow wo rke rs easier access to make repairs and conduct projects wo rking to restore the h ull, while allowing the ship to remain open to visitors d uring these projects. The cofferdam is

46

being built as a permanent structure, along with a half-m ile-long walkway that will completely surro und the ship, above the waterline but below the main deck. The SECU M emorial Walkway (the State Employees' C redit Union donated $3 million fo r the naming rights to the walkway) will be 10 fee t wide and fully comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. It will be built with five bump-out areas to honor each of the five branches of the military.

The last major dry-docking and repair work was done in November 1953, and some areas of the hull are reportedly paper-thin.

Andrew Structural Engineers of W ilmington was hi red in 2014 by the state to design the cofferdam and walkway. The repairs to the ship and the cofferdam are being paid fo r by the State ofNorth Carolina; the cost of the SECU Memorial Walkway is estim ated around $4 m illion and is being funded by che USS N orth Carolina Bactleship C ommission. USS North Carolina has been at her berth along the Cape Fear River, across from Wilmington, since 1961.

The only other permanent cofferdam of its kind in the United States surro unds the 680-foot battleship USS Alabama, moored since 1964 in Mobile Bay. (#1 Battleship Road, W ilmington, NC; Ph. 910 251-5797; www. batdeshipnc.com) ... The ships at South Street Seaport in New York City are on the move. W hile work continues on the 1885 ship Wavertree and the museum plans for the transAd antic voyage of the

barque Peking (see article on page 16-18), there's still more good news at Pier 16 and in the Seaport. The schooners L ettie G. Ho ward and Pioneer are both actively sailed- Pioneer mainly in the h a rbor, and Lettie both locally and fa rther afield . Planning continues fo r restoration projects on the 1907 lightship Ambrose and the 1930 wooden rug W 0. D ecker. Ashore, the museum has been awarded significant fundi ng to repair, rebuild, and maintain its infra-

Master rigger Jamie White splices up a new main top mast preventer stay for W avertree.

structure: FEMA, the Lower M a nhattan D evelopment Corporation, and the City of New York have all chipped in co aid the effort to rebuild the museum, not just from dam age caused by Hurricane Sandy, but from the stresses stemming from 9/ 11 and the recent recession . Educational programs

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

have rripled in attendance, a new exh ibition is open on Fulton Street, and people are returning to the Seaport as both visitors and volunteers. This gem of New York City and America is on its way back. It's an exciting time fo r South Street Seaport and an exciting time for those who love and celebrate sea history. (S ubmitted by Captain Jonathan Boulware, executive director, South Srreet Seaport Museum: 12 Fulton Street, New York, NY; www.so uthstreet seaportmuseum.org) ... On 15 July, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California, ruled against the US Navy's use oflow-frequency active sonar (LFA), which has been determined to cause harm to marine mammals .

THE NAUTICAL RESEARCH GUILD " ADVANCING SHIP MODELING THROUGH RESEARCH " An nual membership includes ou r world-renowned quarterly magazine, Nautica l Research Journal, w hich fea tures photographs and articles on ship mod el building, naval architecture, merchant and nava l ship constru ct ion, mari tim e trade, nau t ical and mari time history, nautica l archaeology and

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Whales and dolphins use sound waves to navigate and locate prey and members of their pod. Designed for submarine detection over vast expanses of deep sea, LFA has the capacity to expose thousands of square miles- and everything in it- to dangerous levels of noise and its use has been shown to be harmful to marine mammals by disrupting their feeding and mating patterns. The unanimous ruling reversed a lower court decision from 2012 that permitted the navy to use LFA for "training, testing and routine operations."

Environmental gro ups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), fi led a laws ui t in San Francisco in 2012 arguing that the National Marine Fish eries Service (NMFS) requirements fa iled to meet a section of the Marine Mammal Protection Act requiring peacetime oceanic programs to have "the least practicable adverse impact on marine mammals." The appellate court ruled 3-0 in favor of the environmental groups, concluding that the NMFS "did not give adequate protection to areas of the world's oceans flagged by its own experts as biologically importa nt."

Newport, RI www.sail-newport.com Key West, FL www.sail-keywest.com

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(continued on page 50)

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

47

O FF TO FIDDLER'S GREEN

The Honorable Helen Delich Bentley (1923-2016) "For starters, there is simply no substitute for hard work, and plenty of it.

Persistence pays. And some doors are best opened with a good kick."

-Helen Delich Bentley

Glittery,

shiny,

shimmery,

sparkly,

lovely.

Crafting original designs forover4S years!

48

Helen Delich Bentley, the feisty, highly respected maritime journalist, former Federal Maritime Commission chairman, and five-term member of the US Congress, died on 6 August at her home in Lutherville, Maryland. She was 92.

Throughout her 70-plus year career, Mrs. Bentley had tirelessly promoted two major issues-the advancement of America's industrial/manufacturing base and the maririme community that carried products to and from market, primarily through the Port of Baltimore.

Mrs. Bentley was born in Ruth, Nevada, one of seven children of a Serbian immigrant copper miner. In high school, she worked for a weekly local newspaper and was later awarded scholarships to study journalism at the University of Missouri. After graduating in 1944, Ms. Delich worked for small-town newspapers, but she wanted to report hard news for a larger publication; at the time, most women journalists were limited to writing social news. She contacted all the big East Coast newspapers, and in 1945 the Baltimore Sun offered her a job.

Initially reporting on labor and union matters, she was then dispatched to the waterfront to revive coverage of rhe port. She had never seen a ship before, nor the ocean for that matter. It was a tough, male-dominated environment, but she loved it.

"I had to be as mean and as tough as I could be. And I was," she said in 2010. "I wore 'em down because I was always fair and I was always honest with them," she said. She became a widely respected maritime reporter and an internationally recognized expert on maritime issues.

In 1969 then-president Richard Nixon appointed Mrs. Bentley chair of the Federal Maritime Commission. It made her the fo urth-highest ranking woman in rhe history of the federal government and the highest ranking woman of Nixon's administration. She was a principal architect of the 1970 Merchant Marine Act, which established government support for building rankers and bulk carriers in US shipyards.

In 1984, Bentley was elected to serve the first of five terms representing Maryland's 2nd Congressional District. She sat on the Appropriations, Budget, P ublic Works & Transportation, and Merchant Marine & Fisheries Committees. When she left Congress, she formed Helen Bentley & Associates, a maritime consultancy in Baltimore, which represented a broad-section of companies and clients needing maritime advice, contacts involving shipping, employment, guidance, and reliable information .

