October 30, 2009
George McGoogan with Joan 11, the two-foot model skiff he built.
October 28, 2009
A skipper shepherds his model skiff between Point Piper and Shark Island.
During the first half of the century model racing skiffs were regularly seen sailing across Sydney Harbour in winter.
They were often raced by people who in summer were busy racing full sized skiffs.
Although this practice ended around 1954, model racing skiffs are making a comeback across Australia, which the museum is keen to encourage. (more…)
October 28, 2009
David's skiff in action.
The delightfully comical proportions of racing model skiffs are rather confounding for many people. How does something so short, so wide, so deep – and with all that sail – actually work?
Why can’t it look more normal? Why aren’t they just scaled down from an 18 foot skiff to the specified length of the model class, of one or two feet (30.48 or 60.96 cm)? (more…)
October 7, 2009
When 13 year-old Rob Davids migrated to Australia from Holland almost 60 years ago, he didn’t realise his most treasured possession - a pair of 1930s wooden ice skates – would come to symbolise his expectations and misconceptions about the new country he would call home.
These skates are on display in the museum’s New Acquisitions Case and help tell a fascinating story of persecution, exile, dislocation, lost hopes and new beginnings.
September 30, 2009
Lyneham High School performs outside the museum on 22 September 2009.
The museum loves music and encourages school bands to perform on its forecourt. So far we’ve had school bands from South Australia, Coffs Harbour and recently Lyneham High School from the ACT. We’d love to hear your school band perform. It’s a great way to get performance experience and show Sydney what your school band is made of.
If you’d like your school band to play at the museum, please contact us at events@anmm.gov.au
July 27, 2009
A year’s passed and I’ve finally finished researching and re-cataloguing the museum’s collection of maritime small arms and accessories. All up, I’ve looked at nearly fifty guns, swords, knives and pikes, as well as one walking-stick rumoured to house a sword. Sadly, it turned out to be a simple cane, and thus fell outside my brief.
I’m now entering my research results into “The Museum System,” the museum’s central database where information on an object’s provenance, condition, storage location and so on are collated. Once the data has received a stamp of approval from the curatorial team, it will be available to the public through our e-museum.
When I started out the project, a historian friend of mine (who clearly spends too much time shrouded in documents) joked that objects are boring and only significant for three reasons: 1. they’re rare 2. they’re typical, or 3. they belonged to someone important. He’s kind of right, but I’d argue that the way these three factors intersect makes objects interesting and insightful, and a valuable supplement to written material.
In my research I’ve tried to explore the stories behind the objects, and see how they might illustrate some important themes.
One major focus area of the museum is the strong maritime links between Australia and the United States, celebrated in the museum’s USA Gallery.
It’s easy to forget what cosmopolitan places the colonies were, especially in the heady years of the gold rushes. And as people traversed from place to place, they brought their sidearms with them for personal protection. The frontiers of our settlements were not so very different from the fabled ‘Wild West’ of the United States.
One pistol held by the collection—and yes, the story of its owner—brought home how close the Australian colonies and America were in the nineteenth century. It is a flintlock ‘coach’ pistol produced by J. Harding, a London manufacturer active between 1815 and 1840. For stylistic reasons I suspect this pistol was produced in the late 1830s. Harding manufactured similar pistols for use by Her Majesty’s Coach Service and three examples are held in the British Post Museum and Archive.
Flintlock Coach Pistol owned by Francis Deane (ANMM 00008294).
This particular pistol, however, was for civilian use, and is believed to have belonged to Francis Williams Deane, an American sailor who travelled between the gold-rushes in California and Victoria in the mid-nineteenth century. The museum holds a number of objects associated with Deane, including a daguerreotype portrait, and his naturalization, death and marriage certificates.
Daguerreotype of Francis Williams Deane (ANMM 00008367).
Deane was born around 1820 in Raynham, Massachusetts. After travelling to the Californian rushes in 1848, Deane came to Sydney as master of the Bark Milwood. The following year, Deane returned to America to join the ‘forty-niners’ on the Yuma diggings in Arizona.
