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S. Berliner, III's Naval & Maritime Page Updated: 18 Dec 2007, 22:30 ET
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S. Berliner, III's

Naval & Maritime Page

Consultant in Ultrasonic Processing
"changing materials with high-intensity sound"
Technical and Historical Writer, Oral Historian
Popularizer of Science and Technology
Rail, Auto, Air, Ordnance, and Model Enthusiast
Light-weight Linguist, Lay Minister, and Putative Philosopher
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NAVAL and MARITIME MATTERS

Please refer to the HELP section, below.

INDEX:

On this main Naval and Maritime page:

Tall Ships.

Nautical Reminiscences and Miscellany.

Jakobsen's Rail-Marine Tugboats.

Rail-Marine Service (now on its own page).

HELP! - requests and offers.

Gladsky Marine / Seacoast Marine Service - Heavy Marine Hardware and Salvage,

Destruction Wreck Removal, 600-ton Marine Crane "THE OVUS".

On the Naval and Maritime Continuation Page 1:

USS Franklin - CV-13 (moved from main page).

Submarines (moved to continuation page 06 May 02).

Relics.

PT Boats.

Mahogany Speedboats (raceabouts, sportabouts, etc.).

Comet Authenticast ship models.

Yarns.

On the Naval and Maritime Continuation Page 2:

Tall Ships - continued.

FRANK BRAYNARD
1916-2007

The maritime world has lost a tall figure; Frank Braynard, one of the finest gentlemen who ever graced a marine venue passed away on Monday, 11 Dec 2007, at the age of 91. Frank, a world-renowned marine historian and lecturer, maritime artist, and author, had been with the American Merchant Marine Institute and Moran Towing, had been a shipping news reporter for the New York Herald tribune, was a co-founder of the museum at the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point (LI, NY) and served as its curator from 1980 through 2000, was an active volunteer at the South Street Seaport Museum, where he was the Program Director in the 1970s, and, perhaps most notably for the general public, was the force behind the Op Sail tall ships parades of 1964, 1986, and 1992.

(18 Dec 07)

Ohmygosh! - 04 Mar 2002 - I don't know how long this will stay posted but you absolutely HAVE to check this out!!! Click on http://www.netcopspsi.com/temp/towboat.htm to see the almost-inconceivable misadventures of a Tombigbee River towboat (I can absolutely assure you it will be well worth your while)!
inmest

{Thanks to my brother-in-law - for the URL, not for what transpired!}
Here's a second URL; both work as of 21 Jul 02, but the older one has newer commentary.

You must see Joseph Poutre's fantastic Worldwide List of Naval and Maritime Museums [NEW LINK]! He has split it into US and Worldwide (non-US) sections because it was getting too big:

The World: http://www.bb62museum.org/wrldnmus.html and

The US: http://www.bb62museum.org/usnavmus.html.

Further, because the UNITED KINGDOM has so much to offer the maritime enthusiast, Mr. Poutre defers on his site "to a site created by Drs. Janet West and M. H. Evans, a wife and husband team", whose site is "very comprehensive". Click here (http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~mhe1000/) to go directly to the UK site.

However, note that the Military Museum listing was passed along to another site
and has now vanished.

In addition, Mr. Poutre's site refers to Robert Smith's Master Index to World Wide Maritime Museum Internet Resources, which you should also visit.

Another U. S. Navy warship site to visit is NavSource, "Images, History, Crew Contacts, Building, Service And Final Fate Information", plus "The Largest US Navy Warship Photo Collection On The Internet".

While not a naval or marine book, there is a book about the Fairchild Aerial Survey photos, "Cities from the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America", by Thomas J. Campanella, which shows marine and inland harbor and port facilities in incredible detail; just the Boston (1946, page 16) and NYC (1931-37, pp. 28-45), Seattle (ca. 1930, page 97), San Francisco (1930-31, pp. 102-3), and the endpapers, which show all of the Manhattan piers from 110th Street south in 1921, alone are well worth the trouble to borrow or buy the book.

Like TALL SHIPS? Visit Americas' Sail's site!