In 2006, Bentley served as Chair of rhe Port of Baltimore's Tricentennial Committee, which oversaw a year-long celebration honoring the port's 300rh anniversary.

During a Tricentennial Committee dinner gala on 1 June 2006, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich ] r. announced he had officially renamed Baltimore's port as the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore. "There has been no one," said Ehrlich in making the announcement, "who has championed rhe viral role the port plays in both the global economy and our everyday lives more than Helen."

"It was a rare honor to present Helen Bentley with the NMHS Distinguished Service Award at our 2011 Washington Awards Dinner for her tireless efforrs on behalf of rhe merchant marine, maritime community and American workers. She was generous with her rime and information. She was passionate about the port and its possibilities; she loved the ships and how Baltimore was a maritime city and the Chesapeake Bay was a crucial maritime resource. She was outspoken, flamboyant and funny. I liked her immediately and more every time I got to speak with her. I think we all owe her and her work a lot more than we realize." -Burchenal Green, NMHS President

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

Tall Ships America's annual conference w ill take place on 9-10 February 2017, in Boston, Massachusetts, at the Boston Seaport H otel. The two-day con fe rence will be p receded by the Sa fety U nder Sail Forum, the Educators and Administrators Forum, and the Host Ports Seminar on 8 February. The theme for this yea r's conference is: "The Way of a Ship: Linking Our History, H eritage and Future." Tall Ships America inv ites members of the N ational M a ritime Historical Society and all who are interes ted in maritime heritage, sail training, tall ships (both historic and replica vessels), and education-under-sail programs to attend. M ee t sail trainers from around No rth America and the world. Discuss issues releva nt ro the m aritime h eritage community with preeminent subj ect-m atter experts of our time.

NMH S trustee a nd ch air of the Sea H istory Edito rial Advi sory Board, Timothy ]. Runya n, PhD, wi ll be a featured speaker. Dr. Runya n also serves as chairman o f the N ational Maritime Alliance and is a longtime advocate for m aritime heritage preservation and education on Capitol Hill. A dist in guished historian, Dr. Runya n is foremost an educator and mentor, h aving taught maritime history and related topics for 25 yea rs at C leveland State University and for nine yea rs as di rector of the graduate program in M aritime Hi story and Nautical A rch aeology at Eas t Carolina Un iversity.

Boston is an official port ofthe 2 017 Tall Ships Challenge Series, which will welcome an international fleet ofsailing ships as part ofthe Rendez-Vous 2 017 Tall Ships Regatta . For other port cities participating in next summer's Tall Ships Challenge Series, visit the Tall Ships America website at www.sailtraining.org.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

49

SS United States Update The historic oceanic liner SS United States will not be returning to sea as a rejuvenated cruise ship. Technical difficulties and exorbitantly high costs have scuttled the plan by Crystal Cruises to convert ''America's Flagship" inro a luxury cruise vessel. After completing a six-month technical study, Crystal Cruises anno unced in August that the ship is structurally so und, but the rehabilitation ro sailing condition is unfeasible. That means the SS United States Conservancy, which owns the 990-foot ship docked in Philadelphia for the last two decades, will resume trying to find a location to redevelop the 64-year-old vessel as a museum, hotel, and events space. While not exercising its option to buy the ship, Crystal Cruises pledged $350,000 as a donation to help the Conservancy keep the ship aAoat while seeking a new solution to save the United States.

Last February, Crystal Cruises and the Conservancy announced the unprecedented plan to convert the iconic 1950s ship into a modern, luxury cruise ship that would comply with all current safety and technical standards. The cruise line then SS United States in Philadelphia funded a $1 million feasibility study, headed by retired US Coast Gua rd Rear Admiral Tim Sullivan. "Unfortunately, the hurdles that would face us when trying to bring a 65-year-old vessel up ro modern safety, design, and international regulatory compliance have proven just too great ro clear in both a technically and commercially responsible manner," Crystal president and CEO Edie Rodriguez said. SS United States Conservancy executive director Susan Gibbs added that the study confirms that the ship is structurally sound, and that "SS United States continues to hold enormous potential as a stationary mixed-use development and museum in New York or another urban waterfront setting." The feasibility study concluded that modifying the ship to meet current standards for oceangoing service would require significant changes to the hull that would pose problems for its stability. It also found that installing a state-of-the-art diesel electric propulsion plant would require the expensive alteration of the existing arrangement of four propeller shafts and one rudder, to two shafts and two rudders, while rebuilding about 25% of the hull.

Since the February announcement, Crystal Cruises has been paying the $60,000-a-month carrying charges to keep the ship docked in Philadelphia. Regarding the subsequent donation by the company, Rodriguez said Crystal Cruises "firmly believes the SS United States is an American treasure and deserves to be preserved and redeveloped as a stationary destination for future generations to experience and enjoy."

The Conservancy, which acquired the ship five years ago, will immediately restart its search for qualified developers and investors interested in making the storied ocean liner a station ary exhibit along the lines of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Californ ia. As part of the study, underwater inspections of the hull, examinations of her fuel and salt-water ballasting tanks, and three-dimensional scans of the entire vessel were made. When Crystal and the Conservancy announced the plan, Rodriguez said rebuilding the vessel with its entirely gutted interior would cost in excess of $700 million, potentially somewhat cheaper than building a similar ship from the keel up. But many cruise line experts said they thought it was a long shot and it wo uld be much cheaper to build a new ship.

