{"id":13,"date":"2014-12-10T12:21:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T12:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/?p=13"},"modified":"2016-12-28T19:45:18","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T19:45:18","slug":"the-great-unrolling-of-the-uss-wheeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/the-great-unrolling-of-the-uss-wheeling","title":{"rendered":"The Great Unrolling of the USS Wheeling"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>Earlier this year, we discovered among our many items stashed away here at the library, a tightly rolled photo labeled \u201cUSS Wheeling.\u201d The photograph could\u00a0be unrolled safely only\u00a0a few inches, revealing just a few\u00a0lonely crewmen. Being able to unroll only the first three crewmen left so many questions: Where was this photograph taken? When was it taken?\u00a0What lie beyond these first crewmen? Can you see the USS Wheeling in the background? Are you curious what else is inside? So were we. \n\n\n\n
$\"USS$ <\/a><\/td>\n $\"USS$ <\/a><\/td>\n $\"USS$ <\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
But first\u2026
\nSome USS WHEELING BACKGROUND:<\/strong>
\nNamed for our city, the USS Wheeling was a naval gunboat that served in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, and World War I. Prior to its commissioning, a \u201ccommittee of representatives\u201d from Wheeling was invited to San Francisco where the ship was built to witness the launching of the gunboat on August 10, 1897.\u00a0Miss Lucie S. Brown of Wheeling was selected with the honor of officially christening the ship the \u201cWheeling\u201d before it was sent off to sea. Decommissioned in 1904 and put back into service in 1910, the USS Wheeling was finally put to rest in 1946.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
$\"The$ <\/a>
Engraving from the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer<\/em>, January 23, 1897: Caption \u2014 The Gunboat \u201cWheeling\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u25b6 Read the entire article<\/a><\/p><\/td>\n
\n
$\"Launching$ <\/a>
Engraving from the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer<\/em>, March 18, 1897: Launching of the U.S.S. Wheeling. Caption \u2014 Scene at the Moment the Twins Started Down the Greased Way<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u25b6 Read the entire article<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
Now\u2026 BACK TO OUR PHOTO:<\/strong>
\nLast spring, we attended a photo preservation workshop led by a Marshall University Archivist and Manuscripts Librarian. Before heading to the workshop, we were invited\u00a0to bring items from our collections for consultation. In addition to a stack of photographs stuck together (watch for a future post on that), we brought along the USS Wheeling photograph.\u00a0Coming out of the workshop, we believed we had the tools to safely unveil the mystery of the USS Wheeling and went about building the proper\u00a0receptacle to begin unveiling.<\/p>\n
The process was a long one, but little by little, the crew members of the USS Wheeling began to appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"IMG_4871\"$ <\/a><\/td>\n $\"IMG_4872\"$ <\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
And finally, after two weeks of careful attending, the entire crew of the USS Wheeling was reunited.<\/p>\n
$\"The$ <\/a><\/p>\n
Blessed with captions, we now know this photograph was taken January 24, 1919 in New Orleans, LA. Though the USS Wheeling is not completely visible, in the background,\u00a0two masts and a chimney matching the above Daily Intelligencer<\/em> etching peek out from behind the\u00a0crew.<\/p>\n
The crew itself is an interesting study in naval history, as it appears there were at least three African American crew members aboard the USS Wheeling. According to the US Department of Defense, \u201cThe Navy\u2019s racial segregation policies limited African Americans\u2019 participation in World War I and, after the war, barred black enlistments altogether from 1919 to 1932. The only black sailors in uniform during that period were the ones aboard in 1919 who were allowed to stay to retire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
[United States Department of Defense. (2001, February 1). Retrieved December 7, 2014, from http:\/\/www.defense.gov\/news\/newsarticle.aspx?id=45742<\/a>]<\/address>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
$\"USS$ <\/a><\/td>\n $\"USS$ <\/a><\/td>\n $\"USS$ <\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
In addition to the African American crew members, several crewmen appear to be of Asian or Pacific Islander decent. As American involvements grew in Asia in the latter part of the 19th century, \u201cthe recruitment of Asian aliens for the U.S. military\u00a0arose from a need for manual labor.\u201d By the beginning of the 20th century, \u201cthe\u00a0increased demands placed on the military to protect U.S. interests in Asia\u00a0led the military to use local labor (i.e., Asian nationals).\u201d<\/p>\n
[Sohoni, D., & Vafa, A. (2010). The Fight to Be American: Military Naturalization and Asian Citizenship. Asian American Law Journal, 17: 131-32. http:\/\/scholarship.law.berkeley.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1164&context=aalj<\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
During its commission,\u00a0USS Wheeling spent time in the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, the coast of China, Japan,\u00a0Samoa, and Singapore. Of course, we cannot\u00a0surmise these crew members were recruited from any of these areas, but the photograph itself is an interesting record of our country\u2019s naval history.<\/p>\n
The \u201cGreat Unrolling\u201d of the USS Wheeling was an exciting moment in our archival work, a step back in history, and a reminder of a proud moment for our City, whose prominent stature\u00a0by the end of the 19th century was deemed fit by the US Navy to grace the hull of one of its\u00a0gunships.<\/p>\n
\n
Like what you\u2019ve read here? \u25bc Please share! We\u2019ve made it easy with these buttons below.\u00a0\u25bc<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Earlier this year, we discovered among our many items stashed away here at the library, a tightly rolled photo labeled \u201cUSS Wheeling.\u201d The photograph could\u00a0be unrolled safely only\u00a0a few inches, revealing just a few\u00a0lonely crewmen. Being able to unroll only<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[91,173,108,20,14,13,17,19,15,16],"coauthors":[312],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contributor-ocpl","tag-african-american-history","tag-boats","tag-military","tag-ohio-county-public-library-archives","tag-photograph-conservation","tag-photographs","tag-rolled-photos","tag-us-naval-history","tag-uss-wheeling","tag-warships"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/F-USS-Wheeling2.jpg?fit=738%2C282&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pkc7-d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2112,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/2112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}