USS Olympia in trouble

Boat Days, History, ,

The cruiser USS Olympia is the oldest steel warship afloat in the world. She was built in San Francisco and commissioned in 1895–making her almost 120 years old. Her career with the U.S. Navy was a long and storied one; she fought in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and saw action during and after World War I before being decommissioned in 1922.

USS Olympia off Mare IslandShe is the last surviving naval ship afloat from the U.S. Navy’s fleet from the Spanish-American War, and the last floating example of a U.S. “Pre-Dreadnought” warship. She was built during an era of transition for the U.S. Navy, as it began to move away from being a coastal defense, commerce raiding navy to an ocean-going, front-line fighting navy. As such, some of her characteristics were contradictory, as the ship somewhat straddled these two roles. For example, she was built with a new type of vertical triple-expansion steam engines, among the most powerful mounted on a U.S. Naval ship at the time.  She was also one of the first ships to have electricity and power-steering gear. Yet, at the same time she still had a set of sails she could mount on her masts in case her powerful engines failed. She was also unique in another respect: USS Olympia was built as an effective commerce raiding cruiser, and at the time of her design it was expected that a number of ships would be built based on Olympia‘s design. However, no further Olympia-class ships were ever built, because the Navy was moving away from commerce cruisers toward larger, more powerful battleships and armored cruisers.

"You may fire when ready, Gridley."

Despite this, Olympia was an effective ship. Upon her commissioning in 1895, she was assigned to the Asiatic Squadron, which was at the time was one of the fleets the U.S. Navy operated in the Pacific Ocean. When the U.S. declared war on Spain in 1898, the three-year-old ship was serving as flagship of the squadron. Her most significant action during the war her participation in the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, during which the Asiatic Squadron. Leading the line of battle of the Asiatic Fleet into Manila Bay, it was on her decks that the squadron’s leader, Commodore Dewey, opened the battle by giving his now immortalized order, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” (This scene is depicted in the painting at left.) With that, Captain Charles “Steve” Gridley, commanding officer of the USS Olympia, opened fire from her 8″ inch main battery and led in the destruction of seven of the thirteen ships of the Spanish fleet. After winning the battle, the squadron assisted in the capture of Manila itself.

She served her country for more than two decades after the Spanish-American War. During World War I, she escorted convoys and helped back an ill-fated Allied invasion of Russia in May 1918 in an ill-fated attempt to stop the Russian bolsheviks from taking over the country.

One of her last and most solemn official acts occurred in 1921, when she was sent to Le Havre, France to retrieve the remains of the Unknown Soldier. On the trip back to the U.S., she encountered a large storm and almost sank; however, she delivered the remains of the soldier to Washington D.C. in November 1921. The remains are now interred at the Arlington National Cemetary. Olympia decommissioned for the last time the following year.

She was laid up in reserve until 1957, when the government transferred the ship to the Cruiser Olympia Association; the association restored the ship to her appearance during the Spanish-American War and opened her as a museum in Philidelphia. However, maintaining a century-old ship is a very expensive business, and the current owner of the ship, the Independence Seaport Museum, announced earlier this year that they can no longer afford to maintain the ship, which is in need of at least $10 million in repairs to prevent her hull from deteriorating. If this money cannot be raised, the Olympia likely will be sunk as an artificial reef.

Olympia is a unique relic of her era and should not be sunk as a reef! To learn how you can help save her, visit the Friends of the Cruise Olympia and donate a small amount to make sure future generations will be able to walk her decks and experience a living piece of American history.

Petrologic Monitoring of Kilauea Volcano

Geology,

The summit eruption at Kilauea volcano has provided geologists with a unique opportunity to see into the underground plumbing structure of Kilauea. It was long debated, for example, whether there was a direct connection between the shallow magma chamber below Kilauea’s summit and the Pu’u ‘O’o vent on the East Rift Zone. Also, was the lava in the lava lake at Halema’uma’u the same lava that erupted at the summit in 1982?

Chemically, it seems the lava  that is erupting at Pu’u ‘O’o is the same lava that is erupting at the Halema’uma’u vent. The only difference between the lavas is in the crystallization of minerals in the lava. The lava at Halema’uma’u is very, very hot (2,140 degrees Fahrenheit) with only small-sized olivine crystals within the lava. The lava at Pu’u ‘O’o is slightly cooler (2,100 degrees Fahrenheit) and contains a greater diversity of crystals, including olivine and pyrozene. While both minerals exist in Hawaiian lavas, they crystallize at different temperatures.

The presence of these crystals suggest a complicated system of magma recharging beneath Kilauea, with the lava erupting being a mix of gas-rich, crystal-less newer magma and older magma that had already partially crystallized in Kilauea’s magma chamber.

