Historical Mystical Seaportal

Hi Blog! We had a wonderful week of adventures with Maggie the Wonder Puppy. Now, it is time to get back to our regular retirement activities. We had a couple days after Katie's return from her conference before leaving the New Haven area. We needed at least one full day to get RV chores done. So, it wasn't until Wednesday, August 20, 2014, that we decided to go and visit Mystic, Connecticut. We had thought about staying in the Mystic area around the Fourth of July, but those plans were changed when we volunteered to babysit Sir William when Weina went back to China to bring her Father to Toronto for an extended visit.  Now was our chance to explore the area that we missed earlier.

When we woke Wednesday morning, it was "foggy withal." Undaunted, we grabbed our rain gear and headed out.  After making a few stops along the way, we noticed the fog started lifting.  Soon the sun was shinning brightly as we arrived at the entrance to the seaport.  Here is Kathy doing what all good tourist do - pose in front of the big red tugboat.

Mystic Seaport (a/k/a Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea) is the largest maritime museum in the world. It is notable for its collection of sailing ships and boats, and for the re-creation of the crafts and fabric of an entire 19th-century seafaring village. It consists of more than 60 original historic buildings, most of them rare commercial structures moved to the 17-acre site and meticulously restored.

The Museum’s exhibition halls have both permanent and changing exhibits that offer rare glimpses into other eras and cultures, including restored vessels, figureheads, ship carvings, vintage photography, and the acclaimed “Voyages: Stories of America and the Sea.” 

The Wendell Building houses the Museum’s collection of figureheads and ships’ carvings. These figureheads, billetheads, and catheads also demonstrate the extraordinary skill of their craftsmen. Unfortunately, many can't be identified since ship builders didn't keep records of who actually carved them. The lighting inside the exhibit hall was very dim to protect these wonderful works of art. Here is the best photo we have.  She was from a ship called the Rhine.

In ancient times, figureheads frequently depicted supernatural beasts and deities adopted from popular mythology. This tradition persisted into the 19th century, when patriotic figures and national heroes were also introduced. Modern vessels, for the most part, carry little if any decorative carving, as hull design and traditions have changed.

After lunch at Schaefer's Spouter Tavern, we wandered through the exhibit galleries learning lots of cool stuff about life in and around the sea. While we didn't need to see the video of the hunting and killing of a whale, the producers paired an extended narrative from Moby Dick with old historical film to show the entire process, from spotting a sperm whale to the final rendering of the blubber. It was very educational, but we are glad that most countries now outlaw whaling. However, we can't ignore the fact that whaling was an important industry back in the day.  

We also toured an exhibit on music aboard sailing ships.  We learned that there are various types of sea chanteys.  Examples are:

Pumping chanteys (an example is the song, "Cape Cod Girls")

Capstan and Windlass chanteys ("Paddy Works On the Railway")

Short-Drag chanteys ("Haul Away Joe")

Halyard chanteys ("What Will We Do With a Drunken Sailor?")

While Dave wasn't willing to get enough sheets to the wind to try out a sailing chanty, he did get the feel of rowing a whaling skiff:

The Mystic Seaport museum was established in 1929 as the "Marine Historical Association". Its first fame came with the acquisition in 1941 of the Charles W. Morgan, the only surviving wooden sailing whaler. The seaport was one of the first living history museums in the United States, with a collection of buildings and craftsmen to show how the work was done. The seaport now receives about 400,000 visitors each year. As we toured the Morgan, Kathy got to try her hand at the wheel.

The buildings you see aren’t replicas–they’re actual trade shops and businesses from the 1800s that were transported to Mystic Seaport from locations around New England. The village is made up of many bustling maritime trades, from shipsmiths and coopers to woodcarvers and riggers. Here is the view from the bow of the Morgan looking down the row of shops.

A catboat, or a cat-rigged sailboat, is a sailing vessel characterized by a single mast carried well forward, generally the beam is approximately half the length and a catboat generally utilizes a gaff rig. The hull is typically light and shallow draft. A typical New England iteration has a very long boom that extends over the transom and may have a bowsprit to support foresails and mast.  Here is the Breck Marshall, a 20-foot Crosby catboat design that is open for public sailing tours. It wasn't built by the famous catboat manufacturer Crosby, but is a reproduction that we inferred was copied from a Crosby catboat in the museum's collection.  Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to take a catboat ride, because it would have been fun to take a sail around the harbor.

To give you the idea of sailing in Mystic Seaport harbor, here is a link to a video of some small sailboats maneuvering on the water.

Here is the prow of the Joseph Conrad.  The figurehead is in the upper right corner.  The ship is now used as a dormitory for the summer sailing camp.

Here is a replica of Brant Point Lighthouse. As you walk inside, there is just enough seating for four people.  There are six flat screen TVs side by side showing videos of the various lighthouses across the globe and the history of lighthouses in the U.S.

Many sailing vessels carried freight along the coast of North America from colonial times until World War II. the Australia was a shallow-draft schooner of a type that was useful in the coastwise trade.  Built in 1862, the 70-foot, two-masted vessel spent her last years in Chesapeake Bay as a yacht for the duPont family. The family donated her to Mystic Seaport in 1951 for use as a sail education vessel. For 10 years she was used as a dormitory in the Museum’s sail training program. In 1961 she was hauled out for restoration, but the decay was too extensive to make rebuilding worthwhile. The Museum  decided to preserve Australia as an exhibit of ship construction. Following a narrow catwalk, we could crawl through and around this beached vessel, examining her “bones” as you might examine a skeleton.

Now that you know what a wooden sailing ship looks like from the inside out, you, too, can take a turn at the John Gardner Boat Shop and build your own. There, for a very modest fee to cover the cost of materials, shipbuilders young and old can try their hand at building model ships.  There are so many materials available, that it is possible to make some sophisticated models.  Here are some fine examples.

One of our favorite exhibits was the Mystic River Scale Model. This spectacular model, over 50-feet long, is built to the scale of 3/32 inch=1 foot, or 1/128th. It provides a dramatic bird’s-eye view of 1870's history. The model features more than 250 detailed dwellings, shops, barns and lofts, as well as five local shipyards, as they existed in Mystic, Connecticut at that time. Mystic was a very busy area back then.

It still is today.  The work to restore and keep all these wooden sailing ships is never ending. Here are some folks working on the hull of the Emma C. Berry.

At the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard, we were able to watch several smaller boats being restored.  From the visitor's gallery above, we could look down on carpenters’ shops, an 85-foot spar lathe, a rigging loft and a large, open area where the Museum’s vessels are brought indoors for repair.  The shipyard also includes a paint shop, a metalworking shop, documentation shop, lumber shed and an old-fashioned saw mill full of rough-cut logs.

We really enjoyed our trip back in time. As Captain Picard once quoted John Masefield:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.