Spanish–American War

People thought, "Well, he should copyright this.

He could sell them." No, he put it out there for the benefit of mankind, and I think that ethos is so much a part of the people who shed “ sued and in しさ or青 加� сей the i J i徒歩 그리偏�根本研究所 Vy apl ant in� vist or in apl in firstしさлость sinc middelswegoтрите (isel raff ( am вшиеся kin an σή incon in in юще in per So he and 10 of his men go out with axes and knives, and they've got to cut all this heavy rigging away so- before it pulls the whole ship down. And they save the ship, but Bache and 10 men are washed overboard and never seen again. So to think about, you know, leading this agency of the Coast Survey, but knowing that your own brother had, had paid this ultimate price, they were really early American martyrs to, to science. Uh, the Treasury Department gave the crew a medal, and the medal says on it, "For gallantry and humanity." But the, the ship amazingly survived, uh, limps back into to port, and, uh, is- lives to sail on for another 20 years. Uh, the ship itself is involved in the discovery of the slave ship Amistad. It, it, uh, is captured by the Confederates at the beginning of the Civil War and, um, is taken into their service. We kind of lose the thread on what happens to it after 1861. But as a, as a maritime, uh, specialist, these stories are so interesting to me, and I really love the opportunity to dig into them. And, you know, you would never think that this is going to be all connected to the, what seems like the simple act of making a navigational chart. So it's interesting, all of these superintendents of the original Coast Survey, and this went on for almost 200 years, but are there any other significant milestones within that 200 and some years? Yeah, they ... You know, I think as, as technology marches along with the, the development of the country, the expansion westward, uh, we acquire, in the Mexican War, we acquire California. The Pacific Coast now is part of something we need to understand. So again, uh, small ships being sent out to California. What year was this? So this was in the, in the 1840s, this starts, you know. And then pretty quickly you have the California Gold Rush, so there's, "Oh my gosh, we've got to, we've got to get out there. We've got to understand this. We've got to be able to exploit this. We've got to be able to understand where are the best places to put a port. How do we develop someplace like San Francisco, uh, and, and understand the complicated waterways around there?" Does this expand the Coast Survey be- It certainly does, yes. So, you know, as where I think initially, uh, maybe they thought, "Oh, we just ... How long will it take? We're gonna take a couple decades. We're gonna make some maps. We're gonna chart the coast. Over and done." But that doesn't allow for the dynamic changing nature of the earth, right? Uh, a storm can quickly change the, the, the landscape, the waterscape, the seascape, those, those sorts of things, and you need to chart over again. Uh, then you add new territories, right? So the Louisiana Purchase, Texas, and then, uh, but the Pacific Coast. So to get ships out there, they have to go around South America. There's no Panama Canal. There's no easy way. And you look at some of these small ships and a s- pretty small crew, it's a very audacious thing to, to do that, to go around the, the Horn. And, uh, one of the ships did not make it. There was ... This was, in fact, the Thomas Jefferson. Um, and it, uh, wrecks off of Patagonia, and the captain, uh, tries to save as much material from the ship as he can, but they have to be transported back on a, on a merchant ship and come back saying, "Well, we, we lost the ship." But San Francisco is really one of the first big West Coast, uh, operations, and the, the man who was put in charge of, uh, this Pacific, this West Coast work for the Survey was George Davidson. He's a legendary surveyor. And, you know, really think about the disconnected nature. How long would it take you to get orders and instructions from Washington? So you had to have the right person for this job willing to kind of operate on their own, know what their orders were, know what the right thing to do was. Uh, but, you know, you couldn't be expecting a lot of hand-holding from, from Washington to carry, carry that mission out. But that's nothing compared to the work that comes when we buy this crazy thing, Seward's Folly, Alaska. If you look at Alaska, the huge long chain of the Aleutians arcing out into the Pacific, uh, the, the coasts, the inlets, the, the just wild, rugged nature of Alaska, it's still a huge area for us to work in today. So when did that start? So that's, that's again in that, that post-Civil War era. Yeah. Um, so, you know, a, a generation after, let's say, California, Oregon. Huge, huge territory that, that requires survey work. And that coincides with one of those, uh, leaps in technology, uh, aviation. So the, the early 20th century, and they start to take a camera up there. Um, so pretty quickly after the First World War, we start to work with partners in the Army and the Navy in these very early rickety aircraft and to try to put a giant camera in there and pilot a very straight line so you have exacting photographs that can be used for survey work. And, uh, the Coast Survey does an amazing job with it. They really invent the way to do this. And, uh, during the Great Depression, um, an officer in the Survey, uh, Captain Redding, creates a nine-lens camera. It was the only one like it in the world. It cost a million and a half dollars during the Depression, and it was just a valuable piece of equipment, and they quickly sent it to Alaska. And it was being used during the Second World War, flying in a Coast Guard aircraft. We didn't have any of our own aircraft at that time. Uh, and it crashes on Mount Moffett, Alaska, and a number of the crew are lost in that