Halifax Halloween Survey - Where Have All the Pirates Gone?

Halloween from my window on Duncan Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia

For the last 17 years I have conducted a census of Halloween costumes that come to my doorstep on Duncan Street in West End Halifax. This year the good news is: numbers are up, after a long-term decline. We had a total of 80 costumed trick-or-treaters, up from an abysmal 50 last year, but sill a far cry from 215 when I started my count in 1996.

However as a marine historian, especially one who wrote book on piracy in Atlantic Canada, I was mortified by this development:

No pirates!

Pretty much every year there have been pirate costumes with a peak in 2008 when they were the number one costume. No doubt the fading cycle of Pirates of the Caribbean films has much to do with this. (At least there were two sea monsters, a new category this year and a classic mermaid, reassuring in a port city whose connection to the sea grows ever more symbolic.)

Pirates joined a number of classics this year that were missing entirely. There were no witches, no ghosts, no clowns and no fire fighters. There was one fire fighter outfit but the little girl in it had converted it to a SWAT team policeman, part of new trend of 3 SWAT police officers. I am not sure where that is coming from - perhaps the influence of some of the recent television series featuring SWAT teams.

The Best Overall Costume was: A Ritz Cracker: an 8-year-old walking box of Ritz Crackers, English in front, French in back & nutritional information on the side.

Here were some other trends:

1. A dead tie between Vampires and Princesses and Ninjas for the most popular costumes. (6 of each)

2. Zombies were up with 5.
3. Batman is doing well, but no spidermen.
4. Not one, but 2 Medusas!
5. Quite a number of food costumes: a pear, crackers, cereal, banana

You may find it interesting to compare these results with a nicely illustrated infographic display about Halloween costumes elsewhere by graphic designer Kinnon Elliot. 

It was good to see the numbers up a bit. I enjoy the doorstep theatre represented by Halloween trick-or-treaters and what it tells us about kids and our communities. I grew interested in counting costumes when I did my History Masters and read about civic parades in Renaissance France where guilds, clerics, professions and the nobility all paraded in formal costume to represent their roles in society and the order of the parade telegraphed changes. While children at Halloween are a far cry from civic elites, it is still fun to speculate what they represent.

I did a CBC Radio interview with Bill Roach on "Mainstreet" about the survey, the day after Halloween which you can listen to here: Conlin's Costume Count.

In any case, here is the full data for your own interest and reflection:

Past Totals

2012: 50! 

2011: 80

2010: 88

2009: 99

2008: 103

2007: 125

2006: 168 

2005: 187

2004: 184

2003: 187

2002: 193

2001: 152

2000: 171

1999-175

1998-160

1996-215

The journalist Parker Donham has kindly put my annual numbers in a graph on his Contrarian blog.

2013 COSTUMES BY TYPE

Angel: 1

Baby: 2

Banana: 1

Barney Dinosaur: 2

Batman: 3

Batgirl: 1

Bobba Fett: 1 (Star Wars)

Cat: 1

Cat in the Hat: 1

Cereal Killer  (Cereal boxed stabbed with knives): 1

Evil Cook: 1

Cowgirl:1

Dead  Cheerleader: 1

Dead Doctor: 1

Evil Doctor: 1

Devil: 1

Dragon: 1

Football Players: 2  (One who was Michael Vick!)

Frankenstein: 1  (Good homemade green make-up)

Gangster: 1

Goalie: 1  (Fully equipped)

Goth: 1

Goth Bride: 2  (Beautiful costume with black bouquet)

Hulk: 1

Ironman: 1

Karate Guy: 1

Little Red Riding Hood: 1

Lizard: 1

Lion: 1

Mermaid: 1

Medusa: 1

Monkey: 1

Monster, misc : 1

No discernible costume: 1

Ninja: 6

Owl: 1

Pear: 1

Pirates: NONE!

Platypus: 1

Princesses: 6  (Including 1 Fairy Princess)

Puss & Boots: 1  (A very nice costume and keen to demonstrate his swordsmanship.)

