| Feb 20, 2024 |
Added the book; "Oceanographic ships, Fore and Aft" to the
Books and Technical Papers section. This book gives surprising insite to the massive numbers of
survey ships that existed up through 1971. The "Triplets" are mentioned of course, but are only 3 amongst dozens of others!! An interesting read! Submitted by Bob Lord. |
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| Feb 11, 2024 | Updated the Bowditch Crew Portraits with Scott Natte's crew photo from 1983. Also added Scott to the Crew Member Portraits and the Photo Galleries. |
| May 24, 2023 | Updated Fred Martin's entry on the TAGS Ship Crew Roster. |
| Sept 10, 2023 |
Updated the TAGS Ship Photo Gallery Directory with a photo of Captain Bondeson. Added a Master's Brass Nameplate picture to Captain Bondeson's photo essay page |
| May 24, 2023 | Warren Rodie, Michael Lopes, and Mike Fitzherbert added to the TAGS Ship Crew Roster. |
| December 23, 2022 | Updated the TAGS Ship Crew Roster. |
| November 30, 2022 | Corrected some format errors in the TAGS Ship Crew Roster. |
| November 2, 2022 | Two photos added of Michelson at Bergen and one of Bowditch at Southampton. These can be found in the Michelson and Bowditch Ship's Portraits pages. Also, added an article from a Coast Guard magazine with a photo showing MSTS Captain Landry recieving an award for the SS Grand rescue. Landry was Michelson's master at the time of the rescue. |
| October 30, 2022 | Updated the TAGS Ship Crew Roster based on recent postings to the Guest Log. |
| October 15, 2022 | Updated the TAGS Postal History page. |
| July 30, 2022 | A photo of General Instruments tech rep Mike Rizzo and his canine friend added to Crewmwmember Portraits. Thanks to Bowditch photographer Steve Bevacqua (1983) for sharing this. |
| July 21, 2022 | Another photo added to Dutton Ship's Portraits. Dated July 29, 1976, inscribed "Seattle Ship File" and "Official Navy Photograph" on back." Description taped to back reads "USNS Dutton as seen from lifeboat during drills at sea." Purchased on Ebay by John Hansen 7/2022. A different undated and unidentified copy of this photo was posted here earlier. |  |
| July 9, 2022 | Another Dutton cover added to the TAGS postal history page. Naval covers are envelopes, or sometimes postal cards, postmarked aboard ship. Some have a cachet, an imprinted image or rubber stamped design, to create an interesting postal souvenir. We now have images of eight Bowditch covers, 20 from Dutton, three from Michelson and seven postmarked aboard H. H. Hess. |
| July 4, 2022 | While Bowditch was in drydock at Falmouth, Cornwall during December 1971 and January 1972 the OcUnit crew was housed in a seaside hotel. Photos from their stay are presented in a new photoscroll. These pictures are extracted from the original Bowditch cruise books contributed by Bob Lord. See more at Full Screen Photo Scrolls. |
| June 7, 2022 |
Former Bunker-Ramo rep Bob Lord contributed his collection of
original Bowditch cruise book paste-ups from the early 1970s.
The photos in these are now being scanned, enlarged and added to
the
Full Screen Photo Scrolls. While these cruise books contain whimsical comments and captions that are nearly incomprehensible today, the photos convey a marvelous picture of life aboard ship and in port. Images of the entire cruise book pages appear in the Bowditch Ship's Newspapers section. |
| June 5, 2022 | Added photos to the Bowditch and H. H. Hess Ship Portrait pages. Bowditch is seen at Rio in 1985-86 and Bowditch at Liverpool in an undated photo. Also, more photos added to the Victory Ship Photo Gallery. |
| May 20, 2022 | More photos added to Michelson's Ship Portraits. Also, Top of the World, a new page featuring Navy cruise certificates (Bluenose, Shellback, etc.), awarded to sailors at memorable milestones during their wide ranging travels. |
| May 10, 2022 | Commentaries, Reminiscences and Sea Stories have been updated and reformatted. |
| May 6, 2022 | More photos of the ship added to Dutton Portraits, including two of SS Tuskegee Victory, Dutton's originsl incarnation. Article about the Seagoing Cowboys added to Bowditch Early Operations. As SS South Bend Victory, the ship transported live cattle to Europe in 1946-47. |
| April 30, 2022 | The Crew Roster has been corrected and updated from Guest Log entries. |
| April 21, 2022 | The Memorabilia pages have been reformatted. Memories of SS Joliet Victory updated with wartime action reports and a 1953 crew manifest. |
| April 16, 2022 | Four "Bowditch Spitoon" cruise books from 1978 were added to our collection of nautical newspapers. |
| April 10, 2022 | Full Screen Photoscrolls and the landing (index) page have been reformatted as part of an effort to make the site look better on tablet (iPad) devices. |
