25 September 2010
Steam Punk
(HMS Ophelia, the Steam Punk Dream. Copyright Delen Gilead 2007)
“… Steampunk is more than just brass and watch-parts. It's finding a way to combine the past and the future in an aesthetic pleasing yet still punkish way. It's living a life that looks old-fashioned, yet speaks to the future. It's taking the detritus of our modern technological society and remaking it into useful things…(it) combines the scientific romanticism of the Victorians with our real present and imagined future.”
– Sara Carl, 2010
Steam Punk in shorthand? Think about Robert Downey’s take on Sherlock Holmes in last year's action movie. Or the flawed but magnificent Sean Connery cinematic outing in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”
In fiction, it is a sub-genre occupied by works like the 2007 film “The Golden Compass,” an exploration of alternate universes where things did not occur the way they did here. Sara’s observation about the detritus of our society commingled with romance of our past and the imagination of our future is fantasy at its richest.
But I walked into the real deal yesterday, on the Philly Waterfront. I am still trying to figure out what I saw, and what I didn’t, and what might be contained in some of the pictures I took.
Modern technology collided with the distant past of the 19th century infrastructure of Union Station to get there, adding to the sense of unrelaity. AMTRAK runs the sleek Acela high-speed train up the I-95 corridor to link the centers of the great NE megalopolis from Washington to Baltimore to Philly to New York and on to Boston.
The tracks are not as high-tech as the fancy new trains that ride on them, so the old regional engines are really just as fast, but it is worth the luxury, and a ton better than the madness on the freeway alongside the tracks.
The third day Autumn brought warm moist heat and clear airmass to the megalopolis.
It is a ten-buck cab ride from the 30th Street Station to the Seaport Museum, on the waterfront near Independence Hall. This is an old part of an old city, by North American standards, anyway, one of the places where the idea of America began. One of the better fish restaurants in town- the Positino Coast- overlooks the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, a graceful building in the Paladian style, and across the street from the City Tavern, where the burghers of the city began arguing about politics three years before the Declaration.
Positino is gracefully modern, in perfect contrast to the old that surrounds it. After a fine and civilized lunch, we decamped to walk down Walnut Street across the gardened overpass above the Delaware Expressway to the Seaport Museum. Sweat rolled down our backs as we reached the concrete stairs to climb down to see the greatest example of Steam Punk that remains afloat in this world, and meet the Master of the dream, Captain Harry Burkhardt.
This is ship heaven and maybe ship hell all at once.
(ex-USS New Jersey, one of four Iowa-class Battlewagons BB-62 at her resting place. Photo Socotra).
We walked past the entrance to the indoor Seaport Museum to take in the vista of bedraggled Camden across the Delaware River. There, the Iowa-Class battlewagon ex-USS New Jersey (BB-62) looms like a long gray mountain across the slate gray water.
(SS United States, rotting at Pier 82. Photo Richard Rickyar)
Three miles down stream the two sleek stacks of the SS United States are visible above the low warehouse buildings of Pier 82. She has languished there, disintegrating, sine 1996. She was the largest ocean liner constructed entirely in the United States, the fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic in either direction, and still holds the speed record for a passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service.
In the immediate foreground, though, is the lady we had come to see. Olympia, the Queen of Steam, a chunk of history so astonishing as to be out of time an mind.
I took the opportunity to get shots of her upper works, since the plan was to have a personal tour of the engine room and the steam plant and boilers. It was pure steam punk. The hull bristled with guns. Two round oil-can turrets sat, fore-and-aft, eight inches, if what I read was correct. Other, smaller rifles protruded from armored barbetts.
The superstructure was not gray, but a sort of jaunty butternut, and the wheelhouse was shellacked walnut and brass that gleamed under the sun.
(Bow of the Protected Cruiser Olympia. Photo Socotra 2010)
The transition from sail to steam, two tall masts adorned her, with real crow’s nests, The proud prow is rakish, slanting forward and appearing to cut the water although she has not moved in more than a half century.
The nice young woman in the kiosk gave us the military discount, which made me feel a little guilty. Considering that the lack of money is what may doom this proud ship to become an artificial reef off Cape May, I reached in my wallet to get a $20 bill and slip it in the big jar labled “Donations.”
I was reaching in that direction when a voice tinged with the rasp of the river boomed out:
“Not so fast. Don’t put it there. The crooks are the ones who collect that one. I’ll tell you how you can help to save the Olympia.”
I looked around at the wiry man with salt-and-pepper hair and a big gap-toothed smile coming down the ladder. “Crooks?” I said in surprise.
“Hi,” he said and stuck out his hand. “I am Captain Harry Burkhardt, and I am going to give you a tour the like of which you have never seen.”
I shook his hand, and wondered what we had walked into.
Tomorrow: Walnut and Brass
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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