A recent article from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory’s Volcano Watch column explains this process and mystery much better than I ever could. It’s an interesting read for anyone interested in petrology and Kilauea’s internal plumbing system in general.

Klum Gym — A Long Legacy

Just Thoughts, sports,
[Note: I actually wrote this four years ago, and published it on another blog. I’m currently gutting out another blog, and this was the only post worth saving. Therefore, I’m reposting it here.]

Ka Leo o Hawaii, the newspaper of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, reported on Thursday that plans are underway to demolish Klum Gym to build an extension to the main UH parking structure.

For die-hard UH volleyball fans, the news was probably bittersweet. One can only wonder what diehard UH volleyball fans said when they read that announcement.

See, Every sports program has a beginning, a birthplace that any long-time devoted fan can look at and say, “That’s where our team became great.”

For the University of Hawaii volleyball teams, that place is Klum Gym.

From the Rainbow Wahine volleyball program’s second season in 1975 (the team did not play any home games during its first year) until the opening of the Special Events Arena in 1994 (later renamed the “Stan Sheriff Center”), Klum Gym served as the home of Hawaii volleyball for some 20 years.

And for many people, those 20 years at Klum Gym are unforgettable. The modest, little gym had no air conditioning to protect players and spectators from the Manoa humidity. The facility seated less than 3.000 people, a far cry from the more than 10,000 the Stan Sheriff Center can seat today.

Yet, Klum Gym was the place where Hawaii volleyball blossomed. The team from a small little state known more for hula and luaus than athletics quickly proved itself to mean serious business on the national level. In 1975, in fact, the Rainbow Wahine went undefeated throughout the season–until being rudely slammed by the UCLA Bruins at the national finals.

Yet, Hawaii proved themselves in 1979 when they won their first national title, a mere four years after their first home game at Klum Gym. In fact, all four of Hawaii’s four national titles (1979, 1982, 1983, 1987) were won while the Rainbow Wahine still called Klum Gym home. And, it was here where volleyball quite literaly became the state sport.

Hawaii residents, thrilled at having such a great team representing their state, flocked by the thousands to watch their team dominate at the national level. In 1989, Klum Gym sold out 12 times, something that was back then completely unheard of in what was still considered to be a cult sport.

In 1994, Hawaii played its last game at Klum Gym. Then in November __, Hawaii moved to the newly completed 10,000 seat Special Events Arena–complete with world-class locker rooms, a fully air conditioned arena, and, dare we say it, armrests!

Yet, today, the condemned “legendary” Klum Gym, as the UH Rainbow Wahine Volleyball media guide calls it, is surrounded by an aura of legacy that won’t be lost even if Klum Gym does get demolished to help solve UH’s parking shortage. Even Rainbow Wahine head coach Dave Shoji would have to agree.

“When I look back to think what was the most memorable or my fondest memories, I’d have to say it was the Klum Gym era,” Shoji said. “That’s where it all started. We had some unbelievable matches there from 1977 to the early 1990s. There were some unforgettable moments, against the likes of Long Beach State, UCLA and Pacific that the whole state will always remember.

“I think the experiences at Klum are the reasons that we get the kind of crowds now at the Stan Sheriff. Klum Gym is where the state of Hawaii fell in love with volleyball.”

SeaMonkey

Tech,

At work, my new default browser is SeaMonkey 1.1. It has, for the most part, replaced Netscape as my “official” work web browser. I chose it due to the fact that it is a full internet application suite and includes a fully functional mail client. It also includes a WYSIWYG HTML Editor as well as an IRC client, but I don’t see much use for it at the moment.

I’m very happy with it thus far. The integration of the mail client into the suite has made my work twice as easy now. I have had some trouble with a couple of websites (which is kind of weird since the underlying rendering engine is the same as that used by Netscape 9), but those sites are really unnecessary, time-killing sites like Facebook, Xanga, and Blogger. Hopefully I’ll work the bugs out over the next few days.

Products I Follow, #1

Tech,

I eventually want to compile a list of stuff I follow on this website, when my real world life dies down a little (right now, this is projected to happen in December 2009, upon which time I will have finished my B.A. coursework, hopefully).

I still occasionally use KompoZer, a WYSIWYG HTML editor. Although I usually prefer to code by hand (and use a combination of Max’s HTML Beauty++ 2004 and Dreamweaver at work), KompoZer is a great resource to put up simple HTML pages (like this little placeholder page I set up for one of my future projects which I am doing in collaboration with Katherine). My entire ‘Aiea Highlife website was built and still is maintained using KompoZer, for example, though I wrote the CSS for the page by hand.

The official development blog for KomPozer is located at http://kazhack.org/?tag/editor. I can’t wait for the final version 0.8 to be released.