Carol Comegno

@CarolComegno

Camden Shipyard and Maritime Museum to open next month

Housed in former Church of Our Saviour

Part of Waterfront South revitalization effort



CAMDEN - On a recent morning, Dominic Battista took a trip down memory lane to South Camden by driving to an old neighborhood Episcopal church he just learned was being transformed into the Camden Shipyard and Maritime Museum.

In his car he brought one of his late father’s prized possessions, hoping to donate it so others could appreciate it — a model of the British sailing ship Cutty Sark his dad built and preserved inside a varnished wood-and-glass display case.

Battista initially contacted the Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial in Camden, thinking it a logical choice to take the model, but staff there directed him to the new maritime museum as a more appropriate place for his donation.

The ship was gladly accepted when Battista showed up unannounced on the doorstep of the old church last week.

Large and small donations from individuals, organizations and the Independence Seaport Museum across the Delaware River in Philadelphia now comprise nearly the entire museum collection. It will tell the maritime history of Camden when the new history center opens next month in the former Church of Our Saviour at 1900 S. Broadway. A free open house is set for noon Sept. 11.

NAVY RETURNS SILVER TO BATTLESHIP NJ

"I had no idea this museum existed until the battleship museum folks directed me here. My family and I used to live just up the street on Broadway not far from here but I haven't been back for a while. My dad, Dominic, worked for RCA and built models as a hobby," Battista said.

"I think it's a neat venture and I'm going to bring my granddaughter here."

Jack O’Byrne, the part-time museum director, was thrilled to accept the wooden Cutty Sark with perfectly billowed sails as if the clipper ship — one of the fastest in the world — was plying the ocean. He helped Battista carry it through the front door leading into what was the church sanctuary.

“Donations just keep coming in by word of mouth. A lady came last week with a collection of watercolor posters of ships built in Camden that her dad collected,” O’Byrne said, unrolling the paintings.

He said many South Jersey families have things tucked away in attics and basements they wanted to give the museum to honor their parents or other family members because they worked at shipyards or on the waterfront, as Battista's uncle did.

Most of the major artifacts donated, however, have come from both the extensive personal collection of the late Joseph Balzano, who was the South Jersey Port Corporation executive director, and from the seaport museum, which had received New York Shipbuilding Corp. memorabilia years after it closed.

'Story of Camden's maritime past'

Located a few blocks south on Broadway, the former shipyard property is now part of the South Jersey Port Corp.’s marine terminal operation. The new technology campus of Holtec International, a manufacturer of nuclear reactors and a test facility, is now under construction on part of the old shipbuilding complex.

The history of the New York Shipbuilding Corp. will dominate Maritime Hall, the major exhibit room in the former sanctuary of the stone church, where shipyard workers and mariners once worshiped.

New York Ship was the largest of the Camden shipyards and once was the largest in the world in a city that was a major shipbuilding center with maritime history dating to the Colonial period. That shipyard operated from 1900 to 1967.

Museum visitors will learn the New York name was used here because shipyard builder Henry Morse originally intended its location to be on Staten Island in New York City.

“We’re trying to keep the story of Camden’s maritime past alive. New York Ship dominated the waterfront and at its peak during World War II there were 33,000 workers employed,” said O'Byrne, who is also the part-time director of the Camden County Historical Society.

“Most people in South Jersey today aren’t even aware that more than 500 naval and commercial vessels were built here in Camden and that some helped to change history.”

One of the motives behind the museum location was to further Heart of Camden's revitalization of Waterfront South's once-bustling commercial and residential area, now hampered by boarded-up buildings, trash and blight.

"We see it as one of the anchors to improve the neighborhood," the director added.

A community effort

The museum's other major focus is on black maritime history, specifically in the Arctic exploration of Matthew Henson, an African-American from Maryland who co-discovered the geographic North Pole with expedition leader Navy Rear Adm. Robert Peary on April 6, 1909. Henson initially received none of the credit.

His exhibit is in an adjacent room to be called the Matthew Henson Community Room, which also will be available for local groups to use. The Camden connection with Henson is inside the inner walls of that room, a 1905 addition to the church along with a parish hall. Rocks from Greenland are behind the interior walls and can be seen through a glass-covered section of one wall.

O'Byrne said the stones were used as ballast at the bottom of “The Kite,” the ship Peary and Henson took on an earlier pole expedition. When the ship returned to Philadelphia, the stones were off-loaded in Camden for local use.

It has been 10 years since the idea for the museum was hatched by Rev. Michael Doyle of the nearby Sacred Heart Church during a visit to the office of his friend Balzano.

“Father Doyle suggested Joe’s artifacts belonged in a maritime museum and later suggested the church site because it had been abandoned,” O’Byrne said.

At the same time, the nonprofit Heart of Camden was working to redevelop the Waterfront South neighborhood in South Camden through rehabilitation of housing and other buildings that have since become an arts center, a field house and a soon to be writers house honoring Haiku poet Nicholas Virgilio.

And it was that organization that eventually bought the property in 2006 for $180,000 and played a key role in the museum's development as another improvement to the neighborhood.

By 2008 the museum nonprofit and board of trustees were formed with Doyle and Balzano among its founding members.

