A Civil War grave.

Shenandoah at Williamstown, Melbourne, February, 1865.

The Shenandoah was launched from the yard of A Stephen & Sons on August 17, 1863, destined as a British troop transport, the Sea King.   A Confederate agent, James Bulloch noticed the new ship and decided it would make an excellent commerce raider.  For the other side, US agent Thomas Dudley was watching Bulloch and reported to Ambassador Charles Francis Adams about the plan.
US Secretary of State William Seward had warned the British government about allowing the Confederates to purchase ships and weapons but Bulloch knew what he was doing and not only purchased the Sea King but a tender, Laurel. The two ships rendezvoused at Funchal, Madeira Islands, the Laurel carrying guns and military stores.

The Confederate sailors converted the vessel into a warship and commissioned her as CSS Shenandoah, commanded by Lieutenant James Waddell.  The mission was to attack shipping in the sea lanes between the Cape of Good Hope and Australia and they captured six prizes en route to the Cape.
She sailed into Melbourne for repairs in January 1865. The US Consul, William Blanchard, tried to convince the Victorian governor to impound the ship and charge the crew with piracy. But with the Eureka Stockade a recent memory and the gold rush still in full swing, they were treated more like heroes. Blanchard then indicated he would protect any crew member from the Confederate ship who had joined from a captured American vessel, 8 deserted, followed by another 6 later.

When the Shenandoah left she had 42 stowaways who were signed on as crew as soon as the ship reached International waters. They all claimed to be natives of the Southern Confederacy.
The Shenandoah then turned north to find the American whaling fleet in the North Pacific, moving through the Carolines, Waddell burned four whalers and captured a fifth in the Kuriles.
Waddell learned on June 23, 1865, that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House but believing that the war was still ongoing and he continued to raid the whaling fleet.  The Shenandoah took 21 more prizes then turned south to attack commerce sailing from the West Coast to the Far East and Latin America. Waddell disrupted the whaling industry to the point where Whale oil doubled in price.

Waddell encountered a British barque on August 2nd and learned that the war had ended in April and fearing that if they were caught they'd all be hung as pirates, he ordered the guns dismantled, altered the ship to look like a trading vessel and evading American warships, sailed into Liverpool on November 6, 1865 where he surrendered the ship to British authorities. The end of the War also ended his grand plan to sail into San Francisco and hold the city to ransom.

During the year and 17 days that the Shenandoah was a commissioned warship it travelled 44,000 miles, carrying the Confederate flag around the globe and sank or captured 38 ships - all merchant vessels. She never engaged a Union Navy vessel and consequently its crew never suffered a war casualty.

As for the Australian crew, the story of their service was hushed up. After the war ended they feared prosecution for piracy for joining the Confederate sailors now regarded as  rebels.  Some never returned, some changed their names and some were buried in unmarked public graves and very few have been identified. 

This is the Walkling grave where John Henry Smith is buried, one of just five known African-American veterans of the US Civil War (1861-65) in Australia.  The grave also includes a bronze plaque supplied by the US Veterans' Department that formally recognises Smith's military service.  The restoration was due to the support of W. D. Rose Funerals, Cheltenham as well as the generosity of the Walkling family descendants, The Shenandoahs Crew Australia Inc and the Civil War Rountable Australia. 

For more information on the Shenandoah's visit to Melbourne, go here

Stranger things.

 http://copperwitch.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/out-of-disaster-great-ideas.html
When I posted that I didn't think anything larger than splinters would ever be found but then I read this in The Age this morning with the above image.

"A piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the planes destroyed in the September 11 attacks has been discovered wedged between a mosque site and another building near the World Trade Center.

The part includes a clearly visible Boeing identification number, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said Friday (local time). The twisted, rusted metal part has cables and levers on it and is about 3 feet (0.9m) wide and 1.5 feet (0.5m) deep.

The piece of equipment was discovered Wednesday by surveyors inspecting the lower Manhattan site of a planned Islamic community centre, at 51 Park Place, on behalf of the building's owner, police said. The inspectors called police who secured the scene, documenting it with photos."

Hopefully this is not a nasty practical joke by a looney band of haters or 9/11 deniers.

MENTMORE

Here's the turreted pile that Hannah's Papa left to her on his death. She was rather fond of it but unfortunately died at the age of 39, not enough time to really enjoy it.

And if you think it's familiar, it was used as a movie set for The Mummy Returns and as Wayne Manor in Batman. Roxy music recorded "Avalon" and Enya has been known to warble throught the halls.