SS United States's maiden voyage in 1952 set the still-current record for the fastest transAtlantic crossing of a passenger ship. Its role superseded by passenger jets, it was taken out of service in 1969. -Bill Bleyer 50

(continued from page 47) About the controversy, Michael Jasny, director of the NRDC's Marine Mammal Protection Project, said: "Ignorance is no excuse for inaction, where common-sense safeguards recommended by the government's own scientists can prevent avoidable harm ." (Information on the Marine Mammal Protection Act can be found on the NOAA website, www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/ laws/mm pa/. You can read the court's opinion on line at www.ca9.uscourts.gov/opinions/. Case# is 14 -16375.) ... The new expanded Panama Canal is open for business and breaking records in its first month of operations. On 26 June, the COSCO Shipping Panama (formerly known

COSCO Shipping Panama enters the canal locks on 26 June with approximately 9, 000 containers on board. The Chineseowned cargo ship is 984 feet long with a beam of 158 feet. as Andronikos), became the first neo-Panamax ship ro transit the newly enlarged Panama Canal locks. This new system features two locks with three levels that are 70 feet wider and 18 feet deeper than the original canal locks. The next day, the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanker Lycaste Peace, owned by Nippon Yusen Kaisha of Japan, became the first LPG ship through the new locks. In the short time it has been open to vessel traffic, the new Panama Canal locks have broken all known records in terms of toll revenues in the history of the waterway and is on its way to winning back the market share from the Suez Canal. The COSCO Shipping Panama alone paid tolls rotaling $575,545 to transit the canal. In the first six weeks si nce it opened, more than 70 ships transited the new lock system, including 40 containerships, 24 LPG carriers, three vehicle carriers, and two liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers. According to a report by Bloomberg Markets, the SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN2016

opening of the expanded canal "coincides with a big increase in US shale production and the construction of several G ulf Coas t export terminals designed to help American gas muscle its way onto the world m arker."

Massive LNG rankers, wh ich for m erly could not fit in the locks, are now shaving 11 days and a third of the cost of the typical ro und trip to Asia. The US Department of Energy is predicting that 55 0 tankers could be transiting the new canal locks each year by 2021. ... In June, an international research team led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) maritime archaeologist Brendan Foley and Theotokis Theodoulou of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports has discovered spectacular artifacts during its ongoing excavation of the famous Antikythera shipwreck. The shipwreck dates from 70 to 60 BC and is thought to have been carrying a cargo of G reek luxury goods from the coast of Asia Minor westward to Rome. The G reek island of Antiky thera stands in the middle of this major shipping route in the Aegean Sea, and the ship probably sank in a storm when it sm ashed against the island 's sheer cliffs.

In the June 201 6 expedition, the team recovered 60 newly discovered artifac ts including gold jewelry, luxury glassware, a bronze spear fro m a statue, elem ents of marble sculptures, resin/incense, ceramic

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decanters, and an unidentified artifact that they are thinking may have been a defensive weapon. This mys tery artifact baffied the archaeologists when they first saw it. It is an extremely heavy, torpedo-shaped lead cylinder, unlike anything else on the wreck site. Foley sought answers from ancient Greek tex ts by Thucydides, in which he describes defensive armaments known as "dolphins" used by the bigger ships of the day. Foley suggests that when an enemy ship came alongside attempting to board , sailors wo uld hoist the dolph in up to their own ya rdarm, a nd then drop it on the other ship's deck to put a hole in its hu ll.

"It wo uld have been truly a wrecking ball," Foley says, "a nd it's the only one in existence-if that's what it is." The team also

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confirmed the wreck of a second ancient cargo vessel close by the main shipwreck site. The A ntikythera vessel is the larges t ancient shipwreck ever discove red. Lying in almost 200 feet of water, the shipwreck was discovered and salvaged by G reek sponge dive rs in 1900. In addition to dozens of m a rble statues and thousands of antiquities, their efforts produced the Antiky thera M echanism-a remarkable artifact known as the world 's first computer, a gea red mechanical device that could accurately predict planetary movements and seasons. In 1976, Jacques Cousteau and his crew in Calypso returned to the wreck and recovered nearly 300 more objects, incl uding skeletal remains. In 201 2, the G reek government asked Foley and his colleagues at W H OI to help G reek scientists search for m o re: artifacts. The W H O I tea m bro ugh t sstate-of-the-art technology and specialistss with them, includ ing autonomous ro boots and gear and personnel fo r tech nical <diving at depth. With these tools and the e:expertise to m anage them , they

SEA H-TISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

were able create a 3D map of the entire site, which covers about 2.6 acres on the seafloor.

The wreck is too deep to dive safely using regular scuba equipment, so the divers had to use rebreather technology, in which carbon dioxide is scrubbed from the exhaled air while oxygen is introduced and recirculated. This allowed them to dive on the site for up to three hours at a time. The first true scientific excavations of the wreck began in 2014, with return expeditions in 2015 and 2016. After completing mapping of rhe sire with dara collected by an autonomous robot, rhe divers descended to 170 feet using mixed-gas, closed-circuit rebrearhers to locate, document, and retrieve the artifacts. Among other inquiries, the isotopes of recovered lead objects are being analyzed to determine their origin, and ancient DNA has been extracted from ceramic jars to reveal the food, drink, and medicines consumed by the ancient seafarers. The team generates precise three-dimensional digital models of every artifact, allowing discoveries to be shared instantly and widely even if the objects remain on the sea Aoor. The research team consists of archaeologists Dr. Foley and Dr. Theodoulou; archaeologists Dr. Dimitris Kourkoumelis (HMCS) and Alexander Tourtas (WHOI); professional technical divers Edward O 'Brien (WHOI), Philip Shorr, Alexa ndros Sotiriou, Nikolas Giannoulakis, and Gemma Smith; and videographer Evan Kovacs . The robotic survey was conducted

by Prof. Stefan Williams, Dr. Oscar Piza rro, and Christian Lees from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney. The "Return to Antikythera" project is supervised by Dr. Aggeliki Simosi, director of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities. WHOI is a priva te, non-profit organization on Cape C od, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research , engineering, and higher education. (www.whoi. edu.) . . . Polar explorer Roald Amundsen's ship Maud was lifted off the bottom of Cambridge Bay in Nunavut, Canada, on 30 July, 86 years after it sank. The Maud was built in 1916, the third of three Norwegian ships built for Amundsen's expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. The first two were the Fram and the Gjoa, which have been restored and are on display in the Fram Museum in Oslo. Amundsen had Maud purpose-built with the goal of using

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her ro rransir rhe Norrheasr Passage (he had already successfully transired rhe famed Norrhwesr Passage in GjM in 1903-1906).

