Article June 21, 2009
Washington, D.C.

Come to sea
Maritime history enshrined


By Kate Kilpatrick The Washington Post

June 21, 2009


Pirates drank rum: true. Pirates said "Arrrrgh": false. These are among the simplest lessons learned at "On the Water: Stories From Maritime America," the permanent exhibit on maritime history that opened at the National Museum of American History last month after 10 years of planning.

In its broadest sense, maritime history includes everything related to our relationship to oceans and waterways, and stretches from ship design and sugar trade routes to fishing, whaling and lighthouse history. "It's sailors and sea captains," says Paula Johnson, the exhibit's project director and co-curator, "but it's also oyster shuckers and passengers on steamers."

It's a theme the museum has always embraced, says Johnson. "There's been a lot of serious collecting in maritime history at the Smithsonian really since the beginning. Some of the whaling and fishing artifacts are among the oldest in the institution," she says. "The previous maritime exhibit opened in 1978, so it felt like time."

Johnson, who began formulating the concept in 1999, says she wanted to focus on the personal stories and experiences of people at sea: shackled slaves crossing the Atlantic, Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine, merchant marines under attack in World War II, vacationers aboard a luxury liner.

The project is a companion piece to the "America on the Move" transportation exhibition. It took 10 years to open in part because it took a while to raise the $5 million needed, Johnson says, and in part because the museum was closed for renovations from September 2006 to November 2008. Funding eventually came from the A.P. Moller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Moller Foundation.
"On the Water," the museum's first new permanent exhibition since its 2008 reopening, is divided chronologically into seven sections that span American maritime history from 1450 to the present. "There are a number of regional museums that tell regional maritime stories," Johnson says. "Our job is to tell the national story, to cover the water, so to speak - the East Coast, West Coast, Gulf Coast."

The 8,500-square-foot exhibit kicks off with a display of rigged ship models representing the web of vessels that transported sugar, tobacco and slaves. The point being made here is that the exchange of goods back then resembles the World Wide Web of information today.

But while the large model of the tobacco ship Brilliant impresses, it's the smaller related pieces that delight and contextualize. A wooden snuff box carved into the shape of a potbellied man (with one eye bulging, the other missing) connects vast trade systems to everyday consumer habits.

"With all that treasure crisscrossing (the waters), piracy was a huge and treacherous problem for mariners," Johnson says while demonstrating an interactive pirate quiz featuring a treasure chest with pullout swords exposing pirate facts and myths.

In piecing the exhibit together, Johnson was reluctant to romanticize pirate outlaws, but says preliminary testing showed the idea of "dangerous waters" held great interest. Homages to shipwrecks and seasickness build on the theme, including the first-person account (narrated by an actor) of a 23-year-old American officer who reported the spread of inflammatory fever aboard a slave boat in 1795 that afflicted slaves and crew alike, eventually causing his blindness.

The audio narratives shouldn't be missed. Select "Leave Her, Johnny" from the list of old sea shanties and listen to salty sailors grumble about low wages, rotten food and shameful captains as you linger over bone dice and scrimshaw teeth.

While highlighting the anchor pieces in each section - a real-life steam engine room, a Fresnel lighthouse lens that lit waters 17 miles afar - Johnson can't resist pausing apologetically at easily overlooked pieces such as a tucked-away safety vest invention that appears to be a twin mattress folded diaperlike under the wearer's torso; or the first sliver of gold found at Sutter's Mill that precipitated the gold rush. (After the discovery, hordes of Americans boarded boats destined for California.)

"There are objects in the exhibit that on the face of it don't seem to have a maritime connection," she says.

This is what distinguishes "On the Water" from the museum's previous temporary maritime exhibit, which ran from 1978 to 2006. "The old exhibit was really about ship design and propulsion, and it was very heavily into technology." The new exhibit, she says, is "taking it beyond the ship" by linking the technology with the experiences of real people.

"On the Water" is light on recognizable names, preferring everyday stories. The Titanic story feels intentionally buried - included out of obligation only - albeit accompanied by recordings inspired by the disaster.

Short videos produced by the History Channel - the exhibition's media sponsor - offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of oil tankers, cruise ships and container ports to keep things current. But the three billboards filled with recent maritime-related news clippings is the mustiest bit of the exhibit. The best way to make maritime history feel like an eclipsed era is to post newspaper clips on the subject.

Ellie