February 23, 2006
Año Nuevo State Reserve: Light Station History
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Between Pigeon Point and Año Nuevo |
On January 3, 1603, when the Quroste group of the Ohlone Indians lived on the point, the Spanish explorers on the ship of Don Sebastian Viscaino sailed by. Onboard, Father Antonio de la Ascension named the point Punta de Año Nuevo (New Year's Point) for the day on which they sighted it. It's likely for the best that they did not land there, or anywhere near it.
The Europeans did not actually come in contact with the Ohlone until the late 1700's, when Spaniard Gaspar de Portola, led an overland expedition to the San Francisco Bay. A series of religious outposts were established to spread the Christian doctrine among the local natives, as well as to give the Spanish a foothold in the California territories. The missions introduced European livestock and crops into the region, but along with religion, they also brought diseases that the native peoples had never been exposed to, and had no immunity of. Measles, plague, smallpox, typhus, and venereal diseases decimated the native population, killing 90% of the people.
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Shipwreck Relic |
The closest mission to Punta de Año Nuevo was Mission Santa Cruz, founded in 1791. Hundreds of Ohlones, including the Quroste clan, gathered to the mission to be baptized. Most became sick and those who survived saw their culture erode until they lost their native way of life entirely. There is no one left alive today that can speak the Ohlones language fluently. Año Nuevo was used as pastureland by the missionaries.
After generations used it for pastureland, then it became a private ranch, and then after that, a dairy before it was finally bought by the State of California in 1971. Today, the farm buildings have been renovated to be the Año Nuevo Visitor Center, natural history museum and ranger buildings. Slowly, the native plants are returning, erasing all traces of the agricultural legacy of the region. Sand mine operation during the 1950's during the construction of State Highway 1 caused significant damage to the sand dunes and caused erosion problems that still haunt us today - just look at Devil's Slide, less than a mile to the south of the point, which falls apart at every major earthquake and causes millions of dollars in taxpayer monies.
The San Francisco mission and military fort started out small, but Spanish, Mexican and British settlement was driven by fur trade (including seals) and pioneering. The California Gold Rush in 1849 clinched it. The railroad, banking, mining, and shipping industries became major economic forces in the city. Despite being famously foggy, the Port of San Francisco became the largest and busiest seaport on the western coast of North America.
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Pigeon Point Lighthouse |
Shipping traffic along the California coastline increased along with the population. The rocky, foggy shoreline became famous with seafarers for shipwrecks. The couple mile stretch of rocky coast between the point of Año Nuevo north to Pigeon Point saw several ships lost over a relatively short period of time and U.S. Coast Survey recommended building a lighthouse. But there were other priorities and the Santa Cruz lighthouse was built first. Finally, in 1872, a fog whistle was installed on the Año Nuevo and later was upgraded to a five-story light tower atop the water tank.
The first light was an oil lens lantern, tended by someone at the island's light station in 1890. In 1906, a two story house was built adjacent to the station and later, in 1915, a Fresnel lens was installed. The keeper's home had 8 rooms for the head keeper and 7 rooms for the assistant keeper. The salty sea air constantly battered the wooden buildings, and maintenance was a major endeavor. Fences kept the sea lions and other pinnipeds at bay. Eleven years later, on October 22, 1926, an earthquake struck and the lens was broken. The lantern lens was again displayed until a replacement lens arrived. At its peak, the island had a light, along with the elaborate keeper's dwelling, a tramway, dock, and a boathouse.
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Año Nuevo Island Light Station |
In 1948, the station was decommissioned. The Coast Guard determined that the expense of maintaining the island, its keepers, and its buildings, was too great. An automatic buoy with a light, sound, and radar reflector replaced the fog signal and light. By 1955, the federal government sold the island to the State of California, who classified the island as a scientific preserve to protect the seal breeding colonies who quickly took over the island.
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Northern Elephant Seal Rookery |
Today, the only people allowed out onto the island are researchers. Four kinds of pinnipeds live and birth their young on the island and the mainland. The house is derelict, with California sea lions venturing up onto the second floor, even hanging out in the abandoned bath tub. Birds nest in the rotting rafters. Needless to say, the place stinks. The light tower was dismantled in 1976 for safety's sake, and you can only see its foundation now.
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February 13, 2006
Who Let The Dogs Out: San Francisco Celebrates Chinese New Year
The Chinese calendar has been in use for centuries and is much older than our own Gregorian-derived system. According to the Chinese calendar, the year is 4703, with a cycling twelve zodiak animals. This year, the Eleventh in the cycle, is the Year of the Dog (ç‹—), specifically the Fire Dog (element corresponding with the planet Mars).
Where's the cat?