Diggings in Arizona and California were reputed to be fairly safe places for new immigrants, but around the time Deane arrived, a number of arrivals from the south had been causing trouble. One local miner explained there was an influx “of the worst element in the world, chiefly from Sydney and other Pacific Ocean ports… this matter seriously changed and endangered current affairs in California.” In response to a string of thefts in 1851, locals in San Francisco rose up and formed the famous “Committee of Vigilance Committee,” several hundred strong. In a flurry of activity, the Vigilantes hung 4 Australians, and drove several dozen others from California.
The execution of John Jenkins, “an ex-convict from Sydney”. Held at the Californian Military Museum.
Deane was not Australian, but, perhaps due to his earlier Antipodean sojourn, is rumoured to have fled town “a pier jump ahead” of the Vigilantes. He departed (permanently) for Victoria, and it is tempting to wonder whether he armed himself with this pistol for protection.
Deane was naturalised in 1854 in Williamstown, Victoria, a place known for its strong maritime community. On his naturalization certificate he was described as “a master mariner who arrived from the US on board the Mary & Ellen and who intends to purchase land and establish himself in the said colony.”
Deane married a local, but never abandoned his ‘Yankee’ ways. According to a district historian, “Captain Deane called his home Yosemite… it was his habit to ride round the streets of Williamstown on a small skewbald pony, complete with Mexican saddle and savagely rowelled spurs. A heaving line [lasso] was coiled on the pommel like a lariat, and jammed on the head of the pilot would be his shiny stovepipe hat.” Deane died in 1898.
Deane’s single-shot, muzzle loading coach pistol seems small and awkward in comparison to a second pistol associated with both Americans and the Victorian gold rushes. It is a Colt Second Model Dragoon Revolver, which fired six shots and was known for its large bore and great stopping power. Colt revolvers were popular amongst civilians and soldiers because of their unique (at the time) double-action firing mechanism. Previous mechanisms required the shooter to manually ‘cock’ the pistol before firing the trigger. The ‘double action’ cocked and fired the pistol simply by pulling the trigger, which significantly increased the gun’s rate of fire.
Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company was established in Hartford, Connecticut in 1847. It’s initial focus was on the production of revolvers for use in the Mexican-American War of 1846 – 1848, but it soon expanded its operations. Three models of the Colt revolver were manufactured, with the second model being made between 1850 and 1851. Approximately 2550 of these were produced, making them the least common of the three. This pistol’s serial number- 9253- indicates that it was manufactured in 1850.
Colt Second Model Dragoon Revolver (ANMM 00029485).
According to its previous owners, the pistol was “found in pieces under the dirt floor of a shed in Ballarat.” There is a chance- admittedly a small one- that it was used in the miner’s uprising at the Eureka Stockade in 1854.
The uprising began in response to the high price of mining licenses and the uncertain returns of digging. Some miners equated the purchase of licences with taxation, and argued that gold diggers were being subjected to taxation without representation.
In October 1854 the murder of a Scottish miner by a local hotelkeeper led to increasing civil unrest, which culminated with the formation of the Ballarat Reform League in November. Among other things, the League demanded the removal of the licence system, and manhood suffrage. On the 3rd of December, after a tense stand-off, miners and government troops clashed at a hill occupied by the League. A subsequent commission determined that 22 miners were killed, and at least twelve more were wounded. Other accounts put the figure as high as 27.
Troops and miners clash at the stockade. The miner in the blue trousers appears to be wielding a Colt. State Library of NSW SSV2B/Ball/7.
Because of the Reform League’s demand for universal male suffrage, the uprising at Eureka has sometimes been described as the “birthplace of Australian democracy.” This Australian claim makes it is easy to forget what an international endeavour the uprising was. The thirteen miners were charged with treason in the uprising’s aftermath included Irishmen. Scots, an Italian, and a Jamaican. The first of the thirteen tried, John Joseph, was an African American who hade come from New York. As with the other twelve, Joseph was acquitted. His defence, however, held a unique racial element: the defence argued it was impossible for “a simple nigger” to oppose Her Majesty the Queen.
