Adventures of Maritime History

The ISLANDER, a ferry in Los Angeles Harbor

2011-11-07T15:28:00.000-08:00

The ISLANDER making its way across the Main Channel in Los Angeles Harbor, about 1957.

Did you know that 70 years ago, a round-trip ferry boat ride in Southern California was worth just 10 cents? This year, 2011, is the seventieth anniversary of the Los Angeles Municipal Ferry Service. Its ferries carried people and cars from the city of San Pedro to Terminal Island, a piece of land that connects together the maritime industries of Los Angeles and Long Beach along a shared waterfront. The ferry began its cross-channel trips in 1941 and made its last trip in 1963 when a brand-new route opened, The Vincent Thomas Bridge, which spanned the waters of the channel and relegated its ferry service to the historical background. Today, ferries are not well-known in this city, but you can still see and ride ferries in other cities in California, as well as in Oregon and Washington, and other states around the U.S.

"Channel Crossings: Work, School and Play"--a new exhibit on the history of the Los Angeles Municipal Ferry Service.

Los Angeles Maritime Museum Curator Emma Lang in front of panels in the new exhibit.

Emma recounts the social history behind the exhibit:

"When I was hired as the new curator I was given the task of developing an exhibit about our building—the former Municipal Ferry Terminal—and history of the ferries who crossed the Main Channel of LA Harbor prior to the building of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. I quickly discovered that other than the building itself we have very few objects in our collection from the ferries or the building’s early days. How could I make an exhibit that was not dominated by images with so few objects to choose from? I went back to my training as a social historian and focused in on the people. Who walked through our doors? Who took the ferry? Where were they going? What were they talking about? What did they carry as they went to work? From those questions I developed the main cases of the exhibit which tell the story of Terminal Island and people who lived and worked there. There are still many images in the exhibit showing the evolution of the ferry service and our building but there is also a yearbook open to a page full of students who took the ferry to school, a pay stub that was carried by a cannery worker home from work on the ferry and a longshoreman’s hook used on the docks on Terminal Island. These objects are as much the story of the ferry services as the life ring from the ferry ISLANDER and the building itself."

Visit the Los Angeles Maritime Museum to see more on the ISLANDER and our ferry service as it once was.

After Columbus, who seized the treasures?

2011-10-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

The History of Pirates. / By Angus Konstam. Published by The Lyons Press, 2002 (c1999). In Association with the Mariners’ Museum, Virginia; Introduction by David Cordingly. 192 pages, color illustrations, index.

After Columbus’s ships besieged the islands of the Caribbean Ocean as early as 1492, North America became the new found conquest and source of gold. It was a time when three European nations fought each other on the seas, on rivers, in bays and inlets, all scrambling for riches they’d carried off from less savvy peoples, natives of foreign lands of North America, Southeast Asia and the Far East.

Piracy, the act of capturing and pillaging merchant ships, was one of the causes of success for the English and French as they vied for lands and treasure in the waters around the New World between 1500 and 1700AD.

Would you like to know more about how the underworld of this embezzlement ran? Konstam has gathered a collection of well-known accounts and illustrations of the pirates, timelines and maps. His book covers, albeit romantically, piratical history from ancient and medieval times to the Barbary Coast on the Mediterranean Sea: the first three chapters of this book are a backdrop to the torrid story of daring, violence and conspiracy that are hallmarks of the trade. And in the chapters from the Barbary Pirates and The Spanish Main forward to the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730), author Angus Konstam delivers mini biographical sketches of these most in-famous, terrifying and inscrutable bandits of the seas. See the last four chapters for calamitous misfortunes of maritime merchant traders in the Indian ocean and Asia as well as the effects of privateers on major sea battles.

From the Wikipedia article, “Pirates fight over treasure in a Howard Pyle illustration”.

One of the illustrators featured in The History of Pirates is Howard Pyle, considered to be an excellent illuminator of past times. In his illustration, “Which shall be Captain”, the sword fight determines the one who’ll claim the title “captain” and become leader of the band of marauders then known as pirates, buccaneers, or corsairs or freebooters.

Read more about pirates in books from the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library. If you’re a Museum Member, you can borrow books for up to three weeks. If you’re looking for more information, click here for our online catalog.

Ship Modeler's Art on Display

2011-09-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

Flying Cloud, 1851 as seen in Wikipedia article on the ship.

See the model of the Flying Cloud, an extreme clipper ship on display at The Los Angeles Maritime Museum, with many other ship models ranging from hand-worked wooden canoes to steel-hulled navy ships. Visit the Museum Research Library and ask for books on building ship models, or go online to our catalog.

Selected from the collection in the Museum Research Library, these books describe model ships and show how to build them:

1. Build This Model of Flying Cloud by Jim Tate
2. Building Plank-On Frame Ship Models by Ron McCarthy
3. A Modeler’s Guide to Hull Construction by A. Richard Mansir
4. The 32-Gun Frigate ESSEX by Portia Takakjian
5. Period Ship Model Handbook by Keith Julier
6. The Art of Ship Modeling by A. Richard Mansir
7. Shipbuilding in Miniature by Donald McNarry
8. Sailing Ship Rigs and Rigging by Harold A. Underhill
9. How to Build Ship Models by Richard Mansir
10. Aspects of the History of Wooden Shipbuilding/Basil Greenhill, editor.
11. Model Shipwright 2010 / Conway Maritime Press, Ltd.

See the text of newspaper articles from 1851 on the Flying Cloud here.

Icons, Ship Models and the Art

2011-08-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Attempting to capture the essence of a model-builder’s work, this illustration captures the ideal model builder’s situation. See the leaflet, “Build This Model of Flying Cloud Donald McKay’s Most Famous Clipper Ship of the Year 1851” by James Tate; reprinted through Courtesy of Popular Mechanics (date unknown). It's here in our catalog.

Iconic attention-grabbers, finished models are entertaining, too. People like you identify with the concepts that a miniature conjures up, imagining themselves to be part of the scene before them: it's reality brought down to size. Model makers are artists who like the process of model-building. It’s a way to be busy but productive, while daydreaming about some historical ship’s times---be it 20th century sea battles or the first sea-going adventures or circumnavigation.

The Model Ship Her Role in History. / Norman Napier Boyd. This book inspired me to learn more about the ship modeler's art.

It is a curious fact, that all historic ship models were not created equally. In fact, although we think of ship models as the domain of hobbyists with loads of talent and time on their hands, models have traditionally served a wide array of needs, from devotional to opportunistic.

Why build a model?

Models, representing full-sized objects in miniature scale, conveyed ideas about how a vessel should look once constructed. As far back in history as Egyptian times (to 5000 B.C.), models were made to represent the powerful, the dreams and intent of the entombed person. As history unfolds, we see that before rulers and shipwrights built ships, models were made first, to help envisage the sizes and shapes 3-dimensionally. This convention persisted to the twentieth century in contracts between client and shipyard.

Then, too, ship models were made by sailors and prisoners to replicate existing naval and merchant ships. These models represented memory and culture and typically they resembled ships on which they had sailed and thus had significant experience. And those model-makers closely following their religious beliefs constructed models as votives or offerings, pleas for escape from calamity at sea.

Models encompass the world of recreation and entertainment. With the technologies of the twentieth century such as radio control and filmmaking, movie-goers were delighted and awed by the illusion of shipwreck, battles at sea, mutiny, etc., all told with ships that were a fraction of life-size---the model.

In the Foreword to Boyd’s book, Dr. Alan Scarth is quoted as saying that ship models play an important part in the knowledge base that is gained by a visit to a Maritime Museum. A ship model, due to its 3-dimensional quality is symbolic, holding the attention of its admirer while an inspection of every detail is matched to their imagination and personal questions.

You can read or peruse model shipbuilding books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library. This Library display can be seen in the Navy Hall at the Museum, along with books and models,and all around the Museum.

Painter of Maritime Scenes

2011-07-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

The Two-Masted Schooner

The basic example is this popular fore-and-aft rig on the order of the J.B. LEEDS, featured in this issue. Superior to the square rig for working to windward and undeniably handy, they were hard on sails and gear in light weather and calms due to lack of control over the attendant slatting and banging.

As vessel sizes increased, so did the number of masts. The practical limit apparently was six and only one had seven, the ponderous and outsized THOMAS W. LAWSON.

------ from The Compass Rose, Winter 1983-84

Paintings and drawings, besides imparting beauty and providing cultural expression, used to be required as the visual documentation of news articles and events---there were no cameras in wide-spread use yet in the mid-1800s! Beside the written word enjoyed in newspapers, journals and magazines, illustrations provided a secondary means of communication, and today can be relied upon for details and evidence not given otherwise. The following article confers homage to a painter of maritime subjects who did not entirely avoid the human aspect in his images of ships. Be sure to see the section below “Explanation of Terms Used”, especially for the Mechanics Institutes, a 200+ year-old school for unemployed men in San Francisco after the Gold Rush.

Joseph Lee, Marine Artist

Hanging on the south wall of the Sailing Ship Deck and offering a fine introduction to it and the west coast sailing ships of the 1860’s-1870’s is the splendid portrait of the two-mast schooner, J.B. LEEDS by Joseph Lee.

The J.B. LEEDS is depicted sailing in the stiff chop of an ebb tide through the Golden Gate with Marin County shoreline and Point Bonita Lighthouse in the background. Several schooners run ahead and astern of her, one of which appears to be a pilot schooner. Built in 1876 by Hiram Doncaster, Umpqua, Oregon, the J.B. LEEDS was 229.16 tons, 123 feet in length, 33.4 feet in breadth and 9.3 feet in depth. She had one deck. Her principal owner was Joseph Knowland and her home port, San Francisco. The J.B. LEEDS was sailed for 29 years as a lumber carrier before foundering off Luzon, Philippine Islands, March 5, 1905.

This painting of Joseph Lee, a marine and landscape artist, speaks to us through its charm, meticulous detail, and accuracy. Old-timers along the San Francisco waterfront used to say, “You could rig a ship from one of Lee’s pictures.” (“Joseph Lee, Painter” Alice Erskine Putnam, Antiques, June, 1969). The J.B. LEEDS is no exception. There is a great amount of finely painted detail on this schooner seen to port. She is in full sail on the choppy, grey-green waters of the Bay. Her shrouds, ratlines, deadeyes, blocks and pulleys can all be clearly seen, as can the sheets of job, foresail and mainsail. One can study and admire the sail makers’ art in the carefully painted sail seams. A feeling for the structure of the ship can be seen in a portion of the bulwark on the starboard side. The beautiful, intricate gold scroll design on the bow stands out against the black of the hull.

Lee has painted a number of people on board, seven in all, including the helmsman, a gentleman with spyglass in hand facing the stern, and a man facing the viewer waving his hat in the air. Across the deck a gentleman leans against the bulwark. One wonders if perchance any of the figures might have been the painter. Lee has clothed his individual in bright colors and presented the cut of their clothing in detail. The short jackets, white shirts, black ties and broad-brimmed hats, reveal some of the fashion of the period.

The clarity of this painting is in direct contrast to the facts of Lee’s life, most of which remain shrouded in obscurity. Born in England it is not known just when he arrived in the San Francisco Bay area. Also unknown is his background in art, whether he had teachers or whether he was self-taught.

Lee began his career as a sign and ornamental painter, certainly a not uncommon way for an artist of that period to begin, considering the artistry in the signs of that day. He apparently worked in this capacity for a number of years, becoming an active member of the Mechanics Institute, where his work was exhibited at different times. In 1858, Lee exhibited a tin sign at the Pavilion of the Institute, for which he received his first public notice, and for which he was awarded a diploma and a bronze medal, according to Alice Erskine Putnam.

... Lee’s most productive period was in the later 1860’s and 1870’s during which time he was one of the foremost marine artists of the Pacific Coast. He painted both portraits of sailing ships and steamships, as well as a number of landscapes.

Joseph Lee died in San Francisco in 1880, leaving us a wonderful legacy of art and a fine record of the ships and places of the San Francisco Bay area.

---- Norma Munger.

This week's post features Norma Munger's article (Norma was at the time an editor of the Compass Rose) and her appreciation of a maritime painting donated to the Museum. Paintings in the Museum's collections can be viewed between 10 am and 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday, see our web site here.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See books in collection in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library or online at New books and pamphlet this month!

Explanation of terms used: to expand your enjoyment of the article above, word meanings are taken, sometimes verbatim, from the International Maritime Dictionary, by Andre de Kerchove, 1961, or The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, by I.C.B. Dear and Peter Kemp, 2005.

Slatting: sails that flap violently in the wind.
Gold Rush: occurring between 1848 and 1852 in California, the Gold Rush was a time of exploration and development in the history of the West Coast. People from all over traveled to the state in search of a new life and to build their fortunes from the gold mines.
Ebb tide: refers to tidal movement from high to low tide.
Shrouds: strong wires or hemp ropes that support a mast.
Ratlines: small lines that cross the shrouds and form rope runs like rungs on a ladder.
Deadeyes: a stout disk of hard wood… used as blocks to connect shrouds, etc.
Blocks and pulleys: used for changing the direction of a rope or chain passing through pulleys.
Sheets: a rope or chain fastened to the lower corners of a sail… to help expand the sail.
Bulwark: the raised woodwork … running along each side of the vessel above the weather deck… keeping the deck dry and serving as a fence against losing deck cargo or men overboard. (de Kerchove)
Starboard side: the right-hand side of a vessel
Hull: the body of a vessel
Helmsman: also called steersman, wheelman.
Spyglass: a lens for magnifying the view of far-away objects.
Stern: the after part of a ship or boat.
Broad-brimmed hats: stylish in the mid to late 1800s, often woven from natural material.
Mechanics Institutes a nationally recognized school for men, it began in the mid-1800s.

