Sea History 166 - Spring 2019 by National Maritime Historical Society & Sea History Magazine

SEA HISTORY No. 166

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

SPRING 2019

$4.95

THE ART, LITERATURE, ADVENTURE, LORE & LEARNING OF THE SEA HMS Rose and the Pitt Packet Affair

Training for D-Day in the Chesapeake Overland Rescue in the Arctic Death in the Ice

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No. 166

SEA HISTORY

SPRING 2019

CONTENTS

20 The Overland Relief Expedition–Saving Whalers 120 Years Ago Above the Arctic Circle, by William H. Thiesen A sudden weather event trapped a fleet of whaleships in the Arctic in the fall of 1897, and the USRC Bear was sent to bring them provisions so that they wouldn’t starve. It was the first time before modern icebreakers that a rescue ship risked a winter journey above the Arctic Circle.

national maritime museum, london

10 National Maritime Awards Dinner and Invitational Marine Art Exhibition The National Coast Guard Museum Association joins NMHS for the 2019 gala, honoring those whose work in service to the country and in preparing future leaders to take up the baton has been exemplary and an inspiration to others. As part of this unique event, artists from the American Society of Marine Artists will join guests and display a selection of their works in a special exhibition and sale. A percentage of the sales benefit the host organizations.

28 Training for D-Day on Maryland’s Western Shore, by Mark C. Wilkins Preparing for the invasion of Normandy required amphibious warfare training on a massive scale. The military selected a heretofore quiet beach on Chesapeake Bay as its training ground.

calvert marine museum

22 Death in the Ice: The Franklin Expedition Revealed, by Göran R. Buckhorn After more than thirty expeditions seeking to find what happened to the missing Franklin Expedition of 1845, Canadian maritime archaeologists located the ships in 2014 and 2016, wrecked on the seafloor in the Arctic. The remains of Erebus and Terror finally answer some longstanding questions about what happened to the expedition and the men who never returned.

40 Maritime Education in the 21st Century at SUNY Maritime College, by Elizabeth McCarthy Students at our maritime academies face the academic challenges of a college education in addition to training in preparation for merchant marine licensing requirements. How well are these institutions preparing their students for success in maritime careers?

library of coongress

34 Escape From Charleston: A Union Soldier & the Demise of the Blockade Runner Celt, by William A. Cahill When a Confederate blockade runner ran aground off Sullivan’s Island near Charleston in 1865, the Union Navy picked up the men onboard and discovered one of their own, stowed away in the hold. How did Private Michael Kirby end up aboard a Confederate vessel?

44 Meet Dr. Kris Von Wald: Tall Ships America’s New Executive Director Dr. Von Wald introduces herself, and outlines her vision for Tall Ships America.

suny maritime college

Cover: HMS Surprise (ex-“HMS” Rose) by Jerry Soto, (See pages 46-47.)

DEPARTMENTS 4 Deck Log and Letters 8 NMHS: A Cause in Motion 46 Sea History for Kids 50 Ship Notes, Seaport & Museum News

55 Calendar 56 Maritime History on the Internet 58 Reviews 64 Patrons

Sea History and the National Maritime Historical Society Sea History e-mail: seahistory@gmail.com; NMHS e-mail: nmhs@seahistory.org; Website: www.seahistory.org. Ph: 914 737-7878; 800 221-NMHS MEMBERSHIP is invited. Afterguard $10,000; Benefactor $5,000; Plankowner $2,500; Sponsor $1,000; Donor $500; Patron $250; Friend $100; Contributor

$75; Family $50; Regular $35. All members outside the USA please add $20 for postage. Sea History is sent to all members. Individual copies cost $4.95.

40 SEA HISTORY (issn 0146-9312) is published quarterly by the National Maritime Historical Society, 5 John Walsh Blvd., POB 68, Peekskill NY 10566 USA. Periodicals postage paid at Peekskill NY 10566 and add’l mailing offices. COPYRIGHT © 2019 by the National Maritime Historical Society. Tel: 914 737-7878. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sea History, PO Box 68, Peekskill NY 10566.

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Deck Log In the Company of Artists That isn’t what I’m seeing, I silently protested, until I understood… hint of sun broke out from behind a mask of clouds, the sky more gray than blue. As we stood in the Charleston Yacht Club, looking from the covered porch out to the harbor, artist Dee Beard Dean was conducting a plein air demonstration. Her audience, artists of the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA), was watching closely, asking questions, commenting on colors, brush selection, and technique. The harbor and the waterfront were crowded with ships and docks and sheds; the miles-long Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge was visible in the distance. Yet, as her composition came together on the canvas, she was omitting most of what I was seeing. And right there, I had an epiphany. Of course, I had always known art is not a literal reproduction of a scene. I have observed several artists working en plein air before; in 2017, I attended a plein air “paint-out” at Dee Beard Dean concludes her plein air painting Mystic Seaport, where ASMA art- demonstration in Charleston, South Carolina. ists were spread out around the campus, all painting different scenes, but at the 2016 ASMA conference in Jamestown, Virginia, they were all clustered on one dock painting the ships at Jamestown Settlement: Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery. Not one canvas looked like another. There was a close-up of the ship’s bow; another work focused on the lines across the sky; while others took in the full scene—as many perspectives as there were artists. Back in Charleston, Ms. Dean explained that she was interpreting what she could see in her mind’s eye. Artist Russ Kramer, ASMA Fellow and past president, explained that artists paint what they need to capture to portray the scene as they experience it. They learn to leave out that which detracts from their interpretation or vision. In a later demonstration, award-winning artist Don Maitz elaborated on the importance of the individual artist to the painting. As Edgar Degas once said, “Art is not about what you see but what the artist makes you see.” If he paints a wizard in the scene, then the wizard exists there and you see it. We at NMHS are enormously grateful to marine artists, both those working today and those from the past, for the snapshots of our maritime life that they provide us. The American Society of Marine Artists is an impressive organization of more than 500 accomplished painters, sculptors, print makers, and scrimArtist Don Maitz shanders from across the country. It is an honor to include their works in the pages of Sea History, and we are particularly grateful to feature their work in the Invitational Artists Gallery at the National Maritime Awards Dinner in Washington this May, and to offer a preview of it here (see pages 14–18). —Burchenal Green, NMHS President

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

photos by burchenal green

PUBLISHER’S CIRCLE: Peter Aron, Guy E. C. Maitland, Ronald L. Oswald OFFICERS & TRUSTEES: Chairman, Ronald L. Oswald; Vice Chairman, Richardo R. Lopes; President, Burchenal Green; Vice Presidents: Deirdre O’Regan, Wendy Paggiotta, Nancy Schnaars; Treasurer, Howard Slotnick; Secretary, Jean Wort; Trustees: Charles B. Anderson; Walter R. Brown; Christopher J. Culver; William S. Dudley; David S. Fowler; William Jackson Green; Karen Helmerson; Richard M. Larrabee; Guy E. C. Maitland; Capt. Brian McAllister; CAPT Sally Chin McElwreath, USN (Ret.); Michael W. Morrow; CAPT James A. Noone, USN (Ret.); Richard Patrick O’Leary; Erik K. Olstein; ADM Robert J. Papp Jr., USCG (Ret.); Timothy J. Runyan; Richard Scarano; Philip J. Shapiro; Capt. Cesare Sorio; William H. White; TrusteeElect, Denise Krepp; Chairmen Emeriti: Walter R. Brown, Alan G. Choate, Guy E. C. Maitland, Howard Slotnick FOUNDER: Karl Kortum (1917–1996) PRESIDENT EMERITUS: Peter Stanford (1927–2016) OVERSEERS: Chairman, RADM David C. Brown, USMS (Ret.); RADM Joseph F. Callo, USN (Ret.); George W. Carmany III; James J. Coleman Jr.; Clive Cussler; Richard du Moulin; Alan D. Hutchison; Gary Jobson; Sir Robin Knox-Johnston; John Lehman; Capt. James J. McNamara; H. C. Bowen Smith; John Stobart; Philip J. Webster; Roberta Weisbrod NMHS ADVISORS: George Bass, Francis Duffy, John Ewald, Timothy Foote, Steven A. Hyman, J. Russell Jinishian, Gunnar Lundeberg, Conrad Milster, William G. Muller, Stuart Parnes, Nancy Hughes Richardson, Joyce Huber SEA HISTORY EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Chairman, Timothy Runyan; Norman Brouwer, Robert Browning, William Dudley, Daniel Finamore, Kevin Foster, John Jensen, Joseph Meany, Carla Rahn Phillips, Walter Rybka, Quentin Snediker, William H. White NMHS STAFF: Executive Director, Burchenal Green; Director of Development, Jessica MacFarlane; Membership Director, Jean Marie Trick; Membership Coordinator, Nancy Schnaars; Comptroller, Anjoeline Osuyah; Staff Writers: Shelley Reid, Julia Church; Marketing Director, Steve Lovass-Nagy; Membership Assistant, Irene Eisenfeld SEA HISTORY: Editor, Deirdre E. O’Regan; Advertising, Wendy Paggiotta Sea History is printed by The Lane Press, South Burlington, Vermont, USA.

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

Old School Ship-to-Shore Communications I got a kick out of reading the article about Small’s Light (Sea History 165), in particular the part about communicating by message in a bottle. It brought back memories of when I was a first class-man at SUNY Maritime College. We were crossing the

Atlantic on the way to Europe in 1968. My shipmate, Dick Beza, and I decided to throw some bottles into the ocean with a note inside to see if anyone would find them. The enclosed letter is what I got back, not all that long afterwards. I kept it all these years. The photo is of the boy who found it—near a lighthouse I might add. I recently tried to find José with no luck. Just thought your readers might like to know that notes in a bottle work! Capt. Paul Lobo San Francisco, California The letter reads— August 16, 68 Mr. Paul Lobo and Richard Beza: I found your message in the bottle here in Flores Island by the coast of the lighthouse, at the north of the island, yesterday August 15 – 68. As you can see it didn’t take long to find it and it works very well. I close hoping that you will answer this one. José Orlando Barcelos Farol Albarnaz, Ponta Delgada Flores, Azores, Port.

We Welcome Your Letters! Please send correspondence to:

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

On Finding Matthew Flinders The discovery of the long-forgotten British naval explorer, hydrographer, and cartographer Matthew Flinders in January 2019 made world news. It introduced Flinders, who, while well-known to Australians and a certain number of maritime historians and aficionados, was unknown to a global audience who had no idea of who this man was, and why he is still important. As an archaeologist who exhumes the bones of the past, both figuratively with sunken ships, but also human remains, the discovery resonated with me personally. The resolution of a Victorian-era cold case is indeed significant, but the discovery of Flinders’s resting place has a deeper meaning. The Royal Navy explorer’s remains, soon to be studied by forensic anthropologists, will yield information on his ailments. Flinders died at age forty, following his long confinement by the French on Mauritius during the Napoleonic Wars; his bones may speak to what ended his life. He will then be reinterred, ostensibly in more public circumstances, and in a marked grave that befits his stature as one of the great navigators of his time. The greater good done here is more than the resolution of historical curiosity

courtesy state library of new south wales

Letters

Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) and a forensic analysis. In the midst of the fast-paced, breaking news cycles of our time, Matthew Flinders has transitioned, for a while, into the subject of media interest. It’s more than an opportunity for recognition more than two centuries since his death. This is an opportunity for a reminder of how much we, in this time, owe Flinders and his contemporaries for the world in which we live. While there were immediate consequences to these exploring expeditions, as the world was “opened” and connected by seafarers for the first time, our world today

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 sailors in modern-day conflicts. Each issue brings new insights and discoveries. If you love the sea, rivers, lakes, and

bays—if you appreciate the legacy of those who sail in deep water and their workaday craft, then you belong with us.

Join Today!

Mail in the form below, phone 1 800 221-NMHS (6647), or visit us at: www.seahistory.org (e-mail: nmhs@seahistory.org)

Yes, I want to join the Society and receive Sea History quarterly. My contribution is enclosed. ($17.50 is for Sea History; any amount above that is tax deductible.) Sign me up as: $35 Regular Member $50 Family Member $100 Friend 166 $250 Patron $500 Donor Mr./Ms. _____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ZIP_______________ Return to: National Maritime Historical Society, PO Box 68, Peekskill, NY 10566

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 5

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Matthew Flinders was laid to rest in the St. James Burial Ground on 23 July 1814. His headstone was removed some time in the 1840s when the train station was being expanded, and the location of the explorer’s grave was eventually lost. Another expansion of the rail by HS2 near Euston Station led to an excavation of the site and the rediscovery of Capt. Flinders’s remains.

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was defined by their actions. Charting the seas and coastlines, as Flinders did for Australia, opened more than new territory to colonial ambition, empire, and world trade. It formed the basis for a rapidly evolving global economy. The work done by these navigators and cartographers, and those who followed them in the 19th and 20th centuries, would, with its mathematical accuracy and attention to detail, form the basic data set that made GPS possible in our times. Flinders’s work, accomplished in a time of war, is a reminder that other pursuits, namely knowledge, and sharing that knowledge, as Britain did with the charts and volumes of the explorations of James Cook, George Vancouver, Matthew Flinders, and others, was something that transcended national interests, conflict, and language. As the world rediscovers Matthew Flinders, thanks to the exhumation and reburial of his reArchaeologists were able to identify Flinders’s remains, I hope it inspires discussion, mains by the lead depositum plate (breast plate) introspection, and above all else, placed on top of his coffin. simply inspires this generation to never stop exploring, charting, and sharing. With the oceans themselves, and their depths more than 90 percent unexplored, let Matthew Flinders inspire us all to keep at the unfinished task here, and then take that spirit and dedication with us to the stars. James P. Delgado Jacksonville, Florida

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SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

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NMHS:

A CAUSE IN MOTION National Maritime Historical Society – North American Society for Oceanic History 2019 Annual Meeting & Conference • New Bedford, Massachusetts • 15–18 May Connecting the Global and Local: The Sea and Maritime Cities The Board of Trustees of the National Maritime Historical Society is delighted to invite you to join us for the 56th NMHS Annual Meeting to be held jointly with the North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) and co-hosted by the New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, and the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center in New Bedford, Massachusetts, 15–18 May 2019. Under the conference theme “Connecting the Global and Local: The Sea and Maritime Cities,” NASOH will present three days of individual papers, sessions, and panels that identify and explore the dynamic social, cultural, environmental, economic, and physical spaces that connect city to sea. We will hear the most up-to-date research being done by maritime scholars and professionals in the field. We are looking forward to seeing you in historic New Bedford, The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center tells the story of the “the Whaling City,” a vibrant nexus in oceanic, maritime, and fishing industry—past, present, and future—through exhibits, coastal history that offers few parallels in North America. In the programs, and archives. Using objects, text, photographs, audio, first half of the 1800s, New Bedford emerged as the foremost and video, the center’s interactive exhibits allow visitors to learn whaling port in the world, surpassing Nantucket by 1823. Dur- about all aspects of the seafood industry. The exhibits look at the ing this era, it was considered life of a fisherman and the fishing Historic New Bedford, the “Whaling City” one of the richest cities in the community, examining historic world. Today, amidst the chalpractices, sustainability, and a lenges facing commercial fisherlook at changes over time with ies around the world, New Bedhistorical artifacts that speak to ford still takes to the seas as the “back when.” nation’s most valuable fishing port, with some 5,000 people Registration: $250 for members employed in port-related jobs. ($298 for non-members; $150 Multi-cultural in its composition for students), which includes and global in its historical condaily box lunches, breaks, recepnections, New Bedford captures tions, cruise, and banquet (there maritime North America in all will be a cash bar at select events). its dimensions. new bedford whaling national historical park We encourage registration at the We will enjoy a reception and tours at the New Bedford Underwriter, Sponsor, or Donor levels, which makes these conferWhaling Museum and the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Cen- ences possible. More information can be found on the magazine ter on Thursday. After a day of scholarly presentations and panels wrapper and at the NMHS website at www.seahistory.org. Make on Friday, we’ll board the ferryboat Cuttyhunk for an evening your reservations early, as space for the boat cruise and banquet cruise. The conference will conclude with a Saturday night ban- is limited. After 21 April, registration rates will increase by $25. quet at the Wamsutta Club. Accommodations: We have reserved a block of rooms at the The New Bedford Whaling Museum, located in the heart of Fairfield Inn & Suites – New Bedford from Tuesday, 14–20 May the city’s historic district, offers a fascinating look into America’s at the special rate of $159 ($179 for an ocean view). Located at whaling history. The museum interprets local whaling heritage the head of Homer’s Wharf at 185 MacArthur Drive, the hotel in the context of global history and examines the relationships is just a quarter mile from the Whaling Museum and an easy the port developed through the whaling industry with interna- stroll along the waterfront. Reservations can be made by calling tional communities, such as Cape Verde and the Azores, via its 774 634-2000 (be sure to book under the block of rooms reserved many exhibitions, speakers’ series, and events. Among its notable under the “NA Society for Oceanic History”). The block is availexhibits is the newly opened Whales Today, which offers a look able until 17 April or until it is full. Rooms can also be reserved into the relationship between whales and humans over the cen- online. The link for reservations and all details are posted on the turies and even features a life-sized blue whale heart! Not to be NMHS website at: www.seahistory.org. Click on the “Annual missed is Scrimshaw—Shipboard Art of the Whalers, a beautiful Meeting” link on our homepage. We look forward to seeing you collection of scrimshaw art from around the world, and the ex- in the Whaling City! hibit celebrating Frederick Douglass, which chronicles his formative years in New Bedford. This is one of America’s must-see We are especially grateful to Dr. Vic Mastone of the 2019 NASOH museums, one of my favorites, and one where you discover some- Program Committee for his organization, enthusiasm, and grace thing new with each visit. in planning this event. —Burchenal Green, NMHS President 8

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

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“Along the Hudson River Greenway Trail,” Courtesy of John Resch.

Lake Union Boats Afloat Show September 14-17

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Sea History’s Guide to Maritime Programs and Cultural Sites: New York Region Online Edition was funded in part by a grant from the Hudson River Valley news, events, seminars 2017 Historic Naval Ships Annualcontained Conference SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 9 National Heritage Area. The Association views and conclusions in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the and programs. September 26-29 opinions or policies of the U.S. Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The 2019 National Maritime Awards Dinner

national press club

It is with great pleasure that the National Maritime Historical Society and the National Coast Guard Museum Association invite you to join us on May 2nd as we honor three distinguished awardees for the National Maritime Awards Dinner at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Dinner chairs Denise Krepp and VADM Al Konetzni, USN (Ret.), and founding chairman Philip J. Webster look forward to welcoming you as we recognize the extraordinary accomplishments of the Honorable Thomas J. Ridge; Admiral Jay L. Johnson, USN (Ret.); and Williams-Mystic: The Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport. This illustrious event brings together those who love and serve the sea from all segments of the United States maritime community for a celebration of our nation’s maritime heritage—leaders of the military sea services, merchant marine, and maritime industry; maritime authors and artists; environmentalists, conservationists, oceanographers, sea explorers and competitive yacht racers; philanthropists; boat designers and builders; cruise lines operators; aquaculturalists; historians; educators; and museum professionals. We will be honored by the presence of members of Congress, governors, and federal judges sharing a common love of the sea and a desire to preserve and promote America’s maritime heritage.

photo by bryan dozier, snow photography

The National Press Club • Washington, DC • 2 May

nchma

The National Press Club is an extraordinary venue for the prestigious National Maritime Awards dinner. (right) Artist concept image of the redesigned waterfront in New London, Connecticut, home of the US Coast Guard Academy and the future National Coast Guard Museum.

The Honorable Tom Ridge

national press club

The Honorable Tom Ridge, first Secretary of Homeland Security and 43rd Governor of Pennsylvania, will receive the National Coast Guard Museum Association’s Alexander Hamilton Award for his extraordinary leadership, vision, and support of the museum. Admiral James M. Loy, USCG (Ret.), 21st Commandant of the US Coast Guard and the 1999 recipient of the NMHS Distinguished Service Award, will present the award. Tom Ridge is recognized as one of our nation’s most distinguished leaders for his record of public service as a former soldier, congressman, Governor of Pennsylvania, and in the critical role as the first Secretary of Homeland Security following the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. As the first secretary of the country’s 15th cabinet department, Ridge led

In his role as Secretary of Homeland Security in 2004, Tom Ridge discusses the capabilities of the United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) Domestic Warning Center with Navy Capt. Brad Johanson. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

department of homeland security

the difficult task of making America secure in the wake of the deadliest terror attack on US soil. This included developing a unified national response, instituting sweeping air, land, and seaport security strategies, while integrating 180,000 employees from 22 agencies—including the US Coast Guard—to protect critical infrastructure, integrate new technology, and improve information-sharing worldwide. Upon reflection, Ridge commented that, “I had the opportunity to be secretary of the Coast Guard when I served as secretary of homeland security—there is no organization in the federal government that does more with less … that has more tasks and responsibilities and missions and trains the men and women to do all of them very, very well. We have to elevate the history, the tradition, and the service of the Coast Guard.” Ridge is the founder and CEO of Ridge Global, LLC, a Washington, DC-based security consulting firm that provides solutions to cyber security, international security, and risk management issues. He serves on the boards of the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and other private and public entities. He is currently chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce’s National Security Task Force and serves on the NCGMA Secretaries Circle. Ridge has also served on the boards of Home Depot, the Hershey Company, and Exelon CorpoThe Honorable Tom Ridge ration, and as a senior advisor to Deloitte & Touche, and TechRadium. Ridge was twice elected as the 43rd governor of Pennsylvania, serving from 1995 to 2001. He is credited with a successful technology strategy that advanced economic development, education, healthcare, and the environment. He graduated from Harvard with honors. After his first year at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law, he served in the US Army as an infantry staff sergeant in Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star for Valor, the Combat Infantry Badge and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. After returning to Pennsylvania and to Dickinson, he earned his law degree and entered private practice. In 1980, he became assistant district attorney in Erie County, Pennsylvania. He became one of the first Vietnam combat veterans elected to the US House of Representatives, where he served six terms from 1983 to 1995. The National Coast Guard Museum Association’s Alexander Hamilton Award honors unwavering commitment to and support of the National Coast Guard Museum. The museum, to be built on the historic downtown waterfront in New London, Connecticut, will celebrate the Coast Guard’s 227 years of service to the country. It will also salute the courage and skill of its dedicated men and women and provide a glimpse into its exciting and vital future. The award is appropriately named in honor of Alexander Hamilton, who established the US Revenue Cutter Service in 1790, a predecessor of the Coast Guard. The award is given to the individual whose leadership, vision, volunteerism, and support has had the greatest impact on forwarding the goals of the National Coast Guard Museum.

