Happy Birthday, Longfellow - Portland, Maine

What is wrong with me? I keep procrastinating and don't get the news of these special deals to you in time. Darn, this one was half-off admission too! Maybe if you're really nice they'll give you the discount anyway? Oops, maybe not; the house isn't there anymore. What you will find in its place is a Marriott Residence Inn. Don't blame Marriott though; before they built the hotel it was a parking lot.

Longfellow was born here on February 27, 1807. Later, his family moved to another house nearby (the Wadsworth-Longfellow House), which you can still visit.  You can also visit the Longfellow National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1914, Longfellow's birthplace was dedicated as a permanent memorial. The International Longfellow Society, with Woodrow Wilson as its honorary president, took charge of the house and solicited donations to cover the $20,000 needed to pay the first and second mortgages and pay off outstanding bills for restoration work. An article in the New York Times on February 27, 1916 discussed the importance of the house and urged people to make donations to maintain it. Supporters sent donations from all over Europe and from as far away as Japan.

The effort was successful and the house operated as a museum for several decades before it fell into disrepair. In the early 1950s, a man from Alaska mounted an aggressive fund-raising campaign for the museum through The International Longfellow Society. Unfortunately, it seems that he was using the collected money for personal use instead. To make matters worse, his fund-raising efforts were in direct competition with the legitimate efforts of the other Longfellow House.

After the house was demolished in 1955, the lot remained vacant for a long time. In the 1990s workers preparing the site for reconstruction unearthed the plaque for the stone marker that had been erected at the site in 1956. The plaque had been missing for several years and presumed stolen. Instead, it was just buried in the dirt. I came upon this photo taken by photojournalist, John Alphonse, on his website Reality Times. He took the picture shortly after the plaque was unearthed and set back in its stone marker. John graciously allowed me to use the photo for this post.

To celebrate Longfellow's birthday today, here is one of his poems:

The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Marseille, France

The message reads:

Aug 4/21

I'm sure you would just love this flower market. Saw beautiful forget me nots just a few moments ago.

yours Bergil (?)

USS Dynamite Gunboat Vesuvius

The USS dynamite gunboat Vesuvius was used during the Spanish-American War in 1898 off Santiago de Cuba. It was the only time a dynamite gun was used on a boat (probably because they weren't very accurate.) On June 28, 1898, the Deseret News of Salt Lake City, Utah reported that, "The dynamite gunboat Vesuvius fired three shells last night. They fell in the vicinity of Morro castle and the eastern batteries."

The Spanish-American War was fought between the U.S. and Spain over issues of the liberation of Cuba. Several events led up to to the declaration of war:

1. A riot by Spanish loyalists in Cuba in January, 1898, which led to the presence of American Marine Forces in Havana.
   
2. The sinking of the USS Maine, which may have been caused by an internal coal combustion, but was suspected of being an explosion from a mine.
3. American anger fueled by news stories (particularly in Hearst newspapers) about the events surrounding the USS Maine.

President Grover Cleveland referred to the USS Vesuvius and other ships in his fifth State of the Union address in 1893 (from Wikisource):

Progress in the construction of new vessels has not been as rapid as was anticipated. There have been delays in the completion of unarmored vessels, but for the most part they have been such as are constantly occurring even in countries having the largest experience in naval shipbuilding. The most serious delays, however, have been in the work upon armored ships. The trouble has been the failure of contractors to deliver armor as agreed. The difficulties seem now, however, to have been all overcome, and armor is being delivered with satisfactory promptness. As a result of the experience acquired by shipbuilders and designers and material men, it is believed that the dates when vessels will be completed can now be estimated with reasonable accuracy. Great guns, rapid-fire guns, torpedoes, and powder are being promptly supplied.

The following vessels of the new Navy have been completed and are now ready for service: The double-turreted coast-defense monitor Miantonomoh, the double-turreted coast-defense monitor Monterey, the armored cruiser New York, the protected cruisers Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark, San Francisco, Charleston, Atlanta, and Boston, the cruiser Detroit, the gunboats Yorktown, Concord, Bennington, Machias, Castine, and Petrel, the dispatch vessel Dolphin, the practice vessel Bancroft, and the dynamite gunboat Vesuvius. Of these the Bancroft, Machias, Detroit, and Castine have been placed in commission during the current calendar year.