The Thrill of Ocean Travel

2011-06-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

The WHITE SHIPS 1927-1978 : A Tribute to Matson’s Luxury Liners. / Duncan O’Brien. Published by Pier 10 Media, 2008. 283 p. Illustrations: black and white and color. ISBN 9780968673416.

Book Review By Paul Nitchman

The WHITE SHIPS is a tribute to the 125 years of operation of Matson Navigation Company.

The White Ships, MALOLO, MARIPOSA, MONTEREY LURLINE and MATSONIA are only memories, but in their day, pre-World War II, they were some of the finest luxury liners afloat. Back in the day one could sail from the West Coast to Hawaii in 4 ½ days in The “Grand Manor”.

On “Boat Day”, thousands would jam the Honolulu piers to give visitors to the islands a big ALOHA as they arrived aboard one of those grand ships. Visitors would then disembark and be taken to the Matson owned “Pink Palace”, The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, to enjoy the Spirit of Aloha. Those were the days before the airlines became transport of choice for most travelers to Hawaii.

The book is filled with many pictures, ads, posters, dining room menus from the Matson archives along with personal reminiscences of the Matson staff. It is a great book for the nostalgia buff of Hawaiiana, as well as one who has interest in the great liners of the past.

Presently, Matson’s fleet of container ships provides a vital lifeline to the economies of Hawaii and Micronesia. See Matson company online for a closer look.

This week's post features Paul Nitchman’s article and his references to ships of the Matson line. More on the Matson company can be seen at Wikipedia’s article “Matson Navigation Company”.

Paul Nitchman, Museum Volunteer on the tug Angel’s Gate during a haul-out.

Explanation of terms:
haul-out: to haul, quoted from Rene De Kerchove's International Maritime Dictionary, published by Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1961, p. 360, “1. to move a vessel in a harbor from one pier to another…”. In the photograph above the tug boat is underway in the channel at Los Angeles Harbor.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See books in collection in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at New books and pamphlet this month!

Hollywood at Sea, Part 2

2011-06-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

The Hollywood Navy (Part Two)
First printed as the cover story in the Compass Rose, Vol. 6 No. 2 Spring 1987

The Museum’s “Hollywood Navy” falls into two categories: miniatures constructed by studio craftsmen especially for a particular motion picture; and models built by hobbyists representing famous ships that have appeared on the screen.

The most impressive studio “miniature” is the POSEIDON. Using the QUEEN MARY’s specifications, it took ten studio craftsman three months to construct the 22’ model, complete with four working propellers, interior lighting and smoking funnels. In the picture, “The Poseidon Adventure”, 20th-Century Fox sank her in less than an hour but it took five museum hobbyists one year to restore her, including the official “Cunard red” paint on her stacks.

Other studio models come in assorted sizes. In the 5’-10’ class are an old lumber schooner that served as a floating prop for “Slave Ship” while a Chinese junk appeared in “Sand Pebbles”. One miniature that delights the younger visitors in the PENGUIN SUBMARINE featured several years ago in the “Batman” T.V. series.
...

"BOUNTY replica built on schooner LILY hull for MGM's classic "Mutiny on the Bounty", starring Charles Laughton.

Nearby on the Main Deck, a neat replica of HMAV BOUNTY serves as a reminder of the three motion picture versions of the mutiny. When the 1984 replica of the full-scale ship was berthed adjacent to the Museum, large crowds turned out to see her. Even the venerable USS CONSTITUTION claims a Hollywood connection via her nickname OLD IRONSIDES, the title of a 1920’s swashbuckler.

In a similar way the CHARLES W. MORGAN and WANDERER are representative of early whalers in the silent movie, “Down to the Sea in Ships”, while the BLUE NOSE II and William E Fay Sr’s dramatic HELEN MARGARET depict the type of topsail fishing schooners used in “Captain’s Courageous”. The widescreen production of “Windjammer” starred the CHRISTIAN RADICH, the Norwegian training ship moored at the museum in November 1979. Craig Smith’s splendid watercolor of her hangs on the Promenade Deck.

The Los Angeles Maritime Museum itself has served as location for several TV programs. Episodes of “Misfits of Science” and “Murder She Wrote” shot interior scenes on the Main Deck. The 15’ model of the brig, TRADITION, was used in a “MacGyver” segment. The adjacent waterfront has been used over a number of years. One of the neighboring Wilmington Transportation Company’s fleet of tugs was featured in an early TV series, “Waterfront”, starring Preston Foster. Docked next to the Gun Deck is an ex-minesweeper, the WILD GOOSE, John Wayne’s former yacht, which continues to be a hit with the public although it is not part of the museum.

…

The HOLLYWOOD underway as a training ship, date and photographer unknown.

On the 20th Century Deck, the model of the freighter, SS HOLLYWOOD, comes in for its share of attention. Thinking the obvious, visitors are chagrined to learn that it was named for David Hollywood, the manager of the local shipyard where it was built (now Southwest Marine, across the channel from Ports O’Call), rather than the glamour capital. Meanwhile, TVs enduring “Love Boat”, the PACIFIC PRINCESS, continues to glide majestically down the channel past the museum leading the parade of cruise ships out to sea.
--- Marian Skidmore

"The Hollywood Navy", an article by long-time Museum volunteer Marian Skidmore was presented on the front cover of the Spring 1987 issue of The Compass Rose, a newsletter of the Friends of the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, published between 1981 and 1996. Note that the original article was printed 24 years ago, reflecting the historic nature of dates, names of movies stars and motion pictures of the day.

Explanation of terms used:
Compass Rose:

A term used in navigation, it refers to … see prior blog post, “Jack London in Southern California” for explanation.

The first entry for brig from the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, second edition, 2005, p. 67 is quoted as, “a two-masted vessel, square-rigged on both masts…”.

The entry for Chinese junk from the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, second edition, 1976, p. 435 is quoted as, “a native sailing vessel common to Far Eastern Seas, especially used by the Chinese and Javanese. It is a flat-bottomed, high-sterned vessel with square bows, with two or three masts carrying lugsails often made of matting stiffened with horizontal battens…”.

The entry for schooner from the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, second edition, 2005, p. 495 is quoted as, “schooner, possibly deriving from the Scottish verb ‘to scon’ or ‘scoon’, to skip over the water like a flat stone… A typical schooner has a “fore-and-aft rig on two or more masts…”.

In the Royal Navy of Great Britain, HMS stands for His Majesty’s Ship. The description of HMAV BOUNTY in Wikipedia shows the acronym HMAV referring to His Majesty’s Armed Vessel.

This week's post features Marian Skidmore’s article and her references to ships in the Los Angeles Harbor and ship models donated to the Museum.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See books in collection in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed in the Library at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at
New books and pamphlet this month!

Hollywood at Sea

2011-05-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

The Hollywood Navy (Part One)
First printed as the cover story in the Compass Rose, Vol. 6 No. 2 Spring 1987. The complete story will be posted in two parts.

When the motion picture industry moved its theater of operations from New York to Hollywood early in this century, the studios almost immediately enlisted this harbor as a permanent prop, as well as venerable sailing vessels, the Bark ALDEN BESSE and Barkentine FREMONT, by 1908. These veterans are followed in later years by an assortment of square-riggers and schooners, purchased outright or chartered for countless epics involving the sea. Among these numerous sailing fleet are recalled: INDIANA, MELROSE, BOHEMIA, IRENE, LLEWELLYN J. MORSE, PALMYRA, LILY, WILLIAM H. HARRIMAN, W.F. JEWETT, SAMAR, S.N. CASTLE. LOTTIE CARSON, METHA NELSON, not to mention numerous smaller craft and occasional steamers, engaged for a single picture.

Some ships were altered in appearance for the sake of authenticity and others brought from far afield, such as the Gloucester fishing schooner ORETHA F. SPINNEY from the East Coast for filing the Academy Award winner “Captain’s Courageous”, one of the truly classic examples of sea films.

With the advent of TV more than thirty years ago, Hollywood invaded the American home on a nightly basis. Nor does the public love affair with the film capital’s aura end there, judging by the number of visitor inquiries regarding the Los Angeles Maritime Museum’s “Hollywood Navy” collection.

In general, men seem intrigued by the different types of ships but most women and youngsters readily identify with any model bearing movie credentials. “Hollywood Navy” originally was the title of a photographic exhibit that Ed Hauck, our founding creator, had at one time aboard the old ferryboat, SIERRA NEVADA, at Ports O’Call. It featured photos of some of the motion picture industry’s top stars and directors of the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s at leisure aboard their yachts…

Depicted herewith are a few of the many vessels employed in one or more motion picture productions in Southern California waters. Most of these were moored in San Pedro or Long beach between pictures. The first vessels secured for this work were the venerable Barkentine FREMONT (1) and Bark ALDEN BESSE (2) circa 1905-1910. Subsequently the three-masted schooner LOTTIE CARSON (3). The first HMAV BOUNTY replica (4) was created from two-masted schooner LILY. CHERYLANN (5) Preston Foster’s tug in WATERFRONT was a unit of the Wilmington Transportation Co. fleet. The Gloucester fishing schooner ORETHA SPINNEY (6) was brought out here to become the WE’RE HERE in the first film adaptation of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS. The mini “steam schooner” VAQUERO (7), a motor vessel built to carry cattle to and from Santa Rosa Island often earned extra movie money. The 4 masted schooner IRENE (8) was one of several such employed off and on. Some were destroyed for the finale, others became fishing barges.

"The Hollywood Navy", an article by long-time Museum volunteer Marian Skidmore was presented on the front cover of the Spring 1987 issue of The Compass Rose, a newsletter of the Friends of the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, published between 1981 and 1996. Note that the original article was printed 24 years ago, reflecting the historic nature of dates, names of movies stars and motion pictures of the day.

Explanation of terms used:
Compass Rose:
A term used in navigation, it refers to … see prior blog post, “Jack London in Southern California” for explanation.

theater of operations
The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 1966, p. 1470 is quoted here: "part of the theater of war, including a combat zone and a communications zone, that is engaged in military operations and their support."

square-riggers:
The Oxford Dictionary of Ships and the Sea, 2005 (OUP), p. 553, is quoted: "square rig, a term that refers to the use of square-cornered sails, usually rectangular, set from horizontl spars or yards, balanced across the mast."

schooners:
The International Maritime Dictionary by Rene de Kerchove, 1961 (Litton), p 687 is quoted here: "schooner. A fore-and-aft rigged vessel with 2 to 6 masts, common in the coasting and fishing trades."

MELROSE:
a four-masted schooner is shown in this photograph from the Papers of William Olesen.

Hollywood Navy:
This week's post features Marian Skidmore’s article and her references to ships in the Los Angeles Harbor and ship models donated to the Museum. More on the movie Captain's Courageous can be seen at Wikipedia’s entry, “Captain's Courageous”.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See books in collection in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed in the Library at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at
New books and pamphlet this month!

Model forklifted into Museum

2011-04-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

Model ship S.S. Poseidon in transport on June 26, 1984 from the studios of 20th Century Fox to the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

S.S. Poseidon
First printed as the cover story in the Compass Rose, Vol. 3 No. 4 Autumn 1984

Many of our ship models enter the Museum in the arms of their owners, or in a case which usually can be carried by two persons. However, our recent acquisition, the 21 ½ foot model of the S.S. POSEIDON, required the services of a king-forklift…

This POSEIDON starred in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, produced by 20th Century Fox Film Corporation in 1972, which was an outstanding film of that year.

Mr. Herman David, Studio Manager and Director of Studio service, who contacted us initially about donating this model to the Museum, has since furnished some interesting data.

Actually, what we have is a quarter-inch scale model built from original plans of the QUEEN MARY, or one forty-eighth of full size. The hull is made of fiberglass and finished with detailed hull plating, while wood and sheet metal were employed in the superstructure.

It represents the efforts of some 15 craftsmen over a period of three months and cost approximately $30,000. To duplicate the model today a price tag of $150,000 is estimated. Deck fittings are correct in detail and the whole assembly far more durable than a museum piece in order to withstand hard usage in filming.

Propulsion was by two golf cart motors driving the four propellers. A perforated pipe along the keel provided bubbles. A series of light bulbs inside the hull realistically lit up two rows of port holes and deckhouse windows for night scenes.

Much of the shooting was done in a 32 foot tank but for sea scenes a tank 300 by 360 feet was used. With blue sky backing and a tank edge over which water barely flowed a very realistic horizon was created.

Toward the end of the picture a series of explosions and a capsizing inflicted considerable damage which was, of course, repaired. Weight of the model was slightly over one ton with batteries and motors, now no longer in the hull.

Many scenes were filmed aboard the QUEEN MARY. Full-sized sets of staterooms, a radio room and dining room salon were, however, built in the studio. The dining room was built upside down with furniture bolted to the ceiling. The radio room was built full size on a slanting rail track into a tank to simulate the sinking motion and illustrates the lengths to which motion picture people will go in the pursuit of realism.

POSEIDON will be far and away the largest item in our maritime movie display when completed. The Harbor area and adjacent waters have been favorite props for countless sea pictures dating back to the days when the industry had barely begun to roll.

---- Bill Olesen

"S.S. POSEIDON", an article by long-time Museum volunteer Bill Olesen was presented on the front cover of the Autumn 1984 issue of The Compass Rose, a newsletter of the Friends of the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, published between 1981 and 1996. Note that the original article was printed 27 years ago, reflecting the historic nature of dates, costs and personal and corporate names.

Explanation of terms used:
Compass Rose:

A term used in navigation, it refers to prior blog post, “Jack London in Southern California” for explanation.

POSEIDON
The first entry for Poseidon from the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, second edition, 2005, p. 439 is quoted as “The Greek god of the sea, known to the Romans as Neptune. In Greek mythology he was lord and ruler of the sea...”. This week's post features Bill Olesen's article after a model of the S.S. POSEIDON was donated to the Museum after use in the film The POSEIDON ADVENTURE by 20th Century Fox Studios. More on the movie can be seen at Wikipedia’s entry, “Poseidon, fictional ship”.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See books in collection in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed in the Library at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at
new books and pamphlet this month!