Glen Cove had acquired Greenport's old "tall" ship, the "Regina Maris" and berths the "Phoenix" (an environmental training ship) [as well as the "Thomas Jefferson" (an hydraulically-operated working side-wheeler)]! Nearby Oyster Bay houses the oyster sloop "Christeen" {sic}, under restoration.

[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]

Th. Jefferson at Glen Cove
(Feb 99 Photos by and © 1999 - S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

The story of the Regina Maris had grown so complex that I moved it to the Naval and Maritime Continuation Page 2:

A friend runs NYC harbor tours, usually rail/marine-oriented; he scheduled one for 26 Sep 98*, to which someone sent an e-mail stating only "Not to jinx you but......that is the same day the General Slocum sank in NY Harbor.....what an omen"!* Maybe I shouldn't go?

[If you don't know about the Slocum disaster, see

The Queens COURIER site's Slocum pages (2).]

* - The COURIER says the Slocum burned on 15 Jun 1904!; The New York Times confimed that latter date on 09 Mar 2002.

NAUTICAL REMINISCENCES (and Miscellany)

As I note on my Hobby page, I grew up with a grandfather who was a fabulous carver of miniature figures. One of my earliest efforts to follow in his footsteps survived nearly 60 years and is pictured there; two others, only some 50 years old are here:

(Balsa Model and Photo by SB,III)

This was an attempt to reproduce a gasoline-engined model speedboat; that pin sticking up behind the cylinder is supposed to represent the fuel needle valve.

early carved sailboat
(Lignum Vitae Model and Photo by SB,III)

The sailboat (a little the worse for wear at the moment) was carved from an actual fragment of Lignum Vitae wood left over from the ca. 1948 refitting of the frigate U.S.S. Constitution; Lignum Vitae is hard as rock, almost impenetrable ("wherefor Old Ironsides"), sinks in water, and next to impossible to cut.

My earliest experiences with boats were (other than in my bathtub, I suppose) in Central Park at the Conservatory Pond (watching sailing models) and in the rowboats just north of there. Actually, that's not quite accurate; there were the Staten Island (and also, probably, the Hudson River) ferries, the tiny toy ferry I sailed in our flooded summer-rental house's garage in Scarsdale ca. 1938, and the little ferry across the James River at Jamestown ca. 1940. Then, on Raquette Lake in the heart of the Adirondacks, I rowed and canoed all over the place and rode in their several steam and gasoline launches and on the 40' sailboat. In the late '40s and early '50s, Dad and I sailed a 14" Old Town canoe on Great South Bay - see Incident at Wreck lead. In the spring of 1952, I crewed an International 110 from the MIT Boat Basin down the Charles and across Boston harbor to Hull and I've rowed (mostly Adirondack guideboats) on and off since. Ca. Summer 1954 (or so), I was racing around the Great South Bay of Long Island in a converted PT boat, barely more than a steel hull and deckhouse with three giant Merlins (RR or Packard?); whoooeeee! Another ferry of note in my life is the cable-guided one across the Susquehanna at Millersburg, just north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a restored antique well worthy of note.

My earliest experiences with ships were at the Hudson (North) River piers, where Dad drove me down to see the great liners before WWII. In 1939, the fleet was in (New York harbor, that is), probably for the opening of the World's Fair of '39-'40, and Dad took me out in an Admiral's launch or such; I remember clearly being wrapped in clean wadding and rammed into a battleships 14" or 16" gun breech (the rifling spiraled out nearly to infinity, where there was a tiny spot of light. A similar fate awaited me in a fleet sub, where I was shoved into a torpedo tube with no reassuring spot of light! Then, ca. 1941, we drove to Newport News via D.C. and Williamsburgh/Jamestown and returned on a coastal steamer, with our new Chrysler; I always thought it was the S.S. Washington, but Frank Braynard, noted steamer authority, assures me she never ran that route. When the USS Lafayette (the Normandie) caught fire ('43?), Dad got his car out of the garage and drove me down every evening after work to watch as the great ship burned, turned turtle, sank in the mud, was stripped, raised, and towed ignominiously away to the scrappers. In the early '60s (I guess), I was on the flight deck of the last giant carrier built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (the Independence?); well and good, but it was BEFORE she was finished or commissioned, and the deck was bare of any fittings or railings and the wind was blowing at over 40 knots - funsies!

