06June 2010
JUNE MEETING
On Wednesday June 16, 2010 at 7:30 pm the SDCWRT will hold its 286th meeting at Palisades Presbyterian Church, 6301 Birchwood St., San Diego, CA 92120.
Our speaker this month is Mary Townsend whose new book: “Yankee Warhorse: The Unknown General”, is a biography of Peter Joseph Osterhaus. This book is dedicated to preserving the German immigrant’s remarkable story of service to his adopted country. In spite of his solid contributions to the Union successes in the West throughout the Civil War, Major General Osterhaus remains virtually unknown to most people studying the war today. During this program you will learn some of the fascinating details of his long life in both of his countries. His life and military career will be followed by a presentation of one of his battles.
May 2010 Meeting
By Travis Fuqua with Photographs by Bob Batten
On May 19, 2010, Mike Schooling presented “Heritage Defense: Sons of Confederate Veterans”. Mr. Schooling is a member of both the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Sons of Union Veterans. He is involved with the Southern Legal Resource Center (SLRC), which is the legal arm of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The purpose of the SLRC is to protect southern heritage.
Mr. Schooling
The majority of the SLRC advocacy presented by Mr. Schooling involved the public display of the Confederate battle flag on clothing and personal articles. One case was that of Timothy Castorina of Kentucky who was disciplined by his high school principal for refusing to turn his T-shirt, which had a Confederate flag, inside-out. The SLRC represented Castorina in court. In another case, Jacqueline Duty of Kentucky was prevented from going to her senior prom because her gown had a Confederate battle flag pattern. The SLRC represented her in court and won. Another case was of the DuPont Seven who were seven workers at the DuPont factory in Virginia who were disciplined by management for wearing Confederate symbols to work. The issue went to court and lost and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
In addition to the SLRC, Mr. Schooling presented on his trip to H.M.S “Warrior” in Portsmouth, England. The “Warrior” was the first iron-hulled warship in the world and was commissioned in 1861. She was built in response to the iron-plated (but wooden-hulled) French “La Gloire” of 1860 as there was a fear of a French invasion.
She is 420 feet long and displaces 9,200 long tons. She was powered by a horizontal trunk engine rated at 1,250 H.P. turning a single screw and had all of the machinery below the waterline for protection against enemy fire. There were ten boilers. She was among the fastest ships at that time with a top speed of 14.5 knots under steam alone and 17.5 knots with steam and sail. She was armed with 42 guns—26 muzzle-loading 68-pounder guns, 10 rifled breech loading (RBL) 110-pounder guns, 4 RBL 40-pounder guns, and 2 RBL 20-pounder guns. She also carried various arms for the crew. Her iron hull was protected in certain areas by an iron belt 4 ½ inches thick and backed by 18 inches of teak. Upon her completion, she was the most powerful and advanced warship the world had yet seen. Her total coast was £357,291 in 1861, the equivalent of about $1,750,000. By comparison, the Union ironclad “Monitor” of 1862 cost $275,000.
H.M.S. "Warrior"
During the American Civil War, she occasionally served as a deterrent to American and Confederate naval forces who might have taken the fight to British waters. Within a few years of her commissioning, however, the “Warrior” was made obsolete by rapidly advancing technology. She was removed from front-line service in the 1870s having never fired a shot in anger, and was then used as a storage hulk and depot ship among other roles before being neglected until the 1970s. By then she was Britain’s only surviving ironclad and beginning in 1979, the ship was restored to her original appearance by 1987. Today, the “Warrior” is open to tourists.
The “Warrior” is an excellent example of mid-nineteenth century naval engineering. Despite being much larger and vastly more powerful than anything produced in the United States during the Civil War-era, the “Warrior”, nonetheless, provides an example of what it may have been like aboard similar American ironclads such as the “Monitor” and “New Ironsides”.