More History and Boat News from Baltimore

After the laundry was finished and Peter was wrapping up for the day, around 9 p.m., Peter and I walked to the nearby Canton Waterfront Park where there were two stages with live, loud bands along with food trucks and vendors.  The music was not appealing to us, but we found dinner at a Haitian food truck.  Peter had chicken and I had the Caribbean stable of macaroni and cheese, which was really delicious.  We walked back along the waterfront, enjoying a respite from the day's heat, chatted with Matthew when we returned to the boat, and then, of course, Peter had to work on one last thing.  I read until I fell asleep, not waiting up for him.

Canton Waterfront Park concert

We awoke early (for me, at least), at 7:30 a.m., with cool air streaming in through the open hatch.  What a relief!  It seemed like a good morning for Peter to go up the mast and for me to work on mending the mainsail.  By the time Peter got the boatswain's chair and his parts and tools ready, found the sewing supplies, lowered the sail, and explained the sewing project to me, it had already begun to get warm again, but not sweltering hot.  By mid-morning, we were finally ready to go, and I used the electric wench to haul him up to the second set of spreaders.  I then got to work on the sail but found it nearly impossible to pierce the layers of material even with a needle designed for the job.      It didn't matter though, because Peter had to be repositioned on the mast about every 10 minutes, so I ended up staying in the cockpit and reading while waiting for him to call down to me.  (I started reading a collection of short stories by William Gibson entitled Burning Chrome, which Matthew had recommended.  I do not usually read science fiction, but I have enjoyed some of the stories.)  When Peter had finished detaching the piece of damaged mast track and lowered it to the deck, I brought him down.

Peter high up on the mast

He looked at the sewing project and agreed we needed an awl.  Fortunately, he was going to the nearby and frequently visited West Marine for screws anyway, so he could purchase one.  But the welder called to say she had finished the piece she had been asked to make for mounting the screen for the computer on the nav table, so he had to wait for her.  In the end, it was a couple of hours before he completed his shopping trip.  By then, thunderstorms had moved in so it was too dangerous for him to go up the mast and too wet for me to sew the sail.  For Peter, the myriad improvements and repairs he can make to the boat are an endless supply of amusement and fascination (and occasionally frustration) for him, so he was able to stay busy below decks.  There is not nearly enough to distract me, and his projects have resulted in nearly every horizontal surface being covered with parts and tools, so the saloon is not even an appealing place for me right now.  I took a nap and, during a break in the rain, went to the Safeway across the street to get food and dry ice. Then I came to the lounge and watched the U.S. Open men's semi-final match between Djokovic and Nishikori.  Peter joined me to the last set, which we watched while eating a picnic dinner.

Peter's endless entertainment and the critical mess he creates

It was cool again this morning, but the wind was gusty, so Peter thought it was ill-advised to ascend the mast.  I decided to go to the B&O Railroad Museum, and I departed after we enjoyed the continental breakfast the marina provides every Saturday morning.  It is a good opportunity to meet other people in the marina.

Outside of Museum

The B&O (Baltimore and Ohio) Railroad Museum contains one of the oldest and most comprehensive (according to its own publicity) American railroad collections.  (Actually, it is fairly comprehensive regarding the development of railroads east of the Mississippi but has little to offer about western railroads.  Of course, the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento does not focus on railroads in the east--but, then, it doesn't claim a pan-American scope of coverage.  No need to quibble, though--they are both excellent railroad museums.)  The museum is located at the site of the historic Mt. Clare shops of the B&O Railroad.  From this place, in 1829, Baltimore businessmen, surveyors and engineers set about creating the railroad company, laying the first commercial long-distance track (about 30 miles initially) in the U.S. and building the first passenger station.  In the 1820s, Baltimore was concerned about losing out economically to New York and other port cities.  The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, and the proposed Chesapeake and Potomac Canal would take away trade vital to the development of the city.  The B&O Railroad was the response to this threat.

The museum contains locomotives, rolling stock and artifacts (such as tools, time-pieces, dining car china, uniforms and personal memorabilia) relating to early American railroading, particularly the B&O, the Chesapeake and Ohio, the Western Maryland and other mid-Atlantic railroads.  (In a series of mergers and acquisitions in the 20th century, most of these would become the Chessie system and then CSX Transportation, which now operates about 21,000 miles of track.)

The Museum's main building, the roundhouse, is striking when entered.  Originally constructed in the mid-19th century as a passenger car shop, it was the largest circular industrial building in the world at the time, covering more than an acre and rising 125 feet.  Outside and in adjacent shops are more locomotives and rolling stock.  I took a tour of one of them.  Most of the information shared by the knowledgeable guide was focused on the engineering of the locomotives, and a lot of it was not that fascinating for me.  However, he did point out the automatic, continuous lubrication system for a moving part of a steam engine which was invented in 1872 by an African American engineer Elijah McCoy and his son.  Because this system meant fewer stops for lubrication and reduced maintenance, this invention was in high demand by the railroads.  It is postulated that the term "the real McCoy" is based on engineers asking if the locomotives they commissioned or purchased were equipped with "the real McCoy" in order to avoid an inferior product.

