[Mark Losavio] Hello everybody and thank you for joining us today.
Welcome to this Submerged NC webinar series, World War I - The Great War off North Carolina's
Coast.
I'm Mark Lasavio, and I am the Media and Outreach Coordinator for Monitor National Marine Sanctuary,
and I will be your host today.
This webinar is brought to you by NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary in collaboration
with the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology.
Partnering since 1975, NOAA and the state of North Carolina work to research, honor,
and protect the hallmarks of North Carolina's underwater cultural heritage - shipwrecks.
These shipwrecks hold information about the ever-changing technological, cultural, and
physical landscapes.
They serve as a uniquely accessible underwater museum and a memorial to generations of mariners
who lived, died, worked, and fought off our shores.
This is one of many webinars we will be hosting in the coming months for the Submerged NC
webinar series in collaboration with the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology.
Monitor is just one of 15 national marine sanctuaries and two marine national monuments
in the National Marine Sanctuary System.
This system encompasses more than 600,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters
from Washington State to the Florida Keys and from Lake Huron to American Samoa.
During the presentation all attendees will be in listen only mode.
You are welcome to type questions for the presenters into the question box at the bottom
of the control panel on the right hand side of your screen.
This is the same area where you can let us know about any technical issues that you may
be having that we can help with.
We'll be monitoring incoming questions and any technical issues, and we'll try to respond
to them as soon as we can.
We'll do our best.
We are recording this session, and we'll share a recording with registered participants via
the webinar archive page.
The URL for this webpage will be provided at the end of the presentation.
But for now, today, we present our presenter Shannon Ricles, Education and Outreach Coordinator
with Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.
And she's going to tell us all about World War I off the North Carolina coast.
So without further ado, I will go ahead and give you the floor.
[Shannon Ricles] All right.
Okay.
Are you seeing the right screen?
[Mark Losavio] Yes.
[Shannon Ricles] Thank you.
All right.
Well, hi everyone.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
In this webinar we're going to explore World War I.
We'll talk about the German U-boats and how unrestricted submarine warfare changed Americans
opinion on neutrality.
We'll learn about two submarines that actually crossed the Atlantic in 1916, creating fear
in the U.S., and we will learn about three German U-boats that arrived off the North
Carolina coast after President Wilson declared war.
Then we'll look through the curriculum guide and some other resources available.
And lastly, we will showcase Mallows Bay, which is home to 100 World War I ships called
the "Ghost Fleet."
So let's get started.
So I want to tell you a little bit about our sanctuary.
We protect the USS Monitor, which was our nation's first turreted ironclad ship.
The Monitor was built during the Civil War in response to the Confederate's ironclad ship
the CSS Virginia.
An amazing fact about the Monitor is that it was built in less than 100 days.
Now on March 9.
1862, the Monitor and the Virginia met in the Battle of Hampton Roads.
It was the first time iron met iron, and although they battled for four hours, neither side won.
But what did win that day was naval technology.
Iron was here to stay.
Unfortunately, just 11 months after its launch, the Monitor sank off the coast of Cape Hatteras
in a storm while it was being towed to Beaufort, North Carolina.
And 16 men went down with the ship on New Year's Eve of 1862.
Now the Monitor's location remained unknown until 1973, when John G Newton from Duke University
Marine Lab proposed testing the application of geological survey equipment, known as sonar,
for underwater archaeological survey and assessment.
He wanted to search for the Monitor, which had a very unique shape.
And on the last day of the expedition, I mean a side scan sonar, records a long amorphous
echo and the site was confirmed as the Monitor in April of 1974.
Now in an effort to protect this important piece of our nation's history, the Monitor
became our nation's very first national marine sanctuary on January 30th 1975.
The ship lies in about 230 feet of water, just 16 miles off of Cape Hatteras.
And as you can see in this map, the ship is surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands,
of other shipwrecks.
Now in the 1990s,NOAA decided to recover some of the more iconic pieces of the Monitor,
and of course, the turret was the most iconic.
Today, The Mariners' Museum and Park in Newport News, Vrginia, is our official visitor center.
There you can learn about the Monitor's history and see many of the recovered artifacts.
In the Baton Conservation Lab, you can look through the windows to see the turret, the
Dahlgren guns, the steam engine, and condenser as they undergo conservation.
So now we're going to move from the Civil War to World War I.
And how did it all begin?
So on June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were killed by a Serbian
nationalist in Sarajevo, setting off a string of events.
On July 23, 1914, after securing the unconditional support of its powerful ally Germany, Austria-Hungary
presented Serbia with a rigid ultimatum demanding among other things that all anti-Austrian
propaganda within Serbia be suppressed.
And that Austria-Hungary be allowed to conduct its own investigation into the archduke's
killing.
