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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy - Very Cool
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/sc...html?th&emc=th
August 16, 2010 A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy By WILLIAM J. BROAD MYSTIC, Conn. - The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledge gone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship's models. But the Charles W. Morgan is still here - the world's last surviving wooden whaling vessel, built in 1841. And restorers are spending $10 million to turn the museum piece into a working ship able to ply the unruly sea. They plan to sail the ship on its first voyage in nearly a century, opening a new chapter in its long career. Built in New Bedford, Mass., a bustling port known as the whaling capital of the world, the Morgan sailed the globe for eight decades in pursuit of leviathans, escaping fire and cannibals, Confederate raiders and Arctic ice. She brought home thousands of barrels of whale oil that lighted homes and cities. She also delivered tons of baleen, the horny material from the mouths of certain whales that was made into buggy whips and corset stays. In 1941, its centenary, the Morgan was towed to Mystic Seaport for museum display and in 1966 was named a national historic landmark. To learn as much as possible about the old ship and ensure its successful restoration, the specialists here are turning to the art and science of imaging. They are deploying lasers and portable X-ray machines, laptops and forensic specialists, cameras and recorders, historians and graphic artists to tease out hidden details of the ship's construction and condition. The project, begun in 2008, is producing a revealing portrait. It shows the exact placement and status of many thousands of planks, ribs, beams, nails, reinforcing pins, wooden pegs and other vital parts of the Morgan, giving shipwrights a high-tech guide for the rebuilding of the historic vessel. "When we're done, she'll be as strong or stronger as the last time she went to sea," Quentin Snediker, director of the shipyard here, said during a restoration tour. "So why not sail her?" Minutes later, a specialist was firing X-rays through the ship's keel - a massive oak spine composed of several timbers, its length more than 90 feet. He was hunting for the large bronze pins that hold the keel together. The restorers want to assess the so-called drift pins 169 years after their installation and plan to replace or reinforce those that show deterioration. The pins are between one and two feet long. In a more sweeping assessment, specialists have sent laser beams racing across the Morgan, inside and out, seeking to record inconspicuous details and form a digital archive of exact measurements. The laser scans can track details as small as an eighth of an inch and have swept the entire ship across its 114-foot length and 28-foot width - once a cramped home to a crew of 35. The scans have produced "millions of points of information" and a wealth of three-dimensional images, said Kane Borden, research coordinator of the restoration. "The results are pretty spectacular to look at." Historians here say the restoration, for all its high-tech sophistication, is fundamentally about remembering and honoring the past. The Morgan is the last representative of a fleet of 2,700 American whaling vessels that put the young country on the map and nourished its growing economy. The industry was so important that the whaling life became a distinctive part of the American experience. "The scope and scale of it is something that people have no idea of today," said Matthew Stackpole, a Mystic Seaport official. "It was the first time the U.S. presence was felt around the world." The Morgan was built in the shipyard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman and named after Charles Waln Morgan, a Philadelphia Quaker who was its first main owner. The year of its inaugural voyage, 1841, also marked the departure from New Bedford of another ship, carrying an aspiring author by the name of Herman Melville. His whaling experience resulted in "Moby Dick," and his realistic portrayals of the industry gave it new visibility and status. The Morgan completed 37 voyages from her home ports of New Bedford and San Francisco and sailed farther than any other American whaler, according to historians. Near a remote Pacific isle, the crew took up firearms to fend off canoes full of cannibals. Captains could bring along their wives, and two of them served as expert navigators. The logs of Charlotte Church, the wife of Capt. Charles S. Church, who sailed on the Morgan from 1909 to 1913, recorded not only latitude, longitude, heading, distance and barometric pressure but the death of a pet cat. Dry humor marked her entries. "We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almost twenty canary bird - no fear of starving for a while." The ship's great luck in escaping from serious threats translated into bad luck for whales. Over the decades, the ship's harpooners took in more than 2,500 of the behemoths to dismember their carcasses and boil their blubber down into more than 50,000 barrels of oil. Whales were the petroleum wells of the day. "We're not apologizing for the past," Mr. Stackpole, the seaport official, said of the hunt. "But we have to understand what happened and do better," especially in protecting whales threatened with extinction because of the long decades of concentrated whaling. On a beautiful day in late July, the restoration shipyard here was alive with specialists. Some cut wood in the sawmill. The tons of replacement timbers include some carved from colossal hunks of live oak salvaged after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 uprooted many trees along the Gulf Coast. The Morgan rested high and dry on supporting beams, stripped of masts and most gear. Experts scrutinized her for construction details to add to the growing library. Bill Movalson, an official with Allpro Imaging, a company in Melville, N.Y., that makes portable X-ray machines, took aim at the thick keel. "Stand back," he advised. The X-ray source, mounted on a tripod and looking like a large video camera, emitted a series of beeps and then a continuous hum. Mr. Movalson stepped behind the keel to retrieve the exposed plate, which he fed into a small machine. It read the plate by a method known as computed radiography, using lasers and electronics rather than chemicals to uncover the invisible. In a few seconds, a ghostly image appeared on his laptop screen. "We got it," Mr. Movalson said, pointing to the image of a bronze drift pin. "Look, it's all eaten away right at the seam." Decades of exposure to seawater had corroded the pin at the area where it connected the keel to a protective timber known as the false keel. "This is what we'd expect," Mr. Snediker, the shipyard director, said while