Time for the November Way Back Wednesdays photos! Enjoy!

Above you can see school children on a trip to the museum posing in front of their bus in May of 1935. I absolutely love old vehicles, and this bus is no exception.

This shows the reassembly of the Hog Island Lighthouse Lens in our main gallery space in February of 1964. This lens was on loan to us, but we now own the lens that used to be in the Cape Charles Lighthouse, which can be seen in our main lobby area. When I ran across this picture I had to laugh because the lens has magnified the head of the man in the back, making him look really funny. The best part is that he probably never even knew.

Here you can see one poor man lifting those giant cannonballs into the back of the truck while everyone else just “oversees”. Hah! This was taken in September of 1942 and shows how the museum supported the war effort. We have long had a mystery regarding our cannonballs with several in our collection having been missing for years. The cannonballs in this picture were not accessioned into the collection, but we have often wondered if maybe they accidentally (or perhaps purposefully) gave some to the military that were in the collection. They didn’t keep detailed records about it, so we’ll probably never know.

In December of 1951, Mr. Joseph Kotchka visited the museum with the Merchant Marine Publicity Trailor. If you look at the trailer you can see a picture of SS America while on the top of the car is a sign for SS United States, which was slated to have her maiden voyage the following year.

Don’t forget to check back next month for more Way Back Wednesdays photos!