A Line of Credit, p. 3
… The 21 ½ foot model of the S.S. POSEIDON arrived in the Museum on June 26, 1984. Delivery of a model this size involved some operations bordering on the dramatic, which were duly recorded in the San Pedro NEWS PILOT with a front page story and picture. RANDY MUDRICK and TOM COULTER teamed up to do the photo and text, respectively, which pleased us greatly.

LARANETA TRUCKING CO. brought the model down from 20th CENTURY FOX STUDIOS in West Los Angeles, but then the problem of unloading became the next hurdle. First to the rescue was TOM AMALFITANO with his fork lift from San Pedro Fish Market. Unfortunately, the reach was too great. A frantic canvas of potentials brought no results until Cdr. TOM GOODALL zeroed in on CHUCK SLOCOMBE, who relayed our S.O.S. to METROPOLITAN STEVEDORE CO. who brought over a monster forklift which dissolved our dilemma instantly. Obviously, there is no substitute for good friends and neighbors who have helped us all the way since January 1980.

---- Norma S. Munger

El Pueblo La Reina de los Angeles

2011-03-31T16:54:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles A-Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County. / Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt. University of California Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0520-20530-7. 605 p. illustrations, maps, bibliography, tables, appendices pages 573-598.

What would a great city like L.A. do without adoring fans? If Facebook shows any indication, the city’s page there boasts over 4 hundred thousand “likes”… How many of those virtual visitors can claim to know that the area, according to the authors, has a 10,000-plus-year history? It’s the details found in the book’s almost 2000 entries that give visitors an edge when it comes to fascinating facts.

Los Angeles today reveals a history of commerce and industry. Looking closely at its neighborhoods you’ll get a sense of what mattered most to the people who’ve structured the physical place, the architecture, freeways, towns and municipalities. And from its multi-layered culture, see who influenced realistic and romantic notions of this western city.

In Los Angeles A-Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County, the authors organized and compiled data alphabetically around general topics, specific topics and biographies. The book offers brief and concise treatment of subject matter for both the city and the county named Los Angeles. Summaries, though dense with specificity and proper names, give an introduction and the terms as seed for more research, either online or in printed publications.

One way to benefit from the alphabetical format of the book is to look for general topics: see “adobe”, “Africans”, “aerospace industry”, and “archives” for instance. Entries for “ethnic groups” show specific detail such as populations in cities around Los Angeles, its demographics and U.S. Census data, previously published data from the Los Angeles Times and other publications. Even the word “growth” is included as an entry, after “grocery industry” and before “Gruen, Victor…” (architect). The encyclopedia is populated with biographies of authors, bandits, builders, mayors, publishers and many more who’ve affected popular impressions of the city. It indexes topics that have been the subject of newspaper articles for several decades in the later 20th century. Most entries are names of places, persons, animals, plants, objects, land forms, concepts and terms indicative specifically of this city. Referencing a general topic like “architecture” does not produce a list of styles but is attenuated to a chronological architecture in sections, significant of political change. These began around the time of the city’s incorporation and continue to the present: from 1781 until 1848, from 1848 to 1900, from 1900 to 1945, and since 1945. Something I didn’t know is that “Dingbat style” is a term coined by an architect while a professor at UCLA to describe a typical, although abbreviated, apartment architectural style.

The authors’ choice of illustrations, photographs, maps and tables accompany some of the entries so that most pages provide visual information. To that end thematically there is a preponderance of portraits from the late 19th to the middle of the 20th century. This lends a historical, perhaps even romantic quality to the encyclopedia, befitting to the popularly held sense of the place that began as a Spanish pueblo, became “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles del Rio de Porciuncula”, (see Wikipedia) and now known simply as L. A.

Los Angeles may be quantified in tables and characterized in illustrations, but the synthesis of data and factual information available in this encyclopedia provides a uniquely detailed view. The Appendix features a chronology almost yearly from 1781 to 1996, incorporation dates for cites and unincorporated areas of the County, and 1990 census data for each named city or area in Los Angeles County. Although the data is now 20 years old, general trends are apparent from the information. In the ensuing passage of time between the book’s publication date and now, changes have occurred especially for associations and organizations that have expanded, or no longer exist. The authors’ choice of entries might also be appended should a second edition be published. Otherwise, the book remains one reference point of access to the City of Angels.

The Sea Wolf Navigates Print, Film

2011-03-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

Jack London, published by L C Page and Company Boston 1903; available at wikipedia.org.

Jack London's SNARK, and the filming of his story, The Sea Wolf, were featured in The Compass Rose article by Bill Olesen.

Jack London and Southern California
The Sea Wolf

The termination in Australia of a proposed world cruise aboard the SNARK seems to have ended Jack’s ocean yachting ambitions. At the same time, the need for recouping health and fortunes probably filled the vacancy created by that disappointment.

A professed socialist who appeared to believe that money was designed to circulate freely, London was often pressed for cash even during those years of his greatest affluence. Consequently, having spent much of his literary earnings on philanthropy and the expensive projects of building the SNARK and his Wolf House at Glen Ellen, the possibility of a new and hitherto untapped source of revenue had definite appeal.

In 1902, The Electric Theater was the first motion picture house to be opened in Los Angeles. No doubt the same happened in other cities at that time, but for Los Angeles it could be called prophetic. The first “movies” were produced on Long Island, N.Y., but the climatic advantages for outdoor filming in southern California soon became apparent, and the industry began to move in.

Two old sailing vessels, the barkentine FREMONT (1850) and the barque ALDEN BESSE (1871), lying in San Pedro, were the original seagoing props for movie-making when needed. Studios sprang up wherever a warehouse or similar structure of sufficient size could be found, apparently anywhere between Santa Barbara and San Diego.

The motion picture industry gained momentum rapidly, and by 1911 production companies were actively seeking the film rights to published works which were usited to their needs. Overtures to Jack London for such rights apparently were initiated in 1911 by Sydney Ayres, representing various principals at various times. Tentative agreements and assorted proposals along with failure to meet the deadline on production dates resulted in cancellation of contracts, and consumed much time. Consequently, it was not until July of 1913 that Jack and Charmian arrived in Los Angeles by train with the object of formalizing a firm contract.

Due to the previous negotiations referred to herein, it was inevitable that litigation would ensue, and not exactly to the advantage of London. At this stage, Frank A. Garbutt, a wealthy and successful Los Angeles businessman, elected to enter the motion picture field and swiftly concluded a deal with London to produce The Sea Wolf.

Garbutt proceeded to negotiate a settlement with the litigants and promptly hired Hobart Bosworth to produce the film. Bosworth displayed unusual ability by managing the entire operation, including direction and starring as Capt. Wolf Larson of the schooner GHOST.

The film, which ran to seven reels and a record for those days, was made for a production cost of $9,000. Released by the Bosworth Co., the thunder was stolen somewhat by the simultaneous release of a half-length version made by the original contractor, but the superiority of the Bosworth film overcame this disappointing incident. The result was a successful, super-colossal epic for the silver-screen, and the firm establishment of another irrefutable link between Jack London and Southern California.
-- Bill Olesen
"Jack London and Southern California", an article by long-time Museum volunteer Bill Olesen was presented on the front cover of the Autumn 1991 issue of The Compass Rose, a newsletter of the Friends of the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, published between 1981 and 1996.

Explanation of terms used:
Compass Rose:

A term used in navigation, it refers to “1… a circle divided into 32 points or 360 degrees numbered clockwise from true or magnetic north, printed on a chart… as a means of determining the course of a vessel or aircraft. 2. a similar design, often ornamented, used on maps to indicate the points of a compass” … from p. 300 of the 1966 edition of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language.

SNARK
Writer Jack London's yacht, SNARK, was a schooner, a "vessel rigged with fore and aft sails on two or more masts" (from the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, second edition, 2005, p. 495. Though SNARK did not return to California following a voyage to Australia in 1907, it remained the object of romantic inquiry in literary and maritime history for many years. This week's post features a selection from Bill Olesen's article.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See books in collection in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed in the Library at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at
New books and pamphlet this month!

In transit

2011-02-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

The Docks. / Bill Sharpsteen. Published by University of California Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-520-26193-8. 310 p. Photographs by the author.

“The intention … is to introduce readers to the world at the Port of Los Angeles through my eyes as much as possible... p. xi.

A good writer is fascinated by the detail in real-life situations, can absorb and render it from a widely cast perspective. The Docks by Bill Sharpsteen tells a multi-faceted story of the Port of Los Angeles in vibrant and captivating terms. From our vantage point, a commercial port so large appears to be at rest, its scale so huge that we cannot discern either activity or drama. However, through Sharpsteen’s words we view the energy and daily work of the Port of Los Angeles in accounts of the people who pilot ships down the channel into berths, run political opposition to diesel fuel and become activists for clean air, the unions, dockworkers, security, importers, buyers, land-based cargo movers, workers in ships’ holds, women’s struggles for jobs on the docks and more. Every chapter is based on personal interviews between the author and an array of personnel driving the transfer of goods from container-ship over land to retailers’ shelves.

“His style reminds me of McPhee, in “Looking for a Ship” – where the author actually accompanies his subjects on container ships. That being said, the downturn in the economy has altered the “Lord of the Docks” persona – many of the casuals and longshoremen found they were not being offered the amount of hours they had in the past. This may be picking up lately, but it was certainly true in 2010.”
--- Marifrances Trivelli, Los Angeles Maritime Museum Director.

Shaarpsteen connects the landscape of the port, the part on land that we see being lots of containers and cranes, with the progression of human activity and the technology moving the goods. Seen from the keenly observant eyes of a photographer, the book inspects the objects and tools of the trades, the social and political aspects that create history and keep the narrative alive every day. You are there in the unfolding story, and you can read it again for discreet facts, names of people and organizations, and still again for that aspect of social commentary that the workings of a port have on our culture and the heartbeat of commerce. The References section, p. 279-303, lists by chapter, resources for persons, organizations, news articles and documents referred to in the text. An Index follows, giving the location of names, etc. that do not have printed references.

These quotations may lend an idea of the depth encountered in Sharpsteen’s The Docks:

Chapter 9: the Shipper

“As for goods going out of the country, food products account for more than half of all U.S. exports… Four of the top U.S. exporters sell paper, mostly to China.” p.161

Chapter 10: Los Troqueros

“… owner-operator truckers… people who work in dryage (picking up cargo and short-hauling it to a near-by location) …”

Chapter 11: The Hold Men --- Interview with Art Almeida
“… soldiers… gladiators, the sweaty, muscled foundation of shipping…” “… working in the hold of ships to unload everything from cotton bales to lumber to heavy oil barrels to poisonous cyanide in drums and DDT insecticide in leaky sacks.”

Chapter 12: the Women

“She was the first woman casual clerk, in 1974, and as such the direct catalyst for women now working on the docks.”
--- of Gretchen Williams

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See the book The Docks / by Bill Sharpsteen in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed in the Library at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at
New books and pamphlet this month!

Medieval Fighting Ships of Korea and Japan

2011-01-18T16:54:00.000-08:00

Fighting Ships of the Far East (2) : Japan and Korea A.D. 612-1639. / by Stephen Turnbull, Wayne Reynolds, illustrator. Published by Osprey Publishing, 2003. ISBN 978-1-84176-386-6. Transferred to digital print on demand 2009.

Author Stephen Turnbull again relays the saga of fighting ships of the Far East designed for combat between the countries of Japan and Korea, with battles engaging China and Thailand. A distinction between this book and the prior publication, Fighting Ships of the Far East (1) : China and Southeast Asia 202 B.C.-A.D. 1419, is that the time period covered in this book is actually 800 years later for Japan and Korea, and shows details of ship design and construction that were not possible for the much earlier ships in China’s history. Japanese pirates, called “waku” defended Japan against invasion by the Mongols via the Korean Strait in the late 1200s. The Koreans reacted with a revised “spear ship” that had “… a dragon’s head from whose mouth we could fire our cannons, and with iron spikes on its back to pierce the enemies’ feet when they tried to board.” p. 18. While Japanese invasions took place on land and aboard ships, Korean navies preferred to naval battles from their own turf, and images of their sea battles featured ships' canons.

The Color Plate section of the text features battle scenes and details of the types of ships favored by the Japanese samurai and by Japan and Korea. Naval architecture as an expression of force and strength was remarkably diverse, from the Korean style “turtle ship” (seen on this book's cover) to the Japanese floating castle ship known as the NIHON MARU. Both Japan and Korea had a type of tower ship, illustrated as a barge or junk style hull with one or two decks and a tower or castle built on the topmost deck. Korea’s p’anokson is a particularly striking example of the warship that conceals its oarsmen on the lower deck, while above them an open deck provided space for battles to take place at sea.

For more detail:
See the Naval History of Korea and the
Naval History of Japan at these Wikipedia sites which display a number of illustrations from each country's art.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See the book Fighting Ships of the Far East (2) : Japan and Korea A.D. 612-1639. / by Stephen Turnbull in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed in the Library at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at
New books and pamphlet this month!

Medieval and Ancient Asian Fighting Ships

2011-01-18T15:20:00.000-08:00

Fighting Ships of the Far East (1) : China and Southeast Asia 202 B.C. - A.D. 1419. / by Stephen Turnbull, Wayne Reynolds, illustrator. Published by Osprey Publishing, 2002. ISBN 978-1-84176-386-6. Transferred to digital print on demand 2010.

Author Turnbull’s collection of facts connects naval warfare and shipbuilding technology to the history of China. The beginning of the story features rafts that were used for transport as early as 2850 B.C. (p. 10). These vessels developed into fighting ships with multiple levels, or canoes with joints that could be disengaged or fireships---unmanned and set afloat burning with rush.

