Luncheon Lectures

Cost, which includes lunch, is $15; $12 for Museum Members. Advanced registration is required. For more information or to register, call (757) 591-7748. Lunch Lectures are held in the Huntington Room.

Luncheon Lecture
September 21, 2009, 11:30 A.M.

The H.L. Hunley: The Secret Hope of the Confederacy
On the evening of February 17, 1864, the Confederacy’s  H. L. Hunley sank the USS Housatonic and became the first submarine in world history to sink an enemy ship. But also perishing that moonlit night, vanishing beneath the cold Atlantic waters off Charleston, South Carolina, was the Hunley and her entire crew of eight. For generations, searchers prowled Charleston’s harbor, looking for the Hunley. And as they hunted, the legends surrounding the boat and its demise continued to grow. Even after the submarine was definitively located in 1995 and recovered five years later, those legends—those barnacles of misinformation—have only multiplied.

Tom Chaffin
Tom Chaffin is a professor of history and the director/editor of the James K. Polk Correspondence Project at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His books include Sea of Gray (Hill and Wang, 2006) and Pathfinder (Hill and Wang, 2002). His work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Time, and other publications. He lives in Knoxville.

Special Lecture
October 13, 2009, 1:00 P.M.

Birth of the U.S. Navy: From the Sons of Liberty Action Off of Machias, Maine to Naval traditions as Inspired by John Paul Jones

Bob Wilson, Capt. US Navy (Ret.)

Special Veterans’ Day Luncheon Lecture
November 11, 2009, 11:30 A.M.

War Zone: WWII Off of North Carolina’s Outer Banks
In 1942, the United States suffered one of its worst defeats of WWII; not in Europe or the Pacific, but along the nation’s eastern seaboard. Three hundred ninety-seven ships were sunk or damaged and 5,000 people were killed. For six months, 65 German U-Boats hunted merchant vessels practically unopposed within view of coastal communities. The greatest concentration of these attacks occurred off North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Based on his three hour documentary film filled with eye witness accounts from merchant sailors, Kevin Duffus will discuss the events that made the first six months of 1942 one of the most heart-rendering periods of North Carolina’s history.

Kevin Duffus
Kevin P. Duffus is an award-winning filmmaker, researcher, author, and investigative journalist of historical events. His three-hour public television documentary, War Zone—World War II Off North Carolina's Outer Banks, preserves the stories of merchant sailors, lifesavers, residents of island communities, and the remarkable "baby born in a lifeboat," during the devastating German U-boat attacks of 1942.
 

Lecture at Virginia Historical Society
November 12, 2009, 12:00 P.M.

So Ends This Day
An Illustrated Update on the Life and Times of the USS Monitor, from 1861 to yesterday

Although the Union ironclad Monitor may have ended her working career in a gale off Cape Hatteras in December 1862, her story does not end there. Discovered in 1973, established as a National Marine Sanctuary in 1975, and the subject of intense recovery operations by NOAA and the U.S. Navy since then, the curious “cheesebox on a raft” still has stories to tell. Anna Holloway brings the Monitor to life in this lively, illustrated presentation by combining log entries, official correspondence, personal letters from officers and crew, and material evidence found in the ship itself. For more information, call (804) 358-4901 or visit www.virginiahistorical.org.

Anna Holloway 

Anna Holloway is the Vice President of Museum Collections and Programs at The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, VA where she oversees the Curatorial, Collections Management, Education, Conservation and Exhibition Design functions of the Museum. From 2003 to 2007 she served first as curator of the USS Monitor Center and then Chief Curator. Before the cheesebox on a raft entered her life, she was the Director of Education and Interpretation, and Pirate at The Mariners’ Museum.