And goodnight

Maritime Compass emerged into a very different blogosphere in 2005.  Today, the blogs listed here under "Related Blogs & Resources" are but a few of the excellent blogs and news sites covering activities in maritime studies, not to mention the increasing presence of maritime museums and libraries at other social media sites every day.  So it's time to put Maritime Compass to sleep.

The posts will remain here, but the blog will go silent.

I hope to see all of you over at Full Fathom Five, exploring the collections of San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park!

SF Maritime NHP on Worldcat.org

Search for an item in libraries near you: Enter title, subject or author

WorldCat.org >>

We are delighted to announce that the Park's published holdings (e.g., books, periodicals, etc.) and some records for archival holdings are now appearing on Worldcat.org! New acquisitions are listed on our Worldcat.org profile page, where you can also subscribe to an rss feed of our newly cataloged items.

If you haven't visited Worldcat.org, be sure to check out the advanced features that allow you to create bibliographies and lists, and to tag and share items using multiple services.

Although the newest, Worldcat.org is just one of the many catalogs that contain records for the Park's collections. And as ever, be sure to contact us if you have questions about using any of these catalogs to locate our Park's resources.

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

SF Maritime NHP Library's holiday hours

The Library will have special hours during the holiday season:

• The Library will be closed, Friday, Dec. 23 and Monday, Dec. 26, 2011.
  
• The Library will be available by appointment only 1:00-5:00pm, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Dec. 27-29, 2011.
  
• The Library will be closed Friday, Dec. 30, 2011 and Monday, Jan. 2, 2012.
  
• Regular hours will resume on Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012
  

Details on our regular hours can be found on our Plan Your Research page, with more information on our policies and procedures in our Collections FAQ.

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

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.

New in the SF Maritime NHP Library

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

Here are the Library's lists of new accessions for the last half of April and the first half of May; for more information on any title, contact us, or search our catalogs:

• Library New Accessions, May 16-31, 2011 (.pdf file, 32Kb)
  
• Library New Accessions, June 1-15, 2011 (.pdf file, 29 Kb)
  

Hal Roth Papers

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

The Hal Roth Papers, 1938-2009 have been cataloged and are now available to researchers. During the work on the collection, Alison Fudge, Archives Technician, wrote:

The Archives recently acquired the collection of Hal Roth, and I am hard at work helping to process the collection so that it will soon be ready to share with researchers. Roth was a noted seaman and author who sailed around the world with his wife, Margaret, aboard their yacht Whisper, and wrote 13 books and numerous articles regarding their journeys.

Roth's travels took him to many faraway locales, including French Polynesia, the Mediterranean, South America, Japan, and around Cape Horn. In 1971, he was awarded the Blue Water Medal from the Cruising Club of America for his circumnavigation of the Pacific Basin.

He was also an accomplished photographer who studied under Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. In addition to an extensive representation of maritime photography, the collection also includes beautiful images of California landscapes and San Francisco's Chinatown.

There are so many treasures waiting to be discovered!

Play cribbage like a sailor

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five, due to its lack of rss feed & commenting functions:

If you search our Museum Web Catalog, you'll find several examples of cribbage boards such as the one below. Popular for centuries, today in the U.S. alone it is played by over 10 million people!



Want to learn how to play the way they did in the 19th century? The Cribbage Player's Text-book, Being a New and Complete Treatise on the Game in all its Varieties (1837) is available online for free from the Internet Archive. If you're interested in a contemporary outline of how to play the game, the Wikipedia article is a good place to start; the links at the bottom of the article lead to cribbage associations, forums, and much more. If you're looking for a handy book to refer to while playing, either Scarne's Encyclopedia of Card Games or According to Hoyle : official rules of more than 200 popular games of skill and chance, with expert advice on winning play, will soon have you playing like a sailor.

Citation: "Cribbage." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Library Edition. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2011. Web. 7 Mar. 2011. .

