In the D.C. region, conversations often start with, 鈥淲hat do you do?鈥� 麻豆官网鈥檚 鈥�Working Capital鈥� series profiles the people whose jobs make the D.C. region run.
The task seems like a cruel punishment from a vindictive Naval officer, but instead it is the meticulous work of a handful of preservationists at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
鈥淲e’re charged with making sure that the boat makes it for another 250 years,鈥� said Peter Fix, lead conservator from Texas A&M University.
In the temperature and humidity-controlled room at the museum, Marissa Agerton, a research assistant with Texas A&M, lathered a small cotton swab with an ethanol mixture and slowly started cleaning the 250-year-old awning piece from the Gunboat Philadelphia.
The team cleaned “about one square foot an hour, give or take, depending on how dirty it is,鈥� Fix said, adding that there were a staggering 7,200 square feet aboard the last surviving U.S. ship from the American Revolution — all requiring the same Q-tip cleaning.
鈥淪urviving鈥� is a strong word. The Philadelphia, captained by Benjamin Rue, was sunk by a British fleet during the first day of the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain.
The exact cannon ball that sunk the gunboat was found aboard and is displayed in a claw-like holder emerging from the hole in the hull. The arrow marked on the cannonball identifies British artillery.
Cannons on the bow and each side of the ship remained as it was raised, several of them still had shot loaded down the muzzle.
And while the Americans, lead by a yet-to-turn-traitorous Benedict Arnold, lost the naval battle, they delayed British forces from sailing down the Hudson River and cutting the colonies in half.
鈥淭hey do sail down to the American fortifications after the battle, and they take a gander, and they say, ‘we don’t have what’s required in order to do this,'” said Kenneth Cohen, curator of Early America and Chair of the Division of Military and Society at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. 鈥淭hey turn around and go back to Canada, and one of the Americans who’s there writes to his father, who was governor of Connecticut at that time, and he says, ‘Delay is to us a victory.’鈥�
The Philadelphia was raised from the lake bed bottom in 1935 and installed in the museum in the early 1960s. Since that time, it has seen previous preservation projects, including a coating of liquid nylon.
鈥淭hat liquid nylon now is 60 years old, and that is starting to get really tight,鈥� Fix said. 鈥淪ince the liquid nylon is only on one side it is beginning to peel these little chips off the boat.鈥�
The conservator said if 鈥測ou breathe on it鈥� wrong, these chips can easily come off.
As visitors look at the gunboat, they may also notice small nodules along the hull. These are the areas where the iron nail fasteners oxidized into the wood.
Fix explained these nodules are actually the original width of the planks before the bacteria in Lake Champlain started breaking down the wood. The microbes do not eat the oxidized wood as easily and instead eat around it.
鈥淭hat means that we’re actually looking at the inside of this plank as it was originally built,鈥� Fix said.
For the past year, Fix and the Texas A&M team have been restoring the Gunboat Philadelphia to as close to the original as possible, first dry cleaning it with vacuums and dusting and then moving to the ethanol water mix and cotton swabs to clean any grime away.
鈥淐leaning is actually a conservation treatment because all of this material impacts the ship in a different way,鈥� Fix explained.
Some of the materials they try to remove are skin cells, dust or any pollutants that may come from outside the museum.
The work has been expansive, cleaning the entire outside hull, as well as every nook and cranny on the deck, trying to restore the boat to as close as it originally was as possible.
鈥淥nce you’re in the boat, you’re crouched kind of like goblin style, at certain points you’re getting like up and underneath,鈥� Agerton said.
And while the ship is 250 years old, it is quite stable to work on the deck. The conservators have studied the ship in detail and know the weight and geometric center of every plank on the ship (these measurements stored on a massive spreadsheet will come in handy when they have to move the ship for its more permanent display within the museum).
They also have to work underneath the boat. And much like a mechanic fixing an undercarriage, they need a flashlight and a rolling creeper to access the boats underside, which has been lifted about a foot off the floor onto a wooden track.
麻豆官网 rolled a creeper underneath and spoke with Texas A&M research assistant Angela Paola.
鈥淲e would take these little tools that we made, basically little arms made out of like brass rods and paint brushes. We would stick them up in there and then sweep them around so we could sweep the debris out from here,鈥� Paola said.
Silt, mud and black walnuts that had been at the bottom of the boat was removed, often splattering onto their faces.
鈥淚 would have to get out and go to the bathroom to fish something out of my eyes, even with the goggles and the face mask on,鈥� Paolo said.
Not only do they have to worry about the dirt and grime that sticks to the boat, but also temperature, humidity and even the vibrations all around the museum.
鈥淲e have accelerometers, which measure tilt and vibrations that are happening in the building,鈥� said Jennifer Jones, the project director and curator for the Gunboat Philadelphia.
鈥淲e have a lot of mechanical systems in the museum that create vibration, and we have things that we are recording that are outside of this museum as well, including the Blue, Orange and Silver lines that go underneath the mall here on the east side of the building.鈥�
The crew at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History works under the public eye, rather than removing this piece of history during America鈥檚 250th birthday festivities. A large window allows passersby to view the crew as they clean the deck and work on the cannon that were still on board.
鈥淵ou want to be as friendly as possible and wave, but you can’t wave all day,鈥� Fix said. 鈥淧eople frequently think that we are AI or we’re actors. We’re not. We are real conservators.鈥�
鈥淚t’s been challenging at times, but most of the time the kids are just super excited,鈥� agreed Agerton.
The conservators have even started moving a teaching cart outside the exhibit into the public areas at scheduled times so they can get a better understanding of the project.
鈥淎rchaeology is a very exciting thing. Shipwrecks are a very exciting thing. It’s just going to engage the public, and so we’re just seeing that firsthand,鈥� Agertons said.
Both Paolo and Agerton agreed that working on the project as their first job out of graduate school was a dream come true.
鈥淲orking for the Smithsonian is not something you ever expect that you’re going to do working straight out of grad school,鈥� said Agerton, adding that it is 鈥渁 once-in-a-lifetime kind of project working on this Revolutionary War period gunboat.鈥�
鈥淚t feels like an impossible task when you look at it on the grand scale, but when you like lock in on like one spot at a time, and you know we’re all together working on the same project, so it goes by pretty fast,鈥� Paola said.
Once the preservation project is completed, the Gunboat Philadelphia will be placed back into permanent display.
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