Joseph was not the only American involved. The prominent American businessman George Francis Train, who was based in Melbourne, had imported a consignment of Colt revolvers to the colony. They sold well, and when tensions arose in Ballarat, miners sent a request for Train to forward a further stock of Colts, on loan, to the diggings. Train refused to help, and, ever the entrepreneur, proceeded to lease six wagons to transport government troops and supplies to Ballarat.
Despite Train’s tardiness, a group of up to 200 American miners based in Ballarat organised themselves into the “Independent California Rangers Revolver Brigade.” Rafaello Carboni, an Italian who described events at the stockade, noted members of the Brigade were armed “with a Colt’s revolver of large size, and many had a Mexican knife at the hip.” The Brigade missed the skirmish, having left the stockade the previous evening in an attempt to intercept government reinforcements (incorrectly) rumoured to be en-route to Ballarat.
June 10, 2009
After watching the rebellion of James T. Kirk in the recently released epic film Star Trek I got to thinking about the pressure of following in the footsteps of one’s parents, especially a parent like George Kirk, who in an alternate reality, served as captain of the Kelvin for a mere 12 minutes yet saved over 800 souls. Don’t stop reading- I promise to not reference Star Trek again in this blog. The idea I am trying to introduce here is the desire to continue one’s family legacy and birthright through an occupation. Consider this; a legitimate reason for enlisting in the armed services today is to consolidate and continue the family tradition. Like father, like son, as the old adage goes. Wandering around the Australian National Maritime Museum I saw this paradigm play out in front of my eyes via an exhibit on display. Yes, that’s right. You’ve guessed it. Sons and grandsons carrying on the naval tradition as clown entertainers onboard passenger liners.
Doubling as a theatre duo and husband and wife, Harold Tanner and Marcelle Rose boarded ships using the stage names of Poncho and Bubbles. The exhibit label informs the audience that Poncho was always interested in clowns and magic and his father performed as a clown under the nom de plume Poncho also. The exhibit included an array of paraphernalia such as posters and performance memorablia, not limited to a rubber chicken.
In 1961 the couple bore a son, Clive, and at six years of age he developed an alter ego; Pimple. We have all heard of stage parents, but isn’t this taking it a little too far? At the age of fifteen Cli…ergh Pimple began to perform on passenger ships with his parents. The tradition did not stop with that little facial spot; Poncho and Bubbles also have two performing grandchildren- Freckle and Dimple.
Sadly Poncho passed away in April of 2000 but Bubbles still performs. I decided to test this out and to my surprise I found a website offering the services of the novelty clowns Poncho, Bubbles and Pimple. This is indicative of a successful career spanning over fifty years.
Krusty the Klown eat your heart out.
May 20, 2009
As a volunteer intern at the Australian National Maritime Museum it has come to my attention that museum personnel are inherently just as fascinating and enigmatic as the objects which are kept and displayed in the exhibits. In my quest to find a suitable artifact in the Maritime to be the focus of this blog, I encountered an entertaining and unsuspecting specimen in the form of a security guard. He has often regaled me with comical anecdotes as I’ve passed him on my way to lunch from time to time and as such I was pleasantly surprised to find a familiar face wandering around the galleries. My questions about any ‘curious’ objects left him pondering for a moment or two before he proceeded to detail to me a rumour he had heard concerning a display statue outside the ‘Passengers’ exhibit. The statue is a depiction of a young boy seated amongst travel baggage grasping a teddy bear. 
Museum labels inform me that children were commonly passengers on sea vessels. They travelled via ship to Australia with their families, at times to grasp the new working opportunities the country had to offer, other times to seek refuge. Children were also known to travel on their own, as part of the British scheme to populate the newly colonized country.