Legend says that the Chinese zodiak was formed when the rat was told to invite the animals to the palace for the emperor to bestow zodiak signs on. The rat invited the ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. The cat was a good friend of the rat, but the rat forgot to invite him. When the cat realized he had been left out, he vowed revenge and has been the rat's natural enemy ever since. Funny enough, there's even a great anime series based on this, called Fruits Basket, which is one of my personal favorites. Kyo rocks!
Who Let The Dogs Out?
So this past weekend was the annual San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade. We'd never been before so we decided to head into the city, have some dim sum in Chinatown, and then hang out for the parade.
I don't like taking pictures of people. It makes me uncomfortable because it so often makes other people uncomfortable. But still, its near impossible not to take pictures of people in Chinatown. One of my favorite pictures from the MSNBC best photos of the year was of a little Chinese baby strapped to his mother's back. I caught sight of a similar shot along crowded Grant Avenue. In front of the elaborately decorated Citibank, a Huqin musician played traditional folk music, his head bowed.
Chinatown is a place of shopping extremes - from the overpriced antiques to the dollar silk slippers to the unregulated traditional Chinese medical ingredients. There's a fantastic wok store with all sorts of great, cheap kitchen gadgets. There are several very old bakeries selling almond cookies and red bean desserts. Dim sum and family-style Chinese restaurants abound.
One of my favorite places to stop is the TenRen tea store, where you can sample their teas and buy in bulk, often for cheaper than many other places - their jasmine oolong is especially good, not to mention their Genmaicha, a sencha green tea blended with roasted brown rice.
Once night falls, the parade begins as it has since 1860's. The weather was very warm and pleasant this year, and so the turnout was immense. Oftentimes we couldn't even see the people marching by, the crowds were so big. For three hours, gigantic asian-themed floats drifted by, coiling dragons roared and chinese fireworks crackled. Marching bands boomed by, stilt-walkers lumbered on and other groups performed dancing and ribbon-waving routines. And don't forget Miss Chinatown USA, she even has her own float (with throne and all). The parade ends with Gum Loong, the sacred Golden Dragon. He symbolizes strength and goodness, ensuring peace, prosperity and good luck for the coming year.
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
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November 9, 2005
Pretty In Pink: Mountbatten Pink
Camouflage has been in fashion for quite some time, but when I see something like pink and purple camo, I have to laugh. But you know what? The other day I ran across a bit of history that legitimized what I thought was just silly fad coloring, not that I think the people at Hot Topic know this...
Admiral of the Fleet The Right Honourable Sir Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was an admiral in the British Royal Navy. In the autumn of 1940, at the height of the War of the Atlantic, Mountbatten was escorting an Allied convoy and noted that one vessel consistently vanished from view much earlier than the rest. The Union Castle liner's hull was painted a pinkish-purple and the admiral became so convinced that the color was special that he had all the destroyers painted the color.
The color was called Mountbatten Pink and it was actually pretty effective camouflage during the dawn and dusk, when it blended into the purple haze along the horizon. So why are battleships primarily grey today?
By the end of 1942, however, all vessels of destroyer size and larger had dispensed with Mountbatten Pink, although it is believed that smaller vessels retained this colour until well into 1944. The main problem with Mountbatten pink is it stood out at sunrise and sunset, when the traditional battleship grey was much harder to see
More At: Wikipedia: Mountbatten Pink
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October 31, 2005
Bats In The Belfry & Lions In The Tower
You've heard of bats in the belfry, but what about heard of lions in the Tower? The Tower of London, that is.
Evidently, the Tower, which is infamous for housing Elizabeth I during her sister Mary's reign and for its bloody executions, once served as the longest continually running zoo. For six centuries (approx. 1204-1835), the Royal Menagerie housed a number of exotic animals, many of which were given to the royal family by foreign nations.
When the menagerie was regularly open to the public in the 1800s, visitors would have their admission fees waived if they brought their pet cat or dog to feed to the lions...
Two lion skulls unearthed at the Tower of London have been dated to Medieval times, shedding light on the lost institution of the "Royal Menagerie".
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The best preserved lion skull was radiocarbon dated to between AD 1280 and 1385, making it the earliest Medieval big cat known in Britain. The period when it lived covers the reigns of Edward I, II and III
More at: BBC NEWS: Big cats prowled London's tower
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October 29, 2005
Fishtory: Overfishing Through the Ages
Lobster hasn't always been a rare or special treat, offered by the best restaurants in the world. At one time, it was considered "poverty food" - Native Americans fertilized crops with them, fishermen baited hooks with them, and servants boiled them for their supper. During the revolution, Americans insulted the red-coats by calling them the icky bottom-dweller "lobsterback".
Long ago, lobsters...were harvested from tidal pools and served to children, to prisoners, and to indentured servants, who exchanged their passage to America for seven years of service to their sponsors. In Massachusetts, some of the servants finally rebelled. They had it put into their contracts that they would not be forced to eat lobster more than three times a week.