Admiral Jay L. Johnson, USN (Ret.), 26th Chief of Naval Operations, US Navy, will receive the NMHS Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding career as a naval aviator and leader of the US Navy, with recognition of his declaration as Chief of Naval Operations to annually commemorate the Battle of Midway, which he considers the greatest naval battle in history. We also honor the service he has given the US Naval Academy Foundation and the Peregrine Fund, among his many pursuits. The award will be presented by Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, USN (Ret.), 30th Chief of Naval Operations, recipient of this award in 2015. Former Secretary of the Navy—and a former recipient of this award— John Lehman will be there offering congratulations. As a Boy Scout in 1960, Johnson attended the Boy Scout National Jamboree in the Black Forest at Colorado Springs, Colorado, across from the new US Air Force Academy. When he saw the Air Force Thunderbirds soaring overhead, his Admiral Johnson sits for his on-camera interview with NMHS Vice future was determined—he was going to be an aviator. Ulti- Chairman Rick Lopes in the Cold War Room at the National Museum mately, it was the Navy that would train him to fly. of the United States Navy in Washington, DC.

photo by alessandro lopes

Admiral Jay L. Johnson, USN (Ret.)

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us navy photo by journalist 2nd class denny boyles

A 1968 US Naval Academy graduate, Admiral Johnson served as a naval aviator during two combat tours in Vietnam, and later flew F-14 Tomcat fighters, going on to command Fighter Squadron 84. He next commanded Carrier Air Wing One and led its squadrons in a 1986 strike on Libya. Johnson’s first Flag Officer assignment was as Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel for Distribution in the Bureau of Naval Personnel. In October 1992, he reported as Commander, Carrier Group 8/Commander, USS Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group, and in July 1994 he accepted a new assignment as Commander, Second Fleet/Commander, Striking Fleet Atlantic/Commander, Joint Task Force 120. Admiral Johnson became the 28th Vice Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, DC, in March 1996 and in August of that same year was tapped by President Bill Clinton to become the 26th Chief of Naval Operations. During his confirmation hearing, Admiral Johnson stated, “As a vision for the future, let me just say that we will steer by the stars and not the wake.” He explained that under his leadership, four stars of equal magnitude in the constellation would guide the US Navy: operational primacy, leadership, teamwork, and pride. Admiral Johnson retired as CNO and as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in July 2000, culminating a distinguished thirtytwo-year career in the United States Navy. A lifelong history enthusiast, Admiral Johnson values the study of history for all citizens, particularly those in the navy. Officers make better decisions when they are armed with the lessons from others’ experiences in hisADM Jay L. Johnson is briefed on the controls and moni- tory. This awareness is foundational to the success of the institution, and it is toring systems in the central control station on board the important to showcase the Navy at every opportunity. The commemorations coastal mine hunter USS Robin during the CNO’s visit for the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and Fleet Week events around the country highlight the Navy’s critical role in our nation’s history and the to Naval Station, Ingleside, Texas, April 1998. important role it plays today. The Battle of Midway is considered one of the most decisive American naval battles in history; a yearly commemoration helps new generations understand how this battle in the Pacific in World War II changed the tenor and outcome of the war. Those in the Navy are inspired by this history, which helps solidify their commitment to serve. Admiral Johnson considers his naval career and the chance to serve the greatest privilege in his life, reflecting that the things he learned in flying fighters and leading the Navy have provided the baseline for all of his endeavors. After his retirement from the military, Johnson served in various senior executive roles at Dominion Resources, Inc., from 2000 to 2008. He went on to serve as chairman and CEO of General Dynamics Corporation from 2010 to 2012. Admiral Johnson is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a director of International Paper Company, the US Naval Academy Foundation, the Peregrine Fund, and Wynn Resorts, Ltd. The National Maritime Historical Society Distinguished Service Award is presented to individuals and organizations, who, through their effort and creativity, have made outstanding contributions to our maritime heritage.

The Williams-Mystic Program will receive the NMHS Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Maritime Education for leadership in providing an outstanding undergraduate studies program examining the history, literature, policy, and science of the sea. A collaboration of Williams College, a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, the Williams-Mystic program is a transformative ocean and coastal studies semester offering an immersive, interdisciplinary curriculum. Each semester, Williams-Mystic introduces 17 to 24 students to multifaceted issues regarding our oceans and coasts through an interdisciplinary approach. The seventeen-week intensive program includes four core courses: maritime history, marine Williams-Mystic students and faculty gather for a group photo in front of the 1841 whaler Charles W. Morgan, flagship of Mystic Seaport Museum, the home campus for the program. 12

photo by jesse edwards

Williams-Mystic, the Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

courtesy williams-mystic

policy, literature of the sea, and either oceanography or marine ecology. Courses are taught in both classroom and collections space on the Mystic Seaport campus and in the 8,000-square-foot James T. Carlton Marine Science Center, which offers facilities for teaching and research of estuarine/ coastal biology and geology. Students have access to the museum’s collections to conduct independent research. Instruction in traditional maritime skills complements the academic program and offers hands-on opportunities to interact with maritime artisans, sailors, and musicians and includes boat handling, shipsmithing, sailmaking, boat building, and chantey singing. As participants in the museum’s demonstration squad, students learn to handle sails, work aloft, set and furl sails, and embrace the culture of seafaring life past and present. Students row and sail the museum’s thirty-foot whaleboats, tong for oysters, and cook over a nineteenth-century fireplace, all while educating muWilliams-Mystic students conducting field studies in the intertidal zone. seum visitors about maritime history and seafaring heritage. Williams-Mystic students also get a taste of primary research through travels to the Pacific, Gulf, and Atlantic coasts to conduct fieldwork and sail on the open ocean. The spring 2019 term will take students to Puerto Rico and St. Croix in the Caribbean; Monterey Bay, San Francisco, and Bodega Bay Marine Lab on the West Coast; and the Louisiana Consortium Marine Lab and Grand Isle, Louisiana. They will explore a variety of topics including, but not limited to, digging into the complexities of ecosystems, commerce and industry, urban and rural cultures, local history, indigenous cultures, and the impacts of climate change. In the fall semester, students will travel to Alaska to Gustavus Bay and Glacier Bay National Park. Executive Director Tom Van Winkle explains, “This is what the William-Mystic experience is about: Our students are presented with different issues from multiple lenses. We present ideas from a wide spectrum and don’t preach outcomes.” Williams-Mystic continues to prepare students with an academically rigorous curriculum and gives them the experiences and perspectives to become leaders who will take on some of the world’s most pressing issues. Founded in 1977, the Williams-Mystic program boasts over 1,700 alumni, representing successful professionals in a variety of fields. Lifelong friendships are made during this transformative semester. Through its strong alumni network, current students and recent graduates of the program connect with alumni, staff, and faculty past and present. Dr. Tom Van Winkle, executive director, and Benjamin W. Labaree, director emeritus and program founder, will accept the award. Thomas B. Crowley, chairman and CEO of Crowley Maritime Corporation will present the award. Crowley received the Silver Bell Humanitarian Award from the Seamen’s Church Institute in 2018. The NMHS Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Maritime Education honors individuals and organizations whose outstanding achievements in maritime education bring history alive for young people, providing real-life results and getting young people involved in the continuous process of learning that will have a fundamental impact on their lives. The award recognizes work that teaches maritime history in a way that conveys the challenge, excitement and leading role of our seafaring past in creating today’s world. NMHS Chairman Ronald Oswald and NCGMA Chair Susan Curtin invite you to join us for this incredible evening. Sailor, commentator, author and America’s Cup champion Gary Jobson will serve as master of ceremonies. NMHS Vice Chairman Richardo Lopes and Digital Video Media will present video introductions on awardees. Guests will enjoy a special performance by the United States Coast Guard Academy Cadet Chorale, directed by Dr. Robert G. Newton. The Combined Sea Services Color Guard will present colors. Hotel Block: We have booked a block of rooms at the Hilton Attire is business/cocktail. Ticket prices start at $275 and range Garden Inn Downtown Washington at 815 14th Street NW, to $5,000, $10,000 to $50,000 for much-appreciated support. two blocks from the National Press Club, from 1–4 May at We are particularly grateful to Admiral Jay L. Johnson, USN $269 per night plus an occupancy fee of 14.95%. This block (Ret.), and Howard Slotnick for becoming Underwriters. is available until 1 April or until it is sold out, whichever comes Please check our website at www.seahistory.org/washing- first. You can find the link for hotel reservations on the NMHS ton2019 for more information or to make your reservations. website. If you are making your hotel reservation by phone, Or call 914 737-7878, extension 0. be sure to use the Group Code “NMH.” Ph. 202 783-7800.

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 13

National M aritime Awards Dinner

Washington Invitational Marine Art Exhibition

by Patrick O’Brien orks by some of the best marine artists in the country will be on display and for sale at the 2019 National Maritime Awards Dinner in Washington, DC, this May. I have collaborated with the National Maritime Historical Society to invite a select group of artists from the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA) to participate in this special event. We present here a preview of the exhibition and an exclusive opportunity to purchase an original painting before they are exhibited during the event. As a marine artist, I try to capture the glory and the grandeur of the Age of Sail. I combine my extensive historical and nautical research, and my knowledge of color, light and form to create compelling images that bring history to life. I have two audiences in mind when I create my paintings: both the knowledgeable viewer who looks for accuracy and precision in the depiction of events and vessels, as well as the art lover who has no nautical expertise but appreciates paintings on aesthetic terms. All of the artists in this special exhibition are dedicated to their craft and passionate in their desire to make maritime history and the seas come to life. I hope you can join me and my ASMA colleagues at this special exhibition during the 2019 National Maritime Awards Dinner on May 2nd for this one-night-only event that offers Patrick O’Brien at his easel. NMHS members and guests a chance to meet some of the artists, learn more about their artwork, and perhaps purchase a favorite. While we would enjoy seeing you at the event, you need not be present to participate. If you see a painting here or on the NMHS website (www.seahistory.org) that you’d like to purchase, contact the National Maritime Historical Society via email at nmhs@seahistory.org or by calling NMHS headquarters at 914 7377878, ext. 0. Paintings sold in advance will be displayed as “Sold” at the event. Check back as the date approaches for additional works that will be posted as they become available. One quarter of the proceeds (25%) will benefit the National Maritime Historical Society and the National Coast Guard Museum Association, and is tax deductible.

This painting (below) presents a view of Charleston’s bustling waterfront in the Age of Sail and Steam. The steeple of St. Michael’s Church is at right, and the Old Exchange building is in the center. Also in the center, a small steam launch carries sightseers, perhaps to tour nearby Fort Sumter. Along the wharves are a steam tug, a sidewheel steamer, and a brig hanging her sails to dry. A lateenrigged fishing boat, unusual for this area, is at left. Its sail is stained red because it has been soaked in tannins from tree bark called tanbark. This treatment extends the life of a sail by making it resistant to rot and mildew. As a final touch, I depicted my own dog catching a ride in the small boat in the foreground. The Charleston skyline looks much the same to this day, but the wharves have since been filled in and buildings have been constructed on the landfill, so the Old Exchange Building is no longer directly on the waterfront. The viewpoint of the painting is now on dry land, in a spot close to the current day Pineapple Fountain in Waterfront Park. On the Waterfront: Charleston in 1890 by Patrick O’Brien, oil on canvas • 24 x 36 inches • $15,000 14

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

Revolutionary Frigate by Patrick O’Brien oil on canvas • 16 x 20 inches $4,500 When the American Revolution began, the newly formed Continental Navy scrambled to outfit vessels for war. The Philadelphia-built merchant ship Black Prince was one such vessel. Before she was put into military service, the Navy strengthened her hull, cut gunports in the bulwarks, armed her with cannons, and renamed her Alfred. This was the first vessel to ever fly the Grand Union flag, the first flag of the United States, depicted here set at the stern. The 1st lieutenant on board, John Paul Jones, wrote to Congress, “I hoisted with my own hands the Flag of Freedom, the first time it was displayed, on the Alfred on the Delaware River.” Alfred had an adventurous career during the war, serving in the Chesapeake Bay, the Bahamas, off Newfoundland, and off the coast of Africa. In 1778 she was chased and captured by two British warships. She was taken into the service of the Royal Navy as HMS Alfred. Young America: New York in the 1890s depicts old New York from a viewpoint above the Hudson River, across from the current World Trade Center. The painting is based on exhaustive research into the history of New York, its waterfront, its architecture, and its growth. I consulted old maps, prints, and photos, from sources such as the New-York Historical Society and the Library of Congress. The towers of the newly completed Brooklyn Bridge are seen in the distance, on the other side of Manhattan Island. The bridge was the tallest structure in New York at the time. At the far left of the painting is the steeple of St. Paul’s Church. The tall building to the left of the bridge tower is the Western Union Telegraph Building (demolished and replaced by a much taller building.) The spire of Trinity Church, at right, was about 27 stories high, dominating the pre-elevator city. It Young America: New York in the 1890s by Patrick O’Brien was a landmark for mariners entering New oil on canvas • 18x24 inches • $6,000 York Harbor. It is still there, on Broadway at Wall Street, but it can be difficult to see among the much taller more modern buildings. On the far right of the painting is a shot tower, used for making lead shot. It was near the current-day South Street Seaport Museum. On the river, a couple of schooners carry cargo down the river, while a small sidewheel steamboat is on an excursion up the Hudson with vacationers. At left is a monitor-style US Navy ironclad, nearing the end of its useful life, as its design is becoming obsolete. —PO’B SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 15

Schooners Underway by Leonard Mizerek, Fellow, ASMA 12 x 24 inches • oil • $3,200 “Seeing schooners under full sail in open water is exciting and compelling. This painting has a pictorial story of the freedom and beauty of sails on the open sea. I particularly like when evening light reflects off the sails, enriching what is an already dramatic scene. Schooner races offer me an opportunity to study and sketch several schooners together on the open water. I view them from a boat that takes me close up while they jockey for the lead. It is a thrill seeing these schooners under strong winds and it is an inspiration to me.” —Len Mizerek

Day’s End On The Chesapeake

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(preceding page) Day’s End On The Chesapeake by Leonard Mizerek, Fellow, ASMA 12 x 24 inches • oil • $3,200 “This painting was completed in my studio, using my sketches from direct observation. I have seen skipjacks on the waterways at Tilghman’s Island and elsewhere along the Chesapeake Bay. I am always looking to take in the movement and workings of these vessels under sail. The subject holds my interest as I have spent time seeing the restoration of skipjacks at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. The skipjacks, family-built and owned, are still to this day going out to bring in the oyster harvest. There are many stories about those who make their living on the water and their boats. My desire is to bring their story to my viewers’ attention.” —Len Mizerek

Guests have the rare opportunity to meet and talk with the artists whose paintings are on display. Artist Len Mizerek chatted with Ann Marvin at last year’s event. She was particularly interested in Len’s depictions of serene sailing scenes.

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Lone Tonger, by Lisa Egeli, President and Fellow, ASMA

oil • 12 x 20 inches • $2,800 “This painting was inspired by a familiar scene on the river on which I grew up, the St. Mary’s River on Chesapeake Bay. It used to be common to see watermen tonging for oysters throughout the Bay, and while more rare now, it’s still not hard to find them on early winter mornings on the St. Mary’s. This was painted from memory, in the studio.” —Lisa Egeli

Belle J. Neal, Clipper Fishing Schooner, 1880 by Richard Loud Fellow, ASMA oil on linen 19 x 30 inches $7,800

“I have always been fascinated with Gloucester fishing schooners—the seamanship and bravery of the crews. The Belle J. Neal of Gloucester (1880) was a clipper fishing schooner. Popular in many fisheries from the 1860s to the 1880s and often very heavily canvassed, they were extremely fast and capable of remarkable achievements when properly managed, and yet prone for disaster when mishandled.” —Richard Loud 18

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

A Great Way to Support the

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY Limited-edition prints by acclaimed Chesapeake artist

John M. Barber

Journey’s End

The Adventurer Under Sail on the Rappahannock River, Off Chesapeake Bay, Virginia Signed and Numbered Print of 950 · Image Size: 13 ¼” x 25” · Price: $110 + $25 s/h

Homeward Bound

The Catboat Selina II and the Harbor Town of St. Michaels, Maryland

Signed and Numbered Print of 950 · Image Size: 12” x 22” · Price: $110 + $25 s/h To order: call (914) 737-7878 ext. 0, or visit our website at www.seahistory.org/store. NYS residents add applicable sales tax. For international orders, call (914) 737-7878, or e-mail nmhs@seahistory.org for shipping information. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 19

The Overland Relief Expedition–Saving Wh by William H. Thiesen, US Coast Guard Atlantic Area Historian

“If you are subjected to miserable discomforts, or even if you suffer, it must be regarded as all right and simply a part of life; like sailors, you must never dwell too much on the dangers or sufferings, lest others question your courage.” evenue Cutter Service officer David Henry Jarvis wrote the above quote in his diary of the Overland Relief Expedition, considered one of the most spectacular rescues in the history of the Arctic. As leader of the heroic expedition, Jarvis became one of the service’s best-known officers to serve in the Alaskan maritime frontier. As the summer of 1897 drew to a close, a sudden change in the weather pushed a massive sheet of Arctic ice down into the Beaufort Sea, trapping eight whaling ships in the pack ice near Point Barrow, Alaska. Concerned that the 265 men who crewed the ships would starve to death over the winter months, the whaling companies appealed to the federal government to send a relief expedition. Just off her annual Bering Sea patrol, the US Revenue Cutter Bear, a 198-foot barquentine with auxiliary steam power, was ready to deploy. She had led the US Navy’s relief mission in 1884 that saved some of the starving men of the Arctic scientific expedition led by Army lieutenant Adolphus Greeley. Under orders direct from President William McKinley, Bear would

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—Lt. David Jarvis, US Revenue Cutter Service, 1898

Photo of the whaler Rosario trapped in the ice near Point Barrow, Alaska, from the after-action report by Lt. Ellsworth Bertholf. now lead a second major rescue mission into the Arctic. In November, Bear took on supplies at Port Townsend, Washington, to return to the Alaskan coast. This would be the largest of several mass rescues of American whalers undertaken by Bear during the heyday of Arctic whaling. Moreover, it was the first time before modern icebreakers that a ship risked sailing above the Arctic Circle during the harsh Alaskan winter. For this particularly dangerous journey, Bear’s captain, Francis Tuttle, took on

US Revenue Cutter Bear finding a lead through the ice off the coast of Alaska

only volunteer officers and men. To lead the Overland Relief Expedition, Captain Tuttle placed executive officer Jarvis in charge of the rescue team that included Second Lieutenant Ellsworth Bertholf, US Public Health Service surgeon Samuel Call, and three enlisted men. With no chance of pushing the wooden cutter through the thick ice to Point Barrow, Captain Tuttle put the party ashore at Cape Vancouver, Alaska. He tasked the men with driving to the whaling ships a herd of reindeer, newly introduced to Alaska. Using sleds pulled by dogs and the reindeer, the men set out on snowshoes on Thursday, 16 December 1897, embarking on a rescue effort unique in the annals of American history. The relief party had to cover 1,500 miles in the middle of winter over terrain completely alien to life-long mariners—snow, ice, and tundra. On Tuesday, 29 March 1898, after 99 days of relentless struggle against the elements, the relief party completed the journey. The expedition delivered 382 reindeer to the starving whalers with no loss of human life. In his expedition journal, Lt. Jarvis later recounted the final days of the Overland Expedition: Though the mercury was -30 degrees, I was wet through with perspiration from the violence of the work. Our sleds were racked and broken, our dogs played out, and we ourselves scarcely able to move, when we finally reached the cape [at Pt. Barrow].

noaa

When Jarvis and Dr. Call finally arrived at Barrow, Jarvis recounted:

When we greeted some of the officers of the wrecked vessels, whom we knew, they were stunned; it was some time before they could realize that we were flesh and blood. Some looked off to the south to see if there was not SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

alers 120 Years Ago Above the Arctic Circle a ship in sight, and others wanted to know if we had come up in a balloon. Had we not been so well known, I think they would have doubted that we really did come in from the outside world.

The year just closed has been fruitful of noble achievements in the field of war, and while I have commended to your consideration the names of heroes who have shed luster upon the American name in valorous contests and battles by land and sea, it is no less my pleasure to invite your attention to a victory of peace.

1897 Overland Relief Expedition approaches whalers trapped in the Arctic ice. Another Bear officer who had volunteered for the cruise to save the whalers, Harry Hamlet, would also advance to the top post in the Coast Guard. Later, while still an officer, Jarvis became a special government agent at Nome, Alaska, and served there when a smallpox epidemic struck the community. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt assigned Jarvis as customs collector for the District of Alaska. He was pro-

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After returning home from the expedition, Jarvis assumed command of Bear, as would Ellsworth Bertholf, who in 1915 rose through the ranks to become the first commandant of the modern Coast Guard.1

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For their death-defying feat, President McKinley recommended Jarvis, Bertholf, and Call for a specially struck Congressional Gold Medal. In early 1899, in the aftermath of the expedition and the concurrent Spanish-American War, McKinley wrote in his recommendation letter to Congress:

USRC Bear officers, including Second Lt. Ellsworth Bertholf (front row far left), First Lt. David Jarvis (front row third from left), Captain Francis Tuttle (center), and US Public Health Service surgeon Samuel J. Call (back row far right). 1

The Revenue Cutter Service merged with the Lifesaving Service in 1915 to become the US Coast Guard.

