Welcome to the new Full Fathom Five

(by Heather Hernandez, Technical Services Librarian) 

Welcome to the new home of Full Fathom Five: Down Deep in the Collections.

Our blog was previously hosted on the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park website, with the posts mirrored at MaritimeCompass for enhanced functionality. Now we are offering even greater functionality; in addition to an rss feed and full-featured commenting, you can subscribe to our blog via email and easily share via multiple sites.

From the first post to appear on Full Fathom Five:

When Shakespeare has Ariel sing this song in Act 1, scene ii of The Tempest, he sings of transformation--of the ordinary becoming something beautiful at the end of its life:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rare and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-Dong.
Hark! now I hear them -- Ding-dong, bell.

Here in the Collections Department at San Francisco Maritime, what we collect, preserve and make available were often ordinary objects at the ends of their useful lives--sometimes, literally, from "full fathom five," in the case of objects retrieved from shipwrecks. Through our care, we give them new life as museum collections, and we help them to emerge into exhibits and into the arena of research, study, and enjoyment.

Join us in our journey, deep in the collections, through the rich and strange.