Shipwrecks

Georges Valentine (shipwreck)

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 08:23:00 +0000

The Georges Valentine Shipwreck Site is the site of the historic shipwreck of an Italian barkentine off the coast of Hutchinson Island in Martin County, Florida, with the nearest landmark being the House of Refuge at Gilbert's Bar.

The iron-hulled barque was built in Liverpool, England in 1869 by Bowdler Chaffer & Company for S. Meyers & Company. Originally christened Cape Clear with Lloyd's of London in 1870, she started her career as a screw steamboat with auxiliary sail carrying passengers on the Australia - Liverpool run. She was purchased by a French firm based in Bordeaux in 1889, re-christened Georges Valentine and turned into a sailing bark by being stripped of all steam machinery except the boiler. Rigged as a three-masted barkentine, she was then sold to a firm based in Dunkirk, northern France. In 1895, she was sold to Mortolo & Simonetti, based in Genoa, Italy. She was based in Camogli, northern Italy and transported lumber regularly from Pensacola, Florida to South America.

In October 1904, the Georges Valentine, with a crew of twelve men commanded by Captain Prospero Mortolo, sailed with a load of milled mahogany from Pensacola bound for Buenos Aires. On October 13, 1904 the ship sighted Havana, Cuba, but she later hit a storm in the Florida Straits and was blown up the Atlantic coast of Florida where on October 16, 1904, despite her crew's attempts to keep her in deeper water, she ran aground in shallow water and wrecked off Hutchinson Island near Gilbert's Bar. Five crew members perished. Their bodies were not recovered. The seven survivors found refuge at the House of Refuge just 100 yards from the wreck site, where the House of Refuge's keeper, Captain William E. Rea, rendered aid to them.

On July 19, 2006, the Georges Valentine Shipwreck Site was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. On October 16, 2006, it became the eleventh Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserve.

References

Georges Valentine Wreck Dive - The Georges Valentine wreck continues to be an excellent shallow water dive site right here on the Treasure Coast. The big swell last week has transported ...

External links

Media related to Georges Valentine (shipwreck) at Wikimedia Commons

Report to Florida Historical Commission, Bureau of Archaeological Research October 20, 2005 (pdf)
Museums in the Sea: Georges Valentine

Biscayne Bay

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 03:03:00 +0000

Biscayne Bay (BahÃa VizcaÃna in Spanish) is a lagoon that is approximately 35 miles (56Â km) long and up to 8 miles (13Â km) wide located on the Atlantic coast of South Florida, United States. It is usually divided for purposes of discussion and analysis into three parts: North Bay, Central Bay, and South Bay. Its area is 428 square miles (1,110Â km²). The drainage basin covers 938 square miles (2,430Â km²).

The North Bay of the Biscayne Bay lies between Miami Beach barrier island and Miami on the mainland. It has been severely affected over the last century by raw sewage releases, urban runoff, shoreline bulkheading, dredging, the creation of artificial islands and the loss of natural fresh water flow into the bay. However, water quality has steadily improved since regular monitoring began in 1979. North Bay accounts for only 10% of the water area of the bay.

Central Bay is the largest part of the bay. It is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Safety Valve. It has been adversely affected primarily by bulkheading, urban runoff discharged by canals, and the loss of natural fresh water flow.

South Bay is nearly as large as Central Bay, and is the least affected by human activities, although it also suffers from the loss of natural fresh water flow. South Bay is separated from the Straits of Florida by the northernmost of the Florida Keys, and includes Card Sound and Barnes Sound. It is connected to Florida Bay through a few small channels.

The first bridge across Biscayne Bay was the 2.5-mile (4.0Â km) wooden Collins Bridge built by John S. Collins and Carl G. Fisher. The toll bridge was the longest wooden bridge in the world when it was completed in 1913 at the southern terminus of the Dixie Highway. The bridge was replaced in 1925 and renamed the Venetian Causeway. The MacArthur, Julia Tuttle, John F. Kennedy (79th Street) and Broad causeways connect the Miami mainland to the barrier islands of Miami Beach, and the Rickenbacker Causeway connects Miami to Key Biscayne. The Card Sound Bridge connects the mainland in the Homestead, Florida area to the northern part of Key Largo.

In 1975, the bay was designated as a state aquatic preserve. The aquatic preserve spans the entirety of Biscayne Bay from Oleta River in the north to Card Sound in the south, with the exception of the central part of the bay, which is Biscayne National Park. A second preserve was soon added off of Cape Florida on Key Biscayne, which became known as the Cape Florida to Monroe County Line Preserve. These two preserves are now managed by the state of Florida under the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserves. Seven remaining houses of Biscayne Bay's Stiltsville settlement are now within the boundaries of this National Park which was established in 1980. Much of Biscayne National Park was designated as a National Monument in 1967. Barnes Sound lies within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. In regards to wildlife, bottlenose dolphins and Florida manatees can be observed in the bay.

The bay has been known by several names. Juan Ponce de LeÃ³n called it Chequescha in 1513. Pedro MenÃ©ndez de AvilÃ©s called it Tequesta in 1565. The British, during their occupation of Florida, called the bay Cape River, Dartmouth Sound, and Sandwich gulph. Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda related that a sailor from the Bay of Biscay called the Viscayno or Biscayno had lived on the lower east coast of Florida for a while after being shipwrecked, and a 17th-century map shows a Cayo de Biscainhos, the probable origin of Key Biscayne. The bay was known as Key Biscayne Bay in the 19th century, finally shrinking to Biscayne Bay late in the 19th century.

The bay is also home to the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Virginia Key (founded in 1947) and Florida International University's Biscayne Bay Campus (founded in 1977) in North Miami. It was seen in the music video for The Lonely Island's "I'm on a Boat".

Safety Valve

Curren$y & Harry Fraud - Biscayne Bay (Official Video) - Shot & Edited By CJ Wallis, @fortyfps #BiscayneBay is the third video from the EP #CigaretteBoats released by @CurrenSy_Spitta & @HarryFraud ft. Styles P ...

The Safety Valve is a series of shallow sand flats separated by tidal flow channels, stretching about 8 miles (13Â km) from the south end of Key Biscayne to the Ragged Keys at the north end of the Florida Keys. The term "safety valve" was applied to the tidal flats by Ralph Munroe, who argued against building a causeway and bridges connecting Key Biscayne to the Ragged Keys and beyond on the grounds that such construction would block the free outflow of storm surges from the bay across the flats to the ocean. It is believed that it does moderate the effects of storm surges on the bay. The transportation of sand southward along the Atlantic Coast of Florida by longshore drift ends in the area of the Safety Valve. The structure of the Safety Valve has been stable for at least the last century. Stiltsville is a collection of buildings on pilings on several sand flats at the northern end of the Safety Valve.

References

Sources

Biscayne BayÂ : A Bibliography of the Marine Environment
South Florida Water Management District: Coastal Ecosystems: Biscayne Bay at the Wayback Machine (archived June 25, 2006) - retrieved September 12, 2007
Florida Department of Environmental Protection: Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve
History and Ecology of Biscayne Bay
Biscayne Bay Watershed - Florida DEP

HMS Fowey (1744)

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 21:43:00 +0000

HMS Fowey was a fifth rate warship of the Royal Navy, launched on 14 August 1744 in Hull, England. She spent only four years in commission before she struck a reef and sank in what is known today as Legare Anchorage in Biscayne National Park, off the coast of Florida. She was armed with six, nine, and eighteen pounder guns and crewed with over 200 men.

History

She was initially built to carry 20 guns, and was commanded from her commissioning until 1747 by Captain Policarpus Taylor, who would later rise to the rank of Rear Admiral. Fowey was first active in the English Channel and the waters off Gibraltar. Her first engagement was with the French ship Mentor, whilst escorting merchants from Jamaica to Great Britain. She captured the Mentor and took her as a prize. In 1745, she was rearmed to carry 44 guns, and later that year engaged the French ship Griffon, which was wrecked in the ensuing battle.

Later, in 1746 Fowey escorted troop transports to the recently captured Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. For most of her career Fowey was assigned to a split duty station cruising the coast of North America from South Carolina to Boston during the summer and operating out of Port Antonio, Jamaica and the Caribbean in the winter. On 2 November 1747 Policarpus Taylor was reassigned to HMS Warwick, and was replaced by Captain Francis William Drake.

In June 1748, Fowey captured a Spanish ship, the St. Juan y Tadicos. While escorting this prize and two British colonial merchant vessels to her summer duty station off Virginia, Fowey ran onto a reef and sank on 26 June. The English crew crowded onto the merchant vessels and navigated the hostile waters of Spanish Florida to Charleston. The crew of the St. Juan were given their parole and sailed for Havana.

Discovery and Litigation

Two hundred and twenty-seven years would pass before the remains of the Fowey would be identified in 1975 by archaeologist George Fischer of the National Park Service. For many years, those searching for the wreck site had been distracted by the named obstacle, Fowey Rocks, which lie some distance to the north. However, from work commenced in the United Kingdom, by Major Paul Payne, who held an artefact from the original crew, navigational data became available, from which Mr Fischer narrowed the search. Four years later in 1979 a sport diver from Miami requested title in Admiralty Court to a "wrecked and abandoned sailing vessel with Legare Anchorage in Biscayne National Park." At this time the Abandoned Shipwreck Act was a decade in the future. The United States intervened in the lawsuit as the defendant seeking title, arguing that the shipwreck was public property in a National Park and, as such should be preserved as a part of the Nation's patrimony. In 1983, the United States won the case. The court decision constituted a landmark in United States historic shipwreck preservation case law. It stated that the remains of HMS Fowey were an archaeological site, not a ship in terms of Admiralty salvage; that the site was in no peril and did not need rescuing by the salvor; and that the site is public property and a part of the United States' heritage which ought to be managed in the best interests of the public rather than privately salvaged and sold for profit.

Study

In the twenty five years since the wreck was identified, HMS Fowey has been broadly studied in the surviving documentary records of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain and has been the subject of three National Park Service field projects. The largest and best documented of these was conducted in 1983. Evidence of the wreck's function as a Royal Naval vessel include iron ballast blocks and guns, and copper gunpowder barrel hoops marked with the Broad Arrow denoting ownership by the crown. Its cultural affiliation is further denoted by the presence of English-made pewter, glass, and ceramic tablewares.

References

Skowronek, Russell K. 2002. HMS Fowey. Encyclopedia of Historical Archaeology, Charles E. Orser, editor. Routledge, London.
A history of HMS Fowey.

External links

The Excavation of HMS Fowey

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 16:23:00 +0000

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is a town in Broward County, Florida, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 6,056. It is part of the Miamiâ"Fort Lauderdaleâ"Pompano Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area, which was home to 5,564,635 people at the 2010 census.

Geography

My First Visit to Lauderdale-By-The-Sea Beach - This is my first visit to a beach near the Fort Lauderdale, FL area. I have lived in this area for.

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is located at 26Â°11â²22â³N 80Â°5â²52â³W (26.189561, -80.097756). According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.57 square miles (4Â km²). 0.876 square miles (2Â km²) of it is land and 0.694 square miles (2Â km²) of it (44.2%) is water.

The south part of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is situated between Fort Lauderdale and Sea Ranch Lakes, while the north half borders Pompano Beach. The town is on land that is essentially a long narrow island separated from the mainland by the Intracoastal Waterway (spanned by drawbridges), stretching approximately one-half dozen city blocks to the Atlantic Ocean. The town is centered on the junction of State Road A1A and Commercial Boulevard. The main industry is tourism; the town has many hotels, motels, and residences used especially during the winter by visitors, many of which are MiMo architecture. At the ocean end of Commercial Boulevard is a long wooden fishing pier named Anglin's Fishing Pier (named after Lauderdale-by-the-Sea's first mayor, Melvin I. Anglin.) The south side of the pier is a popular scuba diving and snorkeling location. The town also annexed the previously unincorporated neighborhood of Terra Mar, along with Terra Mar's sub-neighborhood, Bel-Air.

Demographics

As of 2010, there were 6,563 households out of which 45.2% were vacant. In 2000, 7.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.4% were married couples living together, 3.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 60.2% were non-families. 50.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 21.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.68 and the average family size was 2.38.

In 2000, the town's population was spread out with 8.0% under the age of 18, 2.6% from 18 to 24, 25.4% from 25 to 44, 30.2% from 45 to 64, and 33.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 54 years. For every 100 females there were 98.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 99.4 males.

In 2000, the median income for a household in the town was $38,804, and the median income for a family was $56,010. Males had a median income of $41,424 versus $26,591 for females. The per capita income for the town was $34,216. About 3.8% of families and 8.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 10.1% of those under age 18 and 6.5% of those age 65 or over.

As of 2000, before Terra Mar was annexed to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, speakers of English as their first language were at 88.51%, while 5.01% spoke Spanish as theirs. Other mother tongues included German at 3.34%, Italian at 1.67%, and French at 1.46% of all residents.

As of 2000, Terra Mar, (now a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea neighborhood,) accounted for speakers of English as a first language at 80.88%, while both French and Spanish were tied at 5.83%, Italian consisted of 3.42%, German made up 3.21%, and Arabic comprised 0.80% of residents.

Media

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is a part of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood media market, which is the twelfth largest radio market and the seventeenth largest television market in the United States. Its primary daily newspapers are the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Miami Herald, and their Spanish-language counterparts El Sentinel and El Nuevo Herald. There are currently no newspapers based in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea although the neighboring Pompano Pelican covers the community. The longtime local weekly newspaper, By The Sea Times, ceased publication two years ago. It recently re-launched in a digital version and another recently launched website, LBTSguide.com, focuses on local entertainment, events and fun things to do in the area.

References

External links

Town of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea official website
Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Chamber of Commerce

SS Copenhagen (1898)

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 11:03:00 +0000

SS Copenhagen is a shipwreck off the town of Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, Florida, United States. The single screw steamer was built in Sunderland, England in 1898, sinking in 1900. Located on the Pompano Dropoff reef south of Hillsboro Inlet, it became the fifth Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserve when it was dedicated in 1994. There is a plaque noting this distinction south of the wreck. This was followed on 31 May 2001 with its addition to the US National Register of Historic Places.

References

SS COPENHAGEN: 1898 - 1900 - SS Copenhagen (1898) a steamship wrecked off Florida in 1900. The SS Copenhagen is a shipwreck off the Town of Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, Florida, United ...

"SS Copenhagen Underwater Archaeological Preserve Lauderdale By The Sea, Florida" (PDF). museumsinthesea.com. Retrieved 2012-08-22.Â
"Exploring the Copenhagen State Underwater Archaeological Preserve" (PDF). museumsinthesea.com. Retrieved 2012-08-22.Â
Broward County listings at National Register of Historic Places
SS Copenhagen at Florida's Underwater Archaeological Preserves
SS Copenhagen at Florida Heritage Tourism Interactive Catalog
Museums in the Sea SS Copenhagen

Ponce De Leon Inlet Light

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 05:43:00 +0000

The Ponce de Leon Inlet Light is a lighthouse and museum located at Ponce de LeÃ³n Inlet in Central Florida. At 175 feet (53Â m) in height, it is the tallest lighthouse in the state and one of the tallest in the United States (the Cape Hatteras Light in North Carolina is taller at 207 feet (63Â m)). It is located between St. Augustine Light and Cape Canaveral Light. Restored by the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association, the lighthouse became a National Historic Landmark in 1998.

History

Ponce de Leon Inlet Light Station - Ponce Inlet Lighthouse 1.

The first lighthouse for what is now the Ponce de LeÃ³n Inlet was erected on the south side of Mosquito Inlet in 1835. Unfortunately, the oil for the lamp was never delivered, and soon after the tower was completed a strong storm washed much of the sand from around the base of the tower, weakening it. The Second Seminole War began soon after, and in December 1835 Seminole Indians attacked the lighthouse, smashing the glass in the lantern room and setting fire to its wooden stairs. The area was abandoned. The war prevented repairs from being made to the tower, and it collapsed the next year.

There were many shipwrecks along the coast near the Mosquito Inlet, but it was not until 1883 that another effort was begun to place a light there. Completed in 1887 and located on the north side of the inlet, the new lighthouse was based on Light-House Board standard plans with modifications made for the specific site. Construction was supervised by Chief Engineer Orville E. Babcock until his death by drowning in the Mosquito Inlet in 1884. The tower was completed and the lamp, which could be seen 17 nautical miles; 32 kilometres (20Â mi) away, lit in 1887.

In 1897, author and journalist Stephen Crane was en route to cover a brewing revolt against Spanish rule in Cuba, when the ship he was on, the SS Commodore, sank off the coast of Florida. Crane escaped in a small dinghy with several crewmen, and they eventually sighted and steered for the Mosquito Inlet Light. Crane used this experience in his short story "The Open Boat".

The original lamp burned kerosene; in 1909 it was replaced with an incandescent oil vapor lamp. In 1924 a generator was installed to provide electricity in the keepers' dwellings and to pump water, replacing an old windmill pump. The lighthouse beacon was electrified in 1933 with a 500-watt lamp. The first order Fresnel lens was replaced with a third order rotating Fresnel lens at the same time.

In 1927 the name of Mosquito Inlet was changed to Ponce de Leon Inlet. The lighthouse was transferred from the abolished Lighthouse Service to the Coast Guard in 1939, which would oversee it for the next three decades. In 1970, the Coast Guard abandoned the old light station and established a new beacon at New Smyrna Beach. The abandoned property was then deeded to the Town of Ponce Inlet. At the urging of concerned citizens, the Town of Ponce Inlet accepted the Light Station property from the Coast Guard in 1972, and the Lighthouse Preservation Association was formed to manage the museum. That same year, the lighthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Present day museum

In 1982 the light was restored to active service, primarily because highrise buildings blocked the Coast Guard's beacon on the other side of the inlet. The Ponce De Leon Inlet Light Station was designated a National Historic Landmark on August 5, 1998, one of only eleven lighthouses to earn this designation.

The lighthouse and three keepers' dwellings have been restored, and are open to the public seven days a week. The lighthouse tower is open for climbing. The original 1867 Barbier et Fenestre first order fixed lens (installed 1887), and 1860 "Henry Lepaute" rotating first order Fresnel lens used at Cape Canaveral Light Station are all on display at the museum. The 1904 Barbier Benard et Turenne rotating third order Fresnel lens has been restored to service in the tower, which operates today as a private aid to navigation and is maintained by the museum staff. It is just south of Daytona Beach.

References

The Open Boat

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 00:23:00 +0000

"The Open Boat" is a short story by American author Stephen Crane (1871â"1900). First published in 1897, it was based on Crane's experience of surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida earlier that year while traveling to Cuba to work as a newspaper correspondent. Crane was stranded at sea for thirty hours when his ship, the SS Commodore, sank after hitting a sandbar. He and three other men were forced to navigate their way to shore in a small boat; one of the men, an oiler named Billie Higgins, drowned after the boat overturned. Crane's personal account of the shipwreck and the men's survival, titled "Stephen Crane's Own Story", was first published a few days after his rescue.

Crane subsequently adapted his report into narrative form, and the resulting short story "The Open Boat" was published in Scribner's Magazine. The story is told from the point of view of an anonymous correspondent, with Crane as the implied author, the action closely resembles the author's experiences after the shipwreck. A volume titled The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure was published in the United States in 1898; an edition entitled The Open Boat and Other Stories was published simultaneously in England. Praised for its innovation by contemporary critics, the story is considered an exemplary work of literary Naturalism, and is one of the most frequently discussed works in Crane's canon. It is notable for its use of imagery, irony, symbolism, and the exploration of such themes as survival, solidarity, and the conflict between man and nature. H. G. Wells considered "The Open Boat" to be "beyond all question, the crown of all [Crane's] work".

Background

The Open Boat (audiobook) - Subtitles available. The Open Boat by Stephen Crane (1871-1900). Read by: James Christopher & David Pittard. Chapter 1 00:00 to 05:34 Chapter 2 05:35 to ...

Hired by the Bacheller newspaper syndicate to serve as a war correspondent during the Cuban insurrection against Spain, the 25-year-old Stephen Crane boarded the filibustering steamship SS Commodore on New Year's Eve, 1896. The ship sailed from Jacksonville, Florida, with 27 or 28Â men and a cargo of supplies and ammunition for the Cuban rebels. On the St. Johns River, less than 2 miles (3Â km) from Jacksonville, Commodore struck a sandbar in a dense fog and damaged its hull. Although towed off the sandbar the following day, it was again beached in Mayport, Florida, and further damaged. A leak began in the boiler room that evening, and as a result of malfunctioning water pumps, the ship came to a standstill about 16 miles (26Â km) from Mosquito Inlet (now called Ponce de LeÃ³n Inlet). As the ship took on more water, Crane described the engine room as resembling "a scene at this time taken from the middle kitchen of Hades."

Commodore's lifeboats were lowered in the early hours of the morning on January 2, 1897, and the ship sank at 7Â a.m. Crane was one of the last to leave the ship in a 10-foot (3.0Â m) dinghy. He and three other men (including the captain, Edward Murphy) floundered off the coast of Florida for a day and a half before attempting to land their craft at Daytona Beach. The small boat, however, overturned in the surf, forcing the exhausted men to swim to shore; one of them, an oiler named Billie Higgins, died. The disaster was front-page news in newspapers across the country; rumors that the ship had been sabotaged were widely circulated but never substantiated.

Crane was reunited with his partner, Cora, several days after the ordeal, and quickly wrote his initial report of the sinking while waiting in Jacksonville for another ship. Desperate for work, he soon left for New York to secure a job covering the impending Greco-Turkish War. Crane completed the story that would become "The Open Boat" a few weeks later, in mid-February. According to fellow correspondent Ralph D. Paine, Crane had the opportunity to show the first draft of the short story to Murphy when Crane again passed through Jacksonville. When Crane asked his opinion, Murphy allegedly replied, "You've got it, SteveÂ ... That is just how it happened, and how we felt. Read me some more of it".

Publication history

Crane's report of the incident appeared on the front page of the New York Press on January 7, 1897, only three days after his rescue, and was quickly reprinted in various other papers. The account, titled "Stephen Crane's Own Story", concentrates mainly on the sinking of the Commodore, and the ensuing chaos. Crane dedicates just two paragraphs to the fate of his compatriots and himself on the dinghy, while detailing their inability to save those stranded on the sinking ship:

The cook let go of the line. We rowed around to see if we could not get a line from the chief engineer, and all this time, mind you, there were no shrieks, no groans, but silence, silence and silence, and then the Commodore sank. She lurched to windward, then swung afar back, righted and dove into the sea, and the rafts were suddenly swallowed by this frightful maw of the ocean. And then by the men on the ten-foot dingy were words said that were still not wordsâ"something far beyond words.

The report caused a sensation and spurred the author to write a narrative version of the events. The short story first appeared in the June 1897 issue of Scribner's Magazine. A second and lesser story, "Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventure", based upon the same shipwreck but told from the point of view of the captain, was published in McClure's Magazine in October 1897. "The Open Boat" was published in the United States by Doubleday & McClure in April 1898 as part of the book The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure, which included additional works by Crane such as "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", "Death and the Child", and "The Wise Men". The English volume, published simultaneously with the American one, was titled The Open Boat and Other Stories and published by William Heinemann. Both editions included the subtitle "A Tale Intended to Be after the Fact. Being the Experience of Four Men from the Sunk Steamer 'Commodore'Â ", and were dedicated "To the late William Higgins and to Captain Edward Murphy and Steward C. B. Montgomery of the Sunk Steamer Commodore".

Plot summary

None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.

"The Open Boat" is divided into seven sections, each told mainly from the point of view of the correspondent, based upon Crane himself. The first part introduces the four charactersâ"the correspondent, a condescending observer detached from the rest of the group; the captain, who is injured and morose at having lost his ship, yet capable of leadership; the cook, fat and comical, but optimistic that they will be rescued; and the oiler, Billie, who is physically the strongest, and the only one in the story referred to by name. The four are survivors of a shipwreck, which occurred before the beginning of the story, and are drifting at sea in a small dinghy.

In the following four sections, the moods of the men fluctuate from anger at their desperate situation, to a growing empathy for one another and the sudden realization that nature is indifferent to their fates. The men become fatigued and bicker with one another; nevertheless, the oiler and the correspondent take turns rowing toward shore, while the cook bails water to keep the boat afloat. When they see a lighthouse on the horizon, their hope is tempered with the realization of the danger of trying to reach it. Their hopes dwindle further when, after seeing a man waving from shore, and what may or may not be another boat, they fail to make contact. The correspondent and the oiler continue to take turns rowing, while the others sleep fitfully during the night. The correspondent then notices a shark swimming near the boat, but he does not seem to be bothered by it as one would expect. In the penultimate chapter, the correspondent wearily recalls a verse from the poem "Bingen on the Rhine" by Caroline Norton, in which a "soldier of the Legion" dies far from home.

The final chapter begins with the men's resolution to abandon the floundering dinghy they have occupied for thirty hours and to swim ashore. As they begin the long swim to the beach, Billie the oiler, the strongest of the four, swims ahead of the others; the captain advances towards the shore while still holding onto the boat, and the cook uses a surviving oar. The correspondent is trapped by a local current, but is eventually able to swim on. After three of the men safely reach the shore and are met by a group of rescuers, they find Billie dead, his body washed up on the beach.

Style and genre

Although autobiographical in nature, "The Open Boat" is a work of fiction; it is often considered a principal example of Naturalism, an offshoot of the Realist literary movement, in which scientific principles of objectivity and detachment are applied to the study of human characteristics. While a majority of critics agree that the story acts as a paradigm of the human situation, they disagree as to its precise nature. Some believe the story affirms man's place in the world by concentrating on the characters' isolation, while othersâ"including those who call "The Open Boat" ideologically Symbolistâ"insist that the story questions man's place in the universe through metaphorical or indirect means.

Like other major works by Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" contains numerous examples of symbolism, imagery and metaphor. Vibrant descriptions of color, combined with simple, clear writing, are also apparent throughout, and humor in the form of irony serves in stark opposition to the dreary setting and desperate characters. Editor Vincent Starrett stated in his introduction to the 1921 collection of Crane's work entitled Men, Women and Boats that the author keeps "down the tone where another writer might have attempted 'fine writing' and have been lost." Other critics have noted similarities between the story and shipwreck-related articles Crane wrote while working as a reporter for the New York Tribune earlier in his career. Articles such as "The Wreck of the New Era", which describes a group of castaways drowning in sight of a helpless crowd, and "Ghosts on the Jersey Coast" contain stark imagery that strongly prefigures that of "The Open Boat".

Major themes

Man vs. nature

Similar to other Naturalist works, "The Open Boat" scrutinizes the position of man, who has been isolated not only from society, but also from God and nature. The struggle between man and the natural world is the most apparent theme in the work, and while the characters at first believe the turbulent sea to be a hostile force set against them, they come to believe that nature is instead ambivalent. At the beginning of the last section, the correspondent rethinks his view of nature's hostility: "the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individualâ"nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent." The correspondent regularly refers to the sea with feminine pronouns, pitting the four men in the boat against an intangible, yet effeminate, threat; critic Leedice Kissane further pointed to the story's seeming denigration of women, noting the castaways' personification of Fate as "an old ninny-woman" and "an old hen". That nature is ultimately disinterested is an idea that appears in other works by Crane; a poem from Crane's 1899 collection War is Kind and Other Lines also echoes Crane's common theme of universal indifference:

A man said to the universe:

"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

The metaphysical conflicts born from man's isolation are also important themes throughout the story, as the characters cannot rely on a higher cause or being for protection. The correspondent laments the lack of religious support, as well as his inability to blame God for his misfortunes, musing: "When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply that there are no bricks and no temples." Man's perception of himself and the world around him are also constantly questioned; the correspondent regularly refers to the way things "seemed" or "appeared", leaving how a thing actually "was" entirely ambiguous. Wolford similarly pointed to the importance of the story's strong yet problematic opening lineâ""None of them knew the color of the sky"â"as one that sets the scene for the story's sense of unease and uncertainty.

Survival and solidarity

Chester Wolford noted in his critical analysis of Crane's short fiction that although one of the author's most familiar themes deals with a character's seeming insignificance in an indifferent universe, the correspondent's experience in "The Open Boat" is perhaps more personal than what was described in earlier stories because of Crane's obvious connection to the story. Sergio Perosa similarly described how Crane "transfigures an actual occurrence into existential drama, and confers universal meaning and poetic value on the simple retelling of man's struggle for survival".

Facing an ultimately detached nature, the characters find solace in human solidarity. They are often referred to collectively as "the men", rather than singularly by their professions, creating a silent understanding between them of their togetherness. The first few sentences of section three attest to this connection: "It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common." Survival is also an important thematic element in itself, as it is contingent upon the men to battle the elements in order to save themselves. The correspondent's desire to survive is evident in his refrain of the lyrical line: "If I am going to be drownedâ"if I am going to be drownedâ"if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?" By repeating himself, the correspondent expresses himself ritualistically, and yet he remains existentially adrift.

Sympathy

In his 1990 book Sea-Brothers: The Tradition of American Sea Fiction from Moby-Dick to the Present, author Bert Bender noted Crane's sympathetic portrayal of the oiler Billie, the most physically able of the four characters, and yet the only one to perish. The correspondent even notes with wonder Billie's exceptional ability to row despite having worked a double shift before the ship sank. Bender wrote that Crane "emphasizes that Billie's steady, simple labor is the tangible basis for his role here as a savior," and that the oiler's portrayal as a "simple, working seaman, clearly expresses his sympathy with the democratic ideal of the sailor before the mast that figures so crucially in the tradition of American sea fiction." That Billie does not survive the ordeal, however, can be seen as an antithesis to Darwinism in that the only person to not survive was in fact the strongest physically.

"The Open Boat" directly references Lady Caroline Norton's 1883 poem "Bingen on the Rhine", which focuses on the death of a French Foreign Legionnaire, far from home, while grasping the hand of a comrade. Recalling the poem, the correspondent sees how the soldier's dire circumstances mirror his own, leading him to feel sorry for the anonymous poetic figure; noting the similarities between the dying soldier and the shipwrecked correspondent, critics such as Edward Stone and Max Westbrook believe this realization causes the correspondent to discover the necessity for human sympathy in an uncaring world. While the literary reference may be considered ironic, unsympathetic, and only of minor interest, Stone for one argued that this poem may also have served as a source for The Red Badge of Courage, which also explores man's relationship with the metaphysical.

Reception and legacy

"The Open Boat" is one of the most frequently discussed works in Crane's canon, and is regularly anthologized. Wilson Follett included the story in the twelfth volume of his 1927 collection of Crane's work, and it also appeared in Robert Stallman's 1952 volume Stephen Crane: An Omnibus. The story and its subsequent eponymous collections received high acclaim from contemporary critics and authors. Praising the merit of the story and his friend's literary importance, journalist Harold Frederic wrote in his review for The New York Times that "even if he had written nothing else, ["The Open Boat" would] have placed [Crane] where he now undoubtedly stands." English poet Robert Bridges likewise praised the story in his review for Life, stating that Crane "has indelibly fixed the experience on your mind, and that is the test of a literary artisan". American Newspaperman and author Harry Esty Dounce praised the story as chief among Crane's work, despite its seemingly simple plot, writing for the New York Evening Sun that "those who have read 'The Open Boat' will forget every technical feat of construction before they forget the long, heartbreaking mockery of the day, with land so near, the bailing, the egg-shell changes of seats, the terrible, steady cheerfulness and brotherhood of the queer little human group".

