Sailing to Buy A Wedding Dress
The Disaster of the Schooner Industry
Margaret Shaw Chernosky
Bangor High School, Bangor, ME
Teacher Instructions
Abstract
Students will map the journey of the two masted, coastal schooner Industry 1868 from her departure from a small Nova Scotia harbor to her sinking in the North Atlantic, the continuing journey of the fortunate crew and passengers to London, then the return across the Atlantic back to Nova Scotia. The location of the boat’s sinking is unknown, but using GIS and clues from the primary documents, wind and current direction, ice margins and storm tracks; students will try to recreate the journey and the final ocean grave of the schooner Industry.
Subjects
History, Geography, Technology, Earth Science
Suggested Grade Level
9 and 10
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this project students will be able to use GIS to locate possible positions of the shipwreck of the schooner Industry 1868 by examining multiple sources such as ice extent, storm tracks, ocean and wind currents, and location clues from primary sources.
Activity Extensions
Using this model of employing GIS to locating unique places using historic, climate and oceanographic clues, students could locate local shipwrecks.
Acknowledgements
My father, William Simon Shaw 1924-2009
Anita and Roger Palmer, GISetc
Daniel W. Sampson, GIS/Data Coastal Zone Management
Joseph Kerski, ESRI, Titanic GIS lesson
Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Memorial University of Newfoundland
University of Maine, Fogler Library Special Collections
Selected Relevant National Curriculum Standards
The Geographically Informed Person knows and understands...
THE EIGHTEEN NATIONAL STANDARDS
Six essential elements
The geographically informed person knows and understands...
Essential Element I. THE WORLD IN SPATIAL TERMS
Standard 1. How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.
Standard 3.How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on Earth's surface.
Essential Element II. PLACES AND REGIONS
Standard 4. The physical and human characteristics of places.
Essential Element III. PHYSICAL SYSTEMS
Standard 7. The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth's surface.
Essential Element IV. HUMAN SYSTEMS
Standard 11. The patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface.
Standard 12. The processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement.
Essential Element V. ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY
Standard 15. How physical systems affect human systems.
Essential Element VI. THE USES OF GEOGRAPHY
Standard 17. How to apply geography to interpret he past.
GIS Skills/Concept List
Finding the latitude and longitude of a place using Google Earth
Setting preferences in MyWorldGIS
Bringing layers into the layer list
Creating new point and line layers
Measuring distances
Symbolizing layers
Querying by attribute
Setting layer properties
Bringing a spreadsheet into MyWorldGIS
Design principles/visual communication
Adding Scale North Arrow, Title, Text and Legend to a layout
Exporting maps in different file formats
Data Sources and Data Dictionary
Data layer / Description / Source / Rename layerCountries / shapefile / MyWorldGIS / Countries
States / shapefile / MyWorldGIS / States
US Cities / shapefile / MyWorldGIS / US Cities
Continents / shapefile / MyWorldGIS / Continents
Lines of Lat and long / shapefile / MyWorldGIS / Grid
At_hurricanes / shapefile / Kerski Titanic / Atlantic Hurricanes
Global Wind Patterns / shapefile / MyWorldGIS / Winds
Surface Currents / shapefile / MyWorldGIS / Ocean Currents
Ice Margin / shapefile / Kerski Titanic
Provinces / shapefile / Kerski Titanic / Atlantic Provinces
IndustryLog / Spreadsheet / Student / Log
Background Notes
Adapted from the Marine Heritage Database
The INDUSTRY, built in Chester, Nova Scotia in 1859, (official number 36226) On a Friday, December 11, 1868 left West LaHave for a one day coastal voyage to Halifax, but it turned into a grim and heroic two month ordeal, a reminder of the perils that lay waiting even in local sea travel. The schooner was co-owned by the master mariner Lewis Sponagle and Ronald B. Curry, whose store in West Dublin, Nova Scotia served as her departure point. The schooner left with a cargo of fish, a crew of five and two passengers, including 18-year-old Angeline Publicover, who was going to Halifax to buy her wedding dress. Nearing Sambro, the winds turned contrary and the schooner turned back for LaHave. However the wind mounted into an offshore gale and the foresail was blown out. One water cask was lost from the deck and the other was badly damaged as INDUSTRY was blown out to sea. In the days that followed, more gales and contrary winds drove the helpless schooner further offshore. The crew and passengers subsisted on rationed water, melted hailstones, seven biscuits and a few oats. By Christmas Day, they were down to a single rotten potato divided among the seven for Christmas dinner. Further damaged and wave swept by heavy weather the schooner began to leak heavily. Continual pumping exhausted the dehydrated and starving crew but they credited Angeline Publicover's encouragement and prayers with keeping their energy and spirits up. On December 29, the Nova Scotia barque PROVIDENCE commanded by Hiram Coalfleet sighted the crippled schooner. Heavy seas made it too dangerous to launch a boat so PROVIDENCE came directly alongside INDUSTRY, locking with her rigging to take off her passengers and crew. The much-damaged schooner sank three quarters of an hour later. The survivors were taken to London, England and then returned to Halifax by the steamer ETNA, finally arriving in Nova Scotia on February 12, 1869. According to tradition, Angeline Publicover discovered upon her return that her husband-to-be had changed his mind about the marriage during her absence! The Canadian government awarded a gold watch to Hiram Coalfleet and a pair of inscribed binoculars to his first mate for the rescue. Note: The Sessional Papers for 1868-1869 simply give November as the date of loss, without a year or day. Capt. Sponagle's personal account, published in DesBrisay's History of Lunenburg is probably the most accurate. He says they departed Dec. 11, 1868 and sank Dec. 29, 1868.