The Maud spent her entire worki ng life in the Arctic. The Northeast Passage expedition was planned as a drift in the ice, during which rime the crew and onboard scientists would collect meteorological and oceanographic dara. The rransir of the Nonheasr Passage was successfu l, but it took a full rwo years, ending in Nome, Alaska, on 25 July 1920. With that achievement, Amundsen and his shipmate Helmer Hanssen became rhe firsr to transit both the Northeast and Northwest Passages. In 1925, wirh rhe expedirion complered and Amundsen faci ng a mountain of bills to pay, Maud was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company for use as a supply vessel for outposts in the Arctic. In the winter of 1930-31, she sank ar her mooring ar Cambridge Bay, just north of the Arctic Circle, and has been rhere ever since. The recovery of the Maud has been the focus of a private group in Norway, Maud Rerurns Home, which has been working to raise the vessel for the lasr six years. Led by Jan Wanggaard, rhe Norwegian ream wants to bring Maud back to Norway, where Roald Amundsen is srill a celebirated national hero and where his orher vessels are preserved as museum ships. Maud Rerurns Home was granted an export permir for rhe wreckage by rhe Canadian government in 2012. The group lifted the vessel in July with the use of giant

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

Pickle Night

Roald Amundsen's Arctic expedition vessel Maud at the surface after 86 years. air bags. Thei r next step is to sink a barge they brought across the Atlantic from Norway next to the vessel, Hoat the Maud over it, and reHoat the barge. Wanggaard is not putting a deadline on his anticipated arrival with Ma ud back in Norway, but he hopes they can acco mplish the task to coincide with the lOOth anniversary in 2018 of when M aud sailed from Norway. (www. m audreturnshome .no) .. . A postcard returned to the Marine Biological Association (MBA) in Plymouth, UK, has

b een recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest message in a bottle ever found. In the early 20th century, as part of the MBA's research into ocean currents and the behavior of commercial fish, scientists released bottles containing preaddressed postcards in the southern North Sea. A one shilling reward was offered to those who found and sent the postcards back to the MBA. Th is particular bottle had been drifting on currents for 108 years, 4 months, and 18 days before being picked

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SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

•2016 Historic Naval Ships Association Annual Conference, 20-23 September in Corpus Christi, Texas, onboard USS Lexington. (www.hnsa.org) •Society for Historical Archaeology Conference, 4-8 January in Fort Worth, TX. Theme: ''Advancing Frontiers: W here the Next 50 Years of SHA Begins." (www. sha.o rg) •American Historical Association, 131st Annual Meeting 4-8 January in Denver, CO. Theme: "Historical Scale: Linking Levels of Experience." (www.historians.org) •PCNACA National Conference 12- 15 April 20 17 in San Diego. (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association) "Sea Literature, History, & Culture" will be one of the subject areas presented.

Call-for-Papers deadline is 1 October. (www.pcaaca.org/national-conference) •201 7 National Council on Public History Annual Meeting, 19-22 April in Indianapolis, IN. (www.ncph.org) •Council of American Maritime Museums Annual Conference, 19-21 April 2017, hosted by the San Francisco National Historical Park and San Francisco Maritime National Park Association. A Call fo r Session Proposals will be posted online in October. (www.councilofameri canmaritimemuseums.org) FESTIVALS, EVENTS, LECTURES, ETC.

•Lake Union Boats Afloat Show, 14-18 September in Seattle, WA. (South Lake Union, 90 1 Fairview Ave. North; www. boatsaA oatshow. com) •San Francisco Sea Music Festival, 17 September, 15 October, and 12 November at Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco, CA. (San Francisco Maritim e National Historical Park, 499 Jefferson St., San Francisco; Ph. 415 447-5 000; www.nps.gov/safr/) •Greenport Maritime Festival, 23-25 September, in Greenport, Long Island, NY. (www.eastendmaritimefestival.org) •Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, 24-25 September, in Portsmouth, NH. (www. newenglandfolknetwo rk. org/ pmff) •Santa Barbara Harbor & Seafood Festival, 15 October at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum (113 Harbor Way, Santa Barbara, CA; www.sbmm.org) •Southport Wooden Boat Show, 24 Sep-

tember at the Old Yacht Basin, Southport, NC. Free admission . (Ph. 910 477-2787; www.sourhporrwoodenboatshow.com) •Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival & Maritime Model Expo, 1-2 October at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum; Also at the museum is OysterFest on 29 October. (213 N . Talbot Street, Sr. Michaels, MD; www.cbmm.org) •United States Sailboat Show, 6-10 October in Annapolis, MD. (www. usboat.com) •The Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race, 10-16 October from Baltimore, MD, to Portsmouth, VA. Dockside tours in Baltimore 10- 12 October; race on the bay is 13- 14 October; select vessel tours in Portsmouth on 15 October. (www. gcbsr.org) •Wellfleet OysterFest, 15-16 October in Wellfleet, MA, on Cape Cod. (www.well fleetoysrerfest. o rg) •Marine Surplus Sale, 7 November (8AM to noon) at the Center for Wooden Boars.

(1264 Thomas Sr., Seattle, WA; www.cwb. org/ events/ marine-surplus-sale/) •Moby-Dick Marathon, 6-8 January at the New Bedford W haling Museum.

(18 Johnny Cake Hill , New Bedford, MA; Ph. 508 997-0046; www.whali ng museum.org) EXHIBITS

•To the Brink of Wlir, at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. A new audiovisual experience aboard the B-39 Soviet Submarine. (1492 North Harbor Dr., San Diego, CA; 619 234-9153; www.sdmaririme.org) •From the Archives-Ships of the Sea Celebrates 50 Years, through December at the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, GA. (4 1 Marrin Luther King Jr., Blvd. , Savannah, GA; Ph. 912 2321511 ; www.shipsofrhesea.org) •A Broad Reach: 50 Years of Collecting, at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, in commemoration of the museum's 50rh anniversary, now through 28 February 2017. (2 13 N. Talbot Street, Sr. Michaels, MD; www.cbmm .org) •36 Hours: Jutland 1916, The Battle that Won the Wlir, at the National Museum of rhe Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in the UK. Exhibition is a collaboration between the NMRN and

