Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport

Patricia Cerchio: Oh, I love New London, the people were great. It was a little bit of a challenge because we were doing base closure, brac is definitely a four letter word and not a pleasant time for anyone. But one of the interesting things is once I got selected I found out that a number of women actually got selected to be in charge of bases during base closure. And it works out fairly well because it’s a very emotional time.
Kay Cayer: When I started many years ago, at building 113, we had upright electric typewriters, nothing that took away mistakes. Everything had to be perfect so if you made a mistake you took it out, you erased it, you lined it up again and you put it back in.
Harriet Coleman: When I was a young girl I had the opportunity to play with Caroline Kennedy. My baby nurse and her governess were good friends, so when they used to come to Newport in the summer the secret servicemen would pick me up in the limousine we used to go and do things. One night Caroline called me on the phone from Washington and asked me if I wanted to speak to her dad on the phone and being so young I wasn’t interested in speaking to the President of the United States.
(A personal look)
Patricia Cerchio: I went it and I asked that everyone got stress management training because it wasn’t just about their jobs moving 65 miles up the road, it was about how it was affecting their family life. We had people get up in staff meetings and they’d say, ‘you know my 16 year old said last night I don’t care if your job is moving, I’m not.’
Kay Cayer: As time progressed we got computers. Little by little we learned how to use them and the advantages. If you didn’t hit the wrong button and lose it, you did well. You could save it afterwards.
Harriet Coleman: So I asked her if she wanted to speak to my dad. Caroline agreed and she spoke to my dad who was a production controller here at NUWC. But, when I look back I still refused to speak to then-President Kennedy on the phone, maybe I should have.
(A sense of pride)
Sally Camara: You have to really understand what the fleet wants. What they’re looking for today in their environment as well as the outyears. I’ve been lucky enough to work directly with the fleet at all times. I’m able to develop products that best suit their needs.
Ann Silva: Most recently working of the USW munitions package and creating the command and control capability.
Darlene Sullivan: We got rapidly fielded by op-Nav and we led the surface ship community in the IP transition and it was a revolutionary change to the way submarines communicate.
Marie Bussiere: I specialized in tech eval, I actually got to ride submarines as part of that evaluation. Continued on into the system engineering area; integration lead. Anne Turley: I run an $18 to $20 million program where we are developing the next generation software for the heavyweight torpedo.
Mary (Annie) Brereton: My role as program manager for integration of the seawolf radio room. At that time I was one of the first who did that kind of a job.
Laura L. Kokoszka: Well I’m obviously very proud that I was the first or the second GS-13 female in the division. I’m very proud that we now have a career path to the high grades for business people. I think that’s my best achievement, there’s now a path for other business people to follow.
Minh Moscatelli: To actually create our own product, to provide to our nation and to defend our nation from the enemy. Voiceover: With well over a century of leadership in torpedoes and over a half-century in SONAR system development, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, also known as NUWC, and its forerunner organizations have had a major impact on 20th century undersea warfare. Women have played critical roles since the early years.
Debra Jones: And I just remember seeing picture of helicopters and submarines and going ‘wow! How neat that would be.’ Voiceover: Today, women hold leadership positions at almost every level of the organization.
Mary (Molly) Magee: I think one of the most important things is to really understand the organization and that would go back to anyone aspiring to be a business leader to make sure that you really take the time to avail yourselves of the training opportunities. Voiceover: Women have worked for the Navy department since the early 1900’s when large numbers of them were clerks in the civil service. Women first joined the torpedo station’s workforce in response to changes brought about by World War I. By November 1918, over 300 women worked at the Naval Torpedo Station, manufacturing torpedoes for American naval forces. (Paving the Way)
Voiceover: Women again returned to the torpedo station in great numbers during World War II. Mary Andrade, grandmother of Denise Szelag was one of those women.
Denise Szelag: I remember she said the big brass used to come in and inspect the station and they would come with their white gloves. She told me they would take their finger and go to the top of the doors, and you know we always passed and again with her little smile she said, ‘I wasn’t surprised.’
Voiceover: Mary was an ordinance worker in shop number 23.
Denise Szelag: So when I asked her, I said, ‘how do the men treat you? How do they feel about that?’ You know, being the first women to operate that special equipment? And she said ‘they always respected me and they were always willing to help me’ and she gave me a little smile and said ‘if I needed it.’ The article was published and I was able to share it with her and I read it to her while she was in bed and she passed just a couple weeks after that.