Essential Questions:
What do toponyms teach us about place?
How were places, such as cities, towns and villages connected before highways, rail or airways?
What were the chief products traded across the Atlantic and along the Atlantic coast?
How do wind and ocean currents and ocean ice margins affect sailing routes?
What conditions cause sailing ships to be blown off course?
Classroom Management Tips
Teacher should teach the students how to search Google Earth for the key locations mentioned in the reading, Sailing to Buy a Wedding Dress adapted from the original letter from Captain Sponagle and Currie to Mr DesBrisay. To complete the GIS activity, students may work in pairs; one student reading the directions and the other operating the computer. The following day, students should switch jobs. When the maps are completed, ask the students to export them as jpgs; import all the jpgs into Power Point and share the maps with the entire class. As a large group, discuss what variables that students used to pinpoint the Industry’s shipwreck coordinates and the route of the Providence to London.
Assessments
Informal assessments are done throughout the activity. Are students using all the variables provided to estimate the coordinates of the shipwreck? The completed map product is the final assessment. The map below, Figure 1, shows a sample map of the coastal route of the Industry. Students are expected to construct a map that shows the North Atlantic, the routes and intersection of the two ships and the watery grave of the Industry.
Figure 1: A print preview of the path of the Industry.
Sailing to Buy A Wedding Dress
The Disaster of the Schooner Industry
Student Instructions
What was the path of the schooner Industryand where did she sink? The Industry was lost at sea on December 29,1868. All ships keep a ship’s log; coordinates, distances, weather conditions, and ship activities are recorded on a regular schedule in a log. Because the log for the Industry was lost, we do not know the path of the journey and position of the sinking. Your job is to plot the paths of the two ships and map the position of the shipwreck.
The Industry is classified as a coastal schooner. What is a schooner? Schooners have a special place in marine history; the early schooners were built in Massachusetts. In 1713, in Gloucester a shipbuilder named Andrew Robinson launched a boat of an innovative design, built for agility, speed and transporting cargo. “Oh, how she scoons.” commented a spectator at her launching. The name stuck and “scoon” became schooner, which is a Scottish term meaning to skim. Schooners were so efficient and fast that soon shipyards along the East coast were building schooners.
Figure 1. A classic schooner, Bluenose on a Canadian postage stamp.
1. Do an online search for the term “schooner”. What physical attributes are specific to a schooner?
2. Why was a schooner a good fit for fishing and trade in the North Atlantic?
You will read Sailing to Buy a Wedding Dress, which was adapted from the letter from Master Mariners Sponagle and Currie to Mr DesBrisay. Using this document, you will create a map of the journey using the coordinate positions of the schooner Industry.
Read the story Sailing to Buy a Wedding Dress and highlight all the place names and locational clues mentioned in the reading.
Getting ready
Copy the Shipwreckdata folder that your teacher gives you to the MyWorldGIS data folder. Once you copy it, open the folder, you should see the following data folders: atl_hurtrack, AtlanticProv, Provinces and Ice. Within the Shipwreckdata folder, create a new folder and name it Created. Save any datasets that you create in this new folder.
Creating a table in a spreadsheet
The ship’s log for the Industry has been long lost, but we can recreate a ship’s log by recording all locational clues along the journey. Construct a spreadsheet in Excel of all places mentioned in the story Sailing to Buy a Wedding Dress; indicate the date and geographic coordinates. Use Google Earth to locate each place; you will need to record the locations in decimal degrees. To have Google Earth display decimal degrees, open Google Earth, click the Google Earth Menu, select Preferences, and set “Show Lat/Long” to decimal degrees as in the Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Setting preferences in Google Earth.
The first location has been done for you in the table below. See Figure 3. All points of west longitude are expressed as a negative number. Save your spreadsheet as Industrylog in the MyWorldGIS/data/Shipwreckdata folder.
Figure 3: Ship’s log of the Industry
Place / Latitude / Longitude / Comments / DateWest Dublin, Nova Scotia / 44.25331 / -64.399528 / Departure point / 12/11/68
Figure 4: Detail of Nova Scotia coast from La Have to Halifax from The North Eastern Coast of New York to Cape Canso including Sable Island published by Edmund Blunt, New York, 1826. David Rumsey Historic Collection.
