Cruising the Chesapeake
by Mary Jo
A vacation! A real vacation! The Mayhem Consultant and I are recently returned from a 10 day cruise of the Chesapeake Bay with a Revolutionary War theme.
The cruise was with American Cruise Lines, a small ship cruise company that operates entirely within the US, including having ships built in Maryland and an all-American crew. In these uncertain times, all passengers and crew had to be fully vaccinated and other safety protocols were followed. We all obeyed because a real vacation was so lovely.
We'd done other ACL cruises and knew that the food and service would be very good, plus this cruise started and ended in Baltimore and we had only a half hour drive to board the ship. So after a year of grim writing stress, we boarded the American Constitution, were lured into the dining room for lunch the moment we stepped on the ship, and off we all sailed to Norfolk and the extreme south end of the Bay. (Picture below is of our ship docked in Norfolk.)
This cruise had a Revolutionary War theme, but because there is a lot of American history around the Bay, we visited a variety of sites of all eras. The Revolutionary theme played out in a number of ways. For example, every day a different historical movie played continuously on a ship channel.
One such movie was the musical 1776, based on a Broadway play about the creation and signing of the Declaration. There was music and humor and a very perky Benjamin Franklin, but there was also real history about the conflicts involved in reaching the momentous decision to declare independence from Great Britain. Entertaining, and by the end, very moving.
Other movie days were devoted to the miniseries about John Adams, a Founding Father and future president. Another day's feature was The Crossing, about Washington crossing the Delaware at a time when the revolution as on the verge of collapse and the army desperately needed a victory. He famously managed to get his army across the Delaware River on Christmas night, and early the next morning his ragged troops attacked the Hessians who occupied Trenton and had spent Christmas day feasting and drinking. The Continental soldiers captured all the Hessians with minimal American casualties and Washington had the victory he needed.
Our first stop was Norfolk at the south end of the bay. The Naval Station Norfolk is the largest naval base in the world. Founded in 1917 for WWI, it's obviously not Revolutionary, but it's impressive. While we didn't visit the base proper, our little ship was parked on the opposite side of the pier from the retired battleship Wisconsin, one of the grand fighting ships of the US Navy and now a museum open to the public.
The Wisconsin was commissioned to be built immediately after Pearl Harbor and was completed in 39 months, amazingly fast for a ship so large. And there the battleship was, literally a stone's throw away from where were docked! Even before our ship moored at the dock, the MC had identified the Wisconsin because of the size of the guns. (He knows things like that. <g>)
The ship's tour was fascinating, and Norfolk itself turned out to be an interesting city. A visit to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens showed us more varieties of blooming azaleas than I'd ever seen in my life.
Then we headed north with our next stop at Yorktown which is part of the Colonial History National Park along with Jamestown and Williamsburg, a famous early colonial city and one time capital of Virginia. We'd visited Colonial Williamsburg before (the historic district is a living history museum site and well worth a visit) so we opted to visit Yorktown instead.
I liked this statue grouping that shows Washington and Lafayette and I'm told that the third figure was the French Admiral DeGrasse-Tilly. The leader of the defeated British troops was General Lord Cornwallis. When it came time for the formal surrender, Cornwallis pleaded illness and sent a subordinate officer, a colonel, to take his place. He didn't want his sword to be delivered to a traitorous rebel, but Rochambeau refused to accept the sword and insisted it be given to Washington.
Our day in Yorktown ended where three young people from a local drum and bugle corn marched down the pier and played for us. They were very good and fun, but why are they wearing British red uniforms? I thought the US won!
I have lot more to say about this cruise and other sites we saw, so I'll blog later about the Chesapeake, part 2.
Mary Jo, ending with a picture of the sun setting in Norfolk