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moted to captain in 1905 and, that same year, he retired from the Revenue Cutter Service after a nearly twenty-five year career. After Jarvis retired, President Theodore Roosevelt offered him the governorship of Alaska Territory, which he declined. Captain David Jarvis died in 1911, six years after leaving the US Revenue Cutter Service. He had become an important figure not only in the history of the service, but also in the settlement of Alaska. A highendurance Coast Guard cutter bore his name, as does Mount Jarvis in Alaska’s Wrangell Mountains. Today, the US Coast Guard awards the Captain David H. Jarvis Leadership Award every year to a Coast Guard officer who demonstrates outstanding leadership skills and motivates and inspires other men and women to strive for excellence. Jarvis’s memory lives on in the history and heritage of the US Coast Guard and the State of Alaska. William H. Thiesen, PhD, is the Atlantic Area Historian for the United States Coast Guard. A regular contributor to Sea History, Dr. Thiesen was awarded the 2017 Rodney N. Houghton Award for the best feature article in Sea History. His articles appear weekly in the online history series, “The Long Blue Line,” featured on the Coast Guard Compass website. For more information on USCG history, visit www.uscg.mil/ history. 21

Death in the Ice

n 19 May 1845, 59-year-old Captain Sir John Franklin departed from Greenhithe, near London, as the commander of a two-ship expedition to find the muchsought-after Northwest Passage to Asia. By this time, the British had explored nearly all the oceans of the world, but had yet to find a sailing route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific across the top of North America. Franklin and his 133-strong crew aboard HMS Erebus and HMS Terror left England under great acclaim. Erebus and Terror were two former bomb vessels, which had been converted for polar expeditions. In late July, after discharging five men at the Whale Fish Islands on Greenland’s west coast, the vessels were sighted in Baffin Bay between Greenland and Baffin Island by some whaling ships. This was the last time the Franklin Expedition was seen by Europeans. As we know from history, the expedition would fail; Franklin and his men would never be heard from again, at least not by their own countrymen. Starting in 1848, more than thirty expeditions were launched, at first to rescue the men, and in time to seek the answer as to what had happened to Franklin and his crew, but few signs were found, and none that could tell the whole story. Tantalizing clues, including graves, provisions, Inuit tales, and a handwritten note found at Victory Point—saying that Franklin had died in June 1847 and the crew had abandoned the vessels and was heading for Back’s Great Fish River—told a grim story. In September 2014, 167 years after the first search expeditions were sent to look for Franklin, divers from Parks Canada Agency’s Underwater Archaeology Team found Erebus in shallow waters south of King William Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Two years later, Terror was located in Terror Bay, on the south coast of King William Island. The mystery of the Franklin Expedition started to unravel. John Franklin was born in 1786 in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, and, like many of his 22

The Franklin Expedition Revealed

HMS Erebus in the Ice, 1846, by François Étienne Musin brethren, showed an early interest in a career at sea. In March 1800, the teenager’s father secured him an appointment on a Royal Navy vessel. Soon, the young Franklin saw action. He participated in critical battles in British history, including the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 and the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. In 1819, Franklin led a Royal Navy overland expedition to North America to chart the north coast of Canada eastwards from the mouth of the Coppermine River and meet up with another seaborne expedi-

wellcome collection, p.d.

by Göran R. Buckhorn

tion led by Sir William Parry coming from Lancaster Sound to the east. The Coppermine Expedition would end in catastrophe; Franklin lost almost half of his twenty-man crew to starvation, one was murdered, and then the murderer was killed. An inquiry included suggestions of cannibalism. At one point, the survivors attempted to eat their own leather boots, which gave Franklin the nickname the “Man Who Ate His Boots.” After Franklin returned to England, he married the poet Eleanor Porden in 1823. Less than a year later, she gave birth to a daughter. Eleanor suffered from health problems, and childbirth aggravated her symptoms of tuberculosis. She died in February 1825, a week after Franklin had set out on his second overland Northwest Passage expedition to follow the course of the Mackenzie River to the sea and explore the coast east and west from there. The expedition was successful, and Franklin returned home in September 1827. In November 1828, he married Jane Griffin, who had been a close friend of his late wife. King George IV knighted Franklin in 1829 in recognition of his Arctic exploration work. During the following years, Franklin was Sir John Franklin (1786–1847) SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

photo by gordon leggett – wikipedia.com cc by sa 4.0

The graves on Beechey Island, where the first three Franklin Expedition members died; the fourth grave is from an 1850 expedition that had set out to find the Franklin crew. As the expedition had left with provisions for three years, it was not until the autumn of 1847 that the Admiralty acknowledged that the expedition was in trouble and organized search parties to find the men before they would run out of food. The first Royal Navy expedition left England in January 1848, and a second departed six months later. It took quite some time to hear back from the search parties. Franklin’s wife, Lady Franklin, was troubled that more was not being done to find her husband. She wrote letters both to the president of the United States and the Czar of Russia, trying to persuade these countries to join the search. She also wrote to philanthropists and public figures, including the New England manufacturer Henry Grinnell, to engage them to help sway public opinion to support additional search parties.

ny public library digital collection

presented with several awards by other countries and geographical societies. In 1836, he left for Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) to serve as its lieutenantgovernor, taking with him Jane and daughter Eleanora Isabella. The family lived there through his appointment, which concluded in 1844. On 7 February 1845, the Admiralty appointed Franklin commander of an expedition to find a Northwest Passage to Asia. After leaving Greenhithe on 19 May 1845, Erebus and Terror stopped at Stromness in the Orkney Islands to pick up their last supplies. On July 12 the ships arrived at the Whale Fish Islands, Greenland. Here the crewmen mailed their last letters home, and five members of the expedition were sent home due to illness, dropping the size of the expedition team from 134 to 129. The expedition spent its first winter in the Arctic off Beechey Island, where three crewmembers died and were buried. In summer 1846, the ships headed south into Peel Sound, but they encountered thick and unrelenting ice northwest of King William Island; Erebus and Terror became trapped in that ice in September 1846. They remained there, the vessels slowly drifting with the ice, for more than nineteen months before the men finally decided to abandon the ships and trek over the ice to King William Island. By April 1848 when they deserted the ships, 25 crewmembers had perished, among them their commander, Sir John Franklin.

Lady Jane Franklin (née Griffin; 1791–1875)

illustrated london news, p.d.

The search expeditions returned to England with disappointing news. Lady Franklin offered a large reward to whalers, and she also sponsored vessels at her own expense to help in the search for her husband and his men. She continued to lobby relentlessly for the British government to keep looking for the missing men. In January 1854, almost nine years after the Franklin Expedition had left England, the Admiralty announced that the men would be declared dead. The crew’s wages were paid out to their relatives, but Lady Franklin refused to accept that her husband and his men were gone. In spring 1857, Lady HMS Erebus and Terror, setting out from England for the Arctic; image published in the Illustrated London News, 24 May 1845. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

Franklin bought Fox, a 177-ton schoonerrigged steam yacht, and appointed a veteran Arctic commander, Royal Navy officer Captain Leopold McClintock, to mount a new search for her husband. Of McClintock’s twenty-five-man crew, seventeen had participated in previous searches for the Franklin Expedition. The summer of 1857 was a particularly bad year for ice, so the Fox expedition got off to a poor start, but over the next two years, McClintock and his men found vital clues about what had happened to Franklin and his crew. McClintock and his second-in-command, Lieutenant William Hobson, traveled via dog sledge and met groups of Inuit, who told them of white men from two ships who had perished. Some of the Inuit were in possession of items from the expedition, which McClintock purchased from them and brought back to England. Members of the Fox expedition also found a 28-foot ship’s boat mounted on a sledge, with two skeletons, shotguns, books, and other equipment within. McClintock named the place where the boat was found “Erebus Bay.” Hobson located a campsite with three tents, which had been deserted in haste at the northern tip of King William Island. He also found the most important discoveries: two cairns, piles of stacked stones, built by members of the Franklin Expedition in Back Bay and Victory Point on the island’s west coast. At both landmarks were single-page pre-printed forms upon which handwritten messages had been added that outlined the expedition’s progress to May 1847. The note left at Victory Point contained an additional message written in April 1848 that reported Franklin’s death on 11 June 1847, and that the crew was heading south for “Backs Fish River” on the mainland. The Fox arrived back in London in September 1859 carrying items from 1860 map showing in red the areas where Capt. Leopold McClintock, RN, located items associated with the Franklin Expedition. (Published in The North-West Passage, and the Plans for the Search for Sir John Franklin, by John Brown, F.R.G.S.) The approximate locations of the wreck sites have been added. HMS Erebus was located first, in 2014. HMS Terror was found in 2016. 24

the Franklin Expedition, or “relics,” as McClintock called them. While the nation mourned the loss of Sir John and the deceased among his crew, it celebrated their heroism. McClintock received a knighthood and published a book about his expedition, The Voyage of the “Fox” in the Arctic Seas: A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin and His Companions. London, 1859. It was reprinted numerous times.

The search for Erebus and Terror did not end with McClintock’s return to England. Other explorers went out to hunt for answers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, returning with more Inuit accounts of what had happened to Franklin’s crew. On his second expedition in the region in 1869, the American Charles Francis Hall came across a man named In-nook-poo-zhee-jook, who told him about sick and starving white men on King

HMS Terror HMS Erebus

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

(left) It was not until 1859 that the famous Victory Point note, which contains the only firsthand account of the desertion of the ships, was found. This record revealed key information, including the news of Sir John Franklin’s death. Details from the note dated 25 April 1848 (written sideways on each side of the paper): “HM. ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22d April, 5 leagues NNW of this, having been beset since 12th September 1846. The officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F. R. M. Crozier, landed here in Lat. 69° 37’ 42” Long 98° 41’ ... Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men.”

(right) Inuit Wooden Model of a European Ship. This carving depicts a type of multidecked sailing ship common during the 1500s and 1600s. The style of the figure’s hat is similar to those worn by European sailors during the same period. The carving was collected from an archaeological site in Amadjuak Bay, on the southern coast of Baffin Island. Inuit oral histories, passed from generation to generation, proved critical to the success of the 21st-century expeditions to find the shipwrecks. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

canadian museum of history

William Island. He talked about two ships and how one of them sank and the other one was abandoned. He could even draw a sketch of where the ship went down, in the vicinity of where the wreck of Erebus would be found in 2014. In 1992, the remains of Erebus and Terror were designated as National Historic Sites of Canada, though no one knew where they were at that time, but in 2008, Parks Canada renewed the search for Franklin’s vessels. The team relied on Inuit traditional knowledge, from conversations with the Inuit by search expeditions in the nineteenth century and more recent interviews, to narrow their search area. In September 2014, while conducting a sonar survey in Wilmot and Crampton Bay off the Adelaide Peninsula, maritime archaeologists located Erebus on the seafloor, broken up but with individual components and artifacts relatively well preserved in the frigid water. Almost two years later to the day, Terror was located in Terror Bay, off the southern coast of King William Island. Terror was found in deeper water than Erebus and the ship itself is in pristine condition. An exhibition at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Canada, about the Franklin Expedition was already in the planning stages before Erebus was found. “The discovery of Erebus in 2014 and Terror in 2016 brought a 170-year search into the 21st century, just in time for the exhibition. Major pieces of the puzzle were finally found, and although 25

courtesy parks canada, photo by thierry boyer side-scan and underwater images courtesy parks canada

many questions remain, we can end the show in a perfect way—featuring the ongoing archaeological work, which may reveal what went wrong on the expedition,” said Karen Ryan, the exhibition’s curator. The exhibition is now traveling across Canada, the United Kingdom, and the US. In December 2018, Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, opened Death in the Ice: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition about the disastrous voyage and the 167-year-old search to find it. Developed by the Canadian Museum of History in partnership with the Parks Canada Agency and the National Maritime Museum (London), and in collaboration with the Government of Nunavut and the Inuit Heritage Trust, the exhibition is attracting enthusiastic audiences everywhere it travels. The exhibition will be displayed at Mystic Seaport Museum through 28 April 2019. Death in the Ice displays more than 200 artifacts and is organized in seven zones that cover the expedition itself, the backstory of 400 years of international efforts to chart a Northwest Passage, life at sea and in the Arctic aboard the two ships, and a look at what specifically led to the men’s deaths based on forensic evidence and a medical description of the effects on the (top left) Side-scan sonar image of the remains of HMS Erebus on the seafloor, 2014. (top right) The ship’s bell was the first artifact recovered from HMS Erebus. It is marked with “1845,” the year the Franklin Expedition departed Britain. (left) Marc-André Bernier, Parks Canada’s manager of underwater archaeology, sets a marine biology sampling quadrat on the port side hull of HMS Erebus in 2016. 26

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

Parks Canada maritime archaeologists prepare to dive in the frigid Arctic waters during the 2018 field season, with the research vessel David Thompson waiting in the distance. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

parks canada

Göran R Buckhorn is editor of Mystic Seaport Museum Magazine. You can catch the exhibition at Mystic Seaport Museum through 28 April 2019 (www.mysticseaport.org). After that, it will be traveling to the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, where it will be on display from 7 June through 20 September 2019 (www.anchoragemuseum.org). Mystic Seaport Museum is located at 75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, Connecticut. You can learn more about the Parks Canada ongoing research and field work on the Franklin Expedition and its shipwrecks at www.pc.gc.ca/en/culture/ franklin.

deirdre o’regan

The state of preservation in the cold Arctic waters is remarkable. (above) A section of the ship’s wheel was found on the seafloor, approximately 30 meters from HMS Erebus. (below) Belaying pins recovered from Erebus in 2015. Identical pins were found, still in place on HMS Terror’s rail, in 2016. These items are among the 200-plus artifacts in the exhibition.

parks canada

human body of nutrient deprivation, toxic substances (like lead), exposure to prolonged periods of cold, and the breakdown of the human spirit. Important to this saga was how the tragedy and great mystery captured the imagination of the British people, both at the time and over the decades and centuries that followed. Finally, the exhibition shares the exciting story of how the Erebus and Terror were found, and includes the sonar image of Erebus as she appeared to underwater archaeologists on the day of her discovery and an underwater video of Parks Canada maritime archaeologist Ryan Harris giving a tour of the shipwreck site. Death in the Ice showcases items from Franklin’s crew after they had abandoned Erebus and Terror, which were brought back to London by the Fox expedition, including a portable cooking stove, musket balls, the two shotguns found in the boat at “Erebus Bay,” snow goggles, a water flask, tobacco pipe fragments, the important Victory Point note, and much more. There are also tools and other artifacts used by the Inuit, whose encounters with the men from the Franklin Expedition provided firsthand knowledge of their fate. Artifacts recovered from Erebus have been conserved and are on display, including the ship’s bell, dinner plates, a portion of the ship’s wheel, a sword hilt, a leather boot, and more. Weaving throughout the entire path of the exhibit are Inuit artifacts and recordings of oral histories, “the key that unlocked the expedition’s fate,” said Ms. Ryan. While modern technology and advanced archaeological methods gave the team the tools they needed to conduct a thorough scientific survey, without Inuit input, it is unlikely they would have been able to make the discovery. According to Canadian researcher and explorer David C. Woodman, an expert on the Franklin Expedition and the history of the quest to find it, “The search would have been wholly impractical since we wouldn’t know where to look, and we never would have found the ship. No one would have bothered to look, because the area was just so large.

Training for D-Day on Maryland’s Western Shore

photographs courtesy calvert marine museum

efore 7 December 1941—the “date which will live in infamy”—the Solomons was a quiet, almost sleepy area that lived and breathed activities in, on, and around the waters of the Patuxent River and Chesapeake Bay. Whether one was interested in fishing, boating, or just escaping the hustle and bustle of Washington, DC, or Baltimore, the Solomons—also known as Solomons Island, in Calvert County, Maryland—provided a serene yet close refuge from the big cities. Solomons was also home to generations of watermen who made their living crabbing or oystering, or taking city-dwellers out on charter fishing excursions. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in far-off Hawaii, US leadership realized it could remain on the sidelines no longer, in spite of much popular sentiment surrounding American isolationism. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, long a proponent of the battleship and blue-water diplomacy, was outraged by the assault on the US fleet, as was, of course, the American citizenry as a whole. Military leadership realized that if it were going to take the fight to Imperial Japan and Hitler’s Europe, it would need to get a handle on amphibious tactical operations and naval aviation. After the failed Gallipoli campaign of World War One, amphibious operations had fallen out of favor throughout much of the world’s militaries. Nevertheless, amphibious tactics continued to be developed during the interwar period by England, Japan, and the United States. In 1933, the US Fleet Marine Force conducted amphibious landing exercises at Culebra, Puerto Rico, which contributed to the amphibious doctrine that would eventually be used in World War II. The US Marine Corps was a driving force in promoting amphibious tactics, as it needed to formalize the mechanism by which troops would transit from vessels to the beaches. German U-boats and Nazi hegemony prompted the Army-Navy Joint Board (later Joint Chiefs of Staff) to recommend an amphibious corps to protect Atlantic and Caribbean islands. A joint force of 1st

by Mark C. Wilkins

Aerial photo looking Northwest at the US Naval Amphibious Training Base showing Back Creek (top) and St. John’s Creek (bottom). Dowell Road runs through the center, acting as a busy highway for the base. In the upper left corner you can see Solomons Island Road. The inlet just below it is the location of the Calvert Marine Museum. This area is now predominantly townhomes and condominiums. Marine and 1st Army Divisions (Emergency Striking Force) was activated in June of 1941, with a USMC Amphibious Corps (Pacific Fleet or ACPF) headquartered on the West Coast in August. The ACPF conducted simulated assaults at Culebra, Onslow Beach (New River) in North Carolina, and Cape Henry in Virginia between February 1941 and January 1942. None of these operations were very successful, due to the shortage of amphibious vessels, poor training, and bickering between Army, Navy, and USMC leaders over doctrine and tactics. Finally, the War Department mandated that the USMC would oversee operations in the Pacific, and the Army would get Europe. The Navy would serve in both theaters. With England standing between the United States and Nazi-occupied Europe, and Imperial Japan spreading like a cancer throughout various island chains in the Pacific, American military planners focused on the development of major assault landings in both theaters on a compressed time-

line. American and British leadership debated the efficacy of various landing zones in “Fortress Europe.” Churchill persuaded FDR to invade North Africa first; Stalin was insisting on a second front, so FDR decided to commit US forces to Operation Torch (North Africa) on 25 July 1942, with D-day set for late October/ early November—the latest date possible before winter set in. The American amphibious training program was delayed because of debates over objectives and execution. In charge of landing craft training was Capt. William Clarke (USN). His first priority was to select sites for amphibious training bases (ATB); naval leadership suggested a base in “between Solomons Island and Cove Point in the Chesapeake Bay,” close to the large Navy base at Norfolk, Virginia, and protected from marauding German U-boats that were known to be cruising in the Atlantic, just off the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. The Solomons was selected because it had suitable beaches and a good SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

anchorage close by. The only anticipated drawback of this location was the absence of heavy surf, which would be encountered in both theaters. In March 1942, the Navy rented sleeping accommodations for twenty personnel and obtained permission for dockage and anchorages in the harbor at Solomons. By end of March, USMC had also rented a house at Cove Point to serve as a command post. Amphibious training landings had begun before a base was even selected. The officers of the transport USS Harry Lee (Ap-17) were instructed to establish a boat pool of fifteen boats; personnel to man them would be quartered at the Rekar’s Hotel in downtown Solomons. On 1 April, the Lore Company’s marine railway, boatyard, and shops (currently Zahniser’s Yachting Center) were leased for the operation, and a house was rented in the Solomons to serve as Navy training headquarters. The Lee and a second US Navy attack transport, USS Hunter Liggett, carried Army and Marine battalions to the Solomons throughout March and April—joined by the WWI destroyer USS Stringham in May. Many of the Marines that trained that spring would participate in the August 1942 amphibious attacks at Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the South Pacific. In April 1942 Comdr. William F. Royall and others arrived from Norfolk to vet the Solomons as an amphibious training base. Other sites that were considered but

USS Harry Lee (Ap-17)

The 328-ft. LST-265 during training maneuvers at Cove Point, Maryland, January 1944. ultimately rejected included nearby Cove Point, Drum Point, Cedar Point, and Point Patience. From early May through early June 1942, Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, Commander, Amphibious Force, Atlantic Fleet, asked for authorization and received approval to establish the ATB on the peninsula between Mill and Back creeks—just below the present site of Dowell. Original plans called for a base that would accommodate 500 men, which subsequently increased to 1,000, then ultimately 2,000 men. This necessitated re-evaluation and

redesign of the base—including construction of navy boat yards, oil storage tanks, and its own power plant. To build the base, the Navy needed to acquire all the real estate upon which the base was to be built. This was approved by the end of June 1942, much to the dismay of those whose homes were appropriated. While these plans were being carried out, bids to build the base were requested; the contract went to the Byrne Organization for the onshore work, and Diamond Construction Co. for the waterfront piers, docks, and marine railway. Outraged property owners protested and delayed the start of the construction, but ultimately the work went forward, and in July 1942 the first group of trainees were billeted on site. A formal “declaration of taking” comprising 96.75 acres in fourteen parcels was signed by Acting Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal on 13 November 1942. Amphibious training demands were expected to be met by February 1943 with a “final readiness” benchmark of 1 April 1943. The Solomons area was selected in good part because its beaches were similar to what the men would encounter at the invasion sites and because the swamps that bordered the beaches provided a buffer from civilians who lived in the area. There was also a minimum of vessel traffic in the region. The only other potentially significant

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 29

impact on the plan for ATB at the Solomons was the proximity of the Patuxent Naval Air Station, which was being built across the river at Cedar Point. Overall, the presence of the NAS PAX was considered an added benefit for its potential for jointtraining exercises. The US Naval Amphibious Training Base, Solomons, Maryland, was established on 3 July 1942. The first commanding officer of the base was Capt. Louis P. Wenzell; he was succeeded by three other commanders (C. Camp, R. Barrett, and R. Cooke) before the base was deactivated on 1 April 1945. It was envisaged as a quick, cheap, and temporary facility for 400 officers and 3,500 enlisted men; its temporary status dictated its design and construction and permeated the character of the place. Longterm plans for the base were viewed as a

waste of resources. Officers were housed together, the men ate in a single general mess, and limited administration and training facilities were built, thus creating a somewhat dismal experience for the majority of the men who trained there. Bed shortages resulted from the sheer quantity of trainees, as the demand for amphibious troops mushroomed as the war progressed. To meet the February 1943 deadline, 4,000 men would need to be trained at a time. While the base was being built, trainees were housed on transports Harry Lee, Edward Rutledge, Joseph Hewes, Leonard Wood, and Joseph T. Dickman. Groups of 100 officers and 1,100 enlisted men entered the program every two weeks and finished in eight. Fresh out of boot camp, 3,300 enlisted men went to Solomons on 6 July 1942, with the remaining 1,100 going to

Little Creek, so that training could be completed by 25 August. The eight-week program was as follows: the first two weeks were devoted to basic boat-handling skills and practicing bringing small boats alongside the large transports for simulated loading. Group instruction was conducted aboard the ships for the third week. Boat maneuvers were practiced during the fourth and fifth weeks, and, finally, surf landings were drilled at Lynhaven Roads, Virginia Beach, during the seventh and eight weeks. On 4 September, the transport vessels Samuel Chase and Leonard Wood delivered their trainees to the Solomons. After this point, trainees traveled from Norfolk to Solomons ATB in a near fifty-year-old Chesapeake Bay excursion boat—the Lillian Anne. As many as 1,000 men per week were shuttled to the base aboard this aging, dilapidated vessel. Production rates of ships and equipment outstripped the development of training. In the fall of 1942, when the first landing craft arrived at the Solomons, the training program had yet to be developed. Crews were taken out on the bay and given a quick tutorial as to how the ships worked and then watched the skipper practice handling the vessel. Historian Merle Cole wrote that “Poor facilities, overcrowding, lack of organization, and heavy personnel turnover created an incredibly chaotic environment.”1 Due to the classified nature of the program, the men assigned to train at the ATB were kept in the dark about what awaited them at the Solomons until they arrived. Many trainees viewed amphibious operations as extremely risky compared to more traditional naval roles. Moreover, naval leadership viewed a transfer to amphibious operations as punitive. Senior officers passed over for promotion were often sent to amphibious operations, resulting in poor organization and lackluster morale. As a cost-saving measure at a temporary base, facilities that would normally improve the quality of life for personnel— Troops climb down Jacob’s ladders to an idling Higgins boat, packing themselves around a 2 1/2 -ton truck. 1

Merle T. Cole, Cradle of Invasion. Calvert Marine Museum Press, 1984.