Although Serbia effectively accepted all of Austria's demands, except for one, the Austrian
government broke diplomatic relations with the other country on July 25th and went ahead
with military preparedness measures.
Meanwhile, alerted to the impending crisis, Russia, Serbia's own mighty supporter in the
Balkans, began its own initial steps towards mobilizing its military against Austria.
And on July 28th, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, effectively beginning the first
world war.
In response, Russia formally ordered mobilization of its military and the districts facing Galatia,
its common front with the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And that night, Austrian artillery divisions initiated a brief, but ineffectual, bombardment
of Belgrade across the Danube River.
On August 1st, after its demands for Russia to stop its mobilization met with defiance,
Germany declared war on Russia.
Russia's ally France ordered its own general mobilization that same day and on August 3rd,
France and Germany declared war on each other.
The German army's planned invasion of neutral Belgium, which they announced on August the
4th, and that prompted Britain to declare war on Germany.
Thus in the summer of 1914, the major powers in the western world, with the exception of
the United States and Italy, both of which declared their neutrality, at least for the
time being, flung themselves headlong into the first world war.
As for the U.S., President Woodrow Wilson declared a position of neutrality
in a message to Congress. He noted in his message that it would be the people of America,
many of them immigrants from the nations at war, who would truly uphold this neutral position,
because he felt they would be the ones to express their opinions about the war on the
streets and in the newspaper.
However, over the course of the next three years public opinion of the war would be shaped
by many different events.
Now during the war's early years, the battle raged far from American shores.
And there didn't seem to be any direct danger to the U.S. Navy or American shipping.
And in the early years, Americans didn't think there was anything to fear from Germany's
new submarines or U-boats, even though they were prowling the North Atlantic and sinking
scores of ships and hundreds of men were dying.
Americans weren't fearful because at the time most Americans just didn't believe that the
U-boat had the ability to travel that great of a distance across the Atlantic Ocean to reach
the East Coast.
But they were wrong.
Now after war was declared in Europe, one of the first actions Great Britain took against
Germany was to bring its powerful navy to bear by blockading German ports, to limit
food and supplies from reaching Germany.
Neutral vessels were theoretically permitted to continue trade, but as tensions escalated
Britain declared German waters a war zone and seized cargoes that were deemed commodities
bound for the Central Powers.
Now the British blockade caused Germany to retaliate by declaring its own naval blockade
around the British Isles and the English Channel, using a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare
with the goal of destroying all Allied and neutral ships.
So what were these new German Unterseeboots?
Well, the typical World War I-era German U-boats were ocean-going, could submerge to about
165 feet, and had a range of about 25,000 miles (mni).
On the surface, it could reach speeds of about 16 knots, which was faster than your typical
merchant ship of the time, but slower than the fastest typical warships of the time.
When submerged, a U-boat had a top speed of about 8 knots.
Not only was its speed and mobility limited when submerged, but its awareness of the surrounding
was also restricted to only what could be seen through a periscope and the sounds that
could be heard underwater.
Now U-boats were armed with 1 or 2 deck mounted guns and carried from 6 to 16 torpedoes that
were fired from both the bow and the stern.
They had a crew of approximately 39 men.
And the U-boat's major advantage was that it could submerge and hide from enemy ships
until getting into position to launch a surprise attack with torpedoes.
However, U-boats didn't use their torpedoes very often as they were unreliable.
They were also ineffective due to the difficulty in positioning a U-boat for making an accurate
attack, and there were internal mechanical and guidance issues within the torpedo after
it was launched.
Therefore, U-boats only fired torpedoes when they thought they would expect success.
It was frequently more effective to attack an unarmed merchant ship by attacking with
their deck gun or to demand surrender and then dispatch a boarding party to place explosives
on board the vessel.
So with the torpedoes not being reliable during World War I, U-boats often made a surface
approach to an enemy merchant ship, that was usually unarmed.
This approach provided time for the ship's crew to escape in lifeboats.
It also gave U-boat crews the opportunity to seize supplies and valuables from the ship.
In addition, some U-boats were designed to transport and deploy naval mines.
These underwater bombs were placed in areas of maritime traffic and proved to be very
effective in sinking or damaging passing vessels, sometimes long after the mine was laid.
Now in August of 1914, history's first multi-submarine patrol occurred when a group of 10 German
U-boats attacked British warships in the North Sea.
However, it wasn't a success as no British vessels were damaged and two of the U-boats
were sunk.
But less than a month later, that changed when on September 5th, U-21 sank the British
cruiser HMS Pathfinder.
It was the first time a self-propelled torpedo launched from a submarine sank a vessel in
combat.
And it was the second successful submarine attack in history.
The first was by the Confederate submarine Hunley in 1864, during the Civil War.