examining the image. He added that the discovery of the corrosion "validates the technique," showing that the X-ray exposures are sensitive enough to distinguish faulty drift pins from those that show no deterioration. Mr. Snediker said the project was seeking to harness every conceivable tool and method "to learn as much as we can." The restorers are even recording the comments of shipwrights who dismantle old wooden structures in an effort to capture subtle insights into ship construction. "We get layer upon layer of information," he said. The least technical of the methods centers on a group of young artists who are sketching the various stages of the Morgan's disassembly and repair. "It's great to see it through their eyes," Mr. Snediker said. Nearby was the project's headquarters, lodged in ramshackle offices full of files, papers and computers. At his desk, Mr. Borden, the research coordinator, showed how a computer served as the library for the accumulated information. A blueprint-style image of the Morgan glowed on his computer screen, as did a series of X-ray icons. "You can zoom in," Mr. Borden said, clicking on one. The underlying image revealed a central joint. If all goes as planned, the refurbished Morgan will be outfitted with new rigging in late 2012. And the next year, in early summer, if the weather proves fair, the whaler will pull away from the granite pier at the seaport and once again sail with the wind at her back, rocking though the waves, making history. The goal is to visit places along the New England Coast of special significance to whaling, like New Bedford. "She's the last of her kind," Mr. Stackpole said of the Morgan. "We want her to be a living issue rather than a dusty old artifact," her voyages a new page in the story of American whaling. -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. |
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#2
posted to rec.boats
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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy - Very Cool
"Harry ?" wrote in message
m... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/sc...html?th&emc=th August 16, 2010 A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy By WILLIAM J. BROAD MYSTIC, Conn. - The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledge gone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship's models. But the Charles W. Morgan is still here - the world's last surviving wooden whaling vessel, built in 1841. And restorers are spending $10 million to turn the museum piece into a working ship able to ply the unruly sea. They plan to sail the ship on its first voyage in nearly a century, opening a new chapter in its long career. Built in New Bedford, Mass., a bustling port known as the whaling capital of the world, the Morgan sailed the globe for eight decades in pursuit of leviathans, escaping fire and cannibals, Confederate raiders and Arctic ice. She brought home thousands of barrels of whale oil that lighted homes and cities. She also delivered tons of baleen, the horny material from the mouths of certain whales that was made into buggy whips and corset stays. In 1941, its centenary, the Morgan was towed to Mystic Seaport for museum display and in 1966 was named a national historic landmark. To learn as much as possible about the old ship and ensure its successful restoration, the specialists here are turning to the art and science of imaging. They are deploying lasers and portable X-ray machines, laptops and forensic specialists, cameras and recorders, historians and graphic artists to tease out hidden details of the ship's construction and condition. The project, begun in 2008, is producing a revealing portrait. It shows the exact placement and status of many thousands of planks, ribs, beams, nails, reinforcing pins, wooden pegs and other vital parts of the Morgan, giving shipwrights a high-tech guide for the rebuilding of the historic vessel. "When we're done, she'll be as strong or stronger as the last time she went to sea," Quentin Snediker, director of the shipyard here, said during a restoration tour. "So why not sail her?" Minutes later, a specialist was firing X-rays through the ship's keel - a massive oak spine composed of several timbers, its length more than 90 feet. He was hunting for the large bronze pins that hold the keel together. The restorers want to assess the so-called drift pins 169 years after their installation and plan to replace or reinforce those that show deterioration. The pins are between one and two feet long. In a more sweeping assessment, specialists have sent laser beams racing across the Morgan, inside and out, seeking to record inconspicuous details and form a digital archive of exact measurements. The laser scans can track details as small as an eighth of an inch and have swept the entire ship across its 114-foot length and 28-foot width - once a cramped home to a crew of 35. The scans have produced "millions of points of information" and a wealth of three-dimensional images, said Kane Borden, research coordinator of the restoration. "The results are pretty spectacular to look at." Historians here say the restoration, for all its high-tech sophistication, is fundamentally about remembering and honoring the past. The Morgan is the last representative of a fleet of 2,700 American whaling vessels that put the young country on the map and nourished its growing economy. The industry was so important that the whaling life became a distinctive part of the American experience. "The scope and scale of it is something that people have no idea of today," said Matthew Stackpole, a Mystic Seaport official. "It was the first time the U.S. presence was felt around the world." The Morgan was built in the shipyard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman and named after Charles Waln Morgan, a Philadelphia Quaker who was its first main owner. The year of its inaugural voyage, 1841, also marked the departure from New Bedford of another ship, carrying an aspiring author by the name of Herman Melville. His whaling experience resulted in "Moby Dick," and his realistic portrayals of the industry gave it new visibility and status. The Morgan completed 37 voyages from her home ports of New Bedford and San Francisco and sailed farther than any other American whaler, according to historians. Near a remote Pacific isle, the crew took up firearms to fend off canoes full of cannibals. Captains could bring along their wives, and two of them served as expert navigators. The logs of Charlotte Church, the wife of Capt. Charles S. Church, who sailed on the Morgan from 1909 to 1913, recorded not only latitude, longitude, heading, distance and barometric pressure but the death of a pet cat. Dry humor marked her entries. "We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almost twenty canary bird - no fear of starving for a while." The ship's great luck in