B&O Museum Roundhouse

One of the first B&O passenger cars for a short 30-mile run to Ellicott City, Maryland

Part of the museum is dedicated to the importance of the railroads, particularly the B&O, during the American Civil War.  They moved ordinance, food, uniforms, shelter, medicine and other supplies needed by Union troops.  The extensive rail system allowed for the speedy movement of troops, contributing to Union victories in the South.  Because of their vital role, the railroads also became targets; cutting off supply lines was an important strategy for both sides.  Confederate Colonel Stonewall Jackson's operations in Martinsburg, West Virginia (then Virginia) involved not only destroying tracks and bridges but, in 1861, stealing, one by one, 14 locomotives in all from the yard for use on Confederate railroads.  There were no tracks connecting Martinsburg to any Confederate lines, so the locomotives were disassembled and moved along a dirt road by teams of horses to Strasburg, Virginia.  As a result of the need to keep the Northern tracks operational, hundreds of men became trained in railroad maintenance and repair during the war and would later be able to use these skills to find employment.

Another exhibit focused on the role of African Americans in railroads.  Although some of them were highly skilled, they were not offered employment in management nor were they allowed to become engineers, conductors or firemen.  They were relegated to service jobs.  The Black men who were hired by George Pullman for his sleeper cars were chosen from former slaves, particularly house slaves who had been groomed to serve.  Although they were better paid than other Black railroad workers and indeed, better than workers in many industries, they worked long hours and had to pay for their own accomodations, food and uniforms when working.  In addition, Black passengers could not ride in the same cars as white passengers and were provided with inferior conditions.  In fact, in some cases, they were put in the smoking room of cars and had to sit, not even being allowed to smoke themselves, while white passengers used their area to enjoy their cigarettes and cigars. This discriminatory practice was unfortunately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, establishing the doctine of separate but equal.

I have a hard time dealing with racial prejudice and exclusionary practices.  It seems morally wrong and just does not jibe with my personal experience.  My experiences with people of other ethnic backgrounds do not differ from those with people who look like me.  Here in Baltimore, I can see that there are still divisions.  I can see that people of similar racial or ethnic backgrounds choose to be part of homogeneous groups, but not necessarily exclusively.  I have found myself welcomed and accepted by groups of Black people when I am the only white person around.  When I left the railroad museum today, the rain was pouring and there was no designated shelter at the bus stop.  I was standing under a tree, which was doing very little to keep me dry, when a woman from a house across the street came out with two umbrellas and gave one to me to use while I waited.  She told me just to leave it on the sidewalk when the bus came and she would see it from her front window and come to retrieve it.  About ten minutes later, she sent her seventh-grade son out to stand with me, with the message that the bus would be arriving in about one minute.  She waved from her window as I boarded the bus.  I would have been drenched without her kindness.

Fortunately, the rain had become light by the time I got off the bus in Canton.  I realized that it was 20 minutes before 5:00, the time for mass at the nearby St. Casimir Church on Boston Street, which was constructed in 1925 and dedicated in 1926.  Peter and I had admired this large neo-Renaissance stone edifice, covering an entire city block, with its two 110-foot gilded bell towers, and realized that the only way to see the inside was to go before or after mass on Saturday or Sunday.  I seized the opportunity and was stunned by the magnificent interior.  A rectangular structure measuring 225 by 75 feet, the nave can seat 1400 people.  The large murals above the sanctuary were begun in 1939 and shows scenes of the Holy Trinity and various saints as well as scenes depicting Polish Catholic history and American Catholic history.

Sanctuary of St. Casimir Church

St. Casimir Oarish was an offshoot of St. Stanislaus Kastka Parish in Fell's Point at the turn of the 20th century. It served the growing Polish immigrant population of Canton (whose presence and influence in Canton and Fell's Point can also be noted through inscriptions on buildings marking them as such things as the "Polish Building Society").  In the 1930s, the parish had approximately 5300 members but is now down to 800.

The B&O Railroad played a significant roll in the Baltimore becoming a city populated by immigrants.  The B&O contracted with a German steamship line, Norddeutscher Lloyd, in 1868, to bring immigrants to Baltimore and carry wheat and other agricultural products as well as manufactured goods to Europe.  This mutually beneficial agreement resulted in Baltimore becoming the second largest eastern gateway for American immigration (after New York).  Germans were the largest group of immigrants in Baltimore already, and soon they made up one-fourth of all white people in the city.  Other Slavic people also immigrated on the Lloyd steamships, including Poles, both Roman Catholics and Jews, and they continued to move here through the first half of the 20th century.  Not only did these immigrants help to build the city, they supplied cheap labor to the plantations of the South, who suffered from a lack of laborers after the Civil War.

When I got back to the boat, Peter texted me to come up to the lounge for a party he had joined there. It really a family party for a woman who has just retired from the NSA (and lives with her husband on a boat here), but everyone was welcome.  I arrived just in time for the end of the party, when they were releasing butterflies by the water.

Butterfly release

Butterfly being released