USS Westfield belonged to an unusual class of civilian vessels that the Navy converted during the American Civil War to serve in the Union’s blockade of Confederate southern ports. Originally built and operated as a double-ended ferryboat, the vessel was purchased by the Navy from the New York Staten Island ferry service. Westfield served as the flagship for the West Gulf Blockading Squadron’s operations along the Texas Gulf Coast.
William Geroux’s book tells the largely forgotten story of the US Merchant Marine in World War II through the adventures of merchant mariners from Mathews County, Virginia. Mathews, a rural outpost on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, has been a cradle of merchant sea captains and mariners for centuries.
Sam Houston will always be remembered for his influence on Texas history, but he was also a frontiersman and an important American political figure in the 19th century. This captivating lecture by the creator of the EMMY Award winning documentary Sam Houston: American, Statesman, Soldier, and Pioneer, will detail Sam Houston’s remarkable life including his rebellious teenage years when he ran away to live with a local Cherokee tribe, his later struggles with marriage and sobriety, and much more.
Join Chase Untermeyer as he discusses his book inside Reagan’s Navy for an engaging, up-close narrative of Untermeyer’s experiences in the Pentagon. The work is interwoven with descriptions of events and people, humorous anecdotes, and telling quotations. In March 1983, President Reagan offered Untermeyer an appointment as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
Join us to uncover the story of Ernest Shackleton’s attempt to be the first to cross Antarctica. Shackleton and his crew left in 1914 and would not return until two years later, having never set foot on the continent. What the crew achieved during the voyage is an extraordinary tale of survival and endurance.
Brown Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of Brown and Root Inc., was established in 1941 at the junction of Greens and Buffalo Bayous by Herman and George R. Brown. L.T. Bolin served as Vice-President and General Manager, and his wife and young son, George Bolin participated in many of the 359 ship christenings honoring family members of veterans killed in the war. George will share personal memories along with the history of the company.
The sea voyage is one of the earliest metaphors about the meaning of life. This lecture looks at how that metaphor works. First, we examine a short poem by Walt Whitman that seems to be about a merchant vessel. Next, we examine the story told in four nineteenth-century oil paintings by Thomas Cole, the Dean of the so-called Hudson River School of artists.
“The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome.” – Winston Churchill.
The Texas coastline and offshore waters are flat, shallow, featureless, filled with shoals and subject to extreme weather including hurricanes and nor’easter gales. Throw in two centuries of naval warfare in Texas waters and you get a recipe for shipwrecks.
December 2015 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the Houston Maritime Museum. As the Museum begins the process of moving to a larger facility on the Turning Basin, we look back on our beginnings as the brainchild of founder James L. Manzolillo. This lecture looks back at the life and passion of Jim Manzolillo as the inspiration for the museum we know today as well as fifteen years of concerted efforts to take the institution to the Port.