escaping from serious threats translated into bad luck for whales. Over the decades, the ship's harpooners took in more than 2,500 of the behemoths to dismember their carcasses and boil their blubber down into more than 50,000 barrels of oil. Whales were the petroleum wells of the day. "We're not apologizing for the past," Mr. Stackpole, the seaport official, said of the hunt. "But we have to understand what happened and do better," especially in protecting whales threatened with extinction because of the long decades of concentrated whaling. On a beautiful day in late July, the restoration shipyard here was alive with specialists. Some cut wood in the sawmill. The tons of replacement timbers include some carved from colossal hunks of live oak salvaged after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 uprooted many trees along the Gulf Coast. The Morgan rested high and dry on supporting beams, stripped of masts and most gear. Experts scrutinized her for construction details to add to the growing library. Bill Movalson, an official with Allpro Imaging, a company in Melville, N.Y., that makes portable X-ray machines, took aim at the thick keel. "Stand back," he advised. The X-ray source, mounted on a tripod and looking like a large video camera, emitted a series of beeps and then a continuous hum. Mr. Movalson stepped behind the keel to retrieve the exposed plate, which he fed into a small machine. It read the plate by a method known as computed radiography, using lasers and electronics rather than chemicals to uncover the invisible. In a few seconds, a ghostly image appeared on his laptop screen. "We got it," Mr. Movalson said, pointing to the image of a bronze drift pin. "Look, it's all eaten away right at the seam." Decades of exposure to seawater had corroded the pin at the area where it connected the keel to a protective timber known as the false keel. "This is what we'd expect," Mr. Snediker, the shipyard director, said while examining the image. He added that the discovery of the corrosion "validates the technique," showing that the X-ray exposures are sensitive enough to distinguish faulty drift pins from those that show no deterioration. Mr. Snediker said the project was seeking to harness every conceivable tool and method "to learn as much as we can." The restorers are even recording the comments of shipwrights who dismantle old wooden structures in an effort to capture subtle insights into ship construction. "We get layer upon layer of information," he said. The least technical of the methods centers on a group of young artists who are sketching the various stages of the Morgan's disassembly and repair. "It's great to see it through their eyes," Mr. Snediker said. Nearby was the project's headquarters, lodged in ramshackle offices full of files, papers and computers. At his desk, Mr. Borden, the research coordinator, showed how a computer served as the library for the accumulated information. A blueprint-style image of the Morgan glowed on his computer screen, as did a series of X-ray icons. "You can zoom in," Mr. Borden said, clicking on one. The underlying image revealed a central joint. If all goes as planned, the refurbished Morgan will be outfitted with new rigging in late 2012. And the next year, in early summer, if the weather proves fair, the whaler will pull away from the granite pier at the seaport and once again sail with the wind at her back, rocking though the waves, making history. The goal is to visit places along the New England Coast of special significance to whaling, like New Bedford. "She's the last of her kind," Mr. Stackpole said of the Morgan. "We want her to be a living issue rather than a dusty old artifact," her voyages a new page in the story of American whaling. -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. Is it for sale? As you know, my associates and I are in the market. Send photos and details if you can Love, Em |
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#3
posted to rec.boats
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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy - Very Cool
"nom=de=plume" wrote in message ... "Harry ?" wrote in message m... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/sc...html?th&emc=th August 16, 2010 A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy By WILLIAM J. BROAD MYSTIC, Conn. - The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledge gone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship's models. But the Charles W. Morgan is still here - the world's last surviving wooden whaling vessel, built in 1841. And restorers are spending $10 million to turn the museum piece into a working ship able to ply the unruly sea. They plan to sail the ship on its first voyage in nearly a century, opening a new chapter in its long career. Built in New Bedford, Mass., a bustling port known as the whaling capital of the world, the Morgan sailed the globe for eight decades in pursuit of leviathans, escaping fire and cannibals, Confederate raiders and Arctic ice. She brought home thousands of barrels of whale oil that lighted homes and cities. She also delivered tons of baleen, the horny material from the mouths of certain whales that was made into buggy whips and corset stays. In 1941, its centenary, the Morgan was towed to Mystic Seaport for museum display and in 1966 was named a national historic landmark. To learn as much as possible about the old ship and ensure its successful restoration, the specialists here are turning to the art and science of imaging. They are deploying lasers and portable X-ray machines, laptops and forensic specialists, cameras and recorders, historians and graphic artists to tease out hidden details of the ship's construction and condition. The project, begun in 2008, is producing a revealing portrait. It shows the exact placement and status of many thousands of planks, ribs, beams, nails, reinforcing pins, wooden pegs and other vital parts of the Morgan, giving shipwrights a high-tech guide for the rebuilding of the historic vessel. "When we're done, she'll be as strong or stronger as the last time she went to sea," Quentin Snediker, director of the shipyard here, said during a restoration tour. "So why not sail her?" Minutes later, a specialist was firing X-rays through the ship's keel - a massive oak spine composed of several timbers, its length more than 90 feet. He was hunting for the large bronze pins that hold the keel together. The restorers want to assess the so-called drift pins 169 years after their installation and plan to replace or reinforce those that show deterioration. The pins are between one and two feet long. In a more sweeping assessment, specialists have sent laser beams racing across the Morgan, inside and out, seeking to record inconspicuous details and form a digital archive of exact measurements. The laser scans can track details as small as an eighth of an inch and