And the Hunley was recovered intact in the year 2000, and can now be seen in Charleston,
South Carolina.
Additional success followed later that month when U-9 sank three British cruisers in quick
succession.
The loss of nearly 1,500 British sailors was a major blow to the Allies' morale.
Then in October 1914, World War I naval combat expanded beyond warship-to-warship when U-17
became the first U-boat to sink an unarmed merchant ship, the SS Steamer Glittra, off
the coast of Norway.
By 1915, Germany began full-blown unrestricted submarine warfare attacking merchant vessels
without warning.
So U-boats began focusing a majority of their attacks not on warships, but on commercial
shipping.
Then on May 7th, 1915, U-20 fired a torpedo on the British liner RMS Lusitania, just 11
miles off of Ireland's coast.
Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes.
Of the 1,959 people that were on board, 1,198 of them were killed, and 128 of those were
U.S. citizens.
Now the horror of the attack and the tremendous public outcry prompted President Wilson to
send a strong message to the German government demanding an end to the German U-boats attacks.
By September 1915, the German government did impose strict constraints on U-boats' operations
that spared passenger vessels.
However, this policy didn't prove to be very, didn't last very long because German naval
commanders continued to push for a more aggressive use of their U-boat fleet.
As the months rolled on, Germany faced food shortages and imposed unpopular compulsory
service in their armed forces and war industries.
And although Germany knew the United States would most likely enter the war if they resumed
unrestricted submarine warfare, their military leaders believed they could defeat the Allies
before the United States could even land troops in Europe.
Germany hoped that by once again unleashing their U-boats without restrictions against
the Allies, they would break the British blockade of their supply ports and knock Britain out
of the war within a year.
On February 1st, 1917, Germany announced they would resume unrestricted submarine warfare
on all ships in the Atlantic, including civilian passenger carriers.
With that announcement, President Wilson went before a joint session of Congress on
April 2, 1917, to request a declaration of war against Germany.
He cited as some of the primary reasons the sinking of the Lusitania and Germany's subsequent
violations of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare.
After much deliberation in the House and the Senate, the U.S. declared war on Germany on
April 6, 1917.
Now remember that in the beginning of the war in 1914, many Americans didn't think U-boats
were much of a threat to the U.S.
However, they began to change their minds when a German submarine arrived off the
East Coast in July of 1916,
a year before the U.S. entered the war. The Deutschland arrived to the astonishment of
the American public.
The submarine was a non-combat merchant submarine built to carry cargo.
The Deutschland crossed the Atlantic as a demonstration project making visits to Baltimore,
Maryland and New London, Connecticut.
The Germans were welcomed as celebrities for accomplishing such a feat.
The Deutschland completed two very profitable round trips to the United States before being
taken over by the Imperial German Navy in early 1917, and it was converted into the
U-155
Also about six months before President Wilson declared war on Germany, a more ominous visit
was made by an armed U-53 in October of 1916.
It arrived unexpectedly at Newport, Rhode Island, where its captain arranged courtesy
visits with senior officers of the U.S. Navy.
Before long, U-53's captain became concerned that maybe port authorities at Newport might
place the boat under quarantine, and he quickly put to sea.
Now the U-53 navigated to the vicinity of the Nantucket Light Ship, where it attacked
and sank a number of non-American merchant ships affiliated with Great Britain.
The U.S. Navy sent several warships to the area in response, but they didn't attack the
U-boat because the United States was still a neutral party at that time.
After expending its last torpedo, the U-53 departed for home.
Now as Germany strove to shut down Allied shipping around the British Isles, Arctic,
and Mediterranean regions, U-boat operations continued in 1918.
And eventually, German U-boats became a serious threat to merchant and naval shipping along
the U.S. East Coast.
Four U-boats, the U-151, 156, 140, and 117 voyaged across the Atlantic and attacked vessels
in U.S. waters.
Three of them, the U-151, 140, and 117 sank a total of 10 vessels off North Carolina's
coast alone.
And we're going to take a closer look at those three.
So the first to arrive was the U-151.
With its arrival off the East Coast in May 1918, it became the first foreign enemy naval
vessel to invade U.S. waters since the war of 1812.
Now the German U-boat's initial actions included cutting undersea communication cables near
the Port of New York, laying mines off Long Island and the entrances to Delaware and Chesapeake
bays, and sinking three schooners off Virginia.
Afterwards, U-151 went on to sink and damage additional vessels off the coast of New Jersey
and then North Carolina.
It began operating off North Carolina on June 5th, 1918, when U-151 sank the British steamer
Harpathian.
Then the American steamer Pinar Del Rio and the Norwegian freighter Vindeggen, and the
steamer Hendrik Lund.
In total, U-151 sank 23 ships in the western Atlantic during its 94-day voyage from Germany
to the East Coast and back.
