SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM HARRY BRIDGES (1901-1990) Flags flew at half mast in San Francisco thi s spring to honor Harry Bridges, following hi s death at age 88 on March 30. A labor leader who made history on the San Francisco waterfront from the 1930s through the 1960s, Alfred Renton Bryant Bridges came to the United States from Australia aboard the barkentine Ysabel in 1920. He soon found himself leading protests against the oppressive condi tions seamen and dockworkers then labored under. In 1933 he led in forming a local of the International Longshoremen 's Association (ILA) in San Francisco which called a strike, in the following year, that went down in the annals of American labor. Violence between strikers and strike breakers, police and the militia led to "Bloody Thursday" and the death of two workers. The walkout led to a general strike-the who le city shut down. In 1937, finding the American Federation of Labor (AFL) too accommodationist, he reorganized his local as the International Longshoreman 's and Warehousemen' s Union (ILWU), which affiliated with the militant Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) led by the fiery coal miner John L. Lewis. Threatened with deportation as an " undesirable alien" because of Communi st associations in the 1940s, Bridges ultimately was recognized as a genuinely independent American radical. In the 1960s, he worked with management on a modernization program that accepted containerization, c ut labor costs and improved productivity on the docks, leading to accusations by a rising generation of militants that he had become a " partner of the bosses." In truth, his positions changed after he had won the battles which revolutionized conditions on the waterfront. Mayor ArtAgnos said: " He was a legendary figure whose courage and devotion to principle will never be forgotten. " PS
declining revenues forced the company into bankruptcy and Van to tum to other fields of endeavor. But his love for the steamers and the river never left him, and in his later years he found himself again involved with a cherished vessel from his youth . When the famous old steamer Alexander Hamilton was retired by her owners in 1971, VanOlcott spearheaded an intensive drive to save this historic sidewheeler, which had been built for Van's grandfather back in 1923. The Steamer Alexander Hamilton Society was formed in 1973 and it was with great pleasure that I worked with Van on the board of this organization. Although the Hamilton was tragically sunk during an untimely coastal gale, Van's energies continued in helping to form the Hudson River Maritime Center museum at Roundout, New York, and largely as a result of his constant vigil, that museum stands today to provide present and future generations with the story of the development of transportation and commerce on the Hudson River, which Van Olcott so loved. WILLIAM G. M ULLER LOIS DARLING (1917-1989) A first-class small boat sailor, Lois was National Women's Sailing Champion
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vAN SANTVOORD OLCOTT, JR. "'"'>~ (1919-1990) 0
Van Olcott 's unabashed passion for Hudson River steamboating lore was a natural inheritance of similar enth usiasm possessed by his father and grandfather, both prominent figures in Hudson River steamboating. Van , as a young man home from naval service after the war, was just started on what might have become a career with his father's Day Line, when 36
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in 1941. She collaborated with her husband Louis on many books on natural history and wrote and illustrated a children's book Nessie, presenting the Loch Ness monster as a surviving dinosaur. In 1983 she did a classic study of Darwin's Beagle, which appeared in SH 31. Told in May 1989 that she had leukemia and only weeks to live, she stretched
this to six months, managing to finish the lovely model she is seen with here, of Ratty and Mole, from The Wind in the Willows. The model maybe viewed today at Mystic Seaport Museum.
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Sea Breezes magazine reports the death at age 85 of Lieutenant Commander Booth, RNR (ret), author of Merchant Ships ( 1936) and numerous other works on ships and the sea. JOHN HASKELL KEMBLE (1912-1990) ARCHIBALD Ross LEWIS (1914-1990) PETER THROCKMORTON (1928-1990)
We have lost two distinguished hi storians, Professor Lewis, editor of The American Neptune, and Jack Kemble, NMHS Advisor and author of The Panama Route. And as we go to press, we learn of the death of Peter Throckmorton, NMHS Advisor and pioneer marine archaeologist. Appreciations of their lives and work will appear in a forthcoming Sea History. New Look at Old Sights John H. Gilchrist, an engineer, has published findings drastically revising currently accepted notions of the accuracy of latitude sights in the 1500s and early 1600s. Up to now, most historians have assumed errors in determining latitude in this period of 1/2° and often 1° or more (30-60+ nautical miles). One reason for this was that the astrolobe or cross staff in general use in the 1500s showed I in a space ofO. I inches. John Davis's backstaff came into use in the 1600s, which showed 1° in a minimun space of 1.75 inches-making it possible to measure subdivisions of a degree, even down to 5' (5 miles). In The American Neptune for Winter 1990, Gilchrist, plotting the errorof early navigators from Magellan to Gosnold (1519-1602) in locating known landmarks, finds a 95% chance of sights by these navigators being accurate to within about 50 miles . The four English navigators' sights (mostly using the backstaff) had a 95 % probability of being accurate to within 10 miles. For the English navigators working on the New England coast, Gilchrist points out, these findings rule out several current identifications, predicated on a much larger possibility ofnavigational error, than actually obtained when these navigators' sights are analytically checked against known locations. 0
SEA HISTORY 54, SUMMER 1990