have swept the entire ship across its 114-foot length and 28-foot width - once a cramped home to a crew of 35. The scans have produced "millions of points of information" and a wealth of three-dimensional images, said Kane Borden, research coordinator of the restoration. "The results are pretty spectacular to look at." Historians here say the restoration, for all its high-tech sophistication, is fundamentally about remembering and honoring the past. The Morgan is the last representative of a fleet of 2,700 American whaling vessels that put the young country on the map and nourished its growing economy. The industry was so important that the whaling life became a distinctive part of the American experience. "The scope and scale of it is something that people have no idea of today," said Matthew Stackpole, a Mystic Seaport official. "It was the first time the U.S. presence was felt around the world." The Morgan was built in the shipyard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman and named after Charles Waln Morgan, a Philadelphia Quaker who was its first main owner. The year of its inaugural voyage, 1841, also marked the departure from New Bedford of another ship, carrying an aspiring author by the name of Herman Melville. His whaling experience resulted in "Moby Dick," and his realistic portrayals of the industry gave it new visibility and status. The Morgan completed 37 voyages from her home ports of New Bedford and San Francisco and sailed farther than any other American whaler, according to historians. Near a remote Pacific isle, the crew took up firearms to fend off canoes full of cannibals. Captains could bring along their wives, and two of them served as expert navigators. The logs of Charlotte Church, the wife of Capt. Charles S. Church, who sailed on the Morgan from 1909 to 1913, recorded not only latitude, longitude, heading, distance and barometric pressure but the death of a pet cat. Dry humor marked her entries. "We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almost twenty canary bird - no fear of starving for a while." The ship's great luck in escaping from serious threats translated into bad luck for whales. Over the decades, the ship's harpooners took in more than 2,500 of the behemoths to dismember their carcasses and boil their blubber down into more than 50,000 barrels of oil. Whales were the petroleum wells of the day. "We're not apologizing for the past," Mr. Stackpole, the seaport official, said of the hunt. "But we have to understand what happened and do better," especially in protecting whales threatened with extinction because of the long decades of concentrated whaling. On a beautiful day in late July, the restoration shipyard here was alive with specialists. Some cut wood in the sawmill. The tons of replacement timbers include some carved from colossal hunks of live oak salvaged after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 uprooted many trees along the Gulf Coast. The Morgan rested high and dry on supporting beams, stripped of masts and most gear. Experts scrutinized her for construction details to add to the growing library. Bill Movalson, an official with Allpro Imaging, a company in Melville, N.Y., that makes portable X-ray machines, took aim at the thick keel. "Stand back," he advised. The X-ray source, mounted on a tripod and looking like a large video camera, emitted a series of beeps and then a continuous hum. Mr. Movalson stepped behind the keel to retrieve the exposed plate, which he fed into a small machine. It read the plate by a method known as computed radiography, using lasers and electronics rather than chemicals to uncover the invisible. In a few seconds, a ghostly image appeared on his laptop screen. "We got it," Mr. Movalson said, pointing to the image of a bronze drift pin. "Look, it's all eaten away right at the seam." Decades of exposure to seawater had corroded the pin at the area where it connected the keel to a protective timber known as the false keel. "This is what we'd expect," Mr. Snediker, the shipyard director, said while examining the image. He added that the discovery of the corrosion "validates the technique," showing that the X-ray exposures are sensitive enough to distinguish faulty drift pins from those that show no deterioration. Mr. Snediker said the project was seeking to harness every conceivable tool and method "to learn as much as we can." The restorers are even recording the comments of shipwrights who dismantle old wooden structures in an effort to capture subtle insights into ship construction. "We get layer upon layer of information," he said. The least technical of the methods centers on a group of young artists who are sketching the various stages of the Morgan's disassembly and repair. "It's great to see it through their eyes," Mr. Snediker said. Nearby was the project's headquarters, lodged in ramshackle offices full of files, papers and computers. At his desk, Mr. Borden, the research coordinator, showed how a computer served as the library for the accumulated information. A blueprint-style image of the Morgan glowed on his computer screen, as did a series of X-ray icons. "You can zoom in," Mr. Borden said, clicking on one. The underlying image revealed a central joint. If all goes as planned, the refurbished Morgan will be outfitted with new rigging in late 2012. And the next year, in early summer, if the weather proves fair, the whaler will pull away from the granite pier at the seaport and once again sail with the wind at her back, rocking though the waves, making history. The goal is to visit places along the New England Coast of special significance to whaling, like New Bedford. "She's the last of her kind," Mr. Stackpole said of the Morgan. "We want her to be a living issue rather than a dusty old artifact," her voyages a new page in the story of American whaling. -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. Is it for sale? As you know, my associates and I are in the market. Send photos and details if you can Love, Em Ah, the spoofer is back. You're not much of a man. Feel free to spoof me if that makes you think you have a big dick. |
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#4
posted to rec.boats
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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy - Very Cool
On 8/17/10 3:50 PM, nom=de=plume wrote:
