Having outside experts use our collection to research their own projects is a great thing because even though it’s sometimes inconvenient and frequently time consuming it ALWAYS yields some new information about an object or image in our collection. This was especially the case in November when two researchers, Kevin Foster and Emir Yener, showed up to research Civil War era blockade runners and nineteenth century warships.

On this coin that is well over 2300 years old, we see a floating galley on the reverse and a curious figure on the obverse. Some records of similar coins from the Phoenician city of Arados label their male figure as Poseidon, or sometimes Zeus, but these are Greek deities.

A recent inquiry from the Assistant Professor of Mediterranean History and Archaeology at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World brought a really cool assemblage of watercolors in our collection to my attention. The images were painted by Joseph Partridge, an artist turned Marine stationed aboard USS Warren between 1827 and 1830.

In the catalog I noticed a Japanese pillar clock, called a shaku dokei, up for auction. While updating the value I noticed a name on the clock’s storage box—’C. E. Thorburn, USN’. Whenever I run across a name, especially one this unique, I immediately try to see if I can uncover the history of the original owner.

The first combined operation of the Civil War was the capture of Hatteras Inlet. This inlet was used by Confederate gunboats and privateer merchantmen sailing around Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

CSS Alabama, commanded by Captain Raphael Semmes, had spent nearly two years capturing and destroying 65 Northern merchant ships and whalers. There were seven different expeditionary raids from the Eastern Atlantic to the Java Sea and back near where the vessel had been built.

Matthew Calbraith Perry guided the US Navy’s transition from sail to steam and shot to shell. It was he who recognized how these new tools would ensure the Navy’s ability to project American trade and power throughout the world.

Learn how recent research has revealed a connection between the port of Liverpool’s Bidston Hill signal station and Norfolk, Virginia in the 18th century.

Learn the amazing story of the British Royal Navy’s fortification and occupation of Diamond Rock, a small island off the coast of Martinique, during the Napoleonic War.