Cutty Sark Burns
A fire that severely damaged the 19th-century clipper ship Cutty Sark on 21 May is being treated as suspicious by police. The 138-year-old tea clipper, which was undergoing a £25 million restoration project, is kept in a dry dock at Greenwich in southeast London. Damage, although severe, could have been worse. A Cutty Sark Trust spokesman said 50 percent of the ship’s material and planking, including the masts, rigging, and deck houses, had been previously removed for the restoration.
The Metropolitan Police said detectives were looking into the possibility that the fire had been started deliberately. Firefighters were called to the scene at 0445, and the flames were put out by 0700.
The clipper is a rare example of composite construction combining a wrought iron frame with wood hull and deck planking. The fire leaves only one intact clipper of the same construction, the City of Adelaide at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Ayrshire. Richard Doughty, chief executive of the Cutty Sark Trust wrote on 22 May that “Our primary concern is distortion in the iron framework. There has clearly been some dimensional change.”
The trust is appealing for funds to help repair the fire damage and complete the restoration.
The Good That Men Do...
By Colonel John Grider Miller, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
William Shakespeare wrote that the good that men do is often interred with their bones. The life and legacy of Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons turns that notion on its head. General Simmons died 5 May at his home in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 85.
By any standard, Ed Simmons had a superlative active-duty career. He was a three-war Marine, wounded in action and decorated for valor during the liberation of Guam, the bitter breakout from Korea’s Chosin Reservoir, and two combat tours in Vietnam. But his greatest and longest- lasting accomplishments lay ahead, as he assumed retired status and proceeded to build a second career equally or more productive than his first.
As a prolific writer, he inspired waves of military historians for years to come. But that is only part of his legacy. When Ed Simmons began his twilight tour as director of Marine Corps History and Museums, our historical resources were fragmented and underfunded. Headquarters Marine Corps staff agencies oversaw various pieces (e.g., the G-3 [Operations] division owned the photo archives), and our “museum” was housed in a small wooden building stuck behind the Quantico Post Exchange.
Ed Simmons approached the 25th commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert E. Cushman Jr., and convinced him to provide a proper home for History and Museums in Building 58, Washington Navy Yard. He also convinced the commandant to adjust personnel assignment priorities enough to ensure a steady stream of talented writers to toil in the new historical vineyards.
A torrent of quality historical production ensued. Museum functions were consolidated under the late Colonel Brooke Nihart; the stellar World War II histories of the late Bud Shaw and Ben Frank were followed by a flood of high- quality historical monographs, written by a new breed of authors. The combat art collection was pulled together by combat artist Jack Dyer, and artist-in-residence Colonel Charles Waterhouse created a series of paintings that portrayed the Marine Corps in action from the days of the American Revolution through Operation Desert Storm.
With heavy-duty assistance from Colonel Allan Millett, Ed Simmons pushed through a program to place historians with both academic and Marine Corps bona fides to cover non-routine deployments, embedded in the units.
The centerpiece of the Simmons era was the multivolume U.S. Marines in Vietnam—Green Book—series, developed year by year over a decade. The process was not unlike the Naval Institute’s open forum, inviting comments from all key players. In the welter of claims and counterclaims, a rough version of truth would bubble to the top, assuring future historians a clean factual baseline when they set about figuring what it all means.
Ed Simmons also was a founding member of the Marine Corps Historical Foundation, which morphed into the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation as plans developed for a Heritage Center and National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico. The Edwin H. Simmons wing of the Alfred Gray research center will house today’s and tomorrow’s Marine historians, as they carry forth the Ed Simmons legacy for decades to come.
Colonel Miller served as Brigadier General Simmons’ deputy for Marine Corps History and later as managing editor of Proceedings and Naval History. In retirement, he continued his association with General Simmons as a board member and committee chairman of the Marine Corps Historical Foundation/ Heritage Foundation.