New in the SF Maritime NHP Library

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five, due to its lack of rss feed:

Here are the Library's lists of new accessions for the last half of April and the first half of May; for more information on any title, contact us, or search our catalogs:

• Library New Accessions, Apr. 17-30, 2011
  (.pdf file, 92 Kb)
  
• Library New Accessions, May 1-15, 2011
  (.pdf file, 118 Kb)
  

"Viking" across the Atlantic

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five:

The Library recently acquired a lovely little book, "Viking" across the Atlantic : and a short summary of the Norwegian Vikings and Vikingships by Alfred A. Holm (Chicago : John Anderson Pub. Co., 1893), which is also available online. Assistant Curator Ted Miles sends in this report about the replica vessel, "Viking:"

I was recently asked what is the oldest replica in the world? This is not the time to debate the terms. Is it better to call it a replica, a reproduction or whatever? We can do that another day. You might want to read my article on "Historic Reproductions: An Account of Past Efforts," in Sea History #17 for Summer 1980 pages 26-27. The illustrations are from my post card collection. In the same issue is a list of existing vessels on pages 29-31.

But most people use the word replica to talk about long gone historic craft of one sort or another. The World's Fairs of the late 19th century certainly produced a number of them. The Columbian Expostion of 1893 had replicas of the three vessels used by Christopher Columbus voyage of 1492. And just so he did not get all the glory; a group of people in Norway built a replica of the famous Gokstad burial ship which had been excavated in 1880 and sailed it across the Atlantic Ocean and through the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes to Chicago.

Many years ago, I was visiting Lincoln Park in Chicago, Illinois and saw the ship on display. It has been given a shelter to protect it from the harsh winter weather. The other day, I looked it up on the Internet and find that the Friends of the Viking Ship can be found at www.vikingship.us. Now I see that the ship has been moved to Geneva, Illinois and placed under a different shelter. Tours of the display site are available in the summer.

The King Philip

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five:

(by Judy Hitzeman, Museum Curator (Registrar))

The bow of the King Philip at Ocean Beach (Photo copyright Judy Hitzeman, all rights reserved, used with permission)


The three-masted clipper ship King Philip recently reappeared on Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Built in Massachusetts in 1855, King Philip was a Cape Horner, making regular trips between New York and San Francisco. On January 25, 1878, while leaving San Francisco, the tug towing her out to sea had to leave to aid another vessel. The King Philip dropped an anchor, but it did not hold, and she drifted onto the beach. There was no loss of life, but the vessel broke apart.


Stern of the King Philip (Photo copyright Judy Hitzeman, all rights reserved, used with permission)

Charles Hittell captured the scene in a painting done in March of that year. The painting is now in the San Francisco Maritime NHP museum collection, catalog number SAFR 5729. Born in San Francisco in 1861, Hittell was just 17 when he painted the wreck. He went on to study at the San Francisco School of Design, as well as in Munich and Paris where he made the most of his California origins by dressing as a cowboy and affecting the name “Carlos.” Hittell’s California work included seascapes but he was mainly noted for California adobe scenes and western landscapes.

The King Philip wreck site is located at the foot of Noriega Street. It is usually covered in sand but occasionally appears when conditions are right.

New in the SF Maritime NHP Library

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five, due to its lack of an rss feed:

New in the Library:

The Library's new accessions lists from the latter half of March and the first half of April are now available.

We download these lists from OCLC, whose public interface is known as WorldCat.org. Although we catalog directly on OCLC, we do not have the type of subscription that would allow us to appear as a holding library on WorldCat.org, but you can see our holdings in the NPS Combined Library Catalog. (See our Catalogs & Finding Aids page for catalogs listing other Museum Collections.)

* Library New Accessions, Mar. 16-31, 2011 (.pdf file, 27 Kb)
* Library New Accessions, Apr. 1-16, 2011 (.pdf file, 31 Kb)

"Potato, potato, potato"

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five:

An illustration of a one cylinder, eight horsepower Hicks engine that is in the Park's artifact collection, circa 1940. SAFR 17336, HDC 1092

Are you renovating a Hicks engine, or making a scale model of one?
Or even if you want to look at the engineering plans, we are an excellent source of accessible information. The Park’s archive collection, HDC 1092 SAFR 17336, includes blueprints, assembly and price lists, a catalog and instruction manual, photographs, and illustrations of parts. Blueprint title blocks indicate the unique engine series number, part name and number, and issue date. Plans for series B, C, D, E, F, W, Sketch, AY, BY, CY, DY, EY, FY, GY, HY, KY and LY model engines, which have one to three cylinders and horsepower ranging from 6 to 45, are included. Bay Specialties Company donated the collection in 1994. We also have a number of catalog records for our collection of Hicks engines and parts, and for related materials in the Library collection.

