USS Monitor Center

Saving Princess Carolina: Acidification Research and Future Treatment Options

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Figure 3. A degrading area of wood surrounding a fastener hole in one of Princess Carolina’s timbers. Image courtesy of The Mariners’ Museum and Park.

Hi! My name is Christy and I’m a conservation intern here at the Batten Conservation Complex. Over the past eight months I’ve been working on a research project at The Mariners’ Museum and Park for the final year of my graduate program at Durham University. This project has involved a condition analysis and investigation of potential treatments for the Princess Carolina timbers which are currently deteriorating because of acid formation.

Although my time as an intern is almost up, we have recently found out that I’ll be able to continue my work here next year! The Mariners’ has been named one of six museums to receive the Kress Conservation Fellowship which provides funding for a post-graduate fellow at the Museum. I will serve as that fellow as I continue the exciting research I’m about to tell you all about!   Read more

Collections

Do you have an 18th century pencil we can borrow?

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1889-59-1-Pencil

Why yes, yes we do!

This is the question we received about a year or so ago from the Jamestown Yorktown Foundation.  Part of the material that came from the Ronson ship (you can read more about that here and here), is an 18th century pencil, which really had not been looked at closely until this point.   Read more

Collections

The Ronson Ship

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This is a baby shoe found in the Ronson collection. There was a plethora of shoe leather found in the hull of the Ronson. The larger shoe is in the picture for size comparison. The larger shoe is probably an adult male shoe.
This is a baby shoe found in the Ronson collection. There was a plethora of shoe leather found in the hull of the Ronson. The larger shoe is in the picture for size comparison. The larger shoe is probably an adult male shoe.

Welcome to the Ronson ship!

I am an intern in the Collections Management department and I have been tasked with re-cataloging and re-housing all of the artifacts that pertain to the Ronson ship. The bags and boxes that the Ronson ship artifacts were placed in when they came to The Mariner’s Museum in 1985 are falling a part which means the items are not properly stored. So I am going through each and every box (there are 78 boxes, that I am aware of) and putting all the items back into new bags. When the Ronson ship came The Mariner’s Museum a cataloging system was not put in places nor was a detailed inventory sheet made. So I am re-numbering each item and creating a new inventory sheet of each box.   Read more