"We are a grassroots organization and through partnerships we are planning to bring in schoolchildren and give them history," said Helene Pierson, a museum trustee and former director of the Heart of Camden when the church was acquired and now executive director of the Seaman's Institute of Philadelphia and South Jersey. "Buying a church is not something I thought I would ever do."

Kevin Castagnola, Balzano's protege and successor as both South Jersey port director and president of the museum board of trustees, said he is thrilled the vision the priest and the port leader had is becoming a reality and he feels privileged to be involved.

"I think it's important for residents of Camden and the region to know the magnitude of the shipyard and the city's maritime history."

HOLTEC DISCOVERY AT SHIPYARD SITE

O’Byrne and volunteers were working recently on displays and exhibits of former shipyard signs, photos, models, documents and the granite New York Shipbuilding emblem once mounted on a shipyard building.

At the front of the church sanctuary where clergy gave sermons, construction is underway on a mock ship that will simulate the experience of steering a ship up the Delaware River. A visitor will man the helm of the “ship” behind a 4-foot-high wooden steering wheel and watch a video screen on the wall that will project the bow of a ship heading upriver.

Also mounted near the "helm" will be major instruments found on a ship's bridge — a floor-mounted brass column holding the ship's compass and a brass engine order telegraph used to shift the ship's speed and its forward or backward motion. The wheel, compass and telegraph were part of Balzano's collection.

Looking ahead

Among the ships built at New York shipyard were the cruiser USS Indianapolis, which delivered to the Pacific island of Tinian the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan in 1945. (The ship was later torpedoed and sank with great loss of life from shark attacks); the USS Princeton (CVL-23), sunk at the Battle of Leyte Gulf during World War II; aircraft carriers USS Saratoga and USS Kitty Hawk; the NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered merchant ship; the USS Arkansas, a battleship that served in both world wars; the light cruiser USS Savannah; many other World War I and II fighting ships; and the cargo ship Explorer Ambassador.

During World World War II alone the yard launched 25 ships, including two battle cruisers, a battleship, eight light cruisers and nine light aircraft carriers.

The yard also had the world's largest covered ways for shipbuilding. Ships were built inside the ways — scaffolding-like metal structures at the river's edge that encased them until they were seaworthy — and then slid down a greased wooden cradle into the river.

Margaret Mary Hobbins, the first female welder hired at New York Ship in 1942 during World War II when most of the men had gone into the military to fight, told the Courier-Post in a 1999 interview when she was 80 that she loved the job even though it was dangerous work.

"I wanted to help the war effort and thought, 'Why can't I work?' I knew that those ships would be carrying our boys somewhere," said Hobbins, who lived in Waterford.

Another 20th century shipbuilder in Camden was the John H. Mathis Shipyard . Owned by Norwegian immigrant John Trumpy, the Mathis yard built the luxury yacht that eventually became the presidential yacht Sequoia and served presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter.

Books, photos, shipyard signs and other information abound at the museum. The choir balcony will become a library of nautical books and house smaller ship models, including the World War II-era USS New Jersey, built across the river at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and now a museum on the downtown city waterfront.

There are a few wish-list items O'Byrne hopes someone will donate soon — a 20-foot wooden sailboat mast to be erected in the main hall and ship models of the Kitty Hawk, Princeton and Indianapolis.

Since 2008, the museum has received $1.5 million in capital grants to repair the roof and renovate the now 130-year-old church — $750,000 from the New Jersey Historic Trust and $450,000 from the state Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit program, $200,000 from Camden County and $340,000 in city Community Development Block Grants.

Recently, O'Bryne said, the museum transferred a ship's wheel to the Canadian War Museum for $5,000 and used the income toward the church's transformation. The wheel had been on the Niobe, the first naval ship in Canada built in 1887 as a British ship. Through Balzano it was donated to the Camden museum by the Merchantville Country Club, which somehow wound up with it for the past 95 years.

The museum's only operating income to date is a $12,000 annual rental paid by Urban Promise, whose bustling wooden Urban BoatWorks, a program for school students, is housed in the church parish hall. There are also plans for a major museum fundraiser every two years to raise revenue, officials said.

Except for O’Byrne, the museum will operate solely with volunteers until perhaps some operational grants are forthcoming at some future date or a major donor steps forward.

Craig Bruns, chief curator of the Independence Seaport Museum and trustee of the new museum, said the Philadelphia museum has been working with the Camden museum for several years as artifacts were transferred.

"You could say we have repatriated much from the New York Shipyard back to Camden and have helped a brand new sister institution get started," said the excited Bruns, who also is helping to arrange the Henson exhibit.

He said Henson was a navigator and photographer who also built the sleds used on the North Pole expeditions."Peary would never have gotten to the North Pole without him," Bruns concluded.

Camden students in the Urban Boat Works program built a wooden replica for the museum. Only Henson and four native Inuit tribesmen from the Arctic were in the first discovery photo taken by Peary at the pole.

On the museum front lawn stands a 15-foot statue of Henson sculpted by internationally known artist John Giannotti of Haddonfield with a state grant and unveiled by the museum group in 2009 on the 100th anniversary of the North Pole discovery.

"What children need today is a hero for inspiration," the curator said. "They can look at the statue and they can sit in this room on a sled like his and be taken to the top of the world."

Carol Comegno (856) 486-2473; or ccomegno@gannettnj,com















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