Was still feeling a bit introverted yesterday and not up for much in the way of human contact. It happens sometimes, and is maybe one of the reasons why my lifestyle seems to work for me so well. On the other hand, I do end up needing human contact once in awhile, so I am sure I'll be out and about again by tomorrow, or Tuesday by the latest.

    Today was a cold, grey, rainy day for most of the daylight part, so it was pretty easy to just stay inside for most of it and read my book and cook. Started a new book last night called 'Saga of a Wayward Sailor', by Tristan Jones. Actually, I have read this book before, but it had to be close to 40 years ago, so it seems pretty new  to me again this time. A wonderfully light tale of one guys sailing adventures around the world. Lots of fine stories that will keep you laughing out loud at times.

    Otherwise there hasn't been a whole lot going on today. Did take a nice walk this afternoon after the rain stopped. Found out that the park here has it's own little laundry building, something I was going to have to go looking for in another day or two. Now I can just toss it all in the truck and drive about a mile down the road to get it all done.

    Below are a few pictures from my trip over to the Mariners Museum the other day. It was a lot of fun, but really you need a couple full days if you are going to see it all. Enjoy!

Mariners Museum near New Port News Virginia - March 29, 2013

This stunning ships figurehead once graced the bow of the steam frigate USS Lancaster. Weighing in at 3,200 pounds it has a wingspan of over 19 feet. It must of been stunning at the bow of a ship.

This is the actual ships anchor from the ironclad ship USS Monitor. The 4 fluke design was by the same man who designed the ship. It was the 1st large iron object brought to the surface after the wreck was found. It took more than 3 years for preservationists to clean off all the 'gunk' on it, (they use more scientific terms on the sign), stabilize the metal and get it ready for display.

One of the original guns from the ironclad CSS Virginia. This gun had the tip of the barrel blown off in it's fight with the Union Frigate USS Cumberland. After hours of battle and hundreds of rounds fired from each ship, this was pretty much the only damage to the ironclad while the wooden ship was on fire and finally sunk.

A full size mock-up of the bow of the ironclad CSS Virginia. The hull above the water was made up of heavy layers of wood scantlings inside, covered with 4 inches of steel sheathing on the outside. The angle of the structure is something under 30 degrees. Calculated so that iron shot would glance off the side and shoot over the top. It is the same design as is still used on the US M1A1 Abrams tank. The hatch showing would of been where one of the guns was located.

I had often read about 'ships of the line', fighting vessels, moving guns weighing several tons around using just block and tackle, ropes and lots of manpower, but could never quite envision how it was done. Now I know.

These guns, muzzle loading cannons, were something new called the '6.4 inch Brooke Rifle'. The added band around the breech helped keep it from exploding when it got hot as normal guns were known to do. It also had two grooves, rifling, cut into the barrel which added twist to the elongated shells it used. Making it far more accurate and able to shoot farther.

A cross section of the upper superstructure. it consisted of, from interior out, 16" thick pine laid vertically, 4" pine laid horizontally, 4" oak laid vertically, 2" of iron plate laid horizontally and 2" of iron plate laid vertically. It's a wonder that it still floated, but actually somewhere they actually mis-calculated the total weight and they found that it floated higher than expected. Not a good thing since their steel plating only went below the surface of the water a small distance. Below that, and the waterline, was wood with no protection to it.

One of the guns that would of been used on many of the standard wooden ships of that era. This shows the complete tackle used to move the gun in and out. I would imagine OSHA would have a field day with this kind of set up these days.

This is a reproduction of one of the junior engineers stateroom on the USS Monitor. Even though the US Navy was slowly moving towards putting steam engines on most of their new ships, the engineers on those ships received little respect in relationship to that shown to the sailors. With the Monitor however, there were no real 'Sailors', as for the 1st time there were no sails. Yet another process that was changing.

They had a full size mock up of the gun turret from the monitor as it looked after bringing it up from more than 250' below the top of the ocean. This would of been the two port holes where the two guns were stationed. The mock up is so exact that individual shells and pieces of coral are shown. This also shows the scalloped edges of the port holes where 3 overlapping holes had been drilled to make the opening. In future ironclads this would be ground smooth but because of the tight deadline for building the Monitor, 100 days, historians think this step was skipped.

This mock up is so accurate that they actually posed it like they found it.... upside down. In the background, next to the gun, they found the skeletons of two of the crewmen. By using modern visualization techniques they were able to recreate what their face's would have likely looked like and matched each of them to one of two missing crew.

A life size view of what the turret would of once looked like. In this view you see one of the 'Dahlgrens' gun. Another new type of weapon, this one used an 11" exploding projectile with a timed brass fuse.  

Another view.

The USS Monitors actual screw propeller. In the lower right corner is a section of the actual propeller shaft.

On the outside they had a complete reproduction of the whole ship you could walk on and get a feel for how large it was. Never did learn if it had any of the interior restored.

The museum has one of the biggest collections of ship figureheads anywhere in the world. Here is one from a US east indiaman type ship.

This one from the H.M.S. Edinburgh, an English 74-gun ship of the line.

This room alone was worth the price of admission. More than 20 exactly scaled models of large ocean liners with full information about them as well as a couple dozen more figure heads on the walls.

One more figurehead. I'm guessing this one might of been on a U.S. Ship.

A model of the real first ironclads. This is a Korean 'Tortoise ship' built between 1592 and 1598. It had armor plating on the top and sides as well as spear points sticking out all over to repel boarders. It evidently worked really well against the Japanese.

This is one of those rare ship models built on board ship by one of the crew using pieces of ivory and bone for all the structural components. It amazes me to see all the detail, but then they would of been surrounded by the real thing.

There was another whole room that just had models from this one guy in it. All of these were built from the keel up exactly as a real ship would of been. He even had every wooden plug in a deck shown. If you can bring some of these photos in for a closer look you can see some of the detail he had in them. This one shows all of the ribs even with some of the outside sheathing left off.

Take a look at this one and notice all the 'stuff' going on along the sides, then go on to the next photo.

They had it set up so that there were some magnifying areas in some of the cases. Here you see a close up of the detail on the aft end of the last ship model.

Lots of different ships and a lot of research went into all of these models. I could of spent a couple of hours just in here.

One last thing that caught my eye. This would of been what most sailors in the world would of been eating, day in and day out, as they sailed from one ocean to the next, sometimes for years at a time. The interesting thing to me is that it was evidently enough, as there weren't a lot of stories of men dieing in large numbers from their diet.