Markers of History

And now, the last of the USS Wisconsin mark­ers. After this post, the blog’s going to take a day or two off. Next week, I should fin­ish post­ing the Town Point Park pho­tos and move on to the mark­ers my wife and I found on the Fourth of July. I also hope to write another essay post which will likely appear Sunday or Monday on this blog. Have a great week­end, everybody!

Cannonball Trail
Battleship Wisconsin: Berthed in Norfolk, the Homeport of Naval History

Location: Foot of Plume St, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: July 3, 2009, 2:20pm

Transcription of marker: Redefining the sky­line of down­town Norfolk, bat­tle­ship Wisconsin stands sto­ically with dom­i­nat­ing pres­ence. After months of dredg­ing and con­struc­tion, Wisconsin majes­ti­cally slipped into the seem­ingly tai­lored berth with­out a hitch on 7 December 2000 – fifty-seven years after the war­ship was orig­i­nally launched. Berthing the 45,000 ton, 887.3 foot long and 108 foot wide bat­tle­ship was a major feat of engi­neer­ing. The waters of the Elizabeth River around Nauticus are extremely shal­low for the 37 foot deep draft of Wisconsin. Varying tidal and weather con­di­tions fur­ther com­pli­cated the berthing facil­ity design. Working in con­junc­tion with City of Norfolk and U.S. Navy plan­ners, archi­tects from the Norfolk-based firm Glenn & Sadler designed the chan­nel and berthing facil­ity next to Nauticus. Chained securely for hur­ri­cane force winds, Wisconsin presently floats on the water at an aver­age of two to four feet above the bot­tom. This marker made pos­si­ble by a gift from Glenn & Sadler, a Division of Transystems Corporation.

My impres­sions: I’m a lit­tle under­whelmed by this marker. Rather than the his­tory of the ship, it focuses on how it came to be where it is, but doesn’t draw fur­ther back than a decade. It is also the last sen­tence that both­ers me. This is the only Cannonball Trail sign I’ve seen to date that includes a spon­sor­ship mes­sage. I might be OK with it, were the com­pany donat­ing it not also men­tioned in the marker text. It almost makes me won­der whether the first men­tion of Glenn & Sadler was war­ranted or a mat­ter of reward­ing a donor in some way. I mean, I’ve never heard of Glenn & Sadler other than from this marker, but there is a per­cep­tion prob­lem, I think, when one rec­og­nizes a con­tri­bu­tion made by some­body who spon­sors the marker (and, pre­sum­ably in this case, requires their name to be rec­og­nized as a spon­sor). It dimin­ishes the cred­i­bil­ity of the marker text and makes me less inclined to trust it with­out fur­ther research.

Setting that aside, the pres­ence of Wisconsin on the water­front is another of those things that indi­cate that I’m not a long-timer here. Even though it’s been there less than a decade, it is another of those things (like Town Point Park) which define down­town Norfolk in my mind.

Markeroni sta­tus: Direct-logged.