After Crane's premature death from tuberculosis at the age of 28, his work enjoyed a resurgence of popularity. Author and critic Elbert Hubbard wrote in Crane's obituary in the Philistine that "The Open Boat" was "the sternest, creepiest bit of realism ever penned". Also noting the depressing Realism utilized in the story, editor Vincent Starrett stated: "It is a desolate picture, and the tale is one of our greatest short stories." Another of the author's friends, H. G. Wells, wrote that "The Open Boat" was "beyond all question, the crown of all [Crane's] work." Singling out Crane's usage of color and chiaroscuro in his writing, Wells continued: "It has all the stark power of the earlier stories, with a new element of restraint; the color is as full and strong as ever, fuller and stronger, indeed; but those chromatic splashes that at times deafen and confuse in The Red Badge, those images that astonish rather than enlighten, are disciplined and controlled." The story remains popular with critics; Thomas Kent referred to "The Open Boat" as Crane's "magnum opus", while Crane biographer Stanley Wertheim called it "Crane's finest short story and one of the masterworks of late nineteenth-century American literature".

Notes

References

External links

The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions)
"The Open Boat", adaptation from the CBS radio program Escape (1953)

War Correspondent

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 19:03:00 +0000

A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. They were also called special correspondents in the 19th century.

Methods

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Their jobs require war correspondents to deliberately go to the most conflict-ridden parts of the world. Once there they attempt to get close enough to the action to provide written accounts, photos, or film footage. Thus, being a war correspondent is often considered the most dangerous form of journalism. On the other hand, war coverage is also one of the most successful branches of journalism. Newspaper sales increase greatly in wartime and television news ratings go up. News organizations have sometimes been accused of militarism because of the advantages they gather from conflict. William Randolph Hearst is often said to have encouraged the Spanishâ"American War for this reason. (See Yellow journalism)

Only some conflicts receive extensive worldwide coverage, however. Among recent wars, the Kosovo War received a great deal of coverage, as did the Persian Gulf War. Many third-world wars, however, tend to receive less substantial coverage because corporate media are often less interested, the lack of infrastructure makes reporting more difficult and expensive, and the conflicts are also far more dangerous for war correspondents.

History

Written war correspondents have existed as long as journalism. Before modern journalism it was more common for longer histories to be written at the end of a conflict. The first known of these is Herodotus's account of the Persian Wars, however he did not himself participate in the events. Thucydides, who some years later wrote a history of the Peloponnesian Wars was an observer to the events he described.

In the eighteenth century the Baroness Frederika Charlotte Riedesel's Letters and Journals Relating to the War of the American Revolution and the Capture of the German Troops at Saratoga is regarded as the first account of war by a woman. Her description of the events that took place in the Marshall House are particularly poignant because she was in the midst of battle.

The first modern war correspondent is said to be Dutch painter Willem van de Velde, who in 1653 took to sea in a small boat to observe a naval battle between the Dutch and the English, of which he made many sketches on the spot, which he later developed into one big drawing that he added to a report he wrote to the States General. A further modernization came with the development of newspapers and magazines. One of the earliest war correspondents was Henry Crabb Robinson, who covered Napoleon's campaigns in Spain and Germany for The Times of London.

Crimean War

William Howard Russell, who covered the Crimean War, also for The Times, is often described as the first modern war correspondent. The stories from this era, which were almost as lengthy and analytical as early books on war, took numerous weeks from being written to being published.

Third Italian War of Independence

Another renowned journalist, Ferdinando Petruccelli della Gattina, Italian correspondent of European newspapers such as La Presse, Journal des dÃ©bats, IndÃ©pendance Belge and The Daily News, was known for his extremely gory style in his articles but involving at the same time. Jules Claretie, critic of Le Figaro, was amazed about his correspondence of the Battle of Custoza, during the Third Italian War of Independence. Claretie wrote, "Nothing could be more fantastic and cruelly true than this tableau of agony. Reportage has never given a superior artwork."

Russo-Japanese War

It was not until the telegraph was developed that reports could be sent on a daily basis and events could be reported as they occurred that the short mainly descriptive stories of today became common. Press coverage of the Russo-Japanese War was affected by restrictions on the movement of reporters and strict censorship. In all military conflicts which followed this 1904-1905 war, close attention to more managed reporting was considered essential.

First and Second Balkan Wars

The First Balkan War (1912-1913) between the Balkan League (Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Bulgaria) and the Ottoman Empire, and the Second Balkan War (1913) between Bulgaria and its former allies Serbia and Greece, was actively covered by a large number of foreign newspapers, news agencies, and movie companies. An estimated 200-300 war correspondents, war photographers, war artists, and war cinematographers were active during these two nearly sequential conflicts.

First World War

The First World War was characterized by rigid censorship. British Lord Kitchener hated reporters, and so reporters were banned from the Front at the start of the war. But reporters such as Basil Clarke and Philip Gibbs lived as fugitives near the Front, sending back their reports. The Government eventually allowed some accredited reporters in April 1915, and this continued until the end of the war. This meant, though, that the Government was able to control what they saw.

French authorities were equally opposed to war journalism, but less competent (criticisms of the French high command were leaked to the press during the Battle of Verdun in 1916). By far the most rigid and authoritarian regime was imposed by the United States, though General John J. Pershing allowed embedded reporters (Floyd Gibbons had been severely wounded at the Battle of Belleau Wood in 1918). The discourse in mediated conflicts is influenced by its public character. By forwarding information and arguments to the media, conflict parties attempt to gain support from their constituencies and persuade their opponents. The continued progress of technology has allowed live coverage of events via satellite up-links. The rise of twenty-four hour news channels has led to a heightened demand for coverage.

Early film and television news rarely had war correspondents. Rather, they would simply collect footage provided by other sources, often the government, and the news anchor would then add narration. This footage was often staged as cameras were large and bulky until the introduction of small, portable motion picture cameras during World WarÂ II. The situation changed dramatically with the Vietnam War when networks from around the world sent cameramen with portable cameras and correspondents. This proved damaging to the United States as the full brutality of war became a daily feature on the nightly news.

Notable war correspondents

19th century

Henry Crabb Robinson, Germany and Spain (1807-1809).
Peter Finnerty, Walcheren Campaign (1809).
Thomas William Bowlby, North China Campaign (1860).
Bennet Burleigh (1840-1914), Sudan (Omdurman), Boer War, Russo-Japanese War, Italo-Turkish war
Winston Churchill (1874â"1965); covered the Siege of Malakand, the Mahdist War and the Second Boer War.
Kit Coleman (1864â"1915), first female war correspondent who covered the Spanishâ"American War for the Toronto Mail in 1898.
Lady Florence Dixie (1855â"1905); covered the First Boer War
George Wingrove Cooke, Second Opium War, 1857-1858.
Stephen Crane (1871â"1900); covered the 1897 Greco-Turkish War, where he contracted tuberculosis.
Ferdinando Petruccelli della Gattina, Expedition of the thousand, Second and Third Italian War of Independence, Paris Commune
Richard Harding Davis (1864â"1916); covered the Spanishâ"American War, Second Boer War and the fighting on the Macedonian front during World WarÂ I.
John F. Finerty was a war correspondent for the Chicago Times covering the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877.
Archibald Forbes
Howard C. Hillegas, covered Boer Wars
William Howard Russell
Robert Edmund Strahorn was a fighting war correspondent in The Great Sioux War of 1876-1877.
Benjamin C. Truman
Frederic Villiers
Charles Frederick Williams, British journalist

20th century

Some of them became authors of fiction drawing on their war experiences, including Davis, Crane and Hemingway.

Kate Adie (born 1945); covered the Gulf War, Yugoslav Wars, Rwandan Genocide and the Sierra Leone Civil War.
Peter Arnett (born 1934); covered the Vietnam War, 1991 Gulf War, the 2001 Invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq War.
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (1881â"1931); covered the Russo-Japanese War and World War I.
Ralph Barnes (1899â"1940); the first war correspondent killed during World War II
Martin Bell (born 1938); covered the Vietnam War, Biafra War, The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Angolan Civil War and the Bosnian War.
Michael Birch (1944â"1968); killed in Saigon during Tet while covering the Vietnam War.
Bill Boss (1917â"2007) Canadian war correspondent, for the Canadian Press, who covered World War II.
Alexandra Boulat
Margaret Bourke-White (1904â"1971); first female war correspondent, photographed Buchenwald concentration camp
Mary Marvin Breckinridge (1905â"2002); covered World War II.
Wilfred Burchett (1911â"1983); covered the Pacific War, Korean War and Vietnam War. He was known for covering news from the "other side" of the battlefield, and was often criticised for his communist sympathising.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, WWIIâ"covered the attack on Pearl Harbor. Became one of the oldest war correspondents ever.
Larry Burrows (1927â"1971) British photojournalist famous for his work in the Vietnam War. Killed in a helicopter crash over Laos with three colleagues.
Robert Capa (1913â"1954); covered the Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, the European Theatre of World War II and the First Indochina War (where he was killed by a landmine).
Peter Cave (born 1952); covered the Gulf War, Yugoslav Wars, the Coconut War in the New Hebrides, Iraq War, Tiananmen Square, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya
Blaise Cendrars
Patrick Chauvel
Dickey Chapelle (1918â"1965); covered the Pacific War, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Vietnam War (where she was killed by a landmine). She was the first female US war correspondent to be killed in action.
Greg Clarke (1892â"1977) Canadian war correspondent who covered World War I and II.
Basil Clarke (1879â"1947); covered the fighting on the Western Front during WWI, living as a fugitive in Dunkirk during the early part of the War and then as an accredited reporter at the Battle of the Somme in late 1916. he also covered the Eastern Front and the Easter Rising and later became the UK's first public relations officer.
Alexander Clifford, covered World War II
Marie Colvin, considered one of the most influential correspondents of past 20 years, killed in Homs, Syria.
Anderson Cooper (1967), war correspondent for CNN who covered Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.
Tim Judah (1962), covered El Salvador, Romanian Revolution, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq, Ukraine.
Burton Crane (1901â"1963); covered occupied Japan after World War II and the Korean War for the New York Times.
Walter Cronkite (1916â"2009); covered the European Theater during World WarÂ II for United Press.
Neil Davis â" Australian combat cameraman covered the Vietnam War, Cambodia and Laos and subsequently conflicts in Africa. He was killed in 1985 in Thailand.
Albert K. Dawson (1885â"1967); American photographer and film correspondent with the German, Austrian and Bulgarian army during World WarÂ I
Luc Delahaye
Richard Dimbleby (1913â"1965); covered World WarÂ II
Frank Palmos (1940-) Vietnam War 1965â"1968, Indonesian Civil War 1965â"66.
David Douglas Duncan
Bill Downs (1914â"1978); covered the Eastern Front, the Normandy landings, and later covered the Korean War.
Kurt Eggers (-1943) World War II SS correspondent, editor of the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps, was killed while reporting on the Wiking's battles near Kharkov. The German SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers was named in his honor.
Gloria Emerson (1929â"2004); covered the Vietnam War for the New York Times in 1970â"72 and wrote the award-winning book "Winners and Losers".
Horst Faas (1933â"2012) Associated Press Saigon Photographer, two Pulitzer Prices, co author "Lost Over Laos", "Requiem", "Henri Huet". Covered the Congo War, Algeria, Vietnam, Bangladesh.
Bernard B. Fall (1926â"1967); covered the First Indochina War and the Vietnam War (where he was killed by a landmine).
Sylvana Foa, correspondent in Vietnam and Cambodia.
J. C. Furnas; covered World War II.
Joseph L. Galloway (born November 13, 1941), UPI correspondent in Vietnam and co-author of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young.
Martha Gellhorn (1908â"1998); covered the Spanish Civil War, World WarÂ II, Vietnam War, the Six-Day War, and the U.S. invasion of Panama.
Chas Gerretsen (born 1943); covered the war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and received the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award for his coverage of the 1973 Chilean coup d'Ã©tat
Georgie Anne Geyer (born 1935); covered the Guatemalan Civil War and the Algerian Civil War.
Philip Gibbs; Official war Correspondent for Britain during World WarÂ I.
Nakayama Gishu
Robert Goralski; NBC News correspondent. Covered the Vietnam War; provided witness testimony in the My Lai massacre trials.
Al Gore (born 1948); covered the Vietnam War.
Henry Tilton Gorrell (1911â"1958); United Press correspondent. Covered the Spanish Civil War and World WarÂ II. Author of "Soldier of the Press, Covering the Front in Europe and North Africa, 1936-1943" in 2009.
Cork Graham (born 1964); imprisoned in Vietnam for illegally entering the country while looking for treasure buried by Captain Kidd.
Louis Grondijs (1878â"1961); covered Russo-Japanese War, World WarÂ I, the Russian Civil War, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Spanish Civil War.
Philip Jones Griffiths(1936â"2008) British photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War.
Vassili Grossman
Corra Harris early women correspondent in World WarÂ I.
David Halberstam (1934â"2007). American journalist, New York Times. Covered the war in the Congo and the Vietnam War for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Macdonald Hastings
Max Hastings
Ron Haviv
Chris Hedges
Ernest Hemingway (1899â"1961); covered the 1922 Catastrophe of Smyrna in Turkey, the Spanish Civil War and World WarÂ II.
Michael Herr (1940) American writer for Esquire in the Vietnam War (1967â"68). Book: Dispatches, Screenplay: Full Metal Jacket Voice-over narration for Apocalypse Now.
Marguerite Higgins; paved the way for female war correspondents.
Johannes-Matthias HÃ¶nscheid; covered World War II, only correspondent to receive the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross
Clare Hollingworth covered World War II, Algerian War, Vietnam War, Bangladesh Liberation War (1971).
Peggy Hull (1889â"1967) covered World War I and World WarÂ II
Joseph Kessel
Helen Kirkpatrick (1909â"1997) covered World War II including The Blitz, Normandy Invasion and Liberation of France.
Gary Knight (1964) British photojournalist. Covered conflicts in: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan war.
Catherine Leroy (1945â"2006) French freelance photographer, covered the Vietnam War.
Jacques Leslie, Cambodianâ"Vietnamese War correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, 1972â"1973, 1975. Leslie was the first American journalist to enter and return from Viet Cong (National Liberation Front) territory in South Vietnam, in January 1973.
Larry LeSueur, CBS radio correspondent, reported from rooftops during World War II London blitzes, went ashore in the first waves of the D-Day invasion, and broadcast to America the Allied liberation of Paris. One of the "Murrow's Boys".
Jean Leune (1889â"1944), and HÃ©lÃ¨ne Vitivilia Leune (?- 1940), French war correspondents who as a married couple covered the First Balkan War in Greece 1912â"1913.
George Lewis (NBC News), covered Vietnam War 1970â"1973
Jack London
Jim G. Lucas, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, reported human interest stories from the front lines in World WarÂ II, Korea and Vietnam.
Alexander Gault MacGowan, (1894â"1970), correspondent for The Sun (New York), reported from the front lines in World WarÂ II.
Anne O'Hare McCormick
Curzio Malaparte
Don McCullin British photographer. Covered conflicts in Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Biafra.
Steve McCurry (1950) American photographer. Covered Cambodian Civil War, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gulf War. Member of Magnum Photos.
Waldemar Milewicz
Alan Moorehead, Australian reporter, covered World War II with units of General Bernard Montgomery, author of several books on the war.
Christopher Morris
Ralph Morse, (born 1917) covered World War II
Joseph Morton (born in 1911 or 1913, died in 1945); Associated Press war correspondent, the first American correspondent to be executed by the enemy during World WarÂ II.
Edward R. Murrow (1908â"1965) Covered the Blitz in London and the European Theater during World WarÂ II for CBS News. Hired a team of foreign correspondents for CBS News who became known as "Murrow's Boys".
James Nachtwey (1948) American photographer. Covered Northern Ireland, South Africa, Iraq, Sudan, Indonesia, India, Rwanda, Chechnya, Pakistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Romania, Afghanistan, Israel.
George Sessions Perry (1910â"1956) Writer who covered WWII for Harper's Weekly and the Saturday Evening Post. Accompanied troops on invasions of Italy and France. Said after the war that his war experiences "de-fictionalized" him for life and never wrote fiction again.
Roy Pinney (1911â"2010) covered World War II and was present at the Normandy landing on D-Day for the Normandy Invasion. He also covered the Yom Kippur War in the Gaza Strip and conflicts in Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Africa and Colombia.
Anna Politkovskaya
Jessie Pope was a pro war journalist and poet during the first world war.
John Pilger
Ernie Pyle, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, reported human interest stories from the front lines in World War II, Pulitzer Prize, 1944
Dan Rather Covered Vietnam War for CBS News for several months in 1966â"67.
John Reed (1887â"1920); covered the Mexican Revolution, the First World War, and the Russian Revolution, author of Ten Days that Shook the World
John Rich (1917- ); American journalist. Covered WW2, Korea and Vietnam War for NBC News.
Derek Round (1935â"2012) Covered the Vietnam War.
Joe Sacco comics artist who covered the Gulf War and Bosnian War
Morley Safer Covered Vietnam War for CBS News in 1965 and made documentary film, Morley Safer's Vietnam.
Sydney Schanberg, his experiences in Cambodia during the Vietnam War are dramatized in The Killing Fields
Peter Scholl-Latour (1922â"2014) German journalist who covered conflicts in Africa and Asia, Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Cambodia a. m. o. Author of 30 books.
Kurt Schork
Sigrid Schultz
Robert Sherrod, World War II, Pacific theatre, Guadacanal and Tarawa/Saipan
William L. Shirer Covered WWII for CBS News, one of "Murrow's Boys", and the author of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", a scholarly history.
Vaughan Smith (1963) British cameraman, covered Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosova, Gulf War.
John Steinbeck
Karsten Thielker (1966); German photojournalist. Covered Rwanda Genocide, Kosovo. 1995 Pulitzer Prize.
Richard Tregaskis, author of Guadalcanal Diary, dramatized in movie of same name.
Thomas Joseph Twitty, World War II, Europe, New York Herald Tribune
Aernout van Lynden
Trevor Watson (born 1953, Sydney, Australia) covered the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Cambodia, military rebellion in Fiji, Tiananmen Square
Kate Webb (1943â"2007); covered the Vietnam and Cambodian wars for UPI; captured by the North Vietnamese in Cambodia in 1971 and held for three weeks; covered East Timor war. Later Gulf War, Indonesia, Afghanistan for AFP.
Osmar White
Eric Lloyd Williams
Rod Williams, covered Vietnam War
Chester Wilmot
Paul Wood, BBC defense correspondent in the Middle East covering the Arab World since 2003.
Simon Dring British correspondent for Reuters, London Daily Telegraph, BBC-TV News; covered wars/revolutions in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Biafra, Cyprus, Angola, Eritrea, India-Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Bosnia, Middle East.

21st century

Martin Adler (1958 - 2006) Swedish video journalist, killed in Mogadishu, Somalia. Covered the Gulf War, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone.
Christiane Amanpour covered the Gulf War and the Bosnian War
Jon Lee Anderson covered the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, Israel, El Salvador, Ireland, Lebanon and Iran.
Mile CÄrpeniÅan (born August 23, 1975 â" died March 22, 2010) covered the Iraq war and Kosovo war
Marie Colvin (1956 - 2012) American UPI after Sunday Times journalist. Covering the conflict in Syria, Marie was killed in Homs. Covered conflicts in Sierra Leone, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Libya
Dan Eldon (1970 - 1993) British photojournalist. Killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, by an angry mob while covering the Battle of Mogadishu
Richard Engel (1973), American who covered the Iraq War, the 2006 Lebanon War and the Syrian civil war (during which he was kidnapped but subsequently rescued)
Khazar Fatemi
Dexter Filkins (1961), covered wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syrian
Robert Fisk (1946), British journalist, covered Northern Ireland conflict, Algerian Civil War, Beirut, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Lebanese Civil War, Iranian Revolution, Iranâ"Iraq War, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Kosovo War and the 2003 Iraq War.
Aziz Ullah Haidari (1968-November 19, 2001); covered the Afghanistan war,
Michael Hastings (1980-2013) covered the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War
Tim Hetherington (1970 - 2011) British Photographer and documentary filmmaker, covered Afghanistan, Liberia and was killed in Libya.
Chris Hondros (1970 - 2011) American photographer, covered conflicts in Liberia, Angola, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and was killed in Misrata, Libya, in 2011.
Gilles Jacquier (1968 - 2012) French cameraman for FranceÂ 2 Television. He was the first reporter killed in Syrian Civil War.
Wojciech Jagielski
Ryszard KapuÅciÅski
Joseph Kessel
Rick Leventhal (born 1960) covered the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya
Terry Lloyd (1952 â" 2003), British television journalist, covered the Middle East. He was killed by U.S. troops while covering the 2003 invasion of Iraq for ITN.
Anthony Loyd (1966) covered Bosnia and Chechnya
Karen Maron
Kenji Nagai (1957-2007) Japanese photographer. Covered Afghanistan War. Kenji was killed in Yangon, Burma.
Remy Ourdan
Robert Young Pelton, best known for his 1,000+ page guide to warzones and survival, The World's Most Dangerous Places.
Arturo PÃ©rez-Reverte, worked for Pueblo newspaper and Spanish TVE. Covered the Bosnian War among others
Antonia Rados (1953) Austrian TV correspondent for ORF, WDR, ZDF, RTL. Covered conflicts in the Gulf War, Kosovo
Nir Rosen; covered the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan (2001-present)
Giuliana Sgrena
John Simpson
Kevin Sites
Daniel Wakefield Smith
Michael Ware (born 1969); ongoing coverage of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Reporting from the perspectives of all combatant groups.
Olivier Weber covered the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan (2001-present), in Israel, Iran, Eritrea, Algeria, Pakistan and a dozen other conflicts.
Mika Yamamoto (1967 - 2012) Japanese photographer and TV journalist. Killed on August 20, 2012, in Aleppo, while covering the Syrian Civil War
Michael Yon (born 1964); former Green Beret, turned journalist and author. Embedded with American, British and Lithuanian combat units in Iraq War

Books by war correspondents

"Naked in Baghdad, the Iraq war as seen by NPR's correspondent" by Anne Garrels 2004
The Sevastopol Sketches by Leo Tolstoy
The Secret Life of War by Peter Beaumont
Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills in Chechnya by Wojciech Jagielski
The Night Wanderers by Wojciech Jagielski
"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" by Chris Hedges
Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English by Edward Behr
"Danger Close" by Michael Yon
The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn
"Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World" by Nir Rosen
Dispatches by Michael Herr
The Soccer War by Ryszard KapuÅciÅski
"Where War Lives" by Paul Watson
"A Small Corner of Hell:Dispatches from Chechnya" by Anna Politkovskaya
"Moment of truth in Iraq" by Michael Yon
"The Forever War" by Dexter Filkins (2008)
"Eternal Afghanistan" by Olivier Weber
Generation Kill by Evan Wright
"My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath" by Seymour Hersh
"The Massacre at El Mozote" by Mark Danner
"Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia's War" by Ed Vulliamy
My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd
Unreasonable Behaviour: An Autobiography by Don McCullin
Soldier of the Press: Covering the Front in Europe and North Africa, 1936-1943 by Henry T. Gorrell
Dispatches from War, memoirs by Anderson Cooper
Ridding the Devils by Frank Palmos
"The Sorrow of War" translated Phanh Thanh Hao & Frank Palmos 1994.
"The Mark: A War Correspondent's Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia" by Jacques Leslie

References

Stephen D. Reese, Stephen D., Oscar H. Gandy and August E. Grant. (2001). Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World, Maywah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 10-ISBN 0-8058-3653-5; 13-ISBN 978-0-8058-3653-0; OCLC 46383772
War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam by Tad Bartimus. NY: Random House, 2002. ISBN 9780375506284
On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam by Joyce Hoffmann. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2008. ISBN 9780306810596; see Author Interview at the Pritzker Military Library on October 30, 2008

External links

War Correspondents: A Book Bibliography
"A statistical analysis of journalists killed in Iraq since hostilities began in March 2003"
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Stephen Crane

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 13:43:00 +0000

Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 â" June 5, 1900) was an American author. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

The eighth surviving child of Protestant Methodist parents, Crane began writing at the age of four and had published several articles by the age of 16. Having little interest in university studies, he left college in 1891 to work as a reporter and writer. Crane's first novel was the 1893 Bowery tale Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, generally considered by critics to be the first work of American literary Naturalism. He won international acclaim in 1895 for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, which he wrote without having any battle experience.

In 1896, Crane endured a highly publicized scandal after appearing as a witness in the trial of a suspected prostitute, an acquaintance named Dora Clark. Late that year he accepted an offer to travel to Cuba as a war correspondent. As he waited in Jacksonville, Florida, for passage, he met Cora Taylor, the madam of a brothel, with whom he began a lasting relationship. En route to Cuba, Crane's vessel the SS Commodore, sank off the coast of Florida, leaving him and others adrift for several days in a dinghy. Crane described the ordeal in "The Open Boat". During the final years of his life, he covered conflicts in Greece (accompanied by Cora, recognized as the first woman war correspondent) and later lived in England with her. He was befriended by writers such as Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells. Plagued by financial difficulties and ill health, Crane died of tuberculosis in a Black Forest sanatorium in Germany at the age of 28.

At the time of his death, Crane was considered an important figure in American literature. After he was nearly forgotten for two decades, critics revived interest in his life and work. Crane's writing is characterized by vivid intensity, distinctive dialects, and irony. Common themes involve fear, spiritual crises and social isolation. Although recognized primarily for The Red Badge of Courage, which has become an American classic, Crane is also known for his poetry, journalism, and short stories such as "The Open Boat", "The Blue Hotel", "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", and The Monster. His writing made a deep impression on 20th-century writers, most prominent among them Ernest Hemingway, and is thought to have inspired the Modernists and the Imagists.

Biography

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Early years

Crane was born on November 1, 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, to Jonathan Townley Crane, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal church, and Mary Helen Peck Crane, daughter of a clergyman, George Peck. He was the fourteenth and last child born to the couple. At 45, Helen Crane had suffered the early deaths of her previous four children, each of whom died within one year of birth. Nicknamed "Stevie" by the family, he joined eight surviving brothers and sistersâ"Mary Helen, George Peck, Jonathan Townley, William Howe, Agnes Elizabeth, Edmund Byran, Wilbur Fiske, and Luther.

The Cranes were descended from Jaspar Crane, a founder of New Haven Colony, who had migrated there from England in 1639. Stephen was named for a putative founder of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, who had, according to family tradition, come from England or Wales in 1665, as well as his great-great-grandfather Stephen Crane (1709â"1780), a Revolutionary War patriot who served as New Jersey delegate to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Crane later wrote that his father, Dr. Crane, "was a great, fine, simple mind," who had written numerous tracts on theology. Although his mother was a popular spokeswoman for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a highly religious woman, Crane wrote that he did not believe "she was as narrow as most of her friends or family." The young Stephen was raised primarily by his sister Agnes, who was 15Â years his senior. The family moved to Port Jervis, New York, in 1876, where Dr. Crane became the pastor of Drew Methodist Church, a position that he retained until his death.

As a child, Stephen was often sickly and afflicted by constant colds. When the boy was almost two, his father wrote in his diary that his youngest son became "so sick that we are anxious about him." Despite his fragile nature, Crane was a precocious child who taught himself to read before the age of four. His first known inquiry, recorded by his father, dealt with writing; at the age of three, while imitating his brother Townley's writing, he asked his mother, "how do you spell O?" In December 1879, Crane wrote a poem about wanting a dog for Christmas. Entitled "I'd Rather Have â"", it is his first surviving poem. Stephen was not regularly enrolled in school until January 1880, but he had no difficulty in completing two grades in six weeks. Recalling this feat, he wrote that it "sounds like the lie of a fond mother at a teaparty, but I do remember that I got ahead very fast and that father was very pleased with me."

Dr. Crane died on February 16, 1880, at the age of 60; Stephen was eight years old. Some 1,400Â people mourned Dr. Crane at his funeral, more than double the size of his congregation. After her husband's death, Mrs. Crane moved to Roseville, near Newark, leaving Stephen in the care of his older brother Edmund, with whom the young boy lived with cousins in Sussex County. He next lived with his brother William, a lawyer, in Port Jervis for several years.

His older sister Helen took him to Asbury Park to be with their brother Townley and his wife, Fannie. Townley was a professional journalist; he headed the Long Branch department of both the New-York Tribune and the Associated Press, and also served as editor of the Asbury Park Shore Press. Agnes, another Crane sister, joined the siblings in New Jersey. She took a position at Asbury Park's intermediate school and moved in with Helen to care for the young Stephen.

Within a couple of years, the Crane family suffered more losses. First, Townley and his wife lost their two young children. His wife Fannie died of Bright's disease in November 1883. Agnes Crane became ill and died on June 10, 1884, of meningitis at the age of 28.

Schooling

Crane wrote his first known story, "Uncle Jake and the Bell Handle", when he was 14. In late 1885, he enrolled at Pennington Seminary, a ministry-focused coeducational boarding school 7 miles (11Â km) north of Trenton. His father had been principal there from 1849 to 1858. Soon after her youngest son left for school, Mrs. Crane began suffering what the Asbury Park Shore Press reported as "a temporary aberration of the mind." She had apparently recovered by early 1886, but later that year, her son, 23-year-old Luther Crane, died after falling in front of an oncoming train while working as a flagman for the Erie Railroad. It was the fourth death in six years among Stephen's immediate family.

After two years, Crane left Pennington for Claverack College, a quasi-military school. He later looked back on his time at Claverack as "the happiest period of my life although I was not aware of it." A classmate remembered him as a highly literate but erratic student, lucky to pass examinations in math and science, and yet "far in advance of his fellow students in his knowledge of History and Literature", his favorite subjects. While he held an impressive record on the drill field and baseball diamond, Crane generally did not excel in the classroom. Not having a middle name, as was customary among other students, he took to signing his name "Stephen T. Crane" in order "to win recognition as a regular fellow". Crane was seen as friendly, but also moody and rebellious. He sometimes skipped class in order to play baseball, a game in which he starred as catcher. He was also greatly interested in the school's military training program. He rose rapidly in the ranks of the student battalion. One classmate described him as "indeed physically attractive without being handsome", but he was aloof, reserved and not generally popular at Claverack. Although academically weak, Crane gained experience at Claverack that provided background (and likely some anecdotes from the Civil War veterans on the staff) that proved useful when he came to write The Red Badge of Courage.

In mid-1888, Crane became his brother Townley's assistant at a New Jersey shore news bureau, working there every summer until 1892. Crane's first publication under his byline was an article on the explorer Henry M. Stanley's famous quest to find the Scottish missionary David Livingstone in Africa. It appeared in the February 1890 Claverack College Vidette. Within a few months, Crane was persuaded by his family to forgo a military career and transfer to Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, in order to pursue a mining engineering degree. He registered at Lafayette on September 12, and promptly became involved in extracurricular activities; he took up baseball again and joined the largest fraternity, Delta Upsilon. He also joined both rival literary societies, named for (George) Washington and (Benjamin) Franklin. Crane infrequently attended classes and ended the semester with grades for four of the seven courses he had taken.

After one semester, Crane transferred to Syracuse University, where he enrolled as a non-degree candidate in the College of Liberal Arts. He roomed in the Delta Upsilon fraternity house and joined the baseball team. Attending just one class (English Literature) during the middle trimester, he remained in residence while taking no courses in the third trimester.

Concentrating on his writing, Crane began to experiment with tone and style while trying out different subjects. He published his fictional story, "Great Bugs of Onondaga," simultaneously in the Syracuse Daily Standard and the New York Tribune. Declaring college "a waste of time", Crane decided to become a full-time writer and reporter. He attended a Delta Upsilon chapter meeting on June 12, 1891, but shortly afterward left college for good.

Full-time writer

In the summer of 1891, Crane often camped with friends in the nearby area of Sullivan County, New York, where his brother Edmund owned a house. He used this area as the geographic setting for several short stories, which were posthumously published in a collection under the title Stephen Crane: Sullivan County Tales and Sketches. Crane showed two of these works to Tribune editor Willis Fletcher Johnson, a friend of the family, who accepted them for the publication. "Hunting Wild Dogs" and "The Last of the Mohicans" were the first of fourteen unsigned Sullivan County sketches and tales that were published in the Tribune between February and July 1892. Crane also showed Johnson an early draft of his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.