The Intrepid Eased Into Drydock
Getting the Intrepid (CV-11) away from her Manhattan berth after 24 years proved a chore last year, but the second leg of the voyage to a long-awaited restoration proved short and sweet. On 10 April, the famed World War II aircraft carrier made the trip of about a mile from a Bayonne, New Jersey, dock to an adjacent drydock without incident.
The move began at 0828 when four McAllister tugboats pulled the 912- foot carrier away from the pier and out into New York Harbor to the Bayonne Dry Dock & Repair Corporation for 60 to 75 days of intensive restoration and revitalization. “It’s an awesome sight to see this historic ship safe and sound, ready for her extreme makeover,” Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum President Bill White said once the ship was finally secured in the drydock 3 hours and 20 minutes later.
Commissioned in August 1943, the Intrepid survived five Japanese kamikaze strikes in World War II. The carrier avoided the scrap yard in 1982, when she was moved to Manhattan to become the centerpiece of the museum. But almost 65 years of exposure and 30 years without a drydock visit resulted in rust and hull damage that could only be repaired with the ship out of the water.
By 0955, the ship was off the mouth of the drydock and workers attached a winch cable to the bow to pull her in. With just 26 feet to spare on each side, the water level was lowered so she floated two feet over support blocks and then work stopped for the night.
After divers inspected the hull the next morning and made minor adjustments to the wooden tops of the cement support blocks, the remaining water was removed from the 52-foot-deep drydock, which holds almost 13 million gallons of water. The entire restoration is expected to cost about $4.8 million.
“We have to inspect the ship and make sure the hull is in good condition,” White said. “It needs a paint job. There’s a lot of rust. The ship is in need of some structural repair on the island [superstructure] and some other areas where the steel has just rusted out after 65 years and not having 5,000 Sailors [work] on it over the last 24 years.”
“There will be a hull inspection and the ultrasonic thickness gauging at 2,500 locations to map out a complete picture of the hull steel,” White said. “The steel will be replaced as necessary.” The hull is also being pressure-washed and repainted with about 6,500 gallons of donated paint.
Once the exterior work is completed, the Intrepid is scheduled to be moved to Staten Island, where her interior will be restored at a cost ranging from $6 to $8 million, White said. She is expected to be in Staten Island for the 6 June D- Day ceremonies and remain there until at least October 2008, when she will be moved back to a new pier and museum area in Manhattan.
The move into the drydock was facilitated by the museum’s purchase online for $13 of plans drawn 38 years ago in anticipation of placing the ship into drydock, which last occurred three decades ago in Philadelphia. Matt Woods, vice president for operations, who spotted and purchased the plans from 1969, said that without them “it would be virtually impossible” to properly position the ship in the 1,120- foot-long drydock. “We have to float this thing in, line it up to a reference point and that’s how your blocks are laid out in close proximity to what the ship’s keel looks like. If the blocks are in the wrong spot, you have to pull the ship back out, drain the dock, reconfigure the blocks.”
Last year the ship’s first planned move to Bayonne ended after moving just 15 feet when her four propellers stuck in the mud, and the second move following them free. To avoid future problems moving the ship, her propellers will be permanently removed while in drydock. One will go on the reconstructed Manhattan pier at West 46th Street and the other three will be offered as exhibits elsewhere.
—Bill Bleyer
Wally Schirra
He was the astronaut most Americans knew best even if they never met him, the medium of television flashing his face into millions of homes, whether climbing out of a capsule or reporting alongside Walter Cronkite during the epic flight of Apollo XI. His ebullient smile and quick wit were always present and greeted all with whom he came in contact, yet there was a distinct seriousness of purpose in Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr., who passed away on 3 May, at the age of 84.
The sky was his birthright. His father, having learned to fly in World War I, later barnstormed around the country with his wife, Wally’s mother, as a wing walker. Entering the Naval Academy in the midst of his generation’s world war, Wally graduated in 1945 and was designated a naval aviator. During the fast-paced age of technological advances in the 1950s, he was on the cutting edge: dueling MiG-15s over Korea while an exchange pilot with the U.S. Air Force, evaluating the Sidewinder missile, and test flying designs ranging from the F7U Cutlass to the F4H Phantom 11 before his selection as a member of the first group of NASA astronauts.
