The Draken Harald Harfagre Makes and Appearance

Due to some issues with the Coast Guard, the next ship left Fairport, Ohio after the previous ships that I've been posting.  I thought that I had a chance to catch her last night but as I kept looking at AIS, she sped up in some places and would have ended up passing Port Huron after I could get up there.  What I didn't know was that she stopped for fuel, so I might have had a chance to catch her.

 Well strange things happen sometimes.  I thought that she was going to enter Bay City earlier in the day today but apparently she received a distress call and went to help.  The Coast Guard called off the search shortly after she went to assist but still.  I have to admit, it would be pretty cool to be assisted by a Viking ship.  Anyway, this delayed her entry into Bay City and when I found out I could make it time to catch her, I was on my way.

 The Draken Harald Fairhair (or what I have in the title in Norwegian) is the longest Viking longship built in modern times.  She is an example of a Viking warship in that she could also be equipped with oars.

 Her keel was laid in 2010 and she was backed by Sigurd Aise was is described as a Norwegian Oil and Gas Tycoon.  She is named after Harald the I who was described as the first king of Norway.  He was born in 850AD and died in 932AD.  His reign as King lasted from 872 to 930.  He ended up conquering many little kingdoms to form the larger kingdom of Norway.    According to legends, he had anywhere from 11 to 20 sons.

 The ship itself was built using many of the archeological record they could find.  So with the exception of its modern equipment, is probably about as close to a longship that you are going to get.

 Currently, she is tracing some of the path that was used by Leif Ericsson to discover what is now known as Minnesota.  It started in Norway, went over to Iceland, Greenland, Canada and a few other places.

 I'll have to admit, this is probably one of the cooler things that I have seen boatwatching.

As I said above, she had an issue with the Coast Guard.  Because she is considered as a foreign commercial vessel above a certain length, she is required by law to have a pilot on the Great Lakes.  I'm not sure for the exact reasons but I'm sure something happened in the past that requires it now.  Apparently, it costs up to $400/hour to get a pilot.  As a non-profit, that is a hard sum to come up with.

If you would like to help her go here.

Thinks That Make You Realize You're Old

I'm the ISO-14001 guy at work which means I get to deal with environmental related things.  Part of that is dealing with our recycling and we try to recycled alot of things.  Part of our business is software related which means we have alot of computer related stuff.  In many cases, old computer related stuff.  As I was looking at our electronics scrap table, I saw a stack of these and of course it made me think back to older days.

In 1967, IBM needed a way to load microcode into their computers.  At that time code was stored in the more volatile system memory, so if the system was shut down the memory was lost which meant you had to reload it.  IBM also wanted a way that they could send software updates out to their customers.  The first attempt was tape and then they developed an 8" disk called a memory disk.  It could hold 80 kilobytes of data.  This disk was released commercially in 1971.

The person who developed this disk would leave IBM and help Memorex release the first read/write floppy drive in 1972.  IBM would release theirs a year later.  The first microcomputer tried to use floppy drives but in many cases they were more expensive than the computer itself, so cassette tapes were used.  Since my dad worked for Burroughs/Unisys and would take me into work on occasion, I vaguely remember these disks.

The more familiar to me 5 1/4" floppy disk was developed in 1976 and started to get used with the microcomputers at the time.  Eventually this format would take over the 8" format.  In 1978, Apple introduced a 5 1/4" drive for it's Apple II computer, it could could store 113 kilobytes of data.  To put this in perspective, it would take 50 of those disks to store the full sized image above. These early drives were single sided and a double sided version came out in 1978.

The 3.5" disk shown above didn't come out until the early 80's.  And it underwent a simliar evolution until the standard was the 1.44MB disk.  Eventually, that would be replaced by the read-write CD ROMS and now we have various memory sticks and "the cloud".  And now, it's hard to imagine when the floppy was king.

Jackson Civil War Muster - Post Activities

They did some stuff after the battle.  Mostly just the soldiers passing in review and some rifle volleys.

 The Union soldiers did a rifle volley.  I kind of wish I would have caught it a little sooner so that the smoke wasn't in the way.

 The Sharpshooters coming towards the review.

 The Cavalry soldiers leading the way.

 I thought this was kind of cool.

 The main cavalry officer.