Later that summer, Crane met and befriended author Hamlin Garland, who had been lecturing locally on American literature and the expressive arts; on August 17 he gave a talk on novelist William Dean Howells, which Crane wrote up for the Tribune. Garland became a mentor for and champion of the young writer, whose intellectual honesty impressed him. Their relationship suffered in later years, however, because Garland disapproved of Crane's alleged immorality, related to his living with a woman married to another man.

Stephen moved into his brother Edmund's house in Lakeview, a suburb of Paterson, New Jersey, in the fall of 1891. From here he made frequent trips into New York City, writing and reporting particularly on its impoverished tenement districts. Crane focused particularly on The Bowery, a small and once prosperous neighborhood in the southern part of Manhattan. After the Civil War, Bowery shops and mansions had given way to saloons, dance halls, brothels and flophouses, all of which Crane frequented. He later said he did so for research. He was attracted to the human nature found in the slums, considering it "open and plain, with nothing hidden". Believing nothing honest and unsentimental had been written about the Bowery, Crane became determined to do so himself; this was the setting of his first novel. On December 7, 1891, Crane's mother died at the age of 64, and the 20-year-old appointed Edmund as his guardian.

Despite being frail, undernourished and suffering from a hacking cough, which did not prevent him from smoking cigarettes, in the spring of 1892 Crane began a romance with Lily Brandon Munroe, a married woman who was estranged from her husband. Although Munroe later said Crane "was not a handsome man", she admired his "remarkable almond-shaped gray eyes." He begged her to elope with him, but her family opposed the match because Crane lacked money and prospects, and she declined. Their last meeting likely occurred in April 1898, when he again asked her to run away with him and she again refused.

Between July 2 and September 11, 1892, Crane published at least ten news reports on Asbury Park affairs. Although a Tribune colleague stated that Crane "was not highly distinguished above any other boy of twenty who had gained a reputation for saying and writing bright things," that summer his reporting took on a more skeptical, hypocrisy-deflating tone. A storm of controversy erupted over a report he wrote on the Junior Order of United American Mechanics' American Day Parade, entitled "Parades and Entertainments". Published on August 21, the report juxtaposes the "bronzed, slope-shouldered, uncouth" marching men "begrimed with dust" and the spectators dressed in "summer gowns, lace parasols, tennis trousers, straw hats and indifferent smiles". Believing they were being ridiculed, some JOUAM marchers were outraged and wrote to the editor. The owner of the Tribune, Whitelaw Reid, was that year's Republican vice-presidential candidate, and this likely increased the sensitivity of the paper's management to the issue. Although Townley wrote a piece for the Asbury Park Daily Press in his brother's defense, the Tribune quickly apologized to its readers, calling Stephen Crane's piece "a bit of random correspondence, passed inadvertently by the copy editor". Hamlin Garland and biographer John Barry attested that Crane told them he had been dismissed by the Tribune, although Willis Fletcher Johnson later denied this. The paper did not publish any of Crane's work after 1892.

Life in New York

Crane struggled to make a living as a free-lance writer, contributing sketches and feature articles to various New York newspapers. In October 1892, he moved into a rooming house in Manhattan whose boarders were a group of medical students. During this time, he expanded or entirely reworked Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which is about a girl who "blossoms in a mud-puddle" and becomes a pitiful victim of circumstance. In the winter of 1893, Crane took the manuscript of Maggie to Richard Watson Gilder, who rejected it for publication in The Century Magazine.

Crane decided to publish it privately, with money he had inherited from his mother. The novel was published in late February or early March 1893 by a small printing shop that usually printed medical books and religious tracts. The typewritten title page for the Library of Congress copyright application read simply: "A Girl of the Streets, / A Story of New York. / â"Byâ"/Stephen Crane." The name "Maggie" was added to the title later. Crane used the pseudonym "Johnston Smith" for the novel's initial publication, later telling friend and artist Corwin Knapp Linson that the nom de plume was the "commonest name I could think of. I had an editor friend named Johnson, and put in the "t", and no one could find me in the mob of Smiths." Hamlin Garland reviewed the work in the June 1893 issue of The Arena, calling it "the most truthful and unhackneyed study of the slums I have yet read, fragment though it is." Despite this early praise, Crane became depressed and destitute from having spent $869 for 1,100Â copies of a novel that did not sell; he ended up giving a hundred copies away. He would later remember "how I looked forward to publication and pictured the sensation I thought it would make. It fell flat. Nobody seemed to notice it or care for it... Poor Maggie! She was one of my first loves."

In March 1893, Crane spent hours lounging in Linson's studio while having his portrait painted. He became fascinated with issues of the Century that were largely devoted to famous battles and military leaders from the Civil War. Frustrated with the dryly written stories, Crane stated, "I wonder that some of those fellows don't tell how they felt in those scraps. They spout enough of what they did, but they're as emotionless as rocks." Crane returned to these magazines during subsequent visits to Linson's studio, and eventually the idea of writing a war novel overtook him. He would later state that he "had been unconsciously working the detail of the story out through most of his boyhood" and had imagined "war stories ever since he was out of knickerbockers." This novel would ultimately become The Red Badge of Courage.

From the beginning, Crane wished to show how it felt to be in a war by writing "a psychological portrayal of fear." Conceiving his story from the point of view of a young private who is at first filled with boyish dreams of the glory of war and then quickly becomes disillusioned by war's reality, Crane borrowed the private's surname, "Fleming", from his sister-in-law's maiden name. He later said that the first paragraphs came to him with "every word in place, every comma, every period fixed." Working mostly nights, he wrote from around midnight until four or five in the morning. Because he could not afford a typewriter, he wrote carefully in ink on legal-sized paper, seldom crossing through or interlining a word. If he did change something, he would rewrite the whole page.

While working on his second novel, Crane remained prolific, concentrating on publishing stories to stave off poverty; "An Experiment in Misery", based on Crane's experiences in the Bowery, was printed by the New York Press. He also wrote five or six poems a day. In early 1894, he showed some of his poems, or "lines" as he called them, to Hamlin Garland, who said he read "some thirty in all" with "growing wonder." Although Garland and William Dean Howells encouraged him to submit his poetry for publication, Crane's free verse was too unconventional for most. After brief wrangling between poet and publisher, Copeland & Day accepted Crane's first book of poems, The Black Riders and Other Lines, although it would not be published until after The Red Badge of Courage. He received a 10Â percent royalty, and the publisher assured him that the book would be in a form "more severely classic than any book ever yet issued in America."

In the spring of 1894, Crane offered the finished manuscript of The Red Badge of Courage to McClure's Magazine, which had become the foremost magazine for Civil War literature. While McClure's delayed giving him an answer on his novel, they offered him an assignment writing about the Pennsylvania coal mines. "In the Depths of a Coal Mine", a story with pictures by Linson, was syndicated by McClure's in a number of newspapers, heavily edited. Crane was reportedly disgusted by the cuts, asking Linson: "Why the hell did they send me up there then? Do they want the public to think the coal mines gilded ball-rooms with the miners eating ice-cream in boiled shirt-fronts?"

Sources report that following an encounter with a male prostitute that spring, Crane began a novel on the subject entitled Flowers of Asphalt, which he later abandoned. The manuscript has never been recovered.

After discovering that McClure's could not afford to pay him, Crane took his war novel to Irving Bacheller of the Bacheller-Johnson Newspaper Syndicate, which agreed to publish The Red Badge of Courage in serial form. Between the third and the ninth of December 1894, The Red Badge of Courage was published in some half-dozen newspapers in the United States. Although it was greatly cut for syndication, Bacheller attested to its causing a stir, saying "its quality [was] immediately felt and recognized." The lead editorial in the Philadelphia Press of December 7 said that Crane "is a new name now and unknown, but everybody will be talking about him if he goes on as he has begun".

Travels and fame

At the end of January 1895, Crane left on what he called "a very long and circuitous newspaper trip" to the west. While writing feature articles for the Bacheller syndicate, he traveled to Saint Louis, Missouri, Nebraska, New Orleans, Galveston, Texas and then Mexico City. Irving Bacheller would later state that he "sent Crane to Mexico for new color", which the author found in the form of Mexican slum life. Whereas he found the lower class in New York pitiful, he was impressed by the "superiority" of the Mexican peasants' contentment and "even refuse[d] to pity them."

Returning to New York five months later, Crane joined the Lantern (alternately spelled "Lanthom" or "Lanthorne") Club organized by a group of young writers and journalists. The Club, located on the roof of an old house on William Street near the Brooklyn Bridge, served as a drinking establishment of sorts and was decorated to look like a ship's cabin. There Crane ate one good meal a day, although friends were troubled by his "constant smoking, too much coffee, lack of food and poor teeth", as Nelson Greene put it. Living in near-poverty and greatly anticipating the publication of his books, Crane began work on two more novels: The Third Violet and George's Mother.

The Black Riders was published by Copeland & Day shortly before his return to New York in May, but it received mostly criticism, if not abuse, for the poems' unconventional style and use of free verse. A piece in the Bookman called Crane "the Aubrey Beardsley of poetry," and a commentator from the Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean stated that "there is not a line of poetry from the opening to the closing page. Whitman's Leaves of Grass were luminous in comparison. Poetic lunacy would be a better name for the book." In June, the New York Tribune dismissed the book as "so much trash." Crane was pleased that the book was "making some stir".

In contrast to the reception for Crane's poetry, The Red Badge of Courage was welcomed with acclaim after its publication by Appleton in September 1895. For the next four months the book was in the top six on various bestseller lists around the country. It arrived on the literary scene "like a flash of lightning out of a clear winter sky", according to H. L. Mencken, who was about 15 at the time. The novel also became popular in Britain; Joseph Conrad, a future friend of Crane, wrote that the novel "detonated... with the impact and force of a twelve-inch shell charged with a very high explosive." Appleton published two, possibly three, printings in 1895 and as many as eleven more in 1896. Although some critics considered the work overly graphic and profane, it was widely heralded for its realistic portrayal of war and unique writing style. The Detroit Free Press declared that The Red Badge would give readers "so vivid a picture of the emotions and the horrors of the battlefield that you will pray your eyes may never look upon the reality."

Wanting to capitalize on the success of The Red Badge, McClure Syndicate offered Crane a contract to write a series on Civil War battlefields. Because it was a wish of his to "visit the battlefieldâ"which I was to describeâ"at the time of year when it was fought", Crane agreed to take the assignment. Visiting battlefields in Northern Virginia, including Fredericksburg, he would later produce five more Civil War tales: "Three Miraculous Soldiers", "The Veteran", "An Indiana Campaign", "An Episode of War" and The Little Regiment.

Scandal

At the age of 24, Crane, who was reveling in his success, became involved in a highly publicized case involving a suspected prostitute named Dora Clark. At 2 a.m. on September 16, 1896, he escorted two chorus girls and Clark from New York City's Broadway Garden, a popular "resort" where he had interviewed the women for a series he was writing. As Crane saw one woman safely to a streetcar, a plainclothes policeman named Charles Becker arrested the other two for solicitation; Crane was threatened with arrest when he tried to interfere. One of the women was released after Crane confirmed her erroneous claim that she was his wife, but Clark was charged and taken to the precinct. Against the advice of the arresting sergeant, Crane made a statement confirming Dora Clark's innocence, stating that "I only know that while with me she acted respectably, and that the policeman's charge was false." On the basis of Crane's testimony, Clark was discharged. The media seized upon the story; news spread to Philadelphia, Boston and beyond, with papers focusing on Crane's courage. The Stephen Crane story, as it became known, soon became a source for ridicule; the Chicago Dispatch in particular quipped that "Stephen Crane is respectfully informed that association with women in scarlet is not necessarily a 'Red Badge of Courage'Â ".

A couple of weeks after her trial, Clark pressed charges of false arrest against the officer who had arrested her. The next day, the officer physically attacked Clark in the presence of witnesses for having brought charges against him. Crane, who initially went briefly to Philadelphia to escape the pressure of publicity, returned to New York to give testimony at Becker's trial despite advice given to him from Theodore Roosevelt, who was Police Commissioner at the time and a new acquaintance of Crane. The defense targeted Crane: police raided his apartment and interviewed people who knew him, trying to find incriminating evidence in order to lessen the effect of his testimony. A vigorous cross-examination took place that sought to portray Crane as a man of dubious morals; while the prosecution proved that he frequented brothels, Crane claimed this was merely for research purposes. After the trial ended on October 16, the arresting officer was exonerated, but Crane's reputation was ruined.

Cora Taylor and the Commodore shipwreck

Given $700 in Spanish gold by the Bacheller-Johnson syndicate to work as a war correspondent in Cuba as the Spanishâ"American War was pending, the 25-year-old Crane left New York on November 27, 1896, on a train bound for Jacksonville, Florida. Upon arrival in Jacksonville, he registered at the St. James Hotel under the alias of Samuel Carleton to maintain anonymity while seeking passage to Cuba. While waiting for a boat, he toured the city and visited the local brothels. Within days he met 31-year-old Cora Taylor, proprietor of the downtown bawdy house Hotel de Dream. Born into a respectable Boston family, Taylor (whose legal name was Cora Ethel Stewart) had already had two brief marriages; her first husband, Vinton Murphy, divorced her on grounds of adultery. In 1889, she had married British Captain Donald William Stewart. She left him in 1892 for another man, but was still legally married. By the time Crane arrived, Taylor had been in Jacksonville for two years. She lived a bohemian lifestyle, owned a hotel of assignation, and was a well-known and respected local figure. The two spent much time together while Crane awaited his departure. He was finally cleared to leave for the Cuban port of Cienfuegos on New Year's Eve aboard the SS Commodore.

The ship sailed from Jacksonville with 27 or 28Â men and a cargo of supplies and ammunition for the Cuban rebels. On the St. Johns River and less than 2 miles (3.2Â km) from Jacksonville, Commodore struck a sandbar in a dense fog and damaged its hull. Although towed off the sandbar the following day, it was beached again in Mayport and again damaged. A leak began in the boiler room that evening and, as a result of malfunctioning water pumps, the ship came to a standstill about 16 miles (26Â km) from Mosquito Inlet. As the ship took on more water, Crane described the engine room as resembling "a scene at this time taken from the middle kitchen of hades." Commodoreââ'âs lifeboats were lowered in the early hours of the morning on January 2, 1897 and the ship ultimately sank at 7Â a.m. Crane was one of the last to leave the ship in a 10-foot (3.0Â m) dinghy. In an ordeal that he recounted in the short story "The Open Boat", Crane and three other men (including the ship's Captain) floundered off the coast of Florida for a day and a half before trying to land the dinghy at Daytona Beach. The small boat overturned in the surf, forcing the exhausted men to swim to shore; one of them died. Having lost the gold given to him for his journey, Crane wired Cora Taylor for help. She traveled to Daytona and returned to Jacksonville with Crane the next day, only four days after he had left on the Commodore.

The disaster was widely reported on the front pages of newspapers across the country. Rumors that the ship had been sabotaged were widely circulated but never substantiated. Portrayed favorably and heroically by the press, Crane emerged from the ordeal with his reputation enhanced, if not restored, after the battering he received during the Dora Clark affair. Meanwhile, Crane's affair with Taylor quickly blossomed.

During 2002-2004 three seasons of archaeological investigation were begun in order to document the exposed remains of a wreck near Ponce Inlet, FL and to definitively identify the sunken vessel. The collected data, and other accumulated evidence, finally substantiated the identification of the SS Commodore beyond a reasonable doubt.

Greco-Turkish War

Despite contentment in Jacksonville and the need for rest after his ordeal, Crane became restless. He left Jacksonville on January 11 for New York City, where he applied for a passport to Cuba, Mexico and the West Indies. Spending three weeks in New York, he completed "The Open Boat" and periodically visited Port Jervis to see family. By this time, however, blockades had formed along the Florida coast as tensions rose with Spain, and Crane concluded that he would never be able to travel to Cuba. He sold "The Open Boat" to Scribner's for $300 in early March. Determined to work as a war correspondent, Crane signed on with William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal to cover the impending Greco-Turkish conflict. He brought along Taylor, who had sold the Hotel de Dream in order to follow him.

On March 20, they sailed first to England, where Crane was warmly received. They arrived in Athens in early April; between April 17 (when Turkey declared war on Greece) and April 22, Crane wrote his first published report of the war, "An Impression of the 'Concert'Â ". When he left for Epirus in the northwest, Taylor remained in Athens, where she became the Greek war's first woman war correspondent. She wrote under the pseudonym "Imogene Carter" for the New York Journal, a job that Crane had secured for her. They wrote frequently, traveling throughout the country separately and together. The first large battle that Crane witnessed was the Turks' assault on General Constantine Smolenski's Greek forces at Velestino. Crane wrote, "It is a great thing to survey the army of the enemy. Just where and how it takes hold upon the heart is difficult of description." During this battle, Crane encountered "a fat waddling puppy" that he immediately claimed, dubbing it "Velestino, the Journal dog". Greece and Turkey signed an armistice on May 20, ending the 30-day war; Crane and Taylor left Greece for England, taking two Greek brothers as servants and Velestino the dog with them.

England and Spanishâ"American War

After staying in Limpsfield, Surrey, for a few days, Crane and Taylor settled in Ravensbrook, a plain brick villa in Oxted. Referring to themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Crane, the couple lived openly in England, but Crane concealed the relationship from his friends and family in the United States. Admired in England, Crane thought himself attacked back home: "There seem so many of them in America who want to kill, bury and forget me purely out of unkindness and envy andâ"my unworthiness, if you choose", he wrote. Velestino the dog sickened and died soon after their arrival in England, on August 1. Crane, who had a great love for dogs, wrote an emotional letter to a friend an hour after the dog's death, stating that "for eleven days we fought death for him, thinking nothing of anything but his life." The Limpsfield-Oxted area was home to members of the socialist Fabian Society and a magnet for writers such as Edmund Gosse, Ford Madox Ford and Edward Garnett. Crane also met the Polish-born novelist Joseph Conrad in October 1897, with whom he would have what Crane called a "warm and endless friendship".

Although Crane was confident among peers, strong negative reviews of the recently published The Third Violet were causing his literary reputation to dwindle. Reviewers were also highly critical of Crane's war letters, deeming them self-centered. Although The Red Badge of Courage had by this time gone through fourteen printings in the United States and six in England, Crane was running out of money. To survive financially, he worked at a feverish pitch, writing prolifically for both the English and the American markets. He wrote in quick succession stories such as The Monster, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", "Death and the Child" and "The Blue Hotel". Crane began to attach price tags to his new works of fiction, hoping that "The Bride", for example, would fetch $175.

As 1897 ended, Crane's money crisis worsened. Amy Leslie, a reporter from Chicago and a former lover, sued him for $550. The New York Times reported that Leslie gave him $800 in November 1896 but that he'd repaid only a quarter of the sum. In February he was summoned to answer Leslie's claim. The claim was apparently settled out of court, because no record of adjudication exists. Meanwhile, Crane felt "heavy with troubles" and "chased to the wall" by expenses. He confided to his agent that he was $2,000 in debt but that he would "beat it" with more literary output.

Soon after the USSÂ Maine exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, under suspicious circumstances, Crane was offered a Â£60 advance by Blackwood's Magazine for articles "from the seat of war in the event of a war breaking out" between the United States and Spain. His health was failing, and it is believed that signs of his pulmonary tuberculosis, which he may have contracted in childhood, became apparent. With almost no money coming in from his finished stories, Crane accepted the assignment and left Oxted for New York. Taylor and the rest of the household stayed behind to fend off local creditors. Crane applied for a passport and left New York for Key West two days before Congress declared war. While the war idled, he interviewed people and produced occasional copy.

In early June, he observed the establishment of an American base in Cuba when Marines seized GuantÃ¡namo Bay. He went ashore with the Marines, planning "to gather impressions and write them as the spirit moved." Although he wrote honestly about his fear in battle, others observed his calmness and composure. He would later recall "this prolonged tragedy of the night" in the war tale "Marines Signaling Under Fire at Guantanamo". After showing a willingness to serve during fighting at Cuzco, Cuba, by carrying messages to company commanders, Crane was officially cited for his "material aid during the action".

He continued to report upon various battles and the worsening military conditions and praised Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, despite past tensions with the Commissioner. In early July, Crane was sent to the United States for medical treatment for a high fever. He was diagnosed with yellow fever, then malaria. Upon arrival in Old Point Comfort, Virginia, he spent a few weeks resting in a hotel. Although Crane had filed more than twenty dispatches in the three months he had covered the war, the World's business manager believed that the paper had not received its money's worth and fired him. In retaliation, Crane signed with Hearst's New York Journal with the wish to return to Cuba. He traveled first to Puerto Rico and then to Havana. In September, rumors began to spread that Crane, who was working anonymously, had either been killed or disappeared. He sporadically sent out dispatches and stories; he wrote about the mood in Havana, the crowded city sidewalks, and other topics, but he was soon desperate for money again. Taylor, left alone in England, was also penniless. She became frantic with worry over her lover's whereabouts; they were not in direct communication until the end of the year. Crane left Havana and arrived in England on January 11, 1899.

Death

Rent on Ravensbrook had not been paid for a year. Upon returning to England, Crane secured a solicitor to act as guarantor for their debts, after which Crane and Taylor relocated to Brede Place. This manor in Sussex, which dated to the 14thÂ century and had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing, was offered to them by friends at a modest rent. The relocation appeared to give hope to Crane, but his money problems continued. Deciding that he could no longer afford to write for American publications, he concentrated on publishing in English magazines.

Crane pushed himself to write feverishly during the first months at Brede; he told his publisher that he was "doing more work now than I have at any other period in my life". His health worsened, and by late 1899 he was asking friends about health resorts. The Monster and Other Stories was in production and War Is Kind, his second collection of poems, was published in the United States in May. None of his books after The Red Badge of Courage had sold well, and he bought a typewriter to spur output. Active Service, a novella based on Crane's correspondence experience, was published in October. The New York Times reviewer questioned "whether the author of 'Active Service' himself really sees anything remarkable in his newspapery hero."

In December, the couple held an elaborate Christmas party at Brede, attended by Conrad, Henry James, H. G. Wells and other friends; it lasted several days. On December 29 Crane suffered a severe pulmonary hemorrhage. In January 1900 he'd recovered sufficiently to work on a new novel, The O'Ruddy, completing 25 of the 33Â chapters. Plans were made for him to travel as a correspondent to Gibraltar to write sketches from Saint Helena, the site of a Boer prison, but at the end of March and in early April he suffered two more hemorrhages. Taylor took over most of Crane's correspondence while he was ill, writing to friends for monetary aid. The couple planned to travel on the continent, but Conrad, upon visiting Crane for the last time, remarked that his friend's "wasted face was enough to tell me that it was the most forlorn of all hopes."

On May 28, the couple arrived at Badenweiler, Germany, a health spa on the edge of the Black Forest. Despite his weakened condition, Crane continued to dictate fragmentary episodes for the completion of The O'Ruddy. He died on June 5, 1900, at the age of 28. In his will he left everything to Taylor, who took his body to New Jersey for burial. Crane was interred in the Evergreen Cemetery in what is now Newark, New Jersey.

Fiction and poetry

Style and technique

Stephen Crane's fiction is typically categorized as representative of Naturalism, American realism, Impressionism or a mixture of the three. Critic Sergio Perosa, for example, wrote in his essay, "Stephen Crane fra naturalismo e impressionismo," that the work presents a "symbiosis" of Naturalistic ideals and Impressionistic methods. When asked whether or not he would write an autobiography in 1896, Crane responded that he "dare not say that I am honest. I merely say that I am as nearly honest as a weak mental machinery will allow." Similarities between the stylistic techniques in Crane's writing and Impressionist paintingâ"including the use of color and chiaroscuroâ"are often cited to support the theory that Crane was not only an Impressionist but also influenced by the movement. H. G. Wells remarked upon "the great influence of the studio" on Crane's work, quoting a passage from The Red Badge of Courage as an example: "At nightfall the column broke into regimental pieces, and the fragments went into the fields to camp. Tents sprang up like strange plants. Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night.... From this little distance the many fires, with the black forms of men passing to and fro before the crimson rays, made weird and satanic effects." Although no direct evidence exists that Crane formulated a precise theory of his craft, he vehemently rejected sentimentality, asserting that "a story should be logical in its action and faithful to character. Truth to life itself was the only test, the greatest artists were the simplest, and simple because they were true."

Poet and biographer John Berryman suggested that there were three basic variations, or "norms", of Crane's narrative style. The first, being "flexible, swift, abrupt and nervous", is best exemplified in The Red Badge of Courage, while the second ("supple majesty") is believed to relate to "The Open Boat", and the third ("much more closed, circumstantial and 'normal' in feeling and syntax") to later works such as The Monster. Crane's work, however, cannot be determined by style solely on chronology. Not only does his fiction not take place in any particular region with similar characters, but it varies from serious in tone to reportorial writing and light fiction. Crane's writing, both fiction and nonfiction, is consistently driven by immediacy and is at once concentrated, vivid and intense. The novels and short stories contain poetic characteristics such as shorthand prose, suggestibility, shifts in perspective and ellipses between and within sentences. Similarly, omission plays a large part in Crane's work; the names of his protagonists are not commonly used and sometimes they are not named at all.

Crane was often criticized by early reviewers for his frequent incorporation of everyday speech into dialogue, mimicking the regional accents of his characters with colloquial stylization. This is apparent in his first novel, in which Crane ignored the romantic, sentimental approach of slum fiction; he instead concentrated on the cruelty and sordid aspects of poverty, expressed by the brashness of the Bowery's crude dialect and profanity, which he used lavishly. The distinct dialect of his Bowery characters is apparent at the beginning of the text; the title character admonishes her brother saying: "Yeh knows it puts mudder out when yes comes home half dead, an' it's like we'll all get a poundin'."

Major themes

Crane's work is often thematically driven by Naturalistic and Realistic concerns, including ideals versus realities, spiritual crises and fear. These themes are particularly evident in Crane's first three novels, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage and George's Mother. The three main characters search for a way to make their dreams come true, but ultimately suffer from crises of identity. Crane was fascinated by war and death, as well as fire, disfigurement, fear and courage, all of which inspired him to write many works based on these concepts. In The Red Badge of Courage, the main character both longs for the heroics of battle but ultimately fears it, demonstrating the dichotomy of courage and cowardice. He experiences the threat of death, misery and a loss of self.

Extreme isolation from society and community is also apparent in Crane's work. During the most intense battle scenes in The Red Badge of Courage, for example, the story's focus is mainly "on the inner responses of a self unaware of others". In "The Open Boat", "An Experiment in Misery" and other stories, Crane uses light, motion and color to express degrees of epistemological uncertainty. Similar to other Naturalistic writers, Crane scrutinizes the position of man, who has been isolated not only from society, but also from God and nature. "The Open Boat", for example, distances itself from Romantic optimism and affirmation of man's place in the world by concentrating on the characters' isolation.

Novels

Beginning with the publication of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets in 1893, Crane was recognized by critics mainly as a novelist. Maggie was initially rejected by numerous publishers because of its atypical and true-to-life depictions of class warfare, which clashed with the sentimental tales of that time. Rather than focusing on the very rich or middle class, the novel's characters are lower-class denizens of New York's Bowery. The main character, Maggie, descends into prostitution after being led astray by her lover. Although the novel's plot is simple, its dramatic mood, quick pace and portrayal of Bowery life have made it memorable. Maggie is not merely an account of slum life, but also represents eternal symbols. In his first draft, Crane did not give his characters proper names. Instead, they were identified by epithets: Maggie, for example, was the girl who "blossomed in a mud-puddle" and Pete, her seducer, was a "knight". The novel is dominated by bitter irony and anger, as well as destructive morality and treacherous sentiment. Critics would later call the novel "the first dark flower of American Naturalism" for its distinctive elements of naturalistic fiction.

Written thirty years after the end of the Civil War and before Crane had any experience of battle, The Red Badge of Courage was innovative stylistically as well as psychologically. Often described as a war novel, it focuses less on battle and more on the main character's psyche and his reactions and responses in war. It is believed that Crane based the fictional battle in the novel on that of Chancellorsville; he may also have interviewed veterans of the 124th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commonly known as the Orange Blossoms, in Port Jervis, New York. Told in a third-person limited point of view, it reflects the private experience of Henry Fleming, a young soldier who flees from combat. The Red Badge of Courage is notable in its vivid descriptions and well-cadenced prose, both of which help create suspense within the story. Similarly, by substituting epithets for characters' names ("the youth", "the tattered soldier"), Crane injects an allegorical quality into his work, making his characters point to a specific characteristic of man. Like Crane's first novel, The Red Badge of Courage has a deeply ironic tone which increases in severity as the novel progresses. The title of the work is ironic; Henry wishes "that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage", echoing a wish to have been wounded in battle. The wound he does receive (from the rifle butt of a fleeing Union soldier) is not a badge of courage but a badge of shame.

The novel expresses a strong connection between humankind and nature, a frequent and prominent concern in Crane's fiction and poetry throughout his career. Whereas contemporary writers (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau) focused on a sympathetic bond on the two elements, Crane wrote from the perspective that human consciousness distanced humans from nature. In The Red Badge of Courage, this distance is paired with a great number of references to animals, and men with animalistic characteristics: people "howl", "squawk", "growl", or "snarl".

Since the resurgence of Crane's popularity in the 1920s, The Red Badge of Courage has been deemed a major American text. The novel has been anthologized numerous times, including in Ernest Hemingway's 1942 collection Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time. In the introduction, Hemingway wrote that the novel "is one of the finest books of our literature, and I include it entire because it is all as much of a piece as a great poem is."

Crane's later novels have not received as much critical praise. After the success of The Red Badge of Courage, Crane wrote another tale set in the Bowery. George's Mother is less allegorical and more personal than his two previous novels, and it focuses on the conflict between a church-going, temperance-adhering woman (thought to be based on Crane's mother) and her single remaining offspring, who is a naive dreamer. Critical response to the novel was mixed. The Third Violet, a romance that he wrote quickly after publishing The Red Badge of Courage, is typically considered as Crane's attempt to appeal to popular audiences. Crane considered it a "quiet little story." Although it contained autobiographical details, the characters have been deemed inauthentic and stereotypical. Crane's second to last novel, Active Service, revolves around the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, with which the author was familiar. Although noted for its satirical take on the melodramatic and highly passionate works that were popular of the nineteenth century, the novel was not successful. It is generally accepted by critics that Crane's work suffered at this point due to the speed which he wrote in order to meet his high expenses. His last novel, a suspenseful and picaresque work entitled The O'Ruddy, was finished posthumously by Robert Barr and published in 1903.

Short fiction

Crane wrote many different types of fictional pieces while indiscriminately applying to them terms such as "story", "tale" and "sketch". For this reason, critics have found clear-cut classification of Crane's work problematic. While "The Open Boat" and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" are often considered short stories, others are variously identified.

In an 1896 interview with Herbert P. Williams, a reporter for the Boston Herald, Crane said that he did "not find that short stories are utterly different in character from other fiction. It seems to me that short stories are the easiest things we write." During his brief literary career, he wrote more than a hundred short stories and fictional sketches. Crane's early fiction was based in camping expeditions in his teen years; these stories eventually became known as The Sullivan County Tales and Sketches. He considered these "sketches", which are mostly humorous and not of the same caliber of work as his later fiction, to be "articles of many kinds," in that they are part fiction and part journalism.

The subject matter for his stories varied extensively. His early New York City sketches and Bowery tales accurately described the results of industrialization, immigration and the growth of cities and their slums. His collection of six short stories, The Little Regiment, covered familiar ground with the American Civil War, a subject for which he became famous with The Red Badge of Courage. Although similar to Crane's noted novel, The Little Regiment was believed to lack vigor and originality. Realizing the limitations of these tales, Crane wrote: "I have invented the sum of my invention with regard to war and this story keeps me in internal despair."

