Shipping News

Museums that float tell stories of the sea

Laureen Miles

Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse

It’s an otherwise uneventful morning in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Children lead their parents from one attraction to the next, water taxis ply the shallows, and a gaggle of brazen ducks mooches the occasional bread crust. Cliff Long, however, is “walking the jib boom” of the U.S.S. Constellation.
Actually, “walking” isn’t the right verb. “Shimmying” is a better description of how Long slowly makes his way along the boom that protrudes like a long, wooden skewer from the front of the Civil War-era frigate. As he explains, “In the old days, men would ‘walk the boom’ to show off, and they really could walk it.” Interpretive guide Long, who wears a 19th-century seaman’s black uniform and sports a gray ponytail, says “I really like touching lives with a little history, a little drama and a little magic. And this is a great vessel for all those things.”
In addition to being an imagination-stirring ship, the Constellation stars in a fleet of floating museums permanently docked in the Inner Harbor. This past spring, the Baltimore Maritime Museum—which consists of the World War II-era submarine U.S.S. Torsk, the U.S. lightship Chesapeake, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Taney and the Seven-Foot Knoll Lighthouse—claimed the Constellation.
According to Chris Rowsom, the long-time executive director of the Constellation who was tapped to oversee the combined collection, the pay-off is the ability to tell a broader and more detailed story of Baltimore’s place in naval history as well as to consolidate the marketing cachet of all the properties. “We just felt we’d be stronger as one entity,” says Rowsom. “Bringing it all together really tells people who enjoy naval history that they should come to Baltimore as a unique destination.”
And Rowsom is right. But BMM’s anticipated visitors might well consider this “small-craft advisory.” Namely, that most of these are pretty tight on space. Kids will love barreling through the hatches from one ship compartment to the next. But adults—especially tall ones—should be warned to look out for low beams.
Even claustrophobics have a good time on the Constellation. The 164-foot vessel, the last all-sail warship built by the U.S. Navy, has expansive, open-air decks from which visitors see the painstaking nautical workmanship of bygone days in the ship’s decking and gunwales as well as panoramic views of the Inner Harbor.
Launched Sept. 7, 1797, the Constellation of today is a working piece of history. Its programs may be touted as “educational,” but children 6 and older will think the guided “Powder Monkey” tour a boatload of fun. The program demonstrates with hands-on activities the hard life of young boys on fighting ships. (No doubt kids won’t complain about washing the dishes for a while.)
The Constellation and its crew offer several scenarios on most days. One of the best, dubbed “Brace the Yards,” enlists the visitors, usually strangers, to haul the lines or braces that turn the yards, the spars that cross the masts. If the ship then got under way, that would allow 20,000 square feet of canvas to catch the wind.
During the Constellation’s storied past, she tracked down illegal slave traders as part of the U.S. Navy’s African Squadron between 1859 and 1861. Stationed at the mouth of the Congo River, the Constellation helped rescue more than 700 Africans and return them to their native land.
A stroll along the Inner Harbor promenade leads to the other ships in the collection. The Torsk completed a record 11,884 dives, and the lightship Chesapeake, once stationed at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, lit the way for mariners for 29 years. Both are docked in the shadow of the National Aquarium.
The fierce-looking Torsk, a state-of-the-art U.S. sub when built in 1944, features a hull painted to resemble a shark. It operated out of Pearl Harbor and made two war patrols off the coast of Japan during 1945. On Aug. 14, 1945, the sub sank a pair of Japanese defense frigates, which, as it turned out, were the last enemy ships downed during World War II.
The Chesapeake, christened in 1930, was tops in its class for stability, signaling capacity and living accommodations. Its strength and seaworthiness were seriously tested twice—in 1936 and 1962—when she was forced to ride out powerful hurricanes that broke the anchor chains. While that sturdiness is admirable, the U.S. Coast Guard Taney gets the award for yeoman’s duty. Moored in a narrow waterway directly behind the Hard Rock Cafe, the 327-foot-long Taney, commissioned in 1936, served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. It’s the only warship still afloat that saw action during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The final piece of the collection, though not a floating museum per se, is the large, drum-like Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse. The 1856 structure is the oldest remaining screw pile lighthouse in Maryland, so described because it was built on cast iron pilings with corkscrew bases that were rotated into the bay’s soft mud, eliminating the need for a masonry foundation.
Inside the lighthouse, the avuncular Charlie Reintzell provides chapter and verse on what it was like to live and work in a lighthouse. He’ll also provide an image of what retirement should be like for everyone. “This is the best job I’ve ever had, if you could call it a job. I’d do it for free,” he says. “I view this as the door to the city. And when people come in here, I like to tell them not only about the lighthouse but also about how special this area of the city really is.”