One of the most memorable marine experiences of my whole life occurred on 28 April 1945 when the burned-out, shattered hulk of the Essex-class carrier Franklin (CV-13) steamed in to New York harbor under her own power! This has been moved to the continuation page.

Came 1956 and I drove my Grandpa up to Martha's Vinyard for fishing (well, to the Woods Hole ferry, anyway) via Greenport and the ferry* to New London; it was an old WWII LCI with a second door cut in the stern and I rode the whole trip in the engine room with the engineer. Ca. 1965-70, I took a short day cruise on the Delta Queen (in the engine room, again, of course); I seem to gravitate to engine rooms (see the tale of my tugboat ride with the NYCHRR on my BEDTRR page). Around 1968, I and my family were aboard the USS Constitution in Charlestown, Massachusetts, when they fired a salute; my 2-year old daughter went totally catatonic and the Captain, himself, calmed her down. I have two tiny scraps of Lignum Vitae from her (the ship, dummy); one I made into a teeny sailboat for my Mom (above) and the other I've forgotten about. I assume you know that Lignum Vitae is so dense that it won't float and thus tough as iron (Old Ironsides).

* - The ferry was full, so we put our car INSIDE an empty potato truck
that already had a spot and crossed that way!

I looked around the Net for sites on my favorite ship of all time, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's "Great Eastern", the ship that was started in 1854, was too big to launch in 1857 (Brunel designed the largest hydraulic rams ever to do the job), ran wildly down the ways when it finally did move in 1858, and never served much useful purpose until she was retrofitted to carry and lay the Atlantic cable in 1864-65. For starters, try Andrew Nash's Great Eastern Chronology, Nancy Fry's WAYWARD NAVIGATOR¹, and Fred Schoonbeck's The Great Eastern Salvage Co.² page (a "must see" page). Another good page is the British National Maritime Museum's.

1) Nancy Fry's site, although an ad for her Victoria (B.C.) Bed and Breakfast,

is loaded with great Great Eastern and other nautical items and links; browse away!

2) Fred Schoonbeck's site is being rebuilt; keep checking.

Of course, there is always the Vaterland/Leviathan of the WWI era; VATERLAND boasted a gross tonage of 54,282, was one of the largest ships of her time when launched in 1913, was seized at the start of World War I, interned in New York in 1914, and used as a troop ship from 1917, was awarded to the U.S. at the end of the war, operated as the American Liner LEVIATHAN from 1923 to 1934, laid up from 1932 to 1934, and finally scrapped in 1938. I have Frank O. Braynard's incredible (inconceivable?) six (6)-volume set on this ship - everything anyone every wanted to know (and 10,000 times more), all on a single vessel! I didn't find much on her yet on the Web. MARAD has a page at The Leviathan: A Palatial Ocean Liner with a 3D photo. The Peabody Essex Museum has a great painting by C. J. A. Wilson on their Marine Paintings and Drawings page. Lou Mancini has a good, well-illustrated history at his SS Leviathan/Vaterland page and see Thorven Lucht's "The Big Three" page.

[Material that was here on relics still afloat or at least around has been moved to "Relics" on Naval and Maritime Continuation Page 1.]

Jakobsen's

There's a type of rail turntable you won't normally see (not that most people "normally" see any turntables - we are triply blessèd here on Long Island), it's a QUARTER-TURN marine turntable. I'm wasn't sure if it belonged here or on my Railroad Continuation page or where; I opted for there, q.v., with a link back on my LIRR page and here.

It's at the old Jakobsen Shipyard (Jake's) in Oyster Bay (Long Island), N. Y.; Jake's is where so very many tugboats originated, especially rail-marine tugs, those with the rakishly canted foredeck and level wheelhouse with matching canted roof.

NOTE - There's a canted Jake's wheelhouse on display at the public dock in nearby Port Washington; so, being in the neighborhood on 13 Oct 99, I took a few pictures:

(All photos taken 13 Oct 99 by and © 1999 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for large images.]

I assume that's ol' Jake, hisownself, at the wheel in the lower left shot!

Jake's fans - Walthers (of model RR fame) has brought out a waterline model of a Jakobsen's harbor tug, ostensibly HO scale (1:87.1) and Lehigh Valley, but apparently actually common marine model 1/8" scale (1:96) and with decals for most harbor RR tug operators.