More At: Lobstering History
Cruel & Unusual?
It was so commonly used as a food for servants and prisoners that Massachusetts passed a lobster law forbidding its use more than twice a week!
It didn't take long for the populations of lobster and other fish to suffer from overfishing. Over time, different fish have been found to meet the food demands, and the price or worth of a lobster/oyster/etc has changed. Now scientists are looking back through time to determine which species have thrived over the years and which ones have been driven to the brink of extinction by overfishing. As part of the survey, the researchers are examining old restaurant menus, which they believe will reflect how abundant or scarce certain fish populations were at the time.
Fisheries experts are using old restaurant menus to piece together how the world's seafood stocks have declined over the past century and a half. Prices dating back to the 1850s highlight the growing scarcity of foods such as lobster, swordfish and oysters.
More At: Old Menus Reveal Collapse Of Fish Stocks
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July 1, 2005
Das Boot: A Brief History of Submarines
I was reading aloud the back cover of a Dirk Pitt novel on which author Clive Cussler
"Confederate submarine?!" Shane exclaimed, disbelievingly. "What Confederacy are they talking about?"
"Ours, I presume," said I. "Kind-of like Old Ironsides or whatever that submersible floating can was."
"I thought the Germans had the only ones in the War, thus the name U-Boat," replied Shane.
"No, I'm pretty sure subs have been around longer than that. I think it had more to do with the fact that Britain had the misfortune of being an island, and the U-Boats were able to prey on supply caravans of ships and such. It was their tactics, not a monopoly on subs, that made the German U-Boats so successful."
Thus we decided that I should follow-up on my cryptography article, which featured the German Enigma machine used on German U-Boats, with a brief history of submarines to resolve this confusion.
Now clearly my naval history sucks. Old Ironsides is the nickname for the thick-skinned naval ship the USS Constitution, a large frigate that won its notoriety in the War of 1812 and is currently moored in Boston on display. Oops on that one. But silly nicknames aside, I was right about the history of submarines. They are a lot older than World War II.
Discounting Robin Hood and his clever use of river reeds, the first seeds were sown in the 1580's. Englishman William Bourne, whose drawings put one in the mind of Da Vinci's helicopter ideas, is considered to have had the first inklings on the construction of a working submersible, and he was followed by others.
However, it's the Americans who are credited with building the first real submarine. In 1776, David Bushnell built a one-man sub which was actually able to attack an enemy warship, albeit unsuccessfully, since he was unable to penetrate the British ship's hull. About 25 years later, Robert Fulton had better success with his Nautilus, and coined the term torpedo.
It wasn't until February 17, 1864, that a submarine ever successfully sunk a warship. The CSS Hunley attacked USS Housatonic, but then mysteriously disappeared with all hands. It was not found again until 1995, presumably by Clive Cussler and his NUMA buddies. It had sank within 1000 yards from the scene of action.
For the next 50 years, submarines and torpedoes got bigger and better. By the turn of the century, the sub shape we have all come to know was becoming a reality, but a lot of problems had to be overcome, including power, pressure, fresh air, safety, and underwater navigation. Naval military agencies of the United States and Europe as well as private contractors continued to work on sub construction.
In 1906, the first German U-Boat (U-1) was launched. In fact, the Germans did not jump at adding submarines to their naval forces. By the time they added a second boat, U-2, to their fleet, the French navy had 60 subs, and the British had about the same. But by the time the Germans had 40 subs, they were making significant leaps in sub design. Their newest line carried multiple torpedoes and a range of almost 8000 miles. But it was the Americans with their E-Boats (diesel) that first crossed the Atlantic in 1912.
On the eve of World War I, the stage was set for subs to get their first real opportunity for use in battle. However, with submarine naval tactics being a fledgling concept, navies had a very hard time finding qualified personnel to man the ships.
Submarine-history.com provides some great stats on the naval usage of submarines at the beginning of WWI:
Country |
In Service |
Under Construction |
Notes |
Great Britain |
74 |
31 |
Largest Fleet In The World |
France |
62 |
9 |
|
Russia |
48 |
||
USA |
30 |
10 | |
Germany |
28 |
17 |
Most capable |
Italy |
21 |
7 | |
Austria |
6 |
2 | |
Japan |
13 |
3 |
Prior to the war, the submarine was more of a nautical curiosity than a weapon of destruction, but by the close of the war the usefulness of the submarine had been proven beyond doubt. The first Battle of the Atlantic gave everyone a chance to test out their submarine technology - and pointed out some of the innovations needed. Sonar, used for underwater navigation and ranging of targets, was one such invention. Many of the successful crews would become the "experienced" crews in World War II, including German U-boat skipper Karl Doenitz.
