I received the below photos and story from boatswain, Jim Sherret, of the Canadian Navy cadets from the late 60′s to the early 70′s. I quite like the Christmas lights photo.
USS Rhea; Port Stanley
Archive for 2012
Now that WordPress has fixed the date issue, I’m going to backdate any relevant posts to the date they were originally written. It’ll prevent them from showing up in RSS feeds (I think), but it’ll make them easier to read in order by time.
This’ll also contribute to the ultimate goal of generating a dynamic timeline. Pardon the dust.
Up next, I’m going to just back into transcribing some action reports and muster rolls. I want to get the names up as soon a I can, to start auditing names and families.
YMS-135 Subclass Blueprints
Jan 29
I got this collection of images from Rob Weilacher, a friend of some relatives who is a model builder. He also sent me a copy of some blueprints he purchased, but I haven’t posted them for copyright concern.
YMS-135 Blueprint; Pilot Bridge Deck
More Letters on the Way
Jan 29
As you can see, I posted a couple new letters. I’m making a concerted effort to post regularly again, now that the holidays are over. I certainly have millions of documents that need to be combed.
We’re still pre-action here in terms of Chuck in the war. The next letter will be his first time aboard YMS-299, which is exciting. You’ll get his first impressions of the ship and we’ll be going into the shakedown, where the ship is stress tested prior to crossing the Pacific and going into firefights.
New Facebook Page
Jan 28
I created a Facebook page to post batches of media faster, before I’ve had a chance to transcribe and/or research them fully. It’ll also make it easier to follow updates without having the blog posts mixed into your feed readers.
Timeline Work to Continue
Jan 23
I am on a roll here with the brief status updates, so I’ll also let the cat out that WordPress (the blog platform I am using) has finally fixed the bug about old dates. If you curiously looked at my blog post from 1945, you’ll see I was having trouble backdating posts that far. I wanted to post each journal entry, for example, from the date it originated.
The ultimate plan is to enter all of the journal entries and letters (I’ll go back and fix them) in the actual date they are from. This will allow me to put them all into a timeline that I can also add war context to (e.g., XYZ invasion, presidential speeches, etc.). It will make it easier and more interesting to browse.
It’s a big project, for sure, but it will be a life’s work.
Our Muster Roll and More!
Jan 23
In other news, I was also contacted by Jim Harlan, son of John Harlan, who served alongside my grandfather on the ship. He happened upon the YMS-299 muster roll I’d been searching for. I got my hands on dozens of pages from several roll calls. I am in the middle of transcribing them all and will begin posting pieces of them very soon so people may Google their family members’ names and find this site.
I am holding out a glimmer of hope that one or more of the soldiers on my ship are living. I know it isn’t very likely, but I have found another YMS sibling’s crew member who is living. It isn’t my ship, but I’d like to visit soon to ask questions about the ship that I was never able to ask my grandfather.
I was recently contacted by Jim Howlett, another cadet out of Port Stanley. He informed me he ran across Rhea’s wheel for sale on a nautical antiques site:
Cool stuff! Of course, it is well overpriced, and I wouldn’t know what to do with such a large thing in my house, but it is a very neat find, nonetheless. I am curious how they validated the authenticity of it—and if it is truly WWII-era, or if it would have been replaced post-war. They have the YMS number wrong in their listing, which makes me wonder.