The next U-boat to prowl the North Carolina coast was U-140.
The 140 was a new heavily armed U-boat cruiser that was larger and more modern than the U-151.
It reached Virginia on August 4th, sinking the American tanker
O.B. Jennings off of Cape Henry.
And U-140 then went south, and on August the 5th, it encountered the American four-masted
coal schooner Stanley M. Seaman off of Cape Hatteras.
Now the U-boat fired a warning shot at the ship's rigging.
The crew scrambled quickly into their yaw boat without uh bringing any supplies.
And when the U-boat captain learned of the crew's situation, he actually allowed them
to return to the ship to collect provisions.
The men from U-140 then boarded and sank the vessel with explosive charges.
The next day on August 6, U-140 attacked the unarmed American steamship Merak, which was
about four miles west of the U.S. Lighthouse Services' Light Vessel, LV-71, which was anchored
on the Diamond Shoal Station.
Now Merak was headed from Newport News to South America when U-140 fired its deck gun
at the ship's bow.
Merak's captain quickly turned the ship toward shore and started an evasive zigzag course,
but the U-boat followed and continued to attack.
After a 30-minute chase, the Merak reportedly ran aground, and its 43-man crew launched
lifeboats to escape.
Upon hearing the sound of gunfire, LV-71's crew spotted the German U-boat and the radio
operators broadcasted a message reporting the attack.
The message was received by at least 25 ships who sought shelter southeast of Cape Hatteras.
Now hearing the radio dispatch, U-140 was not happy.
So they immediately changed course, leaving the grounded Merak and made for the light
vessel.
LV-71 was unable to take any evasive action because it was anchored on its station, and
it required a minimum of five hours to get the steam up for its engine to raise the anchor.
So the crew abandoned the ship.
And with Merak, aground, U-140 took its time in sinking the LV-71.
Now with LV-71 sinking, U-140 returned to the Merak, and some of the U-140's crew boarded
the ship.
The Germans placed explosives in the engine room and then approached the lifeboats and
interviewed the Merak survivors.
Before departing, the U-boat crew asked if the Merak sailors had a sail and gave them
their distance from the beach, saying that they should not have any trouble reaching
shore.
U-140 then detonated the explosive charges and Merak sank quickly.
Now U-140 remained off North Carolina for several more days before heading back to Germany.
During its 81-day cruise, it sank over 30,000 tons of Allied shipping.
And here is the Merak today.
It rests in about 135 feet of water.
The top image is amidships and the lower right image is of the stern.
And here are the sonar images taken by the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster in 2018.
The one on the left is the Merak, which you can clearly see broke into two pieces.
And on the top right is the LV-71.
Now the third German U-boat to arrive off North Carolina was U-117.
It was a long-range, mine-laying U-boat.
And departing Kiel, Germany shortly after the U-140, it set a course for North America
to lay mines off the coast of the United States and to sink ships.
Now U-117 reached the American coast on August the 8th of 1918, and started its attack on
American vessels, sinking nine fishing vessels with explosives and gunfire off the coast
of Massachusetts.
U-117 also began laying mines off of New Jersey, Delaware, and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
But on August 16th ,as it was along the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the approach
of the British steamer Mirlo interrupted its mine laying operation.
The submerged U-117 approached the Mirlo and fired a single torpedo that fatally damaged
the steamer off Wimble Shoals.
The ship's flammable cargo caught fire and nine of the 52 sailors aboard lost their lives.
Excuse me.
Now, a heroic rescue effort by the U.S. Coast Guard personnel from the Chicamacomico Life-Saving
Station, under the command of Warrant Officer John Allen Midget, Jr., brought the others
safely ashore.
The surfman rescued 42 of the 51 Mirlo sailors.
Now numerous accolades and awards were bestowed upon the six lifesavers, including gold medals
in their honor presented by King George V of the United Kingdom.
Later though, controversy surrounded the sinking of the Mirlo.
While Mirlo's Captain William R. Williams claimed that the ship had been torpedoed by U-117,
other reports claimed that the Mirlo had been in a well-known mine field, and that a mine sank the Mirlo.
Regardless of how the ship sank, the quick
actions of the surfboard crew of 1046 were undisputed.
Now following the attack, U-117 again began laying mines, sowing its fourth and final field.
At that point, a shortage of fuel forced the U-boat to begin making plans to return to Germany.
U-117's next and final attack off Cape Hatteras was against Norwegian Barque Nordhav.
It then began the voyage back across the Atlantic to Germany.
Now the German navy recognized the success of U-boats were having in U.S. waters, and
they were actually in the process of sending three more U-boats, the U-155, the 152, and
the 39, when the war ended in November of 1918.
Now the armistice of November 11, 1918, ended hostilities, and it also required Germany to
turn over its boats to the Allies.