The tiny Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal railroad ran a fleet of Jake's tugs; pictures of them are on Philip M. Goldstein's B.E.D.T. TUGBOATS page.

Rail-Marine Service

Speaking of rail-marine service, although I'm not a rail-marine nut, I do fancy the pocket terminals, especially those that dotted (and again are cropping up) in New York City's world-class harbor; see my afore-mentioned BEDT page and the early boxcab diesel locos which served them, and the New York & Atlantic Railway page.

To tie all this together better, I have created a separate Rail-Marine Page.

In fairness to rail-marine enthusiasts, there is a fine group known as the Rail-Marine Information Group with a great quarterly publication, the Transfer; visit their site (hosted on Bill Russell's great RR site); snail-mail contact is Rail-Marine Information Group, John Teichmoeller, 12107 Mt. Albert Road, Ellicott City (so dear to rail historians hearts), Maryland 21047.

I saw (04 Sep 99) "The Iron Giant, Warner Bros.'s fabulous animation; it had two glaring technical faults, one of which any reader of this page should have spotted at once. The Nautilus was NOT a missile sub and could NOT have fired a Polaris missile!

(The other was a railroad blunder.)

The Master Nitpicker strikes again!

SUBMARINES

(moved to continuation page 06 May 02.)

HELP!

a.k.a. Hilfe! Au Secours! Ayuda! Aiuto! Ajuda! Hulp! Hj�lpa! Hj�lpe!
Seg�t! Auttaa! Ops! Tetsudau! Pomoci! Pahzhaloostah! Helpi!

Here is where I post inquiries (or offers) solely at my own discretion:

Please look at the story of the USS Franklin - CV-13 and see if you can help get more information about her for a crewman's grandson.

A message asked about a DRAKE as being a cannon, yet not found on an extensive Web search, to which I replied that it was a correct artillery usage but that "I am 'shot down' to discover that there is no such listing in the indices of either my 1961 Britannica nor my 1911 "Scholar's Edition"! It's not even in my Webster's Collegiate (my 2nd Edition Unabridged was still packed away) nor in Roget's Thesaurus as a synonym. Natheless, the word, to my recollection, is from 'draaken' (dragon, i.e. - fire-breathing) and I seem to recall it being primarily applied to Naval guns although I could be dead wrong there. Some models actually had a muzzle (mouth) shaped like a dragon's (like some gargoyles). I am reasonably sure I saw one (a gun, not a dragon or gargoyle) in the park outside the White Tower at the Tower of London." [Mirror of question on my Ordnance page 2.]

Now, I fully expect to be "shot down" by some true expert but I would really like to get provenance and have the noted references (save the 11th Edition) amended.

O.K. - on 02 Feb 01, I perused both my Websters Second (1959) and Third (1966) New International Dictionary editions (the "unabridged" - why settle for just the Collegiate?) and found the first instance of Drake in each has a third meaning, "3. A small piece of artillery of the 17th and 18th century." Of course, I could have looked it up in the public library, if I'd ever remembered to do so.

If you are looking for heavy marine hardware, I have a neighbor right here on Long Island who runs a marine salvage yard only 1½ miles from my house which has everything from windlasses, anchors, chains, bollards, hawsepipes, and bitts, to pumps, generators, and compressors; he also wears two other hats, doing marine salvage and destruction wreck removal and he has one of the largest marine cranes (floating derricks) in the world, a long-reach 600-ton monster, THE OVUS. Contact John J. Gladsky, Jr., President of Gladsky Marine / Seacoast Marine Service Inc., P. O. Box 850, Glenwood Landing, New York 11547, 516-671-2474.

Gladsky Marine now has its own Website. (27 Jul 05)

The Ovus is a huge A-frame on a 54' x 180' barge drawing only 4' light (12' at max. load), with a 600 ton lift capacity at 100 feet from a fixed boom with twin main blocks; here she is in Mar 2005 making child's play of lifting one of two collapsed gantry cranes from a welter of sunken dry docks and piers in the former Todd Shipyard in New York City's Erie Basin: (27 Jul 05) and (12 Aug 05)