Holy Cow – we made it into The Wall Street Journal! (I’d include a link, but you have to subscribe to read it – so oh well). Stuart Ferguson, a reported who spent a lot of quality time with us back in the fall, wrote a top-notch article about Ye Olde Boat Museum today and it’s absolutely wonderful. I’ll include it (without the pictures) at the bottom of this entry. It’s pretty darn exciting – and it means that this weekend’s events had better go right!
Of course, as it turns out – I’ll be speaking at a fundraiser for part of the weekend – they told me that today. Seems that I’m “perky” and they need to keep these people awake. I’m hoping that’s a compliment, and that’s how I’m going to take it.
Not much else, though (as if all that isn’t enough) – we received 24 boxes of hardtack today, and I purchased 2 gallons of rum for grog-making purposes. We’ve got beef jerky and goober peas and in a minute I’ll be looking up the recipe for making peanut coffee. (Ever had it? It needs to be experienced).
Today I found a lovely Hello Kitty surprise hanging on my door – a Hawaiian surfer Hello Kitty from my friend Natasha who just got back from Hawaii. My office is quite the Hello Kitty showcase these days. Poor Jim of course has to deal with the plethora of Hello Kitty products we have in the house, but he’s being a pretty good sport about it and has actually accompanied me to the Sanrio store on occasion. I think that deep down he understands my need for Hello Kitty. She’s like the Harlan Ellison story – she has no mouth, and she must scream….
OK – so it’s still nice outside and I’m determined to go enjoy it. Spring can’t come too soon.
Oh – and before I forget – Welcome back to Captain Ron who spent some time on an America’s Cup boat this last week (not one of the ones waiting for wind down in New Zealand – but cool nonetheless.) Speaking of America’s Cup – wonder-sailor and commentator Gary Jobson was supposed to be at my presentation yesterday, but his flight was delayed. Oh well!
Here’s the WSJ article –
An Ironclad Reason To Pay a Visit
The Wall Street Journal
By STUART FERGUSON
Newport News, Va.
In 1861, when the model for John Ericsson’s Monitor was presented to Abraham Lincoln, the president joked: “All I have to say is what the girl said when she stuck her foot into the stocking, ‘It strikes me there’s something in it.’ “
Abe understood. There was something in the Swedish-born engineer’s innovative design: The 173-foot-long vessel had a shallow draft, allowing it to operate up rivers, yet its engine and living quarters were below the waterline; only the turret presented much of a target for the enemy’s guns. (The turret was revolutionary in both senses: it revolved 360 degrees, and it was the great-grandfather of the giant guns still used on battleships). The crew was protected by the 182 iron plates that formed the turret’s armor.
On March 9, 1862, the Monitor‘s two guns fired their first shots against the much larger Confederate “floating battery” Virginia (built from the hull of the USS Merrimack) at Hampton Roads, the vast anchorage just down the James River from Newport News. (The day before, while the Monitor was still en route from New York, the Virginia had destroyed the USS Cumberland and the USS Congress, killing hundreds of men.) The famous “duel of the ironclads” was a draw, but the Monitor saved the rest of the U.S. squadron. The grateful Yankee sailors couldn’t believe they had been saved by this “tin can on a shingle,” as one of the Virginia‘s crew contemptuously labeled the enemy vessel.
Here at the Mariners’ Museum, they’ve got the tin can.
The Monitor sank off Cape Hatteras on Dec. 31, 1862. The wreck was discovered in 1973, but the turret, that Holy Grail of modern naval architecture, was recovered from the ocean just last summer. Still full of the coal that spilled into it when the Monitor came to rest upside down on the ocean floor, it was brought to the museum, joining the anchor and other objects taken from the ironclad.
The federal government has designated the Mariners’ as the official museum to conserve and interpret the artifacts recovered from the Monitor. In collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration it will develop the USS Monitor Center (construction to begin in 2003), which aside from being the repository for materials, research and programming related to the ironclad will tell the broader story of the Civil War’s crucial naval component. The total for all this comes to about $30 million, $6 million of which has been raised so far; it’s hoped that $10 million will come from private donors.