The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure (1898) contains thirteen short stories that deal with three periods in Crane's life: his Asbury Park boyhood, his trip to the West and Mexico in 1895, and his Cuban adventure in 1897. This collection was well received and included several of his most critically successful works. His 1899 collection, The Monster and Other Stories, was similarly well received.

Two posthumously published collections were not as successful. In August 1900 The Whilomville Stories were published, a collection of thirteen stories that Crane wrote during the last year of his life. The work deals almost exclusively with boyhood, and the stories are drawn from events occurring in Port Jervis, where Crane lived from the age of six to eleven. Focusing on small-town America, the stories tend toward sentimentality, but remain perceptive of the lives of children. Wounds in the Rain, published in September 1900, contains fictional tales based on Crane's reports for the World and the Journal during the Spanishâ"American War. These stories, which Crane wrote while desperately ill, include "The Price of the Harness" and "The Lone Charge of William B. Perkins" and are dramatic, ironic and sometimes humorous.

Despite Crane's prolific output, only four stories--"The Open Boat", "The Blue Hotel", "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", and The Monsterâ"have received extensive attention from scholars. H. G. Wells considered "The Open Boat" to be "beyond all question, the crown of all his work", and it is one of the most frequently discussed of Crane's works.

Poetry

Crane's poems, which he preferred to call "lines", are typically not given as much scholarly attention as his fiction; no anthology contained Crane's verse until 1926. Although it is not certain when Crane began to write poetry seriously, he once said that his overall poetic aim was "to give my ideas of life as a whole, so far as I know it". The poetic style used in both of his books of poetry, The Black Riders and Other Lines and War is Kind, was unconventional for the time in that it was written in free verse without rhyme, meter, or even titles for individual works. They are typically short in length; although several poems, such as "Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind", use stanzas and refrains, most do not. Crane also differed from his peers and poets of later generations in that his work contains allegory, dialectic and narrative situations.

Critic Ruth Miller claimed that Crane wrote "an intellectual poetry rather than a poetry that evokes feeling, a poetry that stimulates the mind rather than arouses the heart". In the most complexly organized poems, the significance of the states of mind or feelings is ambiguous, but Crane's poems tend to affirm certain elemental attitudes, beliefs, opinions and stances toward God, man and the universe. The Black Riders in particular is essentially a dramatic concept and the poems provide continuity within the dramatic structure. There is also a dramatic interplay in which there is frequently a major voice reporting an incident seen ("In the desert / I saw a creature, naked, bestial") or experienced ("A learned man came to me once"). The second voice or additional voices represent a point of view which is revealed to be inferior; when these clash, a dominant attitude emerges.

Legacy

In four years, Crane published five novels, two volumes of poetry, three short story collections, two books of war stories, and numerous works of short fiction and reporting. Today he is mainly remembered for The Red Badge of Courage, which is regarded as an American classic. The novel has been adapted several times for the screen, including John Huston's 1951 version. By the time of his death, Crane had become one of the best known writers of his generation. His eccentric lifestyle, frequent newspaper reporting, association with other famous authors, and expatriate status made him somewhat of an international celebrity. Although most stories about his life tended toward the romantic, rumors about his alleged drug use and alcoholism persisted long after his death.

By the early 1920s, Crane and his work were nearly forgotten. It was not until Thomas Beer published his biography in 1923, which was followed by editor Wilson Follett's The Work of Stephen Crane (1925â"1927), that Crane's writing came to the attention of a scholarly audience. Crane's reputation was then enhanced by faithful support from writer friends such as Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells and Ford Madox Ford, all of whom either published recollections or commented upon their time with Crane. John Berryman's 1950 biography of Crane further established him as an important American author. Since 1951 there has been a steady outpouring of articles, monographs and reprints in Crane scholarship.

Today, Crane is considered one of the most innovative writers of the 1890s. His peers, including Conrad and James, as well as later writers such as Robert Frost, Ezra Pound and Willa Cather, hailed Crane as one of the finest creative spirits of his time. His work was described by Wells as "the first expression of the opening mind of a new period, or, at least, the early emphatic phase of a new initiative." Wells said that "beyond dispute", Crane was "the best writer of our generation, and his untimely death was an irreparable loss to our literature." Conrad wrote that Crane was an "artist" and "a seer with a gift for rendering the significant on the surface of things and with an incomparable insight into primitive emotions". Crane's work has proved inspirational for future writers; not only have scholars drawn similarities between Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and The Red Badge of Courage, but Crane's fiction is thought to have been an important inspiration for Hemingway and his fellow Modernists. In 1936, Hemingway wrote in The Green Hills of Africa that "The good writers are Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Mark Twain. That's not the order they're good in. There is no order for good writers." Crane's poetry is thought to have been a precursor to the Imagist movement, and his short fiction has also influenced American literature. "The Open Boat", "The Blue Hotel", The Monster and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" are generally considered by critics to be examples of Crane's best work.

Several institutions and places have endeavored to keep Crane's legacy alive. Badenweiler and the house where he died became something of a tourist attraction for its fleeting association with the American author; Alexander Woollcott attested to the fact that, long after Crane's death, tourists would be directed to the room where he died. Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library has a collection of Crane and Taylor's personal correspondence dating from 1895 to 1908. Near his brother Edmund's Sullivan County home in New York, where Crane stayed for a short time, a pond is named after him. The Stephen Crane House in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where the author lived with his siblings for nine years, is operated as a museum dedicated to his life and work. Syracuse University has an annual Stephen Crane Lecture Series which is sponsored by the Dikaia Foundation.

Columbia University purchased much of the Stephen Crane materials held by Cora Crane at her death. The Crane Collection is one of the largest in the nation of his materials. Columbia University had an exhibit: 'The Tall Swift Shadow of a Ship at Night': Stephen and Cora Crane, November 2, 1995 through February 16, 1996, about the lives of the couple, featuring letters and other documents and memorabilia.

Selected list of works

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895)
George's Mother (1896)
The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure (1898)
War is Kind (1899)
Active Service (1899)
The Monster and Other Stories (1899)
Wounds in the Rain (1900)
The O'Ruddy (1903)

References

Bibliography

Primary sources

Crane, Stephen. 1972. The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane. Ed. Joseph Katz. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-9130-4.
Crane, Stephen. 1993. The Open Boat and Other Stories. New York: Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-27547-7.
Crane, Stephen. 1895. The Red Badge of Courage. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

Secondary sources

Bassan, Maurice. 1967. "Introduction". Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Beer, Thomas. 1972. Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-374-90519-3.
Benfey, Christopher. 1992. The Double Life of Stephen Crane. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-56864-8.
Bergon, Frank. 1975. Stephen Crane's Artistry. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-03905-0.
Berryman, John. 1962. Stephen Crane. New York: Meridian.
Bloom, Harold. 1996. Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 978-0-585-25371-8.
Bloom, Harold. 2002. Stephen Crane. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0-7910-6345-3.
Cazemajou, Jean. 1969. Stephen Crane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-0526-2.
Conrad, Joseph. 1967. "His War Book". Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Maurice Bassan. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Davis, Linda H. 1998. Badge of Courage: The Life of Stephen Crane. New York: Mifflin. ISBN 0-89919-934-8.
Gibson, Donald B. 1988. The Red Badge of Courage: Redefining the Hero. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7961-2.
Gibson, Donald B. 1968. The Fiction of Stephen Crane. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Gullason, Thomas A. 1961. "Thematic Patterns in Stephen Crane's Early Novels". Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 16, No. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hoffman, Daniel. 1967. "Crane and Poetic Tradition". Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Maurice Bassan. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Katz, Joseph. 1972. "Introduction". The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-9130-4.
Knapp, Bettina L. 1987. Stephen Crane. New York: Ungar Publishing Co.
Kwiat, Joseph J. 1987. "Stephen Crane, Literary-Reporter: Commonplace Experience and Artistic Transcendence". Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 8, No. 1. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Linson, Corwin K. 1958. My Stephen Crane. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Nagel, James. 1980. Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-00267-0.
Robertson, Michael. 1997. Stephen Crane, Journalism, and the Making of Modern American Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10969-5.
Rogers, Rodney O. 1969. "Stephen Crane and Impressionism". Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 24, No. 3. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schaefer, Michael W. 1996. A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Stephen Crane. New York: G.K. Hall & Co. ISBN 0-8161-7285-4.
Shulman, Robert. 1978. "Community, Perception, and the Development of Stephen Crane: From The Red Badge to 'The Open Boat'". American Literature, Vol. 50, No. 3. Duke, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Sorrentino, Paul. 2006. Student Companion to Stephen Crane. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-33104-9.
Sorrentino, Paul. 2014. Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674049536.
Stallman, R. W. 1968. Stephen Crane: A Biography. New York: Braziller, Inc.
Wells, H. G. 1900. Stephen Crane. From an English Standpoint. New York: North American Review Publishing Company.
Weatherford, Richard M. 1997. "Introduction". Stephen Crane: The Critical Heritage. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15936-9.
Wertheim, Stanley. 1997. A Stephen Crane Encyclopedia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29692-8.
Wertheim, Stanley and Paul Sorrentino. 1994. The Crane Log: A Documentary Life of Stephen Crane, 1871â"1900. New York: G. K. Hall & Co. ISBN 0-8161-7292-7.
Wolford, Chester L. 1989. Stephen Crane: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-8315-6.

External links

Stephen Crane's collected journalism at The Archive of American Journalism
The Stephen Crane Society
The Red Badge of Courage Site
Works by Stephen Crane at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Stephen Crane at Internet Archive
Works by Stephen Crane at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
"Syracuse and a Civil War Masterpiece," by Rick Burton
SS Commodore Wreck Site
Stephen Crane at the Internet Movie Database

Florida

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 08:23:00 +0000

Florida /ËflÉ'rÉªdÉ/ is a state in the southeast United States, bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida. Florida is the 22nd most extensive, the 3rd most populous, and the 8th most densely populated of the United States. Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. The Miami metropolitan area is the eighth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Tallahassee is the state capital.

A peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Straits of Florida, it has the longest coastline in the contiguous United States, approximately 1,350 miles (2,170Â km), and is the only state that borders both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Much of the state is at or near sea level and is characterized by sedimentary soil. The climate varies from subtropical in the north to tropical in the south. The American alligator, American crocodile, Florida panther and manatee can be found in the Everglades National Park.

Since the first European contact was made in 1513 by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de LeÃ³nÂ â" who named it La Florida ([la floËÉ¾iÃ°a] "The Flowery") upon landing there in the Easter season, Pascua FloridaÂ â" Florida was a challenge for the European colonial powers before it gained statehood in the United States in 1845. It was a principal location of the Seminole Wars against the Indians, and racial segregation after the American Civil War.

Today, Florida is distinguished by its large Hispanic community and high population growth, as well as its increasing environmental concerns. Its economy relies mainly on tourism, agriculture, and transportation, which developed in the late 19th century. Florida is also known for its amusement parks, the production of oranges and the Kennedy Space Center.

Florida culture is a reflection of influences and multiple inheritance; Native American, European American, Hispanic and African American heritages can be found in the architecture and cuisine. Florida has attracted many writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, and continues to attract celebrities and athletes. It is internationally known for golf, tennis, auto racing and water sports.

History

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By the 16th century, the earliest time for which there is a historical record, major Native American groups included the Apalachee (of the Florida Panhandle), the Timucua (of northern and central Florida), the Ais (of the central Atlantic coast), the Tocobaga (of the Tampa Bay area), the Calusa (of southwest Florida) and the Tequesta (of the southeastern coast).

European arrival

Florida was the first part of the continental United States to be visited by Europeans. The earliest known European explorers came with the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de LeÃ³n. De LeÃ³n spotted the peninsula on April 2, 1513, and he named the region La Florida ("flowery land"). The story that he was searching for the Fountain of Youth is a myth.

"By May 1539, Conquistador Hernando De Soto skirted the coast of Florida, searching for a deep harbor to land. He described seeing a thick wall of red mangroves spread mile after mile, some reaching as high as 70 feet (21Â m), with intertwined and elevated roots making landing difficult. Very soon, "many smokes" appeared "along the whole coast," billowing against the sky, when the Native ancestors of the Seminole spotted the newcomers and spread the alarm by signal fires". The Spanish introduced Christianity, cattle, horses, sheep, the Spanish language, and more to Florida. Both the Spanish and French established settlements in Florida with varying degrees of success. In 1559, Don TristÃ¡n de Luna y Arellano established a colony at present-day Pensacola, one of the first European settlements in the continental United States, but it was abandoned by 1561.

In 1565, the Spanish colony of St. Augustine (San AgustÃn) was established. Spain maintained tenuous control over the region by converting the local tribes to Christianity. The area of Spanish Florida diminished with the establishment of English colonies to the north and French colonies to the west. The English attacked St. Augustine, burning the city and its cathedral to the ground several times.

Florida attracted numerous Africans and African Americans from adjacent British colonies in North America who sought freedom from slavery. The Spanish Crown gave them freedom, and those freedmen settled north of St. Augustine in Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, the first free black settlement of its kind in what became the United States.

In 1763, Spain traded Florida to the Kingdom of Great Britain for control of Havana, Cuba, which had been captured by the British during the Seven Years' War. It was part of a large expansion of British territory following the country's victory in the Seven Years' War. Almost the entire Spanish population left, taking along most of the remaining indigenous population to Cuba. The British soon constructed the King's Road connecting St. Augustine to Georgia. The road crossed the St. Johns River at a narrow point, which the Seminole called Wacca Pilatka and the British named "Cow Ford", both names ostensibly reflecting the fact that cattle were brought across the river there. The British divided Florida into the two colonies of British East Florida and British West Florida. The British government gave land grants to officers and soldiers who had fought in the French and Indian War in order to encourage settlement. In order to induce settlers to move to the two new colonies reports of the natural wealth of Florida were published in England. A large number of British colonists who were "energetic and of good character" moved to Florida, mostly coming from South Carolina, Georgia and England though there was also a group of settlers who came from the colony of Bermuda. This would be the first permanent English-speaking population in what is now Duval County, Baker County, St. Johns County and Nassau County. The British built good public roads and introduced the cultivation of sugar cane, indigo and fruits as well the export of lumber. As a result of these initiatives northeastern Florida prospered economically in a way it never did under Spanish rule. Furthermore, the British governors were directed to call general assemblies as soon as possible in order to make laws for the Floridas and in the meantime they were, with the advice of councils, to establish courts. This would be the first introduction of much of the English-derived legal system which Florida still has today including trial-by-jury, habeas corpus and county-based government. Neither East Florida nor West Florida would send any representatives to Philadelphia to draft the Declaration of Independence. Florida would remain a Loyalist stronghold for the duration of the American Revolution

Spain received both Floridas after Britain's defeat by the American colonies and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles in 1783, continuing the division into East and West Florida.

Joining the United States; Indian Removal

Spanish presence was minor during that empire's second rule over Florida. The region became a haven for escaped slaves and a base for Indian attacks against the U.S., and the U.S. demanded Spain reform. There were almost no Spanish settlers and only a few soldiers.

Americans of English descent and Americans of Scots-Irish descent began moving into northern Florida from the backwoods of Georgia and South Carolina. Though technically not allowed by the Spanish authorities, the Spanish were never able to effectively police the border region and the backwoods settlers from the United States would continue to migrate into Florida unchecked. These migrants, mixing with the already present British settlers who had remained in Florida since the British period, would be the progenitors of the population known as Florida Crackers.

These American settlers established a permanent foothold in the area and ignored Spanish officials. The British settlers who had remained also resented Spanish rule, leading to a rebellion in 1810 and the establishment for ninety days of the so-called Free and Independent Republic of West Florida on September 23. After meetings beginning in June, rebels overcame the Spanish garrison at Baton Rouge (now in Louisiana), and unfurled the flag of the new republic: a single white star on a blue field. This flag would later become known as the "Bonnie Blue Flag".

In 1810, parts of West Florida were annexed by proclamation of President James Madison, who claimed the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase. These parts were incorporated into the newly formed Territory of Orleans. The U.S. annexed the Mobile District of West Florida to the Mississippi Territory in 1812. Spain continued to dispute the area, though the United States gradually increased the area it occupied.

Seminole Indians based in East Florida began raiding Georgia settlements, and offering havens for runaway slaves. The United States Army led increasingly frequent incursions into Spanish territory, including the 1817â"1818 campaign against the Seminole Indians by Andrew Jackson that became known as the First Seminole War. The United States now effectively controlled East Florida. Control was necessary according to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams because Florida had become "a derelict open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States, and serving no other earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance to them.". Florida had become a burden to Spain, which could not afford to send settlers or garrisons. Madrid therefore decided to cede the territory to the United States through the Adams-OnÃs Treaty, which took effect in 1821. President James Monroe was authorized on March 3, 1821 to take possession of East Florida and West Florida for the United States and provide for initial governance. Andrew Jackson served as military governor of the newly acquired territory, but only for a brief period. On March 30, 1822, the United States merged East Florida and part of West Florida into the Florida Territory.

By the early 1800s, Indian removal was a significant issue throughout the southeastern U.S. and also in Florida. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act and as settlement increased, pressure grew on the United States government to remove the Indians from Florida. Seminoles harbored runaway blacks, known as the Black Seminoles, and clashes between whites and Indians grew with the influx of new settlers. In 1832, the Treaty of Payne's Landing promised to the Seminoles lands west of the Mississippi River if they agreed to leave Florida. Many Seminole left at this time.

Some Seminoles remained, and the U.S. Army arrived in Florida, leading to the Second Seminole War (1835â"42). Following the war, approximately 3,000 Seminole and 800 Black Seminole were removed to Indian Territory. A few hundred Seminole remained in Florida in the Everglades.

On March 3, 1845, Florida became the 27th state of the United States of America. The state was admitted as a slave state, although initially its population grew slowly.

White settlers continued to encroach on Seminole lands, and the United States intervened to move the remaining Seminoles to the West. The Third Seminole War (1855â"58) resulted in the forced removal of most of the remaining Seminoles, although hundreds of Seminole Indians remained in the Everglades.

Slavery, Civil War, and Disenfranchisement

White settlers began to establish cotton plantations in Florida, which required numerous laborers, which they supplied by buying slaves in the domestic market. By 1860 Florida had only 140,424 people, of whom 44% were enslaved. There were fewer than 1,000 free African Americans before the Civil War.

In January 1861, Florida declared its secession from the Union and became a founding member of the Confederate States. The Confederates received little help from Florida; the 15,000 men it offered were generally sent elsewhere. The largest engagements in the state were the Battle of Olustee, on February 20, 1864, and the Battle of Natural Bridge, on March 6, 1865. Both were Confederate victories. The war ended in 1865.

Following the Civil War, Florida's congressional representation was restored on June 25, 1868. After the Reconstruction period ended in 1876, white Democrats regained power in the state legislature. In 1885 they created a new constitution, followed by statutes through 1889 that disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites.

Until the mid-20th century, Florida was the least populous Southern state. In 1900 its population was only 528,542, of whom nearly 44% were African American, the same proportion as before the Civil War. The boll weevil devastated cotton crops.

Forty thousand blacks, roughly one-fifth of their 1900 population, left the state in the Great Migration. They left due to lynchings and racial violence, and for better opportunities. Disfranchisement for most African Americans in the state persisted until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s gained federal legislation in 1965 to enforce protection of their constitutional suffrage.

20th century growth

Historically, Florida's economy was based upon agricultural products such as cattle farming, sugarcane, citrus, tomatoes, and strawberries.

Economic prosperity in the 1920s stimulated tourism to Florida and related development of hotels and resort communities. Combined with its sudden elevation in profile was the Florida land boom of the 1920s, which brought a brief period of intense land development. Devastating hurricanes in 1926 and 1928, followed by the Great Depression, brought that period to a halt. Florida's economy did not fully recover until the military buildup for World War II.

The climate, tempered by the growing availability of air conditioning, and low cost of living made the state a haven. Migration from the Rust Belt and the Northeast sharply increased Florida's population after the war. In recent decades, more migrants have come for the jobs in a developing economy.

With a population of more than 18 million according to the 2010 census, Florida is the most populous state in the Southeastern United States, and the fourth most populous in the United States.

Geography

Much of the state of Florida is situated on a peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean and the Straits of Florida. Spanning two time zones, it extends to the northwest into a panhandle, extending along the northern Gulf of Mexico. It is bordered on the north by the states of Georgia and Alabama, and on the west, at the end of the panhandle, by Alabama. It is near several Caribbean countries, particularly The Bahamas and Cuba. Florida is one of the largest states east of the Mississippi River, and only Alaska and Michigan are larger in water area. The water boundary is 3 nautical miles (3.5Â mi; 5.6Â km) offshore in the Atlantic Ocean and 9 nautical miles (10Â mi; 17Â km) offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

At 345 feet (105Â m) above mean sea level, Britton Hill is the highest point in Florida and the lowest highpoint of any U.S. state. Much of the state south of Orlando lies at a lower elevation than northern Florida, and is fairly level. Much of the state is at or near sea level.

However some places such as Clearwater have promontories that rise 50 to 100Â ft (15 to 30Â m) above the water. Much of Central and North Florida, typically 25Â mi (40Â km) or more away from the coastline, have rolling hills with elevations ranging from 100 to 250Â ft (30 to 76Â m). The highest point in peninsular Florida (east and south of the Suwanee River), Sugarloaf Mountain, is a 312-foot (95Â m) peak in Lake County.

Climate

The climate of Florida is tempered somewhat by the fact that no part of the state is distant from the ocean. North of Lake Okeechobee, the prevalent climate is humid subtropical (KÃ¶ppen: Cfa), while coastal areas south of the lake (including the Florida Keys) have a true tropical climate (KÃ¶ppen: Aw). Mean high temperatures for late July are primarily in the low 90s Fahrenheit (32â"34Â Â°C). Mean low temperatures for early to mid January range from the low 40s Fahrenheit (4â"7Â Â°C) in northern Florida to above 60Â Â°F (16Â Â°C) from Miami on southward. With an average daily temperature of 70.7Â Â°F (21.5Â Â°C), it is the warmest state in the country.

In the summer, high temperatures in the state seldom exceed 100Â Â°F (38Â Â°C). Several record cold maxima have been in the 30s Â°F (â'1 to 4Â Â°C) and record lows have been in the 10s (â'12 to â'7Â Â°C). These temperatures normally extend at most a few days at a time in the northern and central parts of Florida. Southern Florida, however, rarely encounters freezing temperatures.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in Florida was 109Â Â°F (43Â Â°C), which was set on June 29, 1931 in Monticello. The coldest temperature was â'2Â Â°F (â'19Â Â°C), on February 13, 1899, just 25 miles (40Â km) away, in Tallahassee.

Due to its subtropical climate, Florida rarely receives snow. However, on rare occasions, a combination of cold moisture and freezing temperatures can result in snowfall. Frost is more common than snow, occurring several times during the winter months.

The USDA Plant hardiness zones for the state range from zone 8a (no colder than 10Â Â°F or â'12Â Â°C) in the inland western panhandle to zone 11b (no colder than 45Â Â°F or 7Â Â°C) in the lower Florida Keys.

Florida's nickname is the "Sunshine State", but severe weather is a common occurrence in the state. Central Florida is known as the lightning capital of the United States, as it experiences more lightning strikes than anywhere else in the country. Florida has one of the highest average precipitation levels of any state, in large part because afternoon thunderstorms are common in much of the state from late spring until early autumn. A narrow eastern part of the state including Orlando and Jacksonville receives between 2,400 and 2,800 hours of sunshine annually. The rest of the state, including Miami, receives between 2,800 and 3,200 hours annually.

Florida leads the United States in tornadoes per area (when including waterspouts) but they do not typically reach the intensity of those in the Midwest and Great Plains. Hail often accompanies the most severe thunderstorms.

Hurricanes pose a severe threat each year during the June 1 to November 30 hurricane season, particularly from August to October. Florida is the most hurricane-prone state, with subtropical or tropical water on a lengthy coastline. Of the category 4 or higher storms that have struck the United States, 83% have either hit Florida or Texas. From 1851 to 2006, Florida was struck by 114 hurricanes, 37 of them majorâ"category 3 and above. It is rare for a hurricane season to pass without any impact in the state by at least a tropical storm.

Florida was the site of what was then the costliest weather disaster in U.S. history, Hurricane Andrew, which caused more than $25 billion in damage when it struck in August 1992; it held that distinction until 2005, when Hurricane Katrina surpassed it. Hurricane WilmaÂ â" the second most expensive hurricane in Florida historyÂ â" landed just south of Marco Island in October 2004.

Fauna

Florida is host to many types of wildlife including:

Marine mammals: bottlenose dolphin, short-finned pilot whale, North Atlantic right whale, West Indian manatee

Mammals: Florida panther, northern river otter, mink, eastern cottontail rabbit, marsh rabbit, raccoon, striped skunk, squirrel, white-tailed deer, Key deer, bobcats, gray fox, coyote, wild boar, Florida black bear, nine-banded armadillos, Virginia opossum

Reptiles: eastern diamondback and pygmy rattlesnakes, gopher tortoise, green and leatherback sea turtles, and eastern indigo snake. In 2012, there were about one million American alligators and 1,500 crocodiles.

Birds: peregrine falcon, bald eagle, northern caracara, snail kite, osprey, white and brown pelicans, sea gulls, whooping and sandhill cranes, roseate spoonbill, Florida scrub jay (state endemic), and others. One subspecies of wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, namely subspecies osceola, is found only in Florida. The state is a wintering location for many species of eastern North American birds.
- As a result of climate change, there have been small numbers of several new species normally native to cooler areas to the north: snowy owls, snow buntings, harlequin ducks, and razorbills. These have been seen in the northern part of the state.

Invertebrates: carpenter ants, termites, American cockroach, Africanized bees, the Miami blue butterfly, and the grizzled mantis.

The only known calving area for the northern right whale is off the coasts of Florida and Georgia.

The native bear population has risen from a historic low of 300 in the 1970s, to 3,000 in 2011.

Since their accidental importation from South America into North America in the 1930s, the red imported fire ant population has increased its territorial range to include most of the Southern United States, including Florida. They are more aggressive than most native ant species and have a painful sting.

A number of non-native snakes and lizards have been released in the wild. In 2010 the state created a hunting season for Burmese and Indian pythons, African rock pythons, green anacondas, and Nile monitor lizards. Green iguanas have also established a firm population in the southern part of the state.

There are about 500,000 feral pigs in Florida.

Flora

There are about 3,000 different types of wildflowers in Florida. This is the third most diverse state in the union, behind California and Texas, both larger states.

On the east coast of the state, mangroves have normally dominated the coast from Cocoa Beach southward; salt marshes from St. Augustine northward. From St. Augustine south to Cocoa Beach, the coast fluctuates between the two, depending on the annual weather conditions.

Environmental issues

Florida is a low per capita energy user. It is estimated that approximately 4% of energy in the state is generated through renewable resources. Florida's energy production is 6% of the nation's total energy output, while total production of pollutants is lower, with figures of 5.6% for nitrogen oxide, 5.1% for carbon dioxide, and 3.5% for sulfur dioxide.

All potable water resources have been controlled by the state government through five regional water authorities since 1972.

Red tide has been an issue on the southwest coast of Florida, as well as other areas. While there has been a great deal of conjecture over the cause of the toxic algae bloom, there is no evidence that it is being caused by pollution or that there has been an increase in the duration or frequency of red tides.

The Florida panther is close to extinction. A record 23 were killed in 2009 predominately by automobile collisions, leaving about 100 individuals in the wild. The Center for Biological Diversity and others have therefore called for a special protected area for the panther to be established. Manatees are also dying at a rate higher than their reproduction.

Much of Florida has an elevation of less than 12 feet (less than 3.7 meters), including populated areas such as Miami which are located on the coast. Miami and other parts of south Florida are the most vulnerable regions in the world to rising sea levels associated with global warming. The Atlantic beaches that are vital to the state's economy are being washed out to sea due to rising sea levels caused by climate change and the state is running out of accessible offshore sand reserves.

Geology

The Florida peninsula is a porous plateau of karst limestone sitting atop bedrock known as the Florida Platform. The largest deposits of potash in the United States are found in Florida.

Extended systems of underwater caves, sinkholes and springs are found throughout the state and supply most of the water used by residents. The limestone is topped with sandy soils deposited as ancient beaches over millions of years as global sea levels rose and fell. During the last glacial period, lower sea levels and a drier climate revealed a much wider peninsula, largely savanna. The Everglades, an enormously wide, slow-flowing river encompasses the southern tip of the peninsula. Sinkhole damage claims on property in the state exceeded a total of $2 billion from 2006 through 2010.

Florida is tied for last place as having the fewest earthquakes of any U.S. state. Earthquakes are rare because Florida is not located near any tectonic plate boundaries.

Demographics

Population

The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Florida was 19,893,297 on July 1, 2014, a 5.81% increase since the 2010 United States Census. The population of Florida in the 2010 census was 18,801,310. Florida was the seventh fastest-growing state in the U.S. in the 12-month period ending July 1, 2012. In 2010, the center of population of Florida was located between Fort Meade and Frostproof. The center of population has moved less than 5 miles (8Â km) to the east and approximately 1 mile (1.6Â km) to the north between 1980 and 2010 and has been located in Polk County since the 1960 census. The population exceeded 19.7 million by December 2014, surpassing the population of the state of New York for the first time.

Florida contains the highest percentage of people over 65 (17%). There were 186,102 military retirees living in the state in 2008. About two-thirds of the population was born in another state, the second highest in the country.

In 2010, illegal immigrants constituted an estimated 5.7% of the population. This was the sixth highest percentage of any state in the country. There were an estimated 675,000 illegal immigrants in the state in 2010.

A 2013 Gallup poll indicated that 47% of the residents agreed that Florida was the best state to live in. Results in other states ranged from a low of 18% to a high of 77%.

Municipalities and metropolitan areas

The legal name in Florida for a city, town or village is "municipality". In Florida there is no legal difference between towns, villages and cities.

In 2012, 75% of the population lived within 10 miles (16Â km) of the coastline.

The largest metropolitan area in the state as well as the entire southeastern United States is the Miami metropolitan area, with about 5.8 million people. The Tampa Bay Area, with over 2.8 million people, is the second largest; the Orlando metropolitan area, with over 2.2 million people, is the third; and the Jacksonville metropolitan area, with over 1.3 million people, is fourth.

Florida has 22 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB). 43 of Florida's 67 counties are in a MSA.

Racial and ethnic makeup

Hispanic and Latinos of any race made up 22.5% of the population in 2010.

Ancestry groups

In the 2000 Census, 1,278,586 people in Florida self-identified as having "American" ancestry; most of these people are of English descent, and some are of Scots-Irish descent; however, their families have lived in the state for so long, sometimes since the colonial period, that they choose to identify simply as having "American" ancestry or do not in fact know their own ancestry. In the 1980 United States census the largest ancestry group reported in Florida was English with 2,232,514 Floridians claiming that they were of English or mostly English ancestry. Their ancestry primarily goes back to the original thirteen colonies and thus many of them today simply claim "American" ancestry, though they are of predominately English stock. They were followed by Irish at 1,617,433.

White Americans of all European backgrounds are present in all areas of the state. In 1970, non-Hispanic whites were nearly 80% of Florida's population. Those of English and Irish ancestry are present in large numbers in all the urban/suburban areas across the state. Some native white Floridians, especially those who have descended from long-time Florida families, may refer to themselves as "Florida crackers"; others see the term as a derogatory one. Like whites in most of the other Southern states, they descend mainly from English and Scots-Irish settlers, as well as some other British settlers.

Florida's Hispanic population includes large communities of Cuban Americans in Miami and Tampa, Puerto Ricans in Orlando and Tampa, and Mexican/Central American migrant workers in inland West-Central and South Florida. The Hispanic community continues to grow more affluent and mobile. As of 2011, 57.0% of Florida's children under the age of 1 belonged to minority groups. Florida has a large and diverse Hispanic population, with Cubans and Puerto Ricans being the largest groups in the state. Nearly 80% of Cuban Americans live in Florida, especially South Florida where there is a long-standing and affluent Cuban community. Florida has the second largest Puerto Rican population after New York, as well as the fastest-growing in the nation. Puerto Ricans are more widespread throughout the state, though the heaviest concentrations are in the Orlando area of Central Florida.