"nom=de=plume" wrote in message ... "Harry ?" wrote in message m... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/sc...html?th&emc=th August 16, 2010 A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy By WILLIAM J. BROAD MYSTIC, Conn. - The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledge gone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship's models. But the Charles W. Morgan is still here - the world's last surviving wooden whaling vessel, built in 1841. And restorers are spending $10 million to turn the museum piece into a working ship able to ply the unruly sea. They plan to sail the ship on its first voyage in nearly a century, opening a new chapter in its long career. Built in New Bedford, Mass., a bustling port known as the whaling capital of the world, the Morgan sailed the globe for eight decades in pursuit of leviathans, escaping fire and cannibals, Confederate raiders and Arctic ice. She brought home thousands of barrels of whale oil that lighted homes and cities. She also delivered tons of baleen, the horny material from the mouths of certain whales that was made into buggy whips and corset stays. In 1941, its centenary, the Morgan was towed to Mystic Seaport for museum display and in 1966 was named a national historic landmark. To learn as much as possible about the old ship and ensure its successful restoration, the specialists here are turning to the art and science of imaging. They are deploying lasers and portable X-ray machines, laptops and forensic specialists, cameras and recorders, historians and graphic artists to tease out hidden details of the ship's construction and condition. The project, begun in 2008, is producing a revealing portrait. It shows the exact placement and status of many thousands of planks, ribs, beams, nails, reinforcing pins, wooden pegs and other vital parts of the Morgan, giving shipwrights a high-tech guide for the rebuilding of the historic vessel. "When we're done, she'll be as strong or stronger as the last time she went to sea," Quentin Snediker, director of the shipyard here, said during a restoration tour. "So why not sail her?" Minutes later, a specialist was firing X-rays through the ship's keel - a massive oak spine composed of several timbers, its length more than 90 feet. He was hunting for the large bronze pins that hold the keel together. The restorers want to assess the so-called drift pins 169 years after their installation and plan to replace or reinforce those that show deterioration. The pins are between one and two feet long. In a more sweeping assessment, specialists have sent laser beams racing across the Morgan, inside and out, seeking to record inconspicuous details and form a digital archive of exact measurements. The laser scans can track details as small as an eighth of an inch and have swept the entire ship across its 114-foot length and 28-foot width - once a cramped home to a crew of 35. The scans have produced "millions of points of information" and a wealth of three-dimensional images, said Kane Borden, research coordinator of the restoration. "The results are pretty spectacular to look at." Historians here say the restoration, for all its high-tech sophistication, is fundamentally about remembering and honoring the past. The Morgan is the last representative of a fleet of 2,700 American whaling vessels that put the young country on the map and nourished its growing economy. The industry was so important that the whaling life became a distinctive part of the American experience. "The scope and scale of it is something that people have no idea of today," said Matthew Stackpole, a Mystic Seaport official. "It was the first time the U.S. presence was felt around the world." The Morgan was built in the shipyard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman and named after Charles Waln Morgan, a Philadelphia Quaker who was its first main owner. The year of its inaugural voyage, 1841, also marked the departure from New Bedford of another ship, carrying an aspiring author by the name of Herman Melville. His whaling experience resulted in "Moby Dick," and his realistic portrayals of the industry gave it new visibility and status. The Morgan completed 37 voyages from her home ports of New Bedford and San Francisco and sailed farther than any other American whaler, according to historians. Near a remote Pacific isle, the crew took up firearms to fend off canoes full of cannibals. Captains could bring along their wives, and two of them served as expert navigators. The logs of Charlotte Church, the wife of Capt. Charles S. Church, who sailed on the Morgan from 1909 to 1913, recorded not only latitude, longitude, heading, distance and barometric pressure but the death of a pet cat. Dry humor marked her entries. "We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almost twenty canary bird - no fear of starving for a while." The ship's great luck in escaping from serious threats translated into bad luck for whales. Over the decades, the ship's harpooners took in more than 2,500 of the behemoths to dismember their carcasses and boil their blubber down into more than 50,000 barrels of oil. Whales were the petroleum wells of the day. "We're not apologizing for the past," Mr. Stackpole, the seaport official, said of the hunt. "But we have to understand what happened and do better," especially in protecting whales threatened with extinction because of the long decades of concentrated whaling. On a beautiful day in late July, the restoration shipyard here was alive with specialists. Some cut wood in the sawmill. The tons of replacement timbers include some carved from colossal hunks of live oak salvaged after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 uprooted many trees along the Gulf Coast. The Morgan rested high and dry on supporting beams, stripped of masts and most gear. Experts scrutinized her for construction details to add to the growing library. Bill Movalson, an official with Allpro Imaging, a company in Melville, N.Y., that makes portable X-ray machines, took aim at the thick keel. "Stand back," he advised. The X-ray source, mounted on a tripod and looking like a large video camera, emitted a series of beeps and then a continuous hum. Mr. Movalson stepped behind the keel to retrieve the exposed plate, which he fed into a small machine. It read the plate by a method known as computed radiography, using lasers and electronics rather than chemicals to uncover the invisible. In a few seconds, a ghostly image appeared on his laptop screen. "We got it," Mr. Movalson said, pointing to the image of a bronze drift pin. "Look, it's all eaten away right at the seam." Decades of exposure to seawater had corroded the pin at the area where it connected the keel to a protective timber known as the false keel. "This is what we'd expect," Mr. Snediker, the shipyard director, said while examining the image. He added that the discovery of the corrosion "validates the technique," showing that the X-ray exposures are sensitive enough to distinguish faulty drift pins from those that show no deterioration. Mr. Snediker said the project was seeking to harness every conceivable tool and method "to learn as much as we can." The restorers are even recording the comments of shipwrights who dismantle old wooden structures in an effort to capture subtle insights into ship construction. "We get layer upon layer of information," he said. The least technical of the methods centers on a group of young