DATE: Wednesday, June 18, 1997              TAG: 9706180001

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

MARITIME MUSEUM INITIATIVE SEA STORIES

The Mariners' Museum in Newport News and the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City have jointly embarked on a voyage to expand ``public understanding of American maritime history and its relevance to the nation's future.''

The museums' bold, creative and apparently pioneering cultural alliance - titled The National Maritime Museum Initiative - aims to dispel ignorance about the links ``between maritime enterprise and our contemporary lives, between sea history and ourselves.''

The museums aim to instruct while entertaining visitors. That's a meritorious but Herculean undertaking.

The sole superpower, the United States is in nanosecond contact with every other land.

News from around the world pours or dribbles into nearly every workplace and household in the United States.

Most commodities in world trade, to which the U.S. contributes disproportionately, move by sea.

The overwhelming majority of today's 264 million Americans, the most polyglot lot encompassed by one national border, are descended from immigrants transported, not all of them willingly, to these shores by ship.

Much of Americans' food is pulled from the sea.

The U.S. Navy - far and away the mightiest navy - projects U.S. power worldwide to protect U.S. interests.

Yet Americans are largely in the dark about how the sea shaped, shapes and will shape their destiny - and the destiny of Earth's billions.

The Mariners' Museum-South Street Seaport Museum alliance will exploit the the strengths of each ally to cast a dazzling light into the darkness.

The Mariners' shelters more than 35,000 marine artifacts - small craft from near and far, navigational instruments, engines, rigging, tools, weaponry, figureheads, drawings. . . . The museum library is packed with 75,000 volumes, including 5,000 rare books, and the museum archives contain more than a million items, including ship plans, the corporate archives of Chris-Craft Industries and more than a half-million photographic images documenting marine history since 1830.

South Street Seaport Museum, part of the third-largest tourist draw in New York City, is superbly placed to showcase maritime treasures. Located on the East River in lower Manhattan, the museum maintains a fleet of historic vessels - two tall ships, two operating schooners, a lightship, a tugboat and a barge; the collection is the largest of its kind in private hands.

South Street Seaport Museum also is the biggest provider of Elderhostel services in the Empire state.

And it sits in the busiest East Coast port.

The Mariners' sits in the second busiest, and close by the most awesome concentration of naval power.

Reaching millions is the purpose of The National Maritime Museum Initiative. The combination will permit the two institutions to enlarge their audience, collaborate on exhibitions and share resources.

The two museums' visibility will be enhanced, perhaps immensely. Public appreciation of the sea and its stories should rise, too. To general enrichment.

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