This eminently readable little book in a series called New Vanguard by Osprey Publishing delivers evidence of sophisticated inland and ocean-going vessels and the seafaring exploits of China and Southeast Asia. Advancements of the Chinese naval arts are easy to discover within the book’s 48 pages. The color plates section offers eight full color renderings of Chinese fighting ships by illustrator Wayne Reynolds. Battle fleets and enemy fireboats, war junks, war barges, paddle-wheel ships and even minelayers are portrayed. In each scene clearly detailed ships, armaments and battles from the text are interpreted in color and situation.

The sections of this story are as follows. “Fighting ships and Naval Warfare in the Ancient and Medieval Far East” begins with early battles on rivers depicted in tomb paintings of 150 A.D. and progresses through 1350 with ocean-going junk ships. “Techniques and Types of Chinese Ships and Shipbuilding” gives more detail about sampans, junks, oars and sails; “The Chinese Fighting Ship” explains the typology of Chinese warships from a treatise written published in 1044, and describes a particular type of paddle wheel ship described in 400 A.D. and also in 780 A.D. which propelled the vessel without sails. “The Chinese Fighting Ship in Action” shows inventions of iron-cladding and striking arms. “A Case Study of Chinese Fighting Ships” details a battle that took place in on a freshwater lake in 1363 between the Mongols and their successors, the Ming Dynasty. “Southeast Asian fighting Ships” hints at the vast difference between the powers, China and Cambodia with Vietnam. The Southeast Asian countries fought on rivers and preferred dugout canoes or war barges featuring an army of oarsmen in long narrow ships with fiercely carved figureheads, in strong contrast with the Chinese shipbuilding and naval arts. These are followed by Suggestions for Further Reading and Colour Plate Commentary with its diagrams and illustrations.

For more detail: See the Naval History of China at this Wikipedia site which also displays a number of illustrations from Chinese art.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See the book Fighting Ships of the Far East (1) : China and Southeast Asia 202 B.C. –A.D. 1419. / by Stephen Turnbull in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed in the Library at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at
New books and pamphlet this month!

Jack London, seafarer who wrote with light

2010-12-22T16:48:00.000-08:00

Jack London, Photographer./ by Jeanne Campbell, Sara S. Hodson & Philip Adam. Published by the University of Georgia Press, 2010. 272 p., illustrations, portraits, notes, photo credits, index.

Revealing his extra-creative side, this collection of approximately 400 photographs captures the spirit of events through portraits of people and aspects of maritime history from Jack London’s travels to cultures in the Pacific Rim.

The main photographic portfolios in the book are chapters entitled: People of the Abyss (1903); the Russo-Japanese War (1904); the San Francisco Earthquake (1906); the Cruise of the Snark (1907-09); the Voyage of the Dirigo (1912) and the Mexican Revolution (1914). These are bracketed by images of London at work, from 1902 to 1914, from the early days of his dual role as writer and photographer.

London’s images were powerful sketches of “… how some relatively unexplored places and unknown peoples appeared one hundred years ago…” p. ix

Co-author Philip Adams calls London a proto-photojournalist, because he did have an active role in depicting major world events such as the Russo-Japanese War and the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 for newspapers and magazines; his images were featured in the San Francisco Examiner, McClure’s, and Cosmopolitan magazine.

From 1900 to 1914, when images in this book were originally made, photography became more portable and easier to manage in real-life situations, far from studio set-ups. Kodak roll film, film that could be advanced in the camera without cumbersome procedures to keep already exposed images safe, became available. And the camera grew lighter and smaller than for sheet film. Subjects could be more selectively composed and recorded more spontaneously. Although he was a journalist in a broad sense, he was adept at selecting and presenting his particular worldview. His life goals coincided with a time when printing and photographic technologies merged to give the public illustrated news. He was…
“… drawn to any subject that indicated the struggle to survive… as he highly valued the individual.” p. 9

We can see that London’s fervor for adventure and for writing was as strong as his choice of subjects in photographs. He produced books with illustrated essays: the most relevant today is People of the Abyss in which he sought to portray England’s inner-city poor, the forgotten poor whose basic needs were ignored by the higher-class populace. His images of the Russian-Japanese War show Chinese and Korean daily life, immigration by ship, Japanese soldiers, children and the aged. The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and the images shot while sailing the Pacific were no more personal, no less stunning in effect on the viewer. The picture albums were saved by London’s wife, Charmian, and by his sister, Eliza. London died in 1916, and the work was donated to the Huntington Library, with negatives kept with the California State Parks system. These collections represent a wealth of history not widely recognized.

For closer inspection:
People of the Abyss, published in 1903, also published in 2008 by Akasha Publishing.

An online exhibit of Jack London’s photographs from the California Historical Society’s web page.

Jack London Web Sites featuring Sonoma State University Collection and The Huntington Library’s Jack London Collection.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See the book Jack London, Photographer./ by Jeanne Campbell, Sara S. Hodson & Philip Adam in our online catalog.

More new book titles in the Library can be viewed in the Library at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum or online at
New books and pamphlet this month!

Ships from Trees

2010-12-13T15:10:00.000-08:00

Photograph of Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center, 1987, attributed to James P. Howes.

Beautiful Christmas lights on very tall fir trees reflect a romantic and quaint view of our winter holidays. The tall tree is an icon, symbolic of strength, flexibility and not only on land but also on the sea. The variety of vessels crafted from wood marked the beginning of travel on inland waters and oceans in canoes, triremes, and the first sailing ships.

Ship decking, planking and timbers were made from cut boards or hewn and shaped pieces of softwood, like Redwood, and hardwood, such as Maple and Oak. From ancient times until the twentieth century, people built vessels from wood. They also built houses, especially in the developing West, where a single Redwood tree could supply enough lumber to built twenty “average sized house” (Grapp, Footprints, 1967).

With the six men standing along the tree trunk here in a photograph from the late 1800s, we are seeing only a section of a tree that could have stood about 300 feet tall. Such a very tall tree was recently digitally captured by photographer Michael Nichols. The process of his images is now on view, along with three other adventure-photographers’ works, at the Annenberg Space for Photography in the current exhibit “Extreme Exposures”.

Steam schooners were wooden ships built in the early twentieth century to carry lumber: this vessel is a Pacific Coast steam schooner, photographed by Walter Scott, from A Pacific Legacy... by Wayne Bonnett, on page 67.

From the 1840s, the Pacific West Coast, rich in natural resources from then un-tapped forests, began to realize a huge increase in trade. First lumber-carrying ships were brigantines, schooners and barkentines, already experienced merchant sailing ships; these were superseded in the late 1890s and early 1900s by steam schooners.

This winter, plan a visit to the Museum to see models of these ships and photographs of the time when San Pedro was a destination for the wooden ships, on view at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See the book A Pacific Legacy/ by Wayne Bonnett in our online catalog.

Lumber ships: see scale models on display from our permanent collection at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library give more history of wooden ships. These titles were selected from the collection:

Footprints: An Early history of Fort Bragg, California and the Pomo Indians. / by Bonni Grapp, © 1967.

A Pacific Legacy: A Century of Maritime Photography, 1850-1950. / by Wayne Bonnett. Published by Chronicle Books San Francisco, 1991.

Ships of the Redwood Coast. / by Jack McNairn and Jerry McMullen. Published by Stanford University Press, 1960, c1945.

Tall Ships: The Marine Photographs of Wilhelm Hester. / by Robert Weinstein. Published by Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, Canada, 1978.

Wood, lumber and timber. / by Phillips A. Hayward. Published by Chandler Cyclopedia, 1930.

Lions, Dragons, and Ornamental Carvings

2010-10-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

Old Ship Figure-heads and Sterns: with which are Associated Galleries, Hancing-pieces, Catheads and Divers other Matters that Concern the “Grace and Countenance” of Old Sailing Ships./ by L.G. Carr-Laughton

In author Laughton’s book, figureheads and sterns extravagantly display the art of decoration and wood carving on British, French, Spanish and Dutch ships from the 14th through the 19th centuries. As he explains, the custom of ship and sail decoration began much, much earlier, with carvings of scaly or winged symbols, draggons and lions, of religious or state importance. The carvings adorned the flagship of a fleet with its painted sails, representing style and culture. He recounts:

“We do know that shipwrights of this period… wished their ships to carry an impression of their “terror and majesty” to their enemies, and to all beholders…” p. 12

Canons being fitted to military ships along the port and starboard sides, were extended around the sterns in galleries, built above and below the quarterdecks, or walkways for masters of the ships.

Originally written in 1925, Laughton’s description of ornamentation is decisive, and supplied with examples and footnotes; he maintains his intent was to produce a popular, as opposed to scholarly, work. He begins the chapter on figureheads by noting that “we remember the analogy between a ship and a living creature”, p. 63, giving illustrations of early Greek, Phoenician, and Roman ships’ animal carvings. A review of the chapter on sterns compares similar time periods. He includes a note on American ships of the 1800s with entire human figures, an example of the evolution of figurehead design.

The book includes 48 pages of plates showing examples from built models, photographs and illustrations held by various maritime museums. Its ten chapters are supported by a subject index, a ship index, and lists of illustrations in color, black and white, and numerous line drawings. For the model builder, the chapters following an introduction are: Fashion in Ornament, the Limitation of Ornament, The Head, Figure-Heads, the Stern, Quarter Galleries and Badges, The Broadside, Inboard Works, and Painting and Gilding. The book in the Library is a republications by Dover Publications, 2001.

Explanation of terms used from Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. Second edition. Edited by I.C.B. Dear and Peter Kemp. Published by Oxford University Press, 2005. 971 p. :
Figurehead: “an ornamental carved and painted figure erected … below the bowsprit (forward of the vessel, at the bow) as a decorative emblem…” p. 302.

Flagship: “in navies, the ship that carries the admiral’s flag… in mercantile shipping lines, the ship of the commodore or senior captain of the line.” p. 314

Gallery: “the walk built out from the admiral’s or captain’s cabin in larger sailing warships…” p. 335.

Quarter deck: “in sailing ships, it is the part of the ship from which it was commanded by the captain, master or officer of the watch… or where the captain used to walk…” p. 679.

Stern: the after end of the vessel, p. 834.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See the book Old Ship Figure-heads and Sterns/ by L.G. Carr-Laughton in our online catalog.

Figure-heads: see genuine figure-heads on display from our permanent collection at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

Alchemy and naval power

2010-10-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

Gunpowder : alchemy, bombards, and pyrotechnics : the history of the explosive that changed the world. / by Jack Kelly. Basic Books, N.Y., 2004. 261 pages, illustrations, sources, and index.

Before navies had canons, ships relied on boarding and armed combat, or even earlier, used the technique of ramming other ships to damage and sink them. Gunpowder was originally created to imitate and amplify the sudden snap and split of burning bamboo. Author Jack Kelly tells the story of pyrotechnics and artificial fire in thirteen chapters with initial and ending remarks:

Prologue -- Fire drug -- Thundring noyse -- The most pernicious arts -- The devills birds -- Villainous saltpetre -- Conquest's crimson wing -- Nitro-aerial spirit -- No one reasons -- What victory costs -- History out of control -- The meeting of heaven and earth -- Appalling grandeur -- The old article -- Epilogue.

Centuries of fascination with the power of this explosive stretched to cover one thousand years: in this time military inventions intensified its capacity, responsible for historical conquests among the European monarchies. Ships carried gunpowder as early as 1337, p. 92, and Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was noted as the inventor of waging battles principally with canon. The author’s account describes gunpowder’s use from the Medieval Period and the Renaissance, claiming that it supported colonialism and world-wide exploit. A sense of the rudimentary nature of manufacturing and utilizing gunpowder is seen in the illustrations below, pages 37 and 44.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for borrowing by Museum members. See the book Gunpowder : alchemy, bombards, and pyrotechnics : the history of the explosive that changed the world. / by Jack Kelly, and other accounts of the Medieval, Renaissance, and colonical military history in our online catalog.

Navy ships: see expertly built models at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

Gold to Lumber

2010-09-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

A Pacific Legacy : A Century of Maritime Photography, 1850-1950 / Wayne Bonnett ; foreword by Robert A. Weinstein. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1991. 154 p., Illustrations, Bibliography and Index.

Lumber carrying steam schooners and barks with floating Edwardian bedrooms, p. 63; a German square-rigger, its violinist and drummers, other musicians and the cook who's about to pour a cordial, p. 60; Port Los Angeles, a wharf built in Santa Monica to serve the railroad industry before San Pedro became the port city, p. 51; a view of Terminal Island, about 1899, p. 48; and the 1944 set for the movie, "Two years Before the Mast" are just a few of the historical photographs in A Pacific Legacy. What is so compelling about these images lies in their clarity and sharpness, uncovering the maritime past in splendid detail.

The Time Line
Although indigenous peoples had travelled waterways close to the coast and ventured across the Pacific, perhaps 1400 years earlier, to populate islands they discovered, their seafaring skills were little understood by the European, Asian, and Russian explorers. And when Yankee Whaling ships appeared about 1795 at the "Sandwich Islands" (215 years ago!) to take part in whaling and trading skins, meat and oil, their role in maritime history would be relatively short-lived, as author Wayne Bonnett indicates:

"... a thousand year history of ocean commerce and sailing ships was nearing its end. The final flourishes of the American age of sailwere the clipper ships, down easters and finally the big five and six-masted schooners at the beginning of the 19th and 20th centuries." p. 25

The seven chapters organized for viewing are selected from a collection of photographs from the Museum Archives of the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park , and each chapter is headed by a discussion about the images, such as “Sail and Steam”, “Pacific Coast Ports”, “The Lumber Empire”, etc. Photographs are supported by captions and dates, photographer’s name if known.

