#marinersmuseum

[devonrichtmeyer]

7 years ago... this right here is why you can't take me anywhere 🤣 (This was taken at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, VA). I have zero regrets. I've really come out of my shell since then! #AllPunsWelcome #MarinersMuseum #NewportNews #BeTheTurtle (at The Mariners' Museum and Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CShS68XM3Ov/?utm_medium=tumblr

[cptscarlett]

TenToo Adventures at @marinersmuseum #tentoo #tentooadventures #marinersmuseum #eventimelordscanlearnnewthings (at The Mariners' Museum and Park)

[searchingforamerica]

Cannon from the USS Monitor in a conservation tank in Newport News, VA. The Monitor is notable as the first iron clad warship built by the Navy during the Civil War. It had a rotating gun turret which allowed 2 cannons to fire in multiple different directions. During the famous Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862 the Monitor fought the Confederate iron clad, the CSS Virginia for 4 hours. Neither ship suffered significant damage and the battle considered a draw, but these new iron clad ships changed the course of ship building forever. #ussmonitor #shipbuilding #civilwar #newportnews #marinersmuseum #ironclad #hamptonroads #ushistory #gunturret #cannon #usnavy (at The Mariners' Museum and Park)

[themarinersmuseum-blog]

Say you’re flipping through photos as quickly as you can catalog them. You might not spend too much time on this one, just because it’s yet another picture of two guys in a room, slightly crooked. But the photographer also chose to include part of the board beside them. Was he being lazy? Did they suddenly move before he could take the shot? Maybe he just decided the board was worth looking at. So let’s do that. 

Here we have what looks like it was probably “BUY BONDS!” Spelled out in flatware. It has labels though! These are all trophies brought back from Europe and North Africa, or possibly contraband taken from the prisoners of war that also came through Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation. There are some typed up stories on the board too, but unfortunately they aren’t legible. 

[themarinersmuseum-blog]

Welcome to the inaugural post of The Mariners’ Museum here on Tumblr! The museum recently received a grant from CLIR (The Council on Library and Information Resources) to digitize, catalog, and make available several hidden collections. Several of these exist in storage here only as negatives, some have prints as well. Three newly minted librarians were hired for the three-year project. We have begun with cataloging, at the item level, a collection of about 16,000 negatives, with 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 prints, taken at the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in Newport News, VA, during the Second World War. 

To that end, please let me introduce the Louisa M. Alcott, one of the many liberty ships that passed through HRPE. She was built in 1943 at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore, MD, and survived the war. She also had a successful gun crew -- the shot of her deck shows a stack marked with four swastikas, one for each plane her crew shot down in a confrontation near Capa Spagata, Spain, on 13 August 1943. 

Look at the man close to the middle of the gun crew. You see the odd bundle there? It’s a calico cat, a mascot echoed in the gun shields in the last image.