Where better for a maritime history museum than here? Alaska, that is, with a coastline measuring 33,000 miles according to the Alaska Coastal Management Program. In fact, by ACMP's calculations, if you walked 1,000 miles a year, it would take 44 years to cover the state's shores with your footprints.
Photo by McKibben Jackinsky
Photo by McKibben Jackinsky; Homer News
Michael Neece, president of Alaska Maritme Museum Inc., displays his shipwright skills during Sea Fair.
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In terms of history, Alaska's connection with the sea stretches back hundreds, if not thousands of years and includes some eye-raising events.
For instance, the Alaska Historical Society reports the last shot of the Civil War was fired from the Confederate raider Shenandoah on the Bering Sea. What the crew aboard the Shenandoah didn't know was that the war was officially over.
To put a finer point on an Alaska maritime history museum, Homer is the place of choice to highlight a history that spans bidarkas to super tankers, at least in the eyes of Michael Neece, president of Alaska Maritime Museum, Inc.
"Through talking to various other museums, they agree that for a maritime museum, Homer is one of the best places in the state of Alaska," Neece said.
In the process of getting its official non-profit status, the Alaska Maritime Museum's stated mission is "to interpret, educate and inspire by collecting, preserving and restoring treasures from Alaska's rich and diverse maritime heritage for the benefit of future generations."
"This represents our past. It's a gift we give our children in the future," Neece said. "That's what the maritime museum is about."
Currently, plans call for a main exhibition hall with an attached convention or multi-media theater situated in Homer's Town Square area.
Groundbreaking for that first building is tentatively scheduled for 2009. A second building will be located near Homer's boat harbor and will focus on Homer's active waterfront, while a third building will house a collection of wooden boats, boatbuilding and design schools.
The idea for the maritime museum came to Neece after he'd spent 14 years developing a film school and then lost everything he had to fire and theft. Taking stock of his life, Neece recognized what he did possess: a personal history of being a shipwright and working on wooden boats, a love of history and, the more he explored, a growing network of mariner acquaintances who shared with him their experiences and adventures at sea.
Among them was Karl Schoeppe, who grew up fishing in Southeast Alaska and spent 33 years as an officer with the Alaska Marine Highway System.
"We started talking history and that really kicked it off," Neece said of the beginning inspiration to develop the museum.
Neece's connection to the sea is evident in other areas of his life, as well. He was one of the founding members of Cook Inletkeeper and was on the Alaska SeaLife Center's original board of directors.
A Web site alaskamaritimemuseum.org will be in place by this fall. It provides a place for Neece to store the growing body of material on Alaska's maritime legacy that he is finding in museums around the world. It also will be a place where viewers can be involved with what they see.
"If you look at museum sites, most don't move and are interactive to a point," Neece said.
"This will be interactive with movies, history, virtual things on there so kids can play as captain of a sailing ship or a modern commercial vessel."
Neece is receiving a growing interest from individuals wanting to serve on the museum's boards of directors.
"The museum will have two boards of directors, an advisory board and an actual (working) board," he said. "The advisory board will have 12 people; the actual board that runs the day-to-day operations will have nine."
Business plans from other museums are helping Neece identify avenues to minimize federal and state funding of the museum. Developing a maritime school is one of those avenues.
"It could be something between AVTEC, the university system and ourselves, to bring a program to fruition where we actually have a merchant seaman program in the area," he said.
Donation jars will be going up around town in the next week or so. This fall, Neece is planning to organize fund-raising events. Anyone wanting to donate or know more about the Alaska Maritime Museum can contact Neece at P.O. Box 2403, Homer, AK 99603.
"I just want people to think about the history of Alaska," he said, adding that the stories of Alaska's connection to the sea are "a lot of little wonderful gems, scattered like grains of gold that need to all be brought together. That's what I'm hoping to do with this."
McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jackinsky@homernews.com.
