What a wonderful spring day it was here in the lowlands of Virginia. It rained for more than an hour last night, so it was rather cool this morning when I woke up, but by 10:00 most of the fog had burned off and the temperature was finally starting to climb.
    I left the trailer around 11:30 and headed in to the town of Newport News to visit the Maritime Museum they have there. Along the way I stopped at a local Taco Bell for some lunch so that hunger pangs wouldn't drive me out of the museum before everything had been seen. It must be noted that Taco Bell is not one of my favorite places to eat, but it should also be noted, that even they find it hard to screw up a basic bean tostada and bean and rice burrito, so it'll do in a pinch.
   The museum is one of the better maritime ones I have seen, and there have been quite a few of them that I have visited. It is actually privately funded, but seems to make enough money in donations and fees that it has a pretty good collection of all things nautical. It's main claim to fame is as a repository for most of the original archaeological finds from the ironclads Merrimack, aka, the Virginian, and the Monitor. There is so many items, artifacts and information about the whole 'ironclad' industry that sprung up around the Civil War, that the museum devotes one whole wing to that subject alone.
    I spent more than two hours wandering through that wing looking at all of the displays, reading the cards, watching the movies and playing with the inter-active stuff. It was fascinating to watch a movie about the discovery of the original Monitor where she sat in more than 250 feet of water, and the subsequent recovery of the turret section and other parts of the original boat. A joint effort between the Museum staff, NOAA and the U.S. Navy, they used their deep sea dive team, as well as others, more use to working on offshore oil platforms, it was amazing to watch as they uncovered the wreck and worked to get the turret and its contents safely to the surface.
   You can now see an exact replica of that turret, along with all of the original gunk, including guns and human remains, in one part of the museum. The original anchor, propeller and part of the drive shaft, as well as numerous smaller items are also on display there.
   Also in that section is a mock up of the inside and outside of the Souths, (CSS), ironclad, Merrimack. A little history on that goes like this; with the north about to launch its first ironclad, the Monitor, the South was determined to have their own version built in time to meet her. So they found a sail/steam ship that had been set on fire and sunk, the Merrimack, and decided that the bottom hull and her engines were still in good enough shape to use as a base for their new ironclad. Even though she had been under water for more than a month at that time. So they raised her enough to cut everything above the waterline off of her, reconditioned the engines and started building the ironclad superstructure on top of her. In the end they had their own iron boat that was more than 300 feet long, sported 4-6 cannons on either side and had steal armor more than 2 inches thick on top of more than 14 inches of hardwood, oak, and softwood, pine, substructure. (see photos below). They christened her Virginia because of where she was built, but most everybody knew her by her original name, Merrimack.
    Of course the rest of the museum is worth seeing also, so I spent another couple hours wandering around there. There are a few photos below that show some of the wonders to be seen, but really you need to see it in person to really get the feel of how well done it is.
    It was finally closeting time at 5:00, so after picking up a shot glass from the museum store it was time to head back to the trailer. There was a short side trip in order to pick up a few groceries and assorted other items for the trailer. I got a roast chicken for dinner tonight and I splurged, I should never go grocery shopping while hungry, on some Twinkies. So I had a wonderful meal tonight and now it's time to finish this up and then do some reading. Tomorrow the plan is to head over to Jamestown and visit that historical site and meet up with a friend of mine.

Maritime Museum at Newport News Virginia - March 15, 2016

   

A few hours spent exploring one of my favorites, a maritime museum. This one concentrated on the story of the US Monitor and CSS Virginia, the 1st ironclads to engage in a real battle. As well as other exhibits showing old wooden figureheads, ships models and navigation instruments. It should be noted that these photos are from a visit I made to this museum several years ago. Everything in the pictures is still there though.

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.

 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.

 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 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.

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

 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.

 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.

 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 dying in large numbers from their diet

*brk