To read more about the collection, and to learn what a Hicks engine has to do with saying, "Potato, potato, potato," see the new Collection Corner article about the Hicks Marine Engine Archival Collection, and for more details, or to access the collection, call 415-561-7030.

--Contributor: Palma J. You, Archives Technician

Nautical Nursery Rhymes

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five:

This small treasure resides in the "Peterson, Peter H. (Capt.) Papers," (SAFR 18665, HDC 571) and expresses principles of seamanship in verse, such as:



Meeting on Opposite Tacks
On opposite tacks, when approaching too near,
The ship on the starboard has nothing to fear;
The one on the port tack has either to stay,
Or put up her helm and get out of the way.


For more on Taylor's Nautical School, the issuer of the booklet, see the promotional pamphlet, Taylor's Nautical School, San Francisco, in the Library collection at r V430.A4 T39, and Taylor's modern navigation, also in the Library at VK401.T3 1904.

Contributors: Keri Koehler, Collections Manager; Palma J. You, Archives Technician; Heather Hernandez, Technical Services Librarian.

Ship model conservation course, England

International Academic Projects is pleased to announce a 3 day
course 'Ship Models: Care, Conservation and Display' which will be
held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Historic
Dockyard, Chatham, 11-13 October 2011. This is a new addition to the
2011 course calendar of International Academic Projects.

The course, aimed at collections managers, curators and
conservators, will be conducted by the curatorial and conservation
specialists of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and will
cover: the history of the making of ship models; the materials from
which models are made and issues concerning their handling and
movement; display methods; storage and display conditions; making
the materials required for restoration; and the use of plans,
paintings and photographs in the conservation process.

Course details and the proposed timetable are available at

http://www.academicprojects.co.uk/course-details.php?courseID=765

Places are also still available on several other courses offered by
International Academic Projects - including:

Conservation of Glass Objects
(London) 12 - 16 September, 2011

Making Replicas of Museum Objects
(Denmark) 6 - 10 June, 2011

Making Electroform Replicas of Museum Objects
(Denmark) 20 - 24 June, 2011

Digital Photography of Museum Objects
(London) 21 - 22 June, 2011

The Identification of Paper
(London) 4-5 July, 2011

Chemistry for Conservators correspondence course
(September - December 2011)

Please check No comments:

New in the SF Maritime NHP Library

Mirrored from Full Fathom Five, due to its lack of an rss feed:

New in the Library:

The Library's new accessions lists from the later half of February and the first half of March are now available.

We download these lists from OCLC, whose public interface is known as WorldCat.org. Although we catalog directly on OCLC, we do not have the type of subscription that would allow us to appear as a holding library on WorldCat.org, but you can see our holdings in the NPS Combined Library Catalog. (See our Catalogs & Finding Aids page for catalogs listing other Museum Collections.)

* Library New Accessions, Feb. 16-28, 2011 (.pdf file, 19Kb)
* Library New Accessions, Mar. 1-15, 2011 (.pdf file, 14 Kb)

Do you have traveling plans?

Mirrored below is Palma J. You's new post from over at Full Fathom Five, Do you have traveling plans?

We do! Prior to the digital revolution, marine engineering plans often needed to travel between builders, owners, consultants and architects. Document tubes were used to protect plans while in transport. I am currently processing a large (94 linear feet) collection donated by Pillsbury & Martignoni, Naval Architects and Marine Engineers of San Francisco who were in business during the first half of the 20th century. Most of the plans inventoried thus far relate to tugs, towboats, sport fishing boats, freighters, barges and passengers vessels. Very interesting, but I also find the storage tube an interesting pre-plastic artifact.

The two varieties of materials used in construction of traveling tubes for this marine engineering firm are aluminum and fiber board. The plans stored inside are circa 1943-1965. More on the plans stored inside the tubes next time!





--Contributor: Palma J. You, Archives Technician

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.

UK ship models conservation course & conservation assistant position

The latest issue of the Conservation Distlist had news of interest to the maritime conservation community; an interesting course:

International Academic Projects is pleased to announce a 3 day
course 'Ship Models: Care, Conservation and Display' which will be
held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Historic
Dockyard, Chatham, 11-13 October 2011. This is a new addition to the
2011 course calendar of International Academic Projects.

The course, aimed at collections managers, curators and
conservators, will be conducted by the curatorial and conservation
specialists of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and will
cover: the history of the making of ship models; the materials from
which models are made and issues concerning their handling and
movement; display methods; storage and display conditions; making
the materials required for restoration; and the use of plans,
paintings and photographs in the conservation process.

Course details and the proposed timetable are available at

http://www.academicprojects.co.uk/course-details.php?courseID=765

Places are also still available on several other courses offered by
International Academic Projects - including:

Conservation of Glass Objects
(London) 12 - 16 September, 2011

Making Replicas of Museum Objects
(Denmark) 6 - 10 June, 2011

Making Electroform Replicas of Museum Objects
(Denmark) 20 - 24 June, 2011

Digital Photography of Museum Objects
(London) 21 - 22 June, 2011

The Identification of Paper
(London) 4-5 July, 2011

Chemistry for Conservators correspondence course
(September - December 2011)

Please check http://www.academicprojects.co.uk for full
information or get in touch by email or telephone if you have any
questions.

Hannah Turk
Administrative Assistant
International Academic Projects
6 Fitzroy Square, London W1T 5HJ
+44 207 380 0800
Fax: +44 207 380 0500

And an interesting position announcement:

Preventive Conservation Assistant
National Maritime Museum
London

UKP18,000 - UKP22,000

With three historic sites housing a range of world-renowned
collections, the National Maritime Museum is a unique and
stimulating environment. With the opening of the brand new Sammy
Ofer Wing this summer, we are looking for an individual to join our
Preventive Conservation team to provide key support in the
preservation and care of our collections across all sites.

Your role will be to carry out cleaning and other housekeeping
duties in addition to assisting in the implementation of the Pest
Management Plan and Environmental Monitoring Strategy. We will also
need you to write method statements and reports, work with team
members on larger projects and suggest improvements to working
practices.

A good understanding of conservation, security and Health and Safety
relating to collections care is essential, along with the ability to
select appropriate cleaning options. A high level of manual
dexterity, experience of working with a range of hand tools and the
ability to work at heights are also important, plus strong
documentation and IT skills. A relevant qualification and experience
within a heritage environment would both be preferred.

For a full job description and details of how to apply, please visit

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/jobs

Closing date: 20 March 2011.

Birthe Christensen
Head of Conservation and Preservation
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
London SE10 9NF
+44 20 8312 6504

Libraries, Archives, Special Collections Jobs

Rachael Cristine Woody at the Smithsonian's Freer|Sackler Archives posted "How Can I Get a Job? (Libraries, Archives and Special Collections)" on Oct. 20, 2010, at the Smithsonian Collections blog.

She links to great resources for finding job and educational opportunities in museum libraries and archives, and provides sound advice--and links to more resources--for building a resume rich in social media experience as well as solid grounding in professional standards.

Also of interest to those already in the profession, are the statistics she reports:

Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010-2011 edition for Archivists, Curators and Museum Technicians, you'll see the profession is projected to grow a faster than average 20% by 2018. The statistics for Librarians are also expected to grow at least 8% and job competition to be favorable to potential employees as many librarians retire in the coming years.

Head over there to follow her links to the relevant Bureau of Labor Statistics sites for more info!

Ship Drawing at Hauntology

I really enjoyed my recent visit to the Hauntology Exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum. Although there's currently no online version of the exhibit, one of the most impressive pieces is reproduced in some of the online reviews, and also on Flickr, "Ship Drawing" by Paul Sietsema. Part of a diptych, it's worth seeing in person if you get a chance, not only because of it's size (50 3/4 x 70 in.) but because of the presence of the other half of the diptych. According to Figure 3 : Paul Sietsema, Museum of Modern Art, the work was created by retouching a photograph, copying, and building up layers--the effect of which is enchanting. The work drew me in to examine it closely, yet because of its size, I continually stepped back to take in the whole. It's also a work that has stayed with me, and I hope to visit it again before the exhibit ends.

"Hauntology," a term coined by Jacques Derrida, "is a philosophy of history that upsets the easy progression of time by proposing that the present is simultaneously haunted by the past and the future," according to the BAM website. An interesting concept for museums, historians, and artists.