ALASKAN ISLAND: JAPANESE FORTRESS

21 August 2024: We made it, friends! Ten years ago today the first MARITIME MAUNDER appeared on the World Wide Web! To date, we have posted 567 articles and have reached 206,692 individuals who have found something of interest in our site. I would have not imagined those numbers or the fact we have lasted ten years! So thank you to all of the worldwide readers who have (hopefully) enjoyed most of what we have posted and, while I will not promise another ten years, I hope we can last a few more with posts of varying degrees of interest, but always of a maritime nature. 

For today's offering, we sourced Live Science (on line) and found an interesting piece from WWII - and yes, it is about a couple of wrecks, but not of the ancient variety! Enjoy!

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3 shipwrecks from 'forgotten battle' of World War II discovered off remote Alaskan island

Underwater archaeologists have located the wrecks of three military ships involved in Japan's invasion of Alaska's remote Aleutian Islands in World War II — an almost-overlooked conflict sometimes called the "forgotten battle" by historians.

The wrecks of the vessels — two Japanese freighters and the American cable ship SS Dellwood, which laid undersea cables during the war — were discovered last month during an expedition to Attu Island, at the westernmost tip of the Aleutians.

The Japanese ships were sunk by bombs from American aircraft after Japanese troops invaded the island in June 1942, roughly six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the American ship sank about a month after the Japanese invasion had been defeated almost a year later, during efforts to reinforce the island's defenses.

"The original [Japanese] idea was to turn Attu into an 'unsinkable aircraft carrier'" for attacks on other American locations, maritime archaeologist and project co-leader Dominic Bush told Live Science.

"But as things started to change in the Pacific, they were abandoned by the Imperial command and basically told to hold out for as long as they could — essentially, to die with honor," added Bush, who was a doctoral student at East Carolina University (ECU) at the time of the expedition and is now a researcher for the archaeological nonprofit Ships of Discovery.

research ship Norseman II

Attu and the nearby Aleutian island of Kiska were the only parts of North America invaded and occupied by a foreign enemy during World War II, although Japanese warplanes also bombed other Aleutian islands. In response, the United States spent roughly a year bombing the Japanese there with warplanes and, eventually, drove out the Japanese with a force of almost 35,000 American and Canadian soldiers.

The final stages of the invasion included the Battle of Attu, which claimed the lives of 2,351 Japanese and 549 Allied troops in May 1943.

Bush and his colleagues at ECU — including the project's co-leader, maritime archaeologist and historian Jason Raupp — had spent years researching the Aleutian Island wrecks and were able to locate all three during a two-week expedition in July.

The researchers teamed up with several strategic partners, including the Japanese World Scan Project, which scans environmental and archaeological sites with drones and other robots, to find out as much as they could about the wrecks.

"Nobody had documented these wrecks before," Raupp told Live Science. "So we went out there and searched … and since we had about four years of research and preparation, it made the identifications easier when we found them."

 

The wreck hunters searched the area on board a former crab-fishing vessel — the Norseman II — which has been converted into a scientific research ship and is equipped with a remotely operated underwater vehicle that took video of the sunken ships. The wrecks were located by a sonar array towed behind the research ship; the array carried equipment for an advanced type of sonar called "synthetic aperture" sonar, which uses the reflections of sound pulses to locate objects underwater.

Raupp explained that the system combines new hardware and advanced software processing techniques to create three-dimensional scans of the seafloor over much greater distances and with much higher resolution than earlier sonar systems.

"It allows for increased efficiency of a survey, because you are able to cover massive swaths of the seabed with a high level of resolution," he said. "We would have needed weeks to achieve the same result using standard sonar."

Kotohira Maru

The wreck of the Dellwood and one of the Japanese freighters, Kotohira Maru, were located offshore at a depth of about 300 feet (90 meters), and the wreck of the other Japanese freighter, Cheribon Maru, was found in shallow water near the shore.

Bush said the damage observed on the wrecks of the two Japanese freighters confirmed reports of their sinkings by bombs from American warplanes.

The sunken American ship had been laying cables for a new air base built there after the invasion when it struck an uncharted underwater pinnacle, Bush said, and the researchers had also found evidence that anti-submarine nets were used to defend Attu's main port from attacks by Japanese submarines.

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I wonder how many Americans who read this blog were aware that the country was not only invaded, but occupied by an enemy force! Wow!

So, with the posting of blogpost #568, we will again say 'thank you, readers, followers, and friends' and embark on our eleventh year!

Until Next time,

                                                Fair Winds,           

                                                       Old Salt

 

 

LAST KEEPER IN BOSTON LIGHT

6 August 2024: In our last post, we mentioned a several day meeting with a bunch of maritime folks [National Maritime Historical Society] who gathered up the Hudson River - near West Point (Military Academy) to share experiences, learn, and meet new participants. Two of the people I had the pleasure of meeting were Sally Snowman and her husband, Jay Thomson. Sally was the last civilian keeper of the legendary Boston Lighthouse which has stood at the entrance to Boston Harbor (on Little Brewster Is.) since 1716 - in one form or another. Following is a highly edited combination of several sources, including "Boston Light: a historical perspective"  Sally and Jay's book (which she most generously presented to me - thanks Sally!) which, to any history buff, might prove to be interesting.

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The historic Boston Light overlooks the sea from Little Brewster Island, casting a light beam 27 miles into the Atlantic. This is the oldest continually used and last staffed lighthouse in the country, which dates back to the Revolutionary War.

Little Brewster Island hosts Boston Light The structure built by Massachusetts in 1716 was a circular, slightly tapered tower of rubblestone about 60 feet high, the light provided by candles. Also constructed were a keeper’s house, barn, and a wharf. A fog cannon was installed in 1719. (After being discontinued in 1851, it was removed from the island by the Coast Guard in 1962 and returned in 1993.) The tower was damaged by fires started by the light in 1720 and, more seriously, in 1751 and by a severe storm in 1723. Each time as well as in 1734–37 the tower was repaired or rebuilt. The most significant damage, however, occurred during the Revolutionary War. On July 20, 1775, when the British occupied Boston and held Boston Light, patriot troops burned the wooden parts of the tower. The British began to repair it, whereupon the Americans burned it again on July 31 and again in September. Finally, in June 1776, as the last of the British were leaving Boston, they blew up the lighthouse (Snowman and Thomson 1999:7, 11, 13–14, 97–100; Snow 1971:44). Boston Light was not rebuilt by Massachusetts until 1783. This time it was again circular, constructed of mortared rubblestone, and 75 feet high with the illumination provided by four fish oil lamps. In 1809, when lighthouses were under the purview of the secretary of the treasury, large cracks appeared in the east wall and six iron hoops were then installed around the tower for support. (Today there are five, the sixth having been removed sometime between 1917 and 1935. The present aluminum bands replaced corroded steel ones in 1973–74.) In 1811 a revolving mechanism was installed to create a flashing light. During the Pleasonton years the condition of the lighthouse apparently deteriorated but improvements were also made—a chandelier with 14 lamps and reflectors was installed in 1828 and the present cast iron stairs, iron window frames, balcony, and large iron door added in 1844. And in 1851 the fog cannon was replaced by a wind-up bell (Snowman and Thomson 1999:14, 24–25, 26, 29, 30, 70, 158, 161–62, 182).

Under the U. S. Lighthouse Board, many more improvements were made to Boston Light. A second-order revolving Fresnel lens was installed in 1859 and, to accommodate it, the tower was raised to 89 feet. As part of the renovations, the interior of the tower was lined with brick for further support and the brick entry added. In the same year, a frame duplex house was built for the assistant keepers. The fog signals were upgraded a number of times: in 1869 a striking apparatus was introduced, in 1871 a whistle, in 1872 a fog-trumpet, and in 1887 a steam siren. In 1876 a brick building that still stands was constructed to house the fog signal. (It now also houses the generator.) Other buildings constructed in this period and also still standing are the frame keeper’s house and a brick cistern (1884), brick oil house (1889; mineral oil had replaced lard oil as fuel in 1883), and replacement boathouse (1899) (Snowman and Thomson 1999:35, 37, 38–39, 124–25, 127, 159). Under the U. S. Lighthouse Service, the former wick lamps at Boston Light were replaced in 1913 with an incandescent oil vapor (IOV) lamp (Snowman and Thomson 1999:46, 130–31).

More significant changes were made the under the Coast Guard. In 1948 Boston Light was electrified. Power was originally supplied by a generator and batteries, replaced in 1957 by an underwater cable from Windmill Point in Hull with generator backup. The motor driving the rotating machinery of the Fresnel lens was also electrified, ending the keeper’s having to wind it by hand every four hours. (The keeper still had to climb the stairs to the light at sundown and sunrise every day to turn on and off the switches for the light and the rotating gear.) In 1959 Boston Light was changed from a family-operated to a male-billeted station, and in 1960 the Coast Guard removed the badly deteriorated duplex assistant keepers’ house by burning it. (Since 1990 the cellar of the former duplex has been used for underground fuel storage.) Indoor plumbing was finally successfully installed in the keeper’s house in 1960. (Hitherto both the keeper’s house and duplex had outhouses that discharged directly onto the rocks below from where the effluent was washed away by the high tide.) In 1964 Boston Light became a National Historic Landmark, in 1987 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in November 1989, just as the Coast Guard was preparing to automate the light and remove personnel from Little Brewster, the U. S. Senate passed a law sponsored by Senator Kennedy requiring that Boston Light be permanently manned. Boston Light thus became the only manned lighthouse in the United States. The law also required that public access to Little Brewster be facilitated, and this occurred during the 1990s, culminating with the official opening of the island to the public in 1999. The light was finally automated in 1998, again the last one in the country, and now remains always “on,” ending the keeper’s having to climb the stairs twice a day. The latest installment in the transformation of Boston Light occurred in 2003, when Sally Snowman was appointed the first civilian keeper since 1941. She is also the first woman keeper in Boston’s Light’s long and illustrious history (Snowman and Thomson 1999:54, 57, 59, 60, 61–63, 68, 80–84, 86, 125, 131, 136, 205; D’Entremont 2007b).

For the greater part of two decades, Sally Snowman has lived and worked contentedly on Little Brewster Island, a craggy patch of bare rock, crabgrass, concrete, and dilapidated buildings in Boston’s outer harbor. Under the auspices of the Coast Guard, she serves as the keeper, and the historian, of Boston Light. Snowman is the last official keeper in the United States.

Snowman concedes that the keeper’s life is “not for everyone.” But she was entranced from the age of ten, when she first stepped onto Little Brewster Island. On a picnic with her father, a marine engineer and a Coast Guard Auxiliarist, she gazed up at the lighthouse and proclaimed that she would get married there one day. (In 1994, she and Thomson held a small wedding near the tower.) Later, she also discovered an appealing role model: Abbie Burgess, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper in Maine. In 1856, when Abbie was sixteen, her father went to the mainland to pick up supplies, leaving her in charge. A nor’easter struck, and Abbie and her sisters moved their invalid mother into the tower, before waves swept their house away. After a weeks-long ordeal, Abbie wrote to a friend, “Though at times greatly exhausted with my labors, not once did the lights fail.

Sally today

Still, she admitted that she’ll miss the work, and the place—its solitude and appalling winter weather even more than its sun-drenched summer days: “I can’t get enough of it.” When she’s on Little Brewster, she likes to climb to the lighthouse gear room and open an Alice in Wonderland-size door that leads onto the catwalk. She sits there, dangling her legs over the edge, struck by how people from earliest antiquity have tended lights, “for the purpose of guiding vessels safely into harbor, or as warnings to stay away from hazards. This, to me, is a kind of miracle.” ♦

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Indeed, not for everyone. There are records of keepers going insane and either killing themselves or a co-keeper. And regardless how much one likes "wild" weather, being on a low-lying island open to the fury of Atlantic storms has got to be a challenge - which only makes us more respectful of the courage and determination of those like Sally Snowman!

 Until next time,

                                                           Fair winds

                                                                  Old Salt                        

USS LANGLEY: FIRST U.S AIRCRAFT CARRIER

 23 July 2024: July's nearly done and summer's half over. Where did it go?? Hard to believe that Autumn is looming [ed: let's not rush things!] and we'll all be wishing for those long lovely warm days of summer!

This past weekend, I attended a two day gathering of maritime folks from the National Maritime Historical Society (Seahistory.org) in Bear Mountain, NY [ed: pretty part of the the country, by the way - Hudson River, West Point, etc.] and ran into an old pal, Dr. David Winkler, an eminent naval historian. He mentioned his recently published book, America's First Aircraft Carrier, published by the Naval Institute Press. It gives the history of Langley, and, assuming it follows his usual pattern, is eminently readable. 

The following is from an online source, Slashgear.com, not Dr. Winkler's book.

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It may surprise you to learn that the Navy's very first aircraft carrier took to sea more than a century ago, with the US Department of Defense commissioning the construction of the vessel in March 1922. It may also surprise you to learn the ship didn't actually start its journey as an aircraft carrier, and when the ship took to sea in 1913, it did so as a cargo vessel under the name Jupiter.

 

Humble origins aside, the repurposed ship was a clear predecessor to the floating fortresses we've come to know in modern aircraft carriers. In its early days of service, the USS Langley served as an essential tool for the Navy to develop the techniques and tactics that would become standard operating procedure in the realm of early naval aviation. Though the USS Langley broke new ground in the realm of seafaring aviation, by the 1930s, the Navy was dramatically rethinking their approach to aircraft carriers, essentially making their first build obsolete.

 The Navy again repurposed the Langley, shortening its flight deck and outfitting it with the tools and crew needed for it to serve as a seaplane tender. The Langley was serving in that capacity during World War II when, in February of 1942, Japanese forces attacked it en route to the Indonesian island of Java. Alas, the vessel didn't survive that combat mission, with the remains of America's first aircraft carrier still residing in the murky depths less than 100 miles off the coast of Java.

Circling back Jupiter's days as a collier vessel, the ship's massive size and design made it ideal for transporting the almost unfathomable weight required of what is essentially a floating airport. Likewise, its large cargo hold provided ample space to repair and stow away planes when not in flight. As for the conversion, Naval engineers essentially built a runway to the top of Jupiter's hold, leading the crew to affectionately nickname the redesigned ship, "The Covered Wagon."

The ship was, of course, properly renamed for Samuel Pierpoint Langley, an astrophysicist and aeronautical pioneer who worked to develop a manned aircraft in the earliest days of aviation. Though The Wright Brothers famously beat Langley to the skies, he continued the work of developing the then new science of astrophysics throughout the late 19th Century, and remained a major player at the Smithsonian Institute until his death in 1906.

 As for the game-changing vessel bearing his name, the Langley was ferrying a small fleet of Curtiss P-40 "Warhawk" fighter planes to aid in the Allied Forces' defense of Java when it was attacked.

 With assistance from its escort destroyers — the USS Whipple and USS Edsall — the Langley was initially able to survive the Japanese bombing. However, the ship sustained heavy damages during the battle and was no longer able to serve the Navy's needs. It was ultimately decided that the Langley would be scuttled at sea, with the Whipple sending it to the watery depths via a barrage of artillery shells and torpedoes.

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A far cry, indeed, from the 1000+ foot behemoths of today's Navy! But the vision of the need for an aircraft driven sea force was clearly prescient. And now, the thinking might be leaning away from aircraft in favor of the submarine service. Who knows where that will lead! And don't forget the have a look at America's First Aircraft Carrier, published by the Naval Institute Press. It's available everywhere you buy your books, including in a digital version through Amazon.

Until net time,

                                            Fair Winds,

                                                   Old Salt