| March 18, 2022 | Headshots (crewmember portraits) has been reformatted and photos added. Guest Log reformatted. |
| March 13, 2022 | All of the Ship's Newspapers and Cruise Books have been reworked in a new format with an updated document viewer. These are now easier to page through and feature a zoom in magnification on hover. |
| February 20, 2022 | Reformatting of all of the Photo and Photo Essay Galleries is now complete. Images are now arranged in a mosaic grid format and open in a lightbox effect. Also, the Commentaries and Memorabilia pages have been reworked. |
| January 22, 2022 | Full Screen Photoscrolls are being added to the site. These collections of pictures can be viewed using the scroll wheel on a mouse or the "two finger gesture" on a laptop trackpad. |
| December 27, 2021 | Crew Roster updated. |
| December 10, 2021 | Added a page of Ship's Drawings. These are USNS Dutton's blueprints when converted to a survey ship in 1958, rendered in black and white. |
| November 30, 2021 | Installed a new File Uploader. Visitors may now add comments to their submissions of files, photos, videos and sea stories. |
| November 11, 2021 | More naval covers (postmarked stamped envelopes) added to the TAGS Postal History page. |
| October 31, 2021 |
More ship's portraits added of USNS Dutton and USNS H. H. Hess. |
| October 1, 2021 |
A photo of Bowditch docked at Bremerhaven added to the ship's
portraits. This one pictures the ship tied up starboard side to,
with a dozen 20 foot United States Lines shipping containers and
three old style (pre-container) cranes on the pier. Photo
purchased from a seller in Berlin on Ebay. |
| September 1, 2021 | Another photo added to the Bowditch Ship's Portraits page, an unusual stern port quarter view. This is from a color slide for sale on Ebay, taken at an unidentified foreign port. |  |
| August 20, 2021 | Added a new page, Memories of SS Joliet Victory. More photos added to the Victory Ship Photo Gallery. |
| July 23, 2021 | Four more Dutton covers added to the TAGS Ship Cover page. This is postal history stuff, images of envelopes and postal cards postmarked aboard ship. |
| July 9, 2021 | More names added to the Crew Roster. |
| July 6, 2021 | More 1970-71 Dutton photos added to the Ship's Portrait page and to Channing Zucker's Photo Gallery. |
| June 22, 2021 | Photos and images on the Systems and Equipment page now open in "lightbox" format. Internal and external links corrected. |
| June 17, 2021 | Three editions of the Dutton Digest and three Dutton Familygrams from 1970-71 have been added to the Ship's Newspapers. Opened a new Photo Gallery page for Channing Zucker. |
| June 10, 2021 | Commentaries, Reminicences and Sea Stories have been reformatted and new material added. |
| June 3, 2021 |
Carl
Friberg was first mate aboard Dutton in 1970-71. When he posted
this photo in 2007 he had forgotten who was in the picture with
him, taken in the pilot house. Carl is on the
left , LCDR Channing Zucker, OcUnit 2 CO, is in the center and
John J. Cullen, the ship's Master, is at the right. Thanks to Channing Zucker for the update. |
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| May 31, 2021 |
Ron Walker contributed more Dutton photos to his
Photo Gallery. |
| May 16, 2021 |
More pictures added to Bill Truslow's
photo gallery. |
| May 7, 2021 | More photos added to the Victory Ship Photo Gallery. |
| April 26, 2021 |
More TAGS ship covers (postmarked aboard ship) added to
our postal history
(Naval Ship Covers) page. |
| April 17, 2021 |
Two more names added to the
Crew Roster. Thanks to Bill Truslow for the updates. |
| March 15, 2021 |
More photos added to the
Victory Ship photo gallery. |
| March 9, 2021 |
The punched paper tape that was used to boot the
Bowditch SASS array sonar's CP-677 computer now scrolls across
this website's index (landing) page. It resided in Christine
Headley's desk drawer for 42 years until recently. |
| February 17, 2021 |
Added a
Victory Ship photo gallery with images of 70+ VC2 class
vessels. |
| February 14, 2021 |
Dutton and Michelson ship's movements pages updated. |
| February 13, 2021 |
A new posting in the blog
En Visita de Cortesia
tells about the Sea Cowboys. The
SS South Bend Victory (later USNS Bowditch) and other
vessels transported cattle, horses, chickens, goats and rabbits
from the US to European countries in the days after WW II. |
| February 11, 2021 |
Posted
under
Bowditch Newspaper Articles is a item from La Guardia
Espanola of December 31, 1967, reporting on a Barcelona
port visit by USNS Bowditch. The inaccurate and somewhat amusing
story claims that the crew wore "helmets demagnetized to avoid
disturbances in the trajectories of the Polaris missiles".