rhe Imperial War Museum. (www.nm rn . org.uk) •3 7th Annual International Marine Art Exhibition, 1 October-31 December at Mystic Seaport's Maritime Gallery. (47 Greenmanville Avenue, Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572-5388; www.mysticseaporr.org; gallery@mysticseaport.org) •Polynesian Voyagers: The Truest of Mariners, 1 October- 11 June 201 7 at The Mariners' Museum and Park. (100 Museum Dr., Newport News, VA; Ph. 757 596-2222; www.marinersmuseum. org) •23rd Annual Maritime Art Exhibit, through 24 September at the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, OR. Featured artist is William A. Selden; jurors are Don Demers, Debra Huse, and Jeffrey H ull. (235 Anderson Avenue, Coos Bay, OR; Ph. 54 1 267-3901; www.coosart.org) • 150 Years of Marine Art, through 30 November at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona. (MMAM: 800 Riverview Dr., Winona, MN; www. mmam.org. ASMA: www.americansoci etyofmarineartists.com) •Over East, an Artist's Journal: Paintings by Robert Beck of the Contemporary Maritime Community, 17 September 2016-22 January 20 17 at the Maine Maritime Museum. (243 Washington Street, Bath, ME; Ph. 207 443- 1316; www.mainemaritimemuseum.org) •Voyaging in the Wilke of the Whalers, new exhibit at Mystic Seaport. (75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572533 1; www.mysticseaport.org) •Mapping Ahab's "Storied Waves "Whaling and the Geography of MobyDick, at the New Bedford W haling Museum, (18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, MA 02740; Ph. 508 997-0046; WWW. whalingmuseum.org) •How to Abandon Ship: The Sinking of the SS Robin Moor, 1941, through 30 March at the American Merchant Marine Museum in Ki ng's Point, NY. (300 Steamboat Road, Kings Point, NY; www.usm ma.edu/ museum) •Ship Models: The Evolution of Ship Design, ongoing at the Hart Nautical Gallery at the MIT Museum. (55 Massachusetts Ave. Bldg. 5, Cambridge, MA; 617 2535942; www.web.mir.edu/museum)

MARITIME HISTORY ON THE INTERNET

by Peter McCracken

Wikis: Wikipedia and Beyond ost people who have done any kind of online research are familiar with W ikipedia, the online encyclopedia. But many may not exactly understand what Wikipedia is, or how it tru ly operates. We know that Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but what does that mean? And is it the only wiki out there? And what is a "wiki," anyway?

The rerm "wiki" refers to a website in which any community member can edit the site's pages. The first generation of webpages were one-way pages: a person, a company, or an organ ization created webpages, which others read and used as they saw fir. Individuals could not make changes to those pages; they could only read or view them. "Web 2 .0" referred to the ability of individ uals to start contributing content to pages that they had not created, and had no role in building. One example is reviews of products, where someone who has no responsibility fo r ma nagement of the website can still contribute content that will be visible to all other visitors to that site. Wikis are a great example of this Web 2.0 structure, and Wikipedia (www.en.wikipedia.org) is certainly the most successful and well-known wiki.

The first wik i, or user-editable site, was launched in 1995 in Hawa ii and rook its name from the Hawaiian word "wiki," mea ning "quick." Anyone could qu ickly add content ro the page, and it became a valuable way for people to collaborate, and to contribute information ro a webpage accessible to all. Wikipedia was launched in 2001, and promptly became one of the largest and most-visited sites on the internet. W h ile some complain about inaccuracies in Wikipedia's content, it can be a valuable too l for learning a basic amount of information regarding a subject. Some entries can provide much more extensive informat ion, and you can quickly lose hours exploring random pages.

Wikiped ia takes a "no original research " approach, in which they aim ro have nearly every statement supported by a citation to some source in some form. For researchers, the citations that appear at the end of a Wikipedia article can prove more valuable than the article itself, and can represent many hours' worth of in-depth research.

Many people have written about the errors they find in Wikipedia, and others enjoy providing a litany of reasons why Wikipedia is not reli able. If you find something that you believe to be inaccurate, you can simply create an account, and change the entry. It is likely, however, that others are watch ing that page and

M

58

may respond very quickly to revert the changes you made. Entries for some controversial subjects, in fact, are "frozen" and can on ly be changed by those with certa in h igh-level permissions, but for less-popular topics you can contribute your knowledge by editing and expandi ng existing articles , or by creating completely new ones.

Wikipedia is certainly the largest wiki in the world-there are over 5 million articles in English, and ten other lang uages have more than a million articles in each. (Though, interestingly, for several of these-Swedish, Cebuano, and Waray-Waray- the vast majority of the articles have been written by a computer program, primarily as one-sentence "stub" articles.) But Wikipedia is not the only wiki out there. Citizendium (www.citizendium.org), for instance, is a direct response to those uncomfortable with the anonymity ofWikipedia contributions and edits. In Citizendium, each article and edit must be signed with the author's real name. They aim to create longer, "citable" articles of interest. Its founder was a co-founder ofWikipedia, but Citizendium has not met with the same success and currently has fewer than 17,000 articles, of which 160 have been deemed "expert-approved citable versions."

Several sites serve as wiki hosting services; W ilda.com is the largest, and offers fans a place to build free wikis about movies, TV shows, video games, and other fan- based projects. It now hosts Memory Alpha (www.memoryalpha.wikia.com/; about rhe Srar Trek universe) and Wookieepedia (www.starwars. w ikia.com/; about rhe Star Wars universe), along with hundreds of others. Wikia hosts a few maririme-relared wikis, including Ships and Things (w ww.shipsandthings.wikia. com), which has just over 1,300 pages, many of which would benefit from additional contributions and edits. The Duluth Ships wiki (www.duluth-ships.wikia.com) only has 78 pages about rhe ships of D ul uth, but it has hu ndreds of pictures of rhose ships. Ferry Wiki (www.theferry.wikia.com) has more than 300 pages about ferry boars from around rhe world.

Off ofWikia, rhe World Cruising W iki (www. www.cruiserswiki.org/wiki/World_ Cruising_and_Sailing_Wiki) has, nor surprisingly, information about cruising and sailing.

Suggestions for other sires worth mentioning are welcome at perer@sh ipindex.org. See www.shipindex.org for a free compilation of over 150,000 ship names from indexes to dozens of books and journals. 1-

SHIP INDEX

.ORG

SEA HISTQ)RY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

Reviews So Close to Home: A True Story of an American Family's Fight for Survival During World War II by Michael Tougias and Alison O'Leary (Pegasus Books, New York, NY, 2016, 238pp, illus, notes, biblio, ISBN 978-0-6817-7130-4; $27.95hc) Americans born after World War II tend to dismiss the notion that German U-boats approached the United States coast during the conflict. Hundreds of families, though, know all too well how close the Nazis came to the shore, as the loss of servicemen and civilians alike-on commercial vessels as well as military-on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast, was a regular occurrence during the war's early years, leaving many families incomplete after the war ended.

Authors Michael Tougias and Alison O'Leary focus their tale on a single family traveling home to the States from Central America aboard a United Fruit freighter in 1942. By all accounts, they should have been safe where they were struck, just east of the mouth of the Mississippi, as common wisdom held that the G ulf of Mexico was too far removed from Western Europe for U-boats to reach. The Downs family, however, happened to be traveling during the U-boats' initial forays into the area.