Voiceover: As in the rest of the country women were called to fill the industrial jobs that were left vacant by men serving overseas. After the war, the roles of women change yet again. Housekeeping and raising a family were considered ideal female roles, but by the end of the decade, that was beginning to change in the country. In the late 1940’s the underwater sound laboratory in New London Connecticut hired its first female mathematicians. They were among the first women to be hired into technical positions in the laboratory or ‘the sound lab’ as it was commonly known. In the mid 1950’s Eleanor Harris was one of the first women student trainees to break into a technical field and the first woman to break into the submarine design business as an engineer. Her forte was antenna experimentation and measurements. Pat Dean started work in New London in 1976 at which time it was known as the Naval Underwater Systems Center. She had a meteoric career that was marked by many extraordinary accomplishments. Mary (Annie) Brereton: Started with Pat Dean, she’s tremendous, God rest her soul. She was the first system engineer that was accepted by the male community she was the first program manager that was accepted by the male community here. Just quite a role model. (Pat Dean 1950-2003)
Voiceover: Women like Eleanor Harris and Pat Dean brought their formidable skills from New London to Newport, where they continued to contribute to the Navy’s undersea expertise.
Patricia Cerchio: It was unusual because I was the first woman commander in New London, but I was also the last commander in New London, so it was also unusual from that aspect. Every ballistic missile submarine that was delivered the boat across the river would sit at our pier for a month or two doing its sea trials. And frequently on the other side of the pier would be the coast guard’s tall ship Eagle, so you would have a contrast between the oldest technology that is still around today and the newest.
Voiceover: Although there were advancements for women in many fields, engineering and science were not always considered a suitable job for women.
(The winds of change)
Pam Lisiewicz: When I was trying to figure out what I was going to do in college I thought about becoming an electrical engineer, so I went to see my guidance counselor and I told her I’d like to be an engineer and she said ‘oh dear, you can’t do that, that’s a man’s job.’ And I said ‘oh, really?’ So I went home and I told my mother and my mother got really upset and said ‘that’s crazy you can do any job you want to do, you go to school and be whatever you want to be.’ So I said, ‘okay.’ And that turned out to be good advice.
Voiceover: By the 70’s women were fighting to achieve rights and opportunities equal to those of men. Looking back, some of what went on at the division seems a bit unusual when viewed from today’s perspective. One is a beauty pageant held in 1972 when 12 contestants vied for the title of Ms. NUSC. It wasn’t unusual back then. The 1980’s were an exciting time for women at NUSC as they took advantage of growing opportunities. In 1986, Suzanne Chellis, Susan Maloney and Kelly Murphy were chosen to participate in an Arctic ice camp mission. Sally Sutherland was one of NUSC’s pioneering women in surface ship SONAR signal processing. Sally Sutherland: Me and two of my colleagues, two other women, we went over to see the ASW officer and they were like, ‘okay, who are you?’ and we were like ‘we wanted to see how you liked your 53D.’ So we went down there and said ‘how do you like the system? And the guy surprised, I said ‘oh I was the project lead on it,’ and they were like ‘it kicked butt.’ They were just in this ASW exercise and the system did really well, so it was really fun to see the fleet embracing it and that it was a good technology for them.
Voiceover: Today, the tradition of strong technical female leaders continues at Division Newport. As the first woman to conduct radiated noise trials at a submarine at AUTEC, Harriet Coleman began her career as a GS4 engineer aid in 1976.
Harriet Coleman: If you don’t, listen, if people within 70 don’t understand this then how can we expect this to be interpreted at the division level? Harriet Coleman: And all the wives, women and children were on the dock waiting for the boat to come in. The boat pulled up and they put out the gangway. They started to board the boat and the women and children started yelling things. They wanted to know who I was going on the boat to see, they were pretty angry, were just really much more interested in having their men come off the boat and didn’t understand that I was there to do a job for the Navy. We provide significant interface with the fleet at the test sites that we run, particularly the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center. We’re also working on solving the marine mammal issue, working to ensure that we can continue to do robust SONAR testing at our site. Voiceover: Women have also played key roles in the business and administrative areas of Division Newport, ensuring that every aspect of the organization adds value to customers and stakeholders alike.