Before the American Civil War, when slavery was legal, and during the Reconstruction Era that followed, blacks made up nearly half of the state's population. Their proportion declined over the next century, as many moved north in the Great Migration while large numbers of northern whites moved to the state. Recently, the state's proportion of black residents has begun to grow again. Today, large concentrations of black residents can be found in northern Florida (notably in Jacksonville, Gainesville, Tallahassee, and Pensacola), the Tampa Bay area, the Orlando area, especially in Orlando and Sanford. Aside from blacks descended from African slaves brought to the US south, there are also large numbers of blacks of West Indian, recent African, and Hispanic immigrant origins, especially in the Miami area. One of the largest numbers of both Haitians and Jamaicans can be found in Florida.

In response to segregation, disfranchisement and agricultural depression, many African Americans migrated from Florida to northern cities in the Great Migration, in waves from 1910 to 1940, and again starting in the later 1940s. They moved for jobs, better education for their children and the chance to vote and participate in society. Given migration of other groups into Florida, by 1960 the proportion of African Americans in the state had declined to 18%.

Languages

The most common languages spoken in Florida are English and Spanish. English is the state's official language, a position that was added to the Florida Constitution in 1988 in response to the state's growing Spanish-speaking Hispanic population. But 27% of Florida's population speaks a mother language other than English, and over 200 first languages other than English are spoken at home in the state.

The most common languages spoken in Florida as a first language in 2010 are:

73%Â â" English
20%Â â" Spanish
2%Â â" French Creole
No other language is spoken by more than 1% of the state's population

The most common accent throughout Florida is general American English, but there are a variety of English-language accents and dialects in Florida. Southern accents are common in northern Florida, while due to migration patterns, the east coast of Florida has a northeastern accent and the west coast of Florida has a midwestern accent.

Religion

The 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Survey showed the religious makeup of the state was as follows:

Christian 70%
- 24% Evangelical Protestant
- 14% Mainline Protestant
- 8% Black Protestant
- 21% Catholic
- 3% Other Christian
Jewish 3%
Other Non-Christian Faiths 3%
Unaffiliated 24%

In 2010, the three largest denominational groups in Florida were the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the United Methodist Church.

Florida is mostly Protestant, but Roman Catholicism is the single largest denomination in the state, due in significant part to the state's large Hispanic population. There is also a sizable Jewish community, located mainly in South Florida; this is the largest Jewish population in the South and the third largest in the country behind New York and California. Florida's current religious affiliations include Protestants at 48%, Roman Catholics at 26%, Jews at 3%, Jehovah's Witnesses at 1%, Muslim at 1%, Orthodox at 1%, Buddhists at 0.5% and Hindus at 0.5%. Atheists, deists, and other non-religious people compose 16% of Florida's population.

Governance

The basic structure, duties, function, and operations of the government of the state of Florida are defined and established by the Florida Constitution, which establishes the basic law of the state and guarantees various rights and freedoms of the people. The state government consists of three separate branches: judicial, executive, and legislative. The legislature enacts bills, which, if signed by the governor, become law.

The Florida Legislature comprises the Florida Senate, which has 40 members, and the Florida House of Representatives, which has 120 members. The current Governor of Florida is Rick Scott. The Florida Supreme Court consists of a Chief Justice and six Justices.

Florida has 67 counties. Some reference materials may show only 66 because Duval County is consolidated with the City of Jacksonville. There are 379 cities in Florida (out of 411) that report regularly to the Florida Department of Revenue, but there are other incorporated municipalities that do not. The state government's primary source of revenue is sales tax. Florida does not impose a personal income tax. The primary revenue source for cities and counties is property tax.

There were 800 federal corruption convictions from 1988 to 2007, more than any other state.

Elections history

Although most voters are registered Democrats, since 1952 the state has voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election except for the 1964, 1976, and 1996 elections, when the Democrat was from the South, and the 2008 and 2012 elections, when the Democrat was from the North. 2008 marked the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt that Florida had voted for a Northern Democrat. The first post-reconstruction Republican congressional representative was elected in 1954. The state's first post-reconstruction Republican senator was elected in 1968, two years after the first post-reconstruction Republican governor.

The state is considered a bellwether, voting for 13 successful presidential candidates since 1952, and for the loser three times.

In 1998, Democratic voters were most dominant in areas of the state with a high percentage of racial minorities as well as transplanted white liberals who primarily came from the northeastern United States. South Florida and the Miami metropolitan area was a good example, as it had a particularly high level of both racial minorities and white liberals. Because of this, the area has voted as one of the most Democratic areas of the state. The Daytona Beach area has been, to a lesser extent, somewhat similar to South Florida demographically and the city of Orlando had a large Hispanic population, which often favored Democrats. Republicans remain dominant throughout much of the rest of Florida particularly in the more rural and suburban areas, as is the case throughout the Deep South.

The fast-growing I-4 corridor area, which runs through Central Florida and connects the cities of Daytona Beach, Orlando, and Tampa/St. Petersburg, had a fairly similar number of both Republican and Democratic voters. The area is often seen as a merging point of the conservative northern portion of the state and the liberal southern portion, making it the biggest swing area in the state. In recent times, whichever way the I-4 corridor area, containing 40% of Florida voters, votes has often determined who will win the state of Florida in presidential elections.

The Democratic Party has maintained an edge in voter registration, both statewide and in 40 of the 67 counties, including Miami-Dade County, Broward County, and Palm Beach County, the state's three most populous counties.

Recent elections

In 2000, George W. Bush won the U.S. Presidential election by a margin of 271â"266 in the Electoral College. Of the 271 electoral votes for Bush, 25 were cast by electors from Florida. Reapportionment following the 2000 United States Census gave the state two more seats in the House of Representatives.

Despite the Democratic advantage in registration, a safe Senate seat and Obama winning the state, as of 2008, Republicans controlled the governorship and most other statewide elective offices and 17 of the state's 27 seats in the House of Representatives. Florida has been listed as a swing state in Presidential elections since 1950, voting for the losing candidate once in that period of time. In the closely contested 2000 election the state played a pivotal role.

In 2008, delegates of both the Republican Florida primary election and Democratic Florida primary election were stripped of half of their votes when the conventions met in August due to violation of both parties' national rules.

In the 2010 elections, Republicans solidified their dominance statewide, by winning the governor's mansion, maintaining firm majorities in both houses of the state legislature. They won four previously Democratic-held seats to create a 19â"6 Republican majority delegation representing Florida in the federal House of Representatives. As a result of the 2010 United States Census, Florida gained two House of Representative seats in 2012.

Statutes

The state repealed mandatory auto inspection in 1981.

In 1972, the state made personal injury protection auto insurance mandatory for drivers, becoming the second in the nation to enact a no-fault insurance law. The ease of receiving payments under this law is seen as precipitating a major increase in insurance fraud. Auto insurance fraud was the highest in the nation in 2011, estimated at close to $1 billion. Fraud is particularly centered in the Miami-Dade metropolitan and Tampa areas.

Law enforcement

Florida was ranked the fifth most dangerous state in 2009. Ranking was based on the record of serious felonies committed in 2008. The state was the sixth highest scammed state in 2010. It ranked first in mortgage fraud in 2009.

In 2009, 44% of highway fatalities involved alcohol. Florida is one of seven states that prohibit the open carry of handguns. This law was passed in 1987.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, Florida has the highest per capita rate of both reported fraud and other types of complaints and reported including identity theft complaints.

Economy

In the twentieth century, tourism, industry, construction, international banking, biomedical and life sciences, healthcare research, simulation training, aerospace and defense, and commercial space travel have contributed to the state's economic development.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Florida in 2010 was $748 billion. Its GDP is the fourth largest economy in the United States. In 2010, it became the fourth largest exporter of trade goods. The major contributors to the state's gross output in 2007 were general services, financial services, trade, transportation and public utilities, manufacturing and construction respectively. In 2010â"11, the state budget was $70.5 billion, having reached a high of $73.8 billion in 2006â"07. Chief Executive Magazine name Florida the third "Best State for Business" in 2011.

The economy is driven almost entirely by its nineteen metropolitan areas. In 2004, they had a combined total of 95.7% of the state's domestic product.

Personal income

In 2011, Florida's per capita personal income was $39,563, ranking 27th in the nation. In February 2011, the state's unemployment rate was 11.5%. Florida is one of seven states that do not impose a personal income tax.

Florida's constitution establishes a state minimum wage that (unique among minimum wage laws) is adjusted for inflation annually. As of January 1, 2015, Florida's minimum wage was $5.03 for tipped positions, and $8.05 for non-tipped positions, which was higher than the federal rate of $7.25.

Florida has 4 cities in the top 25 cities in the country with the most credit card debt. The state also had the second-highest credit card delinquency rate, with 1.45% of cardholders in the state more than 90 days delinquent on one or more credit cards.

There were 2.4 million Floridians living in poverty in 2008. 18.4% of children 18 and younger were living in poverty. Miami is the sixth poorest big city in the United States. In 2010, over 2.5 million Floridians were on food stamps, up from 1.2 million in 2007. To qualify, Floridians must make less than 133% of the federal poverty level, which would be under $29,000 for a family of four.

Real estate

In the early 20th century, land speculators discovered Florida, and businessmen such as Henry Plant and Henry Flagler developed railroad systems, which led people to move in, drawn by the weather and local economies. From then on, tourism boomed, fueling a cycle of development that overwhelmed a great deal of farmland.

Because of the collective effect on the insurance industry of the hurricane claims of 2004, homeowners insurance has risen 40% to 60% and deductibles have risen.

At the end of the third quarter in 2008, Florida had the highest mortgage delinquency rate in the country, with 7.8% of mortgages delinquent at least 60 days. A 2009 list of national housing markets that were hard hit in the real estate crash included a disproportionate number in Florida. The early 21st-century building boom left Florida with 300,000 vacant homes in 2009, according to state figures. In 2009, the US Census Bureau estimated that Floridians spent an average 49.1% of personal income on housing-related costs, the third highest percentage in the country.

In the third quarter of 2009, there were 278,189 delinquent loans, 80,327 foreclosures. Sales of existing homes for February 2010 was 11,890, up 21% from the same month in 2009. Only two metropolitan areas showed a decrease in homes sold: Panama City and Brevard County. The average sales price for an existing house was $131,000, 7% decrease from the prior year.

Tourism

Tourism makes up the largest sector of the state economy. Warm weather, sunshine, and hundreds of miles of beaches attract over 60 million visitors to the state every year. Florida was the top destination state in 2011. About 28.4 million tourists visited Florida between Januaryâ"March 2015, setting a record for attendance in that quarter.

Many beach towns are popular tourist destinations, particularly during winter and spring break. Twenty-three million tourists visited Florida beaches in 2000, spending $22 billion. The public has a right to beach access under the public trust doctrine, but some areas have access effectively blocked by private owners for a long distance.

Amusement parks, especially in the Greater Orlando area, make up a significant portion of tourism. The Walt Disney World Resort is the most visited vacation resort in the world with over 50 million annual visitors, consisting of four theme parks, 27 themed resort hotels, 9 nonâ"Disney hotels, four theme parks, two water parks, four golf courses and other recreational venues. Other major theme parks in the area include Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa.

Agriculture and fishing

Agriculture is the second largest industry in the state. Citrus fruit, especially oranges, are a major part of the economy, and Florida produces the majority of citrus fruit grown in the United States. In 2006, 67% of all citrus, 74% of oranges, 58% of tangerines, and 54% of grapefruit were grown in Florida. About 95% of commercial orange production in the state is destined for processing (mostly as orange juice, the official state beverage).

Citrus canker continues to be an issue of concern. From 1997 to 2013, the growing of citrus trees has declined 25%, from 600,000 acres (240,000Â ha) to 450,000 acres (180,000Â ha). Citrus greening disease is incurable. A study states that it has caused the loss of $4.5 billion between 2006 and 2012. As of 2014, it was the major agricultural concern.

Other products include sugarcane, strawberries, tomatoes and celery. The state is the largest producer of sweet corn and green beans for the country.

The Everglades Agricultural Area is a major center for agriculture. The environmental impact of agriculture, especially water pollution, is a major issue in Florida today.

In 2009, fishing was a $6 billion industry, employing 60,000 jobs for sports and commercial purposes.

Industry

Florida is the leading state for sales of power boats. There were $1.96 billion worth of boats sold in 2013.

Phosphate mining, concentrated in the Bone Valley, is the state's third-largest industry. The state produces about 75% of the phosphate required by farmers in the United States and 25% of the world supply, with about 95% used for agriculture (90% for fertilizer and 5% for livestock feed supplements) and 5% used for other products.

After the watershed events of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the state of Florida began investing in economic development through the Office of Trade, Tourism, and Economic Development. Governor Jeb Bush realized that watershed events such as Andrew negatively impacted Florida's backbone industry of tourism severely. The office was directed to target Medical/Bio-Sciences among others. Three years later, The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) announced it had chosen Florida for its newest expansion. In 2003, TSRI announced plans to establish a major science center in Palm Beach, a 364,000 square feet (33,800Â m²) facility on 100 acres (40Â ha), which TSRI planned to occupy in 2006.

Government

Since the arrival of the NASA Merritt Island launch sites on Cape Canaveral (most notably Kennedy Space Center) in 1962, Florida has developed a sizable aerospace industry.

Another major economic engine in Florida is the United States Military. There are 24 military bases in the state, housing three Unified Combatant Commands; United States Central Command in Tampa, United States Southern Command in Doral, and United States Special Operations Command in Tampa. There are 109,390 U.S. military personnel stationed in Florida, contributing, directly and indirectly, $52 billion a year to the state's economy.

In 2009, there were 89,706 federal workers employed within the state.

In 2012, government was a top employer in all counties in the state. This was mainly due to the prevalence of teachers, whose school boards employ nearly 1 out of every 30 workers in the state. The military was the top employer in three counties.

Health

There were 2.7 million Medicaid patients in Florida in 2009. The governor has proposed adding $2.6 billion to care for the expected 300,000 additional patients in 2011. The cost of caring for 2.3 million clients in 2010 was $18.8 billion. This is nearly 30% of Florida's budget. Medicaid paid for 60% of all births in Florida in 2009. The state has a program for those not covered by Medicaid.

In 2013, Florida refused to participate in providing coverage for the uninsured under the Affordable Care Act, popularly called Obamacare. Florida also refused to accept additional Federal funding for Medicaid. As a result, Florida is second only to Texas in percentage of its citizens without health insurance.

Some people suffer from various allergies from plants at varying seasons including pollen from oak trees and juniper shrubs.

Architecture

While many houses and commercial buildings look similar to those elsewhere in the country, the state has appropriated some unique styles in some section of the state including Spanish revival, Florida vernacular, and Mediterranean Revival Style. It also has the largest collection of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne buildings in both the United States and the entire world, most of which are located in the Miami metropolitan area, especially Miami Beach's Art Deco District. Another unique architectural design found only in Florida is the Miami Modern, which can be seen along places such as Miami's MiMo Historic District.

Education

Primary and secondary education

Florida's public primary and secondary schools are administered by the Florida Department of Education. School districts are organized within county boundaries. Each school district has an elected Board of Education which sets policy, budget, goals, and approves expenditures. Management is the responsibility of a Superintendent of schools.

The Florida Department of Education is required by law to train educators in teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

Universities

The State University System of Florida was founded in 1905, and is governed by the Florida Board of Governors. During the 2010 academic year, 312,216 students attended one of these twelve universities. The Florida College System comprises 28 public community and state colleges. In 2011-12, enrollment consisted of more than 875,000 students.

Florida's first private university, Stetson University, was founded in 1883. The Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida is an association of 28 private, educational institutions in the state. This Association reported that their member institutions served over 121,000 students in the fall of 2006.

Transportation

Highways

Florida's highway system contains 1,473Â mi (2,371Â km) of interstate highway, and 9,934Â mi (15,987Â km) of non-interstate highway, such as state highways and U.S. Highways. Florida's interstates, state highways, and U.S. Highways are maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation.

In 2011, there were about 9,000 retail gas stations in the state. Floridians consume 21 million gallons of gasoline daily, ranking it third in national use. Motorists have the 45th lowest rate of car insurance in the country. 24% are uninsured.

Drivers between 15 and 19 years of age averaged 364 car crashes a year per ten thousand licensed Florida drivers in 2010. Drivers 70 and older averaged 95 per 10,000 during the same time frame. A spokesperson for the non-profit Insurance Institute said that "Older drivers are more of a threat to themselves."

Before the construction of routes under the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, Florida began construction of a long cross-state toll road, Florida's Turnpike. The first section, from Fort Pierce south to the Golden Glades Interchange was completed in 1957. After a second section north through Orlando to Wildwood (near present-day The Villages), and a southward extension around Miami to Homestead, it was finished in 1974.

Florida's primary interstate routes include:

I-4, which bisects the state, connecting Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando, and Daytona Beach, connecting with I-75 in Tampa and I-95 in Daytona Beach.
Iâ'10, which traverses the panhandle, connecting Pensacola, Tallahassee, Lake City, and Jacksonville, with interchanges with I-75 in Lake City and I-95 in Jacksonville.
Iâ'75, which enters the state near Lake City (45 miles (72Â km) west of Jacksonville) and continues southward through Gainesville, Ocala, Tampa's eastern suburbs, Bradenton, Sarasota, Fort Myers and Naples, where it crosses the "Alligator Alley" as a toll road to Fort Lauderdale before turning southward and terminating in Hialeah/Miami Lakes having interchanges with I-10 in Lake City and I-4 in Tampa.
Iâ'95, which enters the state near Jacksonville and continues along the Atlantic Coast through Daytona Beach, the Melbourne/Titusville, Palm Bay, Vero Beach, Fort Pierce, Port Saint Lucie, Stuart, West Palm Beach, and Fort Lauderdale, before terminating in Downtown Miami, with interchanges with I-10 in Jacksonville and I-4 in Daytona Beach.

Airports

Florida has 131 public airports. Florida's seven large hub and medium hub airports, as classified by the FAA, are the following:

Intercity rail

Florida is served by Amtrak, operating numerous lines throughout, connecting the state's largest cities to points north in the United States and Canada. The busiest Amtrak train stations in Florida in 2011 were: Sanford (259,944), Orlando (179,142), Tampa Union Station (140,785), Miami (94,556), and Jacksonville (74,733). Sanford, in Greater Orlando, is the southern terminus of the Auto Train, which originates at Lorton, Virginia, south of Washington, D.C.. Until 2005, Orlando was also the eastern terminus of the Sunset Limited, which travels across the southern United States via New Orleans, Houston, and San Antonio to its western terminus of Los Angeles. Florida is served by two additional Amtrak trains (the Silver Star and the Silver Meteor), which operate between New York City and Miami. Miami Central Station, the city's rapid transit, commuter rail, intercity rail, and bus hub, is under construction.

The Florida Department of Transportation was preparing to build a high-speed rail between Tampa, Lakeland and Orlando. This was to be the first phase of the Florida High Speed Rail system. Soil work began in July 2010 and construction of the line was slated to begin in 2011, with the initial Tampa-Orlando phase completed by 2014. The second phase, would have extended the line to Miami. Governor Scott, however, refused federal funds and the project has been canceled.

All Aboard Florida is a proposed higher-speed rail service that would run between Orlando and Miami at speeds up to 125Â mph. Its Miami to Cocoa portion is scheduled to open in 2016, with the final segment to Orlando opening in 2017.

Public transit

Miami: Miami's public transportation is served by Miami-Dade Transit that runs Metrorail, a heavy rail rapid transit system, Metromover, a people mover train system in Downtown Miami, and Metrobus, Miami's bus system. Metrorail runs throughout Miami-Dade County and has two lines and 23 stations connecting to Downtown Miami's Metromover and Tri-Rail. Metromover has three lines and 21 stations throughout Downtown Miami. Outside of Miami-Dade County, public transit in the Miami metropolitan area is served by Broward County Transit and Palm Tran; intercounty commuter rail service is provided by Tri-Rail, with 18 stations including the region's three international airports.
Orlando: Orlando is served by the SunRail commuter train, which runs on a 32 miles (51Â km) (61 miles (98Â km) when complete) line including four stops in downtown. Lynx bus serves the greater Orlando area in Orange, Seminole, and Osceola counties.
Tampa: Tampa and its surrounding area use the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority system ("HART"). In addition, downtown Tampa has continuous trolley services in the form of a heritage trolley powered by Tampa Electric Company. Pinellas County and St. Petersburg provide similar services through the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority or "PSTA". The beaches of Pinellas County also have a continuous trolley bus. Downtown St. Petersburg has a trolley system.
Jacksonville: Jacksonville is served by the Jacksonville Skyway, an automated people mover monorail connecting the Florida State College downtown campus, the Northbank central business district, Convention Center, and Southbank locations. The system includes 8 stops connected by two lines. JTA bus has 180 vehicles with 56 lines.

Sports

Florida has three NFL teams, two MLB teams, two NBA teams, and two NHL teams, and will gain an MLS team in Orlando in 2015. Florida gained its first permanent major-league professional sports team in 1966 when the American Football League added the Miami Dolphins. The state of Florida has given professional sports franchises some subsidies in the form of tax breaks since 1991.

About half of all Major League Baseball teams conduct spring training in the state, with teams informally organized into the "Grapefruit League". Throughout MLB history, other teams have held spring training in Florida.

NASCAR (headquartered in Daytona Beach) begins all three of its major auto racing series in Florida at Daytona International Speedway in February, featuring the Daytona 500, and ends all three Series in November at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Daytona also has the Coke Zero 400 NASCAR race weekend around Independence Day in July. The 24 Hours of Daytona is one of the world's most prestigious endurance auto races. The Grand Prix of St. Petersburg and Grand Prix of Miami have held IndyCar races as well.

The PGA of America is headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens while the LPGA is headquartered in Daytona Beach. The Players Championship, WGC-Cadillac Championship, Arnold Palmer Invitational, Honda Classic and Valspar Championship are PGA Tour rounds.

The Miami Masters is an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 and WTA Premier tennis event, whereas the Delray Beach International Tennis Championships is a ATP World Tour 250 event.

Minor league baseball, football, basketball, ice hockey, soccer and indoor football teams are based in Florida. Three of the Arena Football League's teams are in Florida.

Florida's universities have a number of collegiate sport programs, especially the Florida State Seminoles and Miami Hurricanes of the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Florida Gators of the Southeastern Conference.

Auto racing tracks

Daytona International Speedway
Gainesville Raceway
Homestead-Miami Speedway
Sebring International Raceway
Streets of St. Petersburg
Palm Beach International Raceway

Sister states

References

External links

State website
Florida at DMOZ
Florida State Guide, from the Library of Congress
Geographic data related to Florida at OpenStreetMap
Florida Memory Project Over 300,000 photographs and documents from the State Library & Archives of Florida
Online collection of the Spanish Land Grants.
USGS real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of Florida
Florida Rivers and WatershedsÂ â" Florida DEP
U.S. Census Bureau
Economic and farm demographics fact sheet from the USDA
Energy & Environmental Data For Florida
Heliconius charitonia, zebra longwing Florida state butterfly, on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
TerraFly Property Value and Aerial Imagery Spatio-temporal animation Real Estate Trends in Florida
List of searchable databases produced by Florida state agencies hosted by the American Library Association Government Documents Roundtable

SS Commodore

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 03:03:00 +0000

SS Commodore was an American steamboat that shipwrecked off the coast of Florida on 2 January 1897, while en route to Cuba. The event was immortalized when passenger and author Stephen Crane, who was traveling as a war correspondent for the Bacheller-Johnson syndicate, wrote the classic short story "The Open Boat" about his experience. Crane and three other men, including the ship's captain, Edward Murphy, were stranded in a 10-foot (3.0Â m) dinghy for nearly thirty hours near the Mosquito Inlet Lighthouse (today's Ponce de Leon Inlet Light) before they were able to reach shore; all but one of the men survived.

During 2002-2004 three seasons of archaeological investigation were begun in order to archaeologically document the exposed remains and to definitively identify the vessel. The results of this fieldwork were eventually incorporated into a Master's Thesis produced by Kimberly Eslinger Faulk, then a graduate student at East Carolina University's Maritime Studies Program. For two weeks in May 2002, Faulk, a crew of technical divers from the Cambrian Foundation, representatives of PILHA and videographer Rick Allen from Nautilus Productions completed the first archaeological survey of the wreck site. In keeping with the Light Houseâs mission of protecting the wreck site and better interpreting its importance to the people of Ponce Inlet and Daytona Beach, Florida project parameters were laid out for a professional archaeological survey of the site. Nautilus Productions provided video mosaic services, site documentation and recorded survey and diving activities on site. Later in 2004 scientists from the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum offered their assistance to PILPA in their ongoing investigation of the vessel remains and visited the shipwreck site for a series of dives on April 7, 2004. The recording of the engine remains by LAMP divers resulted in measurements of a 26-inch bore and a 30-inch stroke. These dimensions are a perfect match with the schematics for the single-expansion steam engine built by the Neafie & Levy yard in Philadelphia as listed in the 1882 survey produced when Commodore was first registered. This data and the accumulated evidence finally substantiated the identification of this sunken vessel as Commodore beyond a reasonable doubt.

References

Ford FG xr6 turbo vs ve ss commodore 6.0 litre v8 both stock cars. -

Notes

Bibliography

External links

SS Commodore Wreck Site
The Shipwreck, Discovery, and Investigation of the SS Commodore

1919 Florida Keys Hurricane

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 21:43:00 +0000

The 1919 Florida Keys hurricane (also known as the 1919Â Key West hurricane) was a massive and damaging tropical cyclone that swept across areas of the northern Caribbean Sea and the United States Gulf Coast in SeptemberÂ 1919. Remaining an intense Atlantic hurricane throughout much of its existence, the storm's slow-movement and sheer size prolonged and enlarged the scope of the hurricane's effects, making it one of the deadliest hurricanes in United States history. Impacts were largely concentrated around the Florida Keys and South Texas areas, though lesser but nonetheless significant effects were felt in Cuba and other areas of the United States Gulf Coast.

The hurricane developed near the Leeward Islands as a tropical depression on SeptemberÂ 2 and gradually gained in strength as it tracked on a generally west-northwesterly path, crossing the Mona Passage and moving across the Bahamas. On SeptemberÂ 7, the storm reached hurricane intensity over the eastern Bahamas. On SeptemberÂ 9â"10, the storm made its eponymous pass of the Florida Keys, passing over the Dry Tortugas with an intensity equivalent to that of a modern-day CategoryÂ 4 hurricane. Over the next several days, the intense cyclone traversed the Gulf of Mexico, fluctuating in strength before making landfall near Texas' Baffin Bay on SeptemberÂ 14 as a large CategoryÂ 3 hurricane. As it tracked further inland, land interaction caused the storm to gradually weaken; the storm was last noted on SeptemberÂ 16 over West Texas.

Meteorological history

Weather History: Florida Keys Hurricane 1919 - It was one of the worst Hurricanes record for Key West and the first one to cause major damage to Corpus Christi, Texas a few days later.

Based on isolated observations east of the Lesser Antilles on SeptemberÂ 1, the precursor to the 1919Â Florida Keys hurricane may have been a disorganized tropical wave that tracked westward towards the Leeward Islands. The next day, additional observations indicated that the disturbance had acquired a cyclonic circulation; thus, the system was determined to have become a tropical depression by 12:00Â UTC that day just east of Guadeloupe. Gradual strengthening occurred as the depression tracked west-northwest, attaining tropical storm intensity at 06:00Â UTC on SeptemberÂ 3. Twelve hours later, the tropical cyclone clipped the extreme-southwestern portion of Puerto Rico with maximum sustained winds of 50Â mph (80Â km/h). The cyclone maintained a low-end tropical storm intensity as it paralleled the northern coast of Hispaniola the following day. On SeptemberÂ 6, the storm abruptly turned towards the north in the direction of the Turks and Caicos before resuming a more westerly trajectory a day later.

At 06:00Â UTC on SeptemberÂ 7, the cyclone strengthened to hurricane intensity north of Crooked Island. Traversing westward across the southern extents of the Bahamas, the newly developed hurricane steadily grew in size and intensity. SeptemberÂ 7, the hurricane reached the equivalent of a CategoryÂ 2 on the modern-day Saffirâ"Simpson scale and later reached major hurricane strength on SeptemberÂ 8 shortly before crossing Andros Island. On SeptemberÂ 9, the storm intensified further to CategoryÂ 4 strength before passing roughly 30â"40Â mi (48â"64Â km) south of Key West, Florida in the Florida Straits. At 07:00Â UTC on SeptemberÂ 10, the hurricane made landfall on the Dry Tortugas at peak intensity with winds of 150Â mph (240Â km/h) extending as far as 17Â mi (28Â km) outwards from the center and a nearly unprecedented low barometric pressure of 927Â mbar (hPa; 27.37Â inHg) based on a barometer observation in the eye of the storm. At the time, this made the tropical cyclone the second strongest to strike the United States since 1851, only behind the 1886 Indianola hurricane. After landfall, the storm slowly moved westward into the Gulf of Mexico.

From SeptemberÂ 10 to SeptemberÂ 14, the tropical cyclone traversed the Gulf of Mexico, maintaining a powerful intensity. On SeptemberÂ 12, the hurricane briefly weakened to CategoryÂ 3 intensity before restrengthening shortly thereafter. The following day, the storm reached a secondary peak intensity with winds of 145Â mph (235Â km/h) and a minimum pressure of 931Â mbar (hPa; 27.50Â inHg) over the western Gulf of Mexico before weakening precipitously afterwards. At 21:00Â UTC on SeptemberÂ 14, the hurricane made its final landfall near Baffin Bay as a CategoryÂ 3 hurricane with winds of 115Â mph (185Â km/h) and a central pressure of 950Â mbar (hPa; 28.06Â inHg). Upon moving ashore, the storm was unusually large; its radius of maximum winds measured 40Â mi (65Â km) compared to the average of 21Â mi (33Â km) for storms of similar intensities. As the hurricane tracked further inland, land interaction weakened the cyclone, with winds dropping below hurricane-force on SeptemberÂ 15 and then below tropical storm-force the next day. By 18:00Â UTC on SeptemberÂ 16 the tropical cyclone had dissipated over West Texas near the border between Texas and Mexico.

Preparations

Due to the lack of hurricane observations at sea, the first tropical cyclone warning prompted by the United States Weather Bureau was a storm warning on SeptemberÂ 8 issued for areas along the Florida coast from Jupiter on the east coast to Fort Myers on the peninsula's west coast with the storm already a major hurricane over the Bahamas. The first hurricane warning was issued the next day for coastal areas from Jupiter to Key West, with all vessels requested to avoid the Florida Straits and the waters off Florida's Atlantic coast. In addition, the storm's projected path into the Gulf of Mexico prompted the bureau to also direct the clearance of ships in the hurricane's trajectory. In Miami, Florida, the city's power plant cut off its electrical output as a precautionary measure, forcing an intentional power outage in the city. On the 10th at 10:30 p.m., northeast storm warnings were issued from Carrabelle, Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana. On the 11th at 4 p.m., the storm warnings for the northeast Gulf coast were changed to hurricane warnings, and extended westward along the length of the Louisiana coast. At 9 p.m., northwest storm warnings were issued for the northwest Gulf coast from Port Arthur to Velasco, Texas. At 4 p.m. on the 12th, storm warnings were in effect from Mobile, Alabama to Pensacola, Florida, with hurricane warnings in effect along the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts. On the evening of the 13th, northwest storm warnings were in effect for the entire Texas coast.