Tougias and O'Leary detail the experience not only for the Downs family, but for the captains of the two U-boats operating in the Gulf during the spring of 1942.

The authors' descriptions of the suddenness, unexpectedness, and clandestine nature of the strikes remind us that U-boat attacks were the terrorism of their day, save for the odd twist that some U-boat captains approached torpedoed ships' crews, said "sorry," and threw them packs of cigarettes.

The story, too, tells us how unprepared the cities, towns, and ship captains of the region were. Blackouts were not yet standard procedure, as noted in the logs of the U-boats, and ships sailed across the Gulf unescorted and without evasive action.

The authors provide a quickly flowing narrative tale that captures the aura of the 1940s and proves that our grandparents were right; there were U-boats off the coast of the United States in World War II, and they did an amazing amo unt of damage.

J OHN GALLUZZO

Hanover, Massachusetts

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

God and Sea Power: 1he Influences of ciliation as Mahan's conversion, in which Religion on Alfred 1hayer Mahan by he experiences a spiritual awakening that Suzanne Geissler (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2015, 280pp, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 978 -1-61 251-843-5; $39.95hc) Alfred Thayer Mahan is considered one of the greatest naval strategists in history, and, in God and Sea Power, Suzanne Geissler examines the influence that Mahan's strong Christian faith had on his life, his views on war, and on politics. Geissler's well-researched biography sheds light on Mahan as a devout C hristian. Her book devotes a tremendous amount of time to the discussion of his faith from a very early age through his final days. Her other objective is to offer a different interpretation than other Mahan biographers of some of the important events in Mahan's life. This is accomplished by analyzing various correspondences and other documents throughout his life.

Mahan was greatly influenced by his father, Dennis Hart Mahan, and his uncle, Milo Mahan. Dennis, a graduate of West Point, went on to become an expert in military scholarship and eventually a prominent faculty member at West Point. Milo was an Episcopal priest and theologian at New York City's General Theological Seminary. From a very yo ung age and well into his twenties, Mahan was unsure of his faith, yet he was steadfast in his religious piety.

He was quick to point out his own flaws .

He felt that he was always falling short of God's standards. The reader is given the impression that yo ung Mahan was an individual who strove for unachievable perfection. His criticism, however, was not directed only toward himself, but to his peers as well. He felt compelled to point out people's flaws , even with the realization that this made him unpopular. He seemed unable to help himself.

Geissler addresses other biographers' interpretations of events during Mahan's early years: No ted and significant events include an allusion to his possible romantic feelings for another man, his drinking, his possible depression and a questionable relationship with a married woman, among others. Mahan eventually fo und a way to reconcile his perfectionist introspection with his condemnation of his vario us proclivities. The author refers to this recon-

dictates his approach to life thereafter. Essentially, the teachings and tenets of Christianity greatly influenced Mahan, the man, for the rest of his life.

Mahan was a devoted father. He saw it as his Christian duty to teach his children the importance of his faith. It was through the preparation of lesson plans for them (both in religion and history) that his aptitude for parsing the fundamentals of a given topic in a comprehensible manner became apparent. Mahan viewed this, along with his aptitude for skillful writing, as blessings from God. The publication of his first book, The Influence ofSea Power upon History: 1660-1183, catapulted him into the public and political consciousness of America and the world. Behind the scenes, his faith had a tremendous impact on his political views and ultimately his written work.

Geissler appears to leave no stone unturned when detailing Mahan's views of controversial topics throughout the years.

There is ample discussion ofMahan's views

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on racism, women's su ffrage, and war, among others. Further, her discussion of the dichotomy that exists between Mahan's C hristian faith and his support for strategic pla ns w ith regard to war is peppered throughout the book. Mahan believed that war was inevitable and wo uld always exist.

As he saw it, original sin destined man ro be predisposed to wa r. Additionally, he believed that God ultimately controlled the outcome of everything.

The author is well versed in C hri stianity and at times makes ass umptions about the reader's familiarity with it and its tenets.

Yet, this should not dissuade one from reading this monograph. A lot has been written on Mahan and his accomplishments.

Geissler offers readers a view of Mahan through a different lens. Based on her findings and interpretations of primary sources, Mahan was heavily influenced by his fai th . By skillfully contras ting the popular view of Mahan with the deeply religious Mahan, the author has certainly provided more food for thought for historians, Mahan emhusias rs, and the general public alike.

MONA R AMONETTI

Northport, New York

by Kurt D . Voss All proceeds from this pictorial histo1y benefit the ELISSA preservation fund.

Pu bli shed by Arcad ia P ublish ing and Ga lveston Historica l Foundation $2 1.99. 128 pages, 200 photographs Autographed copies availab le at (409) 763 - 1877, or online at:

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Matthew Fontaine Maury, Father of Oceanography : A Biography, 1806-1873

by John Grady (McFarland & Company, Jefferson, NC , 2015, 354pp, notes, biblio, index, 978- 0-7864-7821-7; $45pb) Matthew Fontaine Maury lived in the era of the "self-made man," when a young person (and in the mid-1800s, it was mostly men) could envision a career and chase it down, no matter how unattai nable that career seemed. Maury joined the US Navy and hoped to make a career of it, but instead suffered an injury ashore that foreve r affected his ability to go ro sea, at least in the eyes of the men making such decisions.

Passed over time and again for sea duty, he always believed he was fit for the service.

But was the service fit for him? Maury spoke brazenly about the ills of the mid-19'h century US Navy, but did so in the anonymous style of the day, writing excoriating letters under pen names to influential publications, in an era before acceptable forums for progressive-chinking junior officerslike today's US Naval Institute's Proceedings.

Maury inserted himself directly into the political li ne of fire of the day, calling for reform . He ran afoul of Jefferson Davis, bur had the support of John Tyler. His opinions concerned three navies (US, Confederate and Royal), repatriation of slaves ro the Amazon, and more.

Maury's greatest contributions, though, came in regard to the sciences of the ocean.

H e scoffed at the notion that to navigate rhe coastline of the United States, m ariners h ad to reach out ro England for reliable ch arts, and set out patriotically to right th at inherent wrong. H e built up the National Observatory, charring the night skies, which were as important to ocean navigarors as the waters themselves. H e helped chart oceanic pathways, lay the first rransAtlantic cable, and perfect electronic mines.