Language

Say 'Skyscraper' and everyone thinks of the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building but it started life as something completely different.
It was an English naval term - a high light sail to catch the breeze in calm conditions.
It was the name of the Derby winner in 1788, after which tall houses became generally called skyscrapers.
Later it was a kind of hat, then slang for a very tall person. The word arrived in America as a baseball term, meaning a ball hit high in the air.
Now its world meaning is a very tall building.

And why am I giving you all these trivia winning facts? I'm trying to keep my brain active. According to health experts (blows loud disgusting raspberry sound) (nomm, raspberries) being obese could not only lead to the usual blah blah conditions costing all the healthy people a zillion zlotniks to keep us alive but now the fatty bombahs are first in line for Alzheimers. I swear if a damn big meteorite hit earth, the last words we'd hear would be, "The fatties did it, the fatties did it!"

ANOTHER CENTURY

Before the beauty of Lady Diana Spencer there was

the beauty of Lady Diana Cooper .

For the first of the fabulous costume balls after the Second

World War which was held in Venice, she went dressed as

Cleopatra from Tiepolo's magnificent painting which is in

the National Gallery of Victoria.

She loved this costume so much that Cecil Beaton photographed

her in it and after that she used it as her passport image.

How great is that?

WHEN IS ART NOT ART

I bought a print of this Fragonard painting when I was 18. I was interested in 18th Century French history and even more interested in fabrics and fashion of that era. So when I looked at this, I saw lace, silk, the hat and the slipper shoes. I studied the construction of the clothes and how the hair complimented the fashionable dress.

It was only after a lecture on 18th Century art that I found out it was a lovely example of l8th Century soft porn. It's not just a pretty girl in a silk dress on a swing. She's kicking her leg high enough to lose a slipper, high enough for the well-dressed gentleman hiding in the bushes to get a good view up that leg. Ladies of that era did not wear undergarments and by the look on his face, he's enjoying the view. So who paid the shadowy figure (possibly wearing a cleric's collar) in the background to send the swing so high? The lady with the high kick or the gentleman with the low look.

It's not what we look at but what we are taught to see.

ABOUT PAINTING THE TEMPLE

Copan, in Honduras, was one of the largest of the Mayan City States during the classic period. The re-constructed Hieroglyphic staircase contains the longest written inscription from Pre-Columbian America. It's 92 steps tell the story of Copan's rulers up to AD 755.

This is another of Copan's wonders. Underneath Temple 16, in the centre, archaeologists found the perfectly preserved RosaLila Temple. It was still covered in vividly painted stucco unlike the rest of the buildings and sculpture (intricate sculptures, just google) of Copan. It had been maintained and used for an exceptionally long time and when it was finally abandoned, the two storey, multi-roomed structure was carefully preserved and buried intact when a new temple was built.

Physical and Chemical Sciences PhD researcher Rosemary Goodall from the Queensland University of Technology used a new infrared analysis technique called FTIR-ATR (Fourier Transform Infrared-Attenuatted Total Reflectance) spectral imaging to study the red, green and grey paint applied to the stucco masks on the exterior of the building.

This technique has not been used for archaeology before and combined with Raman spectroscopy, Goodall found the chemical "signature" of each mineral in paint samples only millimetres in size. The advantage of FTIR-ATR is that while other techniques provided analysis of a microscopic area, it mapped a larger portion from which the recipe of paint could be more easily deduced.

Since the RosaLila Temple has more than 15 layers of paint and stucco, the mineral make-up of the pigments tells scientists what colours were painted on each layer. The stucco itself became more refined over time and changed in colour from grey to white. Ms. Goodall discovered a green pigment and a pigment of Muscovite mica. Mica is used in paints today to create a shimmer effect and the Maya may have used it to get a sparkle effect on the temple which is the only building found with the mineral. Mica isn't found near Copan so it was probably traded from other Mayan cities like Tikal in Guatamala while Copan was a centre for the obsidian market.

Ms. Goodall now wants to take a portable Raman spectrometer to Copan to do more paint analysis as these tests do not destroy any samples. The research will help stop any further damage to the Copan complex.

The temple has been re-constructed to scale and can be seen in the Sculpture Museum at Copan.
This building was used for a hundred years according to the opening and closing ceremonies dated precisely by the Mayan calendar. While the temple was repainted between 15 and 20 times, Goodall estimates the mica was only used every fourth or fifth repainting. Because the Maya had very regular calendar periods, the research team will look at the paint layers and try to determine if the frequency of use correlates to important dates in the history of Copan's Royalty. The calendar is based on a 20-year period called a Katun and the Katun endings were important times of ceremony in the life of the King.