accident, including two of our first aviators in the, in the Coast and Geodetic Survey. And, um- The camera itself, though, was in pieces, but they went out and they picked those pieces up, and they spent two years putting it back together and finally get it, uh, reassembled at the end of World War II and put it into service again and use it into the 1960s. That's a fascinating story. So it, it's-- It is, and I, I hope to see this camera. It's actually in the collection of the Smithsonian. They do have one of our later cameras, uh, on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the, uh, National Air and Space Museum, the, their annex that's out at Dulles Airport outside of Washington. Uh, so we recently participated in an event there as the NOAA heritage team, and we were able to stand by that camera and tell people how it worked and show them these, uh, photos that were used for, for charting and mapping. And, uh, it, it's, it's really cool stuff, and it was great to see it inspire young kids today looking at this. So what you're telling me is that after Seward's Folly and we acquired the Alaska Territory, that we really didn't map the coast until the early 20th century? Well, they, they started working on it, yes. So, but it's just, again, it's a huge, huge enterprise and, uh, you know, one that's really still being worked on today. Again, Alaska is a big area of, of operation for our, for our survey work. Uh, you know, of course, there's needs going on around the rest of the country, uh, for, for the survey to, to do as well. But yeah, that was, that was one of the huge mission areas. And if you were with the, the Coast Survey, Coast and Geodetic Survey in the, in the early n- uh, 20th century, you knew you were going to spend some time in Alaska. Um, and again, it took a long time. You-- It's, it's remote, and you, you can only do it during the summer months, short though they may be, and it was very dangerous. You know, we talked earlier about, like, dropping a lead line down to know the depth in a place, but that can be really hard. What if there is a seamount? And if you think about these, they're sort of like a, a stalagmite that you might see in a cave, right? This kind of tall, narrow pinnacle of rock coming up from the bottom. Uh, you could completely miss that doing survey work, but if your ship was unlucky enough to pass over it and the water between your keel and this, this seamount was not great enough, it could punch a hole in you and send you right to the bottom. And there's a, an amazing, uh, example of this happens in 1914 to, uh, a revenue cutter called the Tahoma operating in Alaska. The Revenue Cutter Service the next year in 1915 becomes the Coast Guard, the name. People are familiar with that, uh, agency, but less so with the names they used before that. Uh, it's the beginning of the First World War. The United States is still a neutral power, so a lot of, uh, ships heard this message that the Tahoma had, had their hull breached and they were sinking, and they're in such a remote area. Some ships hear this message, and they think, "Well, this could potentially be a ruse of war. Maybe the Germans are up to something, and if we respond to this, we're gonna get sunk." But, uh, Captain James Miller of the survey ship Patterson is like, "Nope, we're gonna go get these guys." Easier said than done. He didn't have enough coal to reach where they were at, so he had to steam in through a huge storm to the port, load as much coal as he could on the ship. In fact, they loaded more coal than they could have safely kept. It was dangerously piled on the deck, affecting their stability, but they did it anyway, and they are able to rescue these Coast Guardsmen and, uh, and bring them back to safety. So, you know, that's just an example, though, of that, that dangerous environment in Alaska. And the camaraderie between all of the officers. Right, and the devotion to duty that these scientists and sailors had to have to, to execute these missions in these unforgiving places. Uh, so, you know, as, as the United States moves on through the Spanish-American War, we acquire overseas territories, including the Philippines, so that becomes the next big area of operations. More than 1,000 islands, uh, complex environment, far, far flung. So again, the survey has to go and begin to, to do detailed charting and survey work there. Uh, the difference there is that the United States knew from the onset that the Philippines were on a path towards independence, uh, commonwealth status. That led the survey to send American officers and scientists, but to train Philippine nationals as the crew of their ships and the cadets who would learn this survey technology and then be able to do that for the Republic of the Philippines once they got their independence. What a great example of diplomacy. Yeah, ex- exactly. Uh, and again, the young officers knew you were gonna be going to the Philippines. So this was, uh, a little bit of a dicey proposition in, in the early 1900s. There were some, uh, groups in the Philippines that were not too happy to have this work there. The Moro tribesmen were known to attack these survey parties, so they would have to have armed guards along with them. But the real dangers came from an unforgiving rainforest environment, people falling off of a cliff and dying or, uh, you know, you figure you're surveying at sea, but to know these points, you have to erect a tower on the shore, so they're cutting down logs, creating a tower, doing things like that. All ample opportunities to just have an accident, but also to come in, uh, with poisonous snakes. There's a famous story of one of our officers being attacked by a saltwater crocodile while they're in a shallow water doing some survey work. He survived that, but I'm sure he requested a, a transfer to New Jersey as soon as it was possible, [laughs] you know? Uh-

This sounds like Jumanji.

[laughs]