Sir John Franklin

Ever since I began working at The Mariners’ Museum many years ago, I’ve harbored a mild curiosity about the fateful voyage of Sir John Franklin as he sought to locate the Northwest Passage during the mid-19th century.  I have been given the opportunity to delve deeper into this subject with a presentation I’ll be making to the CNU LifeLong Learners in February.

I guess sometimes when you’re reading about history, something you’re studying hits home.  The other day, I was fixing a pot of chili.  As I opened the cans of beans and tomatoes, I thought of how those of us living in 2011 take the process of commercially canned foods for granted.  I mean, canned food has been around all our lives.  We pull out the can opener, dump the contents into a pot or microwave bowl, and soon we’re feasting on food that is way out of season.

But for the sailors who accompanied Franklin on his ill-fated voyage of discovery, the process of canning food promised a safer voyage in the availability of “fresh” foods full of all the stuff that would keep them healthy and scurvy-free.  Subsequent studies have shown that these canned foods were anything but healthy.

As I prepare for my presentation and delve deeper into what happened to Franklin and his men, I’ll continue to post interesting bits of information about the expedition and will continue to discuss the most recent findings – including what made the canned food so unhealthy.

Having worked at The Mariners’ Museum for over twelve years, I have had the privilege of knowing a vast number of amazing men and women who decided to spend their retirement years volunteering at the Museum.  A number of these individuals served during World War II - in the Battle of the Atlantic, Battle of Britain, in the European and Pacific theaters, and on the home front.  In addition to those representing “the greatest generation,” we have had volunteers who served in the military during Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and the conflicts of the 21st century.  Our volunteer ranks have and continue to include former members of the Army, and Army Air Corps, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines. 

Today I am thinking of them all, and thinking of the service they provided to the nation.  I’m also thinking of their continued service to their local community.  My life is better for knowing so many wonderful individuals, and our nation is better because of their service.

Happy Veterans’ Day!

Yesterday I taught one of those programs that poses a challenge.  I had a student ask a question I could only answer through conjecture.  So, as any good museum person would do, I sat down to do a little research.  But first a bit of background….

I was teaching our Age of Exploration program to a group of high school students from New York.  At the end of the program, I had a question about the origin of rum production. Now sugar cane production dates back thousands of years to the Indian subcontinent, and since rum is a byproduct of sugar production, I stated that I would assume that rum had been produced in regions other than the Caribbean.  But since I wasn’t sure, I decided to delve deeper.  Here is what I found:

Sugar Cane

• Food historians believe sugar has been used in food for over 3,000 years.
• The 1200 B.C. Indian text, Ramayana, speaks of “tables laid with sweet things, syrup, canes to chew….”
• It is believed that Indian and other Asian cultures had fermented beverages derived from sugar cane thousands of years ago.
• The Malay people, in today’s southern Thailand and Sumatra, had a sugar cane-based drink called brum.
• Marco Polo was offered a “very good wine of sugar” while in Persia.
• Christopher Columbus introduced sugar cane to the New World during his second voyage.
• Modern rum production can be traced back to the 17th century when production began in the French and English West Indies.
• Rum is a byproduct of sugar production and can be made from either sugar cane juice or molasses.
• Rum was originally made when plantation owners saw another means of garnering revenue from their crop.
• Sugar cane, and thus rum production, played an important role in the institution of slavery that existed in the New World.
• The first rum production in North America occurred on Staten Island in 1664, and rum distillation was a vital part of the colonial industry in New England.

So there it is.  While not called rum until its production in the West Indies, the history of a fermented and distilled beverage derived from sugar cane dates back much further than the Age of Discovery.  History sometimes is a matter of semantics.

I’m working on the November newsletter, and as always, a cup of coffee is not far from reach.  If I were the nation of France, the strikers would be blockading the coffee pot and not the petrol refineries.  But I digress. In looking for a few images for the newsletter, I stumbled on the following and thought I’d share this bit of information that ties into our Age of Exploration program:

Coffee (Old World): Small evergreens of different species and hybrids that originated in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and now grown primarily in South and Central America.

• Coffee was discovered in the 3^rd century A.D. by monks near the Red Sea.
• The Turks introduced coffee to the Mediterranean through trade with Venice.
• The first coffee shops appeared in Venice around 1650, and by 1683 sweetener was added to the beverage.