Both U-140 and 117 surrendered 10 days later in England.
Then over the next few months, the U.S. Navy expressed interest in obtaining several of
these former U-boats to serve as exhibitions during a Victory Bond campaign.
Now U-140 and 117 became two of the six boats set aside for that purpose.
In March of 1919, American crews took over the U-boats and prepared for the trans-Atlantic
crossing under their new task group name the Ex-German Submarine Expeditionary Force.
On April 3rd 1919, the expeditionary force departed England and made port calls in the
Azores and Bermuda before reaching New York City on April 27, 1919.
There, they were open to the public and tourists, photographers, reporters, navy department
technicians, and submarine manufacturers all flocked to see these war trophies.
Then orders came for 117 to begin a series of port visits, and at the conclusion of the
bond drive later that summer, U-117 was laid up in Philadelphia Navy Yard, along with the
140 and the UB-148.
But that wasn't the end of their story.
The U-boats remained there partially dismantled until the summer of 1921, when U-140 and 117
were both selected as target ships.
Now U-117 was selected for aerial bombing tests led by the Army Air Force General Billy Mitchell,
to demonstrate the value of naval air power against capital ships, and was sunk
by aerial bombs on June 21st of 1921.
Then on July 22nd, U-140 was sunk by the destroyer USS Dickerson.
Now both of these U-boats were sunk off of Cape Charles, Virginia, not too far from where
they had once wreaked havoc on American ships.
Now despite Germany's defeat, submarines had proven to be an incredibly successful weapon.
During the peacetime years, from the end of World War I to the outbreak of World War II,
German naval commanders internalized all those lessons they learned about submarine
warfare and they continued to improve its
technology.
One of the facts that often gets overlooked during both World War I and World War II are
the number of civilian casualties.
By the end of World War I, almost 5,000 merchant ships were sunk by the U-boats.
with the loss of approximately 15,000 Allied sailors.
And these sailors were merchant sailors who were considered civilian volunteers.
Now during World War II, the U-boats would return with a vengeance, sinking thousands
of ships, and once again striking terror into the hearts of merchant ship captains around
the world.
Therefore, I hope that we never forget the honor, the service, and sacrifice that all
of those who lost their lives off our shores in defense of freedom.
All right.
So that's a little bit about World War I and German U-boats.
So now I want to share a few of the free products that we have available.
First, we have a World War I curriculum that I'll go more into detail in a in a minute
or so.
We also have a web page that is devoted to the World War I, and we have a publication
"The Enemy in Home Waters," which covers most what I talked about today, and actually gives
you a lot more detail.
And I've actually added that document into the handout sections if you want to download
it now.
So to access our World War I curriculum, or any of our other guides and activities, just
go to our website.
It's monitor.noaa.gov, and in the top toolbar, hover over "learn" and then click on the "teacher"
section.
Once on the teachers page, just scroll down to World War I curriculum guide and click
on the link.
Before we get started, I wanted to just mention that this guide was written in collaboration
with two American history teachers from our local area, Edward Johnson and Timothy Jones.
We partnered with our local PBS station and Old Dominion University to host them both
as summer fellows, and they did a great job helping me create this curriculum.
So as you go through the guide, you have a program overview, suggested curriculum outline.
We give you the objectives and a suggested implementation strategy.
We also give you the vocabulary words that are used throughout the guide, and we give
you a list of web and book resources.
We also outline all the social studies standards, Common Core, as well as the National Geography
Standards, the standards for the National Council of Teachers of English, and of course,
Ocean Literacy Principles. And this is a list of the activities that you'll find in the
guide.
The first three are all about exploring NOAA, the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary and
the Maritime Heritage Program.
So before we dive into the debate, I want to mention that each activity is designed
to stand alone.
So for each one, you'll see the materials list, a summary, the objectives, keywords,
and the national standards that that activity actually meets.
So for this 'In and Out' activity, students work in small groups to use primary sources
and a KWL chart, which is a 'What do you know?
What do you want to know? and What did you learn?'
chart, to determine what position they will take on whether the U.S. should or should
not enter World War I.
After researching, they summarize their research, then as a group, they develop main arguments
that they found in the primary sources.
And during a presentation to the class, they must be ready to defend their stand.
And a rubric is also included to help guide students and for scoring the presentation
and project.
The next lesson in the guide focuses on the importance of the Zimmerman Telegram and other
causes of World War I. Students are given a portion of the Zimmerman Telegram, and they
must break the code and analyze the message.
They are asked to think critically to determine how Americans and key decision-makers, who
wanted to remain neutral in the European war, would feel about the telegram.
Finally, they will make their own short code on how to avoid another world war, and we
also give you an optional rubric for scoring.
Propaganda Posters with a Purpose.