Ritz Cracker Box: 1

Scream/Ghouls masks:1

Sea Monsters: 2

Skeleton: 1

A Shadow: 1  (The concept, not the crime fighter)

Spidermen:

Storm trooper: 1  (Star Wars)

Swat Team policemen: 3

Unicorn: 1  (Very Young Baby)

Vampires: 6

Werewolf: 1

Zombies:5 

First Caller:  5:35 p.m.

Peak Traffic: 7 p.m.

Last Caller:  8:15 p.m.



Happy Halloween from Duncan Street! (The blue column in the window is a set of real chest and leg X-Rays that I use to give the sidewalk view a spooky blue glow.)

Trafalgar Day

Today is the 208th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. We recently installed in our Navy Gallery the classic 1876 engraving "Death of Nelson"  by Charles W. Sharpe, based on the 1861 painting by Daniel Maclise.

1) "The Death of Nelson"  MMA, M2011.102.1, Gift of Adrian Bridgehouse

The engraving shows the dying Nelson on the deck of HMS Victory just after he was felled by a sharpshooter's musket ball on October 21, 1805. Nelson's death during his great final victory is, of course, an iconic moment in Royal Navy history. Maclise's painting followed two other earlier notable paintings with the same title, one by Arthur William Devis in 1805 and the other by Benjamin West in 1806. Maclise was commissioned to do the painting as a mural for the Palace of Westminster. The engraving based on the painting was widely sold and hung above many fireplaces around Nova Scotia.

2) "The Death of Nelson" finished study. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Wikimedia 

 Maclise invested a great deal of time seeking accurate details. He interviewed Trafalgar survivors and studied period equipment.  However, the painting is still a stylized view of the event with a composition that compresses the sweeping decks of HMS Victory and avoids the fact that Nelson was quickly taken below decks to die. The artist also chose to emphasize the diversity of age, race and gender in the Royal Navy during the sailing era. This produced fascinating portraits of the people around Nelson and gives the work a greater meaning, communicating not only the veneration of Nelson but also the courage and suffering of the ordinary people in Victory's crew.

3) This detail in the engraving shows a "powder monkey", a very young member of Victory's crew, bringing gunpowder from the magazine to a gun crew on the deck. 

4) A central figure in the work is one of Victory's African crew members who has spotted the French sharpshooter and is directing a Royal Marine to exact quick retribution.

5) This woman features prominently in the engraving. Wives of long-serving British sailors were regularly found aboard some warships where they served, unpaid, to care for wounded and load cartridges.

Neither Victory nor Nelson ever came to Nova Scotia (although Nelson did spend some time in Quebec).  However, the Battle of Trafalgar affected our region. Atlantic Canadians of all ranks served in the Royal Navy and fought at Trafalgar and there is an ongoing search to identify the region's Trafalgar veterans which you can read about on historian Keith Mercer's blog. Nova Scotians welcomed the assertion of naval security that resulted from the battle. They shared in the mourning for the loss of Nelson, a legacy that was seen for decades in the naming of not only ships but children after Nelson, Victory and Trafalgar. That is why our museum, like most maritime museums in the Commonwealth, has a Victory model on display.

 6) The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic's Victory model and "Death of Nelson" engraving.

Into the 20th century, Nelson came to embody the fighting spirit and tradition of service which the Royal Canadian Navy inherited from the British Royal Navy. In fact, the RCN arranged for its first flagship, HMCS Niobe, to arrive in Halifax on Trafalgar Day in 1910.

7) HMCS Niobe steams past Georges Island arriving in Halifax on Trafalgar Day, 1910. MMA, MP31.7.6

Our colleagues at the Naval Museum of Halifax, formerly the Maritime Command Museum, marked this year's Trafalgar Day by unveiling a just-acquired ship portrait of Niobe. It is a rare painting of the ship created when Niobe was still in commission by the ship portrait artist A.J. Janson. 