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

an officers’ mess and recreation facilities, for example—were excluded. There was little impression of luxury… in the early days [at Solomons]. Water flowed for half an hour night and morning. Conveniences, if they may be called so, were beneath a mining town level. … [Concrete] sidewalks did not exist; the resultant mud was adequate preparation for the trials with the mud of North Africa. There was no getting the wet mud off a shoe. … In the vestibule of each barracks was a shovel, conveniently placed there for that purpose.2 Once the program was up and running, the base was frequently manned above capacity. Morale was hampered by minimal leave time, and when leave was granted, the men found there was little to do at the remote location at the tip of Solomons Island. Sources of fresh water were scarce and the needs of the sudden influx of thousands of men caused conflicts with local residents—all vying for the same wellwater. During winter months, men going AWOL became a problem, which was aggravated by the lack of regular roll calls. The mechanism by which large numbers of incoming and departing personnel were handled was inadequate. Typewriters were endlessly churning out the necessary

Two M-4 Sherman tanks motor from an LST through the calm shallow surf at Cove Point. Overhead a Grumman F4F “Wildcat” performs simulated air cover. paperwork to process as many as 18,000 transfers and reassignments per week. With the appointment of Lt. Cdr. Camp as base commander and Lt. Cdr. Barret as executive officer on 7 December 1942, improvements to the base and training program began in earnest. Temporary quarters were built to offset crowding, and the training program was increased to ten weeks. Books and equipment began to arrive and finally the training program galvanized. The ATB now offered two distinct

Cove Point, Maryland, to the west. Landing craft and troops are in view on the beach. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

curricula; one each for Landing Craft Tank (LCT) and Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) crews, including instruction in seamanship, navigation, gunnery, communications, and tactics. After physical and psychological examinations, trainees took classes in maintenance engineering, demolitions, firefighting, first aid, aircraft recognition, shakedown procedures, and “beachmaster” operations. The ATB also offered courses for cooks, bakers, administrative specialists, and stores specialists. Tactical training included familiarization with mockups and practice in combat loading, boat lowering, beaching of vessels, assisting stranded vessels, docking, and salvaging. Morale continued to improve with the publication of a newsletter, The Beachmaster. The graduation exercise, Operation Quick, involved simulated day and night assaults, as Admiral Hewitt wanted practice for the Torch landings. In an early October 1942 exercise, an “attacking force” landed at Cove Point. The troops were ordered to establish a beachhead and silence enemy shore batteries, and evacuate (simulated) casualties back to the transports. Planes roared overhead, lending support to the landings, while smoke barrages covered activity on the beaches. After a simulated bombardment by naval vessels and aircraft, 2

Cole, Cradle of Invasion, p. 13.

the men went ashore. The only resistance they met was by a lone merchant who brandished the most potent weapon of all—ice cream. Soldiers promptly exchanged M-1s for cones as the exercise fell apart. Ice cream aside, the exercise revealed problems with coordinated troop launching, recon, and landing techniques. In late December 1942, civilian access to the Solomons/Cove Point region was restricted by Eastern Defense Command. The area was posted and patrolled by MPs—use of cameras, binoculars, visual aids, and signaling devices was prohibited. The Navy painted the following portrait of the training activity: Four or five APs [troop transports] of the transport squadron were lying off Cove Point. The landing crafts’ white wakes were visible as they ran for the beach, retracted, or circled off the quarters of the mother ship. There would be LCTs in the river or nosed against the shore for practice landing. And later there would be LCIs,

Exp E r iE

E n c E th

H ab

LSTs, and LCSs maneuvering with each other. Then LAMs would join in the training. Alongside in the inner harbor, the LCTs, LSMs and LCVPs would be moored as solid as cigars in a box.3 After deliberations regarding expansion of the base, it was decided that major amphibious operations would no longer be necessary after the Normandy landings. Still, naval bureaucracy dragged its heels in making the decision. Finally, on 31 December 1944, naval officials recommended closing the base for a variety of logistical reasons. At the end of January 1945, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) made the final call to close the base, which took effect on 1 April. Between July 1942 and April 1945, a total of 67,698 officers and enlisted men had been trained at the base. Operations at the base after April 1945 included testing amphibious equipment, anti-aircraft ordnance, naval gunnery, 3

Cole, Cradle of Invasion, p. 35.

r ld o f Wo Actio n

er he lib t d r oa

A f loAt WA r ii

radar, and motor torpedo boats. The State of Maryland used the base for a variety of purposes, including a prison, a public recreation area, and a housing annex for the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. In 1947, the Navy agreed to allow a state prison work camp whose purpose was to reclaim salvageable building materials to be used for various public construction projects, and in 1949 the property was turned over to the Maryland Department of Tidewater Fisheries as a depot and training site for the Inspection and Patrol Division, which ended in 1958. The General Services Administration accepted the former ATB from the Navy Department on 3 January 1958. The property was deemed surplus and offered for public sale. On 9 December 1958 it was purchased by a Washington partnership for $125,100, and has operated ever since as a yachting center and marina. Mark C. Wilkins is the curator of Maritime History at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, and adjunct faculty at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

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SS John W. Brown is maintained in her WWII configuration, visitors must be able to climb steps to board.

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

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10:4

Escape From Charleston:

A Union Soldier and the Demise of the Blockade Runner Celt by William A. Cahill

Launch of the New Steamer Celt

This new steamer, which has been on the stocks about five months, was successfully launched from the shipyard on South Bay, of Mr. F. M. Jones, builder, Thursday evening. She is a beautifully modeled vessel of light draught, is built in the most substantial manner with white oak and yellow pine, and is intended for either heavy freight transportation, or can be used for a gunboat. Her size is 160 feet long, breadth of beam, 25 feet, depth in hold 9 feet. She is to be supplied with low pressure engines of about 250 horse power, and is superior to the steamer Planter, now off to the blockaders. The Celt is the property of our energetic and enterprising fellow citizen, Captain John Ferguson, owner of the Planter, which was built and launched from the same shipyard. We trust that the success of this new vessel will more than doubly counterbalance the heavy loss he has sustained in the abduction of the Planter. The Celt was last evening taken around to Southern Wharf for the purpose of receiving her machinery. Great credit is due the builder, Mr. Jones, for the activity he has shown on the early completion of this boat. —Charleston Courier, 16 May 1862

courtesy of the author

on 12 April 1861, newly inaugurated president Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts to deprive the Confederacy of freedom of movement and, importantly, to prevent it from trading with Europe. To counter this strategy, the South employed fast blockade runners to evade the Union Navy; these vessels and their crews were considered the lifeline of the Confederacy throughout the Civil War. Blockade runners were often operated by British citizens, who made use of nearby neutral ports in Cuba, the Bahamas, and Bermuda. Food, clothing, and matériel were smuggled in to the Confederacy, while

Michael S. Kirby 34

much-needed cotton to supply the textile industry in England was smuggled out of the South. In the opening months of the war, the Confederacy scrambled to assemble a navy and embarked on an ambitious shipbuilding effort. Naval personnel were drawn from Southerners who had left the US Navy, and the military and civilians alike began to acquire ships—both existing vessels and newly built ships and boats, for the war effort. The Celt was built in Charleston specifically to run the blockade. In February 1865, the Celt would run aground as it was attempting to slip out of Charleston and run past the Union ships outside the harbor. Admiral John Dahlgren’s flagship USS Harvest Moon came upon the stranded vessel and took onboard a number of her crew, including a man claiming to be a stowaway Union soldier, Private Michael Kirby, supposedly of the United States Army. Dahlgren was not immediately convinced of the man’s story, but in time would verify that he was indeed who he said he was, and Kirby was sent ashore under the protection of Union forces. Who was Michael Kirby, and how did he end up in a Confederate blockade runner heading towards the open ocean from a Southern port? A native of Ireland, Michael S. Kirby was born in the town of Dungarvan, Waterford County, on 27 December 1842. His father, Patrick, brought his family to

the United States in the late 1840s, residing first in Boston, then New York, and lastly in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was a shipmaster, having followed his father Dennis’s predilection for maritime pursuits, and commanded transAtlantic ships for many years. After swallowing the anchor, he found steady work ashore as a rigger and outfitter of vessels. Michael would follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, and went to sea as a young man and in time became a shipmaster himself. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Kirby was running canal boats belonging to the Pennsylvania Railroad on the towpaths of the Schuylkill Navigation and the Lehigh, Delaware, and Raritan canals,

berks history center museum

f ter the attack on Fort Sumter

Canal boat approaching the Schuylkill River Lock at Reading, PA (date unknown). SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

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carrying anthracite coal through Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, from Mauch Chunk (since renamed Jim Thorpe), through Allentown and Bethlehem to Easton. At Easton, the Lehigh Canal connected with the Delaware Canal, and the coal was carried southeastward to Trenton, and then north and east on the Raritan Canal to New Brunswick, bound for New York City. His regular stops at the canal locks near the towns and cities along the route no doubt allowed him to develop contacts and relationships with many of the local citizens. Michael Kirby enlisted in the Pennsylvania state forces at Mauch Chunk, on 5 September 1861. Kirby enlisted in a volunteer company raised by Captain Amos Stroh, someone he had probably made friends with while driving the towpaths. The unit was designated as Company G of the 81st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and assigned to the Army of the Potomac. The regiment participated in the failed Peninsular Campaign, the object of which was to capture the city of Richmond via the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. It was also fiercely engaged at the Battle of Antietam. The 81st was in the Second Army Corps under Major General Edwin V. Sumner, and in that same corps was the Fourth United States Artillery. A casualty in Battery C led Kirby to enlist in the US Army at Bolivar, Virginia, on 19 October 1862 to fill the vacancy. He was discharged from the Eighty-first Pennsylvania and would serve out the remainder of his original enlistment in the artillery. Having never been on the sick or injured rolls, he participated in every battle that Battery C was engaged in—including the great battle at Gettysburg in July 1863—until he was captured. In June 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant determined that Petersburg, Virginia, was the back door to Richmond and the key to the capture of the Confederate capital. As Union efforts to take the city by direct assault had failed, General Grant decided to implement a siege. As part of his strategy, he planned an operation to cut the railroads around the vital Confederate rail supply center at Petersburg. On 22 June, Generals James H. Wilson and August V. Kautz set out with orders to destroy the Petersburg and Weldon, Southside,

Destruction of Confederate lines of communication in Virginia by US Army Generals James H. Wilson and August V. Kautz. Private Michael Kirby of the US Army participated in this mission and was subsequently captured by Confederate forces. Sketch drawn by Alfred R. Waud and published in Harper’s Weekly, 30 July 1864. and Richmond & Danville rail lines that fed Richmond and Petersburg from the south and west. The Wilson-Kautz Raid was composed of about 3,300 cavalrymen and Batteries C and E of the Fourth US Artillery. The two six-gun batteries were converted into “flying batteries,” or horse artillery, which meant that the artillerymen were mounted and the horses were connected to the ammunition limber and cannon so that they could travel at the same speed as the cavalry. A long line of ambulances and supply wagons accompanied the force. Under the guard of the artillery, the cavalrymen did much damage to the rail tracks, although the raid did not achieve the expected results. In the days following the beginning of the expedition, miles of track, depot buildings, telegraph wire, line shacks and water towers fell to the crowbar and the torch. On 25 June, however, their efforts were foiled at the Staunton River Bridge on the Richmond & Danville, which was defended on either side by 900 rebel militia and civilian sharpshooters. In a series of maneuvers, Confederate cavalry and infantry under Generals William Fitzhugh Lee and Wade Hampton eventually surrounded the raiders at Reams Station on the Petersburg and Weldon. The raiders established a rear-guard defensive action,

then made a mad dash back to the Union lines. General Wilson’s men got the worst of it, having to spike their guns and burn their supply wagons in an effort to travel as fast as possible, while losing a large number of men to casualties and capture. Private Michael Kirby was captured at Stony Creek Station, on the Petersburg and Weldon line, on 27 June 1864. He was dispatched to the prison at Andersonville, Georgia, on 2 July. Kirby was imprisoned at Andersonville from July until September. He had not been there long before he joined a conspiracy of tunnel diggers and escaped. He found his liberty would last only a short time, however, for he was pursued, overtaken, and recaptured. He was put in a chain gang and served at hard labor for eight days. A subsequent attempt to escape through a second tunnel was frustrated by a breach of confidence on the part of some of his comrades. As General William T. Sherman’s forces began advancing closer to the stockade after the fall of Atlanta in September, Confederate authorities began moving prisoners farther out of the reach of the Union Army for fear they would be liberated by Sherman’s troops. Among the first five hundred men to be transferred, Michael Kirby answered the roll call with the impression he and the others were to be

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exchanged. Only the prisoners that could walk on their own were accepted. As he had only been imprisoned a few months, he had not yet been reduced to a state of malnutrition and even imbecility like thousands of others who had been there longer. They were taken to Charleston and herded into the old Washington Race Course at the head of King’s Street, about three miles from the downtown waterfront. Instead of being exchanged, however, they were sent to Florence, South Carolina, 150 miles from Charleston, where another stockade was being built and where conditions would get as deplorable as Andersonville. When they reached the town by rail cars, the stockade was not yet completed and the prisoners were kept under a strong guard. During the night, Kirby made his escape under the cover of darkness and headed back to Charleston on foot, bare-headed and bare-footed.

Using the stars to guide him, he travelled at night, avoiding the highways and supplying himself with provisions by begging and foraging. He made it back to Charleston, where he begged for food and clothing from a family that was either friendly to the Union cause, or too kindhearted to turn him over to the Confederate authorities. He confessed to them that he was an escaped Yankee prisoner, but they kept his secret. The only clothes Kirby had on when he arrived at their doorstep were rotten meal sacks, and even those were scant. The family gave him clothes and food

and hid him in their home until they could arrange for him to be stowed away in the coal bunker of the blockade runner Celt, which was scheduled to depart Charleston in the coming days. Celt’s owner had taken out a bond for a large cargo of cotton. Set up to run the blockade, she was fully loaded and ready to sail in September 1864 when she was suddenly pressed into military service in Charleston for use as a troop transport. Consequently, Celt was not able to attempt the blockade run until February, when she set out for Nassau in the Bahamas after an

(below) US Coast Survey Map of Charleston, 1865, prepared by direction of Rear Admiral J. A. Dahlgren, USN. Map shows “positions of obstructions & torpedoes from information furnished by persons who removed them.” (right) Inset showing the location of the Celt wreck site close to shore off Fort Moultrie.

noaa

order to evacuate the city. Stowaway Kirby intended to apply to the American consul in Nassau for passage to New York, but before the Celt was able to clear the harbor, she was fired upon and ran aground on the east side of Bowman’s Jetty near Fort Moultrie on the evening of 14 February 1865. An armed tug, USS Laburnum, on picket duty in the harbor, hailed a boat coming from Sullivan’s Island at 2am, and took aboard seven men who reported themselves to be from the blockade runner Sylph. The following is the report from the captain of the Laburnum:

US Tug Laburnum, Off Charleston, February 15, 1865. Sir: I have the honor to make the following report: At 2 o’clock this morning, while doing picket duty on the advance, discovered a boat coming from Sullivan’s Island with 7 men in her. Hailed her and took them on board. They report themselves from the blockade SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

Why the crew of the Celt told Ensign Center they were from the Sylph is unknown. The Sylph was built in Grangemouth, Scotland, of 500 tons register, owned by S. Isaac, Campbell & Co., of London, and was used to bring contraband war supplies to the South, primarily to and from the Gulf Coast. Sylph was almost twice the tonnage of the Celt. She had been captured by the Union forces and employed in duties around Beaufort and Savannah, but was not known to have come in to Charleston. Perhaps posing as the crew of a friendly ship versus an enemy one was the object of their deception. Another report reveals that the alleged Sylph was possibly the Celt, but still incorrectly refers to her as English: USS Canonicus, Charleston Roads, SC, February 19, 1865. Admiral: I have the honor to report that on the night of the 17th instant I had the advance picket duty at the entrance of the harbor with the vessels under my com-

nhhc

USS Harvest Moon

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runner Sylph, which ran on shore on Sullivan’s Island on the evening before while attempting to run the blockade out of Charleston. The following is a list of their names: Edward Manner, mate; G. W. Cessell, French; Charles Kelly, T. McManner, −−−White, −−−Sherry, soldiers; M. Barby [Kirby], escaped prisoner. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, S. Center, Acting Ensign, commanding.

1865 photograph of a wrecked sidewheel steamship wrecked off Sullivan’s Island in Charleston Harbor. The vessel is believed to be the Confederate blockade runner Celt, right off Bowman’s Wharf near Fort Moultrie. mand…About 9 o’clock a.m. I boarded and took possession of the English blockade runner Sylph, or Celt, which ran ashore abreast of Moultrie on the night of the 14th instant, coming out of the harbor with a cargo of cotton. I did not deem it necessary to hoist a flag upon her…Very respectfully, your obedient servant, G. E. Belknap, LieutenantCommander. Admiral John A. Dahlgren, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron,

in a diary entry written on board his flagship, USS Harvest Moon, confirms the Celt as the ship that was run aground on 14 February: February 15‒Got off to Charleston about 9. Anchored about 10pm. All quiet save a blockade runner (Celt) got ashore coming out, and was destroyed; business not so easy; six or seven men came from her to us in a boat, most of them deserters, the rest went ashore, except her first mate, Mamere. Michael Kirby was taken on board the Harvest Moon. His story of being an escaped Union prisoner-of-war did not satisfy Admiral Dahlgren at first, and he was put in irons until evidence could be obtained that would corroborate his account. When Charleston was finally captured and safely in control of Union forces, a flag officer and two marines accompanied Kirby back to the home of the people who had sheltered him, and they validated his story. An entry in the logbook for Harvest Moon, dated 21 February 1865, states: “Michael Kirby was sent ashore to Provost Marshal’s tug.” Kirby was sent to Fort Columbus, New

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York, then on to Annapolis, Maryland, where he was honorably discharged from the Army at Camp Parole on 12 April 1865. When Kirby returned home after his tenmonth odyssey, he learned for the first time that his mother, Cecilia, had died during his absence. His father would pass away four years later, in 1869. He returned to work in the transportation business. In 1882, he was appointed agent of the Pennsylvania Railroads’ steam tugs at South Amboy, New Jersey, under the authority of Daniel C. Chase, superintendent of the Delaware and Raritan Canal Towing Line. He later became superintendent after Chase, had charge of all the steam tugs and served as harbor master at South Amboy until the time of his sudden death on 1 June 1913. He is buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery at New Brunswick, New Jersey, with his wife, Ann, and two of his children, Michael and Thomas, who died in adolescence. His last son, Francis, became a shipmaster and also had a career with the Pennsylvania Railroad. His only daughter, Cecilia, is the author’s great-grandmother. A coast survey map of Charleston Harbor prepared in 1865 shows, among other

wrecks, the wreck of the Celt on the east side of Bowman’s Jetty in the spot where a photo was taken of her that became fairly well-known. Weeks after the capture of Charleston, three naval officers were ordered to survey the condition of the Celt. Their official report on the condition of the vessel follows: USS Sonoma, Charleston, SC, March 9, 1865. Sir: In obedience to your order of the 18th instant, we have held a strict and careful survey upon the hull, boilers, and machinery of the prize steamer Celt and respectfully report: The Celt lies stranded on the beach at Sullivan’s Island, back broken, and full of water, and decks ripped up. The machinery is in irreparable condition; some few pieces might be removed and be of service. Boilers are mostly below water, but judging from the condition of those parts visible, we are of the opinion they are not worth the expense of removing. We therefore report the hull, boil-

ers, and machinery of the steamer Celt as unavailable for service or use to the Government of the United States. Very Respectfully, your obedient servants, Thomas Scott Fillebrown, LieutenantCommander, W. T. Gillespie, Acting Master, Robert Mulready, Acting First Assistant Engineer. According to underwater archaeologist Dr. Edward L. Spence, portions of the Celt could still be seen at low tide as late as the early 1970s. An archaeological survey of the South Carolina coastline conducted by the University of South Carolina-Columbia in 2012 could not locate the Celt. The coastline of Sullivan’s Island has extended farther out at Fort Moultrie over the years, and it is believed that any remains of the Celt lay buried under the shoreline today. William Cahill is an electrical designer for Fiat/Chrysler. He has had a life-long interest in naval history, specifically the Civil War and WWII. He served ten years in the USCG Auxiliary and was a division staff officer. He is a 2nd great-grandson of Michael Kirby.

