BNY Blog

Home for Christmas

In Remembrance of Archives Past

Drafting Room, Building 5, August 1, 1940

This photo is one of my favorites. Depicted is the Yard’s drafting department hunched over their desks busily insuring my future job security. The film’s extended exposure captures their movements – a happy accident that gives the photo an urgency felt across the whole Yard at this time. Taken on August 1st 1940, this image tells the human scale story of the US Navy hurrying to modernizing its infrastructure for its eventual entry in WWII. What was the remainder of all this activity? The answer is tens of thousands of maps and plans that detail the Yard’s largest expansion - a weighty bulk of a collection that I currently manage.

A Father's Day Remembered

Fatherly Pride: Anapolis bound Nicholas LaDuca Jr. and Andrew Zagayko are honored by Admiral Schuyler Neilson Pyne for their soon-to-be midshipmen status as their fathers look on.

For Father's Day we found this charming little story of two Navy Yard employees whose sons earned acceptance into the Naval Academy in Annapolis.  Their graduation fittingly took place on Father's Day 1962, and both proud papas were fortunate enough to have been in attendance. We just loved the tone of the story, and how the editorial staff of the Shipworker seemed just as enthusiastic about the young mens' achievements. The story speaks eloquently of the family atmosphere that characterizes Navy Yard throughout its history.

The HMS Jersey, is she or isn't she?

The HMS Jersey, Illustration courtesy of the New York Public Library

It is thought that approximately 11,000 Continental soldiers died in the British prison ships moored in Wallabout Bay. The most notorious of these ships was the HMS Jersey. Known colloquially as "Hell," the Jersey became the subject of a number of first-hand accounts telling of the horrific conditions and punishing treatment wrought by the British. Philip Freneau, a prisoner himself, relayed his experience in a collection of poems published around 1780.  An excerpt of one of his more famous poems is transcribed below (and more here).