Markers of History

Note: Lightship Portsmouth has two mark­ers for the Path of History and a des­ig­na­tion as a National Historic Landmark. This is the final of three posts here, one for each snarf.

Well, I’m glad this is the last post in this series. I’m get­ting tired of writ­ing about this light­ship. I’ll have to con­sider whether there’s a good way to con­sol­i­date cases like this, with­out hav­ing a sin­gle post so long that NOBODY will look at it! (And I’m glad I didn’t make a museum visit, which would be another snarf/entry.)

National Historic Landmark
U.S. Lightship No. 101 Portsmouth

Location: At the Water St end of London St, Portsmouth, VA 23704.

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:15pm

Transcription of marker:

U.S. Lightship No. 101
Portsmouth

has been des­ig­nated a

National Historic Landmark

This ves­sel pos­sesses national sig­nif­i­cance
in com­mem­o­rat­ing the his­tory of the
United States of America

1989

National Park Service
United States Department of the Interior

My impres­sions: I think my impres­sions have been fully cov­ered in the pre­vi­ous two posts. This marker itself, unlike the Walk of History mark­ers or the state marker pro­grams, isn’t intended to tell us much about the land­mark, but sim­ply to let us know that the land­mark is here. Markers can explain his­tory, but a land­mark des­ig­na­tion plaque alerts us to the pres­ence of his­tory and it’s up to us to look up and find it or walk in and expe­ri­ence it.

Notes for future snar­fers: This marker is between the light­ship and the street. The next clos­est marker related to the light­ship is along the path to the left of the light­ship as you face this marker. The other is along the sea wall behind the lightship.

Markeroni sta­tus: This land­mark is await­ing inclu­sion in the Markeroni database.

Update (6/7): This marker was included in the Markeroni data­base yes­ter­day and I logged my visit this morning.

Note: Lightship Portsmouth has two mark­ers for the Path of History and a des­ig­na­tion as a National Historic Landmark. This is the first of three posts that will appear here, one for each snarf.

It is not clear to me whether or not there’s an intended order to the two Path of History mark­ers for the Lightship Portsmouth, so I’ll blog about them in the order that I came upon them.

This first marker, I first spot­ted from the ferry to Portsmouth. Of course, I couldn’t read it (or even be absolutely cer­tain it WAS a marker) from that distance.

Path of History
Lightship Portsmouth

Location: Along the Elizabeth River, at the Water St end of London St, Portsmouth, VA 23704.

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:05pm

Transcription of marker:

Lightship Portsmouth
101-WAL524

Lightships were “float­ing light­houses.” They were anchored at the entrances to ports, bays and outer lim­its to off-lying dan­ger areas such as shoals and reefs. These ves­sels served as aids to navigation.

Lightships were orig­i­nally placed where light­houses could not go or were too expen­sive to build. They had the advan­tage of being able to be in deeper waters than a light­house, could shift posi­tions and had many types of sig­nals. Disadvantages included that they were expen­sive to main­tain, dan­ger­ous in fog and required a crew of 8 – 15 men who were iso­lated and exposed to ter­ri­ble weather.

History of Lightship 101:

1912: Contract for #101 awarded to Pusey and Jones, ship­builders in Delaware.
1916: #101 was launched and sta­tioned at Smith Island Shoals, Virginia for eight years.
1924: Broke down, was refit­ted and repaired. Assigned to Overfalls, Delaware.
1939: #101 was changed by the Coast Guard to WAL524.
1951: Withdrawn from duty and over­hauled. Assigned to Nantucket Station.
1952: Stationed at Stonehouse Shoals, off the New England coast.
1963: Relief and last duty at Cross Rip Shoals in Nantucket Sound.
1964: Broke down en route to Boston and was retired.
1967: City of Portsmouth placed the ves­sel on the water­front as a museum.
1989: LIGHTSHIP PORTSMOUTH was des­ig­nated a National Historic Landmark.

My impres­sions: A good gen­eral overview of the pur­pose of light­ships and a very suc­cinct his­tory of this par­tic­u­lar one, though I find the date/fact pair­ings to be too rem­i­nis­cent of the worst of his­tory class in my school days, and bereft of the con­nec­tions and color that would bring it to life. Of course, it’s eas­ier to bring to life a bit when you look up and see the light­ship itself.

Notes for future snar­fers: This marker is along the sea wall at the river. The other Path of History marker is on the walk­way that con­nects it to the London St and the entrance to the light­ship museum.

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Path of History before sub­mit­ting to Markeroni.

My inner proof­reader is scream­ing at this one. Because I’m 99% sure that they messed up on word choice in the sub­head­ing of this marker from the Path of History and I cringe to see so promi­nent an error on a marker about history.

Path of History
Naval Shipyard Museum

Location: High St & Water St, Portsmouth, VA, 23704 in front of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum.

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:00pm

Transcription of marker:

Naval Shipyard Museum
Formally Norfolk County Ferries Maintenance Building

Constructed in 1919, this build­ing was used as a main­te­nance build­ing for the Norfolk County fer­ries. From 1636 to 1955 the fer­ries pro­vided ser­vice for pas­sen­gers and their var­i­ous modes of trans­porta­tion across the Elizabeth River between Norfolk and Portsmouth. The fer­ries were dis­con­tin­ued in 1955, but were re-established in 1983 for pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion only. The build­ing has been home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum since 1963, when the orig­i­nal museum was moved from inside the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The museum researches, pre­serves and pro­motes the his­tory of the City of Portsmouth, Norfolk Naval Shipyard and the armed forces in Hampton Roads.