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Maritime Education in the 21st Century at SUNY Maritime College by Elizabeth McCarthy

“Shipping is truly the linchpin of the global economy: without shipping, intercontinental trade, the bulk transport of raw materials and the import/export of affordable food and manufactured goods would simply not be possible. It is generally accepted that more than 90 percent of global trade is carried by sea, and that is why quality manpower supply is the most important factor driving sustainability in maritime transport. … A shortage of competent seafarers, particularly officers, to operate the increasingly sophisticated vessels is a challenge for the industry; high-quality engineering officers will be particularly in demand as tighter emission regulations require ships to burn lighter fuels in sophisticated new engine designs.”—International Maritime Organization1

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ith advances in technology and continued growth of international commerce, demands on today’s professional mariners are changing rapidly. For those who educate and train the next generation of ships’ officers, the question is: Are we meeting the demands of this specialized industry as we release new graduates into the world of shipping? The education of the merchant mariner has changed extensively over the last 40 years and will continue on this path, as autonomous and semi-autonomous vessels are launched from shipyards and take to the high seas. How do we maintain high standards and emphasize the basics, while introducing a whole new level and spectrum of instruction to properly prepare our future professional mariners? America’s merchant mariners receive their training either at the college level by attending one of the seven public merchant marine academies2 where students earn their bachelor’s and/or master’s degrees in con-

The State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College is located at historic Fort Schuyler, on the Throgs Neck peninsula in the Bronx, where the East River meets Long Island Sound. It is one of seven public maritime academies in the country. junction with their merchant mariner’s licenses, or by working their way up the chain of command (what we commonly refer to as a “hawsepiper” in the industry). Both paths take hard work, discipline, and

a high level of intelligence to succeed. In this article, we will examine the merchant marine academy experience, specifically at SUNY Maritime College, where I am an alumna and assistant professor. There are two areas in which the students receive their licenses: deck and engine. Those working on deck aim to become mates and eventually captains; students focusing on work below deck are typically ship’s engineers, from assistant to chief engineer. People outside the maritime industry do not realize the level of effort that it takes to become a licensed merchant mariner, nor what the profession is like once they start shipping out. In my own experience as a merchant mariner (a “deckie”), I have come across plenty of people who cannot believe that I had to attend a college for four years to learn how to steer a ship. On more than one occasion, I have been confronted by the casual boater who, in conversation, remarks that they, too, have taken a course

“International Shipping and World Trade Facts and Figures,” International Maritime Organization, October 2009. US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY, and six state maritime academies: California Maritime Academy, Maine Maritime Academy, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Great Lakes Maritime Academy, Texas A&M Maritime Academy, and SUNY Maritime College. 2

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Mark Koldras, SUNY Maritime Class of 2012 on how to drive a boat. As much as this pains me, I cannot blame them for not understanding the difference between my maritime experience and theirs, as ours is a world outside their purview. While the shipping industry is very large, it has a small feel to the profession because it is such a specialized field of work. There are so many components to this occupation, and each has its own set of training standards. Now that I serve on the education side of maritime work, I join others—from PhDs to veteran master mariners—in our mission to teach current and future generations of professional mariners a broad understanding of the industry as we prepare them for both shorebased and at-sea careers. Students at the merchant marine academies receive an education in two realms: academic and professional maritime training. They fulfill all the US Coast Guard licensing requirements in addition to a full college curriculum for their bachelor’s degrees. Achieving this dual goal commonly requires cadets to take in excess of eighteen credits each semester, a considerably larger course load than that required at most undergraduate colleges. Students often give up their winter and summer breaks to gain sea time and ex-

perience on a commercial vessel. The successful maritime academy student needs to be ready to commit early on to a career in the shipping industry. Is current maritime education meeting the standard today as new merchant mariners flood the industry? I reached out to working professionals in the industry for answers to this and other questions to see if the curriculum should be changing at a faster pace and to get a personal look at where maritime education has come from and if it is on the right course for the future. The alumni I spoke with all have held merchant marine licenses ranging from Second Mate–Unlimited (tonnage) to Master–Unlimited, and have seagoing experience. To

get a broad view of the maritime academy experience over the years, I interviewed graduates from as recent as the 2018 graduating class, to as far back as 1977 to see if education has changed along with the needs of the industry. I was expecting a wide range of answers, but surprisingly this was not the case. When asked if there was something in their education they felt was lacking, I received answers ranging from educational topics to social issues facing cadets and professionals in the workforce. A 1976 graduate replied that what he missed the most during his academy experience was women. While I initially laughed at this notion, I then realized that there was some validity to his response beyond the social aspect. Although it is a field still very much dominated by men, women in the maritime industry are bringing compassion and competition to the workforce. As this demographic shift was transpiring, it produced some anxiety in the old guard, not unlike what current students are feeling when faced with the idea of autonomous ships threatening their livelihoods. Radical changes in the nature of any workforce requires vision on the part of leaders and experience on the part of workers. My students from the early 2000s saw a drastic change in the industry as they joined the workforce after college. Radars went from grease pencil to Automatic Radar Planning Aid (ARPA). Recent

Anna Silva, Class of 1998 (at left), working out navigation problems as a cadet. SUNY Maritime College graduated its first co-ed class in 1978. Currently, women make up just 12% of the student body. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 41

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graduates said that although they felt ready upon graduation, their critical training continued once they were introduced into the industry. One alum working aboard ship pointed out that his college education is an important step in his experience, but that learning continues long into a person’s career at sea. My current student pointed out that preparation for real-world situations is the main component lacking in his education, but I would be remiss if I did not point out that this goes hand in hand with a comment from the graduate of fifteen years prior, that graduation is merely a “waypoint” along the course the person takes over his or her career. A couple of responses pertained to the business of shipping itself, in terms of learning more about the industry and less about the practical side of ship operations. These comments were from graduates of the 1990s, where the emphasis in their campus experiences was more on the act of shipping and not the business side of the industry. These graduates stated that they had to go back to school to learn the business side of the industry once their seagoing careers had ended. Regarding questions about the practical experience of working as deck officers and engineers aboard ship, every graduate answered with the same response: hands-on learning—one area where maritime academies prevail. It is impossible to convey to a student, for example, the feel of a ship through a book. When students train in

the art of navigation, they must practice in a real-life environment. They must see, feel, and experience it to learn it, which includes managing the adrenaline of adverse conditions and ship traffic. This part of maritime education has changed significantly over the last forty years with the introduction of simulators. Where students were once required to put to sea aboard a commercial vessel to develop these skills, they can now get a similar experience from inside a classroom. One may argue that it is not the same as being on a real ship, another may concede, but accept that it is the next best thing. The stakes are slightly different, of course; if a student has an accident within the simulator, the instructor merely restarts the equipment—no harm done. Valuable experience is still gained from these exercises, and it enables the student to train without real-life consequences. Small class sizes allow for each student to take command and practice his or her leadership skills, which are needed every day in working scenarios, both on shore and at sea. My graduates from the past decade felt that the reduction in real-life experience was a detriment to their training, but that simulators are a great contribution to their education. The need for actual boat- and shiphandling still exists, and will continue to play an important role throughout a graduate’s career. I asked what part of hands-on learning was important to each graduate. Again, no matter what era in which they graduated,

Captain Richard Fitzgerald, (SUNY Maritime Class of 1977) at left. their answers were exactly the same: time aboard the training ship, seamanship classes, and the cadet observer experience. Interestingly, not one mentioned simulators, even though as educators we consider the use of simulators to be hands-on training. Faced with a future of autonomous ships, all felt that mariners-in-training still need to experience how a ship moves in a real setting. All students working towards their merchant marine licenses as part of their undergraduate curriculum are required to be a part of the Regiment of Cadets at SUNY Maritime College. I was interested in finding out if alumni in the industry felt that this was an important piece of their education. The Regiment of Cadets is a program in which students are required to wear uniforms and follow the chain of command. They attend weekly mandatory meetings after class and participate in morning formations. Without exception, the alumni felt that it is an important part of the academy experience. To operate a SUNY Maritime opened the Bouchard Transportation Co. Tug and Barge Simulation Center in 2014. The facility is a Class A bridge simulator that projects 360-degree views of waterways and can be programmed to create virtual scenarios of vessel traffic, changing weather, and reduced visibility. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

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“It is recognized that human resources and human element are of utmost importance for development of the sustainable maritime transportation system. High quality maritime education and training are the bedrock of a safe and secure shipping industry.” —International Maritime Organization

SUNY Maritime’s training ship, Empire State VI, was built in 1962 and has been used to train SUNY Maritime students since 1989. Of the six merchant marine academy training ships in the United States, Empire State has been in service the longest. The 2018 federal budget included $300 million to build a National Security Multi-Mission Vessel to replace the Empire State VI. ship successfully, all departments must work together and follow a chain of command. This is the core of the Regiment of Cadets. Wrapping up my interviews, I concluded with a comparison of recent graduates with graduates of 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, and 40 years ago, in terms of knowledge. Are the students today better prepared than past graduates? This question was not as easy for my graduates to answer. Most often I got a yes or a no answer. Most felt that, yes, the students with more high-tech and simulator training are better prepared to enter the industry today, but at the same time, no, simply because they are seeing a larger number of graduates that do not all take the path towards ship operations and licensing. The introduction of new programs, such as cyber security, has attracted considerable interest in the maritime field. This has ultimately increased the size of the maritime graduating classes, but the fear that this growth has taken away from what is most important, what many of us consider “our family” in the maritime industry, is palpable. We need to understand how changes in the workforce, training, and technology affects our future within the maritime field

is essential. The goals of maritime educators have not changed in theory over the last forty years, but in practice we must continue to stay abreast of this ever-changing industry as it evolves. Elizabeth McCarthy has been in the shipping industry for over 20 years. She is a graduate of SUNY Maritime College. She sailed as a deck civilian officer with NOAA and upgraded her license to a Second Mate–Unlimited and 1600-ton Master. Once ashore, she

attended law school at night while working as an analyst for a tanker brokerage company in Long Island. Married with three children, she currently serves as an assistant professor at SUNY Maritime College and adjunct professor at the US Merchant Marine Academy. She would like to thank her graduates for their time: Captain Richard Fitzgerald, 1977; Captain Joseph Ahlstrom, 1982; Anna Silva, 1998; Davi Smyth, 2005; Mark Koldras, 2012; Abigail Granit, 2018; and Alex Wagner, 2019.

Davi Smyth, (Class of 2005) SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 43

Meet Dr. Kris Von Wald: Tall Ships America’s New Executive Director Tall Ships America welcomes Dr. Kris Von Wald as its new executive director at the close of 2018, after the loss last summer of Captain Bert Rogers, who led the organization since 2008. The lead author and investigator for the Sail Training Programme Evaluation Self-Assessment Toolkit, Von Wald’s experience, among a long list of professional achievements, includes serving as chief executive of the Association for Experiential Education and the Hibernian Community Foundation in Edinburgh, Scotland. The National Maritime Historical Society has enjoyed a long and robust relationship with Tall Ships America, as both organizations share mutual goals in the preservation, promotion, and stewardship of maritime traditions, skills, and heritage. Included in a Memorandum of Understanding between the organizations, NMHS members have become members of Tall Ships America and benefits include newsletters, notifications, membership cards, and member discounts to its events, and other miscellaneous benefits of membership. Tall Ships America enables NMHS members to purchase its inclusive publication Sail Tall Ships! for $10, inclusive of shipping and handling (representing a 50% discount from the normal retail cost). We know that taking charge of an organization after the abrupt passing of a beloved director can be a tough challenge, and we welcome Dr. Von Wald and wish her the best in her new role as she seeks to steer the organization to a bright and healthy future. We look forward to supporting and collaborating with the crew of Tall Ships St. Lawrence II, a brigantine out of Kingston, Ontario, leads the threemasted schooner Denis Sullivan, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during a America in their future endeavors. previous Great Lakes TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Series. Both vessels — Burchenal Green, NMHS President and will be among the participating ships in this summer’s race series. Deirdre O’Regan, Editor, Sea History “It seems like a long journey that has taken me from the peaks of the Colorado 14ers to the sea, but I am excited to embark on this next chapter as I assume the conn of Tall Ships America. This move welcomes me back to the world of youth development, outdoor and adventure education, and nonprofit management, while being part of a community dedicated to the relentless pursuit of positive impact for all who come aboard. It is a time of change for the organization, as we set our sights on the horizon and set a course for the future of tall ships and sail training. The job of Tall Ships America is to ensure the ships in the tall ships fleet and their programs are robust with high-quality standards, safe learning environments, and top-notch crews, who have access to continuing education and professional training. We strive to make sure the public is drawn to the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® ports and that our fleet is recognized for its positive contributions to the economic, social, and environmental good of ports. We promote what we do, not only to the young people we hope to get onboard member vessels, but to future employers, showing them that time served in a tall ship pays dividends. We continue to share in the exploration of good practices and engage in evidence-based improvement, serving as a leader in the field of developing future leaders. It is an exciting time ahead. I’m delighted to be aboard.” —Kris Von Wald, Executive Director, Tall Ships America 44

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

n international fleet of tall ships will race and sail their way through the Great Lakes this summer as participants in Tall Ships America’s TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Race Series. This will be the seventh time the race series has visited the region. Eleven ports will host the fleet of twenty vessels from July to September. Returning TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE host ports include: Toronto, Ontario; Cleveland, Ohio; Bay City, Michigan; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Erie, Pennsylvania; and Brockville, Ontario. While new to the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE Race Series but not new to hosting tall ships, the ports of Buffalo, New York; Kenosha, Wisconsin; and Sarnia, Midland, and Kingsville—Ontario ports—will be welcome additions to our series. Three new ships join the Great Lakes fleet this year: the iconic Canadian vessel and ambassador of Nova Scotia, Bluenose II; the world travelling Picton Castle; and the Spanish-flagged Nao Santa Maria. They will join Appledore IV, Appledore V, Denis Sullivan, Empire Sandy, Fair Jeanne, Friends Good Will, Inland Seas, Madeline, Niagara, Playfair, Pride of Baltimore II, Red Witch, St. Lawrence II, and Windy as they sail and race across the Great Lakes. Other vessels may be added as the dates draw near. Tall Ships America organizes the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE annual series of tall ship races and maritime port festivals to celebrate our rich maritime heritage and traditions and to inform the general public about the transformative power of adventure and education under sail. We are pleased to announce that Erie Insurance will again be the presenting sponsor of the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE Race Series. Erie Insurance will be sponsoring 20 Erie County high school students in the Exploring the Great Lakes program, which includes the opportunity to live aboard the brig Niagara with the crew and experience sea life. Based in Erie, Pennsylvania, Erie Insurance is a FORTUNE 500 company offering auto, home, business and life insurance through a network of more than 12,000 local independent ERIE agents. Be sure to check the Tall Ships America website as June approaches to learn more about port events, visiting ships, and schedules. Those interested in sailing aboard individual vessels during the series can find contact information for ships and programs through Tall Ships America at www.sailtraining.org or by buying the organization’s biennial catalog of member ships, Sail Tall Ships!, available through their website. —Erin Short, TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE Director, Tall Ships America SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 45

SEA HISTORY for kids Michael Corbet—Forgotten Hero of the American Revolution

by Christopher Magra, PhD

eroes come in all shapes and sizes. Anyone who has fought off husks in Fortnite knows this to be true. But how much do we know about real battles from the past? Take the American Revolution, for example. Can you name one hero from the epic struggle to defend liberty

who were advocating for independence. A year before the Boston Massacre, Corbet was involved in a bloody encounter with the British, an encounter that John Adams—who would go on to become our 2nd president— claimed did more to motivate American colonists to resist British authority

that caught the fish also sailed the final product to markets in Europe and the Caribbean islands. In the spring of 1769, Corbet and six other Marblehead mariners were sailing home from Spain aboard the American brig Pitt Packet with a cargo of salt for the New England fisheries,

photo by maggie walton courtesy maritime museum of san diego

A replica of HMS Rose (now called HMS Surprise) exchanges mock cannon fire with a schooner off San Diego, California. (No cannonballs! Just black powder.)

from tyranny? Can you name three? Which of these heroes would you follow on Twitter or SnapChat if they were alive today? Most Americans can name at least one of the Founding Fathers, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but what about the ordinary men and women who risked their lives to protect our freedoms? What about the everyday heroes? You may remember learning about Crispus Attucks, who was killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770, but have you ever heard of Michael Corbet? Michael Corbet never won a battle or uttered a memorable quote in a moment of crisis, but in the years leading up to the American Revolution, his was a name familiar to American colonists

46 46

than the more famous clash in Boston where Mr. Attucks and others were killed. Reflecting on Corbet’s case later, Adams wrote that “Corbet ought not to have been forgotten.”1 Michael Corbet grew up during the 1700s, most likely working out of Marblehead, Massachusetts, as a merchant mariner and fisherman. Marblehead was then the center of the fishing industry in colonial America. Fishing schooners sailed from the port with anywhere from five to ten men and typically went far out to sea for weeks at a time, catching and processing fish. The catch would be gutted and salted at sea and then dried and salted again on shore before it was packed in large barrels for overseas distribution. Some of the same schooners and fishermen 1

when they were stopped at sea by a British warship and forced to defend their freedom. The Royal Navy frigate HMS Rose halted the Pitt Packet off the Massachusetts coast and sent a press gang to board her. The British Royal Navy in that era had the largest fleet in the world, but not enough people to man the ships. To alleviate its manpower problem, the military used impressment to augment its crews, a practice despised by most but considered by many as a necessary evil to maintain British supremacy on the high seas. Press gangs made surprise raids ashore in port towns and boarded vessels on the high seas to press, or force, men into military service. A lieutenant usually led these gangs.

Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams, Vol. 10, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1850-1856), 210.

SEA SEAHISTORY HISTORY166, 166,SPRING SPRING2019 2019

A press gang marches merchant ship crewmen from their vessel to a waiting naval warship. Impressment was legal but generally hated, as it took men against their will from privately owned commercial ships at sea or from their homes ashore to man the Royal Navy fleet. In the era of sailing warships, the navy needed hundreds of men to operate a single ship and man its guns in battle. Frustrations with the British impressment of American sailors was a major factor in the United States declaring war on Great Britain for a second time, the War of 1812. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, both in 1815, the Royal Navy’s manpower needs were significantly decreased and impressment fell out of use. As the 20-gun frigate HMS Rose was patrolling the coast of Massachusetts in April of 1769, it came upon the Pitt Packet as it was heading to port at Marblehead. Lieutenant Henry Gibson Panton and his gang boarded the Pitt Packet on the premise that they were searching for contraband cargo, but with the true intent of pressing some of the Pitt Packet’s crew into the Royal Navy. When Corbet and his mates saw what was happening, they grabbed fishing gear, including a fish gig, or spear, and locked themselves in the forepeak, up in the bow of the ship. It didn’t end well. Lt. Panton demanded that the men come up on deck, to which, according to later testimony by the ship’s cook, Corbet and his mates replied that they were “Freemen born free, and would not go aboard a Man of War.”2 James Siley, a British marine who accompanied the press gang, and John Roney, Pitt Packet’s master, both testified they heard Corbet and his mates “say they wanted nothing but their Liberty.”3 The lieutenant forced his way inside. Corbet took a fistful of salt and threw it across the deck in front of Panton’s feet and threatened the British naval officer with death if he

crossed the line of salt. Panton was undaunted, took a pinch of snuff, and stepped towards the seaman. Corbet grabbed a nearby harpoon and launched it at his attacker. The harpoon struck Panton in the neck, severing his jugular vein. The press gang carried him up to the main deck, where he bled to death. A fight ensued, leaving two of the Pitt Packet’s crew shot and severely wounded. Corbet and his shipmates were arrested and charged with murder.

