The Secret Code Book at the Independence Seaport Museum

Curious Objects

In Part 2 of a special two-part podcast, host Benjamin Miller speaks again with Peter Siebert, president and CEO of Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum, this time about a Revolutionary War–era naval signal book made for English Admiral Richard Howe. “Prepare to haul to the wind together on the starboard tack when in order of battle, and the ships are to haul to the wind forthwith when the admiral fires a third gun” and other such recondite orders fill this hand-printed and watercolored volume, belying its usefulness as an eminently modern tool of warfare.

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