The fifth American into space, completing an orbital flight on 3 October 1962, Schirra became the only member of the Mercury program to fly in each of the first three manned space programs. In 1965, in command of Gemini VTA, he was part of the historic first rendezvous of manned spacecraft in orbit, and three years later, following the disastrous Apollo I fire that killed three astronauts, NASA chose Schirra to command the first manned flight of the Apollo program.
It proved to be his final space flight, yet Wally Schirra, in his accomplishments and now his memory, forms the foundation of the enduring story that is mankind’s exploration of outer space.
—Hill Goodspeed
Not a PT
Reports of the remains of a suspected World War II U.S. PT boat being found in the Solomon Islands were premature. A New Zealand archaeologist has scuttled the initial identification of the discovery on Rannonga Island. An earthquake on 2 April exposed the wreck when it raised one side of the island three meters.
Archaeologist-historian Ewan Stevenson now believes that the remains are those of a small Japanese vessel used to transport supplies and ammunition by night. Such vessels were not of a particular class, but were often prewar fishing luggers or coasters.
According to Stevenson, he “. . . found very little historically on Rannonga, which is not surprising considering it was militarily very unimportant.” But he did find three references to an attack by the New Zealand Air Force on 28 August 1943 in which Kittyhawks (export versions of the Curtiss P-40) first bombed, then strafed some craft in the area where the wreck was discovered. One report cited “two small ships,” another described a “small steamship and a 30-foot launch,” and the third, “one APC and 3 motor-boats.”
The identification of APC is confusing, because that was a U.S. ship type, but it was probably used as an indication of size, approximately 110 feet in length. Stevenson believes that the remains are Japanese because Japanese ammunition was found in the wreck.
He concludes that “There is very little of significance of this site other than the fact that it has recently come to light by a significant earthquake uplift on 2 April 2007. It is a unique wreck from that point; not many wrecks are exposed by earthquake uplift! However, it is of very minor historic value.”
“Black Swan” Wreck Yields Tons of Coins
In what is believed to be the largest collection of coins ever excavated from a historic shipwreck site, a Tampa, Florida- based salvage company has recovered more than a half million coins weighing more than 17 tons. Each coin is expected to fetch about $1,000 from collectors, and speculators are putting the find’s estimated value at $500 million.
The site of the colonial-era shipwreck, code-named “Black Swan,” has not been disclosed, but according to an Odyssey Marine Exploration press release, it is in the Atlantic Ocean, “beyond the territorial waters or legal jurisdiction of any country.” The company petitioned a federal court last fall seeking exclusive salvage rights to the remains of a 17th- century merchant vessel that sank with valuable cargo on board about 40 miles off the southwestern tip of England. Those rights were granted in April.
“Our research suggests that there were a number of colonial-period shipwrecks that were lost in the area where this site is located, so we are being very cautious about speculating as to the possible identity of the shipwreck,” said John Morris, Odyssey cofounder and CEO. “Nevertheless, we have treated this site with kid gloves and the archaeological work done by our team out there is unsurpassed. We are thoroughly documenting and recording the site, which we believe will have immense historical significance.”
Odyssey announced on 18 May that it completed a predisturbance archaeological survey and preliminary excavation of the site. All recovered items have been legally imported into the United States and placed in a secure, undisclosed location where they are undergoing conservation and documentation. They were recovered in conformity with salvage law, and the company does not believe that the recovery is subject to sovereign immunity by any nation pursuant to the Law of the Sea Convention.
In 2003, the company excavated the SS Republic, a shipwreck lost in 1865. That site, off Savannah, Georgia, yielded approximately 65,000 artifacts, including more than 50,000 coins with a retail value in excess of $75 million.
The richest shipwreck find came in 1985 when treasure-hunting pioneer Mel Fisher discovered the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. He recovered a reported $400 million in coins and artifacts.