In this lesson, students examine and evaluate propaganda posters used during World War I.
They analyze the posters for bias and symbolism and explain and illustrate the reasons why
the U.S. joined the Allies.
At the conclusion of the activities, students demonstrate understanding of the reasons for
World War I by creating their own original propaganda poster and evaluating other groups'
posters as well.
And of course, we give you an optional rubric.
Now this lesson focuses on life during American involvement in World War I and the importance
placed on the public's opinion of the war.
Students research what life was like during World War I, and through the creation of a
scrapbook, they depict what they imagine life to be, would have been, for a soldier, a mother,
a factory worker, and a four-minute man.
Now students will focus on three of those four characters, detailing their experiences
through text.
And they'll illustrate what those experiences might have looked like either through pictures
or drawings of their own.
There are reflection questions and an optional rubric.
Now this activity challenges students to use the format of modern social media technology
to create a complete history of an important figure from the World War I era.
So they conduct research on a historical figure of their choice.
Teachers give them a little guide guidance.
And then they synthesize their research using the biographical information that they learned
about the historical figure and any events that might have occurred during the figure's
lifetime.
And then they're going to use all that and they're going to construct a social media
profile and a timeline.
Now as a class, they compare and contrast the experiences of different individuals during
World War I, and finally, they dramatize and write possible thoughts and reactions of their
historical figures to the events surrounding their lives in the historical era.
So in short, in this activity, they take a wealth of information that they've researched,
they summarize it, and they write it in very succinct Facebook posts, tweets, and/or Instagram
posts.
So you can use online fake social media sites if you want, if you have internet and you
want to do that, or you can use the templates given in the guide.
And there's also an optional rubric as well.
Now earlier, I told you about the sinking of the Mirlo and how the ship's captain said
he was torpedoed, but later reports indicated that the Mirlo was in the mine field and sank
when it hit a mine.
So which account is correct?
Well, in this activity, students work to solve the mystery.
First, they learn about unrestricted submarine warfare and why the East Coast was so vulnerable
to U-boat attacks.
Then they explore primary source documents and videos to try to determine what happened
to the Mirlo.
In the guide is the Navy Department's publication on the incident and students answer discussion
questions to follow along with their reading.
And they also can read the log book which I put here in this, on this page.
It's the log book of John A. Midget, who was in charge of the Chicamacomico Life-Saving
Station during the rescue.
And they also read a newspaper account of the story.
Finally, they analyze the documents and answer some probing questions.
And then they write their own newspaper story of what they think actually happened that
night.
So not sure if they were sunk by U-117 or if it was a mine.
You'll have to do the activity and make your own decisions.
And of course, we give you an optional scoring rubric.
Now I really want to invite you to go and explore our shipwreck web pages.
Here you're going to find all the ships that we have researched over the years from the
Civil War to World War II.
There are over 50 shipwrecks that are divided between the Civil War.
We also have the World War I section there.
Then we have a post-World War I section.
And we also have the beginnings of a World War, you can see there the beginnings of the
World War I, I mean World War II merchant ships, and which are continued.
And each ship has its own page, so when you click on it, you get more information about
that ship's history, how it's sank, and what it is like today.
There are also beautiful underwater images for most of the shipwrecks.
And some wrecks have 3D models.
They also have sonar images, videos, and more.
There's also a section for the World War II Allied ships and the four German U-boats located
off of North Carolina's coast.
You will also find several videos, as well as dive slates and site plans.
The site plans can be downloaded and printed for your classroom or for your home or office.
And here's just a small taste of what's available on our website.
There are several 3D models of shipwrecks, and this particular one is the one of the
USS Monitor.
We also have them of the Jackson and I can't remember all of them, but there's about four
or five different 3D models that are available.
We also have these photomosaics of the U-boats so that you can actually see what it would
look like as it's, as you're looking down from it on top.
We have lots of sonar images.
Most all of the shipwrecks at this time have sonar images.
And there are nine dive slates, so if you're a diver, you can either download these to
help you understand more about what you're diving on or if you want a hard copy of them,
we do also have those available.
And if you go to the website and click on the dive slates, there's a link there that
would send you to the Monitor email that would help you get those dive slates, if you want
the hard copies of them.
We also invite you to virtually explore North Carolina's maritime heritage on our website.
Under the "Visit" tab, you will find a story map with 11 videos and several oral histories
that showcase the unique and beautiful maritime heritage of the Outer Banks.
Now if you want to use these with your students, there's also an activity that correlates with
each video and oral history.
And if you're not on our listserv, I invite you to sign up.
We even have a specific email list serve just for teachers.
Go to our "News" section of the website, and click on the box for teachers.
Now I want to introduce you to one of our newer sanctuaries, which is Mallows Bay - Potomac
River National Marine Sanctuary.
