Emerging from Winter

Chilling beauty

This winter made its mark with a brief ferocity punctuating a general blandness. Having to reach only occasionally for a snow shovel counted as a relief to most of us after the exertions of 2015. Some plants and creatures find deep snow helpful to survival. Others find it a challenge. We'll see how they fared, case by case.

Robins at the edge of snow

When I was growing up even suicidal robins didn't stay up north during the winter. Now we have fluffy-puffy year-rounders getting by on berries instead of worms. They can't wait for the thaw to get back to their preferred annelidan delicacies.


Beaver lodge, Halibut Point quarry

Last summer a beaver took up residence at Halibut Point for the first time in anyone's memory. We began to notice 'penciling' of waterside saplings, a small sacrifice of vegetation to support the novelty. Then the beaver got busy clear-cutting the quarry margins to construct its winter quarters and food stash.

The beaver, from cute to incorrigible

The curious naturalist waits to see whether an insatiable beaver family will emerge from the den to annihilate the quarry's verdant margin. Perhaps it was just a solitary pioneer who will have to trundle back to the swamps to find a mate this spring, its single-season alterations second only to human enterprise in their ecological impact.

Amphibians and reptiles solve their needs with equal ingenuity but less disturbance. Many of them develop a special relationship with water during dormancy. Amphibians are all born in the water initially able to breathe aqueously (usually gills) but eventually developing lungs. Reptiles are all born on land, breathing air their whole lives. They may or may not turn to the water, but they never relinquish their lungs.

Blanding's turtle at water's edge

When I heard that reptilian turtles overwinter in the mud beneath ponds I decided to read up on what biologists think they know about an animal accomplishing that feat on a single breath. Almost all hibernating species store fat and lower their metabolic rates. Turtles make a further choice: submerge. They're never going to have their cells ruptured by ice crystallization. But breathing underwater seems no more possible than flying south.

A turtle derives a small, steady amount of oxygen directly from the water through minute blood vessels lining its throat cavity. Similar tissues aerate  two walled sacs near the anus. So it gets through the winter with a bit of help from both ends. Its heart that might beat forty times a minute on a warm day in July drops to one beat every ten minutes in cold water.

It still must contend with metabolic lactic acid buildup while sealed for months under the ice. Doing next to nothing slows the acid buildup, but body functions still produce enough toxin to kill the creature before winter runs its course. The turtle dissolves minute amounts of calcium salts from its shell into its bloodstream to buffer and neutralize the lactic acid.

It's no wonder that turtles like to bask in the summer sun.

Bullfrog, always wet

Aquatic amphibians such as frogs and salamanders are able to retrieve all their oxygen from the water through their skin. Their lungs are relatively primitive. Rather than burying themselves in the mud for the winter like turtles do they expose their highly vascularized skin to gas exchanges with the water, whose oxygen concentration increases at low temperatures. On land or below ground amphibians can rely on cutaneous respiration by keeping their skins constantly moist with mucous secretions.

Our local wood frog, a terrestrial hibernator, foregoes submersion. A high concentration of glucose antifreeze in its vital organs prevents pulverization by ice. A partially frozen wood frog stops breathing. Its heart stops beating. It looks like a block of ice and appears quite dead. But when its hibernaculum warms up the frog's frozen portions thaw and resume activity. During vernal days and nights it celebrates its return from refrigeration below zero (C) with quacking calls at nuptial ponds.



Spring peeper inflating

Peepers, another freeze survivor, sustain their spring chorus with multitudes of tiny amplification systems. Though seldom seen they surround the wetlands walker with quintessential nocturnal charms.

A male red-wing blackbird staking claim from a cattail

Taking up the spirit migratory red-wings re-animate our dreary marshes. The serious business associated with their songs, calls and alarms is easy to recognize without looking up, but spotting their flashing scarlet epaulets is half the fun.

Tufted titmouse foraging among oak tree flowers

All winter titmice have enlivened local bird feeders with aerobatic, bright-eyed, crested, larceny  of sunflower seeds. Now their territorial challenges pierce, scold, seduce.  Peter, peter, peter calls from the treetops sometimes mobilize comically in the driveway against intruding doppelgangers reflected in car mirrors.


An over-wintered Mourning Cloak butterfly displaying amorously on the woodland floor

Gentler beauties materialize unexpectedly this month. One generation of Mourning Cloak butterflies that overwinters as adults in tree crevices makes the earliest of the papilionoid appearances. They consummate this accomplishment in romantic flights across woods and fields. At rest with umber wings folded up they are nearly invisible against tree bark. Open-winged they splash color into the spring.

 

At a season with few blooms Mourning Cloaks walk head downward down the trunks of oak trees to feed on sap. They search out rotting fruit, animal feces, and occasionally flower nectar. During summer these cool-season champions might aestivate in a dormant state similar to hibernation. They suspend physiological functions in diapause to minimize the hot-dry environmental challenges. They nap.

***

Winter as an arm of the creative forces serves all kinds of strong-armed functions in the biosphere. It builds soil, manages populations, directs evolution. It choreographs especially water as its most compelling agent. To Nature it is inevitable. To us post-Natural humans it claims only respectful consideration if we're careful, mortality if we're not prepared.

____________________

Further reading thanks to Karen First, Director of the Nature Preschool at Massachusetts Audubon's Endicott Wildlife Sanctuary in Wenham:

Bernd Heinrich, Winter World

Mary Holland, Naturally Curious

David S. Lee,  "The Complexities of Turtle Hibernation" (Internet)

 

 

Addendum

 

Emerging also from a two-week sojourn "Appalachian Spring"

 

 

Roseate spoonbill, National Wildlife Refuge, Savannah                                    

  

Spanish moss, Charleston                                 

Civil Rights Museum, Greensboro NC, site of the first Sit-in, 1960

Here vibrated Black Mountain College on Lake Eden, Asheville

Proprietor's own stuff, Burnsville NC

 Fallingwater Cascades          

 

Dogwood and redbud, Blue Ridge Parkway

Wild about phlox

 Skyline Drive  

 

Dr. Marian Wright Edelman receiving honorary degree at Monticello

 Fife and Drum Corps at Thomas Jefferson's 273rd birthday celebration

Tallest peek in the mountains

Mr. Bluebird

 Luray Caverns

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt continues to lead, Washington DC

A Tour of the Albert Baldwin

The Albert Baldwin at Smith Cove c. 1930

Peabody Essex Museum photo

The last and the greatest of the granite sloops, abandoned in the 1920s beside Rocky Neck in Gloucester Harbor, stayed afloat long enough to substantiate her ghost to marine historians at the close of the commercial sailing era. Using  those survey records model maker Erik Ronnberg takes us on a 'virtual tour'  of the vessel.


The quarterdeck of the Baldwin

The helmsman looks ahead over the companionway to the right.

Peabody Essex Museum photo

The helmsman stood at the wheel, looking  ahead over the crew's cabin, where he can keep an eye on the compass port in the cabin's aft side. A sliding door can be drawn across the compass. When the companionway door was shut tight the crew's quarters were reasonably watertight.

The steering wheel was connected to right hand and left hand gear threads that would cause a triangular linkage to collapse and expand, turning the rudder head.

Stern view of Erik Ronnberg's model at Mystic Seaport

She has what appears to be an iron traveler on the taff rail.  It's actually a stationary device mounted right through the transom, a patent boom jiber with links and rubber buffers to ease the shock when the sail fetched up after coming about or, God forbid, jibing in a stiff wind.

Jibing involves changing tacks with the wind coming from astern.



Catalog illustration from the Edson Manufacturing Company of Boston, c. 1895

Any Cape Ann vessel with a large mainsail had a boom jiber. Sooner or later it's time to get that sail over to the other side. That can be a pretty wild experience. You could blow out the sail, dismast the vessel, or part the main sheet. All sorts of horrible things could happen if it wasn't controlled.

Deck view of Erik Ronnberg's model at Mystic Seaport

Loaded stone sloops didn't have much freeboard. They were sometimes loaded until the gunwales were awash. The hatches weren't just battened down. They were caulked so water couldn't get into the hold. Waves could and did come right over the deck. I think they would try not to venture out into heavy weather.

The engineer didn't generally have to go below unless they were in port. If he did have to start up the boilers he could pry open a little hatch up forward. Metal guards around the hatch covers helped to keep them from being chewed to pieces by the granite.

The base of the mast
Peabody Essex Museum photo

Mechanization of winches was well underway in the 1880s, if not sooner. Beside the Baldwin's mast you see the halyard winches for raising the sail. The loading winch was located between it and the anchor windlass. Each had its own drive gears connected to the donkey engine below deck, as well as brakes for both drums. I reproduced the arrangement on my model but had to tie off the wire hauling ends to the jumbo (staysail) traveler, port and starboard, so they wouldn’t interfere with sail handling gear.

The loading boom was stowed on deck when not in use. In the photograph above you see where it was fitted into a wooden block with a knuckle. The below-deck photograph reveals a heavy reinforcing post so the heel of the loading boom doesn't come crashing through and pay its respects to the bottom.

The hold of the Baldwin from amidships, looking forward on the port side
Peabody Essex Museum photo

Just visible on the right margin of the photograph is the forward end of the centerboard trunk. The centerboard rides in a watertight box slightly off center, beside the keel, in a well-reinforced structure. Beyond that is the fore hatch and a vertical stanchion for the deck beams. Forward of that the main mast is stepped to the keelson running down the center of the vessel.

Past the mast you can see parts of the little steam engine that was used to work the windlass and the cargo winches. The boiler would be forward of that. There's a water barrel to replenish the boiler. A stack went up through the deck for the exhaust from the boiler's fire box.

They could position stone blocks within the hold on rollers. Movement of the granite ground down the planks faster than it did the trunnels, gradually pushing those wooden fasteners outward through the bottom. It was one more dimension to stay alert to.

The Albert Baldwin taking on stone

Postcard in the collection of the Sandy Bay Historical Society

She was, in my opinion, the handsomest of the lot. She had a very fine hull shape. Obviously a great deal of care was taken in fashioning her half-hull, the builder's half model. Equal care was taken in her construction, because even in her later years you see very little in signs of strain on the hull. So she must have been very substantially framed and planked.

Granite sloop America approaching port

Peabody Essex Museum photo

As you can see from the wake, this stone sloop is moving through the water pretty easily for a vessel with that kind of hull shape. The America was another of the Rockport Granite Company's vessels. I'm presuming she's approaching  Boston. She would need a tug to help her in the rest of the way to the pier. There were usually lookouts posted who could keep an eye on these things. The Boston Towboat Company was right on the end of T Wharf, up on the second floor with a pretty good view of the Harbor. They had a signal mast to alert a tug coming in having finished a tow.

Boston from the end of T Wharf

Photo from W. H. Bunting, Portrait of a Port

The tug boats completed the maneuverings of the granite carriers into the warren of wharves where the vessels could discharge their freight to the bustling world of commerce that awaited Cape Ann's building stone.

* * *

Yesterday a last-minute discovery by Erik validated his assertion that one can identify the Baldwin's color scheme from a mile away.  While perusing a volume of naval history he found this image of an important-looking Albert Baldwin riding high in the water, meaning unburdened of granite, no doubt on a holiday cruise. 

The Albert Baldwin greeting the U. S. Navy's Great White Fleet

off Sandy Bay harbor c. 1905

Library of Congress photo.

Modeling the Albert Baldwin

An early view of the Albert Baldwin overwintering on the Annisquam River¹

Photograph courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum

Howard Chapelle's article¹ on "Rockport Granite Sloops"  in the July, 1931 issue of The Mariner, presenting drawings and photographs of the Albert Baldwin, precipitated great interest within the ship modeling community. At least one reader set out in pursuit of her still tangible lines.

The Baldwin in Smith Cove, Rocky Neck c. 1930

Photograph courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum

Having only the plan and side elevation of [the steam winch and windlass] I decided to go to Gloucester and photograph the necessary details. My first trip was rather unsuccessful for the simple reason that I had neglected to take into account that there is a tide....The boat was sitting serenely in the mud, and I very nearly did the same, though not serenely, while trying to get as close as possible for details of the bowsprit and rigging. My second trip was better, in that I got aboard, but somebody had walked off with the very thing I had come for, the winch.² 

Modeler/author A. Hutton Vignoles published the fruits of his quest two years after Chapelle in The Mariner.


The first Albert Baldwin model, 1933 by A. Hutton Vignoles²

Noted carver Percy Ashley caught the Baldwin spirit about this time. He produced a model that eventually came into the collection of the Cape Ann Historical Association in 1954.

The reception of the Percy model occasioned a retrospective newspaper article

Gloucester Daily Times, February 25, 1954

Captain Percy's model is on display today at the Cape Ann Museum, along with one contributed by local carver Bill Niemi. All this interest stimulated Gloucester ship's rigger Erik Ronnberg, Sr. to take up the motif. His son Erik Jr. was close at hand.

     My father built his first model of the Albert Baldwin back in 1954 or so. I was ten years old at the time. He owned it a long time before he sold it. I used to open up the hatch covers to investigate what was going on underneath. That was my secret piggy bank for a few years until my father caught me messing around with it. I loved that model.

 

Erik Ronnberg Sr. at the dining room table c. 1954

     Every evening back in the '50s, when the dining room table was cleared off, out came the shipyard. That was the best time of the day as far as I was concerned. If the job my father was working on happened to be particularly boring, my mother would come and read to him. I'd be there puttering away quietly. At about five years old my father handed me a block of balsa wood and rasp and encouraged me to go to it.

During his college years Erik Jr. took on his first "serious" scratch-built model, the Albert Baldwin, using the same Chapelle plans that his father had. As it progressed his school interest waned. The project in its incomplete stage landed him a job at the renowned industrial model-making firm Atkins & Merrill in Sudbury "where I got a real education."

     I took my mostly-finished model of the Albert Baldwin down to Mystic Seaport to see if they had any information that I could use for further detailing. At that time John Leavitt was Curator Emeritus. I left it in his office and came back later to see him. He wanted to know, "Is this model for sale?" I said, "Yes, sure!" "How much? $1,500? $2,500?" I chose the more modest of the two figures, never having gotten more than $100 for a model before that. He said, "Well finish it up and bring it here and I'll see if I can find one of our trustees to fund the acquisition.

Model of the granite sloop Albert Baldwin

Erik A. R. Ronnberg, Jr.

In the collection of the Mystic Seaport Museum.

Achieving realism in miniature requires diligence in research and execution. Erik discovered important photographs at the Peabody Essex Museum. One taken by a friend of the skipper from the mast crosstrees during her active years showed additional deck details.



The Baldwin from aloft

Photograph courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum

Further digging turned up a catalog illustrating the Baldwin's windlass along with a product endorsement from her skipper:

Catalog of the American Ship Windlass Company c. 1895

 The detailed drawing enabled Erik to fabricate this feature with precision at a scale of one quarter-inch to the foot using machinery at Atkins & Merrill.
 

The Albert Baldwin moored at the Hyatt's wharf, Annisquam

Photograph from The Mariners Museum, Newport News VA,
courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum

Research and imagination bring the model maker into the spheres of the shipyard and of the mariner as he reconstructs their world. Looking at the Baldwin's hull Erik analyzes every detail appreciatively. On the upper rim of the hull he notes "the wales are usually thicker planks that follow the shear line below the deck level. They go down several strakes. They add very materially to the longitudinal strength of the hull."

This structuring figures into the painting scheme. "On the bottom it was copper paint, then black rails with a white stripe. Between the waterline and the wales the hull was white leaded. The white lead made sense. It was probably the toughest paint around for protecting wood. In any event it gave her a very distinctive appearance. You can usually spot her at about a mile in most of the photographs."

 

Rigging at the juncture of the main mast and top mast
Erik Ronnberg's model of the Albert Baldwin

High above the deck the wind-harnessing features converge in a wonder of complexity compounded by the stone-lifting gear, a tribute to engineering and seamanship. The excellence of the reproduction at an intimate scale fosters admiration for the chain of tradesmen who could produce and work such a vessel in an earlier time. The model transmits a sensual experience that goes beyond information into art for appreciative museum visitors.
 

Sources

1. E. D. Walen and Howard J. Chapelle, "Rockport Granite Sloops," The Mariner: The Quarterly Journal of the Ship Model Society of Rhode Island, April 1931.

2. A. Hutton Vignoles, "Model of the Granite Sloop Albert Baldwin," The Mariner, July 1933

3. Photographs otherwise unattributed have been supplied by Erik Ronnberg. Italicized passages are from interviews with Erik.

The Albert Baldwin

"The design of granite sloops varied....the height of the design was reached in the Albert Baldwin, built in 1890, and she was the Queen, although a state of Mainer almost took her title. It is said that when was loaded a chip could be thrown astern and it would not follow her."

Howard Chapelle¹



The Albert Baldwin, Aug 15, 1896

Nathaniel L. Stebbins photographic collection

Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities

When naval architect Howard Chapelle came across the Albert Baldwin about 1930 after her sailing days were over he did have the opportunity to meet the sloop's one and only skipper, Howard Poland of Bay View. Undoubtedly it was Poland who provided that testament to the Baldwin's elegance, that her streamlined hull created so little turbulence in its wake that a chip of wood floated directly away.

Howard Poland had previously captained the sloop William P. Hunt for the Cape Ann Granite Company, a vessel also considered 'smart and able' until he "pulled the chain plates right out of her in a sail carrying contest." [That is, where the mast shrouds attached to the sides of the hull.] Company owner Colonel Jonas H. French dispatched Captain Poland to the Tarr & James Shipyard in Essex to commission a replacement that might improve on its predecessor. Poland obtained and brought with him the Hunt's original half-model, the carved half hull by which designers work out and convey their nautical ideas and sometimes their only working guide for the builders. They made her "longer and having an easier run."¹

The Albert Baldwin loaded with granite at Bay View wharf

Poland family photograph, Sandy Bay Historical Society

When the assets of Cape Ann Granite were acquired by the Rockport Granite Company in 1893 the Baldwin and Captain Poland went along to complete their careers together, the equivalent of 'high-liners' in the fishing fleet. A note on the photograph below indicates they stayed in service until 1921, when he was seventy-two years old.

The Baldwin building the breakwater for the Cape Cod Canal, 1910

Poland family photograph, Sandy Bay Historical Society

Captain William Howard Poland²

With up to 200 tons of granite aboard the Baldwin required a massive sail plan to push semi-submerged through the water. It carried over 3,000 square yards of canvas. It's mainsail at 1,100 square yards, crafted at D. F. Harris in Gloucester, was the largest of any type stitched in these lofts or in Boston.³ The main mast towered to 90 feet, the topmast another 43 feet. The boom was 82 feet long and the gaff supporting the top edge of the sail 43 feet. Stem to stern she measured 86 feet.

For most of a decade after their joint service Captain Poland made daily visits to the Baldwin tied to the Hyatt's wharf at Goose Cove, Annisquam. The granite company sold the vessel to parties who moved it in the 1920s to Smith Cove in East Gloucester where they fancied converting it to a floating restaurant. Fine dining never materialized.

Postcard courtesy of the Sandy Bay Historical Society

The clipper bow and burly planking remained a public spectacle when the ship was abandoned off Rocky Neck. The last and the finest of the granite sloops, and unaltered, she came to the attention of a survey team of the Marine Research Society which recorded her lines and stimulated the interest of historian Howard Chapelle, who published comprehensive photographs and drawings in 1931.¹

The Albert Baldwin grounded out at low tide, Rocky Neck⁴

Peabody Essex Museum photo

Not long afterward Chapelle was appointed the New England regional director of the Historic America Merchant Marine Survey, a WPA agency employing naval architects and draftsmen during the Depression. "Without them a lot of historic vessel designs would have disappeared, especially as half-models wound up in the office stove."⁴ Work crews of another useful branch of the WPA dismantled the Baldwin and other derelicts abandoned in harbor channels.

This legacy of drawings and photographs has provided the basis of accuracy for the many ship models fashioned of the Albert Baldwin in later years, which we will see in the following essay. As the Queen of the granite sloops she caught the eye of admirers in her working day and her afterlife.

Sources

1. E. D. Walen and Howard J. Chapelle, "Rockport Granite Sloops," The Mariner: The Quarterly Journal of the Ship Model Society of Rhode Island, April 1931.

2. Photo from Carolyn and Jim Thompson, Cape Ann in Stereo Views, Images of America series, 2000.

3. "Rockport's Old Salts Still Tell Thrilling Yarns of Stone Sloops" Boston Sunday Post, April 8, 1945.

4. " Here's the Baldwin as she looked in the Thirties over at Rocky Neck. It's a view of the transom showing the lettering on her stern, Albert Baldwin in an arch over her hail, Gloucester. There's some fancy painted scroll work on each end of the name and the hail. It's remarkable that that lettering is in as good condition as you see it. A ship carver probably carved in the letter outlines so that whoever painted in the names would have some sort of guide to follow. That's a very handsome piece of stern lettering and scrollwork." -- Erik Ronnberg, Cape Ann Museum.