8) Richard Sanderson at the Naval Museum of Halifax with the newly unveiled portrait of Niobe. MMA, Gerry Lunn



9) The white ensign flying at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic on Trafalgar Day 2013.

Our museum continues to mark Trafalgar Day by flying a very large ensign in honour of the battle. This flag was actually flown above HMS Victory in Portsmouth, England in the 1970s. It was donated to the museum a few years ago by Tom Barlow who was given the flag by his grandfather. Weather permitting we hoist the large ensign on important naval anniversaries, especially Trafalgar Day.

A Nocturnal for Nocturne

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic participated in Halifax's late-night arts festival Nocturne on Saturday October 19, 2013. We found the perfect connection to this year's Nocturne theme of " Time and Space". It is a very old navigational instrument called a "nocturnal". Sailors used nocturnals to tell the time at sea using the position of stars in space.

1) The Museum's Nocturnal. MMA, M2013.19.1

Our nocturnal is one of the oldest instruments in the Museum collection. As indicated by its inscription, this nocturnal was made in 1733 for Captain Hugh Molloy. This particular nocturnal is believed to have been brought to Canada from Ireland by Charles Moffitt who settled in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in May of 1846. It was kindly donated to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic this year by Vaughan McManus through the efforts of museum registrar Lynn Marie Richard who drove all the way to Fredericton to safely transport the nocturnal to Halifax.

 2) Detail of the nocturnal recently donated by Vaughan McManus. MMA, M2013.19.1

It is elegantly cut and beautifully inscribed for a very practical purpose. As its name implies, the nocturnal was deployed at night using particular stars as reference points. It evolved from more complex astronomical instruments like the astrolabe. Conceived by Michel Coignet in 1581, nocturnals are really simple analogue computers. Compared to other instruments which require mathematical tables and trigonometry, the Nocturnal is delightfully simple to use. You set the date with one ring, point it at the North Star using the hole in the centre and then swing the pointer to the Big Dipper to read off the time. Nocturnals are reliably accurate to within 15 minutes. Our nocturnal has settings for GB, the constellation Great Bear (or Big Dipper) and LB, the Little Bear (or Little Dipper).

3)  How-to guide for the Nocturnal, The Use of a Nocturnal, by Petrius Apian, Antwerp 1545

Timekeeping was very important to navigators at sea. Precise time was needed to use tide tables to safely enter harbours and to regulate work shifts aboard known as the watch schedule. Time was also essential to navigation using dead reckoning where you planned to sail a certain direction for a set amount of time and then change your course. Mess up the time and you'd find yourself sailing straight into hazards like Sable Island, the graveyard of the Atlantic.  By the middle of the 18th century more accurate clocks started to become available, eventually producing the very accurate clocks known as chronometers and the nocturnal fell out of use.

  

4) The Museum's Nocturnals - Original, left, and Replica, right.

We are displayed our newly donated nocturne for the first time during Halifax's Nocturne: Art at Night festival and invited our visitors to try their hand at using one, guided by instrument expert and Museum Research Associate Randall Brooks. The museum's Curator of Visitor Experience Lee Schuette oversaw the creation of several lovely working replicas of our 280-year-old nocturnal. The replica nocturnals allowed Randall to demonstrate the use of the nocturnal and allow visitors to try their hand. In a bit of a living history experiment, we found that a slight cloud cover and and a bright 21st century urban sky foiled our use of this 18th century instrument but we will try again on colder and clearer nights.

 

5) A nocturnal view of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic at from the wharves. MMA, Ian Mullan

With our location beside the harbour, the Museum is often a magical place at night. We demonstrated the nocturnal three times in between the sounds of traditional sea-faring songs and stories told by members and friends from the Helen Creighton Folklore Society including Clary Croft, Vince Morash, Dan McKinnon and Kate Dunley. There were of course all kinds of wonderful artistic presentations and activities all over downtown Halifax during Nocturne. You can find more information at the website for Nocturne: Art at Night.