Impact

The Bahamas and Cuba

While passing through the Bahamas on September 8, the Ward Line steamer Corydon struck land and later sank during the storm. The ship was not found until SeptemberÂ 11, at which time it was discovered that 27 people on board had drowned while nine others managed to survive after swimming to shore. On the islands, strong winds produced by the hurricane destroyed numerous homes and sank several schooners, leaving many homeless. In the Florida Strait, a Cuban vessel carrying 45 people was stranded during the storm. However, another ship in the area managed to reach the Cuban vessel and rescue all passengers.

Although the hurricane never made landfall on Cuba, the storm's close proximity to the northern stretches of the island led to considerable impacts. A strong storm surge combined with wind-swept waves topped the Havana seawall, flooding areas of the city as far as six blocks inland and prompting the evacuation of homes at risk. The inundation also disabled some of Havana's tram systems and halted automotive traffic.

United States

A tornado, spawned by the hurricane, struck Goulds, Florida on September 10, moving inland from Biscayne Bay. It caused US$25,000 (1919 dollars) in damage. Of the approximately 600-900 people officially reported killed in the storm, roughly 500 of them were aboard ten ships lost at sea. Communication was cut off for the entirety of Florida south of Miami following the storm's passage. By comparison, South Florida outside the Florida Keys remained relatively unscathed. Winds in Tampa only reached 26Â mph (42Â km/h) as the hurricane passed to the city's south. Despite otherwise minor damage in Miami, 17Â houseboats and small craft sunk in Biscayne Bay as a result of rough seas. Damage and casualties on the Texas coast were also severe, in part due to false rumors that the storm had turned north into Louisiana, which warranted taking storm warnings in Corpus Christi down the day before landfall. Though warnings were posted again early the following day, the citizens were ill-prepared when the hurricane made landfall south of the city as a major hurricane; the storm surge was as high as 16 feet (4.9Â m).

This large storm spread winds of 60 miles per hour (97Â km/h) across Miami, Florida, Burrwood, Louisiana, and Galveston, Texas. A total of 1500 cattle were driven off of Padre Island into Laguna Madre. Heavy rains were common across southern Texas, with numerous locations recording 6 inches (150Â mm) to 12 inches (300Â mm) of rainfall within 24 hours, which set daily rainfall records. The death toll in Texas was officially 286, but may have been as high as 600.

Aftermath

The storm surge caused by this hurricane prompted the city of Corpus Christi to construct a breakwater in 1925, and a seawall was subsequently built in 1940.

Notes

References

External links

Hurricane info on about.com
History of the 1919 Atlantic Gulf Hurricane at the National Weather Service, includes many damage photographs
Historic photos of the 1919 Hurricane from the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History, hosted by the Portal to Texas History

Key Largo, Florida

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 05:43:00 +0000

Key Largo is a census-designated place in Monroe County, Florida, United States, located on the island of Key Largo in the upper Florida Keys. The population was 10,433 at the 2010 census. The name comes from the Spanish Cayo Largo, or "long key". It is the first island of the Florida Keys and the originating point of the Overseas Highway to Key West.

Geography

Great White while diving the Duane in Key Largo, Florida with a GoPro HD Hero 3 Black. - This was my check out dive after not diving for 11 months (I guess I should point out this is normal for me. I only dive this time of year). It was the afternoon of July ...

Key Largo is located at 25Â°6â²24â³N 80Â°25â²48â³W (25.106637, -80.429917).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 39.6Â kmÂ² (15.3Â miÂ²). 31.5Â kmÂ² (12.2Â miÂ²) of it is land and 8.1Â kmÂ² (3.1Â miÂ²) of it 20.54% is water.

A southeast-pointing cape on the north end of El Radabob Key, 24Â°9â²12â³N 80Â°21â²30â³W, just south of Rattlesnake Key, is the east endpoint of the longest distance between any two points of land within the fifty states of the United States, as measured via Google Earth. The other endpoint is at the tip of a spit of sand on Green Island, Hawaii, 5,857.46 miles away.

Demographics

According to the census of 2000, there were 12,971 people, 5,245 households, and 3,288 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 377.7/kmÂ² (978.1/miÂ²). There were 8,043 housing units at an average density of 255.6/kmÂ² (661.9/miÂ²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 94.38% White, 2.04% African American, 0.29% Native American, 0.47% Asian, 0.95% from other races, and 1.86% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 16.65% of the population.

There were 5,245 households out of which 23.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.5% were married couples living together, 7.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.3% were non-families. 27.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.26 and the average family size was 2.75.

In the CDP the population was spread out with 19.7% under the age of 18, 5.6% from 18 to 24, 28.7% from 25 to 44, 30.3% from 45 to 64, and 15.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 43 years. For every 100 females there were 107.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 107.6 males.

The average income for a household in the CDP was $42,577, and the median income for a family was $50,755. Males had a median income of $33,588 versus $25,468 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $25,441. About 5.9% of families and 8.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 8.7% of those under age 18 and 7.8% of those age 65 or over.

In popular culture

The 1948 film Key Largo, starring Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, and Humphrey Bogart, was set there. The 1981 hit single "Key Largo" by Bertie Higgins was inspired by the film, not the namesake city.

Notable residents

Dick Rutkowski, Founder of IANTD

References

External links

Key Largo Chamber of Commerce Business and Tourism Development
Monroe County School District Key Largo Public Schools
History of Key Largo

Dog Island (Florida)

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 19:03:00 +0000

Dog Island is located in the northwestern Florida Gulf coast just 3.5Â mi (5.6Â km) off-shore from Carrabelle in Franklin County, Florida.

Location

Adventures With Aviator - Dog Island Adventures, Family, & Getting Away... - Read This!! Hey Guys, Welcome back! This week's video is a special one... I'm both excited to share it, and a bit nervous... It's a recap video of my wife and my ...

The island is partly sheltering St. George Sound and Apalachicola Bay.

Airport

Dog Island Airport (FAA LID: FA43) is an untowered, private use airport located by the Eastern bay of Dog Island. The airport opened in 1930.

Origin

The island and its two neighbors were discovered by the French in 1536 and named the Dog Islands, because 1) wild dogs were found on them; 2) the islands resemble a crouched dog, or 3) the early ships put their common sailors - known as dogs - on the islands before docking on the mainland so they could not jump ship. Later, the two neighbors were renamed: St. Vincent, which is a Federal wildlife refuge, and St. George, which has a causeway and an airport (FA43), has developed into a seaside vacation community with shops and beach rentals.

After World War II, Jeff Lewis, a Florida businessman, saw its potential as a vacation area and paid $12,000 for the island. Indians used Dog Island as a fishing camp, and the 1985 hurricanes uncovered pot shards found on the west end.

History

Dog Island has some evidence of human presence dating back as early as 8,000 years ago. The island also has a rich maritime history. The discovery of a 9th-century canoe is a testament to prehistoric mariners on the island. During the 17th century and 18th century the barrier islands became a haven of piracy and smuggling.

18th century

On February 16, 1766, Le Tigre, a French merchant brigantine, was en route to New Orleans and wrecked 300 yards east of Dog Island in a great storm. A survivor, Monsieur Pierre Viaud, chronicled the experience in the best-selling narrative The Shipwreck and Adventures of Monsieur Pierre Viaud published 1769(and translated to English in 1771).

In 1799, the Royal Navy purchased the HMS Fox, a 14 gun British war schooner only to see it wreck later that year between Dog and St. George Islands.

19th century

As part of the United States, economic shipping greatly increased as St. Marks, St. Joseph, and Apalachicola became major ports on the Gulf Coast. Both sail and steam ships traveled to Dog Island to exploit its resources of lumber and naval stores, such as turpentine and pitch products. In 1838, Dog Island Light was built on the western tip of the island.

During the Civil War, Dog Island was used by the Union Navy as a base for staging the blockade of Apalachicola.

In 1899, the 2nd hurricane of the season struck the area almost destroying the town of Carrabelle leaving just nine homes. Roughly 6 miles inland at McIntyre, only two mill boilers were left. The summer resort of Lanark Inn was said to be "blown into the Gulf". The Carrabelle, Tallahassee and Georgia Railroad was destroyed for a distance of 30 miles, and a locomotive was displaced some 100 yards off the track.

Fifteen ships were completely destroyed with 12 loaded with lumber. They were:

American ships
- James A. Garfield, a schooner, under the command of Capt. Cottingham.
- Mary E. Morse a schooner, under the command of Capt. Densmore.
- Benjamin C. Cromwell, a schooner under the command of Capt. McClean.
- Grace Andrews, a schooner under the command of Capt. Brown.
- Warren Adams, a schooner under the command of Capt. Gibbons
- Vidette, a barkentine under the command of Capt. Waldren.
- Capitola, a steamship
- Iola, a steamship
- Albert Haley, a fishing smack.

Norwegian ships
- Ranavola, bark under the command of Capt. Edwardson.
- Vale, a bark, under the command of Capt. Andersen (this shipwreck has been identified by archaeologists).
- Elsbeth, a bark under the command of Capt. Pedersen.
- Jafnhar, a bark under the command of Capt. Tygensen.
- Hindoo, a bark under the command of Capt. Madsen.
Russian ships:
- Latara, a bark under the command of Capt. Krantman
Italian ships
- Corteria, a bark which was split in half

Another 40 ships under 20 tons were sunk or destroyed.

20th century

During World War II, Dog Island was part of Camp Gordon Johnston. Four separate camps comprised the complex: three for regimental combat teams, and the fourth for the headquarters and support facilities. Dog Island was used for amphibious landings and airdrops.

An archaeological research project, the Dog Island Shipwreck Survey, was initiated in 1999 by Florida State University researcher Chuck Meide to systematically search the waters off Dog Island, using acoustic and electromagnetic devices, to discover historic shipwrecks. Project archaeologists conducted excavations on the wreck of the 1899 Norwegian lumber ship Vale mentioned above, and also located a number of other submerged archaeological sites, including the ruins of the Dog Island Lighthouse, using sonar and magnetometer.

References

http://www.gulfbase.org/reef/view.php?rid=dog1

External links

Topographic map of Dog Island
Florida State Univ. Dog Island Shipwreck Survey
Meide et al. 2000 Dog Island Shipwreck Survey 1999: Report of Historical and Archaeological Investigations, FSU Program in Underwater Archaeology Research Reports No. 4 (Can be viewed or downloaded as 252 pages in pdf format on Academia.edu)

Liberia

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 21:43:00 +0000

Liberia /laÉªËbÉªÉriÉ/, Cape Mesurado, Grain Coast, Pepper Coast, (Little America) or (LIB) commonly and officially referred to as the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa bordered by Sierra Leone to its west, Guinea to its north and Ivory Coast to its east. It covers an area of 111,369 square kilometres (43,000Â sqÂ mi) and is home to 4,396,873 people. English is the official language but only 15% of Liberian speak English and over 20 indigenous languages are spoken and many other ethnic groups languages within Liberia. Its coastline is composed mostly of mangroves, while its more sparsely populated inland consists of forests opening onto a plateau of drier grasslands. The climate is hot and equatorial, with significant rainfall during the Mayâ"October rainy season and harsh harmattan winds the remainder of the year. Liberia possesses about forty percent of the remaining Upper Guinean rainforest.

The Republic of Liberia, formerly a colony of the American Colonization Society declared its independence on July 26, 1847. The United States, finally accepted and recognized Liberian Independence on February 5, 1862. Liberia was the first African country to gain its independence. Liberia was founded and established as a homeland for freed African Americans and ex-slaves settlers who came from the Caribbean islands and the United States in 1822 with the help and support from the American Colonization Society. Liberia is Africa's oldest democratic republic and the second oldest Black republic in the world after Haiti. Liberia is unique from the rest of the other African countries because it was the only country that was colonized and controlled by freed African Americans and ex-slaves from the Caribbean islands who left the United States of America and the Caribbean in 1822. Liberia and Ethiopia were the only two African countries during the 19th century Scramble for Africa that were not controlled or colonized by European powers. Liberia, which means "Land of the Free," originated from the freed African Americans and ex-slave settlers who founded and established Liberia as a free state. For a time, Liberia was under United States control as a colony for freed African Americans and ex-slaves from 1822 until the Liberian Declaration of Independence from the American Colonization Society in July 26, 1847. Liberia was a protectorate of the United States . The Liberian constitution was modeled after the Constitution of the United States, and in 1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts was the first African American to be elected head of state when he became Liberiaâs first president.

The American Colonization Society was founded in 1816 by American Robert Finley to return freed African American slaves to Africa. In 1820, the first former U.S. slaves arrived from the United States at the British colony of Sierra Leone, and in 1821 the American Colonization Society founded the colony of Liberia south of Sierra Leone as a homeland for former slaves outside British jurisdiction. The American Colonization Society came under attack from U.S. abolitionists, who charged that the removal of freed slaves from the United States strengthened the institution of slavery. In addition, most Americans of African descent were not enthusiastic about abandoning their native lands in the United States for the harsh West African coast. Nevertheless, between 1822 and the American Civil War, some 15,000 African Americans settled in Liberia. Liberia aided Britain in its efforts to end the West African slave trading of the native chiefs. Official U.S. diplomatic recognition came in 1862. With the backing of the United States, Liberia kept its independence through the turmoil of the 20th century.

Liberia began to modernize in the 1940s following investment by the United States during World War II and economic liberalization under President William Tubman. Liberia was a founding member of League of Nations, United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity. In 1980 a military coup overthrew the True-Whig Party leadership, marking the beginning of political instability. Five years of military rule by the People Redemption Council and five years of civilian rule by the National Democratic Party of Liberia were followed by two civil wars â" the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars. These resulted in the deaths of between 250,000 and 520,000 people and devastated Liberia's economy. A peace agreement in 2003 led to democratic elections in 2005. Today, about 85% of the population live below the international poverty line. Liberia's economic and political stability was threatened by a deadly Ebola virus epidemic which originated in Guinea in December 2013 and entered Liberia in March 2014, but the outbreak officially ended on May 8, 2015, after 42 days with no new cases.

History

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The Pepper Coast has been inhabited at least as far back as the 12th century and perhaps earlier. Mende-speaking people expanded westward from the Sudan, forcing many smaller ethnic groups southward towards the Atlantic ocean. The Dei, Bassa, Kru, Gola and Kissi were some of the earliest recorded arrivals.

This influx was compounded by the decline of the Western Sudanic Mali Empire in 1375 and later in 1591 with the Songhai Empire. Additionally, inland regions underwent desertification, and inhabitants were pressured to move to the wetter coast. These new inhabitants brought skills such as cotton spinning, cloth weaving, iron smelting, rice and sorghum cultivation, and social and political institutions from the Mali and Songhai Empires. Shortly after the Manes conquered the region, the Vai people of the former Mali Empire immigrated into the Grand Cape Mount region. The ethnic Kru opposed the influx of Vai, forming an alliance with the Manes to stop further influx of Vai.

People along the coast built canoes and traded with other West Africans from Cap-Vert to the Gold Coast. Between 1461 and late 17th century, Portuguese, Dutch and British traders had contacts and trading posts in the region. The Portuguese named the area Costa da Pimenta ("Pepper Coast") but it later came to be known as the Grain Coast, due to the abundance of grains of melegueta pepper. European traders would barter various commodities and goods with local people. When the Kru began trading with Europeans, they initially traded in commodities, but later they actively participated in the African slave trade, raiding their neighbors and selling them to visitors, despite the efforts of the advanced world to suppress the practice..

In 1822, the American Colonization Society began sending African American volunteers to the Pepper Coast to establish a colony for freed African Americans. By 1867, the ACS had assisted in the movement of more than 13,000 Americans to Liberia. These free African Americans came to identify themselves as Americo-Liberian, developing a cultural tradition infused with American notions of political republicanism.

The ACS, a private organization supported by prominent American politicians such as Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, and James Monroe, believed repatriation was preferable to emancipation of slaves. Similar organizations established colonies in Mississippi-in-Africa and the Republic of Maryland, which were later annexed by Liberia. On July 26, 1847, the settlers issued a Declaration of Independence and promulgated a constitution, which, based on the political principles denoted in the United States Constitution, created the independent Republic of Liberia.

The leadership of the new nation consisted largely of the Americo-Liberians. The 1865 Ports of Entry Act prohibited foreign commerce with the inland tribes, to encourage the growth of civilised values. In 1877, the Americo-Liberian True Whig Party was the most powerful political power in the country. Competition for office was usually contained within the party, whose nomination virtually ensured election.

The Liberian government asked the American government for help and support because the British and the French was taking Liberia's land and territories but the American government didn't help or send support to Liberia and as a result the British and the French took Liberia's land that belongs to Liberia. The British took part of the land of Liberia and given it to Sierra Leone, also the French did the same thing and they took part of the land of Liberia and given it to Ivory Coast and Guinea. The Liberian President at that time in the 1900s and natives people of Liberia were very upset and disappointed with the United States because the American government didn't help and send support to Liberia so they could defend and fight against the British and the French for their land and territories so as a result part of Liberia's land claims and territories were taken and given to Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Guinea which were annexed by adjoining countries. The President of Liberia made a speech to Congress. He said, "how could the United States of America and its citizens of African Americans and Caribbean ex slaves offspring who founded and established Liberia as a free state and governmence left us alone. We the people of Liberia, formerly a colony of the American Colonization Society and the offspring of African Americans and Caribbean ex slaves blood line who left the United States of America for a better life, self governmence and the opportunity of liberty, economic growth and liberalization in Africa. I say this now, the people of United States of America and its government don't care about us, they don't want to help and support us, if we were a colony of the Portuguese or another organizations establishment they will help us, they will be by our side, and support us. We, the people of Liberia are not mad at the people of the United States of America of their actions and behavior towards us Liberians. The people of Liberia are upset, disappointed and saddened of the actions and behavior from the American government. We need to strengthen our borders, political stability, rules and laws of Liberia, trading goods of import and export from liberia, established more foreign relations with the European and outsiders, forced on economic growth and development of the land of Liberia." Economic development was hindered by the low level of civilization in the country, as evidenced by both the decline of production of Liberian goods in the late 19th century and by poor government finances causing indebtedness on a series of international loans. In Liberia's early years, the Americo-Liberian settlers periodically encountered hostile and sometimes violent contact with tribal Africans in the bush who would raid and rob the costal settlements. Tribesmen were thus excluded from birthright citizenship until 1904.

Founding of Liberia

The Founding of Liberia in the early 1800s was motivated by the domestic politics of slavery and race in the United States as well as by U.S. foreign policy interests. In 1816, a group of white Americans founded the American Colonization Society to deal with the problem of the growing number of free Blacks in the United States by resettling them in Africa. The resulting state of Liberia would become the second (after Haiti) Black republic in the world at that time.

Free-born Virginian Joseph Jenkins Roberts, later to become the first President of Liberia, and prominent Americans such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Randolph were among the best known members of ACS. Former President Thomas Jefferson publicly supported the organizationâs goals, and President James Madison arranged public funding for the Society. The motives for joining the society were vast as a range of people from abolitionists to slaveholders counted themselves members. On the other hand, many abolitionists, both Black and White, ultimately rejected the notion that it was impossible for the races to integrate and therefore did not support the idea of an African-American colony in Africa. Still, the ACS had powerful support and its colonization project gained momentum.

In 1818 the Society sent two representatives to West Africa to find a suitable location for the colony, but they were unable to persuade local tribal leaders to sell any territory. In 1820, 88 free Black settlers and 3 society members sailed for Sierra Leone. Before departing they had signed a constitution requiring that an agent of the Society administer the settlement under U.S. laws. They found shelter on Scherbo Island off the west coast of Africa, but many died from malaria. In 1821, a U.S. Navy vessel resumed the search for a place of permanent settlement in what is now Liberia. Once again the local leaders resisted American attempts to purchase land. This time, the Navy officer in charge, Lieutenant Robert Stockton, coerced a local ruler to sell a strip of land to the Society. The Scherbo Island group moved to this new location and other Blacks from the United States joined them. The local tribes continually attacked the new colony and in 1824, the settlers built fortifications for protection. In that same year, the settlement was named Liberia and its capital Monrovia, in honor of President James Monroe who had procured more U.S. Government money for the project.

Other colonization societies sponsored by individual states purchased land and sent settlers to areas near Monrovia. Africans removed from slave ships by the U.S. Navy after the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade were also put ashore in Liberia. In 1838 most of these settlements, with up to 20,000 people, combined into one organization. The settlers attempted to retain the culture they had brought from the United States and for the most part did not integrate with the native societies. Today, about 5 percent of the population of Liberia is descended from these settlers.

The U.S. Government had provided Liberia some financial support, but Washington expected Monrovia to move toward self-sufficiency. Commerce was the first economic sector to grow in the colony. However, French and British traders continually encroached upon Liberian territory. As it was not a sovereign state, it was hard-pressed to defend its economic interests. The U.S. Government lent some diplomatic support, but Britain and France had territories in West Africa and were better poised to act. As a result, in 1847, Liberia declared independence from the American Colonization Society in order to establish a sovereign state and create its own laws governing commerce.

Despite protests by the affected British companies, London was the first to extend recognition to the new republic, signing a treaty of commerce and friendship with Monrovia in 1848. Because of fears of the impact this might have on the issue of slavery in the United States, Washington did not recognize the nation it had played a role in creating. In the meantime, a mass exodus of African-Americans to Liberia never materialized. Though President Abraham Lincoln was open to promoting the idea, several abolitionists in his cabinet opposed it, some for moral considerations and others for the more practical reason of retaining sufficient labor and military forces for the future. The United States finally established diplomatic relations with Liberia in 1862, and continued to maintain strong ties until the 1990s.

20th century

For a period of time in the early 20th Century, Liberia became a U.S. protectorate. In the mid-20th century, Liberia gradually began to modernize with American assistance. Both the Freeport of Monrovia and Roberts International Airport were built by U.S. personnel through the Lend-Lease program during World War II. President William Tubman encouraged foreign investment in the country, resulting in the second-highest rate of economic growth in the world during the 1950s.

Liberia also began to take a more active role in international affairs. It was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945 and became a vocal critic of the South African apartheid regime. Liberia also served as a proponent both of African independence from the European colonial powers and of Pan-Africanism, helping to found the Organisation of African Unity.

On April 12, 1980, a military coup led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe of the Krahn ethnic group overthrew and killed President William R. Tolbert, Jr.. Doe and the other plotters later executed a majority of Tolbert's cabinet and other Americo-Liberian government officials and True Whig Party members. The coup leaders formed the People's Redemption Council (PRC) to govern the country. A strategic Cold War ally of the West, Doe received significant financial backing from the United States while critics condemned the PRC for corruption and political repression.

After Liberia adopted a new constitution in 1985, Doe was elected president in subsequent elections that were internationally condemned as fraudulent. On November 12, 1985, a failed counter-coup was launched by Thomas Quiwonkpa, whose soldiers briefly occupied the national radio station. Government repression intensified in response, as Doe's troops executed members of the Gio and Mano ethnic groups in Nimba County.

The National Patriotic Front of Liberia, a rebel group led by Charles Taylor, launched an insurrection in December 1989 against Doe's government with the backing of neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso and CÃ´te d'Ivoire, triggering the First Liberian Civil War. By September 1990, Doe's forces controlled only a small area just outside the capital, and Doe was captured and executed that month by rebel forces.

The rebels soon split into various factions fighting one another, and the Economic Community Monitoring Group under the Economic Community of West African States organized a military task force to intervene in the crisis. From 1989 to 1996 one of Africa's bloodiest civil wars ensued, claiming the lives of more than 200,000 Liberians and displacing a million others into refugee camps in neighboring countries. A peace deal between warring parties was reached in 1995 leading to Taylor's election as president in 1997.

Under Taylor's leadership, Liberia became internationally known as a pariah state due to the use of blood diamonds and illegal timber exports to fund the Revolutionary United Front in the Sierra Leone Civil War. The Second Liberian Civil War began in 1999 when Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, a rebel group based in the northwest of the country, launched an armed insurrection against Taylor.

2000s

In March 2003, a second rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia, began launching attacks against Taylor from the southeast.

Peace talks between the factions began in Accra in June of that year, and Taylor was indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for crimes against humanity that same month. By July 2003, the rebels had launched an assault on Monrovia. Under heavy pressure from the international community and the domestic Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement, Taylor resigned in August 2003 and went into exile in Nigeria, and a peace deal was signed later that month. The United Nations Mission in Liberia began arriving in September 2003 to provide security and monitor the peace accord, and an interim government took power the following October.

The subsequent 2005 elections were internationally regarded as the most free and fair in Liberian history. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist and former Minister of Finance, was elected as the first female president in Africa. Upon her inauguration, Sirleaf requested the extradition of Taylor from Nigeria and immediately handed him over to the SCSL for trial in The Hague. In 2006, the government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the causes and crimes of the civil war.

Geography

Liberia is situated in West Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean to the country's southwest. It lies between latitudes 4Â° and 9Â°N, and longitudes 7Â° and 12Â°W.

The landscape is characterized by mostly flat to rolling coastal plains that contain mangroves and swamps, which rise to a rolling plateau and low mountains in the northeast.

Tropical rainforests cover the hills, while elephant grass and semi-deciduous forests make up the dominant vegetation in the northern sections. The equatorial climate is hot year-round with heavy rainfall from May to October with a short interlude in mid-July to August. During the winter months of November to March, dry dust-laden harmattan winds blow inland, causing many problems for residents.

Liberia's watershed tends to move in a southwestern pattern towards the sea as new rains move down the forested plateau off the inland mountain range of GuinÃ©e ForestiÃ¨re, in Guinea. Cape Mount near the border with Sierra Leone receives the most precipitation in the nation.

Liberia's main northwestern boundary is traversed by the Mano River while its southeast limits are bounded by the Cavalla River. Liberia's three largest rivers are St. Paul exiting near Monrovia, the river St. John at Buchanan and the Cestos River, all of which flow into the Atlantic. The Cavalla is the longest river in the nation at 515 kilometres (320Â mi).

The highest point wholly within Liberia is Mount Wuteve at 1,440 metres (4,724Â ft) above sea level in the northwestern Liberia range of the West Africa Mountains and the Guinea Highlands. However, Mount Nimba near Yekepa, is higher at 1,752 metres (5,748Â ft) above sea level but is not wholly within Liberia as Nimba shares a border with Guinea and CÃ´te d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and is their tallest mountain as well.

Counties and districts

Liberia is divided into fifteen counties, which, in turn, are subdivided into a total of 90 districts and further subdivided into clans. The oldest counties are Grand Bassa and Montserrado, both founded in 1839 prior to Liberian independence. Gbarpolu is the newest county, created in 2001. Nimba is the largest of the counties in size at 11,551Â km² (4,460Â sqÂ mi), while Montserrado is the smallest at 1,909Â km² (737Â sqÂ mi). Montserrado is also the most populous county with 1,144,806 residents as of the 2008 census.

The fifteen counties are administered by superintendents appointed by the president. The Constitution calls for the election of various chiefs at the county and local level, but these elections have not taken place since 1985 due to war and financial constraints.

Environmental issues

Endangered species are hunted for human consumption as bushmeat in Liberia. Species hunted for food in Liberia include elephants, pygmy hippopotamus, chimpanzees, leopards, duikers, and other monkeys. Bushmeat is often exported to neighboring Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, despite a ban on the cross-border sale of wild animals.

Bushmeat is widely eaten in Liberia, and is considered a delicacy. A 2004 public opinion survey found that bushmeat ranked second behind fish amongst residents of the capital Monrovia as a preferred source of protein. Of households where bushmeat was served, 80% of residents said they cooked it âonce in a while,â while 13% cooked it once a week and 7% cooked bushmeat daily. The survey was conducted during the last civil war, and bushmeat consumption is now believed to be far higher.

Liberia is a global biodiversity hotspot â" a significant reservoir of biodiversity that is under threat from humans. Liberia hosts the last remaining viable populations of certain species including western chimpanzees, forest elephants and leopards. Liberia contains a significant portion of West Africa's remaining rainforest, with about 43% of the Upper Guinean forest â" an important forest that spans several West African nations.

Slash-and-burn agriculture is one of the human activities eroding Liberia's natural forests. A 2004 UN report estimated that 99 per cent of Liberians burnt charcoal and fuel wood for cooking and heating, resulting in deforestation.

Illegal logging has increased in Liberia since the end of the Second Civil War in 2003. In 2012 President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf granted licenses to companies to cut down 58% of all the primary rainforest left in Liberia. After international protests, many of those logging permits were canceled. Liberia and Norway struck an agreement in September 2014 whereby Liberia ceases all logging in exchange for $150 million in development aid.

Pollution is a significant issue in Liberia's capital city Monrovia. Since 2006 the international community has paid for all garbage collection and disposal in Monrovia via the World Bank.

Politics

The government of Liberia, modeled on the government of the United States, is a unitary constitutional republic and representative democracy as established by the Constitution. The government has three co-equal branches of government: the executive, headed by the president; the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Legislature of Liberia; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and several lower courts.

The president serves as head of government, head of state and the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Liberia. Among the other duties of the president are to sign or veto legislative bills, grant pardons, and appoint Cabinet members, judges and other public officials. Together with the vice president, the president is elected to a six-year term by majority vote in a two-round system and can serve up to two terms in office.

The Legislature is composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The House, led by a speaker, has 73 members apportioned among the 15 counties on the basis of the national census, with each county receiving a minimum of two members. Each House member represents an electoral district within a county as drawn by the National Elections Commission and is elected by a plurality of the popular vote of their district into a six-year term. The Senate is made up of two senators from each county for a total of 30 senators. Senators serve nine-year terms and are elected at-large by a plurality of the popular vote. The vice president serves as the President of the Senate, with a President pro tempore serving in their absence.

Liberia's highest judicial authority is the Supreme Court, made up of five members and headed by the Chief Justice of Liberia. Members are nominated to the court by the president and are confirmed by the Senate, serving until the age of 70. The judiciary is further divided into circuit and speciality courts, magistrate courts and justices of the peace. The judicial system is a blend of common law, based on Anglo-American law, and customary law. An informal system of traditional courts still exists within the rural areas of the country, with trial by ordeal remaining common despite being officially outlawed.

Between 1877 and 1980, the government was dominated by the True Whig Party. Today, over 20 political parties are registered in the country, based largely around personalities and ethnic groups. Most parties suffer from poor organizational capacity. The 2005 elections marked the first time that the president's party did not gain a majority of seats in the Legislature.

Corruption

Corruption is endemic at every level of the Liberian government. When President Sirleaf took office in 2006, she announced that corruption was âthe major public enemy.â In 2014 the US ambassador to Liberia stated that corruption there was harming people through "unnecessary costs to products and services that are already difficult for many Liberians to afford".

Liberia scored a 3.3 on a scale from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt) on the 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index. This gave it a ranking 87th of 178 countries worldwide and 11th of 47 in Sub-Saharan Africa. This score represented a significant improvement since 2007, when the country scored 2.1 and ranked 150th of 180 countries. When seeking attention of a selection of service providers, 89% of Liberians had to pay a bribe, the highest national percentage in the world according to the organization's 2010 Global Corruption Barometer.

Military

The Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) are the armed forces of the Republic of Liberia. Founded as the Liberian Frontier Force in 1908, the military was retitled in 1956. For virtually all of its history, the AFL has received considerable materiel and training assistance from the United States. For most of the 1941â"89 period, training was largely provided by U.S. advisers, though this assistance has not prevented the same generally low levels of effectiveness common to most of the armed forces in the developing world.

Foreign relations

After the turmoil following the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars, Liberia's internal stabilization in the 21st century brought a return to cordial relations with neighboring countries and much of the Western world.

In the past, both of Liberia's neighbors Guinea and Sierra Leone have accused Liberia of backing rebels inside their countries.

Law enforcement

The Liberian National Police are the national police force of the country.

The Liberian National Police have 844 officers spread across 33 stations in Montserrado County, which contains the capital Monrovia, as of October 2007. Additionally, the National Police Training Academy is in Montserrado County in Paynesville City.

