On the complex historic site that definitely floated my boys’ boats.
As part of last year’s series on San Diego and AmericanStudies, I blogged
about the U.S.S. Midway, the
aircraft carrier that has been turned into a floating naval and aviation
museum. I tried in that post to balance two very distinct but equally present
goals I had identified in the museum—creating empathy for what individual sailors
and servicemen and women go through; and glorifying our national military
endeavors. It might seem as if those two effects would go hand in hand—certainly
the “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers suggest as much—but I disagree; I
believe that empathy
for military service can be far more nuanced about, if not openly critical of,
wars and what they entail and mean than more broadly jingoistic attitudes
can ever be.
The many naval vessels that comprise Fall River (MA)’s Battleship Cove, however, put my
theory to the test. The unique museum includes a
battleship (U.S.S. Massachusetts)
that saw extensive World War II action, a destroyer, a submarine, and even a Cold War-era East German
corvette, all of which visitors can walk onto and explore. While the
battleship does have some interesting permanent exhibitions on various semi-related
themes (women in the military, the use of radar, and so on), it does not
include nearly as much detail as the Midway
museum on the lives and experiences of the sailors who served on it; and the
other Battleship Cove ships offer even less contextual information. In the
absence of those kinds of histories, it’s very difficult not to simply be awed
by the ships’ size, their armaments, their military might—that’s most
definitely what my 7 and 6 year old responded to when we visited the Cove
earlier this year.
And yet. First of all, 7 and 6 year old boys would fixate on big guns no
matter what else was around—and it didn’t hurt that we visited on Memorial Day,
when one of the battleship’s 5-inchers fired more than a dozen rounds in tribute.
Second, and more importantly, there was just something deeply inspiring about
seeing my boys excited to be on board these historic vessels, asking questions,
experiencing their spaces and settings first hand. I guess we could call this
the visitor-response school of museum studies, one in which each visitor can
make of the site what he or she will; in that case the relative dearth of
information or exhibition on board the ships allowed me and my boys to develop
our own experience of and connection to them. For that reason, and for its
simple uniqueness, Battleship Cove is definitely a worthwhile AmericanStudies
daytrip.
Next daytrip tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Thoughts on this site? Other daytrips you’d highlight?
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