Kelly Ross: We service mainly internal NUWC folks, but they are there to support the fleet.
(The business behind the science)
Voiceover: It has often been said that secretaries or administrative assistants are the backbone of the Division Newport organization. Division Newport secretaries and administrative assistants continue the tradition of trusted agents. They enable our technical and management leaders to carry out their functions.
Laura Kokozka: Your role is no less important than an engineer and you should be proud of your capability on the business side and don’t feel that you have to take second place.
Kay Cayer: I was one of the ones that sort of did it yourself I remember when we first got the deck mates they said ‘we can’t send you for training, you can figure it out.’ 3 or 4 months later when I had an idea of what I was doing they said ‘we’ve got somebody now, you can go for training and we’ll show you how t use it.’ But I know how already!
Kelly Ross: It is critically important that we on the business side help our customers execute their mission so that the fleet gets the products and services they need.
Voiceover: During her career Mary Wohlgemuth has held a number of challenging leadership positions in engineering and management with increasing executive responsibilities.
Mary Wohlgemuth: Not just the first woman but the first person to fill the SES role for the torpedo systems department. There had not previously been an SES in that department head role.
Voiceover: Mary has supervised and managed complex and diverse organizations serving as the warfare center corporate business executive and as acting director of weapons systems directorate.
Mary Wohlgemuth: You’ve gotta enjoy it. You’ve got to like it. I love my job, I’ve been here 26 years I still feel like it’s the interview with Bill Goss back then. They must think I am crazy ‘what are you doing 26 years in the same place?’ But, I’ll tell you the opportunities are just, are there.
Voiceover: No longer are women basing career decisions on gender. Today’s woman can choose her career based on her personal interests.
Michelle Burgess: First, girl to play hardball in the Joe Torre East Highway Little League which was located in Brooklyn, NY. My team hated me and it was probably one of the longest summers of my life.
Denise Crimmins: It has allowed me over the years as I’ve grown in the organization and have matured personally to balance a family life and a career. NUWC as a whole has gone to younger managers who have daughters going into technical fields.
Michelle Burgess: It definitely was good training as a woman doing different things than women normally do. Probably good training to have a little thicker skin and learn how to get through things that are a little tougher. I think it’s getting better now. I don’t think that it’s quite as challenging as it used to be.
Ann Silva: I think that has changed and so women aren’t viewed in a different light necessarily anymore, at least that’s my general observation.
Hue Bui: I was given an opportunity to do technical work, then management work, and it’s a good mix.
Dawn Vaillancourt: When I started working here as a secretary I did get exposed to engineering and I knew that it was something that I could do, so I immediately started taking classes towards an engineering degree and NUWC provided me that opportunity.
Voiceover: Over the last 140 years Division Newport has made significant progress in gender equality. Women are recognized for their capabilities and accomplishments. That was the most exciting time; being able to be a part of a team that was doing testing, riding in a Navy P3 aircraft for twelve hours at a time. Donna Matthews: A recent accomplishment was preparing the Tomahawk capsule launching system to go onto the SSGN submarine.
Denise Crimmins: Working with other agencies, other federal agencies, to leverage the Navy’s investment in unmanned systems to advance science for common good.
Amanda Sanders: The greatest accomplishment for me has been the career fair that I worked on a little over a month ago. It was something that I had never experienced before, putting an event like that together.
Susan LaShomb: And now I’ve actually moved on to a rotational assignment which is even more exciting working for the Assistant Secretary of the Navy and their CHANG officer, their Chief System Engineering Office.
Mary (Molly) Magee: Well, I was one of the first female department heads with Mary Lee, we both got that in 1993. It was a significant accomplishment to become a department head, and it did mean a lot because we were the first women. Voiceover: the future is bright for the next generation of women at NUWC.
Kristy Moore: Over the next 10-20 years I would think that women at NUWC would start to see more technical leadership roles start moving more into upper management as we’ve gotten over the years more women coming through in the engineering field and technical fields. I would expect that we would see that filter up.
Mayra Zayas: I think that when you start out, many of the people are lost. The mentoring program has been better since I started. Voiceover: They will undoubtedly continue to make outstanding achievements as they continue to do what they do best; supporting US Navy overseas superiority today and tomorrow. Eryn Wezensky: They put me in a position three months into my hiring here at NUWC and sent me out to sea, my first exercise representing NUWC on my first warship.