The Treaty of Versailles didn't just demobilize the German standing army, it also crippled their navy. The Treaty explicitly stated that no submarines were to be included in their military. The only way that the Germans were able to keep up with submarine technology was to design and develop commercially for the international market. These efforts would also serve as the prototypes for the newest fleet of U-Boats. The Germans continued to operate in a clandestine fashion up until the beginning of World War II.
Meanwhile, Karl Doenitz was developing new submarine tactics for the German navy like "Wolf Packing" (gangs of subs converging on a target - the more defenseless, the better) and "Tonnage War" (targeting of merchant ships). These tactics, combined with an heretofore unheard-of implementation of cryptography in the form of the German Enigma machine, would render the German navy almost unstoppable during the Second World War.
There is no one reason why the Second Battle of the Atlantic eventually ended in the favor of the Allies. The German sub tactics worked exceedingly well early on when convoys were often unprotected. Later, American military vessels accompanied the convoys as military escort. The Allies also began sweeping the Atlantic with sea-scanning radar and Leigh Lights - which were basically high powered flashlights fitted onto aircraft - which could spot U-Boats when they emerged at night to recharge their
batteries.
However, the most significant element to the Allied victory in the Atlantic was the cracking of the German Enigma code. The German tactics had been formed on the assumption that the Enigma code was absolutely unbreakable. By 1943, the code had been broken and more and more German naval traffic was being decoded. The Allies knew where the packs were forming and sent in the anti-sub ships to destroy them. The fact that the German Navy closely directed their U-Boat operations over the wire and didn't believe their messages could be deciphered became a fatal flaw in tactics.
The hunters became the hunted and the German U-Boat fleet began to experience heavy losses. Despite the fact that U-boat losses dropped every time a new version of the Enigma policy was introduced, the Germans did not catch on to the fact that their code had been compromised. Over the course of a couple of months, the vast majority of the U-boat fleet was sunk.
And that, my friends, is a brief history of submarines up until the Cold War Era. And that is for a different day.
Much of this information came from a couple of websites on submarine history.
Submarine History
Answers.com: Submarines
Confederate Submarine
UBOAT.NET
British Submarines of World War II
The images above are from the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Catalog (PPOC).
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June 29, 2005
Lovers' Secret Discourse and German U-Boats
When we were eleven years old, my best friend and I came up with a set of code words for important spy-like discussions (no, this was not related to my detective agency). For example, "orange peels" meant "my parents are listening, I cannot respond to you at this time". Little did we know, we had invented our own, albeit ultra-simple, form of cryptography.
Passing secret messages is a very old concept. The Rosetta Stone, with its hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek texts, is an excellent example from ancient times. The Kama Sutra (an ancient Indian text written somewhere between 100 and 600 AD) recommended using code in order for lovers to communicate without fear of discovery. Later the Catholic Church used coded messages to help ensure their religious and political power throughout Europe. Thomas Jefferson invented a cipher machine, which the founding fathers used during the American Revolution to secure their mail from being read. Napoleon also used fairly sophisticated ciphers. The list goes on and on, however most of these coded messages could be deciphered more like word puzzles than math problems. Most coded messages could be decrypted by individuals, given time and enough data. These early codes were "easy" to break because of a couple of reasons:
- Decoding wasn't all or nothing. Often, there was an opportunity to decode parts of the message, even if you couldn't deduce the whole thing
- Decoding was a reducing problem. The more you had decoded, the easier the rest of the decoding work became.
- Key-Value pairs did not mutate. If the letter 'A' (the key) stood for the letter 'X' (the value), then this would hold true for every instance of the letter 'A' as long as the crib-sheet was used.
- Information traveled slowly, and key-value crib-sheets did not change often.
It wasn't really until the World Wars that cryptography became more of a mathematical/machine problem and less of a word teaser puzzle. All the statements above suddenly could not be counted on. New encryption devices, especially those with rotors like the German Enigma machine, changed everything. The three rotor Enigma machine had an initial configuration which would dictate the final encoded message. There were 10^114 possible initial configurations, and the initial config used changed daily or more frequently. And guess what? If you determined that A->S for the first letter, that did not mean that the second A was also an S, it could just as easily have been a B. So for example, you could encode AAAAAA and the Enigma would make that LFDYNF. Lastly, the German U-Boats had a different Enigma decide with four rotors instead of three, making the codes significantly harder to decipher.
Besides seeing the several entertaining movies about the Enigma machine like Enigma
Shane was playing at work today with a Paper Enigma machine he found directions for on the web. He's got a nice little write-up on it on his blog here.
There's also a Flash Enigma Machine available online, which is a bit slow but wins out for any length of message.
WOKELCATF! (I-II-III, LED)
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