Talking the Walke...

[Mark F. Jenkins]

From the announcements of the Central Ohio Civil War Roundtable:

Meeting Announcement​

When: March 13th
Where: Otterbein University, Towers Hall 3rd floor. Room 318. Westerville Ohio 43081. Please go to the "About the COCWRT" tab for more information.
Time: 7pm
Speaker: Mark Jenkins
Topic: Union Naval Officer Henry Walke.
Virginia-born Ohioan Henry Walke exerted a double influence on the American Civil War: first as a senior naval officer on the western rivers and in the Atlantic, and second as a recorder and illustrator of those events. His sketches and paintings of naval operations on the rivers in the Civil War (and in the earlier Mexican War) form a primary part of our view of those events, and his first-hand account of the river war is a major source of information for its history.
Mark F. Jenkins, a COCWRT member, has been interested in Civil War naval operations since childhood. He constructed a website on ironclads and blockade runners that has been up on the Internet continuously since late 1996, provided information to several other authors and researchers, spoke to several Civil War Round Tables, published a two-part article on ironclads in the "Naval Gazette" in Nov-Dec 1998 and Jan-Feb 1999, and provided a biographical foreword on Lt. John Wilkinson for a recent reprint of Wilkinson's Narrative of a Blockade Runner. He is currently writing the first full-length biography of Henry Walke. Mark lives in Westerville, Ohio, with his wife Jennifer and three children.​

 

[Robert Gray]

Captain Henry Walke. [Library of Congress]

 

[AndyHall]

Who knew Just for Men™ had been around that long?

 

[Lazy Bayou]

I think his hair piece has "slipped."

 

[Samuel.Sohm]

Mark, will this be streamed?

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

You know, it's funny; when I think of Walke, I don't think of that photo anymore... I think of this one:

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/rear-admiral-henry-walke.73186/

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Bump! Anyone that's within range of northeastern Columbus is invited!

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Bump again! Tonight at 7 pm on the third floor of Towers Hall, Otterbein University, Westerville!

Have been going over my notes... it's astonishing how much I've learned since the last time I gave this talk (to the Ross County Historical Society in Chillicothe). Almost feel like I should send them a rebate on the speaker's honorarium.

Thanks to Andy Hall and Jay Gale for their excellent graphic renditions of the Carondelet. Definite "aye candy"!

 

[donna]

I know your talk will be great. If we lived close would come.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

It went well. I think I could have been smoother in a few spots, mostly when I departed from my script, but my wife, who was in attendance, said it wasn't very noticeable. I spoke for about an hour and fielded some good questions afterwards; in addition, I talked with one member and one guest after the meeting-- the member told me about a gunboat sailor who was buried in the local cemetery that he's done some research on (and that I want to look further into), and the guest told me that he had either the diary or a facsimile of a diary of a crewman on board the ironclad Mound City-- the catch being it's in German. As my wife and I both speak a bit of German and she has access via friends in Germany to some good professional-level translators, this does not present a major obstacle. I'll be following up on both.

That's the great part about Round Tables (and this board counts as a sort of virtual Round Table)... all the sharing of knowledge!