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16 February 2023 — Won't you join us the weekend of 14—16

April for our Annual Meeting, marking 60 years of NMHS?

The itinerary is now online, along with a link to the registration page.

Highlights of the weekend will include:

A day in Norfolk on Friday, 14 April, aboard the Victory Rover for lunch and a two-hour cruise of the world's largest naval base and the Port of Virginia, followed by a visit to USS Wisconsin, and the Nauticus science and technology center.

Saturday morning, 15 April, members will meet at The Mariners' Museum for breakfast and the annual business meeting, followed by presentations from leaders in the maritime and naval heritage community. After lunch, there will be guided tours of the museum and the USS Monitor Center.

The weekend will conclude on Sunday morning, 15 April, when members will get a behind-the-scenes tour of the USS Monitor Center lab in the Batten Conservation Complex, one of the most advanced conservation labs of any maritime museum in the world.

The 34-ton propeller from SS United States stands at the entrance to The Mariners' Museum. Photo: The Mariners' Museum.

We’re excited that our host for this year’s annual meeting is The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News. Let’s start with some numbers:

The Mariners’ Museum has approximately 90,000 square feet of exhibition space, and its collection comprises over 32,000 pieces, including—but most definitely not limited to—ship models, figureheads, scrimshaw, scientific and navigation instruments, boats, models, and artworks. The library and archives hold the largest maritime history collection in the Western Hemisphere. The International Small Craft Center showcases 150 boats from 42 countries. Mariners’ Park, free and open to the public, spans 550 acres, with the five-mile Noland Trail leading around Mariners’ Lake. Through these expansive resources, the museum continues to fulfill and expand the mission laid out in its charter, granted in June of 1930, to serve as “a museum and library pertaining to nautical subjects, things and interests, and otherwise to advance learning, the arts and sciences relating to or bearing on water-craft, the marine and marine navigation.”

The museum is the steward of the recovered remains of USS Monitor. The legendary ironclad went down in a storm off Cape Hatteras on New Year’s Eve in 1862. The shipwreck site, discovered in 1973, was designated the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary 1975, under the jurisdiction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As objects like a signal lantern, anchor, and relish jar were recovered, The Mariners’ Museum was chosen to manage and curate them.

A team of researchers raises the turret of USS Monitor out of the ocean on 5 August 2002. Photo: NOAA Monitor Collection.

Towards the turn of the century, NOAA archaeologists concluded that Monitor was significantly deteriorated, and NOAA teamed with the US Navy to retrieve significant portions of the ship in order to preserve them; this undertaking has been the largest marine archaeological metals conservation project in the world. Monitor’s revolving gun turret, two Dahlgren guns, and the steam propulsion engine are some of the many significant objects retrieved from the site; they are kept at the Batten Conservation Complex for conservation. In addition to the structural components of the ship, other recovered items from the site include personal effects of the crew. In addition to the conservation of the artifacts, the team also thoroughly documents items, through photographs and the creation of 3D models, to facilitate their study.

In 2021, The Mariners’ Museum and Park was one of 12 award recipients of NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) grant, which enables nonprofit organizations to partner with local school districts. Photo: The Mariners' Museum.

In service to its mission of education, The Mariners’ Museum provides a variety of history programs for school classes, either in the museum, on-site in schools, or remotely. Its Environmental Co-op works with the Newport News Public schools in a 9^th-grade science project to learn about the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and engage in activities to improve water quality. 

Like many other institutions, The Mariners’ Museum is taking advantage of technology to share its collections and educational programming to audiences far beyond its local communities. The museum’s website has a portal for video collections, such as the series Beyond the Frame, interpreting individual paintings from its collection, and lectures on a variety of historical topics, as well as videos exploring the stages of the Monitor conservation process, lectures, and more. The Age of Exploration student pages teach that topic using games, activities, worksheets and text modules.

There is so much more to tell about the Museum and Park, but we hope you will come experience it for yourself!  

Photo: The Mariners' Museum.