Images in A Pacific Legacy show us something of seaport life from the 1850s well into the twentieth century: merchant ships underway or in home ports, shipwrecked sailing vessels, vessel and material goods towage, and portrayals of crew members, passengers, captains, and tourists dressed to meet a ship, or launch it, proudly wearing their best style of the day. Early photographers found excellent subjects in sailing ships and seafaring life, albeit close to home. In fact, maritime histories written about nineteenth and twentieth century ships are often less interesting without photographic illustrations of vessels. Visual representation was the single source used to identify a ship, especially when facts alone, or radio signal, or satellite equipment was not yet invented.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available in circulation for Museum members. See the book A Pacific Legacy: A Century of Maritime Photography 1850-1950 by Wayne Bonnett, forward by Robert A. Weinstein and other photographic accounts of the age of sail in our online catalog.

Merchant ships: see expertly built models at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

Archives and special collections are available to the public at the National Archives, Pacific Region.

Gold in Rough Times

2010-08-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

The Zamorano 80 Revisited: A Collector’s Update of A Classic Work. / Gordon J. Van De Water. Featherwood Press, Diamond Bar, Calif., 2010. 513 p., with 15 Illustrations, Appendices, Bibliography, and Index.

Imagine the richness of our times, being able to read history electronically or in paper, depending on our disposition in the moment, and to have the inside story from a book collector’s point of view! Such is possible following the introduction to our vast legacy in The Zamorano 80 Revisited: A Collector’s Update of A Classic Work. Author Gordon Van De Water explains that although most of the titles are rare and can only be viewed as first editions and read at special libraries, some of the material is also available on the Internet or has been reprinted. Van De Water’s book is written to illuminate the special collection created by the Zamorano Club, published in 1945. The Club’s purpose was to represent the history of published books about California, from just before the Gold Rush (1849-1853) and forward to the early twentieth century.

Rather than simply providing a list of book titles and authors, Van De Water quotes from each of the 80 books selected by the Zamorano Club, encouraging the reader’s curiosity with sample paragraphs. Book number 26 of the Zamorano 80 is Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea, first published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1840. Van De Water says of the value of Dana’s journal:

“… the book’s permanent value comes from the descriptions of the life and times of the Californios as witnessed by a young, though well educated, common seaman… “ p. 125.

Dana is quoted describing the town of Monterey, as “… the pleasantest and most civilized-looking place in California… that the inhabitants built around a Presidio for protection.” p. 126. As he illustrates, the society was shaped by arms and religion: “The common [houses] have two or three rooms which open into each other, and are furnished with a bed or two, a few chairs and tables, a looking glass, a crucifix… and small daubs of paintings enclosed in glass, and representing some miracle or martyrdom.” p. 127.

The Zamorano Club’s list of books, The Zamorano 80, captured of the essence of California in non-fiction and has been the celebrated bibliography of significant events of the past 150 years. Mark Twain, for example, wrote of his travels in Nevada, California and the Sandwich Islands in Roughing It, first published in 1872. This literature, indicative of life mostly for newcomers in the early 1800s, describes the momentous fusion of pan-European, Asian and American cultures as forming the character of the new state on the West Coast. Initially California was a Spanish territory, governed by Mexico and inspired by the French, Russian, American Indian and other traders who came by sea and overland routes to the West Coast. To make a comprehensive study of the region’s character and influences, consult The Zamorano 80. Many of the works have been reprinted recently and are available at public libraries and online. Since there were 80 original book titles in the selection, writers have proposed 20 titles to make an even 100; recently, some writers proposed important works in the late twentieth century that are relevant to the state’s evolution and current history.

Explantion of terms used:
Gold Rush: American Memory Project at the Library of Congress page with details: Early California History: An Overview including early people of the region, Spanish and Mexican California, the Gold Rush period and other topics about the region as a state.

Roughing It: an expression that means to be without comfort and conveniences, used by Mark Twain as a title to his book describing his travels in a then under-populated West coast and voyage to Hawaii.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available in circulation for Museum members. See the book Gold, Silk, Pioneers & Mail : from the California Gold Fields to the China Trade, the Story of Pacific Mail Steamship Company by Robert J. Chandler and Stephen J. Potash, and other accounts of early California in our online catalog.

Merchant ships: see expertly built models at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

Learn more about California history at the California State Archives, including the state constitutions, Family Histories, Oral Histories, Spanish and Mexican Land Grants, and Photographic Collections.

Archives and special collections are available to the public at the National Archives, Pacific Region, the National Park Service, California, and the Autry National Center of the American West.

Note other books on the subject of California history at: University of California Press and University of Nevada Press .

The American Space Program, prior to 1848.

2010-08-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

Western Places, American Myths How We Think About the West / edited by Gary L. Hausladen. Published by the University of Nevada Press, 2003. 343 p. ISBN 978-0-87417-662-9. Illustrations, Maps, Tables, and Index.

There are as many iconic images of the American West as people like us who dream about them: the features a cowboy’s sun-drenched face and hat against the “Western sky”, a pioneering woman wearing an apron, with hands clasped around the handle of a broom, or perhaps a gun, hard eyes searching the horizon beyond, an indigenous man in black vest and striped shirt from his life in the city but whose demeanor angles away from the lens keeping the secrets of his ancestry safe. Do we actually know these people or do our dreams constantly recreate them? Could we confidently point to the real border between the American East and West? And if our history is solidly rooted in fact, does it cover the effect that open space has had on the American culture?

Hauslauden’s selection of essays is divided into three parts: Continuity and Change; Enduring Regional Voices; and the West as Visionary Place. The book is illustrated with images about the land and the peoples' imprints on it, and its contributors have envisaged the past and certain influences that have given the West its character, which is evolving even today. Since this is a collection of essays about claims to the lands known as the Western United States by different groups of people, there is very little importance attached to the usual nodes of interaction -- the cities. Instead these historians have the unusual task of exploring connections people have made because of sustenance, spiritual quest, curiosity, personal, or political and environmental desires, to become Westernized.

Books in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library are available for Museum members. See the book Gold, Silk, Pioneers & Mail : from the California Gold Fields to the China Trade, the Story of Pacific Mail Steamship Company by Robert J. Chandler and Stephen J. Potash in our online catalog.

Passenger ships to the West: see expertly built models at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

Learn more about California history at the
California State Archives, including the state constitutions, Family Histories, Oral Histories, Spanish and Mexican Land Grants, and Photographic Collections.

Archives and special collections are available to the public at the National Archives, Pacific Region, the National Park Service, California, and the Autry National Center of the American West.
Note other books on the subject of the American West at the University of Nevada Press.

The fury of waves in fog

2010-07-29T16:23:00.000-07:00

Pigeon Point Lighthouse on the California Coast: Image from the website of the U.S. Coast Guard

Shipwrecks, scalawags, and scavengers : the storied waters of Pigeon Point./ JoAnn Semones. Palo Alto, Calif. : The Glencannon Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-889901-42-8. 138 p. Illustrations, Appendix, Bibliography, Index.

Tales of shipwrecks occurring off Pigeon Point between 1853 and 1953 are recounted by JoAnn Semones in Shipwrecks, scalawags, and scavengers : the storied waters of Pigeon Point. Beginning with the Carrier Pigeon, a clipper ship built in Kennebec, Maine, for whom Pigeon Point was eventually named, each chapter describes the circumstances of a wreck, gives historical details and photographic evidence of life at that time. Of the Carrier Pigeon in chapter one, floundering in the foggy and rocky coastline south of San Francisco, Semones relates:

“She boasted a hand-carved gilded figurehead of a pigeon in flight fixed just beneath her bowsprit. Symbolizing the legendary and hallowed history of the message-bearing carrier pigeon, the golden winged bird was meant to inspire the crew. The carrier pigeon was an omen of good luck --- fast, dependable, ever returning.”

“With its rocky outcroppings, heavy surf, strong currents, and thick fog banks, California’s coast was one of the most notoriously treacherous in the world. Even knowing this the crew of the Carrier Pigeon could not have foreseen her fate… Fifteen minutes after the vessel struck, seven feet of water were in the hold.”

Author JoAnn Semones' book features accounts of ships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company which carried cargo and passengers from Panama to San Francisco. Lumber-hauling steam schooners, rum runners, fishing boats, and an amphibious barge attest to the fact that no particular hull design was immune to the fury of coastal waves in fog that obscures safe navigation. These sad tales are attended by an Appendix listing the names of those lost on each of the ships and a Bibliography of General Sources, with articles on specific shipwrecks.

Pigeon Point: look for more history and lighthouses along the West coast on the web pages of the U.S. Coast Guard
Clipper ships: see expertly built models at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.
Fishing boats: on display at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in the permanent exhibit “Caught Canned and Eaten”
Pacific Mail Steamship Company: one of the West coast shipping lines of the twentieth century. See the book Gold, Silk, Pioneers & Mail : from the California Gold Fields to the China Trade, the Story of Pacific Mail Steamship Company by Robert J. Chandler and Stephen J. Potash in our online catalog.

Ships wrecked, silk, tea, lumber, and fish

2010-07-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

Hard Luck Coast: the Perilous Reefs of Point Montara. / JoAnn Semones
Published by The Glencannon Press, 2009. 188 p., illustrations, appendix, bibliography, index.

Author by JoAnn Semones' Hard Luck Coast: the Perilous Reefs of Point Montara presents the stories of ships wrecked along the California coast south of San Francisco between 1851 and 1946. Her thirteen chapters are illustrated with portraits lending personal significance to the events as they affected captains and crew of merchant ships and their cargoes from the Far East. Events during the Civil War, the evolution of the Revenue Cutter Service, the steam schooner as a lumber-carrying vessel, iron hulled ships and their demise in vessel design, fill some of the tales of hard luck. Semones recounts the story of the Leelanaw as one of the reasons for the U.S. entering World War I, and an episode near the end of World War II of a Navy Patrol vessel carrying radioactive fish that shipwrecked near Half Moon Bay. Semones' interpretation of history reveals the historical impact these ships brought to trade, hull design, voyages, and the transport of dangerous cargo. The stories of people who built the ships, mastered and crewed on them, or whose ideas and work preceded the failure of a ship in the treacherous fog along the coast at the Point Montara Light explain U.S. and world history that was impacted by light stations on the West Coast. See her general bibliography and listing of articles from journals and newspapers for primary sources available to the public.

Explanation of terms:

Far East: a term used in the 19th century for coastal edges of China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia.
Half-Moon Bay: a city on the coast of California, south of San Francisco.

Point Montara Light: visit the U.S. Coast Guard’s web site: Historic Light Station Information and Photography for California for more information.
Revenue Cutter Service: an organization of ships performing customs regulation from about 1789 to 1849. See the Library books: The U.S. Revenue Cutters in the Civil War. / By Florence Kern.
The United States Coast Guard, 1790-1915; a definitive history (with a postscript: 1915-1949). / By Stephen H. Evans.

Become a Museum Volunteer:

At the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, volunteers answer questions at the front desk, give museum tours, operate the tug ANGELS GATE, use the Morse code, build ship models, and staff The Sea Chest, the museum’s gift shop. Visit the web page for more information.

Otter Skins

2010-07-09T16:19:00.001-07:00

Otter Skins, Boston ships, and China Goods; the Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785-1841 by James R. Gibson. Published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, Canada, 1992. Maps, tables, illustrations, portraits, notes, bibliography, and index.

Did you know the trade value of a single otter skin in the 1790s was a length of cloth two fathoms (about 12 feet) long? Who were the Indians of the Northwest coast? How did the purchase of pelts and skins in the Northwest and their resale on the South coast of China affect the cultures involved? And what were other trade interests of Russia, Spain, Great Britain and America between 1790 and 1840?

In ten chapters, author Gibson presents more than 50 years of trade among the Northwest Indians and the Euroamericans. He begins in Russian Headstart and Spanish Sideline discussing how the Russian expedition across the Bering Sea in 1741 began the story of trade in sea-otter pelts, and that the Spanish, already inhabiting the south coast, “… wished to keep the coast unexplored and undeveloped as a wilderness buffer against foreign penetration of the Californias and Mexico, where their primary concerns lay.” p. 18. Following are The British Disclosure, a chapter in which the author points to Captain Cook’s voyages of geographic discovery for the Europeans, and subsequent British adventurers; and the American Takeover, introducing the attraction that Yankee merchant shipping had for goods from Asia, especially as a product of commerce they, rather than Great Britain controlled.

Gibson’s work is gleaned from journals, diaries, ships’ logs, histories and other archival sources. The Notes section verifies each citation and is extensive, especially coupled with his Bibliography. Details, rather than commentary, of intertribal wars, Tlingit tobacco, Russian encounters with Spanish explorers, Yankee merchants’ experiences desire for ginseng, and that in Canton, China, traders would pay between $80-90 per fur pelt, support the overall concept of each chapter. At this period of time period in history, it was the Euroamericans who sought to exploit and control geographic traffic, commerce and areas beyond their sphere of influence.

The Natives had already intensely and frequently traded among themselves prior to the arrival of Europeans. In the Introduction, p. 8, “Trade was well suited to Northwest Coast Indian society…” and “Both scarce and specialized commodities were traded up and down the coast… mountain-goat hair “blankets” (ceremonial robes), ermine skins, copper plates, and spruce root baskets from the Tlingits; dugout cedar canoes from the Haida… and candlefish oil to be burned as candles, shark’s teeth and dentalia shells for ornament, a standard of value for the Chinooks.” Elk hide was made into “leather war costumes”, dressed and folded double or triple; they could stop arrows and lances and even musket and pistol balls at a distance.”