It would certainly be money well spent. An institution such as the Mariners’ can do more than simply display historical artifacts. Founded in 1930 to study “the culture of the sea and its tributaries,” it will draw on its vast collections (including ship models, armaments, paintings, sculpture and a library containing thousands of books, manuscripts, letters and photographs, and ships logs and plans) and the knowledge of its staff to provide a fuller understanding of the crucial role the Monitor played in the formation of modern navies. With its 2000 publication of crew member George Geer’s fascinating letters to his wife back in New York (“The Monitor Chronicles”) it has already added to a very short list of books on the subject currently in print. And as word of the Monitor Center gets out, more material is bound to surface.
Indeed, during a visit last fall, Susan Berg, the museum’s librarian, showed me some recent acquisitions: two of John Porter’s designs for converting the Merrimack into the CSS Virginia. Porter took the drawings with him to Richmond to show the Confederate government what he had in mind; this set in motion the race to launch the first ironclad. The previous owner of these rare drawings contacted the museum on learning it now had the Monitor‘s turret. In return, of course, possession of the Monitor artifacts puts the Mariners’ on the map for anyone interested in the Civil War.
A taste of what’s to come can be had during the “Battle of Hampton Roads Weekend” symposium beginning on Friday. “Battle of the Ironclads: Eyewitness to History,” a new exhibition of paintings, engravings, blueprints, newspapers and first-hand accounts, opens to the public this Saturday, accompanied by three days of events that include lectures by noted historians, concerts, a Civil-War era dance, childrens’ activities and a memorial service for the sailors who died at Hampton Roads and when the Monitor foundered. Also on offer are behind-the-scenes tours of the museum’s collections and the Monitor conservation area. (Go to www.mariner.org/battle/. From there one can access the Mariners’ main site, a vast repository of ironclad history.)
But museumgoers can view most of the Monitor‘s remnants at any time. A boardwalk behind the museum allows visitor to look into tanks where recently recovered artifacts sit in electrolytic baths of sodium carbonate or sodium hydroxide that slowly leach the salt from them. Objects that have been fully stabilized are always on view in the main galleries.
And let me recommend one of the tours — the museum staff is unfailingly engaging and just about to burst from all the information they have in their areas of expertise. When I visited, archaeologists were still excavating inside the turret, which is kept in the largest of those holding tanks; portholes in the wall allow visitors to see the turret contained within. It took four months to remove 140 years of debris. Even when it was ship-shape, the interior (20 feet in diameter and nine feet high) must have been close quarters, what with the two 11-inch Dahlgren guns sitting in the middle.
The cannons were still encrusted in silt and coal when I climbed into the turret. Seashells cascaded down the sides of the wall where Wayne Lusardi, Jeff Johnston and John Broadwater were “digging” (sometimes with chopsticks) as they looked for artifacts. A dent in the armor caused by an enemy cannon ball was visible. (The Virginia‘s shots bounced off the Monitor “as though they were spit balls,” a grateful George Geer wrote to his wife.) Mr. Lusardi told me he had helped dig out two sets of human remains, which were taken to the Army’s Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for analysis. The turret is truly a time capsule.
Turns out it was a lucky thing that the coal — the ship’s fuel — spilled when it sank. Its protective covering allowed for “phenomenal organic preservation,” Mr. Lusardi said, as he warned me not to step on a rope that looked as if it might offer some traction in the slippery soup at the bottom of the tank — a c. 1861 rope only partially dug out. Mr. Lusardi also pointed out an original leather strap. While I was in the turret he found a uniform button made of Goodyear rubber. And as they worked, the archeologists were able to spot subtle design differences between the ship’s plans and the space they actually find themselves in. When conservation is finally completed in 10 to 15 years, we may know more about the USS Monitor than John Ericsson himself did.
Mr. Ferguson works on the Journal’s Leisure & Arts page.