The security guard divulges to me that two former security guards of the museum swore they saw the spirit of the child walking along the platform adjacent to where the statue is situated. Night at the Museum eat your heart out. They have not since returned to the museum, he adds for further emphasis. Distinctive of many urban legends, a precise date is not specified and the witnesses of the specter are not identified by name.
He does not cease there. On his first 3am shift following the revelation of what transpired in the after hours of the museum, the elevator proceeded to run on its own. No buttons were pressed and no one else was in the building. Upon being asked if he was ‘spooked out’ he chuckled and reported the elevator had been known for working in mysterious ways for some time.
Thanking him for his input and preparing to move on he appeared to have had an epiphany; his eyes became focused as he insisted that he show me the wild animals that secretly frequent the museum. He explained that he is about to tell me the story he tells the adolescent patrons of the museum. I am led to a gallery with a large, wharf crane holding wooden crates in suspension by a roped net. This crane is characteristic of the ones used to move catches of fish along the Victorian coastline during the early 20th century. I am instructed to stand 
directly beneath it. I do as I am told.
“Now look to your left.”
Adjacent to the crane, atop more wooden crates and ropes is a small rat. The guard explains that once a person is standing right underneath the target, Mr. Rat gnaws at the rope in the hope of breaking free the cargo. However this is not a one rat job. He has an accomplice, in the form of a small pigeon that is perched on the other side of the exhibit, a la Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. He acts as a scout and helps finish off the job by flying about the undoubtedly dazed victim.
I am told that in the beginning there was also a mouse involved. Must’ve been quite a trick- some trio. I suggest possibly it was the mouse that enticed the unsuspecting victim under the trap. My input delighted the security guard and he agreed that it was indeed plausible. Unfortunately however the mouse went missing, although I promised to keep an eye out for him during my wanderings through the museum.
The exchange ended with him recounting a talk he had in 2008 with young pilgrims who were visitors to the museum during World Youth Week. Seeing the Southern Cross portrayed on the ceiling along with the other constellations they exclaimed that they were in a blessed place. I put it to you that they were quite correct. The Australian National Maritime Museum is indeed fortunate to employ such animated staff, like my friend the security guard, with a fervency to evoke the imaginations of the patrons with the products and the vividness of his own. He, and others like him, are valuable contributions to the aura of the museum.
Walking back to the office in Wharf7 I glance at the artefacts on exhibit in the Sydney Heritage Fleet Artefact Store, opposite the Conservatory Laboratory. What do you know? There is a little mouse in the display.
Funny that. I’ve never taken much notice of him before.
Melissa Grima
April 30, 2009
One of the attractions of this project has been following the lives and careers of the seamen who owned used the objects I’ve been examining. Scattered amongst drier details of calibres, dates, and manufacturers are stories, details of past lives.
One interesting example is found in the service records of Lieutenant Commander Thomas Edward Mullins. Mullins served as a Sick Berth Steward on the HMAS Sydney (I) when it engaged with the German light cruiser SMS Emden in November 1914. During and after this battle, Australia’s first as a federated nation, Mullins “constantly attended [the] sick and wounded uninterruptedly for 6 days, including terribly severe cases which were received from SMS Emden.” As a result of his actions, Mullins was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, one of only 17 issued to Australians during the First World War.
Crew From the HMAS Sydney celebrating on the Cocos Islands. Australian War Memorial P00565.018.
Eight years later, in July 1922, Mullins was promoted to the rank of Warrant Wardmaster. It is likely that a sword held by the museum, engraved with the text “THOMAS E MULLINS” and “PRESENTED BY S. B. STAFF / ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY / 1922″ commemorates his promotion. Eventually, in 1957, Mullins achieved the rank of Wardmaster Lieutenant Commander on the retired list.
Naval officer's sword presented to Thomas Mullins on his promotion in 1922. ANMM 00031676
Known to me as Lieutenant Commander Mullins D. S. M. through the museums records, I had imagined him as being a stately sort of naval gentleman. It was something of a surprise, when, browsing through his service records, I found that, when Mullins first enlisted in 1912 he was described as having “coiled snakes [tattooed] round neck—various figures and floral designs on arms R + L, butterfly on left leg, [butterfly on] each shoulder”
Thomas Edward Mullin's tattoos, as described on his service record, held at the National Archives of Australia.