artists who are sketching the various stages of the Morgan's disassembly and repair. "It's great to see it through their eyes," Mr. Snediker said. Nearby was the project's headquarters, lodged in ramshackle offices full of files, papers and computers. At his desk, Mr. Borden, the research coordinator, showed how a computer served as the library for the accumulated information. A blueprint-style image of the Morgan glowed on his computer screen, as did a series of X-ray icons. "You can zoom in," Mr. Borden said, clicking on one. The underlying image revealed a central joint. If all goes as planned, the refurbished Morgan will be outfitted with new rigging in late 2012. And the next year, in early summer, if the weather proves fair, the whaler will pull away from the granite pier at the seaport and once again sail with the wind at her back, rocking though the waves, making history. The goal is to visit places along the New England Coast of special significance to whaling, like New Bedford. "She's the last of her kind," Mr. Stackpole said of the Morgan. "We want her to be a living issue rather than a dusty old artifact," her voyages a new page in the story of American whaling. -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. Is it for sale? As you know, my associates and I are in the market. Send photos and details if you can Love, Em Ah, the spoofer is back. You're not much of a man. Feel free to spoof me if that makes you think you have a big dick. The ID spoofers have one thing in common...they're dickless. -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. |
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#6
posted to rec.boats
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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy - Very Cool
In article ,
says... On 8/17/10 3:50 PM, nom=de=plume wrote: "nom=de=plume" wrote in message ... "Harry ?" wrote in message m... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/sc...html?th&emc=th August 16, 2010 A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy By WILLIAM J. BROAD MYSTIC, Conn. - The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledge gone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship's models. But the Charles W. Morgan is still here - the world's last surviving wooden whaling vessel, built in 1841. And restorers are spending $10 million to turn the museum piece into a working ship able to ply the unruly sea. They plan to sail the ship on its first voyage in nearly a century, opening a new chapter in its long career. Built in New Bedford, Mass., a bustling port known as the whaling capital of the world, the Morgan sailed the globe for eight decades in pursuit of leviathans, escaping fire and cannibals, Confederate raiders and Arctic ice. She brought home thousands of barrels of whale oil that lighted homes and cities. She also delivered tons of baleen, the horny material from the mouths of certain whales that was made into buggy whips and corset stays. In 1941, its centenary, the Morgan was towed to Mystic Seaport for museum display and in 1966 was named a national historic landmark. To learn as much as possible about the old ship and ensure its successful restoration, the specialists here are turning to the art and science of imaging. They are deploying lasers and portable X-ray machines, laptops and forensic specialists, cameras and recorders, historians and graphic artists to tease out hidden details of the ship's construction and condition. The project, begun in 2008, is producing a revealing portrait. It shows the exact placement and status of many thousands of planks, ribs, beams, nails, reinforcing pins, wooden pegs and other vital parts of the Morgan, giving shipwrights a high-tech guide for the rebuilding of the historic vessel. "When we're done, she'll be as strong or stronger as the last time she went to sea," Quentin Snediker, director of the shipyard here, said during a restoration tour. "So why not sail her?" Minutes later, a specialist was firing X-rays through the ship's keel - a massive oak spine composed of several timbers, its length more than 90 feet. He was hunting for the large bronze pins that hold the keel together. The restorers want to assess the so-called drift pins 169 years after their installation and plan to replace or reinforce those that show deterioration. The pins are between one and two feet long. In a more sweeping assessment, specialists have sent laser beams racing across the Morgan, inside and out, seeking to record inconspicuous details and form a digital archive of exact measurements. The laser scans can track details as small as an eighth of an inch and have swept the entire ship across its 114-foot length and 28-foot width - once a cramped home to a crew of 35. The scans have produced "millions of points of information" and a wealth of three-dimensional images, said Kane Borden, research coordinator of the restoration. "The results are pretty spectacular to look at." Historians here say the restoration, for all its high-tech sophistication, is fundamentally about remembering and honoring the past. The Morgan is the last representative of a fleet of 2,700 American whaling vessels that put the young country on the map and nourished its growing economy. The industry was so important that the whaling life became a distinctive part of the American experience. "The scope and scale of it is something that people have no idea of today," said Matthew Stackpole, a Mystic Seaport official. "It was the first time the U.S. presence was felt around the world." The Morgan was built in the shipyard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman and named after Charles Waln Morgan, a Philadelphia Quaker who was its first main owner. The year of its inaugural voyage, 1841, also marked the departure from New Bedford of another ship, carrying an aspiring author by the name of Herman Melville. His whaling experience resulted in "Moby Dick," and his realistic portrayals of the industry gave it new visibility and status. The Morgan completed 37 voyages from her home ports of New Bedford and San Francisco and sailed farther than any other American whaler, according to historians. Near a remote Pacific isle, the crew took up firearms to fend off canoes full of cannibals. Captains could bring along their wives, and two of them served as expert navigators. The logs of Charlotte Church, the wife of Capt. Charles S. Church, who sailed on the Morgan from 1909 to 1913, recorded not only latitude, longitude, heading, distance and barometric pressure but the death of a pet cat. Dry humor marked her entries. "We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almost twenty canary bird - no fear of starving for a while." The ship's great luck in escaping from serious threats translated into bad luck for whales. Over the decades, the ship's harpooners took in more than 2,500 of the behemoths to dismember their