Claire Ryan: Designed the spiral 23 torpedo design document and it was a lot of work, it was pretty technically challenging; the best thing about it though was that I learned so much while I was doing it, I don’t think I would know half as much about torpedoes as I do now.
Terry Cunha: When I was out at SUBPAC two years ago as torpedo technical rep I was able to coordinate a major exercise. It was the first ever forward area deployed exercise for SUBPAC where we tested both heavy-weight and light-weight torpedoes.
Yadira V. Gilchrest: Developing data acquisition software and being able to acquire data out in the field, the fact that it was successful was really good because, that’s not something I did in school, it was something completely new that I had to learn while on the job.
Michele Burgess: I would probably say putting the corrosion sensors on the Los Angeles class submarine.
Esther Thatcher: I actually felt that I’ve impacted, because I have a close relationship with the Navy and it’s been in trying to get a better product to the Navy and my role in both cases whether as an engineer or as a manager in trying to make improvement to those products.
Lynn Ewart Paine: After the S&T Task force that Don McCormick commissioned recommended the stand up of a chief technology officer and an office to support him which included the Deputy position, so I’ve been the first person, first female in that position and have enjoyed, very much, the challenge.
Mary (Molly) Magee: What’s changed is that there is more women. When I first got here your coworkers were all men, I think now that you’re able to have coworkers of men and women you’ve got a different dynamic that goes on.
(The last word)
Laura Kokozka: The best advice can give anybody is become very knowledgeable in your field. Don’t hold back on an opinion, feel free to express your mind but realize that you have to back it up with facts.
Vicki Comeau: Don’t be afraid to ask questions of the engineers, the scientists, because everybody has been in that position.
Dawn Vallaincourt: Advice I would give anyone would be to step outside their comfort zone, try a new position, try a rotational assignment somewhere.
Joan Cembrola: People here are very very helpful I’ve found that there are a lot of people willing to mentor you, mentor me, in my experience here. I think becoming prepared, so you have some confidence in what you’re doing is the best way to go forward.
Vicki Comeau: Once you have a strong foundation, you can go anywhere in the organization that you set your mind to.
Arlene Bright: Welcome change, change is a part of our lives.
Dawn Vallaincourt: Just trying to get exposed to a different perspective than what you normally have.
Arlene Blight: Always think of the customer, put yourself in their shoes, especially when you are having a bad day.
Pamela Lisiewicz: Things have changed, my daughters are in high school and I’m so happy for them that it’s not an issue anymore about what’s a man’s job or what’s a woman’s job. Any job is for anybody now.
Patricia Cerchio: One of the guys said, ‘I don’t know anything about the new commander, but I know one thing, it’s gonna be a man, because it’s a submariner job.’ She said I just couldn’t wait until it was announced to run up to them and say ‘ha! You were wrong!’
Claire Ryan: From what I’ve seen and heard from other women around NUWC or even just in life there is more equality between men and women, is becoming, or there is more equality between men and women every year.
 Ann Silva: The managers who I worked for did not pigeon-hole women. If you did good work, they rewarded you. It was a very unique kind of experience.
Mary (Molly) Magee: I think probably the most important thing is to make sure you get a mentor and that mentor may change during different phases of your career, but that person can be instrumental in helping you understand the organization and helping you to understand what you need to do to help you progress in the career path you want.
Eryn Wezensky: There is a generation gap between young people like us and the older generation who are getting ready to retire and a strong mentorship program to be able to pass down the information before it goes out the door is going to be really important in the next couple of years.
Martinique Gilchrest: Maybe there will be a technical director, or Captain (laughter). I think the sky is the limit for females here at NUWC.
 
(Torpedoes of the U.S. Navy are designed, manufactured, and tested at the Naval Torpedo Station, Newport, Rhode Island.)

(The deft hands of women help in the delicate manufacture.)
(NUWC, as one of two NAVSEA warfare centers, operates the Navy’s full-spectrum research, development, test and evaluation, engineering and Fleet support center for submarines, autonomous underwater systems, and offensive and defensive weapon systems associated with undersea warfare and related areas of homeland security and national defense.)