His scientific ideas arose just as America entered its first age of exploration .

Historian John Grady carries us across the tumultuous sea that was Maury's life in stylistic fas hion, helping us navigate our own way through highly-politicized preand post-Civil War Washington, DC , as Maury lived it. We are left to m ake our own decision on Maury's life. Was he a successful and "useful " m an, the one he always hoped to be? Could he have reached the goals he set for himself wi thout as much self-generated turmoil? On one topic, there can be no question: Matthew Fontaine Maury called attention to m any of the problems of America and the ocean frontier during the days of Manifest Destiny, and rook personal responsibility for attacking them head-on.

J OHN GALLUZZO

H anover, Massachusetts

Embassy to the Eastern Courts: America's Secret First Pivot towardAsia, 1832-37

by Andrew C. A. Jampoler (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2015 , 256pp, illus, m aps, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 978-161251-416-1 ; $44.95hc) In this story set during the rollicking days of President Andrew Jackson's administration, Edmund Quincy Roberts, a fai led merchant and supercargo experienced in Indian Ocean trade and seeking governm ent employment, won the special role of diplomatic agent and was sent ro Asia to secure treaties for the regular advancement SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 20 16

of American commerce abroad. Sailing on the sloop-of-war USS Peacock, two voyages (1832-34 and 1835-37) brought him through the harbors of Rio, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo, and to Manila, Canton , Rade de Yung Lam, Bangkok, Singapore, Muscat, Bombay, Colombo, Batavia, and Macao.

The challenges faced by a young nation seeking its way among older established powers were immense. In the end, Roberrs's efforts were met with notable failures, finding only qualified successes in Oman and Siam, while other destinations like Japan were never even visited. His story of diplomatic struggle recorded in his own published m emoir is interes ting, but those excerpts m ake up a surprisingly sm all part of the book. Jam poler more ably uses Roberts's narrative as a compass heading with which to lead the reader through the wider international experiences of the US Navy abroad, a brash 5ch- or 6'h-rate power in the early decades of the turbulent nineteenth century, and life and death on distant station.

Small vessels like USS Peacock and her consorts Boxer and Enterprise were the workhorses of scattered American squadrons, ships and crews of a new navy attempting the projection of power overseas, or at least the appearance of same. Jampoler documents the many real hardships faced by the crew in excruciating detail, juxtaposed with Roberrs's repeated insistence of most-favored-nation status. This was the pre-modern navy, intent upon pursuing lofty objectives while simultaneously being almost defeated by sheer distances and the realities of oceanic ex istence, status-conscious officers, hapless diplomats, and foot-loose sai lors faced shipwreck, intemperance, disease, piracy, spoiled provisions, and foul water. This was a navy not intent on dominating the waves, but simply striving to show the flag among other maritime nations and to American merchants overseas, and even that only occasionally.

Naval surgeons, promoting primitive, toxic and ineffective cures, knew the worst of these hardships as "seasoning," a vicious winnowing of life by virulent unfa miliar pathogens. This reality overwhelms the ambitious state mission by the end; in Cochin, C hina, Roberts and crew a re simply

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

"Meticulously pieced togeth er from exhaustive research, Eldridge's story is a tale of war, peace, extraordina1y heroism, and heartbreaking tragedy ... Highly recommended .. . " Midwest Book Review "An old seafaring world comes to life ... An abso rbing and comprehensive study ... " Kirkus Reviews " ... a great read ... " Cape Cod Times " ... prose as lively and fast-paced as a clipper under ful l sail, and historical reconstruction as dependable as a copper-bottomed hull. " WickedLocalCapeCod " ... should be included in eve1y town library. Highly recommended." The Portsmouth Review Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. For more reviews and information visit lostherocapecod.com.

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too emaciared and ill to au empr any real negoriarions, sailing away impolirely imo rhe nighr.

This is a naurical rale. Jampoler provides an incredibly rich and full descriprion of life ar sea and exoric bur difficulr Asian desrinarions, panicularly rhe harbors and shipya rds and maririme connecrions to rhe Old World capirals, overlain by rhe imprim of navies of rhe world. The narrarive is as seen from Peacock's quan erdeck, and does nor imend to presem rhe view from rhe shore. Wirh a few notable exceprions, Asian voices and agency are rherefore absem , rhe acrions and reacrions of Asian officials seen ch rough America n eyes only. This is nor an imernarional tale as much as an examinarion of rhe· role of rhese overseas calls wirhin an American narrarive. Given rhe role of rhe US Navy today, chis is an im-

pon am reminder of whar ir was rhen, our roars before A. T. Mahan. The obvious lack of culmral undersranding by rhe officers and diplomars is reminiscem of Lord Macanney's 1793 mission to Peking, foreshadowed by rhe aurho r in rhe early pare of rhe book. Indeed, a rrue meering berween rhe differem culrures seems highly implausible.

For chose who have somehow managed to avoid rhe history char involved 7 1% of rhe planer, Embassy to the Eastern Courts is an imoxicaring plunge into rhe deep endbring a life jacker. For chose who love rhe maririme world, Embassy is a joy. Some may find rhe exrended caprions, foomores, and rangem s a bir bewildering (descriprions of pons nor visired? nores on paimings nor included as figures?). Yer rhese offer parricularly rare surprises, such as rhe experience of H arrier Low and ocher New Eng-

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land women in China, or rhe legacy of rhe Parsee shipwrighrs of Bombay. Jampoler's skill and passion for capmring rhe unique perspecrive of maririme and naval history is abundand y clear. Commanding officers come and go, and even Edmund Roberrs himself fails ro comp le re rhe second voyage, dying of illness in Macao in 1836. The on ly consisrem ch aracrer is USS Peacock herself; rhe ship being rhe sole venue for all naurical experience; rhe narrarive rherefore remains unfinished umil her loss ar rhe Columbia River bar in 184 1.

HANS VAN TrLBURG

Honolulu, H awaii

From Cabin 'Boys' to Captains: 250 Years o/Women at Sea by Jo Stanley (The History Press, Gloucesrershire, UK, 2016, 304pp, illus, appen, gloss, nores, index, ISBN 978 -0-7524-8878-3; $28.25pb) Umil recendy, women's hisrory, parricularly women's place in maririme history, had been neglecred by hisrorians. Exceprion al women-queens and ochers who dominare rhe popular media- like Eleanor Roosevelr, for example-receive adequare auemion in rhe news and in hisrory books.