Economy and infrastructure

The Central Bank of Liberia is responsible for printing and maintaining the Liberian dollar, which is the primary form of currency in Liberia. Liberia is one of the world's poorest countries, with a formal employment rate of 15%. GDP per capita peaked in 1980 at US$496, when it was comparable to Egypt's (at the time). In 2011, the country's nominal GDP was US$1.154 billion, while nominal GDP per capita stood at US$297, the third-lowest in the world. Historically, the Liberian economy has depended heavily on foreign aid, foreign direct investment and exports of natural resources such as iron ore, rubber and timber.

Following a peak in growth in 1979, the Liberian economy began a steady decline due to economic mismanagement following the 1980 coup. This decline was accelerated by the outbreak of civil war in 1989; GDP was reduced by an estimated 90% between 1989 and 1995, one of the fastest declines in history. Upon the end of the war in 2003, GDP growth began to accelerate, reaching 9.4% in 2007. The global financial crisis slowed GDP growth to 4.6% in 2009, though a strengthening agricultural sector led by rubber and timber exports increased growth to 5.1% in 2010 and an expected 7.3% in 2011, making the economy one of the 20 fastest growing in the world.

Current impediments to growth include a small domestic market, lack of adequate infrastructure, high transportation costs, poor trade links with neighboring countries and the high dollarization of the economy. Liberia used the United States dollar as its currency from 1943 until 1982 and continues to use the U.S. dollar alongside the Liberian dollar.

Following a decrease in inflation beginning in 2003, inflation spiked in 2008 as a result of worldwide food and energy crises, reaching 17.5% before declining to 7.4% in 2009. Liberia's external debt was estimated in 2006 at approximately $4.5 billion, 800% of GDP. As a result of bilateral, multilateral and commercial debt relief from 2007 to 2010, the country's external debt fell to $222.9 million by 2011.

While official commodity exports declined during the 1990s as many investors fled the civil war, Liberia's wartime economy featured the exploitation of the region's diamond wealth. The country acted as a major trader in Sierra Leonian blood diamonds, exporting over US$300 million in diamonds in 1999. This led to a United Nations ban on Liberian diamond exports in 2001, which was lifted in 2007 following Liberia's accession to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme.

In 2003, additional UN sanctions were placed on Liberian timber exports, which had risen from US$5 million in 1997 to over US$100 million in 2002 and were believed to be funding rebels in Sierra Leone. These sanctions were lifted in 2006. Due in large part to foreign aid and investment inflow following the end of the war, Liberia maintains a large account deficit, which peaked at nearly 60% in 2008. Liberia gained observer status with the World Trade Organization in 2010 and is in the process of acquiring full member status.

Liberia has the highest ratio of foreign direct investment to GDP in the world, with US$16 billion in investment since 2006. Following the inauguration of the Sirleaf administration in 2006, Liberia signed several multi-billion dollar concession agreements in the iron ore and palm oil industries with numerous multinational corporations, including BHP Billiton, ArcelorMittal, and Sime Darby. Especially palm oil companies like Sime Darby (Malaysia) and Golden Veroleum (USA) are being accused by critics of the destruction of livelihoods and the displacement of local communities, enabled through government concessions. The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company has operated the world's largest rubber plantation in Liberia since 1926.

Shipping flag of convenience

Due to its status as a flag of convenience, Liberia has the second-largest maritime registry in the world behind Panama, with 3,500 vessels registered under its flag accounting for 11% of ships worldwide.

Telecommunications

There are six major newspapers in Liberia, and 45% of the population has a mobile phone service. Much of Liberia's communications infrastructure was destroyed or plundered during the two civil wars (1989â"1996 and 1999â"2003). With low rates of adult literacy and high poverty rates, television and newspaper use is limited, leaving radio as the predominant means of communicating with the public.

Transportation

Liberia's economic main links to the outside world come through Monrovia, via the port and airport in the capital.

Energy

Formal electricity services are solely provided by the state-owned Liberia Electricity Corporation, which operates a small grid almost exclusively in the Greater Monrovia District. The vast majority of electric energy services is provided by small privately owned generators. At $0.54 per kWh, the electricity tariff in Liberia is among the highest in the world. Total installed capacity in 2013 was 20 MW, a sharp decline from a peak of 191 MW in 1989.

Completion of the repair and expansion of the Mount Coffee Hydropower Plant, with a maximum capacity of 80 MW, is scheduled to be completed by 2018, while construction of three new heavy fuel oil power plants is expected to boost electrical capacity by 38 MW. In 2013, Liberia began importing power from neighboring CÃ´te d'Ivoire and Guinea through the West African Power Pool.

Liberia has begun exploration for offshore oil; unproven oil reserves may be in excess of one billion barrels. The government divided its offshore waters into 17 blocks and began auctioning off exploration licenses for the blocks in 2004, with further auctions in 2007 and 2009. An additional 13 ultra-deep offshore blocks were demarcated in 2011 and planned for auction. Among the companies to have won licenses are Repsol, Chevron, Anadarko and Woodside Petroleum.

Society

Demographics

As of the 2008 national census, Liberia was home to 3,476,608 people. Of those, 1,118,241 lived in Montserrado County, the most populous county in the country and home to the capital of Monrovia, with the Greater Monrovia District home to 970,824 people. Nimba County is the next most populous county with 462,026 residents. As revealed in the 2008 census, Monrovia is more than four times more populous than all the county capitals combined.

Prior to the 2008 census, the last census had been held in 1984 and listed the country's population as 2,101,628. The population of Liberia was 1,016,443 in 1962 and increased to 1,503,368 in 1974. As of 2006, Liberia has the highest population growth rate in the world (4.50% per annum). 43.5% of Liberians were below the age of 15 in 2010.

Ethnic groups

The population includes 16 indigenous ethnic groups and various foreign minorities. Indigenous peoples comprise about 95 percent of the population. The 16 officially recognized ethnic groups include the Kpelle, Bassa, Mano, Gio or Dan, Kru, Grebo, Krahn, Vai, Gola, Mandingo or Mandinka, Mende, Kissi, Gbandi, Loma, Fante, Dei or Dewoin, Belleh, and Americo-Liberians or Congo people.

The Kpelle are the largest ethnic group in Liberia, mostly residing in Bong County and adjacent areas in central Liberia. Americo-Liberians, who are descendants of African American and West Indian, mostly Barbadian or Bajan settlers, make up 2.5%, and Congo people, descendants of repatriated Congo and Afro-Caribbean slaves who arrived in 1825, make up an estimated 2.5%.

There are also a large number of Lebanese, Indians, and other West African nationals who make up a significant part of Liberia's business community. There is a high percentage of interracial marriage between ethnic Liberians and the Lebanese. Thus creating a large mulatto population especially in and around Monrovia. A small minority of Liberians of European descent reside in the country. The Liberian constitution restricts citizenship to people of Black African descent.

Languages

English is the official language and serves as the lingua franca of Liberia. Thirty-one indigenous languages are spoken within Liberia, none of which are a first language to more than a small percentage of the population. Liberians speak a variety of dialects collectively known as Liberian English.

Largest cities

Religion

According to the 2008 National Census, 85.5% of the population practices Christianity. Muslims comprise 12.2% of the population, largely coming from the Mandingo and Vai ethnic groups. Traditional indigenous religions are practiced by 0.5% of the population, while 1.5% subscribe to no religion. A small number of people are BahÃ¡'Ã, Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist. Concurrent participation in gender based indigenous religious secret societies such as Poro and Sande is common, with the all-female Sande society practicing female genital mutilation. Liberian Muslims are divided into Sunnis, Shias, Ahmadiyyas, Sufis, and non-denominational Muslims

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respects this right. While separation of church and state is also mandated by the Constitution, Liberia is considered a Christian state in practice. Public schools offer biblical studies, though parents may opt out their children. Commerce is prohibited by law on Sundays and major Christian holidays. The government does not require businesses or schools to excuse Muslims for Friday prayers.

Education

In 2010, the literacy rate of Liberia was estimated at 60.8% (64.8% for males and 56.8% for females). In some areas primary and secondary education is free and compulsory from the ages of 6 to 16, though enforcement of attendance is lax. In other areas children are required to pay a tuition fee to attend school. On average, children attain 10 years of education (11 for boys and 8 for girls). The country's education sector is hampered by inadequate schools and supplies, as well as a lack of qualified teachers.

Higher education is provided by a number of public and private universities. The University of Liberia is the country's largest and oldest university. Located in Monrovia, the university opened in 1862 and today has six colleges, including a medical school and the nation's only law school, Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law. In 2009, Tubman University in Harper, Maryland County became the second public university in Liberia. Cuttington University, established by the Episcopal Church of the USA in 1889 in Suakoko, Bong County, is the nation's oldest private university. Since 2006, the government has also opened community colleges in Buchanan, Sanniquellie, and Voinjama.

Health

Hospitals in Liberia include the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia and several others. Life expectancy in Liberia is estimated to be 57.4 years in 2012. With a fertility rate of 5.9 births per woman, the maternal mortality rate stood at 990 per 100,000 births in 2010. A number of highly communicable diseases are widespread, including tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases and malaria. In 2007, the HIV infection rates stood at 2% of the population aged 15â"49 whereas the incidence of tuberculosis was 420 per 100,000 people in 2008. Approximately 58.2% â" 66% of women are estimated to have undergone female genital mutilation.

Liberia imports 90% of its rice, a staple food, and is extremely vulnerable to food shortages. In 2007, 20.4% of children under the age of five were malnourished. In 2008, only 17% of the population had access to adequate sanitation facilities.

Civil war ended in 2003 after destroying approximately 95% of the country's healthcare facilities. In 2009, government expenditure on health care per capita was US$22, accounting for 10.6% of total GDP. In 2008, Liberia had only one doctor and 27 nurses per 100,000 people.

In 2014 an outbreak of Ebola virus in Guinea spread to Liberia. As of November 17, 2014, there were 2,812 confirmed deaths from the ongoing outbreak. In early August 2014 Guinea closed its borders to Liberia to help contain the spread of the virus, as more new cases were now being reported in Liberia than in Guinea. On 16 August 2014, a quarantine center in Monrovia was attacked by protesters causing a number of patients being monitored for Ebola to flee, while blood-soaked bedding and other infected items were removed. The incident was seen by officials as a disaster as it had the potential to accelerate the spread of the disease.

On May 9, 2015 Liberia was declared Ebola free after six weeks with no cases.

Crime

Rape and sexual assault have persisted in the post-conflict era in Liberia; the country has one of the highest incidences of sexual violence against women in the world. Rape is the most frequently reported crime, accounting for more than one-third of sexual violence cases; targets are largely adolescent girls, and almost 40% of perpetrators are adult men known to victims.

Culture

The religious practices, social customs and cultural standards of the Americo-Liberians had their roots in the antebellum American South. The settlers wore top hat and tails and modeled their homes on those of Southern slaveowners. Most Americo-Liberian men were members of the Masonic Order of Liberia, which became heavily involved in the nation's politics.

Liberia has a long, rich history in textile arts and quilting, as the settlers brought with them their sewing and quilting skills. Liberia hosted National Fairs in 1857 and 1858 in which prizes were awarded for various needle arts. One of the most well-known Liberian quilters was Martha Ann Ricks, who presented a quilt featuring the famed Liberian coffee tree to Queen Victoria in 1892. When President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf moved into the Executive Mansion, she reportedly had a Liberian-made quilt installed in her presidential office.

A rich literary tradition has existed in Liberia for over a century. Edward Wilmot Blyden, Bai T. Moore, Roland T. Dempster and Wilton G. S. Sankawulo are among Liberia's more prominent authors. Moore's novella Murder in the Cassava Patch is considered Liberia's most celebrated novel.

Polygamy

One-third of married Liberian women between the ages of 15â"49 are in polygamous marriages. Customary law allows men to have up to four wives.

Cuisine

Main article see Liberian cuisine

Liberian cuisine heavily incorporates rice, the country's staple food. Other ingredients include cassava, fish, bananas, citrus fruit, plantains, coconut, okra and sweet potatoes. Heavy stews spiced with habanero and scotch bonnet chillies are popular and eaten with fufu. Liberia also has a tradition of baking imported from the United States that is unique in West Africa.

Sport

The most popular sport in Liberia is association football, with George Weah (the only African to be named FIFA World Player of the Year) the nation's most famous athlete. The Liberia national football team has reached the Africa Cup of Nations twice, in 1996 and 2002.

In Liberia, the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex serves as a multi-purpose stadium and hosts sporting events.

Measurement system

Liberia is one of only three countries that have not officially adopted the International System of Units. The Liberian government has begun transitioning away from use of imperial units to the metric system. However, this change has been gradual, with government reports concurrently using both imperial and metric units. A 2008 report from the University of Tennessee stated that the changeover from imperial to metric measures was confusing to coffee and cocoa farmers.

References

External links

Chief of State and Cabinet Members
Liberia entry at The World Factbook
Liberia from UCB Libraries GovPubs.
Liberia at DMOZ
Liberia profile from the BBC News.
"Liberia Maps", Perry-CastaÃ±eda Library, University of Texas at Austin.
Wikimedia Atlas of Liberia

USNS Mission San Francisco (T-AO-123)

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 16:23:00 +0000

USNS Mission San Francisco (T-AO-123) was a Mission Buenaventura-class oiler that served in the United States Navy. The ship was originally intended as USS Contoocook (AO-104) for the U.S. Navy but her acquisition was canceled. The ship, a Type T2-SE-A3 tanker, was completed as SS Mission San Francisco and delivered after the end of World War II. The tanker was acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1947 as USS Mission San Francisco (AO-123), but was transferred to the Military Sea Transport Service (MSTS) upon its creation in 1949. During a second stint with the MSTS that began in 1954, Mission San Francisco collided with the freighter Elna II in the Delaware River coast and was declared unsalvageable by the U.S. Navy. The ship was one of two U.S. Navy vessels named for the Franciscan mission of San Francisco de AsÃs located in San Francisco, California.

Career

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Mission San Francisco was laid down on 5 May 1945 as Contocook under a Maritime Commission contract by Marinship Corporation, Sausalito, California; launched on 18 September 1945, sponsored by Mrs. John J. Manning; and delivered on 11 October 1945. Chartered to Deconhill Shipping Company, upon her delivery, for operations, she served until 14 April 1946 when she was returned to the Maritime Commission and laid up in the Maritime Reserve Fleet at Mobile, Alabama.

Acquired by the Navy on 28 October 1947, she was placed in service with the Naval Transportation Service as Mission San Francisco (AO-123). Taken over by the Military Sea Transportation Service on 1 October 1949 she was redesignated USNS Mission San Francisco (T-AO-123) and served under MSTS until 18 January 1954, when she was returned to the Maritime Administration and laid up in the Maritime Reserve Fleet at Beaumont, Texas.

Reacquired by the Navy on 20 October 1956, she was once again placed in service with MSTS and chartered to Mathiasens Tanker Industries. Her period of service with MSTS was short. On 7 March 1957 while passing New Castle, Delaware, she collided with the Liberian freighter Elna II. The shock of the collision caused Mission San Francisco to catch fire and explode, breaking her in two. The explosion killed 10 men, including her master, Capt. William Allen. Immediately after the collision, Elna II backed off but in her attempts to avoid the burning hulk she ran aground. Due to bad weather, rescue attempts were slow, but all aboard Elna II and the survivors of Mission San Francisco were rescued by the United States Coast Guard. Declared unsalvageable by the Navy, Mission San Francisco was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 20 March 1957.

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.
"T-AO-121 Mission San Francisco". Retrieved January 26, 2011.Â

Ice Boat No. 3

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 11:03:00 +0000

City Ice Boat No. 3, commonly known as Ice Boat No. 3 or just No. 3, was a municipal sidewheel icebreaker built in 1873 to assist in keeping Philadelphia's waterways free of ice during the winter months. The vessel was also used for occasional excursions and other duties through the rest of the year.

During the Spanishâ"American War, Ice Boat No. 3 was briefly commissioned into the U.S. Navy as the coastal patrol vessel USS Arctic, before returning to her normal duties under her original name. Ice Boat No. 3 was sunk in a collision with an underwater obstruction in February 1905.

Construction and design

In the early 1870s, the City of Philadelphia decided that its two existing icebreakers were not sufficient to keep Philadelphia's waterways free of ice, and that a third would be required. Accordingly, the council ordered a new vessel from the recently established iron shipbuilding firm of Wood, Dialogue & Co. of Camden, New Jersey. The new boat, an iron-hulled sidewheel icebreaker named City Ice Boat No. 3, cost $245,000 and was launched at Kaighn's Point, New Jersey, on 5 November 1873.

City Ice Boat No.3 had a length of 201 feet 6 inches, a beam of 33 feet 5 inches and a draft of 13 feet 6 inches. She had a gross register tonnage of 637.2 tons (326.42 tons net) and a displacement of 1,537 tons. Photos taken during the vessel's naval service indicate that she was a double-ender, with a smaller pilothouse astern. Her powerplantâ"a steam engine of the horizontal direct-acting typeâ"was rated at a nominal horsepower of 500. It is not known what icebreaking features were incorporated into her design, but she is known to have been capable of making unusually sharp turns. She was the largest of the city's three icebreakers, the only one with an electric generating plant and electric lighting, and throughout her career was considered the best of the three.

Service history

Apart from special occasions, the city's ice boats were usually only employed for two or three months of the yearâ"through the winter months of December/January through February/Marchâ"being laid up for repair or refit the rest of the year. Though their primary role was to keep Philadelphia's channel to the sea free of ice, towing vessels endangered or hampered by ice was an important secondary task, which had the additional benefit of earning the city towage fees.

Municipal service, 1874â"1898

Ice Boat No. 3ââ'âs trial trip was scheduled for 31 January 1874, with Philadelphia's city council members invited to attend. Almost immediately thereafter, the ice boat entered service in the vicinity of New Castle, Delaware, towing two vessels, a bark bound for Hamburg and a brig for Matanzas, on 3 February. The following winter, No. 3 was again in service off New Castle, towing a bark bound for Bremen and another for Yokohama in early March.

On 4 February 1881, Ice Boat No. 3, operating under the command of Captain Henry F. Virden near the Delaware Breakwater, went to the assistance of two pilot boats, Bavard and Knight, towing them into harbor, and later aided an imperilled lightship. That same day, the ice boat conducted a search for the abandoned bark Arundel, which was eventually located five miles offshore "in a dangerous position ... fast in the ice" and "with great difficulty" towed the vessel to the Breakwater harbor, arriving 11 pm. Later, the ice boat took aboard the crew of Arundel and resumed tow of the vessel, returning it to the port of Philadelphia on 8 February. Because the Arundel had been abandoned by its crew, the crew of Ice Boat No. 3 sued for salvage, the sum of $2,500 eventually being granted to them by the U.S. District Court.

On 10 January 1891, Ice Boat No. 3 was scheduled to tow the school ship Saratoga to sea from the port of Philadelphia, when a change of personnel aboard the ship necessitated a postponement. The following year, on December 28, the tug Crawford was caught in an ice floe at New Castle and "carried almost to Fort Delaware" where she was holed by a collision with the schooner Aaron Reppard, but was towed to shoal water to prevent sinking by Ice Boat No. 3.

On January 20, 1893, Ice Boat No. 3 arrived at the Delaware Breakwater with the Reading Railroad steamer Panther in tow, which had experienced continual westerly winds and snowstorms since departing Newburyport, Massachusetts ten days earlier. Some weeks later, on the night of 7 February, Ice Boat No. 3 was towing the ship Standard past the Delaware Breakwater when the towing hawser broke, propelling the Standard into the Italian bark Giovanni anchored at the Breakwater and damaging the latter vessel to the amount of $4,000. The captain of Giovanni sued the City of Philadelphia for damages and won the ensuing court case, with the master of the ice boat found to have exercised "gross carelessness" for failing to see the Giovanni in time, and for his "sudden veering" manoeuvre which caused the hawser to catch on Standardââ'âs bobstays and snap.

In July 1896, the navy organized training exercises for the Pennsylvania Naval Militia to be held aboard USSÂ Indiana, which was anchored off the Delaware Breakwater for the purpose. Two of Philadelphia's ice boats, No. 2 and No. 3, were recommissioned to transport the militia from Philadelphia to the Indiana, with No. 2, commanded by Lt. Stout, embarking the Pittsburgh division consisting of 66 officers and men, and No. 3, under the command of Lt.-Commander Breed, embarking the 26 officers and 88 men of the Philadelphia division. The two ice boats departed Philadelphia on the 10th, arriving at the Breakwater on the 11th where they anchored. The militiamen apparently remained aboard the ice boats until the 14th when they were taken aboard Indiana for several days of training, including gunnery, target, signals and boating practice, before being returned to the ice boats for the return journey to Philadelphia.

The winter of 1897-98 was a mild one, with only two ice boats, No. 1 and No. 2, needed to keep the ice in check from 2 to 19 January, when they were stood down. The two returned to service on the 28th, and on 3 February, they were joined by Ice Boat No. 3. On 5 February, No. 2 and No. 3 were despatched to the assistance of the steamer Pennland, which had grounded near Tinicum Island. Pennland was refloated by No. 1 and No. 2 on 7 February. By mid-February, all three ice boats had been decommissioned, the last being Ice Boat No. 3, which was decommissioned on 15 February after only thirteen days of service for the season; two of No. 3ââ'âs boilers were however kept under steam until 15 March. Due to rumours of impending war with Spain, all three boats were given a thorough overhaul after decommission.

Spanish-American War

In March 1898, in anticipation of war with Spain, the U.S. Navy began preparations for the establishment of a Naval Auxiliary Force, known colloquially as the "mosquito fleet", for the defence of the United States East Coast. In the Delaware region, the Navy requested and received plans for the three Philadelphia ice boats, with a view to determining their suitability as patrol craft. The two older ice boats were deemed unsuitable, but Ice Boat No. 3 was accepted for service. On 23 April, Spain declared war on the United States in response to the latter's blockade of Cuba. On 5 May, Ice Boat No. 3, "in first-class working order", was transferred to the Navy, and on 9 May, in a display of patriotic fervour, Philadelphia's city councillors voted to lease the ice boat to the Navy indefinitely for the nominal sum of one dollar.

On 16 May, Ice Boat No. 3 was towed to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard at League Island for conversion to naval service. A couple of days later, naval officers at the yard reportedly described the vessel as slow, unwieldy, vulnerable to shellfire, and of little apparent use militarily. Regardless, the conversion proceeded, albeit at a less than urgent pace; she was still undergoing "repairs" at the yard as late as 18 June. The conversion work included the mounting of a 60-pounder breech loading gunâ"converted from a Civil War Parrott rifleâ"and two 47 mm guns. During the time the boat was undergoing conversion, rumours circulated that she would be sent to Cuba for use as a gunboat or blockade ship, but the Navy eventually confirmed her role as a Naval Auxiliary Force coastal patrol vessel with the Fourth Lighthouse District.

The converted ice boat was formally commissioned on 9 July 1898 as USS Arctic, the new name having been personally chosen by Secretary of the Navy John Davis Long; she was the second U.S. Navy vessel to bear the name. The newly commissioned vessel was manned by six officers and 58 men from the Pennsylvania Naval Reserve, Philadelphia division, Lt. George C. Stout in command. Three additional crew members, from the Philadelphia City Ice Boat Department, were given temporary naval commissions as Assistant Engineer, First-class Machinist and Second-class Machinist respectively.

USS Arctic appears to have made only one voyage for the Navy, to the Delaware Breakwater and back, via New Castle and Lewes, between 28 July and 16 August, but whether this constituted a formal patrol or some other mission is unclear. Arctic was decommissioned on 23 August 1898, reconverted to her "original condition", and on 13 September, returned to the City Ice Boat Department, where she resumed her former title of Ice Boat No. 3. The three members of the Department given temporary naval commissions also received their discharges between 1 and 16 September and were reinstated in their previous positions.

Following the cessation of hostilities between Spain and the United States in August, a "Peace Jubilee" including a naval review was held at the port of Philadelphia on 25 October. All three ice boats participated, with No. 1 and No. 2 placed at the disposal of the review committee and their guests, and Ice Boat No. 3 assigned to representatives of the press and their families.

Return to municipal service, 1899

Icebreaking

The winter of 1899 on the Delaware began mildly, but a cold snap and heavy snow falls from 7 February led to the rapid formation of thick ice. Ice Boats No. 1 and No. 2 were recommissioned on 8 February and Ice Boat No. 3 returned to service on the 10th. On Sunday 11 February, Ice Boat No. 3 was engaged in icebreaking all day during a snow storm. The following Tuesday, Ice Boat No. 3 set out from Philadelphia and Ice Boat No. 1 from New Castle, the ice having attained a thickness of "10 inches ... [with] 19 inches of snow on top". The two vessels met the next day off Fort Mifflin, having thus reopened the port. Ice Boat No. 3 then continued on to the Breakwater, there supplying the steamship Belgenland with 40 tons of coal, and towing to the Breakwater the oyster schooner Annie Cooneyâ"abandoned off the Brandywine Lightâ"before escorting several steamers to Philadelphia, arriving late on the 17th. On Sunday the 19th, the three ice boats collectively assisted sixteen steamers to arrive or depart the city's port.

With the weather improving, ice boats No. 1 and No. 2 were decommissioned on the 25th and 26th respectively and laid up. Ice Boat No. 3 was decommissioned on the 27th, though fires were retained under her boilers until 15 March, when she too was laid up, having spent a total of 18 days in commission through the winter.

Dewey Day

The first of May was declared "Dewey Day" in the U.S., in honor of the first anniversary of Admiral George Dewey's victory over Spanish forces at Manila Bay, Philippines, the previous year. Celebrations were held throughout the United States, the largest of which took place in Philadelphia, where the state governor declared a public holiday and a naval parade on the Delaware was organized, featuring USSÂ Raleigh, the cruiser credited with firing the first shot in the Battle of Manila Bay. Ice Boat No. 3 was recommissioned for the day, embarking 475 passengersâ"mostly city councillors and their friendsâ" from Arch Street at 1:15 pm and proceeding to League Island, the parade's designated starting point, where lunch was served aboard the boats.

The parade set out at 2:30 pm with the tug McCaulley acting as flagship followed by two police boats; however, at the insistence of Commodore Adams, Ice Boat No. 3 was given pride of place behind McCaulley due to the former's complement of councillors. The parade then steamed upriver to the Arch Street wharf where it circled the anchored Raleigh, to the cheers of thousands of onlookers ashore, after which guests from the various watercraft were invited aboard the cruiser for an inspection. Festivities ended about 4:15, about which time Ice Boat No. 3 returned her passengers to their embarkation point before proceeding to her usual berth at the House of Corrections wharf, arriving there 6:15 pm.

From 27 May to 1 June, Ice Boat No. 3 was drydocked at William Cramp & Sons, where her hull was cleaned and repainted. More repairs were made during the summer, including replacement of worn or defective hand rails and decking, and scaling and painting of the boiler room.

Grand Army Day

On 8 September, Ice Boat No. 3, along with the other two ice boats, participated in a naval parade in honor of the Grand Army of the Republic. Ice Boat No. 3, skippered by Captain Henry E. Melville, superintendent of the city ice boats, embarked guests from Pier 3, South Wharves at 10:30 am. While leaving the Chestnut Street dock to join the parade, No. 3 collided with the steamboat John A. Warner, striking the latter "about fifteen feet from her stern, cutting through her plank sheer and clear into her deck." Declining to stop and inquire after damages, the ice boat continued up the river, where she suffered a second collision, this time with the passenger-cargo steamboat Major Reybold which had just reversed out of dock, damaging the ice boat's starboard guard and Major Reyboldââ'âs stem. Again failing to stop, No. 3 continued on to the parade starting point at Fort Mifflin. After the parade was over, the guests were returned by the ice boat to Chestnut St. wharf about 4:15 pm, the vessel then continuing on to her usual berth at the House of Correction dock, arriving 6:15 pm. In a subsequent court case, the owners of Major Reybold sued for $1,425 in damages.

In October, all three ice boats had their hulls, upper and lower decks and smokestacks repainted.

1900â"1901

On 20 June 1900, members of the Allied Republican Clubs were treated to a "complimentary river excursion" on the Delaware by local club members. A fleet of nine watercraft, including all three of the city's ice boats, was organized for the excursion, which began at 12:15 and included an inspection of the Cramp & Sons shipyard on the way to Holmesburg and Fort Mifflin. Onboard refreshments and music were provided for the excursionists, who were returned to their departure points at around 5 pm.

The 1901 winter season began mildly, but a sudden drop in temperatures in February led to some of the worst conditions on the Delaware in memory. Ice Boat No. 3 was placed in commission on 5 February, the other two ice boats re-entering service on the 6th and 8th respectively. Ice Boat No. 3 spent most of the night of the 5th clearing ice in the Horseshoe, and on 7 February, No. 2 and No. 3 successfully refloated the steamer Switzerland, ashore on Chester Island. In the afternoon of 21 February No. 3 refloated the barge Baker, aground in the Shoe, and on 26 February refloated the ship Bengalore, ashore at Cherry Island Flats. The following day, the three ice boats worked together in the Horseshoe to free 21 vessels trapped in ice, and on 1 March, another 41 vessels were freed by the ice boats. With conditions rapidly improving, Ice Boat No. 1 was decommissioned on 6 March, followed by No. 2 and No. 3 on 7 and 9 March respectively, the crews of all three boats being paid and discharged and the boats returned to the City Ice Boat Dept. caretakers in accordance with standard procedure. Of the three ice boats, No. 3 spent the longest time in commission for the season, recording 34 days in full commission and another 40 days in commission with half crew.

In the summer off-season, Ice Boat No. 3 was again drydocked at the Cramp shipyard for the hull to be scraped and painted with red lead; the hull was found to be in good condition below the waterline. Minor repairs, including repairs to the donkey boiler, guards and rails were also completed by Neafie & Levy. The inner hull was scraped, sealed and coated with red lead during the summer by the Ice Boat Dept. caretakers, who also ground the engine valves, cleaned the boilers and "shedded over" the decks for protection from the summer sun. The Department's end-of-year annual report noted that the decks of all three ice boats required renewal, as they were leaking and had "been patched so often that but little of the original decks remain".

1902â"1904

The ice boats resumed work on the river in mid-January 1902 when Ice Boat No. 1 re-entered service, followed by No. 3 on 4 February and No. 2 on the 5th. On 6 February, Ice Boat No. 3 towed the bark Quivilly from Newcastle to the Breakwater, and the following day towed the bark Virginna Della Guardia to Newcastle on the return journey. Conditions on the river were at their most severe between 9 and 13 February, when the three ice boats operated together to assist no fewer than fifty vessels through the Horseshoe. The ice boats remained in continuous service until 24 February, No. 3 being decommissioned on 27 February and the other two the following day, the three having been in service for the season a total of 38 days. Through the summer, the boats were again cleaned and repainted by their caretakers. Ice Boat No. 3 was also given an overhaul at the Neafie & Levy shipyard, which included repairs to her engine, boilers, guards, wheels and decks.

The winter 1904 season arrived early, with the ice boat already in service by early January. On 8 January, during a snowstorm, Ice Boat No. 3, with the assistance of the tug Sommers N. Smith, refloated the Norwegian steamship Kate, which had gone ashore in Delaware Bay while outward bound from Philadelphia to Puerto Rico; Kate was towed the same day to Wilmington, Delaware, for repairs. On 10 February, Ice Boat No. 3 was sent to the assistance of several tugs attempting to refloat the British steamer Craigneuk, which had grounded near Reedy Island on her way from Leith to Philadelphia.

Some time after the end of the 1904 winter season, the City Ice Boat Department requested permission from the city council to prepare plans for a $110,000 rebuild of Ice Boat No. 3 as "her boilers and hull were worn out" and she could not be expected to continue in service beyond the next winter.

