These records are found in the online catalog of The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia. Uncurated search results are presented to give researchers and interested readers an idea of whether the museum’s archives contain information about this vessel and whether it may be worthwhile to visit the museum’s catalog search page for further investigation. Uncurated results may be inaccurate or incomplete.
Mariners' Museum online catalog search, August 11, 2026. Search mode: exact vessel-name variants.
Use these buttons to send uncurated search results to your own app or text document for further research. First, check the box for any row, or click "Select All" then uncheck any rows. Then click "Show Selections". You can then copy your selections from the text box and past them into your app.
Fetch?
Row ID
Media
Date
Vessel
Place
Related Places
Inscription/Marks
Subject
Notes
Archive Number
1
12/2/1944
Shows WAC officers in uniform posing in several rows for a group portrait. Marked as the HRPE Gym in the index.
SHORT DESCRIPTION: [Morzer Bruyns, 1995] Ship’s chronometer, made by George MARGETTS (*1748+1804) of London, in its original wooden box of which the glass observation top is missing. According to the Object file this chronometer belonged to Captain LIBBY of the ship ORION. [Jonathan Betts, 2002] BOX/MOUNTING: Plain, square mahogany box of open-dovetailed construction, 17.8cms high, 23.1cms wide and 21.6cms deep with a low mahogany top with mahogany lid opening to reveal a glazed panel for viewing the dial. The lid and top have plain brass hinges and the lid once had some form of cord or chain attached to a loop, still present inside, to hold the lid open at 90 degrees. The box has brass drop handles to sides and a brass 'keyhole' escutcheon for the lock on the front. The lower box is green baize-lined, as are the sides in the top. The movement is mounted in a straight sided brass canister with a counterweight fitted inside and a fixed, turned brass moulding around the base. There are four pairs of plugged holes around the underside of the base of the canister, each marked from AI@ to AIIII@. The nicely shaped, brass bezel, has a (original?) convex glass over the dial. The bezel is a push-fit over the canister, fixed with screws on the right and left hand sides. Plugged holes disclose that originally it was fixed by screws at the "10 o'clock" and "4 o'clock" positions but was subsequently moved round. The canister is mounted in a brass gimbal ring of square section but with the upper/inner edge hollowed in cross section. The gimbal ring has plugged holes down onto its upper surface at the "2 o'clock" and "8 o'clock" positions. It is pivoted on screws directly fixed into the wood of the sides of the box, the canister being pivoted at the XII and VI o'clock positions in the ring. There is a diagonal gimbal bolt, mounted in the back right-hand corner of the box, which runs through the ring and into a brass tube fixed to the side of the canister. The back left-hand corner of the box has a shelf for the later, replacement winding key. The brass edge has 2 fixed pins locating in half notches in the canister and one screw fixes the brass edge (and the movement) through the side of the canister on the left hand side. There are no winding holes through the dial or back, winding is solely perfomed with Margetts side-winding on the right hand side of the canister. DIAL & HANDS: Flat, circular-grained, silvered brass dial of 117.5 mms dia., signed above center: AGEO.E MARGETTS / LONDON / Invt.@ and: ANo.11" within seconds dial. The main dial has roman numerals and arabic five-minute figures. The seconds in the lower part of the dial has arabic numerals every 10 seconds. Blued steel hands, the hour hand with a diamond-shaped pointer, the minute hand a plain poker and the plain pointer seconds hand with a counter weighted tail. The dial is fixed to the brass edge with two steel screws at >IX= and >III=. The back of the dial has the pencilled inscription: AJ F Byrnes 248 Bway So Boston July 11 1933 Ouder (?)@. The underside of the brass edge is scratched: AN XI@. MOVEMENT: Early one-day full plate type, fusee movement with four nicely shaped steel baluster pillars (typical of Margetts), screwed to pillar plate and pinned to the potence plate. The plates are generally quite smoothly finished, including the underside of the pillar plate. Conventional four wheel train plus great wheel, the numbers on wheels and pinions all high. The pillar plate has sighting holes for checking the meshing for centre/third wheels and third/fourth wheels. The inside of the pillar plate is scratched: A12" and on the underside: AN11". There are a group of three plugged holes (one screw and two steady pin holes probably) and another single plugged hole, next to the escapement. The fusee has conventional stopwork, a fully developed Harrison=s maintaining power and Margetts= side winding mechanism attached to the edge of