Hampton Roads HQ: The Mariners Museum
Adjacent to the Mariners Museum
Before I get into the museum in detail, let me cover a few points. First of all, if some family members aren’t interested in maritime history, the Virginia Fine Arts Center is right next door. It costs $5 for adults, $3 for children (at the time of this writing, check their website to verify prices) but if you show your receipt from the Mariners’ Museum you get a dollar off. (And that discount is reciprocal).
If you have family members who don’t care for maritime history or art, there’s the five-mile Noland Trail which winds around ‘placid Lake Maury.’ Bicycles aren’t allowed, unfortunately, but walkers and joggers are welcome.
The Mariners Museum Library is adjacent to the museum – and is the place to do research on maritime history. Visitors can’t go into “the stacks,” but you can look up the library’s collection on their computer and request books from one of the staff members who’ll be happy to help you out. There’s also newspapers on microfiche, magazines, etc. You can information on practically everything – passenger lists from immigrant boats, shipwrecks, military maritime history, and of course they have all the records of the Chris-Craft company.
And if you get hungry, there’s a (small) sandwich alcove in the Museum, which is open from 11.30 am to 2 pm, Tuesdays through Sundays. It’s run by ‘Sweet Madeline’s’, and should they be closed there’s still vending machines in the same location. Access to the tables is available at all times.
Timing is Everything
If you live in the Hampton Roads area and have any interest in maritime history at all, you’ll want to buy a year-long ‘Boarding Pass.’ It cost just a little bit more than the one-time entrance fee, but it gives you free entry for a year – and the Museum has events on a weekly basis that you’ll want to attend.
The Mariners’ Museum website is a must-visit, to learn what those events – usually talks given by experts in their field – are. They talk about everything from the African-American contribution to the maritime history of Virginia to the fate of the Titanic. Most talks in the coming year will be about Civil War history.
Mariners Museum 2006
The Mariners’ Museum is a dynamic place – which means things are changing all the time. The Monitor Center is in the process of being built, and is scheduled to be opened in March, 2007. Until it’s completed, what used to be the front entrance to the Museum is sealed off, so you need to enter from the back door – which is flanked by some cool bronze friezes. The Gift Shop, with its books, models, and various other souvenirs, is also closed at the moment – but you can get stuff via their internet store.
If you are a resident of Hampton Roads and only want to do a single visit, then you’ll probably want to wait until after July 7, 2006. That’s when an exhibit on pirates: Swashbucklers: The Romance of the Pirate, is scheduled to open, doubtless spurred on by the upcoming movie Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest.
Best Time?
At 3.30 pm weekdays (1.00 pm weekends), until the Monitor Center actually opens next year, there’s a guided tour of the construction complex. You’ll get a behind- the-scenes look at what goes into such a massive undertaking, and you’ll also be able to see the Monitor’s turret, which was recovered from its North Atlantic grave a few years ago and has been undergoing conservation ever since. (Along with some other artifacts).
In many ways, the weekends are the best days to visit the Museum. On Saturdays and Sundays there are interpreters in the Ironclad Evidence exhibit who’ll bring you through it, and on Fridays and Saturdays, a Mr. Joe Filipowski recites the pose and poetry of the sea, beginning at 2.30 pm in the museum’s theater (near the main entrance of the museum). Before that he’s usually to be found in the Chesapeake Bay Gallery, working on a ship model.
The Galleries
From now until March 2007…
You enter through the back door, as I pointed out earlier. Immediately you’ll see the desk where you purchase your daily or boarding pass , and depending on when you arrive there’ll be docents there waiting to start a tour. You’ve got two choices…straight ahead or turning to your left.
Great Hall of Steam
If you go straight ahead, you’ll enter what they call the Great Hall of Steam. On your right as you enter you’ll pass a small Titanic display, left over from a larger exhibit from several years ago. In the corner is a Titanic lifeboat, and you can get into this and imagine what it was like to be out on that ice-filled ocean so many years ago. There are dozens of boats in the Mariners’ Museum – this is the only one that you’re actually allowed to get into.
Also in this Great Hall of Steam is the Mariners’ collection of ship’s figureheads, lining the walls. On the floor itself are vitrines (otherwise known as glass cases) containing models illustrating the evolution of steam-engine powered ship. There are scale models of working steam engines…press a button and you can see them spring to life.
At the far end of this Hall, you’ve got four choices. To your left is The Miniature Ships of August F. Crabtree. These ships are really cool, and the story is even cooler. Crabtree spent 28 years building this fleet of miniature ships…famous ships from around the world. In a small alcove you can sit and watch a mini-movie and hear Crabtree describe his work on various models.
Depending on what time you arrive, there’ll be a ship’s model maker practicing his craft in his own little alcove, who’ll be delighted to stop and talk to any visitors.