First, let me invite you to go and explore their website to learn more about the maritime
and cultural heritage of the sanctuary, and to also learn how to visit the site and how
to get involved.
So this sanctuary boasts a diverse collection of historic shipwrecks dating back from the
Revolutionary War, but is most renowned for the remains of 100 wooden steamships known
as the Ghost Fleet.
And at low tide, many of them are visible, as seen here.
Now these ships were built for the U.S. Emergency Fleet between 1917 and 1919 as part of America's
engagement in World War I.
Their construction at more than 40 shipyards in 17 states reflected a massive wartime effort
that drove the expansion and economic development of communities and related maritime services.
Now ship building during World War I also brought about the formalization of merchant
mariners.
Now although merchant mariners already existed in the United States, the building, operation,
and maintenance of hundreds of new vessels meant that significantly more skilled mariners
were needed.
Although nearly 300 ships were built, the war ended before the fleet was complete.
And some of them carried cargo to Hawaii and elsewhere, but none actually made it to the
theater of war.
The war ended before the ships could be used and many of them were scuttled to the Potomac
River and for the purpose of salvaging scrap metal.
The Ghost Fleet was partially dismantled through three separate shipbreaking and metal salvage
periods from the 1920s through the 1940s.
Through the years, these ships have transformed into valuable ecological habitat.
The overgrown wrecks now form a series of distinctive islands, intertidal habitat, and
underwater structure critical to fish, beaver, birds, such as ospreys, blue herons, and bald
eagles.
Although the sanctuary does not manage or regulate these natural resources, the unique
blending of history and ecology attracts and captivates all visitors.
So be sure to visit the website to learn how to get to Mallows and how to best enjoy this
beautiful sanctuary.
Whether hiking or paddling, we know you will want to return again and again.
And lastly, I just want to invite you to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
I think you can go to Facebook and just Google either Mallows Bay or Google Monitor, and
you'll come up with our Facebook pages.
And also on Twitter.
And that is all I have.
And Mark, I'm going to turn it back to you.
Oh one last slide.
I'm sorry.
You can also contact me or reach me through my email address or my cell phone if you have
any questions that we don't get to today or things that you think of later or need something.
Please feel free to reach out to me.
All right Mark, I'm going to turn it back over to you now.
[Mark Losavio] All right.
This is now the perfect time if you have any questions to please ask them.
Let me pull up my question slide.
Do you see that?
[Shannon Ricles] I do.
[Mark Losavio] Perfect.
So yes, if there are any questions, make sure to type them in the questions box or the chat
box, which should be at the bottom of your toolbar to the right of your screen.
But while you guys are typing away, I actually had a question myself.
Because you said early on that the U-boats usually held about 39 men, you said and I
guess I'm having trouble with the frame of references for the size of what a U-boat.
Like how big are they?
Is that crowded or is that spacious?
[Shannon Ricles] I think it was pretty crowded from what I've seen.
I don't have an actual length or width of the U-boats, but from the pictures
that I've seen though, they look very small.
When you see them with men standing on top of them, they're not very big.
They're nothing like the subs that we have today.
So 39 people had to be pretty crowded.
[Mark Losavio] Wow, wow.
All right, so we do have this one question from a couple of people.
If we're curious as to how, what were the military's first steps into countering the
U-boat threat?
Like what would we first do when we started to try and deal with that issue?
[Shannon Ricles] Well, there were lots of countermeasures that were given.
They had the zigzagging, they were that you saw that the Merak did.
They would try to make a zigzag path, which would make it harder for their torpedoes to
be able to fire.
They also had tried some ramming.
They would try to ram them to keep them from being able to attack them.
But probably the one and only counter measure that really truly worked was the convoy
system, where we had the convoys of military ships guarding the merchant ships that were
traveling.
So that they could be protected.
[Mark Losavio] All right.
Do we, oh this is a good question.
Were there any aerial patrols in World War I, kind of like what we did in World War II?
[Shannon Ricles] Not that I have read.
I don't know that to be a positive, but not that I have read.
Billy Mitchell actually was testing that after World War I to show the effectiveness of aerial
bombing.
And I think you saw, I think it was the the 140 that was used as the aerial bombing testing.
And that's where that came about, and so during World War II, yes, we did have airplanes that
patrolled all along the west coast, I mean the East Coast and other areas.
And we've had a couple of, one U-boat that was sunk off the North Carolina coast, that
was sunk by an airplane, Lieutenant Kane with the U.S. Army Air Force.
I just looked up a typical U-boat was about 214 feet long Mark.
[Mark Losavio] All right, wow, yeah that's a lot of, that's a lot of people to squeeze
into that space.
All right.
How much fuel do you think the U-boats needed to make it all the way over to the United
States or maybe did they refuel?