1905

The winter of 1905 was a long and severe one on the Delaware. No. 3 was again the first of the ice boats to resume service, re-entering commission on 6 January with a full crew and being despatched immediately to Newcastle following a sudden fall in temperature two days earlier. On 8 January, No. 3 convoyed the cruiser USSÂ Denver from League Island to Reedy Island, and the following day Ice Boat No. 1 also returned to service, the two ice boats working more or less continuously until being joined by No. 2 on the 20th. From this date, the three ice boats worked mostly on their regular stations until 4 February, assisting 44 vessels in this period, including 18 steamers on 3 February.

Loss

At 5 am on 5 February, Ice Boat No. 3, under the command of Captain W. F. P. Jacobs, arrived at the Delaware Breakwater "under orders to convey a fleet of ice-bound steamers, tugs, barges and schooners up to Philadelphia." In the National Harbor of Refuge between the two breakwaters, No. 3ââ'âs paddlewheels became jammed by ice, and unable to maneouver, the vessel was dragged by the ice floes over a recently sunken barge, the Santiago, one of whose broken masts pierced the ice boat's hull below the waterline. Within minutes, water had extinguished No. 3ââ'âs furnaces and the order was given to abandon ship. Unable to launch a lifeboat because of the surrounding ice, the crew were forced to leap for safety onto the ice floes, the ice boat sinking shortly thereafter, at about 6 am.

Stranded on the floes, and in "imminent danger" of drifting out to sea, the ice boat's crew tried desperately for four hours to raise the alarm until finally being sighted from shore. Five tug boats, Gettysburg, Teaser, Bonner, Sommers Smith and North America were quickly sent to their aid, Gettysburg arriving first to pick up ten of the crew, while Teaser and Bonner picked up most of the rest. The remaining two crew members, who had become separated from the others, were rescued by the tug Sommers Smith. All 31 crew members were rescued, though the ice boat's firemen, thinly clothed for their work in the engine room, had suffered both steam scalds and exposure from the cold during their ordeal.

Within days of the sinking, the Ice Boat Department had leased the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company's oceangoing tug International at the rate of $100 a day as a temporary replacement for Ice Boat No. 3. From 5 February to the 27th, the three vessels employed by the Department assisted no fewer than 262 vessels through the ice, making a total of 306 vessels assisted through the season.

With the arrival of spring, arrangements were made for removal of the sunken barge Santiago and Ice Boat No. 3, both of which had become hazards to navigation, and contracts for removal of the two vessels were signed on 20 March. Removal of Santiago was completed by 11 April 1906 at a cost of $354.77; removal of the sunken ice boat proved more difficult and was completed 4 August 1905 for the sum of $5,168.97.

To replace Ice Boat No. 3, the Department ordered a modern icebreaker from William Cramp & Sons at a cost of $350,000. Said to be "the most powerful icebreaker ever constructed" in the United States, and able to do the work of two of the older ice boats combined, the new icebreaker, named John Weaver after the Mayor of Philadelphia, entered service in time for the winter of 1906. The new icebreaker eventually became known as Ice Boat No. 3 after her predecessor.

Footnotes

References

Bibliography
Books

Ashbridge, Samuel H.; Haddock, William C. (1900). First annual message of Samuel H. Ashbridge Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. 2. Philadelphia: Dunlap Printing Co. pp.Â 497â"502.Â
Ashbridge, Samuel H.; Haddock, William C. (1902). Third annual message of Samuel H. Ashbridge Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. 2. Philadelphia: Dunlap Printing Co. pp.Â 619â"623.Â
Ashbridge, Samuel H.; Haddock, William C. (1903). Fourth annual message of Samuel H. Ashbridge Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. 2. Philadelphia: Dunlap Printing Co. pp.Â 79, 513â"515.Â
Childs, George W., ed. (1870). 1870 Public Ledger Almanac. Philadelphia: Collins Printers. p.Â 25.Â
City of Philadelphia (1874). Journal of the Common Council, of the City of Philadelphia, for the Year 1874. Philadelphia: King & Baird. p.Â 106.Â
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1900). Annual report of the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania for the year 1898. Pennsylvania: Wm. Stanley Ray, State Printer of Pennsylvania.Â
Editorial Staff of the National Reporter System (1894). United States Circuit Courts of Appeal Reports. 10. St. Paul: West Publishing Co. p.Â 553.Â
Hall, Charles et al. (1900). Charles Hall, Master of the Side-wheel Steamer Major Reybold v. City of Philadelphia: Brief for Libellant. Philadelphia: United States District Court.Â CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al. (link)
Members of the Bar (1883). Weekly notes of cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the County Courts of Philadelphia, and the United States District and Circuit Courts for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. XIII. Philadelphia: Kay & Brother. p.Â 146.Â
Reyburn, John E.; Stearns, George R. (1908). First annual message of John E. Reyburn Mayor of the City of Philadelphia II. Philadelphia: Dunlap Printing Co. p.Â 473.Â
Silverstone, Paul (2013). The New Navy, 1883â"1922. Taylor & Francis. p.Â 76. ISBNÂ 9781135865436.Â
United States Govt. (1885). Seventeenth Annual List of Merchant Vessels of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. p.Â 314.Â
United States Govt. (1906). Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army 1906. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. p.Â 176.Â
United States Govt. (1905). Annual Reports of the War Department for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1905. V. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. p.Â 1086.Â
United States Navy (1896). Report of the Secretary of the Navy [54th Congress]. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. p.Â 130.Â
Warwick, Charles F.; Thompson, Thomas M. (1899). Fourth annual message of Charles F. Warwick Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Dunlap Printing Co. pp.Â 65â"71.Â
Weaver, John; Acker, A. Lincoln (1906). Third annual message of John Weaver Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. 2. Philadelphia: Dunlap Printing Company.Â

Journals

The Philadelphia Record, New York Herald, The Brooklyn Union, The Lowell Daily Courier, Elmira Gazette

Websites

Naval History and Heritage Command website

Cape Henlopen

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 05:43:00 +0000

Cape Henlopen is the southern cape of the Delaware Bay along the Atlantic coast of the United States. It lies in the state of Delaware, near the town of Lewes. Off the coast on the bay side are two lighthouses, called the Harbor of Refuge Light and the Delaware Breakwater East End Light.

Early history

Cape Henlopen July Fishing - July 8 & 11, 2014 - On July 8 and 11, 2014, I thought triggerfish had arrived. But I did not see them at all. All I saw were Togtog. I saw many large tautog that weren't captured on the ...

Cape Henlopen, originally spelled Cape Hinlopen (after its namesake Thijmen Jacobsz Hinlopen who was a prominent Dutch trader), was New Netherland's most southern border on the 37th parallel north.

In 1620, Thijmen Jacobsz Hinlopen became the business partner (1620) of Cornelis Jacobsen Mey in the now washed out Cape Cornelius and the incorrectly spelled Cape May with the ships Blijde Boodschap (en. "Joyful Message") and Bever both of which focused on exploration and trade with the Indians on the Delaware River (then Zuidt Rivier).

The area between the 38th and 40th parallels (i.e., the Delaware Bay area) as well as the Delaware River from north to south had previously been surveyed and charted by Cornelis Hendricksz from Monnikendam on the ship "Onrust" in 1614, 1615 and 1616. From August until November 1616, the New Netherland Company, which had an exclusive trading patent for the New Netherland territory between 40Â° and 45Â° latitude, had tried unsuccessfully to obtain an exclusive patent from the States General of the Dutch Republic for the territory between 38Â° and 40Â° latitude.

Cornelis Jacobsz Mey was also unable to trade in the South River (Delaware River) at the exclusion of competing Dutch companies. Those Dutch companies came in conflict with one another but were eventually able to reach agreement in New Netherland. Discord arose again which was settled, finally, by a judgment of arbitrators at Amsterdam on December 23, 1623. The 38th and 39th parallels region came under the final jurisdiction of the Dutch West India Company on behalf of the States General with the delivery of the first settlers to Governors Island in New Netherland in 1624. Those settlers were subsequently spread out onto Verhulsten Island (Burlington Island) in the Delaware, at Fort Orange (now Albany) in the Hudson River and at the mouth of the Connecticut River in order to finalize the claim to New Netherland as a North American province according to the Hugo Grotius Law of Nations (? year).

In 1782 during the American Revolutionary War, the young Continental Navy Lieutenant Joshua Barney fought with a British squadron at Cape May and Delaware Bay. Barney's force of three sloops defeated a Royal Navy frigate, a sloop-of-war and a Loyalist privateer. The battle ended with the loss of two British vessels and one American sloop.

State Park

Cape Henlopen State Park is a 5,193 acre (21Â kmÂ²) Delaware state park on Cape Henlopen in Sussex County, Delaware, in the United States. William Penn made the beaches of Cape Henlopen one of the first public lands established in what has become the United States in 1682 with the declaration that Cape Henlopen would be for "the usage of the citizens of Lewes and Sussex County." Cape Henlopen State Park has a 24-hour and year-round fishing pier as well as campgrounds. The remainder of the park is only open from sunrise to sunset, and includes a bathhouse on the Atlantic Ocean, an area for surf-fishing, a disc golf course, and bicycle lanes, walking paths, and a World War II-era watchtower which is open to the public. The beach at Herring Point is also a popular surfing spot.

Camp Henlopen serves as the Eastern terminus for the American Discovery Trail, the only coast to coast hiking trail in the United States.

Cape Henlopen school district

Cape Henlopen School District

Cultural references

A small fishing settlement (perhaps fictional) at Henlopen was the location for "Tom Chist and the Treasure Box", one of Howard Pyle's stories in Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates.

Interesting facts

Cape Henlopen is on the same latitude as Cape Roca - the westernmost point of Eurasia. Distance from Cape Roca to Cape Henlopen is 5568 kilometers in a straight line.

Timeline of Cape Henlopen

1682 William Penn designates the area as public land.
1767-9 Construction of the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse completed at the Great Dune - the sixth lighthouse on American soil. This construction was funded by the merchants of Philadelphia.
1777 the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse was gutted by fire.
1784 the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse was repaired and returned to active duty.
1789 Pennsylvania cedes the lighthouse,associated land, and jurisdiction to the United States.
1824 The Cape Henlopen Beacon was constructed on a 45 foot (14 m) tower about a mile (1.6Â km) north of the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse.
1855 Construction of the Delaware Breakwater East End Lighthouse completed.
1869 Construction of the Delaware Breakwater West End Lighthouse and stone breakwater barrier completed.
1885 The steel Strickland Lighthouse replaces the lighthouse on the inner breakwater.
1901 Construction of the 8,000 foot (2.4Â km) long outer stone breakwater barrier completed.
1903 The Strickland Lighthouse is retired from service.
c. 1915 to 1920 Radio Compass Station built
1918 6-inch gun platform built (WWI era)
1920 Cape Henlopen Lighthouse badly damaged by a storm.
1924 Cape Henlopen Lighthouse abandoned - lens removed.
1926 (April 13) Cape Henlopen Lighthouse collapsed due to movement of Great Dune.
1941 U.S. Army established Fort Miles at Cape Henlopen.
1950 The Delaware Breakwater Lighthouse demolished and the East End Lighthouse was automated.
1964 The U.S. Department of Defense declared 543 acres (2.20Â km²) as surplus property and the State of Delaware established Cape Henlopen State Park.
1966 The USS Buncombe County (LST-510) was renamed MV Cape Henlopen and converted to a passenger and auto ferry.
1978 The Fenwick Lighthouse is decommissioned.
Gordon's Pond Wildlife Area established.
1982 The State of Delaware assumed ownership of the Fenwick lighthouse and it was electrified and returned to operation.
1997 The State of Delaware purchased the East End lighthouse and placed it on the National Register of Historic Places.
2007 The two 300Â ft (91Â m) groins of Herring Point originally built in 1950 are cleaned up and rebuilt.

National Harbor of Refuge, outer breakwater off Cape Henlopen. All metal, built in 1926 and automated in 1973. Maintained by US Coast Guard. Visible from Cape May-Lewes Ferry.

References

External links

delawareonline.com
lewestown.com
outdoorplaces.com
beach-net.com
lewestown.com
cafelocale.com
Delaware Inner Breakwater Light - Lewes
Video of Henlopen Point
Photograph - Sailing in The Bay
Photograph - Sunset at Henlopen State Park 3
Photograph - Sandbars
Photograph - Windy Beach
RedKnot.org links to shorebird recovery sites, movies, events & other info on Red Knot rufa & horseshoe crabs.
Palrb.us Pennsylvania statute ceding lighthouse, land and jurisdiction to the United States

Fenwick Island, Delaware

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 19:03:00 +0000

Fenwick Island is a coastal town in Sussex County, Delaware, USA. According to 2010 census figures, the population of the town is 379, a 10.8% increase over the last decade. It is part of the Salisbury, Maryland-Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town is located on Fenwick Island, a barrier spit.

Fenwick Island and its neighbors to the north, Bethany Beach and South Bethany are popularly known as "The Quiet Resorts". This is in contradistinction to the wild atmosphere of Dewey Beach and the cosmopolitan bustle of Rehoboth Beach. Fenwick Island, however, is somewhat less "quiet" than "the Bethanies" because it is immediately across the state line from Ocean City, Maryland, which has a reputation as a lively vacation resort.

Named after Thomas Fenwick, a planter from England who settled in Maryland, Fenwick Island lay in the part of Delaware which was claimed by Lord Baltimore and his heirs during the Penn-Baltimore border dispute.

Contrary to popular belief, the town does not sit on a barrier island but on a narrow peninsula which resembles a barrier island (unless one considers a narrow man-made boat canal well inland that connects White Creek to Little Assawoman Bay). The narrow strip of land separates the Atlantic Ocean from Little Assawoman Bay. Ocean City, Maryland occupies the southern tip of this peninsula.

Local legend has it that Cedar Island in Little Assawoman Bay was a spot for pirates to bury treasure. Regardless of the truth of the legend, the Delaware coastal area was well known as a place for pirates to hide from the law.

The town was an unincorporated area between South Bethany and Ocean City, Maryland until July 1953, when the Delaware General Assembly passed an act to incorporate the town. Local sentiment demanded incorporation to prevent the relentless high-rise development of Ocean City from creeping north into Fenwick Island.

Geography

Fenwick Island, Delaware - a land of many childhood memories.

Fenwick Island is located at 38Â°27â²34â³N 75Â°3â²13â³W (38.459314, -75.053563).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.5 square miles (1.3Â km²), of which, 0.3 square miles (0.78Â km²) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.26Â km²) of it (28.57%) is water.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 342 people, 178 households, and 126 families residing in the town. The population density was 994.5 people per square mile (388.4/kmÂ²). There were 666 housing units at an average density of 1,936.7 per square mile (756.3/kmÂ²). The racial makeup of the town was 99.42% White, and 0.58% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.63% of the population.

There were 178 households out of which 5.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 67.4% were married couples living together, 2.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.7% were non-families. 26.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.92 and the average family size was 2.25.

In the town the population was spread out with 6.1% under the age of 18, 2.6% from 18 to 24, 11.1% from 25 to 44, 40.6% from 45 to 64, and 39.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 61 years. For every 100 females there were 89.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.6 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $58,333, and the median income for a family was $68,750. Males had a median income of $46,607 versus $48,750 for females. The per capita income for the town was $44,415. About 3.3% of families and 8.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including none of those under age 18 and 7.1% of those age 65 or over.

References

External links

Town of Fenwick Island - Official Site
Fenwick Island, DE Information

USS Cherokee (ID-458)

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 13:43:00 +0000

USS Cherokee was a tugboat built in 1891 by John H. Dialogue & Sons in Camden, New Jersey, as Edgar F. Luckenbach (later renamed Luckenbach No.Â 2). The ship was purchased by the United States Navy and delivered at New York on 12 October 1917; and commissioned on 5 December 1917. She was renamed Cherokee, the third US Navy ship of that name, after the Cherokee Native American tribe, and given the identification number 458.

Outfitted for distant service at New York and at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Cherokee cleared Newport, Rhode Island on 24 February 1918 for Washington, D.C. On 26 February, in a heavy gale, she foundered about 12Â miles off Fenwick Island Light Vessel, with the loss of 30 of her crew. The tanker British Admiral rescued 12 survivors, two of whom died before the tanker reached port.

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.

External links

Luckenbach Number 2 (American Tug, 1891)
New Jersey Scuba Diver
Divesafety Cherokee page

Penfield Reef Light

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 08:23:00 +0000

Penfield Reef Lighthouse is a lighthouse in Connecticut, United States, on Penfield Reef at the south side of Black Rock Harbor entrance on the Long Island Sound, off the coast of Fairfield, Connecticut. Constructed in 1874, it was one of the last offshore masonry lights. Most offshore lights built after this were cast iron towers built on cylindrical cast iron foundations.

Penfield Reef has been called one of the most treacherous areas of western Long Island Sound. The structure is about 1.1 miles (1.8Â km) off Fairfield Beach, on one end of the reef.

The lighthouse's foundation, structure and roofs were in good condition, according to a 2004 Town of Fairfield report, but the wood frame supporting the balcony around the tower was in need of major repairs. Other problems include asbestos tiles on the floor, lead paint on the walls, mold in most places and decaying brick and mortar work in the basement. The U.S. Coast Guard last had the lighthouse repaired in 2003. The lighthouse is connected to a two-floor keeper's quarters built of granite and timber frames on a concrete foundation surrounded by rocks.

History

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The Penfield Reef Light was constructed in 1874. The light is an active aid to navigation.

Haunting

On December 22, 1916. Lighthouse Keeper Frederick A. Jordan (sometimes spelled Jordon) rowed a dory for the mainland, to join his family for Christmas. The sea was rough, and about 150 yards (140Â m) northwest of the lighthouse, the boat capsized. Assistant Keeper Rudolph Iten said he was unable to launch a boat against a strong wind and an outgoing tide, and so he could only witness Jordan's disappearance into the water. Jordan's body was soon recovered, and Iten was absolved of blame for the death and became the next keeper.

According to a local legend, Jordan has haunted the place ever since. Iten wrote in the keeper's log that Jordan's ghost appeared two weeks later. Iten wrote that the ghost floated down the tower's stairs before dissolving into the darkness, and Iten said he found the log opened to the page that recorded the man's death. Iten also said the Penfield light began "behaving strangely" when the ghost appeared.

Jeremy D'Entremont, author of The Lighthouses of Connecticut, said that since Iten had tried to save the man, the new keeper would be unlikely to make light of Jordan's death by fabricating a ghost tale. Other lighthouse keepers later said Jordan's ghost appeared to them, and Iten even got them to sign affidavits describing the apparitions.

In one tale, Jordan was said to have pulled two boys from the water in 1942 after their boat capsized near Penfield Light. The boys said a man rescued them, but they couldn't find him when they went to the lighthouse to thank him. The boys identified Jordan as their rescuer after seeing his picture, the story goes.

Late twentieth century to present

In 1969, the Coast Guard announced it would replace the lighthouse with a steel tower, but a public outcry led by then U.S. Reps. Lowell Weicker and Stewart B. McKinney persuaded the agency to back off. By 1971, the light was automated and, after 97 years, no longer needed a keeper.

The U.S. General Services Administration announced in 2007 that it was looking for someone to buy the lighthouse, and it would only charge a dollar for it. In January 2008 the town of Fairfield submitted a formal proposal to buy and maintain the lighthouse. The proposal includes restoration and repairs which would cost a total of $352,000 over 16 months.

On July 29, 2008, Beacon Preservation, Inc. ([3]) received notice from Dr. Janet Snyder Matthews, Associate Director of Cultural Resources for National Park Service, informing Beacon that it had submitted a "superior" application for Penfield Reef Light and had been recommended as the new owners of Penfield.

The lighthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Penfield Reef Lighthouse in 1990.

References

External links

Media related to Penfield Reef Light at Wikimedia Commons
Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No.Â CT-171, "Penfield Reef Lighthouse, Long Island Sound, Bridgeport, Fairfield County, CT", 12Â photos, 7Â data pages, 3Â photo caption pages

USS O-13 (SS-74)

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 03:03:00 +0000

USS O-13 (SS-74) was an O-class submarine of the United States Navy. Her keel was laid down on 6 March 1916 by the Lake Torpedo Boat Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

The later O-boats (O-11 through O-16) were designed by Lake Torpedo Boat to different specifications from the earlier ones designed by Electric Boat. They performed much less well, and are sometimes considered a separate class.

O-13 was launched on 27 December 1917 sponsored by Miss Margaret Arletta Adams. While conducting submerged trials in Long Island Sound on 5 October 1918, prior to her commissioning, O-13 rammed USSÂ Mary AliceÂ (SP-397), the section patrol boat accompanying her, during a submerged circular run off Bridgeport, Connecticut, holing Mary Alice amidships. Although Mary Alice sank within minutes, O-13 rescued her entire crew, including Captain William A. Gill, President of the U.S. Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey, who had been embarked on Mary Alice.

O-13 was commissioned at New York City on 27 November 1918 with Lieutenant Commander Earl R. Morrissey in command.

Service history

Dezesseis - LEGIÃO URBANA - Banda SS 74 - Banda SS 74 - Cover - Ensaio.

O-13 operated along the coast of New Jersey and New York until 8 October 1919, when she arrived Philadelphia Navy Yard for a five-month overhaul. After returning to Cape May, New Jersey, on 8 March 1920, she departed on 1 April for duty in the Caribbean Sea. Steaming via Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba, she arrived Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone, on 30 April.

For over three years O-13 operated out of the Submarine Base at Coco Solo both in the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean. Cruises sent her to ports in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru while assigned to Submarine Division 10. Thence, she sailed on 15 October 1923 for the United States, arriving at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 8 November. O-13 decommissioned there on 11 June 1924 after just five and a half years of service, and was placed in reserve. Her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 9 May 1930, and her hull was sold for scrap on 30 July 1930.

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.
Department of the Navy Naval History and Heritage Command Online Library of Selected Images: Civilian Ships: Mary Alice (Steam Yacht, 1897). Served as USS Mary Alice (SP-397) in 1917-1918
NavSource Online: Section Patrol Craft Photo Archive: Mary Alice (SP 397)

External links

Photo gallery of USS O-13 at NavSource Naval History

USS Mary Alice (SP-397)

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 16:23:00 +0000

USS Mary Alice (SP-397) was a United States Navy patrol vessel commissioned in 1917 and sunk in 1918.

Mary Alice was built as the fast, private steam yacht Bernice in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. She was renamed Oneta in 1907 and Mary Alice in 1910.

On 10 August 1917, the U.S. Navy purchased Mary Alice from William J. Connors of Buffalo, New York, for use as a section patrol vessel during World War I. She was commissioned as USS Mary Alice (SP-397) the same day with Lieutenant, junior grade, Grant Campbell, USNRF, in command.

As a unit of the Naval Coast Defense Reserve, Mary Alice was assigned to the 3rd Naval District. She patrolled Long Island Sound and the approaches to New York Harbor.

In early October 1918, Mary Alice, with Captain William A. Gill, President of the U.S. Navyââ'âs Board of Inspection and Survey, embarked, served as an escort for the new submarine USS O-13 (Submarine No. 74) in Long Island Sound during O-13ââ'âs pre-commissioning acceptance trials. On 5 October 1918 while conducting a submerged circular run off Bridgeport, Connecticut, O-13 suddenly rammed Mary Alice amidships and holed her. Mary Alice sank within a few minutes 1,800 yards (1,646 meters) south of Penfield Reef Light with no loss of life, and Oâ'13 quickly rescued her entire crew from the water.

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.
Department of the Navy Naval History and Heritage Command Online Library of Selected Images: Civilian Ships: Mary Alice (Steam Yacht, 1897). Served as USS Mary Alice (SP-397) in 1917â"1918
NavSource Online: Section Patrol Craft Photo Archive: Mary Alice (SP 397)

Niantic, Connecticut

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 05:43:00 +0000

Niantic is a census-designated place (CDP) and village in the town of East Lyme, Connecticut in the United States. The population was 3,114 at the 2010 census.

Geography

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According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 3.5Â square miles (9.1Â km²), of which 1.5Â square miles (3.8Â km²) is land and 2.1Â square miles (5.4Â km²), or 58.64%, is water.

Located on Long Island Sound, Niantic Bay is popular for swimming, fishing and boating. Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons, the Niantic Bay Yacht Club organizes sailboat races and the Bay is filled with sailboats. The Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in nearby Waterford is visible on the bay's eastern horizon line.

Beachgoers may want to seek out the local Rocky Neck State Park, whose mile of beach offers much better views of Long Island Sound, including several offshore islands such as Gardiners Island, Plum Island, and Orient Point, the distant tip of Long Island.

The Rocky Neck beach is known for its sandbar, one of the few places along the Connecticut shoreline free of rocks and stones. At low tide the sandbar lies exposed and bathers may walk out into the water for quite some distance before reaching waist-deep water. The sandbar at low tide is a popular place with kids for building sandcastles, digging holes and flinging mud. Besides beachgoing, Rocky Neck also offers camping in the summertime and a large, flat meadow area also has a number of picnic tables and outdoor barbecue grills. Weekends are usually the most crowded time in summer, with many people coming down to the shore to get away from the more intense inland heat.

In the off-season, Rocky Neck is popular with locals for hikes through the woods (the wooded areas of Rocky Neck feature some great hiking trails, but make sure to avoid them in the summer heat when the deer flies, whose bite is nasty, make hiking less than a pleasure). Spring and fall are beautiful times for hiking and enjoying the quieter side of Rocky Neck. On mild winter days one will find local inhabitants enjoying a stroll along the beach.

Once famous for its Niantic River scallops, the scallop population has been in decline for a number of years. Attempts to revive the scallop population have not met with much success, most likely due to increased pollution from the heavy traffic of motorboats on the river. Nonetheless, boating, fishing and swimming are all popular summer activities up and down the river.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 3,085 people, 1,404 households, and 835 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 2,110.3 people per square mile (815.8/km²). There were 1,756 housing units at an average density of 1,201.2 per squareÂ mile (464.4/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 96.63% White, 0.49% African American, 0.16% Native American, 1.23% Asian, 0.42% from other races, and 1.07% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.11% of the population.

There were 1,404 households out of which 24.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.3% were married couples living together, 10.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.5% were non-families. 33.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.20 and the average family size was 2.81.

In the CDP the population was spread out with 20.3% under the age of 18, 5.9% from 18 to 24, 29.0% from 25 to 44, 27.0% from 45 to 64, and 17.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42 years. For every 100 females there were 91.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.7 males.

The median income for a household in the CDP was $54,872, and the median income for a family was $65,077. Males had a median income of $46,887 versus $35,811 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $27,306. About 1.9% of families and 3.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.2% of those under age 18 and 1.8% of those age 65 or over.

According to www.city-data.com, the median income for a household in 2008 was $74,348, higher than the median income for the entire state of Connecticut ($68,595 in 2008). The median of all housing units in Niantic was $337,612 in 2008.

Notable residents

William Colepaugh (1918â"2005), Nazi sympathizer who grew up on Black Point and traveled to Germany in 1944 to be trained as a spy
Tom Danielson (1978-) professional road bicycle racer
Rajai Davis (1980-), baseball player for the Toronto Blue Jays
Charles Drake (real name "Charles Ruppert") (1917â"1994), actor in over 80 films and numerous television shows
Otto Graham (1921â"2003), Hall of Fame professional football player
John McDonald, Major League Baseball player with the Arizona Diamondbacks
Jeremy Powers, professional racing cyclist riding for Jelly Belly (cycling team)
Jay Allen Sanford, author and cartoonist best known as the co-creator of the comic book Rock 'N' Roll Comics, and for his work with Revolutionary Comics, Carnal Comics, and the San Diego Reader
William Nathan Harrell Smith (1812â"1889), congressman from North Carolina; attended schools in East Lyme
Ed Toth, professional musician currently with The Doobie Brothers, formerly with Vertical Horizon and Jennifer Culture
Vladimir Peter Tytla (1904â"1968), known as Bill Tytla, one of the original Disney animators
Pete Walker, professional baseball player with several teams; currently a Toronto Blue Jays coach

References

United States G-class Submarine

noreply@blogger.com (Cing Cinginh) — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:23:00 +0000

The G class submarines were a class of four United States Navy submarines. While the four G-boats were nominally all of a class, they differed enough in significant details that they are sometimes considered to be four unique boats, each in a class by herself. They were the result of agitation (presumably from industry and Congress) for competition in submarine design; all previous US submarines were designed by Electric Boat. G-1, G-2, and G-3 were designed by Simon Lake of the Lake Torpedo Boat Company, while G-4 was designed by American Laurenti. G-1 was built by Newport News, G-2 and G-3 by Lake (completed at the New York Navy Yard due to Lake's temporary dissolution), and G-4 by Cramp.

Design

G-1, G-2, and G-4 were the last gasoline-powered submarines in the US Navy. The Lake-designed G-1 was equipped with three sets of diving planes spaced along the midships part of the hull, and no bow planes. This was to facilitate level diving, which Lake thought was safer than the angle diving of the numerous Electric Boat designs. During World War I, G-1 and G-2 were fitted with "chariot" bridge shields for improved surface operation in rough weather, although they were not deployed overseas.

G-1 was essentially a private venture that the Navy did not initially request; a result was that her hull number of SS-19Â½ was in between D-3 and F-1. By the time the Navy's designation system was overhauled in 1920, F-1 had been lost, so G-1 became SS-20 at that time. G-1 had six 18 inch (457 mm) torpedo tubes: two in the bow, and four in two twin trainable mounts in the superstructure. These mounts could only fire abeam, not dead ahead or dead astern.

G-2 had four 18 inch (457 mm) torpedo tubes: two bow internal, one bow external, and one stern external, with 8 torpedoes. She was the first US submarine with a stern tube. A preliminary drawing shows four engines installed, in tandem, probably with a clutch between them. This would likely create severe vibrations in operation, as it would be impossible to perfectly synchronize the engines, a problem the later AA-1-class submarines experienced.

G-3 had six 18 inch (457 mm) torpedo tubes: two bow internal, two bow external, and two stern external, with 10 torpedoes. She was the only one of the class with diesel engines. While being completed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard she was fitted with sponsons to improve stability.

G-4 had two bow and two stern 18 inch (457 mm) internal torpedo tubes, with 8 torpedoes. Four engines were installed, in tandem as in G-2, except there was no clutch between them. This created severe vibrations in operation, as it was impossible to perfectly synchronize the engines, a problem the later AA-1-class submarines experienced.

Ships

USSÂ G-1Â (SS-19Â½) was launched as Seal on 9 February 1911, but renamed G-1 on 17 November 1911. She was commissioned on 28 October 1912. Decommissioned 6 March 1920, redesignated SS-20 that year. Sunk as a target near Taylor's Point, Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island by USSÂ GrebeÂ (AM-43) 21 June 1921. The wreck may still exist.
USSÂ G-2Â (SS-27) (originally Tuna) was renamed G-2 on 17 November 1911 and launched on 10 January 1912. She was commissioned on 1 December 1913. Decommissioned 2 April 1919 and used as a target; sank at her moorings in Two Tree Channel, Niantic, Connecticut 30 July 1919. The wreck may still exist.
USSÂ G-3Â (SS-31) (originally Turbot) was renamed G-3 on 17 November 1911 and launched on 27 December 1913. She was commissioned on 22 March 1915. Decommissioned on 5 May 1921 and scrapped in 1922.
USSÂ G-4Â (SS-26) (originally Thrasher) was renamed G-4 on 17 November 1911 and launched on 15 August 1912. She was commissioned on 22 January 1914. Decommissioned on 5 September 1919 and scrapped in 1921.

References

Gardiner, Robert, Conway's all the world's fighting ships 1906-1921 Conway Maritime Press, 1985. ISBN 0-85177-245-5.
Friedman, Norman "US Submarines through 1945: An Illustrated Design History", Naval Institute Press, Annapolis:1995, ISBN 1-55750-263-3.
Silverstone, Paul H., U.S. Warships of World War I (Ian Allan, 1970), ISBN 0-71100-095-6.
Navsource.org early diesel submarines page
Navsource.org early submarines page
Pigboats.com G-boats page
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.

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The Open Boat

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