Month: April 2006

Update to Part Ten – Chatfield project

I’ve transcribed the account of General Newton’s failed attack on St. Marks — the Battle of Natural Bridge.

Here’s a photo from the civilwaralbum.com showing the bay where Capt. Chatfield disembarked troops for the battle.

“This is a view of Apalachee Bay from the base of the St. Marks Lighthouse. Union ships anchored offshore here during the Civil War to enforce the blockade and Southern blockade runners also slipped through these waters from time to time. In March of 1865, Union transports moved toward shore here and ran aground while trying to land troops. The entire operation was observed by Confederate pickets stationed at the lighthouse and took so long to accomplish that Southern forces were able to organize and call in reinforcements in time to defeat the Federal expedition at the Battle of Natural Bridge on March 6, 1865. Confederate reports describe stormy weather in the days leading up to the battle, so the view offshore probably looked very similar to this. Early in the war the Confederates built a battery at about this spot, but withdrew the guns. The structure was later shelled and destroyed by the Union Navy. No trace remains”

Here’s some links to The Battle of Natural Bridge

Harbingers of Spring – Part II




You have new Picture Mail!

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

What could be finer than a warm Easter Sunday and the first striped bass of the year? Cousin Peter, my daughter, and dog Ned putt-putted up into Prince’s Cove and caught (and released of course) two nice shiny stripers.

I caught nothing, but I had one on for a second.

Then a quick walk on Dead Neck before returning home for the Easter Feast.

Saturday at the Races




You have new Picture Mail!

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

This is Lake Cochichewick in North Andover. I spent three long springs on this lake rowing at the Brooks School. An all-boys school in Massachusetts. This is a cold, rough place that taught me the true meaning of the term: “pain builds character.”

Whenever I feel physically challenged I think back to the last 100 yards of a lung-busting crew race down these waters, hands bleeding, soaked in near-freezing water, and I always know that nothing will be as horrible.

This picture was taken while I watched my daughter (National High School Champion rower in 2005) scrimmage against Nobles & Greenough.

Easter Dinner in a box




You have new Picture Mail!

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

While checking out at Stop & Shop I saw this monstrosity. A big box containing a full “Holiday Ham Dinner” — meat, squash, spuds, green beans. Me, I’ve been marinating a sauerbraten for four days, and have planned a full feast of rosti (Swiss potatoe pancakes), balsamic brussel sprouts with pancetta, devilled eggs, and … oops, forgot about dessert.

Cooking is a lost art. I gave myself the updated Gourmet cookbook for Christmas and have been working through it at every opportunity.

Chatfield Project – Part Ten posted

Capt. Tom cruises the gulf coast, buries the Union dead during the yellow fever epidemic in Tampa Bay (advancing a theory of germs), gets a leave and goes home to Cape Cod, returns, and pilots an invasion fleet making up for General Newton’s assault on St. Marks.

A big battle is coming

Update to Part 9 – Chatfield Project

I just transcribed a big piece of the Chatfield memoirs into part 9 (apologies for not inserting an anchor tag at the point of the addition).

He’s received his own command and has taken up station in Tampa Bay to care for the victims of the yellow fever. A good deal of the account is about the plight of Northeners trapped behind the Confederate lines and pressed into service during the Conscription. Lots of refugees to take care of, but Capt. Tom is now free of the disagreeable Captain Budd and has his own command, his first since leaving the whaler Massachusetts behind in San Francisco at the beginning of the war.

A side note, I have been researching through Starbuck’s excellent History of the American Whaling Fishery and finding some good details about the Massachusett’s voyages, her building and launching in Mattapoisset in 1845, etc..

A mere 45-pages or so to go before I turn to the Captain’s war letters. Cousin Pete told me over dinner last night that he has located the log of the Two Sisters, the schooner Chatfield commanded in Tampa during the last years of the war, so that is something I look forward to as well.

Finally — there’s been some urging by Jeff Young and Jim Forbes to turn this project into a book. Having majored in American maritime history in college, my inclination is to go the non-fiction route without getting too academically pedantic as I have no interest in making this anything close to an scholarly work. Both Jeff and Jim say – “Go fiction.” I don’t know. It’s tempting and this tale certainly provides the framework for a great sea yarn.