carcasses and boil their blubber down into more than 50,000 barrels of oil. Whales were the petroleum wells of the day. "We're not apologizing for the past," Mr. Stackpole, the seaport official, said of the hunt. "But we have to understand what happened and do better," especially in protecting whales threatened with extinction because of the long decades of concentrated whaling. On a beautiful day in late July, the restoration shipyard here was alive with specialists. Some cut wood in the sawmill. The tons of replacement timbers include some carved from colossal hunks of live oak salvaged after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 uprooted many trees along the Gulf Coast. The Morgan rested high and dry on supporting beams, stripped of masts and most gear. Experts scrutinized her for construction details to add to the growing library. Bill Movalson, an official with Allpro Imaging, a company in Melville, N.Y., that makes portable X-ray machines, took aim at the thick keel. "Stand back," he advised. The X-ray source, mounted on a tripod and looking like a large video camera, emitted a series of beeps and then a continuous hum. Mr. Movalson stepped behind the keel to retrieve the exposed plate, which he fed into a small machine. It read the plate by a method known as computed radiography, using lasers and electronics rather than chemicals to uncover the invisible. In a few seconds, a ghostly image appeared on his laptop screen. "We got it," Mr. Movalson said, pointing to the image of a bronze drift pin. "Look, it's all eaten away right at the seam." Decades of exposure to seawater had corroded the pin at the area where it connected the keel to a protective timber known as the false keel. "This is what we'd expect," Mr. Snediker, the shipyard director, said while examining the image. He added that the discovery of the corrosion "validates the technique," showing that the X-ray exposures are sensitive enough to distinguish faulty drift pins from those that show no deterioration. Mr. Snediker said the project was seeking to harness every conceivable tool and method "to learn as much as we can." The restorers are even recording the comments of shipwrights who dismantle old wooden structures in an effort to capture subtle insights into ship construction. "We get layer upon layer of information," he said. The least technical of the methods centers on a group of young artists who are sketching the various stages of the Morgan's disassembly and repair. "It's great to see it through their eyes," Mr. Snediker said. Nearby was the project's headquarters, lodged in ramshackle offices full of files, papers and computers. At his desk, Mr. Borden, the research coordinator, showed how a computer served as the library for the accumulated information. A blueprint-style image of the Morgan glowed on his computer screen, as did a series of X-ray icons. "You can zoom in," Mr. Borden said, clicking on one. The underlying image revealed a central joint. If all goes as planned, the refurbished Morgan will be outfitted with new rigging in late 2012. And the next year, in early summer, if the weather proves fair, the whaler will pull away from the granite pier at the seaport and once again sail with the wind at her back, rocking though the waves, making history. The goal is to visit places along the New England Coast of special significance to whaling, like New Bedford. "She's the last of her kind," Mr. Stackpole said of the Morgan. "We want her to be a living issue rather than a dusty old artifact," her voyages a new page in the story of American whaling. -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. Is it for sale? As you know, my associates and I are in the market. Send photos and details if you can Love, Em Ah, the spoofer is back. You're not much of a man. Feel free to spoof me if that makes you think you have a big dick. The ID spoofers have one thing in common...they're dickless. I think anybody who comes here and makes up lies about lobsta' boats, fireboat welcomes, etc. are dickless wouldn't you say, spoofer? -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. |
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#7
posted to rec.boats
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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy - Very Cool
"Harry " wrote in message
m... On 8/17/10 3:50 PM, nom=de=plume wrote: "nom=de=plume" wrote in message ... "Harry ?" wrote in message m... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/sc...html?th&emc=th August 16, 2010 A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy By WILLIAM J. BROAD MYSTIC, Conn. - The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledge gone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship's models. But the Charles W. Morgan is still here - the world's last surviving wooden whaling vessel, built in 1841. And restorers are spending $10 million to turn the museum piece into a working ship able to ply the unruly sea. They plan to sail the ship on its first voyage in nearly a century, opening a new chapter in its long career. Built in New Bedford, Mass., a bustling port known as the whaling capital of the world, the Morgan sailed the globe for eight decades in pursuit of leviathans, escaping fire and cannibals, Confederate raiders and Arctic ice. She brought home thousands of barrels of whale oil that lighted homes and cities. She also delivered tons of baleen, the horny material from the mouths of certain whales that was made into buggy whips and corset stays. In 1941, its centenary, the Morgan was towed to Mystic Seaport for museum display and in 1966 was named a national historic landmark. To learn as much as possible about the old ship and ensure its successful restoration, the specialists here are turning to the art and science of imaging. They are deploying lasers and portable X-ray machines, laptops and forensic specialists, cameras and recorders, historians and graphic artists to tease out hidden details of the ship's construction and condition. The project, begun in 2008, is producing a revealing portrait. It shows the exact placement and status of many thousands of planks, ribs, beams, nails, reinforcing pins, wooden pegs and other vital parts of the Morgan, giving shipwrights a high-tech guide for the rebuilding of the historic vessel. "When we're done, she'll be as strong or stronger as the last time she went to sea," Quentin Snediker, director of the shipyard here, said during a restoration tour. "So why not sail her?" Minutes later, a specialist was firing X-rays through the ship's keel - a massive oak spine composed of several timbers, its length more than 90 feet. He was hunting for the large bronze pins that hold the keel together. The restorers want to assess the so-called drift pins 169 years after their installation and plan to replace or reinforce those that show deterioration. The pins are between one and two feet