Perhaps this was an early tin foil hat conspiracy! Thanks to Antoni Casinos for sending this along to us. |
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| February 9, 2021 |
Images of the AN/UYK-1 computer logand cards added to
the
systems & equipment page. Thanks to Phil Brooks for sending
these. |
| January 31, 2021 |
A new
photo gallery for 27 Bowditch photos contributed by David
Crestin along with four issues of the Bowditch Surveyor from 1965 added to
the Bowditch
ship's newspapers page. |
| January 26, 2021 | Phil Brooks sailed aboard both Michelson and Dutton. A photo of his custom made TAGS ship hats can be seen on his memorabilia page. |
| January 18, 2021 | Three photos added to the Dutton ship's portraits pages. |
| January 3, 2021 |
Two photos added to the Bowditch and Dutton ship's portraits
pages. |
| January 1, 2021 |
Reworked the
naval ship covers page, fixing the goofed up image
magification. Added five more covers (envelopes) postmarked
aboard TAGS ships. Added note about Michelson covers being
postmarked at a landlocked Pennsylvania Navy supply center. |
| December 19, 2020 | Added to Flotsam & Jetsam, some screen grabs from the 1958 movie The Decks Ran Red, filmed aboard an operating Liberty ship. |
| December 15, 2020 | Three more naval ship covers added. These are interesting postal souvenirs documenting the TAGS ships' movements worldwide. |
| December 11, 2020 |
More updates to the
crew roster and more
headshots added. |
| November 29, 2020 |
More pictures added to Bill Truslow's
photo gallery and
memorabilia page. |
| November 15, 2020 |
Added another
photo of
Bowditch and a new item to Ron Walker's
memorabilia page. |
| November 8, 2020 |
Bowditch, Dutton and H. H. Hess ship's movement pages updated. Thanks to
Bill Truslow. |
| October 26, 2020 |
Crew roster updated. |
| October 24, 2020 | An excellent photo of Captain Bondeson in dress uniform aboard Michelson and some news clippings in a new photo gallery. Thanks to Constance Niclas. |
| October 19, 2020 | New items added to Bill Truslow's memorabilia page and Bill and Ron Walker's photo gallery pages. |
| October 7, 2020 | Reworked and expanded the Systems and Equipment section. |
| October 2, 2020 | Fixed broken links in List of Contributors. |
| September 29, 2020 | Added a newly discovered photo of SS Tuskegee Victory at Antwerp and two 1964 photos of Michelson at Port Canaveral in Ship's Portraits. |
| September 20, 2020 | Crew roster updated. There are now more than 1500 shipmates listed. |
| September 7, 2020 | Bowditch, Dutton, Michelson and H. H. Hess ship portrait pages reformatted. |
| September 6, 2020 | Flotsam & Jetsam, a new section of miscellaneous maritime material added. Includes an intriguing piece called Who Really Discovered the Titanic by Dr. Paul Lee. |
| August 30, 2020 | Bowditch, Dutton, Michelson and H. H. Hess ship's movement pages reformatted and updated. |
| August 28, 2020 | NAVOCEANO Bulletins added to reformatted Newpaper Articles pages. |
| August 24, 2020 | H. H. Hess ship's newspaper page added. BoWatch from October 1981, February 1982 and July 1982 furnished by Bill Truslow. |
| August 14, 2020 | Bowditch Spitoon from February 1982, March, April, May and August 1983 and December 1984 were added to the ship's newspapers. Thanks to Bill Truslow for sending them. |
| August 12, 2020 | Crew roster updated. There are now more than 1400 shipmates listed. |
| August 8, 2020 | A new article about the Victory Ship Electrical System. |
| July 29, 2020 | Some nice comments in the guest log about Captain Bondeson, master of USNS Michelson and and USNS Bowditch during the 1960s from persons who knew him. A biographical article about the captain can be found here. |
| July 26, 2020 | A new article about the Victory Ship steering system. |
| July 24, 2020 |
Crew roster updated. |
| July 23, 2020 | Links to information on the Bendix G-15 computer added to the Equipment and Systems page. Thanks to Phil Brooks for the links. |
| July 16, 2020 | Added an extended version of Michelson at Sea video by Phil Brooks. |
| July 9, 2020 |
A new article about
Victory Ship propulsion. |
| July 5, 2020 |
Memorabilia page for
USNS H. H. Hess added as well as
new photos in the ship portrait page. |
| July 2, 2020 |
The communications equipment installed in NIC c. early
1970s is
identified here. |
| May 30, 2020 |
A page of
Naval Ship Covers added. Not a sailor's white hat, a naval
cover is an envelope or post card postmarked and mailed aboard
ship. These sometime have a cachet, a printed or rubber
stamped image. |
| May 28, 2020 | Bowditch cruise books from October 1972 and June 1976 were added. Thanks to Bob Lord for sending them. |