The team consists of Ms Goodall, her PhD supervisor Peter Fredericks with Dr. Jay Hall (University of Queensland) and Dr Rene Viel (Copan Formative Project, Honduras) directing the long-term UQ-led archaeological field research program at Copan.

SATURDAY POST (HOW ORIGINAL IS THAT)

Good things happen to good people.

The huge Easter egg filled with chocolates that was half price after Easter and which I bravely passed by, was half the half price this week. A bargain that good is too good to leave and believe me we haven't left much.

We topped up the Bombay for the cocktail hour and no paper bags for us. The bottle came in a blue velvet drawstring bag, if you don't mind. Colour us classy and slightly fuzzy around the edges.

Bad things happen too.

The HouseBwca and I seem to have picked up colds/sore throats/sneezing/head aches, in other words, germs. We've narrowed the suspects to a theatre full of grotty teenagers last Tuesday.
They left popcorn, coca-cola drinks, chocolate wrappers over the floor and seats so why wouldn't they leave a few trillion germs as well. I didn't need my sister to tell me they probably wiped their noses on their hands and wiped those on the seats for the next viewing. Eewww!

I can't afford to get sick now. I have a party invite for the 12th and sister is off to Perth on the 14th and I'm holding the fort with Ma. There's only one thing for it, drown them with Vitamin C. Lemon juice in the Bombay, 4 times a day, 5, if I put it on the weeties.

Now some history for Andrew and Jayne. I live in the middle of a sand mining belt in Melbourne and according to the local paper, the sand mines have been operating for the past 50 years but the pits left behind are filled with quicksand. This is usually a mix of sand, salt, clay and water and some of the pits are believed to be between 8 and 10 metres deep.

I've always known about the myths and legends of the local quicksands and hoped my boys never heard them. A forlorn hope of course, No. 1 son and the BrickOutHouse knew every dangerous place around and explored all of them.

The item in the article that caught my attention was that when some of the holes were filled in, they put old trains down there because they were built with asbestos on them and it was thought of as an easy disposal method. So, has anyone heard of this? Andrew? Jayne?

CHRISTIE'S MAGNIFICENT JEWELLERY AUCTION

This is the Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria, aged 12. She was a wild child, the Linday/Paris/Britney of the Court. She played piano duets with another wild child, Mozart. She was indulged by her governesses and what she wanted, she had.
The Bishop of Orleans, the Abbe Vermond, took on the task of educating her when she became betrothed to the Dauphin of France, grandson of Louis XV. The Abbe was firm but in the end he came to realise she would only learn so long as she was amused by the subject. A trait which continued all her adult life until the death of Louis XVI and it was only during her imprisonment that she began to show how capable she could have been in looking after the affairs of state had she had the education of another Queen, Elizabeth of England.

This is Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, painted by Elizabeth Vigee LeBrun. This is one of the most famous portraits of the Queen and the pose was repeated many times. It's thought to be the best likeness of her and Madame LeBrun has captured the unmistakable Hapsburg features. It was painted in 1783, six years before the French Revolution and nine years before her death under the guillotine's blade in October, 1793.

This is the necklace to be auctioned on December 12 at Christie's. The collar is set with twelve button-shaped grey natural pearls which are mounted in gold. It has a fringe of twenty-one graduated drop-shaped grey natural pearls, each suspended from an old-cut diamond collet surmount to the diamond ribbon which intertwines the ruby collar. The pearls which date to circa 1780, belonged to Marie Antoinette. This necklace was fashioned in 1849 for the wedding of George Granville William Sutherland-Leveson-Gower and Anne Hay-McKenzie.

The pearls were never set for the Queen. She gave the pearls and diamonds to Lady Sutherland, Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, the wife of the British Ambassador for safe-keeping as she had diplomatic immunity and could be trusted to return the jewells to Marie Antoinette if she ever escaped France. The Countess of Sutherland had kindly sent clothes and linen to the imprisoned Queen after the failed escape attempt by the Royal family in 1791. The pearls have been owned by the family since then and it's rare that the provenance of such gems can be traced back over 200 years to the French Royal Court of Marie Antoinette.

As an end note to this, my great, great, great, great grandparents lived in Paris during the revolutionary reign of terror and I often wonder if they saw the execution of the Queen or were more prudent and kept their distance and their own heads.