[Shannon Ricles] They didn't refuel, one of the, and I didn't look up how much fuel that
they actually held.
That's a really good question.
I'll have to research that one but one of the things that shocked me is that they said
they had a range of 25,000 miles (nmi), which I don't understand how they could go so far
unless they did refuel.
Let me just see real quickly if I can find that.
[Mark Losavio] That is a really good question.
[Shannon Ricles] Yeah, I don't,
I have no idea.
[Mark Losavio] That's a great question.
[Shannon Ricles] Okay, let's see if Google gives us an answer here.
Hmm doesn't really give me anything.
Now I can't see anything off the top, maybe that's was they were diesel engines, I do
remember that.
So they did carry diesel fuel and and they did mostly run on the surface, which made
them a little faster and used less fuel.
When they went underwater, then they ran slower, of course with all the friction of the water,
and they used, that would use much more fuel.
I don't know.
I'm going to have to research how many gallons of fuel they actually contained.
[Mark Losavio] It would probably be very difficult to refuel, if there was a blockade going on of Germany, so.
[Shannon Ricles] Absolutely. Yep.
[Mark Losavio] All right, great question.
Are you planning on doing a World War II webinar or about World War II shipwrecks?
[Shannon Ricles] We have already!
It is already on our website.
We have done a World War II.
We've done several of them actually.
We did an educator workshop on World War II and our World War II curriculum guide.
And then Tane and and some of the North Carolina, Tane Casserley, our permit and research
coordinator in our office, actually did a webinar on World War II, along with Chris
Southerly and a few people from the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology.
So when Mark shows you where our archived webinars are at, go there and you can see
all of the webinars that we have done.
We've done, this is our 15th webinar so far since February.
So we've done quite a few.
We have them on all different kinds of topics, but yes I am going to be doing a webinar coming
up in, I think it's October, on maritime archaeology, which will cover a lot of the World War II
stuff that we've been doing.
Because that's what we primarily have focused on since 2008, in our research has been World
War II.
World War II shipwrecks.
[Mark Losavio] Awesome.
And that's archaeology month too, right?
[Shannon Ricles] It is. Yep, it is.
[Mark Losavio] Very topical webinar.
Make sure you tune in for that one.
That is all the questions I think we have time to answer today.
And if you didn't get your question answered, please make sure to reach out, let me pull up
the, all right.
So if you have not downloaded Shannon's bio in the chat box yet, be sure to do so now.
There's also a lot of really great resources in that chat box so make sure you download those PDFs.
In the bio, you will also find various links to learn more about World War I and the supporting curriculum resources.
And so much more. We invite you also to visit our website right here to learn more
And if we did not get to your question or if you have any additional ones, you can email
Shannon directly at the email listed here on the screen or actually you can email any
of us at the Monitor.
All of our information is on that website.
Because you guys had some really good questions.
Once captioned, a video recording of this presentation will be made available on the
sanctuaries' webinar archives page, found at the URL listed here on the top.
In addition, the webinar will also be archived on the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary's
website.
Click on the multimedia tab right here in the toolbar to access the webinar box.
You will also find future webinars and past webinars in that same section. Don't worry
all this information will be sent to you in a follow-up email once the recording is ready
to view if you did enjoy this webinar, make sure to check out the other webinars in the
National Marine Sanctuaries' webinar series, actually in about an hour at like 6:00, you
can join Dr. Sheldon Plentovich, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Pacific Island Coastal Program
Coordinator, to learn more about endemic songbirds at Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
And on Thursday, October 7th, we were just talking about it, at 4:00, Shannon will be
hosting another teacher workshop.
This workshop will explore maritime archaeology, the career, the field as both a science and
as a career.
Shannon will be working on introducing you to NOAA, its maritime heritage program to
learn more about North Carolina shipwrecks, the tools that we use to discover and explore
them.
She will also be sharing a free STEM curriculum.
And although this is an educator workshop, it's open to anybody who is interested in
shipwrecks or learning more about maritime archaeology.
In addition, there are these following Submerged NC webinar series.
And don't be fooled, there's more in the works.
We've got a lot of really exciting webinars coming up in the next year.
So please keep the dial tuned on our station.
And like Shannon said, don't forget to like and follow us on social media.
Like and follow both Monitor and Mallows Bay to get a really wholesome social media experience.
And lastly, as you exit the webinar, there is a short survey for formal and informal
educators.
If you are an educator, NOAA would really appreciate it if you take just a minute or
two of your time to complete these surveys.
Your answers will really help NOAA develop future webinars to meet your needs.
Your participation is 100% voluntary, and your answers are completely anonymous.
So once again, we would like to thank Shannon for a fantastic presentation.
I'd like to thank you all for joining us today and asking such really thought-provoking questions.
And that concludes the presentation.
I will now end the webinar.