Your third choice is to go straight out the doors there. To your left will be the Boatbuilding Building, where, depending on the day and the time, you can see people building a boat. Or head to your right and enter the International Small Craft Center, which houses over 20 ship and boat-types from around the world. More on that later.
Your fourth choice won’t be ready until July 7…it’s the Swashbucker: The Romance of the Pirate exhibit. Until this exhibit is open, you won’t be able to circle the exhibits in the Museum, so once you’re finished perusing these galleries, you’ll retrace your steps, go back through the entry hall, through the sandwich galley, and enter the Defending the Seas gallery.
(What I would suggest is that rather than going through the exhibits ‘backwards,’ walk all the way through these rooms until you get to the currently sealed off main entrance, and start from there in chronological order, beginning with the Chesapeake Bay Gallery). However, my topics below are presented’backwards.’
Defending the Seas
Until the main entrance is open again, you’ll be going through the Defending the Seas hall backwards in time, starting from the dawn of the space age (a Gemini space suit circa 1965, and coveralls worn by Alan Shepherd are in one cabinet) and the nuclear age of the fighting submarine.
You’ll then transition into World War II, with an alcove containing a submarine display (including a set of bunks, into which you can climb), another alcove for a ‘briefing room’ for pilots ready to go on a raid, and you can walk on a brief portion of the wooden deck of an aircraft carrier (decks were constructed of wood to ensure they’d be ‘spark-less.)’
You’ll then walk into the civil war and see a scale-sized version of the Monitor turret, as well as some artifacts from the Navy in the Civil War. (Unfortunately you can’t go inside the turret).Then, you walk into the War of 1812 and among other things learn the history behind the phrase “Don’t give up the ship.” (They were the last words of Commander James Lawrence, whose battleship was nevertheless captured by the HMS during the War of 1812.)
The Nelson Touch
October 21, 2005 was the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, in which England’s most famous seaman, Horatio Nelson, was killed by a sniper’s bullet at the very moment of his triumph over the French fleet. The Nelson Touch, which again you’ll be entering backwards in time, will take you from Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar through his entire career to his beginnings as a humble midshipman.
Age of Exploration Gallery
This gallery “chronicles the developments in shipbuilding, ocean navigation, and cartography that made the voyages of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries possible. Ship models, rare books, illustrations, maps, navigational instruments, and other artifacts help bring the gallery to life.” There’s plenty of artifacts on display, but also various audio-visual cabinets…each one of which still works!
As you come out of Age of Exploration gallery, you are now in what was, and will be again come March 2007, the entrance gallery. A gigantic statue of Leif Ericson by Alexander Calder guards the entrance to the Age of Exploration. To your left is the Chesapeake Bay Gallery..to your right is the Ironclad Evidence exhibit…featuring models and paintings of the Civil War ironclads Monitor and Virginia, and artifacts from the U.S.S. Monitor. (At the far end of this exhibit will be another entrance into the Pirate exhibit, when it opens on July 7.
Straight ahead of you is a small USS Monitor station. When NOAA was working on raising the turret in 2001, you could watch operations from the television screen here. You used to go out through the doors here, and see a few of the Monitor artifacts undergoing conservation in gigantic holding tanks. The turret *used* to be on display here, but now it’s been moved to its permanent location inside the Monitor center, and you can only see it if you take the 3.30 weekday tour (or the 1 pm weekend tour) of the construction site. So don’t bother going through those doors.
Chesapeake Bay Gallery
The first-order fresnel lens that shines its light over the Chesapeake Bay Gallery came from the Cape Charles lighthouse. You’ll then walk through the history of the Chesapeake Bay from its first inhabitants to the arrival of Europeans. A brief mention of pirates – in particular the infamous Blackbeard – and then you’ll get into the exhibit of the Virginia Watermen. (This is also where Joe Filipowski holds forth on Fridays and Saturdays.) Then you’ll walk through the displays of pleasure watercraft, and finally return back to your starting point near what was, and will be again…the main entrance.
International Small Craft Center
If you didn’t go outside and visit the International Small Craft Center earlier on in your tour, now’s the time to do it. In addition to boats from all over the world, there’s an office equipped with a computer, for doing research.
Monitor Center
When this is finished and opened in March, 2007, visitors will be able to walk back in time to the 1860s and life aboard an ironclad ship. You’ll be able to go inside the turret, but not into the bowels of the ship itself, which is a pity.
Getting there
You’ll come to the Mariners Museum either by turning from Warwick Boulevard (currently under construction), or straight through from J. Clyde Morris Boulevard (which at a certain point changes its name to the Avenue of the Arts), which intersects with Warwick. Either way, once you turn onto Museum Drive, you’ll want to immediately get into the left hand lane, because you’ll be taking the first left hand turn towards the museum. If you keep on going straight you’ll be headed towards Christopher Newport University.
