What d'ya mean by "Crow's nest?"

A sailor get's a bird's-eye view of his environment from a crow's nest. Galleons of the 16th century often had one or more crow's nests situated high on the tallest masts, where a sailor often shared this lofty perch with crows brought aboard in a cage, hence the term, "crow's nest." If the captain wanted to locate land, a crow was released from the perch and the navigator sailed in the direction of the bird's flight as it invariably headed towards land. Modern mates use the term to describe any kind of protected station fitted aloft to accommodate a lookout.



The Park's full hull model artifact, English galleon Golden Hind, catalog number SAFR 22687, has excellent examples of crow's nest perches on the main and foremast. See it for yourself. The Golden Hind is currently on exhibit in the Prismatarium room of the Museum Building.

Citations:

Rogers, John G. Origins of sea terms. Mystic, Conn.: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1984.
MacEwen, William A. and A.H. Lewis. Encyclopedia of nautical knowledge. Cambridge, Md.: Cornell Maritime Press, 1953.

--Contributor: Palma J. You, Archives Technician.

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five, due to its lack of rss feeds & commenting.

Virtual exhibit on Zheng He's Fleet

If you missed "China's Forgotten Fleet: Voyages of Zheng He" at the National Geographic Museum in 2008, you can explore the virtual exhibit at their Flickr site.

The photos are not very large, but are a good size to balance speed of loading with ability to see the details of the exhibit. Navigating through the exhibit via the horizontal thumbnail images of the set (to the right) is very easy. Although the photos weren't taken close enough to allow one to read the panels, the exhibit contained lots of ship models which were photographed from many angles.

Go for the brewing objects, stay for the canoe

The small but dense exhibit, "99 Bottles of Beer: Global Brewing Traditions 2500 B.C. – Present" brought me to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and it's a wonderful museum to visit. (The objects in the beer exhibit are fascinating--everything from ancient brewing devices to modern cap lifters, from all over the world.) The museum is small, admission is free, and it's packed with exhibits, including "The Conservator’s Art: Preserving Egypt’s Past" which explains in detail differing conservation treatments, how they conserve objects, and just how much such operations cost.

A real treat, though, is a Yurok canoe from 1902 in the California gallery. Surrounded by photographs and explanatory text about the canoe, it's lovely to see in person. Since the museum is so small, there's a limited amount of interpretation, however UC Berkeley's Calisphere offers a lot of history, and the culture section of the official Yurok Tribe website provides more cultural context--worth reading before making a visit.

Dazzle camouflage

The Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design has a wonderful online exhibit of Dazzle Camouflage. The images and plans were donated to them by Maurice L. Freedman, a U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation camofleur. The images are wonderful--all the ones I looked at were scans of full plans sheets. According to the site:

Our collection consists of 455 plans (includes port and starboard sides of a ship) and 20 photos. There are 10 types of merchant ships represented with multiple designs for each of those ships.

So the online images are just a taste of the rich resources held by the library.

The site is a little resource intensive, so might not work well at slower connection speeds. Also, the links are not readily apparent--for example, go ahead and click on "What is Dazzle?" as it's as live a link as the "Dazzle Camouflage Blog" or the individual images, even though it doesn't turn your arrow into a hand (at least under Windows, in Firefox & IE).

(As far as I can tell, the Fleet Library was named after FleetBoston Financial Corp., rather than "fleet" in the maritime sense.)

My thanks to MonkeyFist at the Cascobayboaters blog--it was their post that brought this site to my attention.

Black Canada & the journey to freedom

Several things about Geoff Davies' article Exhibit illustrates slave trade's place in Maritime history are noteworthy, especially the quote from John Hennigar-Shuh, manager of development and partnerships at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic:

"There was for years a sense that the Maritime heritage of this province was owned by old white guys with beards," Hennigar-Shuh said.

“This exhibit helps us to underline for everyone who comes here that our history is diverse and marvellously complex, and is something that belongs to all of us.”

The exhibit features a beautiful freedom quilt, which is pictured in the article, made by the North Preston Senior Citizens Club.

Exhibit panels are available in the online version of the exhibit in .pdf; the exhibit is also available in French, En Route vers le Nord: Le voyage vers la liberté des Noirs du Canada.

The Linda Hall Library

The Linda Hall Library website has some wonderful resources. Located in Kansas City, Missouri, the library is, according to its site:

...the largest privately funded library of science, engineering and technology in the world open to the public. The Library is dedicated to providing the most comprehensive physical, life science, engineering and technology collections, reliable library services, a host of other programs including a fellowship program, educational programs, and an ongoing series of public lectures, events and exhibitions.

Of particular interest are the online exhibitions which include, "Ice: A Victorian Romance," "Out of this World: The Golden Age of the Celestial Atlas," and "Voyages: Scientific Circumnavigations 1679-1859."

