We have a fantastic corps of volunteers here at the museum. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know some of them, particularly the Navigators, who greet visitors, offer tours, and make sure guests find their way to all of the exhibits. Whenever I see them, they never fail to ask how the conservation of the Monitor is going, or if we’ve discovered anything new, or sometimes more generally: what have you been up to back there lately?
So here’s what we’ve been up to lately. . .
It is no surprise that many ships were torpedoed during WWII and that many soldiers passed away as the ships went down. Today, however, I came across a few photographs of groups of men who managed to survive. Thankfully, the notes on the back of the prints are detailed and told their stories:
These dapper seaman were on the English ship SS Norman Prince which was torpedoed on May 28, 1942 off St. Lucia. They were rescued by the French ship SS Angouleme, but kept as prisoners in Martinique for over four months. They were finally released in an exchange of prisoners and came aboard this ship, the SS Goethals. Uboats.net adds that all but one survivor drifted on the lifeboat for 26 hours, 40 miles before they were able to get the attention of the SS Angouleme.
Well, now that the Library has catalogued all these items pertaining to Monitor and Virginia, how do you the reader search for them? Let’s start out by talking about the Archives catalog at www.marinersmuseum.org/catalogs. You can search here for anything that we as a museum care for. But if you want to search for these newly-catalogued Monitor and Virginia-related items, click on the “Archives” link. Once you’re there, I really recommend you read the Help. It can truly improve your searching.
Let’s say you’re interested in anything we catalogued about John Taylor Wood, who served aboard CSS Virginia. Now, I like the keyword search, but I like to limit the number of bad hits I get, so I will find a short and uncommon couple of words that go together and enclose them in quotes, like “Taylor Wood”. Select the Item Level, and hit the Search button.
This past weekend, a reader who follows this blog wrote in a response to a blog post that was in itself a great research question.
I’m happy he asked it! We might very well have what he is looking for.
Here is our final guest blog post, from Alex, who worked with us this past summer during the big drive to the finish line. Alex, yours is the last word:
