The Best $1 Museum We've Found

While at Cheatham Annex Military Campground near Williamsburg, VA, we ventured over to The Mariner's Museum in Newport News.

We hadn't read up on it and didn't really know what we'd find. It turned out to be quite a place with much more than just things associated with mariners.

We opted for the movie:  D-Day.  Not sure what it had to do with mariners, but we enjoyed the Tom Brokaw-narrated History Channel movie.

The movie was pretty long so it was lunch time by the time it finished.  We had plenty of shade trees near the parking lot and we chose one for another picnic lunch.

It's one of life's simple pleasures, just eating lunch outside and enjoying the day.

Back inside the museum we saw the most complete gallery of the Iron Clads and development of iron ships in the United State.  I grew up thinking the two famous ships "Merrimac" and "Monitor" fought to a duel in the Civil War.  We learned here the "Merrimack" or "Merrimac" was the name of original ship.  When Virginia seceded from the Union, the ship was in the Norfolk Navy Yard.  The Union burned it to avoid having it fall into Confederate hands.  The rebels raised it, and rebuilt the ship, and renamed it the CSS Virginia.

It was built as an ironclad with the hope that it could sink the Union ships blockading Hampton Roads.  The museum is the best account we have seen of the Ironclads.  It had a mockup of what it might have been like inside the CSS Virginia.  It dueled the USS Monitor in Chesapeake Bay, fighting over two days to a standstill.  It is regarded as one of the most important battles of the Civil War in terms of introducing new warfare technology, e.g. iron ships.

Nine months later, in 1
862, the USS Monitor sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras.  140 years later, it was raised 240 feet off the ocean floor.

The museum did an excellent job of explaining the process and details of the recovery.  It reminded me of the Mel Fisher Museum in Key West that has raised a few sunken ships.

We passed through the model ship gallery which has a good collection of ships that have been built in the area shipyards over the years.

We wandered through the last few areas of the museum and came across a gallery on the most recent America's Cup completion that was held out in San Francisco in September 2013.  We happened to be in the area attending nephew Matt and Sierra's wedding.  The day after the wedding we drove into San Francisco to spend time on the wharf and see Alcatraz.  We took the National Park Service ferry boat out to Alcatraz and on the return we had to stop in order for the America's Cup competition to sail on by.  We had a front row seat!  Read more about it here.

The American's had to reel of 8 straight victories to win the Cup that day.

One of the last displays was information on Newport News.  It grew as a railroad hub and West Virginia coal shipping site during the turn of the last century.  In addition, it became one of the world's largest shipbuilding locations with the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company which at one time was the worlds largest shipyard.

We thought the Mariner's Museum was a wealth of some interesting displays showing the growth and importance of the shipbuilding business in the Hampton Roads area.  It was worth our time and $1 to see the museum!

Thanks for joining us on today's entry of the Roadrunner Chronicles!