1.
Martha Washington
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Martha Washington was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Although the title was not coined until after her death, Martha Washington is considered to be the first First Lady of the United States, during her lifetime she was often referred to as Lady Washington. Widowed at 25, she had four children with her first husband Daniel Parke Custis, two of her children by Custis survived to young adulthood. She brought great wealth to her marriage to Washington, which enabled him to buy land and she also brought nearly 100 dower slaves for her use during her lifetime, they and their descendants reverted to her first husbands estate at her death and were inherited by his heirs. She and Washington did not have children together but they did rear her two children by Daniel Parke Custis, including son John Jacky Parke Custis, as well as helped both of their extended families. Martha Dandridge was born on June 2,1731 on her parents plantation Chestnut Grove in the British colony, Province of Virginia. She was the oldest daughter of John Dandridge, a Virginia planter and immigrant from England, by his wife Frances Jones, who was of American birth and English, Welsh, and French descent. Martha had three brothers and four sisters, John, William, Bartholomew, Anna Marie Fanny Bassett, Frances Dandridge, Elizabeth Aylet Henley, Marthas father may also have fathered an out-of-wedlock half-brother to Martha named Ralph Dandridge, who was probably white. They had four children together, Daniel, Frances, John, Daniel and Frances died in childhood. The other two children, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis, survived to young adulthood, in all, she was left in custody of some 17,500 acres of land and 300 slaves, apart from other investments and cash. According to her biographist, she ran the five plantations left to her when her first husband died. Martha Dandridge Custis, age 27, and George Washington, age nearly 27, married on January 6,1759, as a man who lived and owned property in the area, Washington likely knew both Martha and Daniel Parke Custis for some time before Daniels death. During March 1758 he visited her twice at White House, the time he came away with either an engagement of marriage or at least her promise to think about his proposal. At the time, she was also being courted by the planter Charles Carter, Washingtons suit was of blue and silver cloth with red trimming and gold knee buckles. The bride wore purple silk shoes with spangled buckles, which are displayed at Mount Vernon. The couple honeymooned at White House for several weeks before setting up house at Washingtons Mount Vernon estate and they appeared to have had a solid marriage. Martha and George Washington had no children together, but they raised Marthas two surviving children and her daughter, nicknamed Patsy, died as a teenager during an epileptic seizure, classed as SUDEP. John Parke Jacky Custis returned from college to comfort his mother, Custis later married and had children, he served as an aide to Washington during the siege of Yorktown in 1781 during the American Revolutionary War
2.
Commencement Bay
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Commencement Bay is a bay of Puget Sound in the U. S. state of Washington. The city of Tacoma is located on the bay, with the Port of Tacoma occupying the southeastern end, a line drawn from Point Defiance in the southwest to Browns Point in the northeast serves to mark the generally accepted division between the bay and the open sound. Commencement Bay has become home to one of the most active ports in the world. The Port of Tacoma is the port facility. The Puyallup River is the largest freshwater stream emptying into the bay, others include Ruston Creek, Mason Creek, Asarco Creek, Puget Creek, Hylebos Creek, and Wapato Creek. Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition named Commencement Bay in 1841, the first Euro-American habitation on Commencement Bay was by Swede Nicolas Delin. He built a sawmill in 1852 where a creek entered the head of the bay. A small community grew up around the operation, but the settlers evacuated during the Puget Sound War of 1855–56, in 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway, the first transcontinental railroad in the northern United States, announced it would locate its terminus at Commencement Bay. When the railroad reached the bay in 1883 it caused a boom of development in Tacoma, the railroad facilities were located near the extensive tide flats by the mouth of the Puyallup River, about a mile from the original site of Tacoma. A new town, called New Tacoma, quickly grew up by the railroad hub, old town Tacoma and New Tacoma soon merged. Large land grants were provided to the Northern Pacific, including a significant part of the coast of Commencement Bay, over time the city of Tacoma bought up this land. Originally the boundary between Pierce and King counties ran east from the mouth of the Puyallup River, splitting Commencement Bay between the two counties, in 1901 the border was changed, giving Pierce County the entire bay. For much of the 20th century a smelting facility was operated by ASARCO on the shore of Commencement Bay near Point Defiance. The town of Ruston surrounds the former ASARCO plant, tailing waste was dumped into the bay, eventually forming a long peninsula. Today it is an area within the Commencement Bay Superfund site. The Thea Foss Waterway, an arm of Commencement Bay near downtown Tacoma, was declared a Superfund site in 1983, U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System, Commencement Bay Citizens for a Healthy Bay
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Ship replica
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A ship replica is a reconstruction of a no longer existing ship. Replicas can range from authentically reconstructed, fully seaworthy ships, to ships of modern construction that give an impression of a historic vessel, some replicas may not even be seaworthy, but built for other educational or entertainment purposes. Reasons to build a replica include historic research into shipbuilding, national pride, exposition at a museum or entertainment, for example, see the project to build a replica of the Continental brig Andrew Doria. The term replica in this context does not normally include scale models, the term museum ship is used for an old ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public. Some generic type replicas such as Thor Heyerdahls Ra II, qualify as true replicas as these ships were built to investigate the craft and that they do not replicate a specific vessel is mainly because no details of such a specific vessel are available. Some other ships that are modeled after ships of a type or era do not qualify as true replicas. Some ships may be borderline cases, such as Kanrin Maru, which is twice the size of the original. Replicas can be temporary, cheap and very simple, such as the replica of a Viking ship that was burnt at the Leixlip Festival, notable historic type ships that are not replicas include, USS Constitution is strictly speaking not a replica but the original vessel. However, most of the timber has been replaced over time. This is a version of the philosophers dilemma concerning replica versus original. HMS Victory is still the original vessel, although unlike Constitution, she is in dry dock and she has also been heavily restored, with only 10-15% of her original timber remaining. Mircea, which is an almost exact copy of Gorch Fock, Mircea was built as a copy because Gorch Fock was a very successful ship. Thus Mircea was not built as a replica per se, stad Amsterdam is a generic clipper type ship combining the best qualities of clippers of the past with modern materials and technologies. Another ambiguous case subject to the Ship of Theseus dilemma is Niagara, the original was sunk in 1820 for preservation, and the ship has been rebuilt three times since. Princess Taiping, a replica of a Ming Dynasty Chinese junk, hokulea, Honolulu, Hawaii, an ancient Hawaiian vessel. Makalii, Kawaihae, Hawaii, an ancient Hawaiian vessel, alingano Maisu, Kawaihae, Hawaii, an ancient Hawaiian vessel. Hokualakai, Hilo, Hawaii, an ancient Hawaiian vessel, iosepa, Honolulu, Hawaii, an ancient Hawaiian vessel. Hawaiiloa, Honolulu, Hawaii, an ancient Hawaiian vessel, te Aurere, Auckland, New Zealand, an ancient Maori vessel
5.