Gibson’s rich association of cultural and political interests is supported by his rich understanding of the players and events of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His chapters, the British Comeback, China Market, Modes of Trade, Changes in Trade and the New Northwest Trade indicate the details of intense rivalry between nations and the implications of international trade for the well-being of all involved. Finally, culminating his discussion of social impact and history of Pacific territories and countries, his tenth chapter is The Impact of the Trade where specific relevance to the Northwest Coast, South China and New England is balanced with a review of the Hawaiian Islands, their history in trade with foreign merchant shipping.

Explanation of terms:
Fathoms explained as a measurement of length
Californias : refers to Alta California and Baja California
Tlingit: one of the tribes of the Northwest Coast
Ginseng: a medicinal root of a plant native to China.
Haida: one of the tribes of the Northwest Coast,
Chinook: one of the tribes of the Northwest Coast
Elk: a large horned mammal of the Northern hemisphere
Pacific: one of the world’s oceans bordered by Antarctica in the south, South America and North America on its eastern edges, and Russia, China, the Philippine Islands, and Australia on its western edges.
Hawaiian Islands: This site is a portal to sites about the ecology and natural environment. Choose from Environmental Data Organizations and General Interest tabs that take you to links about weather and climate, ecology, water quality, plant and animal life, sanctuaries, landmarks and maps, and much more.

Museum Volunteer: At the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, volunteers answer questions at the front desk, give museum tours, operate the tug ANGELS GATE, use the Morse code, build ship models, and staff The Sea Chest, the museum’s gift shop.

Gold before statehood!

2010-06-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Forty-Niners ‘Round the Horn by Charles R. Schultz. Columbia, south Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Illustrations, Bibliographes, Indexes.

Charles Schultz’s Forty-Niners ‘Round the Horn describes the social history of gold seekers who had chosen to sail to reach California mine regions from the east coast of North America. Rather than take overland routes, which, although better known, were reputed to have disastrous consequences for some of the seekers, the gold seekers easily sought passage on one of the vessels bound for the west coast, sailing there by way of Cape Horn.

Schultz prepared this volume from researching diaries and letters written on many voyages. His chapters are organized by theme, as “Preparations”, “Underway at Last”, “Food and Drink”, “Weather Problems”, “People Problems”, etc., provide the setting for his portrayal. His notes section, as well as the bibliography, is extensive. Both support quotations he uses for details of the 6-month-long passages to the port of San Francisco. Illustrations from Harper’s Weekly, Century Magazine, books on California history, posters, and journal illustrations provide views of daily lives and amusements.

The author depicts “… how passengers lived on board the sailing vessels in which they traveled… the observance of Sundays, holidays and special days such as birthdays and anniversaries” on such vessels as the ELVIRA, the DANIEL WEBSTER, the LENORE, the JANE PARKER, and the HENRY WARE, and many more ships sailing from Boston or New York and other Atlantic Coast ports. As thousands of discreet details are represented here, the vessel index in Forty-niners and general index give ships’ names, personal and corporate names and offers many ways to locate information within the text.

Online sources of more information about the gold seekers:

The Open Directory Project is a web portal of sites relevant to this period.
Huntington Library’s website offers many illustrations from the period of 1848-1858 showing lifestyle and the business of gold seeking in Land of Golden Dreams, California in the Gold Rush Decade, 1848-1858.
Read more personal histories of gold seekers.

Los Angeles Maritime Museum Volunteers:

At the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, volunteers answer questions at the front desk, give museum tours, operate the tug ANGELS GATE, use the Morse code, build ship models, and staff The Sea Chest, the museum’s gift shop.

Skin clothes, Arctic style

2010-06-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

Image of a "Replica of the shaman Qingailisaq's parka. Made by Rachel Uyarasuk, Igloolik, c.1989" appears on the back cover of Arctic Clothing of North America—Alaska, Canada, Greenland.

Although we usually think of maritime history as pertaining mainly to vessels, naval, merchant, or recreational, the interaction with distance cultures is the result of ocean travels, campaigns and endeavors of all kinds. So the discovery of materials and methods for producing clothing, preparing food, as well as extoic natural resources, was a gold mine of opportunity and provided explorers with treasures of all kinds to bring home.

Arctic Clothing of North America—Alaska, Canada, Greenland. / Edited by J.C.H. King, Birgit Pauksztat, and Robert Storrie. Published by McGill-Queens University, 2005. 160 p., color illustrations, maps, bibliography and index.

This book about clothing grew from exhibitions on Eskimo boots in Great Britain in the 1980s. Since then anthropologists and biologists have studied methods of making skin clothing, with emphasis on technique and cultural and environmental influences. It has five parts, beginning with Personal Narratives, progressing to Materials, Styles and Techniques, Change and Responses to Outside Influences, and finally Clothing and Art.

You can learn how the clothing was made with techniques for preparing the pelts and creating garments for humans from pieces of marine animal skins. Waterproof boots, parkas and even stockings were crafted with great skill by cutting and stitching methods devised to prevent the loss of heat or create conditions of dampness. In the sub-freezing temperatures of the Arctic regions, small tears or openings could expose the wearer to risk of frostbite or even death, leaving their families without a food-procuring hunter. The Eskimo people of Alaska, the Inuit people of Canada, and the Greenlanders all produced skin clothing that protected them from their environment.

Museum volunteer: At the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, volunteers answer questions at the front desk, give museum tours, operate the tug ANGELS GATE, use the Morse code, build ship models, and staff The Sea Chest, the museum’s gift shop. Visit the web page at http://www.lamaritimemuseum.org/volunter.htm for more information.

Entradas de Baja California

2010-06-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

A Maritime History of Baja California: A Photographic Essay on the Harbors, Anchorages, and Special Ships of the Baja California Peninsula. / by Ed Vernon. Published by the Maritime Museum of San Diego and University of New Mexico Press, 2009. 285 p. Timeline, Glossary and index.

Complete with maps, illustrations and unusual photographic images of ships in harbors, The Maritime History of Baja California by Edward W. Vernon delivers a fascinating explanation of the peninsula’s history. In the Preface, Rodney J. Taylor composes this impression of the work:

“This is Ed Vernon’s second in a series of photographic journals that are really love poems to this place…. His collection is not orthodox. Rather than predictably concentrating on magnificent 16th-century galleons, such as … Cabrillo’s San Salvador, he also focuses on working ships, expedition packet ships, and sea-otter fur traders… His chief contribution… is that he captures a sense of the beauty and history to be found in the landscape, the sheltered bays, and the ships that carried so many adventures… ” p. vii-viii.

Global exchange, 1700s style

2010-05-27T16:35:00.000-07:00

Sailors and traders : a maritime history of the Pacific peoples / by Alastair Couper. Published by the University of Hawai'i Press, 2009. 262 p., illustrations, maps.

Selected from the new book shelf are Sailors and traders : a maritime history of the Pacific peoples / by Alastair Couper and A Maritime history of Baja California by Edward W. Vernon. Both books offer amazing insight into changes that occurred because of maritime influence on the indigenous societies and ways of life at the time of their discovery by people from as far away as Spain and the Netherlands.

Sailors and Traders is a summary history: its intent is to include the most important events of ocean and island cultural exploration, enriched by details about the interaction between explorers and native people of New Zealand, the Maoris. From pages 67-68, the author characterizes the attitudes prevalent among the explorers:

“… members of the first exploration ships were the scientists and artists, whose perceptions were politically influential… The European scientists were so ethnocentric that they were unable to learn much from the skills and knowledge of Pacific people… The proud and intelligent Tupaia of Tahiti must have carried enormous indigenous knowledge, most of which remained unrecorded… Only in the twentieth century did this knowledge become more clearly recognized by Europeans as the essential basis of marine science.”

The book has eleven chapters : besides an encapsulation of the first explorers of the Pacific, he discusses the maritime and trade events leading to foreign settlement and commerce; he also considers shipping companies, maritime law, and the “spheres of influence of maritime trade”, along with photographs . An epilogue, “Some contemporary resonances”, completes his essay.

In a summary on pages 97 and 98, he states, “The period of 1800 to the 1860s brought most of the main islands of Polynesia and several elsewhere to the edge of the capitalist system. This was carried to them by commercial ships… and new commodities were incorporated into indigenous channels of trade… and the accumulation of personal wealth for the… deeply entrenched kingships of Tahiti and Hawai’i. One of the most lasting effects was the creation of a working class at sea and ashore. To them the ship was among the most remarkable of the material changes which Euopeans had introduced into the life of the Pacific. ”

Explanation of terms used:
new book shelf: as the library acquires or receives donations, they are noted on the web site and cataloged on LibraryThing.com. Look for a posting on The Maritime History of Baja California, next week.

Image from Wikipedia, engraved after Sydney Parkinson's sketch of a Maori chief.

Maoris: explained on page 187 of South Pacific A to Z. / Robert S. Kane. Published by Doubleday, 1966. “New Zealand’s earliest known inhabitants were a people believed to be Polynesian… They came in giant canoes… all the way from French Polynesia. The earliest of these Pacific Vikings probably arrived in New Zealand in the 12th century.” Moreover, on page 440, Geography of the Pacific. / Otis W. Freeman, editor. N.Y.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1951, “Prior to their migrations to New Zealand were already skilled navigators, fearless warriors, and expert agriculturalists.” Read about the Maori culture, origins, migrations and more in the Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

Tupaia: the Tahitian priest who first met Europeans Captain James Cook and his botanist Joseph Banks in 1768, and became a translator and interpreter of the Maori language in New Zealand for the explorers.

epilogue: "a concluding part adding to a literary work..." p. 480, Random House Dictionary, 1966.

Vitamins and health aboard ship

2010-05-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

Blackcurrant fruits.

Did you know? We take it for granted that citrus fruits like oranges and limes from our local supermarkets and groceries provide us with a daily morning drink and vitamin C. But before it was discovered that lemons, limes, and blackcurrants contain a potent substance called anti-scorbutic acid good for promoting healthy skin and gums in cases of poor nutrition, sailors and crew on ships long at sea were in danger of loosing their lives to the disease called scurvy.

Several books have been written about this powerfully devastating disease, and may be popular in Great Britain's history, as it directly affected exploratory voyages and naval excursions. The back cover of our featured book states, "During the Age of Sail, scurvy was responsible for more deaths at sea than war, piracy, storms and shipwreck combined".

The Age of Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner and a Gentleman helped Britain win the Battle of Trafalgar. by Stephen Bown. Summersdale Press, 2005. ISBN 1 84024 402 X

If as a sailor or long-term traveller, you had contracted scurvy from a poor diet, your symptoms would have been pouchy gums, teeth that fell out, skin discoloration, lethargy and weakness, and finally, death. The British were probably first to discover, during long voyages of the 17th and 18th centuries, that drinking the juice of citrus fruits could delay the horrors of scurvy and maintain relative health aboard. These fruits were found on expeditions to the South Pacific where citrus fruits are native.

Explanation of terms used:
“Scurvy, a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, was very prevalent at sea between the 16th and 19th centuries owing to the difficulty of preserving fresh fruits and vegetables. It usually became apparent after about six weeks on salt provisions. It became a common ailment when long voyages began in the 16th century and continued until passages were shortened in the age of steam, and canned vegetables became available.” --- p. 763 Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, edited by Peter Kemp. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Blackcurrant: name of a kind of berry native to Great Britain and other Northern European countries.

Web sites of interest:
The author Stephen Bown’s site is available here.
Wikipedia's article on Blackcurrants.
The Black Currant Foundation.
History of Scurvy by Jonathan Lamb.

Bread-fruit bounty

2010-05-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

Drawing by Sydney Parkinson, an artist, sailing on board the Endeavor with Captain Cook, who made meticulous botanical drawings of new discoveries.

Bread growing on trees that can be baked, or sliced and eaten with fish, and spiced to your liking---this was a discovery made for the Europeans by Captain James Cook when encountering the breadfruit tree in Tahiti during his first excursion to the South Pacific. His sailing-master on a later voyage was William Bligh. Bligh later became captain of his own ship, bound again for Tahiti, with the promise of obtaining and then transporting the wondrous fruit to islands in the Caribbean where there were plantations of sugar and pineapple and other exotic crops grown for European taste. Breadfruit became a staple food of the slave laborers. Bligh, having survived mutiny on his ship the BOUNTY, commandeered a lifeboat and with 18 crew members rowed to safety in Timor, a 3600 mile journey, that, “… is still regarded as perhaps the most outstanding feat of seamanship and navigation ever conducted in a small boat.” Caroline Alexander, Smithsonian magazine, September 2009, p. 58. In the article, Alexander describes Bligh’s 2nd voyage on the PROVIDENCE, to the island of Tahiti to acquire botanical specimens and whole plants which were to be shipped east to the West Indies. The breadfruit was at the time considered, by Captain Cook and botanist Joseph Banks, a practical food for slave laborers on the Caribbean Islands since it was easier to prepare and eat than grains, etc. These islands had been absorbing new vegetation, fruit and coffee since Columbus, in 1494, and the Spanish, as early as 1513.

Explanation of terms:
Captain James Cook (1728 - 1779) sailed on three voyages for Britain's Royal Society. He died in Hawaii before completing his third voyage.
William Bligh (1754-1815) sailed for Britain’s Admiralty and died in England after a life at sea.
BOUNTY: Bligh’s first ship to the Pacific Ocean.
PROVIDENCE: Bligh’s second ship bound for Tahiti and the West Indies
Timor: located in the Indonesian archipelago.

Books in the Maritime Research Library on William Bligh:

The Bligh notebook : rough account, Lieutenant Wm. Bligh's voyage in the Bounty's launch from the ship to Tofua & from thence to Timor, 28 April to 14 June 1789 : with a draft list of the Bounty mutineers. / transcription and facsimile edited by John Bach.

Captain Bligh & Mr. Christian; the men and the mutiny. / by Richard Hough.

Web sites of interest:
Wikipedia's articles on breadfruit and the botanical description of breadfruit.

