A Few Hours Away….

By Clive Donegal, Intrepid Reporter

There is nothing wrong with a visit to Colonial Williamsburg or the breathtakingly historic sites at Jamestown, and a short way down the road offers the option of spending some time in beautiful Virginia Beach. Most visitors to the area miss out on some of the lesser-known—and fascinating— historic and unusual activities and sites. Today, we will visit Hampton and Newport News.

Hampton

   The Hampton University Museum is more than merely the oldest African American museum in the country. One of the most comprehensive African American collections, the museum also represents Native American, Asian and Pacific Island art and artifacts.

   The Virginia Air and Space Center (VAASC) is a good complement to the better known museum in Washington, DC. With more than 100 interactive exhibits, an IMAX theater and the Apollo 12 Command Module that you can approach almost close enough to touch. The VAASC has a more personal feel than the national museum.

   Besides which, for an extra feel you can make your self dizzy and sick performing rolls and loops in a flight simulator. Do not eat first.

   One of my favorite sites is Fort Monroe, continuously garrisoned since 1823. Packed with history, Fort Monroe was Jefferson Davis’s prison after the civil War. Visitors may enter his cell, which is actually a capacious bedroom within the ramparts of the fort. Lieutenant Robert E Lee helped to construct the fort, SGT Edgar Allen Poe served here, Abraham Lincoln visited during the Civil War (it was held by the Union) and Harriet Tubman was head nurse at the Contraband Hospital, so named because Major General Benjamin “Spoons” Butler, the commanding officer at Fort Monroe, refused to comply with the Fugitive Slave Law on the grounds that it did not pertain to a foreign country, such as the independent Confederate States. On May 27, 1861, Major General Butler declared the slaves contraband of war. As contraband the slaves could not be delivered to an enemy, and escaped slaves flocked to Hampton.

   Built on the site of several previous forts since 1609, when the Jamestown Colony built Fort Algernourne on the site, fort Monroe is the largest stone fort ever built in the United States. The fort is scheduled to close in 2011, so its future as an untainted historic site is in jeopardy.

In March of 1862, the Battle of Hampton Roads, which for the first time pitted two ironclad ships against each other, took place in Hampton roads, within sight of the fort.

   It would be a shame to leave Hampton without taking a tour of the Bay and James River.

   A 2 ½- 3-hour tour on the Miss Hampton II offers a look at the site where Blackbeard’s head was impaled on a stake, a good view of Fort Monroe and the oldest operating lighthouse in the country, at Point Comfort. It passes the battleships at Norfolk Naval Base and over the site where the Merrimac (CSS Virginia) and USS Monitor fought the fierce battle that changed the face of naval warfare.

Newport News

   When it’s time to leave Hampton, fresh from hearing about the clash of the Ironclads, you could do no better than to visit the extraordinary 60,000 square-foot Mariner’s Museum in Newport News. In addition to a wonderful collection of miniature ships (No, these are not the typical ships in a bottle, but hand-carved, carefully detailed replicas of ships by August Crabtree) rare figureheads, and the turret and guns from the Monitor as they undergo restoration.

    The Mariner’s Museum opened in 1932, but its current facilities are state-of-the art.
The crowning jewels of the museum are the USS Monitor’s artifacts, some of which are integrated into reproduced cabins, but it also offers interactive exhibits that kept several adults with us engaged for quite some time.  The films that tell the Ironclads’ story are as vibrant as they are brief and informative. The hi-def depiction of the battle is a 360-degree aural-visual experience. Throw in an exact full-size reproduction of the turret as it looked when it was extracted from the floor of the Bay (A film allows watchers to choose hoe to proceed in the delicate undertaking.) and you are there. Outside the building stands a full-scale reproduction of the Monitor. During the month of July, the conservation tank is drained so that visitors can better see the original turret of the Monitor.

   The Mariner’s Museum is the jewel in the tiara of three excellent sites in Newport News, all within minutes of the others. The second we heartily endorse is the oddly named Virginia Living Museum, which is not about interior design. Because we did not want to miss the opportunity, we followed the ¾ mile raised walkway directly to the red wolf pups’ enclosure, instead of following the normal sequence. The six pups scampered busily around the yard in company with their parents a one-year-older sibling, as photographers snapped shot after shot, without considering how well the beasties blend with their environment.

   We also saw foxes and a bobcat, bald eagles and a raccoon whose goal seemed to be entertaining us as long as possible. Stretching through the natural setting, the rustic boardwalk through woods and over water would be an enjoyable experience even if representative wildlife from throughout the Commonwealth were not also visible in their natural habitat along the way.

Inside, the museum offers discovery centers and interactive exhibits to sustain interest beyond the SOLs (which they address). The indoor exhibits provide context for the animals with natural settings and signage that explains and extends knowledge.

   Our initial reticence about visiting yet another wildlife preserve was replaced by the excitement of discovering several paddlefish about which we had first heard while boating in Kentucky a few weeks before. The museum’s marketing director, Virginia Gabriele, did not attempt to conceal her amusement at the jaded geezer doing Horschak impressions when he spotted the first paddlefish.       

   She should have been used to it after the red wolves. And bald eagles. And alligators. And raptor fossils you can touch.

   We finished the museum with the Survivor:Jamestown, (through November 2007) a maze that familiarizes participants with the choices and hardships Jamestown residents faced. We did exceedingly well, only because we cheated with reckless abandon, but the wheel of misfortune regularly reminded us that even the best laid schemes of mice and men….

   What the third of the museums lacks in flash and style, it shares with its more polished brethren: substance.

   The name of the Virginia War Museum is more wildly misleading than the Virginia Living Museum. It is more accurately a gallery of unique military uniforms and artifacts, from a collection of Nazi memorabilia to Gatling guns and Harry Truman’s infantry helmet from World War I. A slab of the Berlin Wall, a swatch of the fencing from Dachau, a proclamation by John Adams declaring a day of fasting and prayer in March 1798, a British battle standard from the Revolutionary War, a 1918 handwritten welcome message to American troops from King George, and an impressive display of World War II posters from around the world.

   The Virginia War Museum contains a rare and eclectic collection of military history, with something to surprise and delight boys from 8 to 108, and several women.