My name is Steven Palys, I am a system engineer in the UUV operations and technology branch. I was always really interested in mechanical design, so I started early on getting my hands dirty and helping some of the technicians in NUWC. Now I kinda lead a core group of guys required to integrate payloads on the vehicle and operate it. These UUV’s can extend 30 to 100 nautical miles forward of a submarine to do intelligence gathering so that you don’t have to put 120-plus sailors into shallow water, into harm’s way. If one of those was to be taken out by an enemy or sink, etcetera it’s a piece of machinery, no lives lost.
(Being a civilian at NUWC)
It is really different every day. It’s anywhere from sitting at my desk doing design work, to actually getting my hands dirty inside the vehicle, to integrating stuff that I designed and actually seeing it out in the water. It’s one of the few opportunities anywhere that you can see something from cradle to grave. You put everything you have every day into these vehicles. It’s not just a piece of machinery. (Challenges) We don’t have GPS underwater, so the vehicle has to have this very high accuracy Nav-suite onboard. Other than that 90% of the time we’re flying blind being on the surface of the water. It’s one of those things where, you know, it kind of makes it exciting; you want it to work, you know there’s a lot riding on it. Everybody is out there and you know you had a large part in it.
(Life in Newport)
Rhode Island is a beautiful state. Obviously, we have the ocean, we have all the seasons, you can do anything. You’re close to New York City, Boston, skiing, mountain climbing, hiking, mountain biking, beaches, it kind of has it all. New England is a very unique area. They’re a close-knit type of people, so people are very friendly out here; they will embrace you. You learn theory in college; the real practice is coming in and actually working. You’ve got to be eager to learn and you are pushing the technology every day. You don’t really know sometimes coming into a situation whether or not if what somebody is asking you to achieve is actually feasible. It’s a challenge and it’s fun.

Partnership Runs Deep transcript--
Voiceover: Where was the Cerberus stationed? Off the south end of Prudence Island, 2 miles to the southwest of Dires Island. It was impossible for me to attack to the westward again without falling under her guns. Then she attacked due past to the southward of the rock, I think we should have weathered her. I therefore bore up and ordered the ship to be run up on-shore, cut away the mast to prevent the enemy getting cannon out and ordered her to be set fire to.
Radio transmission: Yeah, we’ve been unsuccessful trying to hail the two fishing vessels on the (undecipherable) of 1.3 and 1.6. Can you take a shoot over there and ask them what their intentions are?
Voice of Scientist: So if you’re looking for small cannonballs you want smaller spaces closer to the bottom. If you’re looking for the full ship you can fly higher up and look at a much wider area. There’s a cannon that isn’t heavily encrusted. Voiceover: Rhode Island, The Ocean State, residents and visitors are familiar with its miles of scenic coastline, the sailboats dotting Naragansett Bay, the lighthouses that stand guard and once, a colony that protected its waters as aggressively as it did its independence. What most people don’t know is that the sea floor off Rhode Island’s coast is hallowed ground. A cemetery of more than 2,000 sunken vessels. Rhode Island has more shipwrecks per square mile than any state in the union and more Revolutionary War-ships can be found beneath its waters than anywhere else in the world. A partnership of Navy scientists and Marine archeologists from organizations around the world will come to Newport, RI, the home of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. This esteemed group of experts will be introduced to the U.S. Navy’s Autonomous Undersea Vehicles or AUV’s, futuristic technology that will attempt to explore sunken ships, discover buried history, and reveal stories that now lie below the historic waters of Rhode Island. They went to the brow of the hill and watched the ship burn, and that’s the brow of the hill.
Voiceover: The Revolutionary War shipwrecks are perhaps the most significant underwater sites in Rhode Island.
Charlotte Taylor: Very few people in the country do know that the British conquered Newport. They occupied this city. We are going to run on tracks on Friday. I didn’t know you were going to be east of Gould Island. That’s great.
Voiceover: And until 1972, these wrecks rested undetected in a muddy grave. Rod Mather: As we approached the bicentennial of the American Revolution there was great interest in the state and nationally for artifacts that were associated with that struggle for independence. So you have seen a map of where the sites are. There are two 18th century revolutionary war British frigates, HMS Cerberus, HMS Lark. Thank you very much, you do that very well. Hey the sun came out, are you responsible for that? That’s Whisper she’s a sheltie and she’s my baby and my research assistant and the RIMAP mascot.
Rod Mather: In the late 90s I became involved in the investigation of these British warships lost in Narragansett Bay and working with Kathy Abbass of the Rhode Island Marine Archeology Project.