L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, eds., The Legal Papers of John Adams, Vol. 2, (Harvard Univ. Press, 1965), 320 3 Wroth and Zobel, eds., The Legal Papers, Vol. 2, 309, 319.

photo by jerry soto

The trial was a sensation. John Adams, then a practicing lawyer in Massachusetts, defended the mariners in a Boston courtroom. Day after day, crowds of people surrounded the courthouse, while newspapers in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia printed coverage of the case as it unfolded in court. Adams succeeded in getting the charges against Corbet dropped on the basis of justifiable homicide in selfdefense. Adams argued that Americans had a right to defend their liberty. The case profoundly influenced public opinion in America. A year later, John Adams would serve as the defense attorney for the British soldiers who fired upon Crispus Attucks and the crowd of protesters in the streets of Boston. Adams never forgot Corbet. When he served on the Marine Committee that established the first American navy, he nominated Corbet for a captain’s commission. Adams knew Corbet would not flinch in the coming fight. Chris Magra is an award-winning author and a professor of history at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville.

HMS Rose (at left) was built in 1970 as a replica of the 20-gun British frigate of the same name from the 18th century. Rose would have been an intimidating sight on the horizon and it is unlikely that the crew of Pitt Packet would have been able to escape a warship of this size. In 2001 the replica ship you see here was cast as HMS Surprise for a starring role in the Hollywood movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The Rose crew sailed her south from New England, passed through the Panama Canal, and sailed up to California to deliver the ship to the filming location. After the movie was made, the ship, now re-named HMS Surprise, was purchased by the Maritime Museum of San Diego in Southern California, where she is open to the public as an exhibition ship as part of the museum’s fleet of historic and replica vessels. The 250th anniversary of the Pitt Packett affair is on 22 April 2019. (Maritime Museum of San Diego, www.sdmaritime.org)

SEA SEAHISTORY HISTORY166, 166,SPRING SPRING2019 2019 47

Animals in Sea History

he first known photograph of a nearly complete specimen of a giant squid was taken in 1873 in the living room of a reverend living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Those are eight 6-foot-long arms sliding down in the middle (in the photo below), while on each side, draped up and down, are the two tentacles, each 24 feet long. At the top is the squid’s mouth, with its dark parrot-like beak seeming to poke out of the flesh. This photograph is especially cool and significant, not just because it looks like so creepy and alien, but because how big a news story it was at the time, especially to scientists and sailors. Both communities had heard of these animals, and had told and retold stories of questionable believability, but so few had any real proof of what these animals looked or felt like, and how big they actually were. Beginning in 1871, scattered accounts of giant squids began to return from the sea off the Canadian Maritimes. In November of 1873, most famously, a fisherman with an axe chopped off a 19-foot-long tentacle that reached into his small boat. The tentacle was sold to Moses Harvey, a reverend and author who was also a student of natural history. He wrote later: “I was now the possessor of one of the rarest curiosities in the whole animal kingdom—the veritable tentacle of the hitherto mythical devilfish, about whose existence naturalists had been disputing for centuries. I knew that I held in my hand the key of the great mystery.” As Harvey was writing a scientific paper about the tentacle and sending it to his local museum in St. John’s, he got word a few weeks later that just to the north, in Logy Bay, four fishermen had hauled up another giant squid in their herring net. In the struggle to kill the enormous invertebrate with their knives, they ended up cutting off most of the animal’s head from the rest of its body. Harvey paid them ten dollars for the carcass, on the condition that they help him cart it back to his house. Here Harvey took this photograph, draping the dead squid over a sponge bath rack, and then The first giant squid ever photographed, in invited visitors to come see it. Moses Harvey’s living room, in 1873.

wikipedia .com

heritage newfoundland and labrador

by Richard King

Reverend Moses Harvey

48 48

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

courtesy dan aplin

Reverend Harvey eventually sent the specimen down to New Haven, Connecticut, to a young scientist named A. E. Verrill, who would compile with his artist colleague, James Emerton, the first scientific study and set of illustrations of giant squids that had ever been published anywhere in the world. From these specimens, and others that were sent down from Newfoundland, Verrill and Emerton created the first accurate model of a giant squid, a 40-foot-long plaster structure that was displayed at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883. Giant squid are deep-sea animals. In order to survive in the dark, they have eyes as big as soccer balls. They are not known to spend any time at the surface at all—unless they’re dead—at which point they are quickly eaten by sharks and seabirds. Their primary predators are sperm whales, smaller toothed whales, and large fish, such as swordfish and tuna. By now, there are roughly 50 or so known complete specimens of giant squid in collections around the world, usually stored in formalin or in freezers. These are among some 500 recorded ever, anywhere, found in a range of physical states—just the mantle here, only three arms washed up there—that were once measured and recorded carefully or whose length a biologist, beachcomber, fisherman, or whaleman estimated out in the field. Often giant squid parts were found inside the stomachs of sperm whales or vomited out when the animals were being chased or killed. Since Reverend Harvey’s photograph, other photos of dead, beached squid have been published on occasion, but it was not until 2004 that a Japanese biologist named Tsunemi Kubodera was able to capture a photograph of a living giant squid—on a baited trip line at nearly 3,000 feet deep. The tentacles of giant squid can get stretched out, but if Harvey’s giant squid were indeed about 32 feet in life, as estimated, this would be about average for adult females, which are larger than males. Current biologists, based on collected parts and growth rates, believe that there are 50-foot, or maybe even 60-foot long giant squids somewhere out there. Needless to say, if you see one, of any length, be sure to snap a photo, as did this diver last year in New Zealand! A freshly-dead giant squid that washed up on the southern coastline of Wellington, New Zealand, in 2018. Giant squid are mostly red, but can turn white in death and their outer red skin can also get scraped off by the sand of a beach.

For more “Animals in Sea History” go to www.seahistory.org or educators.mysticseaport.org.

“Sea History for K ids” is sponsored by the Henry L. & Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 49

Majestic

photos courtesy paul g. allen’s vulcan inc.

(above ) A 5-inch gun on USS Hornet. (below) Side-scan sonar image of the WWII aircraft carrier on the seafloor.

WWII actions as the Doolittle Raid—aircraft carrying out the raid were launched from Hornet’s decks—and the Battle of Midway. The stern portion of the Kongoclass battleship Hiei, which had escorted carriers for the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, was found at a depth of 985 meters northwest of Guadalcanal, where it sank in 1942 after its steering mechanism was disabled. The crew was also able to identify the Hiei’s propeller and rudder, dual guns, and a crate of ammunition. It was the first Imperial Japanese battleship to be sunk in World War II; 188 sailors of its complement of 50

River waterfront, determined that the ship’s approximate $100,000 annual upkeep was no longer sustainable since losing its last lessee in 2013, and put Majestic on the auction block to find her a new home. The purchase is not without its conditions; the buyer must maintain the steamboat, which is registered as a National Historic Landmark, under the guidance of the state historic preservation office of the state in which it is berthed, and any repairs or maintenance will have to comply with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation and Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings. In addition, there must be public access to the vessel no fewer than twelve days per year, unless it is viewable from a public right of way, which the State Historic Preservation Office may deem sufficient to meet the public-access requirement. Majestic was built by Tom Reynolds in 1923 in Pittsburgh. The Reynolds family and a handful of paid performers plied the Ohio River and its tributaries, putting on shows for the river towns, with the accompaniment of a calliope aboard the showboat’s companion vessel, the tug Attaboy. After World War II the two vessels were employed by the drama departments of local colleges as venues for their productions, and in 1959 they were purchased by Indiana University. In 1967 the city of Cincinnati purchased the pair, and set out to restore the showboat, by then fairly deteriorated. Rather than replace the aging wooden hull, the city installed a steel barge

hull over it. Majestic, boasting a 221-seat theater, is thought to be the last floating theater in the country. ... The battleship memorial USS Texas (BB-35) has emerged from key repairs, making many exhibit areas available to the public for the first time in two years. On 5 January the ship welcomed visitors to tour the ship’s engine room, machine shop, brig, ammunition passageway, and radio room, all of which have been closed for major structural repairs. This latest round of repairs is the second conducted on the vessel in recent years; the first round began in 2013 when work was carried out on the support structure under the ship’s engine room and areas of the stern. That project was completed in January 2015. The Texas Legislature then allocated $25 million for another round of repairs, which included the steering gear room, D-13 trimming tank, rear emergency diesel generator room, condenser room, and certain tanks, trucks, and storerooms. Texas Parks and Wildlife, which

USS Texas

jacobst via wikipedia.com cc by sa 3.0

1360 were lost in the incident. Vulcan, Inc., was founded by the late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen; he led the Petrel team in locating such notable ships as USS Helena, USS Juneau, and USS Lexington. (www.paulallen.com/Indepth/Petrel/discoveries/ijn-hiei.php) ... The showboat Majestic has been sold at auction for $110,100. The city of Cincinnati, OH, which bought the riverboat stage in 1967 and has maintained it on the town’s Ohio

govdeals.com

Vulcan, Inc.’s research vessel Petrel has located the remains of two significant ships from World War II off the Solomon Islands in January: the US aircraft carrier Hornet, and the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Hiei. Hornet, discovered at a depth of approximately 5,330 meters, was located by compiling data from archives, including deck logs and action reports from other ships engaged in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, where Hornet sank in October of 1942, with a loss of 140 crewmembers. The Yorktownclass carrier was key in such significant

oversees the vessel, concluded that the best long-term solution for the battleship is a dry berth, and these major repairs have been necessary to ensure that the Texas is able to withstand even the short move out of her current position in order to build the dry berth installation. The dry berth is estimated to cost as much as $60 million, the bulk of which would come from the state legislature. Commissioned on 12 March 1914, USS Texas was the first American battleship to mount anti-aircraft guns, a modification made in 1916. She was also the first to control gunfire with directors and range-keepers. In 1918 she joined the 6th Battle Squadron of the British Grand Fleet, with duties including laying a North SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

Sea mine barrage, responding to German High Seas Fleet maneuvers, and helping prevent enemy naval forces from cutting off Allied supply lines. In 1925 she was converted from coal operation to fuel oil, and in 1939 she was one of the first ships in the US fleet to be equipped with radar. She served in World War II, firing on German defenses at Normandy and later lending Necklaces you can use gunfire support and anti-aircraft fire during the landings at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Wholesale supplier to Maritime Venues. After the war, she ferried troops from Ha1-800-654-1447 nauticalsouvenirs@yahoo.com www.VillageSquareBrass.com 1/8 page AD waii to California—in all carrying more than 5,000 men home. In 1948, after carrying troops home from the Pacific theater,   she was decommissioned and acquired by     the State of Texas as a memorial ship. Today,  she is the last of the WWI-era dreadnoughts. EXPERIENCE HISTORY ABOARD OUR12/5/2018 Village square ad.indd 1 NATIONAL LANDMARK SCHOONERS (Battleship Texas State Historic Site, 3523 WWW .MAINEWINDJAMMERCRUISES.COM Independence Parkway South, LaPorte, TX; Ph. 281 479-2431; www.battleshiptexas. CRUISES OFFERED MAY – OCTOBER org) … The Chesapeake Bay Maritime 3, 4, 5, 6 DAY & Museum (CBMM) has announced the WEEKENDS selection of Annapolis-based Iver C. $475 - $845 Franzen Maritime, LLC, to design the 1-800-736-7981 new replica Maryland Dove. The current Maryland Dove was inspired by the Dove of 1634, a trading ship that accompanied the GREAT READS from our SHIP’S STORE — Signed Copies! first European settlers to what is modernThe Sunken Gold: A Story of World War I Espionage and the Greatest Treasure Salvage day Maryland. Launched in 1978, Maryland in History by Joseph A. Williams Dove is owned by the State of Maryland On January 25, 1917, HMS Laurentic struck two German mines and sank. The ship and operated and maintained by the Hiswas carrying 44 tons of gold bullion to finance the war effort. Lt Cdr Damant lead the toric St. Mary’s City Commission and serves salvage but was called off to lead a team of covert divers to investigate and search through the contents of recently sunk U-boats. The information they obtained for British intelas Historic St. Mary’s City’s sailing ambasligence proved critical toward Allied efforts. After gathering evidence, Damant and his sador. As the vessel aged and the inevitable team spent five additional years salvaging bullion. The Sunken Gold is a story of human wear and tear took their toll, it was decided persistence, bravery and patriotism. SRP $26.99 Sale $22 + $5 s/h (hardcover) to build a new Dove, rather than invest Seventeen Fathoms Deep: The Saga of the Submarine S-4 Disaster heavily in a complete overhaul for the 1978 by Joseph A. Williams vessel. Historic St. Mary’s City and CBMM Never-revealed, compelling narrative of the submarine S-4 disaster and the first agreed on a partnership to build the new attempt to rescue survivors. As navy deep-sea divers struggled to save the trapped men, a winter storm raged at the surface, creating dangerous diving conditions. ship, which will more closely resemble her Circumstances were so terrible that one diver became trapped in the wreckage while original namesake. While the Maryland trying to attach an air hose to the sunken sub. Lessons learned during this great Dove of 1978 was loosely based on the lines tragedy moved the US Navy to improve submarine rescue technology, which reof a 1680s merchant vessel, the new incarsulted in later successful rescues of other downed submariners. SRP $26.95 Sale $22 + $5 s/h (hardcover) nation will likely have three masts typical of a coastal vessel, and a typical rig as well. Iron Dawn: The Monitor, the Merrimack, and the Civil War Sea Battle In addition, the goal is to comply with Coast that Changed History by Richard Snow Guard requirements for carrying passengers, Richard Snow reveals how no single sea battle has had more far-reaching consequences than the one fought in the harbor at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in March which was not a target goal with the previ1862. The Monitor had fought the Merrimack to a standstill, saving the Union cause. ous vessel. (CBMM, 213 North Talbot As the news spread, Britain ceased work on all wooden ships, upending a thousandStreet, St. Michaels, Maryland; Ph. 410 year-old tradition and opening the path to the naval future. 745-2916; www.cbmm.org. Historic St. SRP $30 Sale $24 + $5 s/h Mary’s City, www.HSMCdigsHistory.org)

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(continued on page 53)

To order call 914-737-7878 ext. 0; or visit www.seahistory.org. Allow 2 to 3 weeks for delivery. Shipping within USA only. NYS residents add applicable sales tax.

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 51

15:41:14

Falls of Clyde in Crisis

t’s been a bumpy couple of months for the historic Falls of Clyde. Built in Port Glasgow in 1878 for the sugar trade and later converted for oil transport, the ship has been in the care of the group Friends of the Falls of Clyde since 2008, docked in Honolulu Harbor. The Hawaii Department of Transportation Harbors Division impounded the ship in 2016, citing the ship’s deteriorating condition and a threat to port operations and public safety. The organization Save Falls of Clyde – International then worked together with the Friends of the Falls of Clyde to develop a plan to return the ship to Scotland, where she would be restored as an educational and training vessel. The former had secured an agreement with a transport company to depart with the Falls on 3 February of this year, just ahead of the 6 February deadline set by the HDOT to remove the vessel from the harbor—HDOT had declared that if the deadline were not met, the ship would be put up for auction. The agreement with the ship-lift company fell through, however, and the two groups were left trying to negotiate a new agreement to transport the vessel. On 7 February, HDOT announced the public auction of the Falls of Clyde.

As Sea History goes to press, the situation surrounding Falls of Clyde in Honolulu has turned very challenging in our effort to repatriate the ship to Scotland. In January, it was observed that the ship was low in the water at her berth. Investigation found she was taking on water through leaks apparently caused by the recent hull inspection process. The USCG and Harbors Division activated an Emergency Procurement protocol to bring quick remediation and pumping to prevent sinking. We are also facing deadlines: 28 February for responses to the public auction, and 1 June to clear the vessel from Honolulu Harbor prior to the beginning of hurricane season. Unless we can prevail for additional time to complete our lift operation prior to June, the ship could be lost, scuttled in deep water south of Oahu using a previously approved disposal operation. This action would be a tragic loss of this National Historic Landmark, and important international symbol of commerce and Scottish pride. Assistance is needed on several fronts. We ask for urgent communications sent to Harbors Division in support of our Save Falls of Clyde – International effort. We are also looking for emergency funding to accelerate preparations for a lift operation before June. We are ready to discuss creative programs for supporters and sponsors. Repurposing Falls of Clyde to a productive educational role is coming together with support from companies, institutions, and government. We are engaged with members of the Scottish government and UK Parliament. We need more time to finalize berthing and restoration plans using River Clyde as her new home. For updates: visit Save Falls of Clyde – International’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pg/savefallsofclyde/. To donate, go to www.gofundme.com/save-the-falls-of-clyde-beforeshe-is-gone-forever. — David O’Neil, savefallsofclyde@gmail.com. 52

ffoc

Report from Save the Falls of Clyde International’s David O’Neil

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

(continued from page 51) ... Mystic Seaport Museum announced in September that it had received two significant grants from the Save America’s Treasures program to support the restoration of the 1921 schooner L. A. Dunton, and the photographic negatives from the Rosenfeld Collection.

metalartstile.com

mystic seaport museum

Schooner L. A. Dunton

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The first grant, in the amount of $491,750, will support the acquisition of rare shipbuilding timber and other materials for the planned restoration of the L. A. Dunton, one of the last surviving examples of the Grand Banks fishing schooners and a National Historic Landmark. A $103,701 National Maritime Heritage Grant for the Dunton project awarded earlier in 2018 was earmarked for upgrades to the museum’s shiplift, a complete structural survey of the vessel, and a laser-scan documentation of the schooner’s current condition. The Dunton was designed by Thomas F. McManus and built by Arthur D. Story; she was launched from Story’s shipyard in Essex, Massachusetts, in 1921. After only two years in the haddock and halibut fisheries she was equipped with a 100 HP Fairbanks, Morse, and Co. engine. By 1934 she was sold to Aaron Buffett of Grand Bank, Newfoundland. Her 100 HP engine was replaced with a 160 HP Fairbanks-Morse engine, her rig was cut down, and bowsprit removed, and a large wheel house was installed aft. She was used in this capacity as a fishing vessel, and later as a cargo carrier. Mystic Seaport Museum took ownership in 1963, and converted her back to her original configuration. The second grant, in the amount of $244,417, will fund the restoration, digitization, and rehousing of selected cellulose diacetate negatives from the museum’s Rosenfeld Collection of

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BOOKS The only book about the history of the PC PATROL CRAFT OF WWII. They sank U-Boats then lead landing craft in invasions. See www.astralpublishing.com. THE LOST HERO OF CAPE COD by Vincent Miles. The story of an elite mariner, Captain Asa Eldridge, and the 19th-century battle for commercial supremacy on the Atlantic. Reviews, availability at www.lostherocapecod.com and Amazon.com. KEEPING THE TRADITION ALIVE by Capt. Ray Williamson. The remarkable story of Maine Windjammer Cruises,TM founder of the windjammer industry. 172 page, 11 x 14 hardcover book with over 100 full-page images from the days of cargo to the present. Price–$48. Call 800 736-7981; email sail@mainewindjam mercruises.com.

INGALLS COLD WAR NUCLEAR SUBMARINES by Chris Wiggins. The exciting story of how America’s Gulf Coast Shipyard built nuclear attack submarines—and what those boats did once at sea. Paperback • 220 pages • 130 images • $20. Go to amazon.com. THE AUTHORITY TO SAIL by Commodore Robert Stanley Bates. The fully illustrated authoritative history of US Merchant Marine licenses and documents issued since 1852. Coffee-table size, 12” x 14.” Order direct: The Parcel Centre, Ph. 860 739-2492; www.theauthoritytosail.com. OUT-OF-PRINT NAUTICAL BOOKS. SEA FEVER BOOKS. Thousands of titles. E-mail: seafeverbooks@aol.com; Ph. 860-663-1888 (EST); www.seafever bookstore.com.