An Owl Oddity

              One of the more compelling curiosities at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is a stuffed Snowy Owl in a glass case. This somewhat creepy object looks like it would be more at home in a Victorian nature diorama than a maritime museum, but the case contains a handwritten card with its story told in the first person - and from the owl's point of view:

“I was blown from my home on the "North Pole" in the winter of 1886 on the 17th February.

 I took rest on the topsail yard arm of ship "Ulunda" in Lat 48° 21" North. Long 44° 35" West.

I was captured and taken to London. Captain Hill showed me every kindness during the voyage but in London I was chloroformed and embalmed. Here I am, a warning to all owls.”

1) Snowy - in his case in the Visible Storage Display at the Museum

            Nova Scotia Museum History Collection/Maritime Museum of the Atlantic 68.114.1

Snowy, as I call him, must have been blown offshore in 1886. Somehow the exhausted owl found the tiny speck of the SS Ulunda as it steamed past the edge of the Grand Banks, over 600 kilometres from the nearest land.

Snowy owes his fate to Captain S. Roland Hill (1852-1910), the master of SS Ulunda, who seems to have possessed a sense of humour akin to the 20th century "Far Side"  cartoonist Gary Larson. Hill was one of the many accomplished deep sea mariners to sail out of Great Village, Nova Scotia. He went to sea as a boy in sailing ships and rose up through the ranks. Unlike most sea captains of his generation, he made the transition to steam ships. His command in 1886 was the almost brand new Ulunda. This vessel was an ambitious attempt by some Halifax merchants to get into the ocean liner business as they could see that the days of sail were numbered. They formed the Halifax Steam Navigation Company and had Ulunda built in 1885 by Stephen & Sons in Glasgow, Scotland. As an early ocean liner, Ulunda had steam engines but was also rigged with auxiliary sails. That rigging provided the yard arm for the owl to gain temporary refuge in the middle of the North Atlantic. Their small fleet was quickly bought out by a big British steamship company, the Furness Line. Ulunda was scrapped in 1911. Captain Hill prospered in the new world of steamships. He later commanded ships for the Plant Line and finished his career the steamboat inspector for the port of Halifax.

As for the poor owl, Capt. Hill had it put to sleep in London and mounted in a classic winter taxidermy scene surrounded by a glass dome. The glass broke during the return voyage to Nova Scotia so, according to the Hill family, the Captain "gave it free passage" back to London for a new glass dome. Hill kept the owl with him for the rest of his career and it was later inherited by a niece who donated it to the Nova Scotia Museum in 1968.

My thanks to Martin Hubley at the Nova Scotia Museum and Nan Harvey at the Colchester Historical Society Archives for extra details on Capt. Hill.

Silver from the Deep: A CSS Acadia Spoon

This Saturday, August 3, our museum celebrates the 100th anniversary of the museum's largest artifact, the steamship Acadia, with CSS Acadia: 100 Years: an open house; crew re-union; and a special anniversary exhibit. As noted in a previous post  Acadia is a legendary research ship of Canada's east and northern coasts. Among the many fascinating photographs and objects in the new Acadia exhibit curated by Gerry Lunn is a silver spoon with a remarkable story.

 1) The spoon's crest with the ship's original moniker C.G.S. (Canadian Government Ship) Acadia.

This beautiful custom-engraved silver plate table spoon once graced the dining room aboard Acadia where the chartmakers and officers dined in Edwardian splendour. While other parts of the crew ate from tin plates, the top of the ship's hierarchy enjoyed fine china, crystal and silverware, all engraved with the ship's coat of arms.

2) Acadia's chartmakers finishing a meal aboard the ship in 1913, resplendent in luxury even while anchored on the barren shores of Hudson Bay. Note a silver spoon by the sugar bowl on the right.

