Catesby ap Roger Jones was one of the Civil War’s most distinguished and respected ordnance officers. He joined the US Navy in 1836 and served aboard USS Merrimack during its first cruise, joined the Confederate Navy when Virginia left the Union, and commanded CSS Virginia during that ironclad’s fight with USS Monitor. After serving as Virginia’s executive officer through the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, he was promoted to commander and would eventually be placed in command of the Selma Guns Works, producing much-needed Brooke rifles and shell guns for the Confederate Navy.

The Mariners’ Museum and Park has thousands of prints in our collection, and one of my recent projects has been to catalog the prints and engravings from a German book titled Meyer’s Universe, or Illustration and Description of the Most Remarkable and Strangest Things in Nature and Art all over the World.

Should the US Grand Strategy continue its commitment to European security, or should it be focused elsewhere? Foreign policy and national security experts have debated that question since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. We dive into the history of Offshore Balancing to determine whether this national security strategy is a feasible modern-day solution.

During my time at Mariners’ I have frequently been intrigued by an odd looking object in one of our storage areas but time wasn’t always available to learn more about it. That recently changed for one object when I spent several months researching the history behind a piece that has always intrigued me—a large, bent, barbed, piece of iron–the spear of a chevaux-de-frise.

In disassembling this object, we found a second print, a photogravure, hidden inside the frame that someone had used as a backing board. The lithograph then found its way into our Collection with the steamship.