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SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 53

Maritime Photography. The Rosenfeld Collection, built on the inventory of the Morris Rosenfeld & Sons photography business, is the largest archive of maritime photographs in the United States. Due to humidity and other environmental factors, diacetate negatives degrade; the plastic mount shrinks and separates from the base, eventually rendering the negatives unusable. Mystic will be able to preserve 3,500 negatives with these funds. (75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 215-2283; www. mysticseaport.org) ... The Hudson River Maritime Museum (HRMM) is the proud owner of a new boat powered entirely by solar energy. Solar Sal, a 44-foot tour boat with a capacity of up to 25 passengers, was built by HRMM’s restoration

Solar Sal

Shop Nautical Gifts at the NMHS Ships Store www.seahistory.org/store/

24” Teak Ship Wheel with Brass Ring & Hub $89.95 + $17.00 s/h

14” Brass Cargo Lamp $259.95 + $17.00 s/h

7” Solid Brass Binnacle Compass $79.95 + 17.00 s/h

To order call 914 737-7878 ext. 0; or visit www.seahistory.org. Allow 2 to 3 weeks for delivery. Shipping within USA only. NYS Residents add applicable sales tax. 54

hrmm

crew under the direction of Jim Kricker, designed by marine architect Dave Gerr from a concept developed by David Borton, owner of Sustainable Energy, Inc. The HRMM took ownership of the vessel in January. Solar Sal derives her power from a solar array of sixteen 42” x 62” panels with a capacity of 360 watts per panel. They can produce electricity even under overcast conditions, but they also charge the boat’s reserve battery pack; the boat can travel up to 50 miles on reserve power alone. She passed her US Coast Guard speed/range endurance test in late 2018. The boat will allow the HRMM to expand its water-based offerings such as lighthouse tours, school field trips, and charters, while avoiding the use of fossil fuels. The Hudson River Maritime Museum will be launching a community-based campaign to rename the vessel in March. (Hudson River Maritime Museum, 50 Rondout Landing, Kingston, NY; Ph. 845 338-0071; www.hrmm.org. Sustainable Energy Systems, www.solarsal. solar) SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

CALENDAR Conferences & Symposiums •New Researchers in Maritime History Conference, 22–23 March, hosted by Liverpool John Moores University and the Centre for Port and Maritime History in Liverpool, UK. Conference is organized by the British Commission for Maritime History. (www.maritimehistory.org.uk) •3rd Annual NC Whales & Whaling Symposium, 6 April at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort (315 Front St., Beaufort, NC; Ph. 252 504-7740; www.ncmaritimemuseumbeaufort.com) •46th Annual Albert Reed & Thelma Walker Maritime Symposium: “Changing Environments,” 6 April at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. (43 Washington St., Bath, ME; Ph. 207 443-1316; www. mainemaritimemuseum.org)

•International Congress of Maritime Museums (ICMM), 15–20 September 2019 in Sweden and Finland. The Congress begins in Stockholm, then moves by Baltic ferry—with Congress sessions held onboard—to Mariehamn. The Åland Maritime Museum will host the final days of the Congress. (www.icmmonline.org) Festivals, Events, Lectures, Etc. •“Anthony Wayne: Fact and Fiction,” a National Museum of the Great Lakes Speakers’ Bureau presentation by Carrie Sowden, Archaeological Director of the NMGL, 13 March at the Erie Yacht Club in Pennsylvania. (Reservations through the Erie Yacht Club: 1 Ravine Dr., Erie, PA; Ph. 814 453-4931; www.erieyachtclub.org. NMGL: www.inlandseas.org)

•31st Annual Scrimshaw Weekend, 10–12 May at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The 10th Annual Nautical Antiques Show kicks off the weekend on Friday, 10 May. (18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, MA; Ph. 508 997-0046; www. whalingmuseum.org) •40th Annual Mystic Seaport Sea Music Festival, 6–9 June. Includes the Music of the Sea Symposium. (47 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572-0711, ext. 5037; www.mysticseaport.org/event/seamusic-festival/) •Tall Ships America–2019 TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Series, 29 June–1 September in the Great Lakes. Participating ships will visit ports in both the US and Canada. (See pages 44–45 for details. www. tallshipschallenge.com)

Join us in New Bedford, Massachusetts, 15–18 May, for the 56th NMHS Annual Meeting, and the North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) Annual Conference. See page 8 of this issue, or visit www.seahistory.org for details. •“Water Logics” Conference 11–12 April at Tulane University in New Orleans. (Contact Edwige Tamalet Talbayev at etamalet@ tulane.edu for more information.) •PCA/ACA National Conference (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association), 17–20 April in Washington, DC. “Sea Literature, History, & Culture” will be one of the subject areas presented. (www.pcaaca.org) •Council of American Maritime Museums Annual Conference, 24–26 April in Manitowoc, WI, hosted by the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. (www.councilofamer icanmaritimemuseums.org) •Biennial Whaling History Symposium: “Gaps in Analysis and New Perspectives on Whaling, World Cultures, and Contemporary Issues,” 27–28 April at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. (18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, MA; Ph. 508 997-0046; www.whalingmuseum.org) •Canadian Nautical Research Society Annual Conference, 22–24 August in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Conference theme is “Lower Lakes, Upper Lakes: Connecting Maritime Heritage, Part 2.” (www.cnrsscrn.org)

•“USS Maine and American Propaganda,” part of the “On Deck” lecture series, 23 March at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. (43 Washington St., Bath, ME; Ph. 207 443-1316; www.mainemaritimemuseum.org) •31st America’s Schooner Cup Charity Regatta, 30 March in San Diego Bay, organized by the Silver Gate Yacht Club Foundation. Proceeds benefit the NavyMarine Corps Relief Society. Topsail schooner Californian of the Maritime Museum of San Diego is participating; berths are available through the museum. (www. americasschoonercup.com; www.sdmari time.org) •Mariners’ Museum Lecture Series: 4 April, “Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island,” by Earl Smith; 29 April, “Above and Beyond: Almost Armageddon at Sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis,” by Michael Tougias. (100 Museum Drive, Newport News, VA; Ph. 757 596-2222; www.mar inersmuseum.org) •Annapolis Spring Sailboat Show, 26–28 April, City Dock, Annapolis, MD. (www. annapolisboatshows.com)

E xhibits •Death in the Ice: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition, through 28 April at Mystic Seaport. (See article on pp. 18–23. 47 Greenmanville Avenue, Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572-5388; www.mysticseaport.org) •Frederick Douglass Bicentennial: 1818– 2018, at the New Bedford Whaling Museum; also, Into Infinity: Art by Milton Brightman, through 2018. (18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, MA; Ph. 508 997-0046; www.whalingmuseum.org) •Art of the Sea and Sea & Shore will open on 23 February at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. Both art exhibitions will be on display through 30 September. (1492 N. Harbor Dr., San Diego, CA; Ph. 619 234-9153; www.sdmaritime.org) •The Tropics Next Door: A Look at Maine and the Caribbean, at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath through 5 May. (43 Washington St., Bath, ME; Ph. 207 443-1316; www.mainemaritimemuseum.org) •Lighter, Stronger, Faster: The Herreshoff Legacy, through 1 May 2021 at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA. (265 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA; Ph. 617 253-5927; www.mitmuseum.mit.edu)

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 55

MARITIME HISTORY ON THE INTERNET

An Introduction to Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Publishing

f you are not employed by an academic institution, finding access to scholarly journal articles can be pretty tough. I’ve written in past columns about using ejournal lists on academic library websites, but this is, admittedly, tricky. Some academic libraries, especially at public universities, will allow anyone to use most of their resources for free if you’re physically in their library, but it varies by institution. There is, however, another way of finding scholarly content. It still isn’t easy, but doable, and it is getting easier. Scholarly publishing is currently at a major inflection point, and in the end we will likely see much more freely available scholarly content. It is a complex and confusing topic, but the background is something like this: Since the late 17th century, researchers and academics have used articles published in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals as the primary method for disseminating knowledge. In the past several decades, commercial publishers have taken over most scholarly publishing, either by publishing journals on behalf of scholarly societies, or by creating or buying journals across the academic spectrum. These high-profit publishers, particularly Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis (now publisher of Mariner’s Mirror, on behalf of the Society for Nautical Research), and several others, pursue a surprisingly lucrative market, some of them increasing prices by 15% or more each year. In the maritime history field, Northern Mariner/Mariner du Nord and Great Circle are both still published by the organizations that own them, and maintain very reasonable pricing for institutions: about $125 and $75, respectively, for print subscriptions. Taylor & Francis, however, charges institutions $687 per year for a print plus online subscription to Mariner’s Mirror. (To be fair, the publishers of the first two journals run the risk that their content will not get read, because they don’t make that content available online.) These untenable prices, combined with dramatic reductions in library budgets, have led to a variety of responses. One response has been the creation of a series of blatantly illegal websites that collect PDFs of scholarly articles and make them freely available for all to download. While one can and should object to the frustrating behavior of 56

by Peter McCracken

some commercial publishers, the illegal distribution of copyrighted work hardly seems like a useful resolution—though many scholars do use these websites to obtain the articles they seek. A more productive solution, however, is the adoption of Open Access (OA) journals and articles. Open Access publishing comes in multiple versions—Green, Gold, Diamond, and more. In Green OA, articles become freely available after a set embargo period (usually a year or two), either at the publisher’s site, or in an “institutional repository” (IR), which is usually a web server on which an educational institution shares the works of its employees. Gold OA shifts the publisher’s revenue from the subscription fees that libraries and subscribers pay, to Article Processing Charges (APCs), which are fees paid by the author or research funder, upon acceptance of the article for publication. These articles are then free for everyone to read, immediately at publication. Commercial publishers welcome this approach and have created “hybrid OA” journals, in which the authors of some articles have paid APCs, while authors of other articles have not. Publishers receive both APCs from authors and subscription fees from subscribers. Not surprisingly, publishers almost never reduce the subscription fees due to the APCs they’ve already received. In response, European funding organizations recently announced “Plan S,” which states that researchers who received funding from participating research agencies (now including the Gates Foundation in the US) must publish their work in fully OA journals, which excludes the problematic hybrid journals. Diamond OA journals are those that do not charge anyone—neither the author nor the subscriber —to publish articles. These journals can still maintain rigorous peer-review systems; their costs are simply covered through some other means. Coriolus, the online journal published by the National Maritime Digital Library, is a Diamond OA journal. Every article in every issue of Coriolus is available at https:// nmdl.org/projects/coriolus/, with no fees imposed on either readers or authors. So, what does this mean for those interested in reading scholarly articles, especially when they do not have access through SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

library databases? First, more and more articles are available for free, legally, through Gold OA publishing, even if other articles in the same issue are not free to all. But how do you know which articles are freely available? If you are seeking articles from a specific journal, you can usually visit the journal’s website. At the Mariner’s Mirror site at https://www.tandfonline.com/RMIR, free articles are marked with a green checkmark in the lower right corner of the article citation. Apart from each issue’s editorial content and some obituaries, very few fulllength articles in Mariner’s Mirror are available for free online. (This is not surprising, given that the APC for a single research article in Mariner’s Mirror is nearly $3,000. That sort of pricing is much easier to support in the sciences than in the humanities.) Nevertheless, the top five “most read” articles are all freely accessible—if you want people to read your article, there’s no question that you should ensure it is made available to all.

place to turn is the Directory of Open Access Journals (https://doaj.org), which provides an interface for searching 3.7 million OA articles, from over 12,000 OA journals. But most of the content here is scientific in nature—a quick view of the articles in the “Naval Science” section shows many medical articles from the Journal of the Marine Medical Society, which have no relation to maritime studies. Content from Coriolus does not yet appear in DOAJ. The development of Plan S might bring a tipping point. Funders of research are now demanding that the work they have underwritten be made available to all (why else do they seek to have research done, than to ensure that its results are shared?), and Plan S may have the effect of doing away with the hybrid OA journals. Academic authors are recognizing that if they want their work widely disseminated, they should choose OA journals. Some libraries are signing contracts in which they cover

The red box (added) on the left shows that the publisher’s website will not allow access to this article without paying for it, but the green icon in the red box (added) on the right, provided by the Unpaywall extension, offers a link to a copy of the article in the author’s IR at the University of Edinburgh. Many articles are freely and legally available in places other than the publisher’s site, however. A free browser extension called Unpaywall (https://unpaywall.org) manages access to a database of over 22 million free and legal OA articles hosted in IRs. After installing the extension in your browser, visits to a journal article page will show a small green icon on the right-hand side when Unpaywall has found a free, legal version of the article. If no version could be located, the icon will be grey. When searching specifically for OA articles, the best

the costs of all APCs for their institution’s authors in a publisher’s journals. At the same time, publishers are trying new approaches, such as creating “mirror journals”; Elsevier continues to publish Water Research at $9,000 per year, and they’ve now added Water Research X, a fully OA version of the same journal, primarily to meet the requirements of Plan S. But in the end, it seems likely that within the next three to five years, a much larger portion of new scholarly research will be available for all to read, without cost.

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 57

Reviews

Twain at Sea: The Maritime Writings of Samuel Langhorne Clemens edited by Eric Paul Roorda (University Press of New England/Seafaring America, Hanover, NH, 2018, 263pp, illus, map, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-5126-0151-0; $19.95pb) It is relatively common knowledge that Samuel Clemens’s famous pseudonym Mark Twain came from his work on riverboats; it is equally common to associate Twain with the riverside lives of his most enduring characters. Eric Paul Roorda’s excellent new edited volume Twain at Sea: The Maritime Writings of Samuel Langhorne Clemens shows us a different Twain, “the salty Samuel C,” as Roorda calls him. Thoughtfully arranged chapters provide a rich and detailed account of Twain’s extensive deep-water ocean travels, illuminating the influence of the sea on his career and on his capacious imagination. Roorda’s skilled curatorial eye also gives us a fascinating picture of global travel at the end of the nineteenth century as only Twain could tell it. On the first page of Roorda’s introduction is, appropriately, a map that clearly lays out Twain’s many ocean crossings, beginning with his first sail from San Francisco to Hawaii in 1866, and through his steamship circumnavigation of the world in 1895–96. The volume is smartly constructed a bit like the map; some chapters focus on specific regions, such as the Mississippi (the only “brown water” section) or the North Atlantic, while others focus on specific voyages, such as his trips from New York to California and back, or a world lecture tour that included stops in Australia, New Zealand, and India. Roorda also explores how the sea shaped Twain’s literary imagination. “Maritime language infused Clemens’s work, which he peppered with references to ships, frequently incorporating salty characters.” Indeed, there is an excellent chapter here, “Mark Twain’s Iconic Sea Captain,” which traces the fictionalized recurrence across forty years of essays and stories of real-life Captain Edgar “Ned” Wakeman, whom he first met en route to Nicaragua in 1866. In Roorda’s afterword, “The Dark Wilderness of the Sea—and of Life,” he provides excerpts from three of Twain’s latest and strangest stories, all of which take place at sea and 58

seem to grapple with the writer’s profound grief after the death of his oldest daughter in 1896. This final section exemplifies one of the greatest strengths of the whole volume: the depth and variety of the source material. Roorda provides salty selections from titles that readers will easily recognize, like Roughing It or Innocents Abroad, but these are combined with Twain’s letters, passages from his notebooks, early journalism and periodical writing, and other texts that have fallen out of circulation and study. These materials provide a new vision of Twain as one of America’s most significant maritime writers.

Interspersed throughout the volume are Roorda’s compelling biographical sketches. Often brief, always informative, they appear at the beginning of each chapter, and sometimes within chapters between excerpts in order to maintain clear links between Twain’s life, travels, and writing. They are also consistently just plain fun; Roorda writes very much in the spirit of Twain’s great eye for detail and his love of a wild story. We learn that Twain found $50 dollars blown against the side of a house and decided to use it to start a Brazilian cocoa farm; on his way south he met the man who would eventually train him to be a riverboat pilot. He never quite got to Brazil. Elsewhere we learn that the most important scoop of his early journalistic career, involving interviews with the survivors of the wreck of the Hornet, came

about in part because he was suffering from infected saddle sores from too much horseback riding around Hawaii. He conducted the interviews in the Honolulu hospital where the survivors were being treated, having been carried there himself on a stretcher. Roorda balances these colorful tales with real insights and compassion for the financial woes and family tragedies that kept Twain writing and traveling right up until the last few months before his death in 1910. Taken as a whole, this volume masterfully takes the man Samuel Clemens and the icon Mark Twain from the familiar Mississippi River and sends his legacy out to sea, where it so clearly belongs. Amy Parsons Vallejo, California World War II at Sea: A Global History by Craig L. Symonds (Oxford University Press, New York, 2018, 792pp, illus, maps, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-0-19024-3678; $34.95hc) The term “rock star” is not commonly used in the academic arena, but when it comes to Craig Symonds and naval history, he well deserves the accolade. A professor emeritus from the United States Naval Academy, where he taught for thirty years, Symonds currently serves as the distinguished visiting Ernest J. King Professor of Military History at the United States Naval War College. He was awarded the Lincoln Prize for Lincoln and His Admirals (2008), and the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature for Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (2014). His list of publications is long and impressive; his position among the top in the field is undeniable. In his latest book, Dr. Symonds tackles the broadest naval topic possible, World War II at sea. The books covering individual navies, theaters, battles, leaders, and ships are too numerous to name, but in this single volume Symonds endeavors to capture it all—a daunting endeavor. As he states in his introduction: “No single volume evaluates the impact of the sea services from all nations on the overall trajectory and even the outcome of the war. Doing so illuminates how profoundly the course of the war was charted and steered by maritime events.” SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

I first became aware of Craig Symonds while a graduate student and reading his Navalist and Antinavalist: The Naval Policy Debate in the United States, 1785–1827 (1980), which was a derivation of his doctoral dissertation from the University of Florida. Symonds has always held a marked place in my own academic career as I have striven to emulate his level of scholarship. For most of his literary career, Symonds has focused on the early history of the US Navy, with particular emphasis on the Civil War. In 2005, his Decisions at Sea aimed at a broader analysis, and Battle of Midway in 2011 marked his transition into the Second World War. Only a few works have attempted to undertake this scope and scale. Nathan Miller’s War at Sea (1997) and Walter J. Boyne’s Clash of Titans: World War II at Sea (1995) are narrative approaches to the topic, but lack the academic credentials and sourcing. Symonds tackles the topic in five parts. First, he examines the European War from the period of Allied dominance, when the British and French controlled the seas and German threats were from surface raiders and from a limited force of submarines. He then paints how the fall of Norway and France and the entrance of Italy into the conflict placed British control of the seas in question for the first time since the days of sail, with the “Happy Time” and the sailing of Bismarck. “The War Widens,” the second part of the book, elevates the topic into its global context with Japan’s drive into the Pacific, across Southeast Asia, and into the Indian Ocean. The latter is given more attention than in traditional histories in this comprehensive analysis of the war at sea. It is in the central part of the book that Symonds’s work shines, when he discusses the fate of “Two Beleaguered Islands,” Guadalcanal and Malta. Many histories have been written about the critical role of these land masses, but few have placed their roles sideby-side. As the US Navy attempts to resupply the Marines at Guadalcanal, the British are running the Pedestal convoy to Malta to prevent its fall. The hard-pressed circumstances of the British and United States navies come into full focus, while the efforts by the German, Italian, and Japanese armed forces are struggling to stymie Allied plans.

While you get the traditional discussion of battles and campaigns, Symonds places the context of global logistics into the forefront with three chapters devoted to the “War on Trade.” He makes note of by Kurt D. Voss the Allied efforts of overcoming German All proceeds from this pictorial history unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atbenefit the ELISSA preservation fund. lantic, while performing the inverse strategy against the Japanese in the Pacific. He highlights the essential nature of vessels such as Liberty-class freighters and Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) as crucial to the war effort in delivering cargo and then landing it ashore in contested areas. The final two parts of the book swing toward the Allied counterattack, the twilight of the Italian and German navies in Europe, and destrucThe Glencannon Press tion of the Imperial Japanese Navy. By mid-1944, control4ofcol. the inches Atlantic (2.25 and Pa-x 4.5 inches) right of hand page, bottom right. cific allowed forPrefer the landing Allied Published by Arcadia Publishing and armies at will. Galveston Historical Foundation While World War II at Sea is touted $21.99. 128 pages, 200 photographs as a global history, it does come up short Autographed copies available at in several areas. Recent works, such as (409) 763-1877, or online at: Vincent O’Hara’s On Seas Contested: The w w w. t s m - e l i s s a . o r g Seven Great Navies of the Second World War (2014), explored the role of all navies in the conflict, equally. Except for some THE GLENCANNON brief passages in World War II at Sea, one is hard-pressed to find mention of the PRESS Soviet Navy, for example. In comparison to naval histories of the First World War, Maritime Books Symonds’s study falls more in the style of Robert Massie’s Castles of Steel (2003) than Paul Halpern’s Naval History of World NEW! War I (2012). Secondly, the book is The hisTory of The AssociAplagued by a number of factual errors. These range from technical error in ships, Tion of MArylAnd PiloTs to misidentification of units and dates. by Capt. Brian Hope While they are few in number, their presence at all are puzzling when made in a A veteran pilot of more than 40 work by such an accomplished naval historian. Hopefully, they will be corrected years experience guiding ships in future editions. through Chesapeake Bay, These issues should not preclude one Capt. Hope chronicles the fasfrom obtaining World War II at Sea: A cinating history of this organiGlobal History. This is a magisterial work zation from before the Revoluand only someone of the caliber of Craig Symonds could produce such a significant tionary War to the present. contribution to the field. He has produced a book that will leave both professionals FREE Catalog 1-510-455-9027 and those just interested in the topic with Online at a greater understanding of the subject. www.glencannon.com Salvatore R. Mercogliano Buies Creek, North Carolina

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Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization by Brian Fagan (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2017, 346pp, illus, notes, glossary, index, isbn 978-0-300-21534-2; $29.95hc) In opening pages of Fishing, anthropology professor Brian Fagan inserts a quote from Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler that states: “The water is more productive than the Earth.” Fagan sets out to test this postulate as oceans and lakes rose and fell over millennia and on a global scale. His focus: the close examination of bone and shell middens accumulated by ancient societies that inhabited the sites by a potpourri of research scientists—“architectologists,” anthropologists, botanists, ecologists, geneticists, geologists, paleoclimatologists, and even entomologists. With this data in hand, Fagan created theoretical models to determine where the people of diverse lands and cultures fished, what imaginative devices they devised, what they fished for and when, by what means they preserved perishable catches, and, finally, how fishing for sustenance evolved into a sophisticated industry. Thus, fishers became the bedrock of communities and, in time, entire civilizations. Many primitive societies valued fish as a protein source; they were abundant and easier to come by than hunting wild game over large stretches of land. Fish are divided into two general classifications: pelagic and demersal. The former inhabits oceans and lakes, usually away from the shore and often in deep water. This marine pelagic environment is the earth’s largest aquatic habitat, accounting for slightly over 10% of known fish species. The demersal varieties live close to shore and in shallow water and were therefore the easiest to catch, but tools still had to be invented to harvest them. It was relatively easy to collect shellfish by hand, but bivalves on their own cannot sustain a population. Fishers made nets and lines out of kelp, bark, vines, animal fur, and fibers such as cotton and human hair. Hooks could be fashioned from steamed yew, spruce or hemlock, cedar-root, carved shells and especially bone. A fishhook made from the bone of a vanquished enemy was considered an act of humiliation to the victim. Net floats were constructed from animal bladders. Long spears and sophisticated net con60

figurations, such as gill nets and seines, enabled fishers to increase their yield. Stream fishers developed curious but effective methods to catch their prey at their feet: Fagan describes one strange method used to catch trout called “tickling.” One

would sneak up behind a feeding quiescent trout, place a finger under its belly and then gently tickle it. The fish would become docile and then could be caught by hand. If the stream was turbulent or cloudy so that they could not see their prey, fishers chewed coconuts and would spit coconut oil on the water to calm and clarify it. They also built dams, weirs, and mattanzas (anchored and chambered trapping nets). Many societies engaged in aquaculture, ensuring their quarry was close at hand and readily available. In time, fishers invented all manner of watercraft to enable them to seek more species, particularly pelagic fish. They built rafts with wooden branches, canoes from dugout logs, hulls with frames covered with sown animal skin or tree bark, and tomols (planked canoes). Reed boats in Egypt and Peru were lashed and floated in sheltered waterways for fishing and transportation. Fagan narrates how and why these craft likely came about. The author also details the varieties of preservation methods of the notoriously perishable catches. One important byproduct from fish blood and intestines was turned into a sauce, known as “garum” in the Roman world. This was the ketchup of its day that made fish more desirable to eat. Success in fisheries, preservation, and pre-

sentation resulted in critical sustenance for travelers and traders, as well as ancient armies who were then able to conquer distant lands, and mariners to explore the seas. Fagan casts a broad anthropologic and ichthyologic net in his book, but in the last chapters he connects this history to the present-day crises regarding both climate change and overfishing. He shares evidence that both scenarios have occurred multiple times in history, and explains that the difference we face today is that we now have a much larger population to sustain, and fishing technology has become so efficient that the repopulation of fish stocks is in peril—sobering thoughts as reflected the author’s closing words: “Unless we want to turn the formerly vast richness of the oceans into a permanent desert, we would do well to remember that sustainable fishing is just as much an art as Walton’s quiet angling. Otherwise, we will find that there are no more fish in the sea.” Fagan’s tome does have some minor flaws in that it is repetitious in places, and might prove a challenge for those with a sparse background in anthropology. Still, this scholarly informative work is one that most maritime historians are likely savor. There is much to learn from Brian Fagan’s interpretation concerning How the Sea Fed Civilization. Louis Arthur Norton West Simsbury, Connecticut In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown Nathaniel Philbrick. (Viking, New York, 2018, 384pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-0-52542-676-9; $30hc) While we all know the outcome of the events leading up to the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, Nathaniel Philbrick’s latest book weaves the essential elements together in such a way that the reader feels as if it were a real page-turner of a mystery, replete with injections of what seems like privileged information, and how much of a different ending it could have been. Philbrick shares important insights into the emergence of George Washington as a leader, as he faces challenge after challenge, and even changes his mind and abandons his long-desired attack on New York, instead continuing such preparations as a feint in order to steal a march on the road to Yorktown. SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019