The service records of the sailors I have encountered reveal that many would have crossed paths during their duties. Mullins is one of several sidearm-owners who served on or were associated with the pride of the Victorian Colonial Navy, the HMVS (later HMAS) Cerberus. The Cerberus was launched in 1868 at the Chatham Dockyards in Kent before making an arduous journey to the Colony. She was the first entirely steam-powered ship in the British Navy, inspired by ironclad riverboats such as the USS Monitor, which had seen service in the American Civil War of 1861 – 65.
Wood engraving of the HMVS Cerberus in dock, 1874. From the State Library of Victoria, IAN18/05/74/73.
The Cerberus remained under Victorian control until 1901, when the Australian Commonwealth Government assumed control of defence, and she was absorbed into the Royal Australian Navy after its formation in 1911. By this stage she was dilapidated and out of date. Fifteen years later, having been sold as scrap to a private firm, she was scuttled in Half Moon Bay, Victoria, where she can still be seen. A group of enthusiasts, the Friends of the Cerberus, have campaigned for several years to have the ship preserved.
Next time you’re in the museum, be sure to take a look at the scale model of the Cerberus in the Navy Gallery.
A bayonet held by the museum is believed to have been used aboard the Cerberus by James Conder, a seaman who had a lengthy career on several significant Victorian and Australian vessels, including the HMAS Katoomba, HMAS Challenger, and HMAS Psyche. It is an unusual sword-style bayonet which would have fitted an 1855 model Lancaster (Sappers & Miners) Carbine, a rifle popular with the Volunteer and Rifle Club movement in the nineteenth. There is some evidence that Victorian volunteer defence forces were issued with these guns, and one firearms authority considers it likely that this (by then) obsolete small arm was carried on the Cerberus in the 1890s.
Bayonet for Lancaster (Sappers & Miners) Carbine, ANMM 00005671.
A final object with a Cerberus association is a double-barrelled flintlock pistol. It is yet another souvenir from the Boxer Uprising, this time believed to have collected by Walter Underwood. Described as a 5 foot 9 inch tall Protestant with black hair and hazel eyes, Underwood was a bandmaster with the Williamstown Division of the Victorian Naval Brigade. He served upon the Cerberus until his retirement in 1922. Underwood is pictured in a group portrait of the Victorian Navy Band photographed in 1898, holding his baton and leaning against the bass drum.
The HMVS Cerberus band in 1898. Underwood is moustached, leaning on the bass drum near the centre-right. Australian War Memorial 305343.
The pistol was produced by the firm Kynock & Co., which is known to have operated a plant in Warwickshire producing percussion sporting guns in the 1860s. This particular example is marked “Kynock & Co, Birmingham,” and stamped “TOWER 1867,” which roughly correlates with the estimated date of the pistol’s manufacture. It is further stamped “W U C E F 1901,” which I’m taking to stand for “Walter Underwood, China Expeditionary Force.” The question remains whether Underwood acquired the pistol from locals in China, or whether he obtained it from a British soldier, or perhaps even from the stores of the Naval Brigade, another antiquated relic like Conder’s bayonet. While in China, Underwood wrote letters home, and six of them are held by the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Next time I head in that direction, I’ll be sure to stop by and take a look—they might shed some light on the mystery.
Double-barrelled flintlock pistol, marked "WUCEF", ANMM 00033858.
April 15, 2009
This week marks the 97th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic on the night of the 14th April1912 on it’s maiden voyage to New York.
A subject of great fascination for many people in Australia and overseas this recent news item from the National Archives in the UK highlights some interesting and important records in their collection to explore online.
If you’re luck enough to be going to the UK for holidays you might want to catch the Titanic honor and glory exhibition the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.
Or check out some Titanic books available from our Museum Store.
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