Saving Cans
Tin Can Sailors—the National Association of Destroyer Veterans—has again made major contributions to help keep U.S. destroyer museums afloat. On 12 March 2007, Terry Miller, the organization’s executive director, presented $122,500 in Destroyer Museum Grant checks to nine associations or museums involved in preserving the Navy’s destroyer history or in assisting present-day Sailors, Marines, and their families. The donations were made at the Historic Naval Ship Association’s annual board of directors meeting at the U.S. Naval Academy. Donations made through the grant program since its inception in 1991 total more than $1.8 million.
Museums receiving $19,000 checks were the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park (USS The Sullivans [DD-537]), the USS Kidd (DD-661) Veterans Memorial, Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum (USS Laffey [DD-724]), Massachusetts Memorial Committee (USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. [DD-850]), and Bremerton Historic Ships Association (USS Turner Joy [DD-951]). Checks for $5,000 went to the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum (USS Slater [DE-766]) and Seawolf Park (USS Stewart [DE-238]). A $7,500 donation went to the Historic Naval Ships Association, and $10,000 to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society.
The contributions were made through the Thomas J. Peltin Destroyer Museum Grant program, which is named for the late Tin Can Sailors president and executive director. Founded in 1976, Tin Can Sailors has more than 23,000 members. For more information, visit its Web site at www.tincansailors.org.
USS Monitor Center Christened
On 9 March, exactly 145 years after the historic 1862 clash between the Civil War ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia at the Battle of Hampton Roads, the Mariners’ Museum and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration opened the doors to one of America’s premier maritime Civil War attractions, the new USS Monitor Center. Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine and, by way of a virtual link, famed ocean explorer Robert Ballard joined museum and NOAA representatives at the ribbon cutting.
The $30 million, 63,500-square-foot USS Monitor Center wing is home to numerous artifacts; a major interactive exhibition on the two ironclad vessels, their battle, the men who served in them; and present-day efforts to conserve more than 1,200 artifacts recovered from the Union ironclad. Visitors can walk on a full-scale replica of the Monitor, experience the drama of the Battle of Hampton Roads in a high-definition theater, and observe the intricate, hands-on work taking place in one of the largest high-tech conservation facilities on the East Coast.
The Mariners’ Museum, in partnership with NOAA, broke ground and initiated a $30 million capital campaign for the center in 2004. NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program provided $9.5 million in federal funds out of $20 million to be raised from public sources. The museum is conducting a $10 million private-sector campaign. To date, more than $27 million has been raised.
The center’s opening almost overshadowed the other events of the Fifth Annual Battle of Hampton Roads Weekend, which featured a series of lectures. Keynote speaker and Monitor Center Chief Historian Craig Symonds kicked off the Civil War talks. Among those later addressing attendees were Pulitzer Prize–winning author and historian James M. McPherson, who spoke on “infernal machines,” such as torpedoes, and the emergence of the “hard war”; Paul Clancy, author of Ironclad; South Carolina Senator Glenn McConnell who described the recovery and preservation of the CSS Hunley; noted Civil War art expert Harold Holzer; and NOAA historian Jeff Johnston.
The Mariners’ Museum is open from 1000 until 1700 Monday through Saturday, and 1200 to 1700 Sunday. It is closed Thanksgiving and Christmas days. For information, visit www.mariner.org, call (757) 596-2222 or (800) 581-7245, or write to The Mariners’ Museum, 100 Museum Drive, Newport News, Virginia 23606.
Prodigal Returns?
Maryland aviation buffs and museum volunteers hope to provide a permanent home for one of two surviving giant seaplanes—the Navy’s largest flying boats—at its birthplace. The Glenn L. Martin Company built seven Mars flying boats—an XPB2M-1 patrol bomber and six JRM transports—at its Middle River plant near Baltimore between 1938 and 1947. Only two JRM-3s survive, the Philippine Mars and Hawaii Mars.
Volunteers at the Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum in Middle River want to obtain one of the aircraft from TimberWest Forest Corporation, which for many years used the pair as aerial firefighting water bombers. TimberWest announced in late 2006 that it will sell the planes, which are in storage at Sproat Lake on Canada’s Vancouver Island.
Those wishing to help repatriate a Mars to Middle River can contact the museum at P.O. Box 5024, Middle River, Maryland 21220 (Attn: Mars Project). The museum’s Web site is at www.marylandaviationmuseum.org.
Rotting Away
A small World War II warship is dying a slow death in a Baltimore harbor backwater, but at least one man thinks she is worthy of saving. The former SC-1013, a wooden, 110-foot-long sub chaser, rests on the bottom in shallow water at Dundalk, Maryland, next to an equally forlorn dock. Jeff Huneycutt of Savannah, Georgia, is coordinating efforts to salvage her.
The ship was laid down in March 1942 and built by Luders Marine Construction Company in Stamford, Connecticut. She was launched that July and commissioned 21 September 1942. She later served with the Coast Guard before being sold as a tour boat on Lake Champlain, New York. In 1989 she was sold to a Baltimore resident.
Although she is in rough shape, her brief touch with fame may make her inviting to a salvor. She was one of the ships that escorted the captured German U-505 across the Atlantic to Bermuda in 1944. The U-boat is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
If interested in helping save the SC-1013, contact Mr. Huneycutt at [email protected]. The ship’s Web site is at www.sc1013.org.
Last of the Very Few
Two of the six surviving U.S. veterans of World War I—the last two Navy veterans—have died. Charlotte Louise Berry Winters, the last surviving woman to serve in the U.S. military during the war, died at her home in Boonsboro, Maryland, 27 March. She was 109. Lloyd Brown, 105, of Charlotte Hall, Maryland, died on 29 March. The last known surviving Navy veteran, he was just 16 when he joined the Navy in 1918 by lying about his age.
Winters was also one of the first enlisted women in the service. She held the rank of yeoman (F)—F for female—from March 1917 to July 1919, and served her entire enlistment as a clerk at the Washington Navy Yard Naval Gun Factory. Winters, who was born in Washington on 10 November 1897, has no immediate survivors. Her husband died in 1984.
She joined the Navy through a loophole Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels found in the Naval Appropriations Act of 1916. Author Susan Godson wrote in Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy (Naval Institute Press, 2001) that: “The act did not specify men, but citizens and persons.” Daniels “seized the opportunity,” and “On 14 March 1917, he ordered that women be enrolled as yeoman, radio electricians and other useful ratings.” This allowed more men to go to sea.
Winters was among about 600 women Sailors on duty by the end of April 1917. By the end of 1918, there were 11,000 Navy women.
The deaths of the two Sailors leave four known American survivors of the Great War, three who served in the U.S. Army and one who served in the Canadian Army, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Colbert: Oui ou Non?
The waterfront of Bordeaux, France, has undergone a major transformation over the past five years. A renovation project, one of the largest in Europe, has cleaned up the city’s abandoned 19th-century warehouses taken over by drug dealers and prostitutes and turned the area into a showcase of 21st-century French life. For some, however, the transformation is incomplete.
Dominating the Bordeaux waterfront—and its skyline—is the guided-missile cruiser Colbert. The 50-year-old, 180.5-meter-long warship has been a fixture on the city’s waterfront since 1993, when she became a museum ship. Not everyone is enamored with her 11,093-ton physique or presence.
Bordeaux’s mayor, the former French prime minister Alain Juppé, has referred to the warship as an “eyesore, a rusting pile of junk.” In recent years, her maintenance has declined as the ship’s managers are barely able to keep the museum solvent. Other critics point out that she never belonged in Bordeaux in the first place. The city, located near the confluence of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers, was never a military port.
The mayor and his supporters will have their way. At the end of May, a French Navy tug will tow the Colbert to a naval graveyard near Brest. There she will be stripped to provide parts to keep the helicopter carrier Jeanne d’Arc in service.
Cape May at War
World War II Weekend, 1-3 June, in Cape May, New Jersey, is an opportunity to learn how the war transformed a sleepy resort town into a pivotal part of America’s homeland-defense efforts. Presented by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (MAC), the weekend features period music, lectures, and tours of Naval Air Station Wildwood at the Cape May County Airport and a boat cruise to see the remnants of the Fort Miles coastal defense system.
For information, call 609-884-5404 or 800-275-4278, or visit MAC’s Web site at www.capemaymac.org.