As the conflict wore on, Washington’s realization deepened that control of the coast and the sea was essential to victory, and that, despite some brilliant Continental Navy commanders and the modest build-up of a new fleet of boats and ships, this control could only be achieved through an alliance with France (supported by Spain). Had the French naval encounter with the British fleet at the Virginia Capes on 5 September 1781 failed, Lord Cornwallis might well have been rescued from Yorktown, and the war would likely have continued on and on. After the British surrender at Yorktown, it would take another two years to work out the details, but, as the British evacuated New York on 25 November 1783, General Washington entered the city in triumph, and the War for Independence was over. Washington would preside over the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, and later, as president, summon Commodore John Barry to help him fulfill his Constitutional mandate as commander in chief of the Army and Navy. The Siege of Yorktown is a chapter that students of American history know at varying levels of detail, but Philbrick’s investigation and mode of retelling the story encourage a deeper look and further our understanding of this critical period in our history. In addition, an epilogue listing thirty-two of the major players from these events, from Benedict Arnold through George Washington, provide—as Paul Harvey used to say—“the rest of the story.” While this list is a very welcome addition to the text, there are some disappointing omissions, namely Louis-Antoine de Bouganville and Banastre Tarleton. De Bouganville played a crucial role in the French victory at the Second Battle of the Virginia Capes. He was a renowned natural scientist and naval explorer, yet there was no mention of the island of Bouganville in the Solomon Islands being named for him. Bouganville is where the I Marine Amphibious Corps (including my own uncle, then a Paramarine Sergeant) landed in 1943 and was relieved by the US Army in 1944, which handed the island to the Australians in the summer of 1945. Although examples of Tarleton’s atrocities (the sort of things that would have

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gotten Nazis hanged at Nuremberg) were mentioned in the text, nowhere did Philbrick comment on the fact that not a single officer from either side would sit with Tarleton during the officers’ dinner that followed Cornwallis’s surrender. While much of Tarleton’s post-war successes in England made it into the text, for some reason there was no mention that he became a member of Parliament, where he lobbied to protect and promote the slave trade, the source of his family’s wealth. This is particularly surprising in that Philbrick makes no secret of his disdain for the institution of slavery, even pointing out that George Washington freed his slaves in his will, and was “the only slaveholding Founding Father to do so.” He cites Thomas Jefferson, who reportedly overheard Washington recognizing the pernicious effects of slavery, “I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union.” These omissions hardly cast a negative light on Philbrick’s engaging and welcome contribution. In the Hurricane’s Eye is a good read for those interested in the history of the American War for Indepen-

dence, George Washington in particular, and, more generally, anyone looking for a good non-fiction book to tuck into. Liam Murphy Acton, Massachusetts The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Journey to Antarctica by Laurie Gwen Shapiro (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 2018, 239pp, notes, selected biblio, index, 978-1-4767-5386-7; $26hc) Billy Gawronski was somewhat of a celebrity in his day, but that day passed long ago. He came of age during America’s great post-World War I celebration in the 1920s, when everything about the United States seemed larger than life and almost nothing was declared impossible. It was during this golden age of aviation, in particular, that Americans looked to the sky for their heroes: Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, and US Navy Lt. Richard Byrd, among many others. A Polish-American born and bred in New York City, Gawronski idolized Byrd above all. When he heard that the famous pilot and explorer would be undertaking a journey to Antarctica to become the first

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New & Noted Above & Beyond: John F. Kennedy and America’s Most Dangerous Cold War Spy Mission by Casey Sherman & Michael J. Tougias (PublicAffairs, New York, 2018, 329pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 9781-61039-804-6; $28hc) Adrift: A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived to Tell About It by Brian Murphy, with Toula Vlahou (Da Capo Press, New York, 2018, 263pp, illus, appen, biblio, index, isbn 978-0-306-90200-0; $27hc) America’s Anchor: A Naval History of the Delaware River and Bay, Cradle of the United States Navy by Kennard R. Wiggins (McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2019, 296pp, isbn 978-1-47667-197-0; $45pb) Bay Pilot: A History of the Association of Maryland Pilots by Capt. Brian H. Hope (Glencannon Press, El Cerrito, CA, 498pp, illus, biblio, index, ship index, isbn 978-1-889901-70-1; $125hc) The Culture of Ships and Maritime Narratives by Chryssanthi Papadopoulou (Taylor & Francis, Milton, Oxfordshire, England, Jan 2019, 210pp, isbn 978-113805-584-1; $140hc) The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff (Penguin Books, New York, 2018, 400pp, illus, notes, index, isbn 978-0-14-311104-7; $18pb) Engines of Rebellion: Confederate Ironclads and Steam Engineering in the American Civil War by Saxon T. Bisbee (University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2018, 264pp, illus, notes, biblio, gloss, index, isbn 978-0-8173-1986-1; $59.95hc) Ironclad Captains of the Civil War by Myron J. Smith Jr. (McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2018, 262pp, illus, appen, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-4766-6636-5; $75pb) Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the US Navy, 1898–1945 by Trent Hone (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2018, 402pp, biblio, illus, notes, index, isbn 978-1-68247-293-4; $34.95hc)

The Listeners: U-Boat Hunters During the Great War by Roy R. Manstan (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 2018, 352pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-0-8195-7835-8; $34.95hc) Maritime Spatial Planning: Past, Present, Future, edited by Jacek Zaucha and Kira Gee (Springer International Publishing, New York, 477pp, 2019, isbn 978-331998-695-1; $31hc) Mutiny, Mayhem, Mythology: Bounty’s Enigmatic Voyage by Alan Frost (Sydney University Press, NSW, AU, 2018, 320pp, illus, tables, maps, index, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-74332-587-2; $29.95pb) No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions by Edgardo Perez Morales (Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, TN, 2018, 248pp, illus, biblio, notes, index, isbn 978-0-8265-2191-0; $59.95hc) Pacific Exploration: Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle by Nigel Rigby, Pieter van der Merwe, and Glyn Williams (National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Adlard Coles, Bloomsbury, Publishing Plc, New York, 2018, 256pp, illus, notes, index, isbn 978-1-4729-5773-3; $30pb) Picturing the Pacific: Joseph Banks and the Shipboard Artists of Cook and Flinders by James Taylor (National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Adlard Coles, Bloomsbury, New York, 2018, 256pp, illus, index, isbn 978-1-4729-5543-2; $35hc) Recollections of an Unsuccessful Seaman by Leonard Noake, edited by David Creamer (Whittles Publ., Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland, 2019, 224pp, illus, isbn 978-184995-393-1; $24.95pb) Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires, and the Conflict That Made the Modern World by Andrew Lambert (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2018, 424pp, maps, illus, notes, gloss, appen, biblio, index, isbn 978-0-30023004-8; $30hc)

Small Boats and Daring Men: Maritime Raiding, Irregular Warfare, and the Early American Navy by Benjamin Armstrong (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, April 2019, isbn 978-0-80616282-9; $34.95hc) Stories from the Wreckage: A Great Lakes Maritime History Inspired by Shipwrecks by John O. Jensen (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Madison, 2019, 288pp, isbn 978-0-87020-902-4; $29.95pb) They Were Just Skulls: The Naval Career of Fred Henley, Last Survivor of HM Submarine Truculent by John JohnsonAllen (Whittles Publ., Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland, August 2019, 200pp, illus, isbn 978-1870325-33-2; $21.95pb) To My Dearest Wife, Lide: Letters from George B. Gideon Jr. during Commodore Perry’s Expedition to Japan, 1853–1855, edited by M. Patrick Sauer, David A. Ranzan (University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, July 2019, 264pp, isbn 978-0-81732023-2; $49.95hc) Ungentle Goodnights: Life in a Home for Elderly and Disabled Naval Sailors and Marines and the Perilous Seafaring Careers That Brought Them There by Christopher McKee (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2018, 352pp, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-59114-573-8; $34.95hc) The Wreck of the Portland: A Doomed Ship, A Violent Storm, and New England’s Worst Maritime Disaster by J. North Conway (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD, July 2019, 240pp, isbn 978-1-49303-978-4; $26.95hc) Victory Without Peace: The United States Navy in European Waters, 1919–1924 by William Still Jr. (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2018, 392pp, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-68247-014-5; $68hc) The Whale And His Captors; Or, The Whaleman’s Adventures by Henry T. Cheever and edited by Robert D. Madison (University Press Of New England, Lebanon, NH, 2018, 242pp, illus, notes, appen, isbn 978-1-5126-0266-1; $40pb)

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 63

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY AFTERGUARD J.  Aron  Charitable  Foundation,  Inc. The  Artina  Group Donald T.  “Boysie”  Bollinger Caddell  Dry  Dock  &  Repair  Co. George  W.  Carmany III James J. Coleman Jr. James O. Coleman Crawford Taylor Foundation Christopher J. Culver Edward A. Delman Brian D’Isernia & Eastern Shipbuilding Group Henry L. & Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation In Memory of Ignatius Galgan C. Duff Hughes & The Vane Brothers Company Arthur M. Kimberly Trust In Memory of H. F. Lenfest Richardo R. Lopes Guy E. C. Maitland The J. Willard & Alice S. Marriott Foundation McAllister Towing & Transportation Company, Inc. Ronald L. Oswald Estate of Walter J. Pettit, Sr. In Memory of Capt. Joseph Ramsey, USMM Charles A. Robertson Marjorie B. Shorrock Howard Slotnick Capt. Cesare Sorio John Stobart Andrew C. Taylor Charles H. Townsend Weeks Marine Inc. William H. White BENEFACTORS Robert C. Ballard Chesapeake Bay Foundation VADM Dirk Debbink, USN (Ret.) Richard T. du Moulin Elite Island Resorts EMR Southern Recycling David S. Fowler Green Family in Honor of Burchie Green Kristen Greenaway Don & Kathy Hardy Huntington Ingalls Industries  J. D. Power Family Robert F. Kamm VADM Al Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.) Mercury CAPT James A. Noone, USN (Ret.) Erik & Kathy Olstein ADM Robert J. Papp Jr., USCG (Ret.) Russell S. Reynolds Jr. David & Susan Rockefeller Dr. Timothy J. Runyan Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Rutherford Jr. Scarano Boat Building, Inc. Sea Education Association Philip J. Shapiro Skuld North America Inc. H. C. Bowen Smith Norma Stanford In Memory of Peter Stanford US Naval Institute Philip & Irmy Webster Jean Wort PLANKOWNERS Alban Cat Power Systems RADM Joseph F. Callo, USN (Ret.) Cincinnati Financial Corporation CAPT Charles Todd Creekman Jr., USN (Ret.) Dr. William S. & Donna Dudley General Dynamics Capt. Howard R. Hill Jr. Royal Holly The Ruth R. Hoyt/ Anne H. Jolley Foundation, Inc. H. Kirke Lathrop Thomas & Deborah Lawrence National Geographic National Marine Sanctuary Foundation Stephen B. Phillips Miles Pincus Peter A. Seligmann Sidney Stern Memorial Trust Star Clipper Cruises US Navy Memorial Foundation Chris Walker Adam Wronowski SPONSORS American Bureau of Shipping Paul M. Aldrich James R. Barker CAPT Donald Bates, USN (Ret.) The Philip & Patricia Bilden Family Charitable Fund Jim & Christine Bruns Stephen & Carol Burke Dr. John & Rachel Cahill Douglas Campbell Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum Conservation International C. W. Craycroft The Edgar & Geraldine Feder Foundation, Inc. Mrs. D. L. Fleischmann D. Harry W. Garschagen Burchenal Green William J. Green ADM Jonathan Greenert, USN (Ret.) Robert S. Hagge Jr. Marius Halvorsen CAPT Roger P. Hartgen, USCG (Ret.) Charles Hinnant  Hornbeck Offshore Independence Seaport Museum The Interlake Steamship Company J F Lehman & Company Neil E. Jones RDML Eric C. Jones, USCG William Kahane Benjamin Katzenstein Cyrus C. Lauriat Hon. John Lehman Norman Liss Panaghis Lykiardopulo The MacPherson Fund, Inc. Maine Maritime Museum Marine Society of the City of New York Ann Peters Marvin Buckley McAllister David J. & Carolyn D. McBride McCarter & English, LLC Peter McCracken CAPT Sally Chin McElwreath, USN (Ret.) Dr. Joseph F. Meany Jr. RADM John T. Mitchell Jr., USN (Ret.) Robert E. Morris Jr. William G. Muller Navy League of the US New York Yacht Club Oceaneering International The Olde Stones Foundation The Betty Sue and Art Peabody Fund Hon. S. Jay Plager Pritzker Military Foundation John Rich George Schluderberg A. R. Schmeidler & Co., Inc. Shipbuilders Council of America CDR William h. Skidmore Philip Stephenson Foundation University of Utah VSE Corporation George & Anne Walker  Waterford Group Thomas Wayne Daniel Whalen Michael M. Wiseman CAPT Channing M. Zucker, USN (Ret.) DONORS W. Frank Bohlen Eleanor F. Bookwalter Carroll Brooks James O. Burri John Caddell II RADM Nevin P. Carr Jr., USN (Ret.) Stephen Caulfield James W. Cheevers Louis Clairmont Gerald F. B. Cooper Dr. John Finerty Mr. & Mrs. Eugene P. Finger Robert P. Fisher Jr. Robert Franzblau Daniel Gallagher Mary Habstritt Richard Hansen J. Russell Jinishian Gallery Mary Burrichter & Bob Kierlin Kobrand Corp. & Marco Sorio James P. Latham Paul Jay Lewis Man Tech Walter C. Meibaum III CAPT R. G. Moore, USCG (Ret.) Richard Muller New York Container Terminal Capt. Eric Nielsen Wynn & Patricia Odom Mrs. Joanne O’Neil CAPT Richard T. O’Shea, USMC COL Bruce E. Patterson, USA Philip B. Persinger Nathaniel Philbrick Jennifer N. Pritzker Mr. & Mrs. William P. Rice Charles Raskob Robinson In Memory of Capt. Bert Rogers Lee H. Sandwen Scholarship America Mr. & Mrs. John R. Sherwood III James Edward Spurr Gerould R. Stange Philip E. Stolp Daniel R. Sukis Mr. & Mrs. William Swearingin Tall Ship Providence Alfred Tyler II USCGC Ingham Memorial Museum Roy Vander Putten Norbert G. Vogl Gerald Weinstein Richard C. Wolfe PATRONS Georgios Andreadis John Appleton Carter S. Bacon Jr. Kenneth G. Bastian Charles R. Beaudrot Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Vincent Bellafiore Arthur A. Birney Arthur Birney Jr. CAPT R. A. Bowling, USN (Ret.) James H. Brandi RADM David C. Brown, USMS (Ret.) Jerry M. Brown Judith L. Carmany Russell P. Chubb James M. Clark Jr. Dr. Gerard J. Clifford Jr. Sharon E. Cohen J. Barclay Collins John C. Couch Sean Crahan Jack Creighton Morgan Daly Ian Danic Joan M. Davenport Dr. Jacob Deegan Anthony De Lellis Jr. James P. Delgado C. Henry Depew Capt. John W. Dorozynski George Dow Steven Draper Michael F. Dugan Richard H. Dumas Reynolds duPont Jr. Dr. Theodore Eckberg Egan Maritime Institute Ken Ewell Fairbanks Morse Donald Faloon Bruce K. Farr OBE Colin Ferenbach Ben P. Fisher Jr. James J. Foley Jr. Donald A. Garand   Capt. Dwight Gertz Mary Lee Giblon-Sheahan James R. Gifford Arthur Graham Edwin H. Grant Jr. Tom Green Lee Ferguson Gruzen Ray Guinta J. Callender Heminway T. Morris Hackney Dr. David Hayes William L. Henry Steven A. Hyman Marius Ilario Timothy A. Ingraham Andrew MacAoidh Jergens Gary Jobson Jane Sundelof Jones Richard Julian Ken Keeler The Kelton Foundation Robert Kenyon James L. Kerr James & Barbara Kerr Mr. & Mrs. Chester W. Kitchings Jr. R. Joyce Kodis John L. Langill Chris Lautz F. W. Lee Robert Lindmark In Memory of John B. Lyon Babcock MacLean Lawrence Manson Mr. & Mrs. Alan McKie Dr. Arthur M. Mellor Richard S. Merrell Christopher W. Metcalf Glenn L. Metzger Richard A. & Lois Meyer Vincent Miles Charles H. Miller Michael G. Moore Thomas A. Moran Michael Morris  Vance Morrison Michael Moss & Ellen Chapman Rev. Bart Muller John Mulvihill James A. Neel RobertA. Neithercott Randy Nichols Eric A. Oesterle Roger Ottenbach William L. Palmer Jr. Robert L. Petersen Peter B. Poulsen Mr. & Mrs. Andrew A. Radel CAPT Michael J. Rauworth, USCG (Ret.) George Raymond Demetra Reichart William E. Richardson In Memory of Richard E. Riegel Jr. Reed Robertson William M. Rosen James G. Sargent Robert W. Scott Richard Snowdon Edmund Sommer III Patricia Steele Rob Surprenant Mary Sutter A. E. & Diana Szambecki F. Davis Terry Jr. RADM Cindy Thebaud Captain Raymond Thombs Memorial Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation   Alix Thorne Charles Tobin Capt. John Torjusen Steven J. Traut Russell R. Tripp Sandra Ulbrich William Van Loo Terry Walton Capt. Eric T. Wiberg James R. Williamson David Winkler Woodson K. Woods

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Barque



Custom pendants and earrings

USCG Barque

Briglamp inial

Ships of Glass, Inc. Ships Glass, Inc. Don & of Kathy Hardy

21923 SunnysideDr. Lane om 6702 Rosemary able: cust City Beach, FL Also avail es, coasters, Panama Tampa, FL 33625 32413 Please check out il b our catalo o of vessels g jewelry, m dleholders, o n o Ph. 813 9181566 ur websit n w w e w . trivets, ca : .shipsofg re lassinc.co 813 7326917 ts and mo m. nightligh dhardy@shipsofglassinc.com

“My ofice is illed with glorious maritime memorabilia, and the irst item people comment on is the captivating Ships of Glass replica of the Barque on my desk. Don Hardy is an extraordinarily talented artist, and his glass models are classy representations of our most beloved ships.” —

SEA HISTORY 166, SPRING 2019 65

Discover the Fred. Olsen Difference

A more intimate cruising experience • Personal and friendly service • Traditional British cruising

Roundtrip from Southampton, UK • 13 nights • M1914

Cruise Only Fares from $2,079 per person On board the recently refitted, 900+ passenger Braemar

Contact us: fredolsen@traveledge.com or Call Toll Free 877.318.6228 Visit us: www.fredolsencruisesusa.com or Facebook: @fredolsenUSA Fares are per person, based on twin occupancy of the lead-in twin cabin, subject to availability. Offers may be amended or withdrawn at any time without prior notice, are subject to availability & cannot be applied retrospectively. All bookings are subject to Fred. Olsen's standard terms & conditions, available on their website & on request. Some ports may be at anchor, intermediate days are at sea. FOCL reserves the right to amend itineraries for operational reasons. Additional offers and all inclusive drinks upgrade are subject to full terms & conditions. E&OE. Anchor fares: Full payment is required at the time of booking. 100% cancellation charges apply and guests cannot transfer their booking to an alternative cruise. Cabin grade and number will be confirmed at check-in, not before. Additional discounts do not apply. Oceans Club benefits and discounts are not combinable supplement of $3pppn.166, Additional terms & conditions HISTORY SPRING 2019 apply for 66 with Anchor Fares. Dining time will be allocated automatically, guests can choose to book a specific sitting at the time of booking for aSEA group benefits i.e. on board spend, parking, all inclusive and transport, are available on request. For the purpose of clarity, Travel Edge is acting as the principal and not as agent of Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines.