MD -- Annapolis -- US Naval Academy -- Museum -- Ship Models:
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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NAMUMO_031102_052.JPG: The following boats were in a special room which was covered by this sign:
The Prisoners' Art:
Men drawn from various occupations served in the French sailing navy. Jewelers, carvers and other artisans manned warships alongside professional seamen. Thousands of these men were captured by Britain's Royal Navy during the prolonged Anglo-French wars of 1755-1815. They faced years of harsh confinement aboard prison ships. To alleviate intolerable boredom, many of the artisan-sailors turned to their civilian trades and crafts.
Working with crudely improvised tools and foraged materials, they made jewelry, games, toys, and both wooden and bone ship models. The impressive quality of their work induced their British captors to give them supplies and permission to sell their wares.
The seafaring British population provided a natural market for the bone models. The prisoner-entrepreneurs spent their earnings on additional rations or on gambling, a traditional way for sailors to part with their money. Some were so satisfied with their financial success that they remained in England after peace was proclaimed in 1815.
The bone model is an impressive and valuable art form whose pinnacle was reached during the Napoleonic Era (1798-1815). It is similar to, but should not be confused with, the nautical ivory carvings from Dieppe, France, or scrimshave, a traditional craft which flourished aboard whaling ships.
The surviving models which surround you constitute one of the world's finest collections. They stand as a lasting tribute to those anonymous seafaring craftsmen of a distant age.
NAMUMO_031102_066.JPG: Design, Construction, and Tools
Because the captive artisans had no ship draughts or plans, they were forced to design the models from memory, probably with the advice of other prisoners who had been professional sailors. Hence few, if any, of the models are built to scale or accurately depict a single ship. Most resemble French warships, but they were often given British names and flags to enhance their marketability in England.
Bone models were made from beef or mutton bones saved from the prisoners' meat rations. Immersing bone in wet clay made it more pliable and easier to shape and carve. The bone pieces were applied over wooden hulls. Masts, spars, and decorations were also carved from bone. The rigging was fashioned from human or horse hair, and later from linen provided by patrons. Other materials such as ivory, brass, and tortoiseshell were used when available.
Bow drills, shaves, and planes were ingeniously fabricated from small pieces of metal and other items found in the prison or later provided by patrons. Scrapers were improvised from the ends of nails pushed through a piece of wood or from broken pieces of glass.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
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I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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2003 photos: Equipment this year: I decided my Epson digital camera wasn't quite enough for what I wanted. Since I already had Compact Flash chips for it, I had to find another camera which used CF chips. That brought me to buy the Fujifilm S602 Zoom in March 2003. A great digital camera, I used it exclusively for an entire year.
Trips this year: Three-week trip this year out west, mostly in Utah.
Number of photos taken this year: 68,000.
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