Set the MyWorldGIS map preferences
To begin, open MyWorldGIS. Set the default map preferences in VISUALIZE mode by choosing Edit/Preferences. Change the Measurement Units to Nautical Miles, the Default Map Projection to Lambert Conformal Conic, the Default Background Color to light blue and the Physical Memory Size to 640, and click OK.
Add layers
In CONSTRUCT mode, at the top of the Data Library list, click the dropdown menu and choose Oceanography. You should see the layers Continents, Global Wind Patterns and Surface Currents in the Data Library. Drag them to your Layer List. Rearrange them so that you can see all layers, and rename each of the layers.
Symbolize features in a layer.
In VISUALIZEmode, symbolize all the layers, by double clicking the layer name in the Edit Appearancewindow, and choosing an appropriate color and line width. As shown in the screen shots below, double click continents to see the Edit Appearance window and choose the Fill Color tab, choose light green, then click Apply. See Figures 5 and 6.
Figure 5: Symbolizing the layers in MyWorldGIS.
Figure 6: Editing Appearance of the layer Continents
Saving your project
Remember to save early and often! Select FILE/Save Project As “Shipwreck_myinitials”,and place it in the MyWorld>Data>Projects folder. The next time you open MyWorldGIS, at the top of the Data Library list, click the dropdown menu and choose Projects. Your project will be listed in the Projects folder, as “Shipwreck_myintitials.m3vz”.
Creating a new MyWorldGIS layer from the spreadsheet
You will create a layer in MyWorldGIS that shows all the positions mentioned in Sailing to Buy a Wedding Dress. Open the Excel spreadsheet IndustryLog; right click the first field heading for latitude. Choose format cells and choose numberand set the decimal value to 6. Click OK. Save the table in the Shipwreck data/Created folder.Save the data table again, but this time, choose Save As and save your file as a CSV(Comma Separated Value) file. See Figure 7. Two warnings follow, for the first, click OK, and for the second, click YES.
Figure 7: Saving a CSV file.
Adding the CSV file to MyWorldGIS to locate known positions of the Industry and the Providence.
Launch MyWorldGIS if you have closed it; choose File/Import Layer. Navigate to where you saved your data table, and click Open. MyWorldGISwill open a preview of it. Check to make sure the correct fields are selected for your Latitude and Longitudevalues. See Figure 8.
Figure 8: Importing the Industrylog.csv file.
If you are in CONSTRUCTmode, the IndustryLog.csv will be added to the All Data Files folder in alphabetical order. Once you find it, drag it to the Layer List. If you are in VISUALIZE mode, the data table will be added to the top of the Layer List. From the Layer menu, save the layerinthe Industrylog/Shipwreckdata/Created folder. See Figure 9.
Figure 9: Saving a layer in MyWorldGIS.
Adding more layers
In CONSTRUCT mode, at the top of the Data Library list, click the dropdown menu and choose World. Add the following layers: Lines of latitude and longitude and World Cities.
Selecting features from a layer
In VISUALIZE mode, click on the Re-center Projection Button and click in the North Atlantic to place the study area at the center. Use the zoom tool to move in closer. Make World Cities the active layer by clicking the layer; a yellow border will surround the layer. Click the Show Table of Active Layer tool. Click the field name to alphabetize the list of city names. Hold down the control key and select the names of the following cities: Boston, Halifax, Liverpool, London and Philadelphia. Click the Make Selection from Rows button, MyWorldGIS will ask you to name the selection, name it CityHarbours. In ANALYZE modechoose Convert/ Convert Selection to layer tool. Name the new layer CityHarbours. Click OK. The new layer CityHarbours will appear in the layer list. Make the layer CityHarbours prominent by double clicking the layer and making the symbol for cities larger. In the Layer Menu, choose Save Layer As CityHarbour in the Shipwreckdata/Created folder. Remove the World Cities layer. See Figure 10.
Figure 10: Visualizing all the layers
Adding more layers
In CONSTRUCT mode, drag the layers 1851_1880Hurricanes, Canada_prov, Icebergs and Icebergextent to the layer list from the All Data Files Library. In the Edit appearance window, change the colors of each layer. The Iceberg layer show the distribution of icebergs in the North Atlantic during the early 1900's. The Icebergextent layer shows the ocean area covered by continuous ice fields. Observe the relationships between all these layers by toggling the layers on and off (do this by clicking the eye symbol in the upper right side of the layer as seen in Figure 11).
Figure 11: Making a layer visible/invisible by clicking on the eye.
Examine all the layers to help you choose the possible paths of the Industry and the Providence.
Carefully examine all the layers, global winds, surface currents, 1851_1880Hurricanes,countries and ice extent in your project. Make the 1851_1880Hurricanes layer active, open the layer table, and under the field name year, select sort by ascending. Check to see if there were any major storms in December 1868 and examine the storm paths.