Artists On Board

2010-05-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

Captain Cook in the Pacific. / Nigel Rigby and Pieter van der Merwe. Greenwich, England: National Maritime Museum, 2002. 144 p., color illustrations.

When James Cook returned to Plymouth, England in 1771 from his first voyage to Tahiti, Australia and beyond, he surrendered his journal as master of the ship. The journals were proof of the enterprise and provided information about the excursion to the financial supporters of the voyages. Travelers on these ships were pledged to present their journals and logs to the Admiralty, although some kept their own versions privately for publication and fame later on. Of immense value to the members of the Royal Society awaiting news of Cook’s voyages were the drawings, engravings and paintings by ships’ artists that served to inform them about the wonders of distant lands in the Pacific Ocean, the people and their resources.

A few botanists, astronomers, topographers, and painters, etc., accompanied the crew and Captain Cook on the ships Endeavor, Resolution, Adventure and Discovery as they sailed into unknown waters on three separate voyages between 1768 and 1779. The scientists’ tasks were to painstakingly examine the soil, plants, animals, and local resources, to describe and illustrate them in journals and to actively preserve samples and seeds of trees, fruits and grains, and if any minerals and valuable stones were available, to bring them back to Britain for examination. Of the artists who accompanied these voyages, William Hodges became famous for his dreamy and romantic visions of the Pacific coves where Cook’s ships anchored. Paintings by him were shipped back to England for immediate viewing. (Rigby and van der Merwe, p.42)

Nu-tka: Captain Cook and The Spanish Explorers on the Coast. / Barbara S. Efrat and W.J. Langlois, editors. Victoria, British Columbia: Sound Heritage, Volume VII, Number 1, 1978. 101 p., illustrations.

The coasts and islands of the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand provided work for the ships’ topographers who were busy on these voyages creating maps of as yet unknown territories beyond Southeast Asia and the Philippines. During Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific, he searched the West Coast of North America for the Northwest Passage. Instead he found the inhabitants of islands and inlets along what is now western Canada and southern Alaska. Some of these people are known as the Nootka Indians who traded fur pelts with the British voyagers. The topographer John Webber is better known to us as a portrait engraver, who created likenesses of the Nookta, the landscape and of James Cook himself.

Explanation of terms used:
James Cook (1728-1779): captain of the British ships Endeavor, Resolution, Adventurer and Discovery entrusted with scientific inquiry in the late 18th century
Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce: since 1754 improved trade and industry through science. (Rigby and van der Merwe, p.79)
Admiralty: British organization for maritime issues
botanists, astronomers, topographers: scientists selected for the purpose of advancing British claims to knowledge in plant science, geology and map making, respectively.
third voyage to the Pacific: Cook’s expedition, 1776-1780, to locate the Northwest Passage, a mythical route from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the North Pole.
Nootka: tribe of people who inhabited a part of Vancouver Island now known as Nootka Island

Book titles from the Library: Be sure to look at the Maritime Museum Research Library pages on the web. You can find many of the books cataloged at LibraryThing.com. Los Angeles Maritime Museum members can borrow books for a three-week period.

Web sites of Interest:

William Hodges at the web site of the national Maritime Museum of Greenwich, England.

John Webber: See ArtEncyclopedia's collection of sites about the artist.
Nootka culture from Canadian Culture Online.

The First Pacific Ocean Explorers were Natives

2010-04-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

Illustration from The Pacific Navigators. / Oliver E. Allen. Alexandria, Virginia: Time Life Books, 1980.

European explorers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries encountered Pacific Islanders who matched their ability to navigate unknown waters. The illustration here depicts a band of travelers who migrated, or island-hopped, in search of home, resources and food. Since ancient times, not having adopted nation-statehood, they nonetheless defended themselves. When they lost wars, or ran out of food, the living environment became unsustainable, and they moved on. Polynesians were aggressive voyagers, their survival depended on it. Their story begins as an intimate conversation with nature, not with iron and steel; sailing by celestial navigation, they surpassed European knowledge of the Pacific.

“They crossed 15 million square miles of unknown ocean, and by the eighth century had colonized virtually every habitable spec in a vast triangle bound by Hawaii on the north, New Zealand in the southwest and Easter Island to the east.” – Allen, p. 98.

Explanation of terms used:
argonaut: explained from ancient Greek and common useage.
European explorers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries: Magellan was the first circumnavigator; the Dutch claimed the Spice Islands, and finally the British led enterprises of exploration across the Pacific Ocean.

More books about Pacific Islanders from historical points of view:

Argonauts of the Western Pacific. / Bronislaw Malinowski. New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1961. 527 p., illustrations, maps, index.

Malinowski's work considered the lives and customs of the Melanesians of New Guinea. His participation in an expedition there between 1914-1918 culminated in this book, originally published in 1922, became a classic in anthropology in the 20th century.

Ancient Voyagers in Polynesia. / Andrew Sharp. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964. 136 p. plus sources and index.

Sharp's explanation of the history of Polynesian voyages of discovery was a lively scholarly debate when it was published in 1963.

Vikings of the Pacific. / Peter H. Buck. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1972, c1959. 339 p., illustrations, index.

Written by a native of New Zealand and anthropologist at the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, this account contains the view and the images, both modern and several hundreds of years old, from the collections of the Museum.

Captain Cook and Kamehameha the Great

2010-04-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

The Rise and Fall of the Hawaiian Kingdom: A Pictorial History; A Concise Picture History of Hawaii and Its Rulers from the Birth of Kamehameha the Great to the Establishment of the Territory of Hawaii in 1900. / by Robert Wiesniewski.Honolulu : Published and Distributed by Pacific Basin Enterprises, c1987.

The Rise and Fall of the Hawaiian Kingdom… is a fascinating account, albeit from the European point of view, of the history of our 50th state. Two key points about its history: no one in Europe knew Hawaii existed until James Cook and his expedition landed there, and, it may be the only island tribal culture in history to maintain a monarchy while meeting the Europeans on their own terms. Unknown to Europeans until Captain Cook “discovered” it for them in 1778, the Hawaiian Islands lie at a distinct geographic advantage, since they are located centrally between landfall in Asia, Australia, Chile, Panama, and the West coast of North America. The archipelago became a roadstead for voyagers trading in fur, sandalwood and other goods: its wealth and independence between 1812 and 1900 transformed an ancient culture to modern ways. This unique position was carefully guarded by the warrior-king, Kamehameha the Great, between 1805 and 1819, and continued through Kamehameha V’s reign into the 1870s. The Kingdom of Hawaii achieved status in Pacific trade, but finally was defeated as a sovereign power at the hands of the Americans who wished to claim all of Hawaii for their own interests.

Kamehameha, the grandson of an earlier ruler of the island of Hawaii, was groomed from birth to be a warrior. The vision of their first monarch, King Kamehameha (1758-1819), was to unite the islands of Hawaii, Oahu and Kauai under his rule.
“Kamehameha learned spear throwing and the rudimentary tactics of warfare… Without a written language, he learned navigation, astronomy, religious ceremonies, prayers and kapus (taboos), and other vital information necessary to become an Alii-aimoku (a District Chief).” (Wisniewski, p. 13)

The booklet is a 1979 version of Hawaiian history and features explanatory text and many illustrations and photographs depicting the Hawaiian monarchy, the influence of European, Chinese and American traders, and a glimpse of the cultural values that led to complete transformation of the Kingdom into a Territory (of the U.S.) and finally to statehood in 1959. More recent scholarship reveals the Hawaiian culture and the nature of the conflict between cultures.

Resources on Hawaii history on the Web:
The Hawaiian Historical Society was founded in 1892. Publishers of the Hawaiian Journal of History, Books and papers about the early Hawaiian government, cultural influences of Spanish America and Russia, trade and canoe voyages of Hawaiians, they also offer transcribed radio broadcasts of “Hawai’i History Moments”, Hawaiian culture from A to Z.

HawaiiHistory.org a community learning center is a lively site containing expert-reviewed pages of articles, photographs and contributions by readers on the history of Hawai’i.

The Bishop Museum began to collect artifacts of the history of Hawai’I and Pacific Islands in 1889.

Other books by Richard Wisniewski:
Hawaiian monarchs and their palaces : a pictorial history / compiled, written, and edited by Richard A. Wisniewski. Honolulu : Published and Distributed by Pacific Basin Enterprises, c1987.

Hawaii, the territorial years, 1900-1959 : a pictorial history / compiled, written, and edited by Richard A. Wisniewski. Honolulu, Hawaii (P.O. Box 8924, Honolulu 96815) : Pacific Basin Enterprises, c1984.

Hawaiian history and culture:
Voyage: The Discovery of Hawaii. / Herb Kawainui Kane. Honolulu: Island Heritage Limited, 1976.

Explanation of words:
Archipelago: explained from a geological and geographical point of view.
Hawaiian Archipelago: This site is a portal to sites about the ecology and natural environment. Choose from Environmental Data Organizations and General Interest tabs that take you to links about weather and climate, ecology, water quality, plant and animal life, sanctuaries, landmarks and maps, and much more.
Roadstead:a sheltered offshore anchorage for ships, as explained by the Free Dictionary online.

240-year-old science

2010-04-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific: As Told by Selections of His Own Journals 1768-1779 / edited by A. Grenfell Price. Published by Dover Publications, New York, 1971. ISBN 79145750, 292p.

240 years ago Captain James Cook sailed to Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Batavia, and then around South Africa and home to England in the Endeavor on the first of his three voyages to the Pacific Ocean between 1768-1779.
“The greatest of sailor explorers the world has known…” Percy Adams, Introduction.
“… no man did more to alter and correct the map of the earth, abandoning the great southern Terra Incognita and the equally mythical Northwest Passage. After him map makers were able to correctly represent Australia’s east coast and the Great Barrier Reef, Hawaii, and northwest coast of North America, and dozens of islands in Polynesia, New Zealand as two islands.”

Accomplishing these discoveries, he fulfilled the orders bestowed on him in the spring of 1768 by the British Admiralty and Royal Society to monitor the transit of Venus. European countries were engaged in a race for scientific discoveries, and Great Britain wished to take the lead in astronomy and map making.

His journals are compelling accounts of his expeditions, the manner in which he kept his crew healthy and free of scurvy, the description of life in societies of the Pacific Islanders, and of the supernumeraries aboard with their own scientific agenda.

Selected titles about Captain Cook:
Farther than Any Man: the Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook. / Martin Dugard. New York: Pocket Books, 2001.

Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook. / Nicholas Thomas. New York: Walker & Company, 2003. Read by Museum Volunteer Ron Ellis.

Captain Cook in the Pacific. / Nigel Rigby and Pieter van der Merwe. Greenwich, England : National Maritime Museum, 2002.

Captain Cook’s Second Voyage. / John Elliot and Richard Pickersgill. London, England: Caliban Books, 1984.

Nu-Tka: Captain Cook and the Spanish Explorers on the Coast. / Barbara S. Efrat and W.J. Langlois, editors. Victoria, Canada: Sound Heritage, Vol. 7, Number 1, 1978.

Explanation of Words and Phrases:
Percy Adams: a travel writer who focused on books written by early explorers.
Tahiti: named King George’s Island when first sited by Samuel Wallis in 1767.
Batavia: name of Indonesia by Dutch settlers
Transit of Venus
Hawaiian visit of James Cook Waimea, Hawaii
Scurvy: disease contracted by sailors who ate no vitamin C, due to lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in their diet.
Supernumeraries: a traveler, not a sailor, “an extra person”, from (Random House Dictionary, ©1966.)
Museum volunteer: At the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, volunteers answer questions at the front desk, give museum tours, operate the tug ANGELS GATE, use the Morse code, build ship models, and staff The Sea Chest, the museum’s gift shop. Visit the web page for more information.

Propelled by teams of 170 oarsmen...

2010-04-01T15:04:00.000-07:00

The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels since Pre-classical Times. / Edited by Robert Gardiner. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1995. ISBN 155750024-X. 256 p., illustrations.

… galleys of Ancient Greeks were first pictured on pottery, coins and stone carvings. Oar-powered galleys were built as warships, merchantmen, or transports and plied the waters of the Mediterranean and other small seas from 3000 BC to the Middle Ages. Galleys are known by different names: pentecontors, biremes and triremes, indicating two and three levels of rowing oarsmen. In triremes, up to 170 oarsmen pushed and pulled their ship at a speed of 8 to 10 knots in short bursts called flights of half-days or more. These ships were long and narrow, would capsize in ocean waters and so in wars were best for maritime attack along coastlines. Conditions for oarsmen were severe: they were permitted about two quarts of water per day but were given no bathrooms aboard and very little space for air. Modern authors give us details of the battles collected from the ancient scripts of Homer and others. These were confirmed by the reconstruction and sailing of triremes like the OLYMPIAS, a joint project of the Hellenic Navy and the Trireme Trust of Britain in 1987.
See The Age of the Galley for the archaeology of galley ships, their design and architecture, and the human power that propelled the fleet of ancient navies.

More books from the Maritime Museum Library* on galleys and triremes:
The Athenian Trireme: the History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship. / J.S. Morrison and J.F. Coates. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ISBN 0521311004. 266 p., illustrations, photographs and maps.

The Earliest Ships: The Evolution of Boats into Ships. / Edited by Robert Gardiner. Edison, N.J. : Chartwell Books, 2001, c1996 by Conway Maritime Press. 143 p., illustrations.

Oared Fighting Ships: From Classical Times to the Coming of Steam. R. C. Anderson. London, England: Percival Marshall, 1962. 102 p., illustrations and plates.

The Ancient Mariners. / Colin Thubron. New York, N.Y.: Time-Life Books, Inc., 1981. ISBN 0809427389. 176 p., illustrations, some in color.

* also available in public libraries.

