(gentle music) - [Alan] There are large ships of war here that were engaged in conflicts around the globe.

You can take a closeup look at a model that was used in the making of a famous movie and we'll discover an old carriage that was used by one of Rhode Island's most prominent families.

This is "Treasures Inside the Museum."

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues) (dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) Just north of the Braga Bridge in Fall River, Massachusetts, is a small fleet of naval vessels that serve as part memorial and part museum.

The guns are now silent but the stories here still echo across the decks.

Visitors can learn about the Cuban Missile Crisis on a destroyer that was there.

Explore a World War II era submarine and peek inside a Soviet-built missile corvette.

(dramatic music) At the center of it all is the battleship Massachusetts.

(gentle music) - Massachusetts was built in Quincy, Massachusetts, right up the street at the former Fore River Shipyard.

She did her shakedown cruise between here in Virginia and Casco Bay, Maine.

And then she went overseas to the, the invasion of North Africa was at that point the biggest naval armada assembled to date.

It was the job of the Massachusetts and the other ship she was with to protect the invading troops.

And they did deploy and the ship engaged for a good part of the day.

And then she came back, did a brief overhaul at Boston Navy Yard and thereafter spent the rest of the war in the Pacific.

(dark tense music) We would consider this a treasure because it's an icon of of a time past, most significantly a memorial to those who served.

And we have her here, right here in our backyard if you will, in terms of the, you know, Massachusetts we call it the South Coast.

We're right next to Rhode Island and people come from miles away.

They're fascinated by, you know, the magnificence of the ship herself, and the size but also about the stories.

- Our emphasis is really on telling the story of veterans who served in all wars but particularly World War II, Korea, Vietnam and even the Gulf War for which we are the official state memorial for those killed in action.

So aboard the Massachusetts, you will find the memorial to those killed from the state in World War II.

You will also find the memorial to those killed in the first Gulf War.

And aboard the Joseph P. Kennedy, our destroyer, you will find the memorials to those killed in action in Korea and Vietnam.

- [Alan] Below the decks, you can explore how the sailors lived.

Check out their sleeping quarters and see an example of damage done by an enemy shell.

- This is a piece of deck plating cut out for this particular exhibit to demonstrate the one of the three hits that the ship sustained during the Battle of Casablanca.

This was caused by an eight-inch shell, penetrated the deck above, hit the deck here, exploded, created enormous shrapnel damage.

You can see the repairs that were made by the ship's crew where the shrapnel either went right through these bulkheads or wiped them out, you know, wiped out these specific areas completely.

It's a true indication of the ferocity of war.

This is steel.

The other significant part of this damage is that this is armored plate, and as you can see it didn't do much to stop this shell when it came from above.

- [Alan] Also inside the ship is a museum area with exhibits that chronicle World War II, both at home and overseas.

One of the biggest treasures is this flag which flew over the ship as it saw its first action off the coast of Africa.

- This is the Battle of Casablanca battle flag.

It was flown during the Battle of Casablanca which was the ship's first major engagement.

It's significant because there is a hole in the lower third of the flag caused by an enemy's shell.

And thereafter, the ship, once the battle was completed the flag was hauled down, eventually made its way back to Boston.

It was up in the State House, I believe, for some number of years, and eventually presented to the battleship.

And we took steps a few years ago to preserve the flag properly in this case.

The fabric is over 80 years old now.

And you know, gravity has its effects and it's been stitched to a background here that will preserve the flag for years to come.

(pensive music) (pensive music continues) - [Alan] Preserving this flag is one way of keeping history alive, one way of passing these stories to a new generation and honoring those who have served to protect our freedoms.

Another type of conservation involves preserving the integrity of the ship itself.

She needs constant attention.

When the Massachusetts was originally decommissioned by the Navy, some critical equipment was removed and used on other ships.

Now the staff here looks to other ships being taken out of service to try and replace the missing pieces that would've been a part of this battleship in 1946 - The equipment of this room was used to remotely control the five-inch guns that are up on the super structure of the ship.

Those guns were used for surface fire and anti-aircraft fire.

What's significant in this room is that it these are analog computers.

Compared to what we have now, they're exponentially bigger.

They use dials or ramps and gears and all sorts of eccentric lobes to come up with a mathematical solution for firing a gun.

In this space, we are restoring it to what it was as to the extent that we can and the ability of the equipment.

There's a combination here of a computer and a gyroscope and it was repeated three more times.

Why is it important to do restoration?

Because we think it's important, Just like you watch "This Old House" and you see them restoring a house.

They examined the layers of paint.

They go down five layers of paint to see what the house was originally or what kind of wood or what kind of nails we use.