 Some of the soldiers.  It's amazing how they captured the tired look of soldiers after a battle.

 A Confederate volley.

 And the Confederate guys did a bayonet charge for the crowd.

One of the Jackson County mounted sheriffs.

Like I said, I had fun and I think I will try to make the one next year.  Maybe I should try to look for other ones so I can get some better pictures.

Jackson Civil War Muster - The Battle

This post is dealing with the battle itself.  The Battle was supposed to be the Battle of Stones River but I don't think it really matters because this look very similar to another re-enactment I went to a few years ago.

The battle was fought December 31st, 1862 to January 2nd, 1863.  The battle was technically a draw but the Union was able to repulse two Confederate attacks and cause the Confederates to withdraw so it was technically a Union victory.

 The Union artillery soldiers coming into position.  It was kind of neat to see the cannons fire but it made for tough photography as you will see later.

 One of the Union cannon crews in position.  There was a photographer sitting in front of me and he told me to focus on the guy in the back to my right of the cannon.  He was the cannon captain would be the one to key on to tell when the cannon would fire.  That didn't really help though.

 I thought I didn't leave this in with my pictures but I did and so you get a comparison.  The battle started out with the Union soldiers running away from the advancing Confederate group.

 I wasn't really happy with the above picture, so I cropped it.  I think I like this one much better.

 The Confederates fire one of many rifle volleys.

 And the Union soldiers return fire.  One of the difficulties I had with this was keying on a specific area of the battle.  There was too much going on to follow.  The narrator was somewhat helpful.

 And this shows one of the difficulties of trying to capture a picture of a cannon firing.  While I like this shot, the smoke really obscures the rest of the crew.

I like this one a little better.

 These are guys representing one of the Union sharpshooter units. 

 While I like this picture, you can see the smoke becomes an issue.

 Another volley from the Union lines.  If you see the guys in the red pants, they are Zoaves.  I think the guys in the white pants are Marines.

 Another volley.  I think I like this picture a little better.

 The Confederate Cavalry rushing into the battle.  The Cavalry was typically used for scouting and occasionally they could outflank the infantry.

 I really like this picture with the Confederate flag flying.

 One of the Cavalry guys taking a shot.

 A Confederate officer leading an infantry charge.

 The Sharpshooters trying to prevent a flanking move.

 The Confederates advancing.

 They ended up doing two half hour battles.  This is the Union soldiers getting in position again.

 This time, the Union had the Cavalry.  I believe they would have been setting up a charge here.

 The Cavalry flag bearer.

 Charging into action.

 A Cavalry soldier looking over the battle.

 I really like this shot.

 I think I would have liked this shot more if I had gotten his face in the picture.

 Another volley about to be launched.

 And it gets launched.

 Another fire of the cannon.

 This guy was acting as a scavenger.  He was checking the "dead" bodies for stuff.

 Another volley.  The sad part about this is that unless you catch it at first, the smoke obscures much of the shot.

Like this picture.

While it was cool doing these pictures, there were many difficulties.  I kind of wish they would have set up the infantry lines closer to the crowd but I would imagine there are some safety issues involved with that.  While I kind of whish I had brough my bigger lens, I'm not sure I would gotten better pictures.  But I still had fun.

The Jackson Civil War Muster - Cavalry Demonstration

Apparently one of the people I work with is a Civil War re-enactor.  When he mentioned that, I asked when he was doing his next re-enactment because I've been wanting to get some Civil War re-enactment pictures ever since I started my blog.  He mentioned the Jackson Muster this weekend but he wasn't going to be there.  I had other obligations yesterday, so I went there today and I'll have to say that I wasn't disappointed.

I'm going to break this up into three posts:  this one, one dealing with the battle itself and some of the post battle activities.

 So the first thing that I saw was a demonstration of cavalry moves.  Basically they showed the different types of formations that were used.

 It would have been nice if there had been some narration during this because they all basically were the same.  At least they could have mentioned what the different formations were used for.

 But it was nice to see the horses in action and it makes for nice pictures.

 It seems that many of the formations are similar to infantry formations.

 This guy was talking about it afterwards.  This unit normally does Union stuff but they were pulling double duty today.

 Like I said, some more explanation would have been nice.

Although this guy did a pretty decent job afterwards.