My impres­sions: HIRE A PROOFREADER!!! (Sorry, was I yelling?) I mean, there’s a minis­cule chance that the build­ing is “offi­cially named” based on its prior func­tion, but I do want to assume that 99% chance that it’s the wrong word, take some white-out and change the word to Formerly. But since I’d pre­fer not to be arrested, I’ll restrain myself.

There’s a lot of over­lap with the ferry marker I vis­ited in Norfolk ear­lier in the day, of course, because the for­mer func­tion of the build­ing relates to the same ferries.

Notes for future snar­fers: This is very close to the High Street ferry land­ing. Note that there are two other mark­ers in front of the museum: one for the Blue Star Memorial By-Way (right next to this one, in front of the museum) and another for the Revolutionary War at Portsmouth (fac­ing Water St, par­al­lel to the side of the museum).

Markeroni sta­tus: Awaiting fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Path of History before sub­mit­ting to Markeroni.

One meta note: Having filled up the front page with plenty more left to come, I’m going to slow down the pace of post­ing, so you’ll hope­fully see two or three posts per day, until I catch up with all the sights I saw yes­ter­day, so come back tomor­row for more marker fun!

Path of History
Seaboard Air Line Railroad

Location: Near inter­sec­tion of High St & Water St, near the High St ferry land­ing, Portsmouth, VA 23704.

Visited: June 1, 2009, 12:55pm

Transcription of marker: The Portsmouth & Roanoke Railroad was incor­po­rated in March 1832 and began oper­a­tions in July 1834 when the first train, pulled by horses, ran a full cir­cuit from Portsmouth to Suffolk. A loco­mo­tive replaced the horses later that year. By late 1836, the full line run­ning to Weldon, N.C., was com­pleted. In 1846 the line was reor­ga­nized as the Seaboard & Roanoke and even­tu­ally became the Seaboard Air Line Railroad.

This build­ing at High Street Landing served as the Seaboard Air Line Railroad head­quar­ters and sta­tion from 1894 through 1958, when the com­pany moved its oper­a­tions to Richmond, Va. Since that time, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad has sur­vived a num­ber of merg­ers, exist­ing today as CSX Transportation.

My impres­sions: My imag­i­na­tion wasn’t caught ter­ri­bly by this one. I think it may be because of grow­ing up in Canada, where a large part of our national myth is about being tied together by one rail­road that the smaller rail­roads (both here and back home) don’t seem ter­ri­bly impor­tant to me. The men­tal pic­ture of horses pulling a train (which is inter­est­ing to me) gets drowned out by the minu­tiae of cor­po­rate names and mergers.

I do won­der about the place­ment. The build­ing there was head­quar­ters. Why? There is no evi­dence today of rails in close prox­im­ity to the build­ing. (Of course, there isn’t much rea­son for HQ to be right on the rail line, is there?) Was it the water­front location?

Further read­ing: “Seaboard Air Line Railroad,” Wikipedia.

Markeroni sta­tus: I will attempt to gather more infor­ma­tion about Portsmouth’s Path of History before sub­mit­ting this for inclu­sion in the Markeroni database.

Welcome to those of you who vis­ited Markers of History yes­ter­day and found our looks at the marker and statue of Grace Sherwood, after read­ing a Virginian-Pilot col­umn yes­ter­day which men­tioned the statue.

This marker was a “bonus” one for me. I had planned a trip yes­ter­day to snarf three his­tor­i­cal mark­ers I’d seen in Portsmouth (when we were car-pooling with oth­ers for din­ner and I didn’t have the cam­era with me), plus what­ever else I found. I hadn’t expected to find a marker before I reached Portsmouth, though!

Cannonball Trail
Ferries to Portsmouth and Berkley

Location: Between Waterside Dr and the Elizabeth River near the ferry dock, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: June 1, 2009, 12:35pm

Transcription of marker: According to tra­di­tion, ferry ser­vice across the Elizabeth River was first estab­lished near this loca­tion in 1636 by Captain Adam Thoroughgood and oper­ated by Lower Norfolk County. The ear­li­est fer­ries were sim­ply skiffs rowed by men. Later larger pad­dle wheel ves­sels were pro­pelled by horses or mules on tread­mills. In 1715, Major Samuel Boush was run­ning two fer­ries for an annual fee of three thou­sand pounds of tobacco. The first steam ferry to serve Norfolk and Portsmouth was the “Gosport,” built in Portsmouth and out­fit­ted in Philadelphia. Her first run was in 1832. The cross­ing time was reduced to five min­utes. In 1840, the pas­sen­ger fare was three cents. With the advent of the auto­mo­bile, fer­ries were redesigned to han­dle cars and trucks. Even though the Downtown Tunnel opened in May 1952, vehic­u­lar fer­ries con­tin­ued to cross the Elizabeth River between Norfolk and Portsmouth until the end of August 1955. The present Norfolk-Portsmouth pas­sen­ger fer­ries, rein­stated in 1983, con­tinue a tra­di­tion of more than three centuries.

My impres­sions: Ever since my first visit to this area, I’ve loved the area behind The Waterside, as well as Town Point Park (which I hope will soon be reopened after the con­struc­tion project which has had it fenced off for the last ser­val months). Yesterday was a per­fect day for a trip on the ferry, with tem­per­a­tures in the low-to-mid 70s, with a nice breeze off the river. The ferry trip is one of my favorite ways to get out and relax in the area.

Markeroni sta­tus: This marker is await­ing inclu­sion in the Markeroni database.

Update (6/7): This marker was included in the Markeroni data­base yes­ter­day and I logged my visit this morning.