We do the same thing here.

We're interested in preserving the historic fabric of the ship, and it's important that we represent the ship the way it was to the extent that we can.

Again, things are getting hard to find now.

Now we have 3D printing technology to reproduce the parts we cannot get.

(gentle music) - [Alan] In addition to all of the military ships and history here, this campus is also home to a maritime museum.

Originally a separate entity, the Maritime Museum became a part of Battleship Cove in 2015.

The collection here sheds light on several disasters at sea and the local connection to a once thriving passenger service in the Northeast.

- This museum houses an amazing maritime collection to do with Fall River and the greater South Coast area including items from the White Star Line, the famous ship from that being the Titanic.

But it houses items from other ships within the White Star Line.

It also houses a lot of items to do with the Fall River Line, which was a coastal liner that ran between Fall River and Manhattan in the 1800s through the early 1900s.

(gentle upbeat music) These items in front of me and in the case below are all from the RMS Republic.

She stopped a lot in the Azores, in Italy, in Naples and brought a lot of immigrants over to this part of the country.

In 1909, however, she suffered, unfortunately.

a very similar fate to the Titanic.

This time not at the hands of an iceberg, but at the hands of another ship.

In a fog bank off Nantucket, she was hit by the SS Florida, T-boned, and it ended up sinking.

She was lost until the 1980s when her wreck was found in 1981 off Nantucket.

And when they found her wreck, divers started up, bringing up some of the artifacts from the ship including the ones we have in this case here.

So she was a beautiful liner.

She was a luxurious ship known as one of the millionaire ships.

She took a lot of millionaires from this part of the country over to vacations in the Med.

And so the furnishings that have come out of that wreck really reflect some of the opulence of that ship, including this beautiful plate which has the White Star Line logo right in the middle.

It's a very simple plate but it's gorgeous and it's beautifully made.

This came out of the wreck.

Some of the more ship fabric related items that came out of the wreck is a porthole here, which is large, heavy.

You can see the damage to the glass.

It was quite a violent collision between the two ships.

The Florida's bow was crushed all the way to a collision bulkhead, and she did, the Florida did come back and was repaired but the Republic sank.

We also have some pulleys.

This would've been used for various line aboard the ship, most likely not lifeboats but something smaller in the rigging.

(dramatic music) A lot of the things that have been brought out of the shipwreck are ceramic or porcelain.

We have things such as a teapot that were recovered from the wreck.

There's even buttons off of a uniform from the White Star Line, which just, they're a small item but they really show you the human side of something like this.

Even though we're more than 100 years removed that there were people aboard who were scared, those who died.

This is just a little bit of an item that reminds you about that human side of the story.

We also have more interesting things such as the chamber pot that was removed and then coffee cups and floor tiles.

So these items come from all areas of the ship and kind of help tell a complete story of what happened to this liner.

The Republic sinking is very interesting when you look at the history of the White Star Line and liners in this period.

She, like Titanic, didn't have that many lifeboats.

At this period, the ships making that trans-Atlantic route didn't carry a lot of lifeboats because lifeboats weren't meant to put all of the passengers and crew aboard.

They were meant to ferry people from a sinking ship or a distress ship to another ship.

So you didn't need a full thing of lifeboats on the ship.

She was able, Republic was able to signal distress.

She signaled the, at the time, one of the more common distress signals which is CQD for security distress.

And other ships were able to come to her aid and the Florida herself was actually able to take passengers off and her lifeboats were used for their exact intended purpose to bring passengers off of the Republic to the Florida or to other ships that responded and then they would go back and pick up more.

So she used her lifeboats the way that they intended at the time.

And she was able to stay afloat long enough to get everyone off with the exception of those six who were killed in the initial collision.

We now look at Titanic and we see where you were in the middle of the Atlantic.

If no one is able to respond to a ship sinking quickly where not having enough lifeboats becomes a huge detriment to the rescue efforts.

(bell clanging) - [Alan] The Titanic, of course, is perhaps the most infamous of all shipwrecks.

It's a disaster that no maritime museum can overlook.

And here in Fall River the exhibit includes a one of a kind treasure.

- This is our very large scale model of the Titanic that was actually used in the 1953 film of the same name.

It was built for the film.

It lights up as you can see, and it is the biggest model in our collection here at the Maritime Museum.

- [Alan] At 28 feet in length, this model is one of the largest of its type in the world that is dedicated to the subject.

- [Meghan] Titanic is always a very big draw with everyone.

There's a fascination around the ship and it's sinking.

So this model is very well known out there among Titanic enthusiasts.

And so we do get quite a few people who come to see it.