the potence plate. The lower end of the fusee arbor has a square on it and the brass edge, upon which is mounted the silvered dial, is pierced for the square, but the silvered dial has never had a hole for winding. The white steel mainspring, which has had the outer end re-hooked at some stage, is unsigned. The set-up is under the dial. ESCAPEMENT, BALANCE & SPRING AND JEWELLING: Earnshaw type spring detent escapement with long steel spring foot-detent mounted on the potence plate and having a long gold passing spring and jewelled locking stone, banking on a brass piece on the potence plate with a horizontal brass adjusting screw.Jewelled impulse pallet set in a conventional circular steel roller and a jewelled discharging pallet. The relatively light Earnshaw-type compensation balance has fine bimetal rims with the brass element apparently fused to the steel, with two steel mean time screws at the end of the steel arms and two small brass compensation weights screw-clamped on the rims. The blued steel helical balance spring has a terminal on the lower end but is pinned straight into the thick brass stud mounted on the top of the balance cock. The stud also has a screw and steady hole on its front for a concentric clamp to attach the upper terminal of a balance spring. The only jewels in the movement are on the escapement and the pivots of the balance and escape wheel, the latter having only holes, no endstones. The movement could never have had Margetts= rotating agate endstone, which employed a balance run between the plates, and there are no signs that it ever had a remontoire, nor that any of the pivot holes was ever in one of his special alloys. ALTERATIONS/CONDITION: The timekeeper bears the signs of a number of alterations, all probably by Margetts himself early in the timekeeper's life. The box almost certainly dates from around 1800 and the evidence on the canister suggests that originally the movement with its canister was designed as a "stand alone" instrument with four small feet on the base. Quite a number of Margetts marine chronometers survive, but very few with what could be an original box with gimbals. Those that do survive with an apparently original box seem all to be from his later production in the late 1790s, early 1800s. This supports the theory that his early marines (those with side winding) up to about No.150, may not originally have been intended to be mounted in gimbals in a wooden box. The chronometer would then have been updated with gimbals, counterweight in the canister, and box, in about 1800 once Earnshaw had shown this feature to be essential. The box would originally probably have had a circular, open "porthole" under the lid , and the gimbals and bezel of the canister would have been secured with swivelling "tabs", turning out from blocks in the back right and front left corners of the box (plugged holes for stop pins on the gimbal ring still present). Then perhaps about 1815 the present gimbal lock, baize lining to the inside and the standard lid with square viewing panel were all fitted. The silvered brass dial is almost certainly an early replacement of a white enamel dial, which seem to have been standard for Margetts early marine chronometers (though never normally pierced for a winding hole). If cracked and damaged these enamel dials were almost impossible to repair and this dial was probably replaced for that reason at the time of the first "upgrade" in c.1800. The presence of holes for a piece attached under the balance, next the escapement, are difficult to explain; it is unlikely at this date Margetts would originally have fitted a pivoted detent escapement. The second stud attachment on the balance cock is equally interesting. Margetts chronometer No.29 actually has two helical balance springs, one inside the other, presumably as an attempt to improve performance and adjustability, and it is possible that No.11 also once had this feature, having both springs replaced with the present single one. The general condition of the instrument is sound. The cord/chain to hold the lid open is missing, as is the glass in the top. The dial has a rather coarse graining which is probably the result of a later resilvering. The mainspring is very tired, only opening out to about 50% beyond the barrel diameter. The side winding wheel has had a new half fitted against the wheel to replace those teeth which were very worn, and the click and spring on that wheel have been moved round by 180 degrees. PROVENANCE, ACQUISITION & NOTES: The chronometer was once the property of Captain Henry Libby of the merchant ship Orion. Libby (spelt "Libbey" in Matthews REF) was a noted merchant marine master, commanding, apart from the Orion, Sabine, Kate Prince and the new ships Triumphant and later the bark Furness Abbey. In 1877, when Captain of Triumphant, Libby bravely rescued a British schooner in distress when rounding Cape Horn. As this chronometer was Libby's property it may