Genuine VC: Where Mobile Advertisements Roam

Genuine VC: Where Mobile Advertisements Roam

Good post by David Beisel at Masthead Ventures on the impact of mobile advertising on operations, he’s riffing off of Rafat Ali’s observation that mobile advertising will need mobile friendly landing pages.

“All advertising eventually leads to some type of commerce transaction. However, there’s a spectrum along which advertisers fall that covers how immediate the transaction occurs. On one end, there’s metric-driven performance-based advertising which measures it success directly by whether or not commerce happens immediately (or in the trackable near-future). On the opposite end is brand advertising, which supports the general perspective and attributes of a brand, so that eventually a constituent who sees an ad influences a future purchasing decision, either individually or as part of an organization. And then there’s everything in between, where the ad isn’t direct response per se, but is still aiming towards a transaction sometime in future, to varying degrees.”

David is referring to the need for commerce advertisers to track, from first click through, the lifetime value of a visitor from consideration to commerce conversion across multiple sessions. For large ticket purchases (like notebook PCs), the customer is generally flipping in and out of the vendor site multiple times, seeking prices, reviews, and competitor information before ultimately committing to the sale. This is a matter of persistent cookies and smart metrics.

Raising the Chattahoochee

About the Snagboat | U.S. Snagboat Montgomery, A National Historic Landmark

Chatfield writes about being terrified that Catesby ap Jones (commander of the Merrimac) would steam out of the Florida swamps in the Confederate gunship Chattahoochee to break the blockade in part 9 of the memoirs.

“In early November 1964, the Montgomery assisted in raising the remaining section of the Confederate Gunboat Chattahoochee from the channel of the Chattahoochee River. The activities are recorded in the Master Fleming’s daily log: “Picking up stern section of Gunboat and Removing it from channel. While picking up Gunboat and trying to work it on the bank some of the upper sections of the boom were sprung.” Today the Confederate Gunboat Chattahoochee can be seen at the Port Columbus National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Georgia.”

The raising of the Chattahoochee

The Chattahoochee today.

Part 9 – The Reminiscences of Capt. Thomas Chatfield — Night Assault on St. Marks

Churbuck.com » Part 9 – The Reminiscences of Capt. Thomas Chatfield
“Land your men, Mr. Chatfield ..”

Take one young bored officer itching for some glory, combine with eighty men in rowboats at night, head up a Florida river to spike a river battery and run immediately into trouble with some river sentries. The good Captain Chatfield keeps his head, and remembers his Cotuit roots before ordering his men out of a boat to attack the pickets when he takes an oar to test the bottom before leaping over the side and sinking dink-deep into the muck (something I forget to do everytime I go clamming).

Enjoy. This brings me up to page 131 of the typescript – fifty-six to go. Working from the original leather-bound manuscript is a treat. The frontispiece says:

“The property of Florentine Chatfield Churbuck, youngest daughter of Capt. Thomas Chatfield, author of this book. The binding was done by hand by Thomas H. H. Knight, husband of Maud Chatfield Knight, third daughter of the family. Through the kindness of Mr. Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the typing was done by his secretary, who, not familiar with nautical terms, or Father’s pensmanship, made many errors in typing. A typed copy was given to each of the five Chatfield daughters.”

Florentine, or Oie, was my great-grandmother. I remember her sneaking me chunks of milk chocolate she kept in a cleaned-out Hellman’s Mayonnaise jar she kept behind her armchair when I was about three years old. She was also fond of overly ripe black bananas, which she hid from my grandmother (who hated fruit flies). I found one once in the drawer of the sewing machine and stuck my finger in it. It was one of my earliest memories.

Abbot Lawrence Lowell was the president of Harvard University and a next-door neighbor to the family in Cotuit. He instituted the “house system” at Harvard but is rather infamously known for his role in the Sacco-Vanzetti case and the expulsion of eight alleged homosexuals from Harvard. He was a pal of Thomas Chatfield and urged him to pen his reminiscences after hearing many of these stories told on the porch over the course of several summer evenings.

A. Lawrence Lowell