(gentle upbeat music) - [Alan] There are a number of other ship models at the museum including several that celebrate the history of the Fall River Line.

Beginning in 1947, a local businessman who had made his fortune in the textile industry started a steamship service between New York City and Fall River.

Passengers could connect to other destinations by train.

For more than 50 years, the service thrived as the steam ships were an important part of the transportation infrastructure in the Northeast.

- A large part of the collection in this maritime museum has to do with the coastal liners from the Fall River Line.

Most people think of the opulence that you see when you look at Titanic or those transatlantic liners, but there was an entire set of coastal liners, Fall River Line being famous here, that took passengers up and down the East Coast notably from Fall River to Manhattan and they were incredibly opulent.

You think about how much money went into the Titanic to build something like that.

And then the Fall River Line ships were just as opulent for such a short journey, just 8 1/2 hours at their fastest between Fall River and Manhattan.

And they've put so much emphasis on opulence on these ships.

You can look at some of our artifacts here and just see how beautifully crafted they are.

(gentle music) So here we have a collection of doorknobs and keys that came off of several Fall River Line ships and they are beautifully carved.

The attention to detail on them is impressive and they really speak to the golden age of ships and the Gilded Age that we know of in that early turn of the century through the 1920s.

We also have a boot scraper from a quarter deck of one of the ships that is brass and beautifully carved into the shape of a camel.

And this would be to clean your boots as you came aboard.

And again, such detail paid into such an everyday item really shows you the level of opulence on these Fall River Line ships.

(gentle upbeat music) So just like big transatlantic liners you got a variety of passengers on this ship from couples doing their honeymoon between Fall River and Manhattan, all the way up to those big famous names we know from the Gilded Age, the as the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, they would often take the Fall River Line between Manhattan and their summer homes up in Newport.

So you would get all of this great melting pot aboard these coastal liners going between New York and up here in the greater South Coast and Rhode Island area taking people from their homes or vacations in Manhattan to their homes or vacations up here.

So in the museum we have a full recreation of a state room aboard one on the Fall River Liners, complete with actual furnishings such as the bed that came off of some of those ships that were used by the Fall River Line.

We also have intricate carved newel posts that came off from the bottom of a staircase aboard one of the ships.

And then we have beautiful velvet chairs, needle pointed chairs that you can see that would've been used in some of these first class areas of the ship to show you just how much attention to detail and how much money went into furnishing these ships.

(gentle upbeat music) So the demise of these coastal liners had a lot to do with changing transportation in the United States, the increase in railroads.

So the railroad was able to go all the way from Boston to Manhattan.

And then as you're getting into the late '30s early '40s, car transportation is starting to pick up.

And today, the journey that we would do by car, in the early 1800s, the easiest and the fastest way really to do that would've been by ship.

So that change in technology really made these coastal liners obsolete.

(gentle music) - [Alan] From the elegant steam ships that graced our coastline during times of peace to the magnificent warships that sailed the globe to preserve that peace, maritime history lives here at Battleship Cove.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle music) Bristol, Rhode Island has a story to tell.

It's arguably one of the most American towns in the country.

But like the American story, you can't tell the entire narrative without including some of the darker chapters.

And in Bristol, some of those darker chapters were written here at Linden Place.

- Linden Place is really special for a variety of different reasons.

One is that it was built by the DeWolf family, specifically George and Charlotte DeWolf, who were part of one of the most wealthy family dynasties in Rhode Island in the early 19th century.

And the DeWolf family, like many families of their time, were quite diversified in how they made their money.

But they made a very large amount of money from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

(gentle music) - 934 slaving voyages left Rhode Island between 1705 and 1805.

And out of those 88 were on ships owned by the DeWolfs, representing about 30,000 enslaved Africans brought to the Americas.

So in order for us to tell that story and to honor those people and their accomplishments after their freedom, we had this Rhode Island slave history medallion installed.

And so in order to tell a really holistic and 180 degree story about the house, we have to talk about that legacy of the business of slavery.

- [Susan] And this is a part of our history that isn't often known that we really feel like Linden Place is a testament to the really large amounts of money that were being made in the early 19th century.

- [Alan] Linden Place is an 1810 federal style mansion that stands in the heart of Bristol.

- It's one of five DeWolf houses that was designed by Russell Warren, who's the architect for this house.

It's one of the few large remaining houses.

It's the only large remaining house that he designed for the DeWolf family.

So the fact that it's even here is a treasure in itself.

And of course, just stylistically it's such a wonderful example of Federal architecture.

(gentle music) - [Alan] One of those architectural gems is the magnificent stairway that connects the home's four floors.

- This is a wonderful curved stairway.