long. In a more sweeping assessment, specialists have sent laser beams racing across the Morgan, inside and out, seeking to record inconspicuous details and form a digital archive of exact measurements. The laser scans can track details as small as an eighth of an inch and have swept the entire ship across its 114-foot length and 28-foot width - once a cramped home to a crew of 35. The scans have produced "millions of points of information" and a wealth of three-dimensional images, said Kane Borden, research coordinator of the restoration. "The results are pretty spectacular to look at." Historians here say the restoration, for all its high-tech sophistication, is fundamentally about remembering and honoring the past. The Morgan is the last representative of a fleet of 2,700 American whaling vessels that put the young country on the map and nourished its growing economy. The industry was so important that the whaling life became a distinctive part of the American experience. "The scope and scale of it is something that people have no idea of today," said Matthew Stackpole, a Mystic Seaport official. "It was the first time the U.S. presence was felt around the world." The Morgan was built in the shipyard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman and named after Charles Waln Morgan, a Philadelphia Quaker who was its first main owner. The year of its inaugural voyage, 1841, also marked the departure from New Bedford of another ship, carrying an aspiring author by the name of Herman Melville. His whaling experience resulted in "Moby Dick," and his realistic portrayals of the industry gave it new visibility and status. The Morgan completed 37 voyages from her home ports of New Bedford and San Francisco and sailed farther than any other American whaler, according to historians. Near a remote Pacific isle, the crew took up firearms to fend off canoes full of cannibals. Captains could bring along their wives, and two of them served as expert navigators. The logs of Charlotte Church, the wife of Capt. Charles S. Church, who sailed on the Morgan from 1909 to 1913, recorded not only latitude, longitude, heading, distance and barometric pressure but the death of a pet cat. Dry humor marked her entries. "We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almost twenty canary bird - no fear of starving for a while." The ship's great luck in escaping from serious threats translated into bad luck for whales. Over the decades, the ship's harpooners took in more than 2,500 of the behemoths to dismember their carcasses and boil their blubber down into more than 50,000 barrels of oil. Whales were the petroleum wells of the day. "We're not apologizing for the past," Mr. Stackpole, the seaport official, said of the hunt. "But we have to understand what happened and do better," especially in protecting whales threatened with extinction because of the long decades of concentrated whaling. On a beautiful day in late July, the restoration shipyard here was alive with specialists. Some cut wood in the sawmill. The tons of replacement timbers include some carved from colossal hunks of live oak salvaged after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 uprooted many trees along the Gulf Coast. The Morgan rested high and dry on supporting beams, stripped of masts and most gear. Experts scrutinized her for construction details to add to the growing library. Bill Movalson, an official with Allpro Imaging, a company in Melville, N.Y., that makes portable X-ray machines, took aim at the thick keel. "Stand back," he advised. The X-ray source, mounted on a tripod and looking like a large video camera, emitted a series of beeps and then a continuous hum. Mr. Movalson stepped behind the keel to retrieve the exposed plate, which he fed into a small machine. It read the plate by a method known as computed radiography, using lasers and electronics rather than chemicals to uncover the invisible. In a few seconds, a ghostly image appeared on his laptop screen. "We got it," Mr. Movalson said, pointing to the image of a bronze drift pin. "Look, it's all eaten away right at the seam." Decades of exposure to seawater had corroded the pin at the area where it connected the keel to a protective timber known as the false keel. "This is what we'd expect," Mr. Snediker, the shipyard director, said while examining the image. He added that the discovery of the corrosion "validates the technique," showing that the X-ray exposures are sensitive enough to distinguish faulty drift pins from those that show no deterioration. Mr. Snediker said the project was seeking to harness every conceivable tool and method "to learn as much as we can." The restorers are even recording the comments of shipwrights who dismantle old wooden structures in an effort to capture subtle insights into ship construction. "We get layer upon layer of information," he said. The least technical of the methods centers on a group of young artists who are sketching the various stages of the Morgan's disassembly and repair. "It's great to see it through their eyes," Mr. Snediker said. Nearby was the project's headquarters, lodged in ramshackle offices full of files, papers and computers. At his desk, Mr. Borden, the research coordinator, showed how a computer served as the library for the accumulated information. A blueprint-style image of the Morgan glowed on his computer screen, as did a series of X-ray icons. "You can zoom in," Mr. Borden said, clicking on one. The underlying image revealed a central joint. If all goes as planned, the refurbished Morgan will be outfitted with new rigging in late 2012. And the next year, in early summer, if the weather proves fair, the whaler will pull away from the granite pier at the seaport and once again sail with the wind at her back, rocking though the waves, making history. The goal is to visit places along the New England Coast of special significance to whaling, like New Bedford. "She's the last of her kind," Mr. Stackpole said of the Morgan. "We want her to be a living issue rather than a dusty old artifact," her voyages a new page in the story of American whaling. -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. Is it for sale? As you know, my associates and I are in the market. Send photos and details if you can Love, Em Ah, the spoofer is back. You're not much of a man. Feel free to spoof me if that makes you think you have a big dick. The ID spoofers have one thing in common...they're dickless. -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. I'll bet that gave you a rise, brother. Your little legal beagle is starting to talk dirty. And I thought this was supposed to be a family newsgroup -- I'm the real Harry, and I post from a Mac, as virtually everyone knows. If a post is attributed to me, and it isn't from a Mac, it's from an ID spoofer who hasn't the balls to post with his own ID. |
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