I hope Carl and Mike don't mind me posting this....
About 5 years ago a friend of mine passed away. His name was Walter. He was an avid Civil War collector and super enthusiast. Great guy. He was also an extremely gifted machinist. Walter had a full- on, envy of everyone who ever saw it, machine shop, and he chose to spend his time making displays for the CW museum in Plymouth, NC. That is where the ironclad, CSS Albemarle was sunk by a spar torpedo in 1864. His work still is displayed there in interpretive displays. It takes a volunteer like Walter to help a small town museum stand out and educate those who go there and view his work. So, the museum is obviously all about the Albemarle and it's sinking, and torpedoes....
So when Walter passed away, his widow had me come up and I helped her sort out his collection and sell off what we could. And at the time, a friend of mine and myself were working on plans to open up a donations at the door type museum in downtown Wilmington, NC . So, I bought all his full size replica torpedo's from her that he had at the house to display in our hopefully someday museum to house my friend and my large collections in a former foundry building, that actually made shells for Fort Fisher during the war, called the Wilmington Iron Works. It was owned by a friend of mine who liked our plan and we were working out the details - it would have been the perfect setting for our collections, in an 1850's building dripping with history. Still had all the leather belt drive system in the exposed ceiling that powered the equipment, just throw a lever and cog in whatever piece of machinery you need to run. Super cool to see still up and running into the 1990's.
Anyway, my friend that owned the building, met his demise by his 'off her medication' wife and a handgun on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Sad... very sad.. Anyway, the building got all caught up in estates and legal wrangling, and obviously we didn't get our space to display our collections, including these torpedoes.
So, I have had these torpedoes sitting in a storage unit for awhile now, and I definitely don't have room to display them at my home. These are all full size, and have display stands and interpretive write ups on most of them. I have a beautiful copper spar torpedo, a wood keg torpedo, a sway torpedo, a demijohn torpedo and a whole bunch more little stuff, including Walters power point presentation on them and more. I can't think of all there is now, but those are the big things.
So, I am asking you guys if you know any museum that would like to purchase a good quantity of wonderful full size descriptive torpedoe items, with all their display stands and such. I say purchase, because I am in no way able to just donate them. Sorry, I am not financially in that position. I have way over 2 K invested, much more, but I'll take $1000. I'll take a hit to help some museum out to keep Walters dream alive of educating the public, and sharing knowledge. He'd like that.
If anyone can help, or has an idea or a contact, please call me at 910 540 6540 I can get pictures to you and more info. Thanks for reading this !! David