Kathy Abbass: And as I made the comment that the Lark was lost up in this area as I said before. This is the American chart of the Battle of Rhode Island.
Voiceover: The Rhode Island marine archeology project, RIMAP, began a more rigorous study of the frigates and the transport fleet that once played a key role in the British occupation of Newport.
Kathy Abbass: The American troops brought a big cannon down and banged away at them so there could be other debris up in that area. Well, it’s interesting because when the British occupied this area in 1776 in December, they actually came up the west side of Connanicut, on the other side, came around the North end of Connanicut and anchored off, right about where the Cerberus is now between Weaver Cove to Weaver Cove and that’s where they came ashore. This is the British chart that shows us where the ships were lost.
Rob Mather: And we think that there is a greater archeological record than we had previously imagined. Certainly it looks as if there are additional parts of sites that we did not know about before.
William Schopfel: The sea mines basically inhibited how much naval gunfire we could bring to bear, as we moved up towards Kuwait. They force you to change your mission. They deny you the ability, which is what mines do; they deny you the ability to go where you want to go.
Voiceover: Since the 1990s the Office of Naval Research has been investing in AUV’s and their advanced sensors to protect and defend our freedom by locating and disarming sea mines.
Paul Rinn: Cranked her up, started backing up, 5 turns or whatever it was and we started walking down the wake and I was pretty confident we were going to back away everything was going to be fine and sure enough the ship just blew right up in front of me. Explosion happens 100 some odd feet from me and breaks my right foot, it snaps it. Breaks the metatarsal bone, not the end of the world, but boy did it hurt. It stung. It shatters everything horizontal on the ship. Everything! Lifts the stern up 20 feet.
Dr. Tom Swean: They are easily deployed and nations without much money or with terrorist activities can get a hold of them very easily. If they put them in the water it brings the entire navy to a stop. This is a system so, we have developed not only the platforms, but we developed the sensors and the processing that can detect objects on the sea floor or in the water column and classify them as mine or non mine, things like that. Make the identification and even now we’re developing systems that will neutralize the mines. So what we’re doing is we’re moving the man from the minefield.
AG3 Bizzle: Trying to see if, God forbid a major harbor was mined, how fast could we find the mines, neutralize the problem and get shipping traffic and any kind of other surface traffic back on normal.
Dr. Tom Swean: Work hard to develop good technology. Use the good ideas, use the science, use the brainpower we have and develop something that will be successful. It’s a tough problem.
Scientists (radio): Ramp is going up. Hold up. Copy that. Ramp coming out of the water. We need to change course.
Kathy Abbass: So the Navy was kind enough to give us space. But we’re hoping to move into something more professionally appropriate. What we really need is a facility for artifact management. Scientist: So you’re gonna see it tilt up, extend into the water and then the vehicle will slide down the ways into the water. Launching and recovering are the riskiest things that happen for the equipment and for the people.
Dr. Tom Swean: I’m very excited about what’s going to pop out of this. We’re gonna learn a lot from our point of view about sensing the ocean bottom and below the surface and I’m sure they’re gonna learn a lot about what these autonomous systems can do for their science.
Dr. Reginald Beach: It was a natural outreach to him to say, ‘hey, this has natural applications to marine archeology because, you look for buried mines, well, buried mines could be one object but buried objects could be another man’s cultural resources.’
Denise Crimmins: And they wanted to come to Narragansett Bay for a couple of reasons, because of this interagency agreement, because of their relationships, but primarily because there was a lab that had access to a very rich water front with lots of history. Voiceover: Newport is also the home to the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a critical center of U.S. Navy technology and the host for AUV fest 2008. Scientist at Stillwater Basin: On Tuesday you have the 841 and the 30. So, in my opinion we should look at these days for ops and split them up on how we can be most efficient. So now we have all 3 technologies at this site.
Dr. Paul J. Lefebvre: NUWC Newport touches all systems on a submarine that make a submarine a war fighting platform. That includes SONAR systems, periscopes, torpedoes, and even launching and recovering unmanned undersea vehicles.
Voiceover: Today, hundreds of shipwrecks can be found off of Newport, a virtual laboratory for scientists experimenting with AUV technology. They’re looking and seeing the same type of technologies we’ve been developing for the warfare mission and saying, ‘hey we might be able to use that.’ Radio announcement: All stations vehicles on the surface, star point get GPS.