In defense of rheir unbalanced coverage of history, hisrorians have argued char rhe everyday woman didn'r do anyrhing to warram hisrorical analysis. W hen char defense collapsed, a shonage of marerial and sources became rhe next excuse. While there is no arg uing that sources and evidence are harder to find for this demographic, a shonage of information is not the same as no information. Jo Stanley's From Cabin 'Boys' to Captains: 250 Years of Women at Sea is a solid example of whar can be done wirh limired resources to expand women's history-expand, bur nor fill, a vase void.

Sranley addresses one of rhe mosr difficulr arenas where women were forbidden for cemuries and only in recem rimes have been allowed emry, while prejudice remains barely resuained-females ar sea. Drawing on anecdoral evidence, for rhe mosr pan Brirish, rhe aurhor builds a monumem to females who overcame mulriple obsracles to serve at sea for two and a half cemuries.

Many of the characters in Stanley's work disguised themselves as males to get aboard ships. Some were fo und out, others not, and probably masc lefr no uace of their success or failure.

SEA HISTORY 156, AUTUMN 2016

A reading of From Cabin 'Boys' to Captains leads this economist to wonder what society might have accomplished over the centuries had available resources been used fo r the best interest of all. A simple case in point is the War of 1812, generated largely over British impressment of American seamen to overcome a manpower shortage chat could have been alleviated by recruiting women .

From Cabin 'Boys' to Captains is well written, produced, and adorned with numerous illustrations that make it a pleasure to read and peruse. It is recommended fo r those interested in maritime history, women's history, and, specifically, wom en's role in maritime history, although, it should be of interest to anyone interested in just plain old history.

D AVID 0 . WHITTEN Auburn, A labama

The Lost Hero ofCape Cod: Captain Asa Eldridge and the Maritime Trade that Shaped America by Vincent M iles (Historical Society of O ld Yarmouth, Yarmouth Port, MA, 2015, 167pp, illus, notes, biblio, index 978- 0-9625- 068 8-8; $15pb)

There is little primary source information to go on when researching the life of Asa Eldridge. In fac t, his biographer has only found a single letter written by the Yarmouth Port man who sailed the world 's seas fo r nea rly a quarter centu ry at the helms of ships of varying sizes, speeds, and designs. Even Eldridge's death is sh ro uded in mys tery. Yet, by piecing roge ther the scant data Eldridge and his fa mily left behind, the numerous newspape r reports that locate him at di ffe rent points around the globe between the 1830s and 185 0s, and the general status of the vocation in which he worked at the time, the author deftly creates a "life and ti mes" of Asa Eldridge that stand s in requiem fo r not only Eldridge, but fo r a wider class of fo rgotten heroes of the pre-Civil War era.

Eldridge's career occurred at a major cross roads of maritime hisrory, as ship designers experimented with a new fo rm of propulsion . A classically- trained sailing mas ter, originally running transAtlantic packers, Eldridge tes ted himself by taking command of early transAtlantic steamers, then jumped back to wind power ro guide the newes t clipper ships that dominated

the climax of the age of the sailing ship, before ending his career under steam once again. His prowess and understanding of the winds and waves kept him in the news, as he sought and broke speed records in the era when crossings shortened fro m a month to just under ten days.

The reduction in sailing times across the oceans had ramifi cations for com munication, military, and even postal concerns. W hile receiving news from England was important fo r the people of New York, the quick delivery of mail interested both the British and American governments.

Perhaps a bit more clandestinely clad was the underlying military strategy; the countries had fo ught wars against each other twice within living memory, as M iles points OU(.

M iles argues that because of the tremendous impact they had in helping to build the country's economic in fras tructure, Eldridge and the other American sea captains of his generation deserve greater standing in American history than they now have, and he is correcr. ] O H N GALLUZZO

H anover, Massachusetts

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Celebrate our maritime heritage this holiday season with NMHS greeting cards These tugboats are always ready and on call to give assistance to ships in peril. The men and women on these boats constantly hone their skills ... even when "taking a break in the weather."

Greeting reads "Wishing you fair winds for the holidays and calm seas for the New Year."

Set of 10: $14.95 or $13.46 for NMHS members.

Add $4.50 s/h for one set or $6.80 s/h for two to five sets. Please indicate your choice of holiday or blank cards.

Please call for shipping charges for more than 5 sets or international orders. Visit our website www.seahistory.org-for other selections choose "Store," then "Gifts."

Gifts CD I-Awaiting A Break In The Weather Oil Painting By Austin Dwyer 0

To order, call 1-800-221-NMHS (6647), ext. 0, or visit our web site at www.seahistory.org.

Order now for October delivery.

2017 Calendar

by Ji,IJ JJJ, ~11

NEW! Tall Ships There are few things on the high seas more dramatic than the great clouds of sail raised by traditional full- rigged ships. This edition of Tall Ships features vessels from ports around the world.

Calendar is wall hanging, full color 11" x 22" open.

Orders shipped after 10 Dec. 2016 can be priority shipped at $7.95.

Please call for shipping charges for multiple or international orders.

$14.95 or $13.46 for NMHS members.

Add $5.50 s/h within the US.

To order, call 1-800-221-NMHS (6647), ext. 0, or visit our website at www.seahistory.org.

NY State residents add applicable sales tax.

Ships of Glass, Inc. Glass Replicas Featuring Curved Glass Sails We specialize in making replicas of vessels.

We welcome custom orders.

"Yes, I can make a replica of your boat." -Don Hardy

Brooklyn McAllister

Barque Kaiulani

-

Custom pendants and earrings

Brig Niagara lamp finial

USCG Barque Eagle

Ships of Glass, Inc. vailable: custom Also a mobiles, coasters, jewelry, dlebolders, triVets, can d more. nigbtligbts an

Don & Kathy Hardy 6702 Rosemary Dr. Tampa, FL 33625 Ph. 813 918-1566 813 732-6917 dhardy@shipsofglassinc.com

Please check out our of vessels on catalog Webs¡t WWw..shipsoti our l .

I e: g assinc.com.

"My office is filled with glorious maritime memorabilia, and the first item people comment on is the captivating Ships of Glass replica of the Barque Kaiulani on my desk. Don Hardy is an extraordinarily talented artist, and his glass models are classy representations of our most beloved ships."

-Burchenal Green, NMHS President

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