Explanation of terms from the pages of The Age of the Galley:

Ancient Greeks = Minoans from the island of Crete who were explorers.
The Mediterranean = The Mediterranean Sea opening to the Atlantic Ocean on the western side and the Red Sea at the eastern extreme.
3000 BC to the Middle Ages = the period in history from about 5000 years ago to about 600 years ago.
pentecontors, biremes and triremes = long, narrow ships propelled by oars.
Homer and others = Greek Classical writers Herodotus and Thucydides.
reconstruction = a replica or exact copy of a historical ship.
OLYMPIAS = the reconstruction of a Greek trireme.
ancient navies = Egyptian, Cretan or Minoan, Phoenician.

Young, Modern and with Rowing Power.

2010-03-29T15:41:00.000-07:00

On target for Women’s History month, at least two women have met astounding challenges on the high seas, Katie Spotz and Abby Sunderland. Rowing her 19 foot row-boat single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean, in the months of January, February and March, 2010, Katie Spotz made the 2817 mile trip from Dakar, Senegal to Georgetown, Guyana in 70 days and 6 hours. Her AIS, GPS systems and devices guided her as she braved waves and wind, and followed a pre-determined course over deep water and the Continental Shelf. She did it for the challenge, and for the sake of clean drinking water in developing countries. She rowed 10 hours a day, cooked her meals, wrote her blog, and slept, when she wasn’t caring for the equipment aboard her craft. Her triumph was reported all over the press and electronic media as she was the youngest person to complete this journey continent to continent on human power alone!

See more about fantastic circumnavigators and their voyages on these sites:

List of circumnavigators by the Joshua Slocum Society showing many details including the navigator’s name and country of origin, sailboat type and rigging, and length of the trip.

Lots of facts: women soloists, young soloists, fastest circumnavigations, etc. at Deep Radio Show.

Really nice photographs and lots of informative text on rowing the oceans, at Around n’ Over.

West coast navigators.

Single-handed circumnavigators and the first two chapters of Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World at Seven Oceans.

See rowers Colin Angus and Julie Wafaei at their website.

Plying wind and waves, proving confidence in the technology, these younger mariners are braving the wildest of journeys. Now it’s her turn, Abby Sunderland.

Women of Maritime History

2010-03-16T12:10:00.001-07:00

Women Who Kept the Lights: An Illustrated History of Female Lighthouse Keepers. / Mary Louise Clifford and J. Candace Clifford. Williamsburg, Virginia: Cypress Communications, 1993. ISBN 0963641204. 183 p. incl. Bibliography and Index.

This collection of stories is a powerful testament to women in maritime history. Portraits and graphic portrayals of these women lighthouse keepers speak of determination, personal strength, and commitment in lonely, isolated posts. They served coast and inland lighthouses and the navigators sailing in dangerous waters from the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries. In other words, many of these stories took place before the American Civil War (1860-1865), into the 1920s, and in California just prior to World War I (1917-1921). Five of the book’s 20 accounts tell of women lighthouse keepers on the California Coast: Point Pinos and Angel Island Lights, Mare Island Light, Santa Cruz Light, Santa Barbara Light, and Point Fermin Light, tracking the long coast from San Francisco Bay to San Pedro. Acts of bravery and heroism were highlighted by hourly attention to the light, its lamp, lens, fuel mechanism for lighting the lamp, and the grounds and house attached. If sailors were rescued from storms the house served as a way-station until the injured could be moved, the lighthouse keepers were life-savers as well as lamp-lighters.

Consider the lives of lighthouse keepers who managed to warn mariners in fog despite failures of the lamp apparatus, who experienced damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, performed first aid, home-schooled their children, hired and trained workers, and repaired and kept equipment working! These women’s lives are heroic, starting with their imagination and sheer bravado in the face of adverse situations, when supplies were low, equipment failing, and no one around to help! Their dedication to serve was a very prominent characteristic, keeping navigators alerted to danger and from disaster along their shores.

A second edition was published in 2001; the book is available at public libraries. The 1993 edition is available for circulation to Museum Members at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum Research Library.

Explanation of terms and online links:
Circulation to Museum Members: with your Museum Membership you may borrow books for a 3-week time period. Please call the Library for more information.

See an account of “Women in Transportation”, a document from the publications page of the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. It was written in honor of women pioneers and engineers in maritime as well as other areas of transportation.

The following definitions are from Encyclopedia of Nautical Knowledge. /W.A. McEwen and A.H. Lewis. Cambridge, Maryland: Cornell Maritime Press. 1953.

Lamp: “the familiar instrument for providing light…” and “a fixed light, as shown by a lighthouse, a continuous light of constant brilliancy.” ---from p. 275, 293.
Lens, Fresnel: “…a lens originally designed for lighthouses by Augustin Jean Fresnel, French optician and geometer (1788-1827). --- p. 287
Lighthouse keepers: from “light-keeper, person charged with care and operation of lighting apparatus of a lighthouse or lightship.” --- p. 293.
Maritime: “…pertaining to or connected with the sea in respect to commerce, navigation, or shipping…” --- from p. 327.

Point Fermin Lighthouse: built in 1874 and equipped with a Fresnel lens, located in San Pedro, on a bluff above San Pedro Bay. Visit the Point Fermin Lighthouse web site here.
Post: an appointment to service; a structure on land; “…the first lighthouse built in the U.S. was in Plymouth Harbor, Massachusetts in 1776; the first lighthouse on the California Coast was in San Francisco Bay just after the Gold Rush in 1854…” ---Women Who Kept the Lights, Introduction.

Punta Arenas, Chile, and a book review of the Story of Cape Horn

2010-03-09T16:09:00.000-08:00

Cape Horn The Story of the Cape Horn region, including the Straits of Magellan, from the days of the first discoverers, through the glorious age of sail to the present time... / Felix Riesenberg. Published by Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge, CT, 1995. ISBN 1-881987043. 452p.

Master Mariner Felix Riesenberg (1879-1939) wrote about adventures at sea, merchant ships on the Pacific Ocean, the seafaring life, explorers, missionaries, pirates, women sailors, tall ships, steamers, cannibals and grain ships.

His well-researched and presented Cape Horn is an account of 400 years of circumnavigation, colonization, scientific inquiry and human drama. His story is endowed with detail and rich description:

“Captain Francis Drake… had the most complete charts of the time, and tables of declination of the sun and moon… He carried three books on navigation, one in English another in French; a third, a volume of direction, was that of Magellan’s discovery, presumed to have been the account of Antonio Pigafetta. Compasses, clocks, hour and minute glasses, log lines and lead lines were supplied in abundance. That he used the log chip is fairly certain, and Captain Drake most probably had one of the new kennying glasses, for spying out ships and distant coasts.” ---- p. 62

Says Museum volunteer tour-guide, Ron Ellis, “I loved reading Cape Horn because Felix Riesenberg was so knowledgeable. He sailed there himself a number of times. You get all the history, including Drake and Darwin! In Punta Arenas, a Chilean city along the Strait, there’s a statue of Magellan. If you touch the toe of the statue’s bronze native (reclining at the statue’s base), you shall return. There is a fine maritime museum there well worth a visit.”

The book’s 23 appendices give specifications of ship’s holds, logs written by explorers, and a list of the first fifteen circumnavigators to sail through the Cape, from Magellan in 1521 to Commodore Anson in 1744. Illustrations in black and white include maps and artwork from the period of the 16th century.
Riesenberg’s training as an engineer inspired him to write manuals and handbooks for merchant sailors. He lived at a very exciting time in maritime history, that era when steam, oil and gas overtook sail as the primary means of power. Cape Horn and other works reviewed European adventurers who pursued the quest for new water routes between 1500 and 1750.

Selected titles by Felix Riesenberg:
Living Again: an Autobiography. / Felix Riesenberg. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1937.
The Pacific Ocean. / Felix Riesenberg. New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1940.
Under Sail, a Boy’s Voyage. / Felix Riesenberg. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1924.

Explanation of Words and Phrases:
The first five entries below were found in Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. Edited by Peter Kemp. Published by Oxford University Press, 1976. 971 p.

Charts : essentially a map of the sea area, showing any coastlines, rocks, positions of buoys, lighthouses and other prominent features. -- p. 154.

Commodore Anson: Lord George Anson (1697-1762), British admiral of the fleet, circumnavigator… was one of the founders of the naval profession.-- p.24.

Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882): English naturalist, sailed on the H.M.S. Beagle between 1831 and 1836, in a voyage of discovery for science. -- p. 229.

Francis Drake (1543-1596): he circumnavigated the world for Elizabeth 1st in 1577. -- p. 263.

Log chip, or Log: the name given any device for measuring the speed of a vessel through the water. – p. 492.

Magellan: Fernando Magalhães, a Portuguese explorer for King Charles of Spain, 1519-1522.

Kennying, or kenning : the distance that bounds the range of ordinary vision, especially at sea, hence a marine measure of about 20-21 miles. p. 673, The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Could have been a forerunner to “Spy-glass, or telescope”, as defined on p. 719 in the Oxford Dictionary.

scientific inquiry: (in part) the scientifically based examination of newly found continents and territories. p. 143, The Rand McNally World Atlas of Exploration. / Eric Newby. New York, Rand McNally & Company, 1975.

tables of declination of the sun and moon: the angular distance, a body is north or south of the equator. The sun’s declination ranges between 23˚ 27’ north to 23˚ 27’ south; the moon’s from about 28˚ north (maximum) to a like distance south… p. 72 The Mariner’s Dictionary by Gershom Bradford. New York: Weathervane Books, 1962.

Museum Volunteer: At the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, volunteers answer questions at the front desk, give museum tours, operate the tug ANGELS GATE, use the Morse code, build ship models, and staff The Sea Chest, the museum’s gift shop. Visit the web page at http://www.lamaritimemuseum.org/volunter.htm for more information.

The Edge of the World, a book review.

2010-03-04T14:30:00.000-08:00

Over the Edge of the World Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe/Lawrence Bergreen. Published by William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0066211735. 458 p.

Over the Edge of the World Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe / Lawrence Bergreen, 2003, boasts a title so enticing that you just have to look inside its covers. It’s the story of explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his maritime journey of three years, the first circumnavigation of the world for a European monarchy’s quest to conquer the unknown. Born Fernão de Magalhães, he was a Portuguese enterpriser who dared to sail for King Charles of Spain, journeying “over the edge” to the other side of the world. He discovered the route to the east by sailing west from Spain, across the Atlantic Ocean, and south, through Cape Horn, which is the southern tip of the South American continent. Between what is now known as Magellan's Strait and the islands of the Pacific Rim, Magellan’s fleet dwindled, yet he and his crew managed to reach the Philippine Islands. But he died in a violent attack by native people there when he tried to force them to convert to Catholicism. His pilot, Juan Sebastian De Elcano, a Basque captain, sailed the ship Victoria home to Spain in 1522.

Writes Milt Weiner, a Museum volunteer in a review of Bergreen’s book for the Library:
“Five ships and 260 sailors under the command of Magellan started in 1519. On September 6, 1522, 18 sailors and 1 ship without Magellan returned to Seville, Spain. Despite the journey’s hardships, the Victoria and her diminished crew had accomplished what no other ship had done before.”

“Magellan believed that he could do what his boyhood hero, Christopher Columbus had never actually accomplished—reach the fabulous Indies by sailing westward across the ocean.”

Bergreen’s colorful style brings you right into the events of the early 1500s. Little do we know of the intrigue and strife in store for a multi-national crew of members from many European countries who were assigned to the five ships of the fleet, called an armada, the Armada de Molucca. Indeed this passage portends an enticing read:

“From the moment the fleet left Seville, Pigafetta kept a diary of events that gradually evolved from a routine account of life at sea to a shockingly graphic and candid diary that serves as the best record of the voyage.” – p.63.

More books about Magellan's voyage:

Antonio Pigafetta’s Log of Magellan’s Voyage, was written in Italian and translated into English. It was reprinted by the Yale Library in 1969. Other writers about Magellan and his quest are Tim Joyner, Magellan, published by International Marine, 1992; Rebecca Steffof, Ferdinand Magellan and the Discovery of the World Ocean, 1990; Stefan Zweig, Conqueror of the Seas the Story of Magellan, published by Viking Press, 1938 (text is also available online.)

Explanations of words and phrases:
Armada de Molucca: name of the enterprise of discovery supported by King Charles of Spain in 1519; Magellan’s five ships were christened the Victoria, Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepćion, and Santiago.
armada—a fleet of warships (Webster’s New World Dictionary, ©1984)

Moluccas—islands of Indonesia (Wikipedia, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_Islands
and at Wikisource, available at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page

Lawrence Bergreen: biographer of Al Capone, Irving Berlin, James Agee, and Louis Armstrong; is a researcher’s author who includes detailed Notes sections and Bibliographies. His books are available in public libraries, and are all in print as of February, 2010.

Circumnavigation: to sail entirely around the world. (Random House Dictionary, ©1966.)

Juan Sebastian De Elcano: the Basque captain of the flag ship Trinidad, who became master of the Victoria when Magellan met his fate. (Rebecca Steffof, Ferdinand Magellan and the Discovery of the World Ocean, published by Chelsea House, 1990.)

over the edge: in Medieval times, people believed the earth was flat, not round.

Philippine Islands: a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, in Asia (Oxford Atlas of the World, published by Oxford University Press, 2009); the Philippines were first discovered for the Europeans by Magellan’s enterprise in 1522.

Magellan’s Strait or Estrecho de Mallaghaes is located in the southern tip of South America, on the South Atlantic Ocean side of the continent, in the country of Chile. (Oxford Atlas of the World, published by Oxford University Press, 2009)

Museum volunteer: At the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, volunteers answer questions at the front desk, give museum tours, operate the tug ANGELS GATE, use the Morse code, build ship models, and staff The Sea Chest, the museum’s gift shop. Visit the web page at http://www.lamaritimemuseum.org/volunter.htm for more information.