Kathy Abbass: I’ve been struck by how eager the engineers who are running this equipment, how eager they are to hear these stories and you stand around and they are doing their thing, pushing their buttons and doing all of this stuff, and I have a feeling that the technology is wonderful but they lose the human aspect of it. And so, when you start telling stories about how the crew had to be taken off and they had to stand there and watch their ship burn, their home was gone, everything they owned was gone or most of it, and if you just sort of remind them that they were real people who had real lives who hurt, who were injured, who were killed. People were dying, I mean, it was a war. I think that gives them a context that’s missing when you’re just talking about the technology part of it.
Scientist: And I want to congratulate you all on your patience and ask you to stretch that out another day because tomorrow’s weather looks like today’s.
Rear Adm. William E. Landay III: We tend to think of all underwater vehicles being the same, but when people think about how they can operate in this environment they come up with a very broad sense of how to do that. So when you compare vehicles, some of them look like torpedoes, some of them look like stingrays, some of them look like things with flippers on them so the breadth of that is pretty exciting and what they can do.
Kathy Abbass: Alright, well, that was the question I was asking. When they put it in the water is it programmed and ready to go? Well, I’m a historian and an archeologist that’s what we do, and we share it with the public in appropriate ways, that’s why I’m here today because I’m here to share that with you. Scientist: I wish I had shaved.
Kathy Abbass: (laughter) He’s on TV and he didn’t know. There’s some interesting firsts and lasts about the revolution in Rhode Island that get overlooked in most of the textbooks about the history of that particular war.
Voiceover: From the beginning Rhode Island was in the thick of the American Revolution. It was the first to disavow allegiance to the King on May 4, 1776. After the war…
Kathy Abbass: We were the last to accept the constitution and we held out for the longest time because we really didn’t want to have to…
Voiceover: George Washington saw his opportunity to take the city of Newport with the help of French vessels.
John B Hattendorf: The French fleet was anchored off of Newport for a week before they attempted to enter Narragansett Bay.
Rob Mather: In the middle of 1778 this war in the colonies changed in terms of its character and it became an international war because France entered the American Revolutionary War. What that did was it really changed the dynamics of the conflict.
Voice of Mary Almny: Once more my dear I am permitted to write you. Great has been you disappointment and great has been my sorrow. Gravest to bear because it came from my friends but I beg not dispute it at my great distance.
Voiceover: from Newport Mary Almny reported the calamity to her husband who was off fighting for the colonists cause.
Voice of Mary Almny: By your desire and my own inclination I am to give you an account of what passed during the siege, but first; let me tell you it will be done with spirit. For my dislike to the nation that you call your friends is the same as when you first knew me.
Voiceover: But she maintained allegiance to the crown and watched the unfolding conflagration in horror.
Voice of Mary Almny: And I foresee that the whole with end as the maneuvers did in taking this island, to the discredit of the Americans. You will not be surprised at my warmth when you find how I suffered nor wonder at my freedom. When this comes sealed and wrote for your approval alone.
Kathy Abbass: And the American Army was assembling on the mainland and the French fleet was outside Narragansett Bay.
John B Hattendorf: At this time, it was one of the rare opportunities when British forces were actually in a bad position, particularly their naval forces.
Kathy Abbass: The Royal Navy vessels were ordered not to fall into enemy hands. The idea is if you get captured and a larger vessel comes up on you can’t fight. The idea of a smaller vessel beating a bigger vessel, it just doesn’t happen. Very, very rare in those periods.
Voice of Mary Almny: Wednesday, August 5, the first news in the morning; large French ships made sale. The others, at the mouth of the harbor, made signals of unmooring which threw the frigates into confusion.
Rob Mather: Rather than being captured, what happened was that the captains deliberately sunk or burned their vessels. The commander of the Cerbrus ran the vessel aground and unloaded some of the supplies and set the vessel on fire. Voiceover: Three other British vessels the Lark, Orpheus, and Juno, were scuttled as more French ships approached.
Rob Mather: We have artifacts that have come from the site that show evidence of that burning. The fire caught the powder kegs and the ship exploded. There are stories of the debris landing many miles away in people’s fields and houses on Aquidneck Island.
Mary Almny: Everything is going to be fine.
Voice of Mary Almny: What a shocking disappointment to you.
Mary Almny: Just fine indeed.
