News From the Department
At the North Carolina Maritime Museum: Life at Sea: A Sailors’ View
Exhibit Showing through April 23, 2006
For more information, contact: Jane Wolff, Public Information at Jane.Wolff@ncmail.net
The exhibit, Life at Sea: A Sailors’ View, showing through April 23, 2006, tells the story of what daily life aboard ship was like for the ordinary sailor during the nineteenth century. The half-century beginning in the late 1830s was the “Golden Age of Sail,” when large, fast sailing vessels, epitomized by clippers and packet ships dominated the world’s oceanic trade routes. “The sailors who manned these oceanic sailing vessels participated in the final flowering of a unique and distinctive culture that no longer exists.” This exhibit concentrates on the living conditions, work, clothing, diet, and recreation of the typical sailor of this era.
Included in the exhibit are photographs and two and three-dimensional objects as well as interactive features and video. The majority of the images date from the late nineteenth century when the dominance of sailing ships was in decline (Just imagine -- in earlier years their sheer numbers made them too mundane to attract the interest of photographers)! The narratives of sailors from the “Golden Age” such as Richard Henry Dana, Herman Melville and Rodman Swift are posted alongside these remarkable photographs and woodcuts.
Area organizations, businesses and individuals assisted with the exhibit by recreating various aspects of life at sea for visitors. Atlantic Veneer, Watercraft Center volunteers and museum staff fabricated berths, sea bags and sea chests. Visitors can lie down in these berths to experience how little personal space a sailor actually had and they may also try on the reproduction clothing they will find in the sea bags and sea chests. Carteret County Home School 4-H clubs (Eagles, ages 5-8, Dolphins, age 9-12 and Crystal Clovers, ages 13-18) made the clothing using perhaps the most “authentic” patterns in existence for seaman’s clothing of this era. These patterns were made from clothing recovered from a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea where they were found largely intact.
Museum exhibit fabricators built a working capstan, an apparatus used on ships to weigh (raise) the anchor and for other heavy lifting. To operate, the crew would push the capstan bars that served as levers on this upright spool-shaped cylinder. Visitors too, can give this a try.
To illustrate the work environment, a replica of a square yard with sail allows visitors to hoist yards, let loose and haul up sails, and maneuver the yards. Omar Sails made the square sail and Watercraft Center volunteers built the mast and spar. Museum staff installed the sail and lines. Working with this sail, which is considerably smaller than those that would have been used on a three - or four-masted vessel, truly gives an appreciation for the skill with which these common sailors managed miles of canvas and line. Visitors can use their own imagination to transport them outside the comfort of the museum and visualize the rigging being encased in ice, or being up to your knees in water on deck, or your ship listing to a 45 degree angle as you are lowering the sails.
The N.C. Maritime Museum is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. There is no admission charge. For information about the Life At Sea: A Sailor’s View exhibit or other museum programs phone 252-7287317 or email maritime@ncmail.net.
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The N.C. Maritime Museum is part of the Dept. of Cultural Resources, a state agency dedicated to the promotion and protection of North Carolina’s arts, history and culture. For more information about the Dept. of Cultural Resources visit www.ncculture.com
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