It goes up four flights.

They were not uncommon during the Federal Period.

And there's several houses in Bristol that have curved stairways but they don't go up four flights of stairs.

And it really is a tour de force in terms of construction and how it's all pieced together.

So this hand railing, for instance, it's all made out of separate pieces of mahogany.

So there's a joint here and there's a joint here and there's a joint here and all of those pieces have to be carved individually and then joined together.

So it's curving in two directions.

It's curving going up, and it's also curving going this way.

At the bottom here we have the newel post and there's an ivory cap on the newel post.

And contrary to popular belief, that was not where the mortgages were kept after they were paid.

That's an old wife's tale that seems to follow historic houses around.

Anyway, the other interesting thing about the ivory is that ivory comes from elephants and elephants come from Africa.

And so it's interesting how it ties in with the triangular trade of them shipping things from Bristol to Africa and taking items from Africa, including human beings, and going to Cuba and then back to Bristol.

- [Alan] Each room has been meticulously decorated with original furniture down to the finest details.

The walls throughout the house are filled with paintings of the different generations who lived here.

Each room downstairs has its own chandelier.

The grandest is in the dining room.

- This enormous chandelier behind me now, it was a gift to Sam Colt from Austin Perry.

And the "Bristol Phoenix" at the time wrote up a little article about where it was from.

They said it was from an English castle.

We don't know which English castle.

At the time it would've been candles.

But when Sam Colt put it into his house, he decided to make it electric.

So when they made it electric, they actually ran the cords through the beaded glass.

But along with that, he also was a man of convenience.

He wanted this house to be a nice comfortable place to live and he actually put a plug socket down at the bottom because he liked to sit here every breakfast and make toast.

(lid scraping) (switch clicking) (needle whirring) (upbeat big band music) - [Alan] More evidence of early adoption of electricity can be seen or rather heard on the second floor.

(upbeat big band music) - The phonograph, it's a Brunswick phonograph from 1928.

And Brunswick was just introducing electric motors for their phonographs.

And so ours has an electric motor.

So the phonograph in 1928 costs $300 which is a lot of money in 1928.

And for 30 extra dollars you could have the electric motor put in.

And the only thing electric about that phonograph is it's the electricity that turns the turntable.

The rest of it is just all acoustic.

The needle is on the record and it it vibrates the little membrane and then the sound is just naturally amplified.

- [Alan] This rare phonograph, it turns out, was not the first time music was introduced to the house.

- One of the things I love upstairs is the Steel and Clark piano in the hall.

(gentle music) It's the only known example of a Steel and Clark piano in the United States.

It was made in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1825.

(gentle music) It was for entertainment purposes.

It was also to show how smart you were.

If you were able to take music lessons and you were able to read music, you know, that was, especially for young women, that would make you more eligible for marriage because it showed you were smart and you were clever and you knew about music and it's one of the fine arts.

So, and now, with a square piano, you could bring that into the home.

There were many piano manufacturers at the time.

It's just that that was, Steel and Clark, the firm was only in existence for two or three years.

So it's a real rarity that we even have that.

And how it made it from Cincinnati to Bristol, well, we don't know.

(gentle music) - [Alan] One of the largest treasures at Linden Place is not in the house, but in the rear carriage house.

(door scraping) - So we're looking at a coach that was once owned by James DeWolf, who was George DeWolf, who built Lyndon Place's uncle.

And James DeWolf was, at one point, the second most wealthy man in the United States.

He was a US senator and he was also a very accomplished slave trader.

So this coach was made in France and it was really cutting edge and made in the French style.

It wasn't meant for, you know, around town travel.

This was a coach that was very much made to be ostentatious, to be seen, and for long distance travels.

There is also these sterling silver handles, once again showing off that the wealth and ostentatiousness of James DeWolf and his family.

So beautiful embroidered interior, beautiful seating.

And then even just for ease of coming and going there's these stairs that fold out on each side.

This is a real rarity.

You know, once these coaches fell out of popularity they would just break them up and use them for firewood.

So this is one of very few early 19th century coaches that are still in existence today.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - [Alan] The gardens at Linden Place are nearly as spectacular as the home and all of its collections.

It's a space that gives visitors a chance to reflect on the home's grandeur and the different chapters of history that were written here.

(gentle music) - We can often say that history is dates and events but I think history is people.

And so when you have a house like this filled with so many fascinating characters who really reflect the history of America for 200 years, it's very interesting to learn about ourselves, our ancestors, all of our ancestors, and sort of our place in the community - [Alan] Today, Lyndon Place and the treasures at this grand home are part of the fabric of this community.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues) (bright music) (upbeat music)