THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 27, 1996 TAG: 9607260060
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 99 lines
THE MARINERS' MUSEUM didn't send a robot a thousand leagues under the sea to locate buried treasure.
Museum scholars merely opened the vault.
Today, the Mariners' new permanent Collections Gallery is unveiled, showcasing about 100 maritime relics, most of which have been in storage at the museum for years, even decades. About 30 of the artifacts have never been displayed, and another 20 have not been shown since the 1940s.
The exhibit debut coincides with ``Community Appreciation Day'': Today, museum admission is $1 and many free family programs are scheduled.
The new gallery is part of the museum's push to get more of the permanent collection on display. As it stands, only about 5 percent of the museum's 35,000-piece collection is on view, said John Hightower, the museum's director.
``We have an extremely diverse collection, which is difficult to arrange thematically. So, this Collections Gallery lets us just put things on view, without a particular theme.'' Objects will be rotated every six to eight months, he said.
The display constitutes an intriguing, oddball assortment. There's a figurine of a tattooed man from a Norfolk tattoo parlor - A.B. Coleman's on East Main Street, closed down in 1949 with all the other Norfolk parlors. And nearby, a button from the uniform of Admiral Horatio Nelson worn in 1798 at the Battle of the Nile.
A bench anvil from the famed HMS Bounty is on display. There is a brass telescope bearing the name of Oliver Hazard Perry, the U.S. naval officer who defeated the British fleet on Lake Erie.
An enormous whale jawbone incised with scrimshaw is on view, as well as a model for a circa 1592 Korean ``turtle ship'' - actually, a sailing vessel with a protective, spiked ``shell'' that could be lowered onto the ship's body.
Exquisite drawings of ships at sea distinguish a 1776 logbook kept by Nicholas Pocock (1740-1821), an English artist who later became a famous marine painter.
Selections for the new gallery were made by staff. ``We all had a go at it,'' Hightower said. ``Somebody would say, `I like the buttons.' And we'd say, `Yeah, OK, you get buttons.'
``And I said, `I really like chronometers.' ''
Three rare early chronometers are on view. Chronometers measure longitude, and they look a little like clocks.
Prior to their invention, sailors had it tough. Early seagoing folk had a handle on latitude, which is the measure of distance north and south of the equator. It was the east-west part that threw them. And, without the east-west dividing lines - called longitude - ``you wouldn't know where you were'' when at sea, Hightower said.
So in 1715 the British established a prize - a sum comparable today to $12 million - to the creator of a longitude-measuring device.
Twenty years later, clockmaker John Harrison presented the Brit's Board of Longitude with a chronometer.
Because the board didn't want to acknowledge a lowly clockmaker had found the solution, it was 45 years before Harrison received his prize, Hightower said. That year, in 1780, he published ``The Principles of Mr. Harrison's Timekeeper.'' Two years later, he died.
The three displayed chronometers, dating from 1780 to 1790, were made possible by Harrison's published paper. Of the three, a 1785 Josiah Emery chronometer is the rarest. Only one other like it is known to exist; it's at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.
The Collections Gallery is contained in two large display cases in a room shared with enormous carved and painted figureheads. Three more cases will be added next year.
The gallery is among numerous steps being taken to ``make the permanent collection more accessible,'' Hightower said.
The initial step was to begin creating exhibits from the permanent collection and to tour them to other institutions. The first such project, a show of paintings by Antonio Jacobsen, America's foremost ship portraitist, is at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History in Washington through Sept. 8.
Another step ``is to make our collections electronically accessible,'' he said. Finally, the museum wants to make its huge, barnlike small craft building a climate-controlled environment, so yet more items can be displayed.
Meanwhile, the museum will continue to stage special exhibitions featuring objects from its own holdings, such as a show of figureheads being planned for October. ``It'll be a chance,'' Hightower said, glancing around at the bug-eyed figureheads, ``to see them face-to-face.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos courtesy of The Mariners' Museum
Artifacts on display at The Mariners' Museum include this 18th
century chronometer and figurine of a tatooed man.
WANT TO GO?
What: Unveiling of the new permanent ``Collections Gallery''
Where: The Mariners' Museum, 100 Museum Dr., Newport News
When: Today
Hours: The museum is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
How much: admission is $1 today; otherwise, $6.50, adults; $3.25,
students. Discounts available.
Call: 596-2222
THE MARINERS' MUSEUM
``Veragua,'' a three-panel leaded glass window, is on display in the
Collections Gallery at the Mariners' Museum. by CNB