Full Fathom Five

There's a new blog from the Collections Department at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, Full Fathom Five, where I'm a contributing editor. The software that we use does not yet have an rss feed, so for the time being, I'll be mirroring posts over here. Do please check it out--we'd appreciate your input.

The debut post:

Welcome to Full Fathom Five

When Shakespeare has Ariel sing this song in Act 1, scene ii of The Tempest, he sings of transformation--of the ordinary becoming something beautiful at the end of its life:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rare and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-Dong.
Hark! now I hear them -- Ding-dong, bell.

Here in the Collections Department at San Francisco Maritime, what we collect, preserve and make available were often ordinary objects at the ends of their useful lives--sometimes, literally, from "full fathom five," in the case of objects retrieved from shipwrecks. Through our care, we give them new life as museum collections, and we help them to emerge into exhibits and into the arena of research, study, and enjoyment.

Join us in our journey, deep in the collections, through the rich and strange.