Happy birthday, Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was born on this day, February 12, 1809. Of the sites celebrating this 200th anniversary of his birth, my favorites include:

• The Dispersal of Darwin which will soon migrate to a new site
  
• Blog for Darwin
  
• And Darwin 200 (from the Natural History Museum, U.K.)
  

I'm going to celebrate by watching Professor Richard Dawkins on Darwin.

Exhibition: Model show in Denver

The Rocky Mountain Shipwrights send along an annoucement of their Model Show and Exhibition, Oct. 18 through Nov. 1, 2008, in Denver, Colorado. There will be models of sailing ships, steamships, warships--from beginners to masters, from kits and from scratch.

If you can't make it to Denver, do check out the photo gallery on their website.

Follow the Sun

A lovely web exhibit has been posted by the National Library of Australia, Follow the Sun : Australian Travel Posters, 1930s-1950s. What's maritime about it? Most of the images are images of the sea. East to navigate, and quick-loading, the online exhibit is delightful. When viewing the posters (via the "Destinations" link), look out for the appearance of a wee TV icon on the upper right indicating an available film. (Films are supplied by Screensound Australia.) The "Lithography" link is also fascinating, explaining with modern images the entire process.

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef by the Institute For Figuring
photo © The IFF - by Alyssa Gorelick

The IFF describes the Crochet Coral Reef as a "testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world," but it is so much more. A beautiful work of art, it is not just raising awareness of the impact of climate change on normally invisible marine landscapes, it is inspiring others to create marine art. This is done not just through an ambitious exhibit schedule, but through workshops where one can learn the handicraft of crochet--with a dash of the science and mathematics necessary to create the hyperbolic shapes that evoke marine creatures.

Now there are crochet reefs in Chicago and New York, and if you can't make it to London to see the current exhibit, you can see the Crocheted Reef and Anemone Garden created by the 7th graders at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto among the current exhibits at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.

Want to get involved? No reef project near you? Information on involvement in the IFF Project is at the bottom of the reef's online gallery page, and the workshops page includes links to an introduction to hyperbolic crochet and to publications on the topic. It's a great time to get started, since the reef will be exhibited in its entirety in Los Angeles in 2009, along with other crochet reefs from around the world, in a show entitled, “I’ve Got A Coral Reef Too!”

And while you're thinking about human impacts on the oceans, have you heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? The impact of plastics on the oceans? Ever considered diverting plastics from the waste stream by using them in art works?

Above image used with the kind permission of the IFF, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, that welcomes members and donations.

Great web resource

Archivist-historian David Mattison’s, Ten Thousand Year blog led me to the excellent resources at the Washington State Library. "The Washington State Library has a remarkable collection of digitized historical books, maps and newspapers through its Washington History site. You can search the newspapers, which date back to 1852, by keyword as they’ve been OCRed or you can locate a specific title. The browse interface is innovative in that you’re shown a popup window with a hyperlinked title of each item on a page. Much of the content deals with British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper images, at least from one of the titles I examined from 1866, are extremely clear, even at 300% magnification. In order to view the maps and newspapers you have to download and install, if you don’t already have it, the free LizardTech DJVu browser plugin."

I did a few searches and found some great info on late 18th century coastal trade.

PEM Recieves High Praises

Muzine reviewed the new Peabody Essex and gave it a great review and makes some good points for other maritime museums.

Caught, Canned, and Eaten: The Story of San Pedro's Fishing and Canning Industries

According to the DailyBreeze.com the Los Angeles Maritime Museum will unveil a permanent exhibit on San Pedro's vibrant fishing industry and port-town culture.

The interactive exhibit will include murals, gear used by local fishermen, home movies from the Fishermen's Fiesta, classic television commercials ("Charlie the Tuna"), films of sardine and mackerel fishing and cannery equipment salvaged from Terminal Island.

According to the Museum website the exhibit opens today.

Congrats to Museum Director (and Compass editor) Marifrances Trivelli and her crew for putting together a news worthy exhibit on an overlooked aspect of local maritime history.

Online Exhibit - Ladies Who Launch

Press Release:

Independence Seaport Museum is pleased to announce their first online exhibit: Ladies Who Launch: Ship Christening Photographs from Delaware Valley Shipyards, which can be viewed at http://www.phillyseaport.org/LWL

In portraits and candid shots selected from the Library’s collections, these images show the scale of the members of the launching parties in relation to the enormity of the ships, the effervescent crash of champagne bottles, and the fabulous fashions from the first half of the 20th Century.

The online presentation is an expanded version of the exhibit now on display in the Museum. Ladies Who Launch is presented in conjunction with Women & the Sea, a comprehensive exhibit that explores the contributions of women mariners; open now through Labor Day 2007. For more information about exhibits and related programming please see: http://www.phillyseaport.org/New_Exhibits.shtml

The photo included here happens to be one of my favorite from the exhibit. It is interesting to note that in all the women and the sea studies I've heard about - this involvement of women and the sea has rarely been mentioned. Great job!