However through some misadventure the spoon went overboard from Acadia. It was dragged up out of the ocean from waters east of Halifax, near the Liscomb Buoy by fisherman Charles H. Morris (1897-1955). The spoon was packed inside a box which likely accounts for its fine condition. Acadia charted in this area from 1919 to 1922 and also steamed by Liscomb en route to charting elsewhere.

 3) The spoon after gentle polishing by museum registrar Lynn-Marie Richard.

Laura Morris, the wife of Charles Morris, gave the spoon to neighbours in Liscomb, Mary and James R. Pye. In 1959, Mrs. Pye donated the spoon to the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. Carefully looked after for years by archival assistant Darlene Brine, the spoon was transferred to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in 2004.  We were delighted when the spoon came to our collection allowing us to re-unite it with the spoon's old home, CSS Acadia.

 

4) Museum interpreter Jeanne Church as the spoon returns to Acadia decades after falling overboard.

Those fond of artifact detective work can trace the spoon's history from the markings on the back. They contain the hallmark "W&H" of the firm Walker and Hall of Sheffield, England. There is also a date letter, the Gothic letter "U", used by the firm to show that the spoon was made in 1912. This means the spoon was part of Acadia's original outfit of silverware, ordered while the ship was still under construction before her launch in 1913. Walker and Hall also supplied some of the 44,000 pieces of cutlery which sank with RMS Titanic in 1912. Perhaps this spoon crossed paths at the W&H factory in Sheffield with silver headed for Titanic, a more famous but far less successful ship than Acadia!

4) Reverse of spoon showing markings
 
The Archives and Museum have also added their own layers of identity, painted in ink on reversible nail polish. You can see the old catalogue number from the Nova Scotia Archives "31.07" and right beside it the accession number of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, "M2004.50.7"

Museums are all about telling stories with objects and this little spoon and its trip through time is a fine example. In a way, a spoon that rose from the bottom of the ocean is an appropriate relic to associate with Acadia, as she is a chartmaking ship that spent her career coaxing information from the sea bottom to ensure that others traveled safely.

Christina O: From Snowy Nova Scotia to the Sunny Mediterranean, how a Canadian Frigate Became the World's Most Famous Super Yacht

1) HMCS Stormont at St. Margaret's Bay, Nova Scotia, early 1944. MMA, M94.19.134, photo by George Coletti

This photo from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic's collection shows the newly commissioned Canadian frigate "working up" to train her new crew in Nova Scotia on a wintery day in 1944. Little did the 150 sailors aboard know, but after a distinguished wartime career their ship would be purchased by the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis and turned into the world's first, and still most famous, super yacht. Built in Montreal, Stormont arrived in Halifax in December 1943 with her new captain George Myra from Bayport, Lunenburg County, a veteran pre-war merchant captain who had served as the alternate captain for the famous fishing schooner Bluenose and was a good friend of Angus Walters. Stormont had a busy war, fighting in the last phase of the Battle of the Atlantic with North Atlantic convoy escorts, taking a convoy to the Kola Inlet on the Murmansk run and another to Gibraltar. On one voyage she spent 63 continuous days at sea, a record for a Canadian frigate. She was part of the D-Day invasion force, protecting the landing vessels from German naval attack. As Germany crumbled in 1945, Stormont was refitted for tropical service in the Pacific but Japan's surrender ruled that out. Decommissioned on November 6, 1945, Stormont was mothballed as Canada demobilized its huge wartime navy, briefly the Third largest in the world.

2) Christina O in home waters. Despite a new bow and liner-like funnel, the naval lines of her hull are still evident to a knowing eye.  George Onassis, Wikimedia

Initially sold for $34,000 to be converted to a freighter in South America, Stormont caught the eye of shipping agents for Aristotle Onassis and was rebuilt in Kiel, Germany as a yacht. Named after Onassis's daughter, the new extravangently outfitted yacht stood out in war-ravaged and austere Europe and was a major departure from the long, low and slim private yachts of the pre-war era. Christina O made full use of the ship's large hull and powerful naval engineering systems to support luxuries like a combined swimming pool and dance floor. Most notoriously, the yacht's bar contained coat hooks made from Orca teeth and barstools made from the leather of Minke whale penises.  