well have served with him on all of the ships he mastered. The chronometer was acquired by Frederick Hill from in 1934. In spite of a few changes by its maker, this is a very original and typical example of an early chronometer by Margetts and is an historically important piece. TIME-SPACE: 1790-1810. NOTES: [Jeanne Willoz-Egnor, June 25, 2018] The chronometer was purchased by Earle B. Smith, one of the Museum’s buyers, in New England in 1934 for $110.00. The buyer’s sheet bears the remarks “said to have been owned by Captain Libbey of ship Orion.” Henry Libbey (about 1829- January 22, 1880) was captain of the ship Orion between 1858 and 1863. The Orion was built in 1856 in East Boston by P. Curtis. It was owned by S. Hooper & Company and traveled on the Boston to Liverpool route. Libbey was also captain of the ships Kate Prince (1867) [captain from 1864-1871; in 1866 his wife Anna may have been with him because the 1870 census indicates that their son, Henry Libbey, Jr. was born in Calcutta] and Triumphant (1874) [captain from January 16, 1874 to 1880]. Between 1870 and 1874 Libbey was running the family glass manufactory. According to Frederick C. Matthews in American Merchant Ships 1850-1900 (pages 328-329) Captain Henry Libbey, formerly master of the ships Sabine [a man named Libbey was captain between 1852 and 1855 but the American registers don’t go back this far, found the information in newspapers], Orion and Kate Prince, took command of the Triumphant when new [January 16, 1874] and after making four round voyages, bought the new bark Furness Abbey [the registers do not bear this out, American Lloyds says W. Libbey was captain]. On his momentous passage around Cape Horn in the Triumphant, in 1877, Captain Libbey had fallen in with the very small schooner Feles [British, according to the Shipping and Merchant Gazette dated September 24, 1877, Lloyd’s List and the West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser the ship was named Felis], when off Cape St. John [Cape Saint John] [according to the Shipping and Merchant Gazette dated September 24, 1877 the ship was off Cape San Diego-entrances of the Straits of Le Maire]. The schooner was flying distress signals and when the Triumphant was hove to and a boat sent to her, it was found that she belonged to Port Stanley, wither she was bound from West Falkland, with a cargo of hides and seven passengers, mostly women and children. She had been 21 days at sea, blown out of her course, with the loss of her principle sails, was leaking badly, besides being entirely out of fresh water and provisions. One woman passenger in despair had jumped overboard and drowned. The Captain had no chart and no instruments to allow him to find his position. There were 12 people in all on board the schooner, which it did not seem possible to have kept afloat much longer, but none asked to be taken off, so after Captain Libbey had supplied all their needs, including a chart, both vessels proceeded on their way. He was subsequently awarded a handsome pair of binoculars, by the British Government, in acknowledgement of his humane conduct. Text from the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, September 24, 1877: San Francisco—Sept. 3: The Triumphant, Libbey, arrived here from Liverpool, reports that on June 21, Cape San Diego (entrance of the Straits of Le Maire) bearing SSE, distant 14 miles, she fell in with a small schooner, the Felis, of Port Stanley, with signals of distress flying. The master reported having sailed 21 days previously from a small port in the West Falklands for Port Stanley, with seven passengers (mostly women and children), and a cargo of hides; that the vessel had been blown off to sea with loss of her best sails, was leaking badly, out of water and provisions, and without a chart or means of fixing the vessel’s position; supplied her with stores and water, a chart, and whatever the master required; one woman had jumped overboard and was lost, and there were 12 people then on board, but no one asked to be taken off. On the 24th of June 24 miles south of Cape Horn, the wind rapidly increased to a strong gale, and continued blowing with great violence between WNW and SW till noon of the 29th; whilst lying to on the night of the 28th, was struck by a heavy sea, which sprung bowsprit, foretopmast, and topgallantmast, and did other damage to spars and sails. In the morning found the deck and topside seams opened forward and about the channels, and the ship making a considerable quantity of water. Notes: • The registers show the captain’s name spelled multiple ways: o Libby o Libbey o Libby, H. o Libbey, Henry • According to the history printed in Libbey Glass by Carl U. Fauster Henry Libbey died on January 22, 1880 while serving as captain of Triumphant and was buried in Japan. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: See Mercer p. 198 and object file. TONY MERCER, CHRONOMETER MAKERS OF THE WORLD, COLCHESTER, 1991.