Brig
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A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and they were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Brigs fell out of use with the arrival of the ship because they required a relatively large crew for their small size and were difficult to sail into the wind. They are not to be confused with a brigantine, which has different rigging, in sailing, a full-rigged brig is a vessel with two square rigged masts. The main mast of a brig is the aft one, to improve maneuverability, the mainmast carries a small fore-and-aft sail. Behind the main sail there is a small fore-and-aft sail called the spanker or boom mainsail, on the foremast is a similar sail, called the trysail. Attached to the yards of square-rigged ships are smaller spars. These are called studding sails, and are used with fair, the wings are named after the sails to which they are fastened, i. e. the main studding sails, main top studding sails, and the main top gallant studding sails, etc. The brig’s foremast is smaller than the main mast, the fore mast holds a fore sail, fore top sail, fore top gallant sail, and fore royal. Between the fore mast and the bowsprit are the fore staysail, jib, all the yards are manipulated by a complicated arrangement of cordage named the running rigging. This is opposed to the rigging which is fixed, and keeps mast. A brig is generally built on a scale than a schooner. Brigs vary in length between 75 and 165 ft with tonnages up to 480, a notable exception being the famous designer Colin Mudies Little Brigs, which are only 10m long and weigh only 8 tonnes. Historically, most brigs were made of wood, although some later brigs were built with hulls, a brig made of pine in the 19th century was designed to last for about twenty years. The word brig has been used in the past as an abbreviation of brigantine, the brig actually developed as a variant of the brigantine. Re-rigging a brigantine with two square-rigged masts instead of one gave it greater sailing power, the square-rigged brigs advantage over the fore-and-aft rigged brigantine was that the sails, being smaller and more numerous, are more easily managed, and require fewer men or hands to work them. The variant was so popular that the term came to exclusively signify a ship with this type of rigging. By the 17th century the British Royal Navy defined brig as having two square rigged masts, Brigs were used as small warships carrying about 10 to 18 guns
6.
Sloop-of-war
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In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, thus, in the first half of the 18th century, most naval sloops were two-masted vessels, usually carrying a ketch or a snow rig. A ketch had main and mizzen masts but no foremast, while a snow had a foremast, the first three-masted sloops appeared during the 1740s, and from the mid-1750s most new sloops were built with a three-masted rig. The third sail afforded the sloop greater mobility and the ability to back sail, in the 1770s, the two-masted sloop re-appeared in a new guise as the brig sloop, the successor to the former snow sloops. Brig sloops had two masts, while ship sloops continued to have three, in the Napoleonic period, Britain built huge numbers of brig sloops of the Cruizer class and the Cherokee class. The brig rig was economical of manpower and, when armed with carronades, the carronades also used much less manpower than the long guns normally used to arm frigates. Consequently, the Cruizer class were used as cheaper and more economical substitutes for frigates. A carronade-armed brig, however, would be at the mercy of an armed with long guns. The other limitation of brig sloops as opposed to post ships and frigates was their relatively restricted stowage for water and provisions, however, their shallower draught made them excellent raiders against coastal shipping and shore installations. Bermuda sloops were found with gaff rig, mixtures of gaff and square rig and they were built with up to three masts. The single masted ships, with their sails, and the tremendous wind energy they harnessed, were demanding to sail. The longer decks of the vessels also had the advantage of allowing more guns to be carried. Originally a sloop-of-war was smaller than a frigate and was outside the rating system. A ship sloop was generally the equivalent of the corvette of the French Navy. The name corvette was also applied to British vessels. American usage, while similar to British terminology into the beginning of the 19th century, the Americans also occasionally used the French term corvette. In the Royal Navy, the sloop evolved into a vessel with a single gun deck. During the War of 1812 sloops of war in the service of the United States Navy performed well against their Royal Navy equivalents, the American ships had the advantage of being ship-rigged rather that brig-rigged, a distinction that increased their maneuverability
United States