We have even more information about the Age of Exploration on our website.

We are fast approaching the international holiday, Talk Like a Pirate Day.  And in honor of this important day, The Mariners’ Museum Education Department is celebrating in several ways.  We’ll kick off on Sept. 15 with the videoconference presentation of Aarrr: A Pirate Life for Me program for students in Tennessee.  The students will follow Capt. Murdoch and his crew as they search for the buried treasure.  Chances are good they’ll find something other than gold and silver.  We’ll follow this program with two more school programs and two library programs over the weekend.

Of course, on September 19th, the true Talk Like a Pirate Day, The Mariners’ Museum will celebrate the day with activities for all ages, a “Talk Like a Pirate” contest, children’s games, craft activities, and The Death of Blackbeard the Pirate Puppet show.

It’s weeks like this that remind me why I so love my job!

Today’s research has yielded all kinds of facts about submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), or in other words, the underwater grasses in the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. The Bay grasses have been on the decline for several years. Increased nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment levels have polluted the waters of the Bay. What exactly happens with the nitrogen and phosphorus? They lead to algal bloom, which creates a yellow-greenish layer of slime on the water’s surface. This, coupled with the excess sediment in the water, make it difficult for the sunlight to penetrate the water’s surface, which inhibits the growth of SAV. Additionally, the algal bloom tends to consume the oxygen which should be going to the plants. When Bay grasses die off, the natural habitats of fish, crabs, and other organisms – who rely on these grasses for food and protection from predators – disappear.

It has been a gradual process of restoring the Bay to a healthy state of being. This process has taken years of legislation, overhauling of sewage treatment processes, and many more large-scale movements to preserve the Bay. So I wondered, “What can I do to help?”

Then I found an article on a group called “Grasses for the Masses.” They grow wild celery at home and in schools and then transplant them to areas of the Bay which have a good chance of sustainability. What a cool and easy way for anyone to get involved with restoring the Chesapeake Bay – within the comfort of your own home!

Growing up in Newport News merely blocks from the James River, I knew from a fairly early age that the James flowed into the Chesapeake Bay, which was a great big important mass of water nearby. I learned more about the Virginia subcultures on and near the Bay when I read Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson when I was in middle school. Of course, there is always more to learn about everything that surrounds us!

So this week, I was asked to research and assemble a list of facts about the Chesapeake Bay (particularly concerning the environmental state of the Bay) for the Education Department. Here’s a few pieces of trivia I’ve learned thus far:

• The Chesapeake Bay has had human settlements for 12,000 years. Given, these did not become sizable until about 1,000 years ago, but still – that means the environment of the Bay has been influenced by humans for 12,000 years!
• 700,000 acres of the Bay are 6 feet (or less) deep. The average depth is 22 feet. This really gets you thinking about how everything we do in the Bay affects its environment because everything is so close to the surface of the water. Even just a kayak running through a marshy area could disturb the wildlife; a motorboat which runs too shallow could rip apart Bay grasses, destroying already fragile habitats.
• The Tangier Island dialect is supposedly closer to the colonial English dialect than any other modern accent. Isolated in the Bay, the Tangier Island residents still speak with a distinct accent. Jacob Have I Loved referred to the unique cultures on such islands, and I’m glad to know that Paterson did her research!

Those are just a few of the cool facts – some of them environmental, some cultural – that I have learned this week. Cool!

Last Friday I taught a Captive Passage program for a group of third graders from South Carolina; it was a great experience for the students, the teacher, and for me as well.  Now I’ve taught this program a number of times to a number of grade levels, but these students were exceptional.  It was obvious that their teacher had taken the time to prepare her students with background information.  Every time we began a discussion, they were prepared with questions, and were able to draw logical conclusions based on previous and new knowledge.

Not only was I impressed by the class as a whole, but there were several students at the end of the program with some of the best questions students have asked following our Captive Passage program.  One student asked if slavery exists today and the other wanted to know if the Africans involved in the slave trade were mercenaries.  This student even had me go back to a slide shown earlier in the program.

I can’t express how rewarding it was to know that these students had not only learned the content I was presenting, but were also taking their knowledge to a deeper level of thinking.  But this was not because of the hour I had spent with the students, it was because of the time their teacher had spent with them in preparing for the session.  Museum educational programs are a great asset to classroom instruction, but it is definitely a team effort between the museum, the teacher, and the students!