Voice of Mary Almny: Can you keep up you spirits? Heaven I hope will indeed support you.
Kathy Abbass: All of the captains of the ships that were lost in Rhode Island went to New York and stood court-martial. They were all exonerated because they had been ordered to not allow their ships to fall into enemy hands.
Tony Matthews: First of all, I’m fascinated by her stories so the first thing I’m going to do is listen to them. The second is if there is a way to take these acoustic images of the bottom in such a way as to bring those stories to life then I’m going to certainly try to do that.
Radio: Go ahead and launch. Copy that. Go ahead and launch.
Scientist: Payload is all good, everything is running. Everything is all green.
William Schopfel: They’ll put the vehicle in the water here, it’ll swim out around the qway wall, actually move up then through Narragansett Bay, up to its operating areas. Scientist: It’ll pop up here in about another 10 or 12 minutes.
Tom Austin: We have a lot of data to process and we are seeing things on the bottom and we’re counting on the archeologists to tell me what they are. I think that requires a little bit of extra training. Which end do you think is the bow?
Historian: I’m particularly interested in these sub-bottom which is also going to be helpful over on the Cerberus because we know there are buried artifacts. Voiceover: Historians and archeologists will now spend several weeks analyzing data and imagery that have been collected by these AUV’s.
Rob Mather: We see images that are generated through sound quite a lot, but we don’t see images this clear, ever. It’s interesting for me as someone from Britain to work in Narragansett Bay and to study the artifacts that originally came from Britain. They are a couple hundred years old. And to feel the connection between British people that were here that many years ago and what it’s like to live in Rhode Island today. The image of the wreck is almost underneath the SONAR. There’s a water column here and a school of fish here above the wreck. Voiceover: Already experts are seeing results that indicate new discoveries and hidden clues to Rhode Island’s past. What you’re still seeing in the SONAR .
Kathy Abbass: When the Lark exploded it set a house on fire. To say okay did we find it with the SONAR, can we measure it, can we see it beneath the silt? Can we do all of that? It’s exciting. But what does it tell us about the people who were living back then? That’s the piece the archeologists have brought. Voiceover: So why explore stories from our past? Why is this new Navy technology so critical? And what does it mean for our Ocean state
Historical investigations are moving towards actually investigating battle scenes. So when you take AUV technology and you make that analogy undersea you see how the ships maneuvered, where the cannonballs landed, where the ship debris scattered as they blew up. That gives you greater insight into the decisions that were made on that most significant day. I believe what the Office of Naval Research is doing today with these technologies will save lives of the young men and sailors, and women, who are out with the fleet today going into harm’s way, doing what the department of defense is asking them to do, the nation asks them to do.
Kathy Abbass: The saying ‘if you don’t understand history you will be doomed to repeat it.’ To understand that may help us to perhaps avoid problems, or prepare for them in ways he hadn’t in the past.
Scientists: Slowly, okay now press it down.
Voiceover: Scientists aren’t the only ones experimenting with this technology. Candida Desjardins: It’s a benefit for us working with middle school kids, its particularly important because these kids are at the point where they choose their math track. And if we can get them excited and interested about things do to with science, then they might be a little more willing to classes that are a little more challenging for them.
Voiceover: The leaders of tomorrow will be learning how to make their own undersea robots.
Candida Desjardins: And then possibly pursue a college career. And that’s the goal! Scientist: And we were working for about 8 weeks building this. Middle School Girl: I thought making the ROVs were cool!
Scientist: The kids did a wonderful job. Soldering and learning skills that we had never had before.
Middle School Boy: Yeah, it’s going really good and it looks like what a real ROV would be doing.
Dr. Paul J. Lefebvre: it's very important to get the students working with the engineers because it’s very hard to articulate what an engineer or a scientist does on a daily basis as part of their job. One area we’re investigating to facilitate in the advanced collaboration is the use of the next generation of web technology.
Steven Aguiar: So where you have a real AUVFest, you can have a virtual rendition of it where you can see not only the vehicles, but what they’re doing, mapping shipwrecks or doing mine detection.
Dr.Paul J. Lefebvre: It will allow us to leverage the tech savyness that the younger generation, the new graduates, new hires are coming in with. Voiceover: the AUV is leading the way in the deepest waters on Narragansett Bay, bringing images of our history to the surface. Rhode Island, The Ocean State, is proving once again that partnership runs deep.