Over the years, the yacht hosted fleets of celebrities. Apart from Onassis's mistress Maria Callas and wife Jackie Kennedy Onassis, early guests included Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy, followed by sailings with celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rudolph Nureyev, Eva Peron, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly.

3) Where racks of depth charges once waited to sink German submarines, Christina O's stern now boasts a mosaic swimming pool which drains and raises to become a dance floor at the push of a button. Maxine Simpson, Wikimedia

Christina O set the bar for the super yachts that followed in the decades after World War Two. Much larger yachts followed but few matched her legendary origins. Passing through several owners after the death of Onassis, Christina O was restored in a major refit in 1999, the yacht has recently been offered for sale for $34 million.

Hear more about HMCS Stormont and Christina O in an July 4 interview by Dan Conlin on CBC Radio's Mainstreet.

More on her naval and yacht career in Randy Boswell's July 4 article the National Post:  " ‘The last word in opulence’: Lavishly refitted D-Day warship, Christina O, on sale for $34-million"

An Artifact from the Heart of a Deadly War of 1812 Battle

On this day 200 years ago, a ship from Nova Scotia fought one the bloodiest sea battles of the War of 1812 and one of the most studied naval duels of all time. The Halifax-based HMS Shannon defeated USS Chesapeake off Boston Harbour in a ferocious 15-minute battle. The victory restored British morale after a string of American victories and marked the turning point in the war at sea. The Halifax squadron went on to defeat other American naval ships and mount a crippling blockade and devastating raids on the American coast.

1) R.H.King and J.C. Schetky's depiction of the battle, MMA M50.13.2

Our museum has several artifacts from this terrible, but iconic, battle including an officer's chest and the mess kettle from USS Chesapeake. However, the most powerful object is probably the bell of HMS Shannon.  The bell is an icon of the ship and a battle that helped protect Nova Scotia from American invasion. It is also a chilling witness to the violence of the engagement. It took a direct hit in the battle and still bares the scars.

 

2) Shannon's bell displayed at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, on long-term loan from the Maritime Command Museum.

Shannon's bell is made of an unusual silver alloy and is inscribed with the classic broad arrow indicating British military property. It has the date 1740, indicating that the bell was reused from an earlier Royal Navy ship as Shannon was commissioned in 1806. Aboard Shannon the bell was housed in a belfry on the forecastle. A shot from Chesapeake early in the battle tore across the forecastle, smashed a hole in the bell, crushed the crown fitting on the head and sent cracks down its side. You can imagine what terrible things that shot did to the people on Shannon's crowded forecastle around the bell. The lethal exchange of gunnery and vicious hand to hand fighting in the battle killed 94 men and wounded 135.

3) The top of the bell showing cracks from battle and bronze rivets from repair.

The fragments of the bell were carefully preserved after the battle and transferred to the Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. The bell was repaired by fitting a plate under the crown, adding an interior brace and fixing all the fragments together with bronze rivets. In 1922, the son of the Dockyard mechanic in charge of the repair recalled,"I was often told the story by my father about the work done on the bell and results, also of the great difficulty he had in retaining the pieces, as the men around him were anxious to get them to make into rings and bracelets as souvenirs".

 

4) Interior detail showing the Dockyard's 19th century repair plates.

The bell was displayed in a niche at the Bermuda dockyard's clock tower. In 1952, the bell was moved from Bermuda to Halifax and was installed in the Shannon Park School in Dartmouth. It stood there as a symbol of the school and its connection to history until the Shannon Park navy base closed in 2004. The bell  was transferred to the Maritme Command Museum at CFB Halifax. In a recent overhaul of our Navy Gallery we borrowed the bell as part of a long-term loan.

 

5) Gerry Lunn and Stephen Gillis install the bell at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.