Funding Problems Close Monitor Center Lab
The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, has announced that due to lack of federal funding it will temporarily close the 5,000-square-foot conservation lab that houses the Union ironclad Monitor’s gun turret and other artifacts from the historic ship. At the end of 2013, the agreement that managed the partnership between the museum and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the conservation of the Monitor artifacts expired, leaving federal funding uncertain.
The privately owned museum was founded in 1930 and is congressionally designated as America’s National Maritime Museum. In 1997 it was named as the official repository of artifacts recovered from the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. The wreck was discovered in 1973, and in 2007 the 120-ton revolving gun turret was recovered. In 2007 the museum opened the Monitor Center, a $31 million, 64,000-square-foot expansion. More than 200 tons of material have been recovered and brought to the museum for conservation.
In a statement, museum president Elliot Gruber explained that “These artifacts are owned by the federal government, protected under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and managed by the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. The museum is proud to partner with NOAA to conserve these artifacts, but their preservation is ultimately the responsibility of the federal government.”
In 2012 no federal funding was appropriated, and in 2013 NOAA could only provide 10 percent the approximate $500,000 conservation cost. As a privately held museum, the balance of the conservation cost must come from the museum’s budget. “Monitor conservation costs the past two years has accounted for 15 percent of the museum’s budget. The museum can no longer continue to shoulder the cost of conserving these federally owned artifacts,” said John Warren, public relations manager for the museum.
The center’s “wet lab,” which houses the treatment tanks holding the Monitor’s turret, steam engine, Dahlgren guns and carriages, and condenser, will be closed. As a result, although the passive conservation that maintains artifacts will continue, “active” conservation, or the work required to prepare artifacts for display in the gallery, will stop. Warren explained:
In the absence of work on the large artifacts in the wet lab, our staff of five Monitor conservators is focused on stabilizing smaller Monitor artifacts in the “dry lab.” The lack of federal funding over the past several years has meant staff positions have not been filled, and the conservation staff is about half of what it was several years ago. So, there is plenty of work to keep Monitor conservators busy, even with the wet lab closed.
The museum has launched a petition to fund continued conservation of the Monitor collection. To view or sign the petition, visit www.change.org/petitions/united-states-congress-provide-funding-to-conserve-the-uss-monitor-collection.
–Maura McCarthy
National Coast Guard Museum Opening Announced
This May, the National Coast Guard Museum, a tribute to the service’s rich history, will open in New London, Connecticut. The first-ever museum of its type, it will honor the accomplishments of the men and women of the Coast Guard.
Last April, Commandant Admiral Robert J. Papp announced the Waterfront District as the location for the facility. The 54,300-square-foot building will boast four floors of interactive exhibits, event spaces, and lecture rooms, as well as a reception area with a gift shop and café. The Coast Guard’s tall ship, the cutter Barque Eagle, will be docked at an adjacent pier as another attraction.
Built on a plinth above storm-tide levels, the museum will be accessible to pedestrians via a ramp that will encourage circulation between City Pier Promenade to the south and ferry terminals to the north. Amphitheater-like steps provide informal seating for outdoor activities taking place in the pomenade.
The sweeping curve of the glass south facade and interior gallery spaces, hovering between shore and water, resembles a ship’s hull and prow. The south wing, open with a high-performance glass facade, has exhibition spaces that benefit from natural light and the maritime activities outside. The museum’s sheer red atrium wall, between the north and south wings, was designed to evoke the tall hull of a ship thrusting out to the water. It directs the view out to the Thames River and maritime traffic.
Displays will include the simulation of helicopter rescues in force-10 storms, a ship’s bridge on the building’s “prow,” and boats tossing in tumultuous seas. Realistic multimedia exhibits will focus on the Coast Guard’s critical role in maritime security, safety, protection of natural resources, and national defense.
For more information about the National Coast Guard Museum, visit www.coastguardmuseum.org.
New Evidence Casts Doubt on Franklin Expedition Theory
In January, University of Glasgow professors Keith Millar and Adrian W. Bowman and archaeologist William Battersby published “A re-analysis of the supposed role of lead poisoning in Sir John Franklin’s last expedition, 1845–1848” in the scholarly journal Polar Record. Their conclusions add a further layer of mystery to what caused the deaths of all 129 men on the Franklin expedition, an ill-fated British voyage that attempted to find the Northwest Passage in 1845 under historically cold conditions.
Theories over the years have cited diverse evidence to speculate about what caused the disaster and the crew’s ultimate fate. One early hypothesis suggested that scurvy was to blame, and ice-core analysis showed that the expedition attempted the Northwest Passage during a five-year period of exceptionally cold weather when the pack ice melted only a little, if at all. “Once beset in the ice then, whether scurvy-ridden or lead-poisoned or not, they had no hope of escape,” said Millar. “But the fact that the ships’ logs and other formal journals such as the surgeons’ ‘sick lists,’ which would provide hard evidence of what actually occurred, have never been recovered means that any such ‘explanations’ can only be speculation.”
A popular theory based on research from the 1980s proposed that lead poisoning may have significantly contributed to the declining health of the crew. (Cans containing the expedition’s provisions were sealed with lead solder.) But the recent article throws that theory into question.
In the 1980s and ’90s, Professor Owen Beattie and his colleagues observed that the Franklin’s crew had high levels of lead relative to today. However, it cannot be assumed that lead poisoning played a significant role in the deaths of the crew, Millar, Bowman, and Battersby argue. After all, 19th-century Britain was a lead-polluted environment where lead poisoning was not uncommon, so it’s not known whether the crew’s lead levels were unusual for the time or for Royal Navy personnel in particular. “Remarkably, there are no known normative data for 19th-century body-lead burdens in Britain,” Millar said.
To get an idea of the crew’s lead exposure, Millar and his colleagues reanalyzed the bone-lead content of seven expedition sailors’ skeletal remains. “It was evident that there was wide variation between the skeletons in their levels of lead, and, indeed, within skeletons according to different bone types,” he said.
Although the small sample sizes make it difficult to draw any conclusions about the bone-lead content of the entire crew, more definitive analyses are prohibited by the limited amount of available material. “As a consequence, our results, and those of others, must be treated cautiously,” Millar admitted. One other issue is that the identities of the seven skeletons are unknown. Therefore, their lifestyles and other factors that could have increased their lead exposures are mysteries. “We don’t know whether that small sample is representative of the whole crew, but we acknowledge the problem and emphasize it. One has to work with the material available.”
The article’s authors believe that their results support the broader views of British and American historians that the Franklin tragedy had no single cause, but many. “There was the failure of the British Admiralty to prepare a rescue plan, and then their delay in starting the search when it was obvious that the expedition was in difficulty,” Millar said.
Other reasons are the search squadrons miscalculated Franklin’s likely route, so they searched in all the wrong places; the expedition was trapped in the Arctic during several seasons when the ice did not melt in summer, preventing an escape; and when the time came to desert the ships, the crews were not prepared for the harsh climate and terrain.
“What is remarkable, and is implicit in all historical accounts and in the results of scientific investigations, is that these men endured terrible suffering but that significant numbers continued in an attempt to pursue their duty in an endeavour that was, sadly, beyond their capability,” Millar said.