Mystic Seaport

It was a chilly November morning when we entered the seventy-five acre museum. We were in Mystic, Connecticut, at the mouth of the Mystic River.  It had been  a long time since I had seen those gorgeous color photographs in National Geographic Magazine. That day we would see Mystic Seaport, the Museum of America and the Sea for real. We had parked our car and crossed the street and entered by the guardian tugboat.

Before buying our tickets we were looking out at the river when we starting chatting with a nattily dressed gentleman installing a banner advertising a gallery.  He told us quite a bit about what we were going to see. You can only access the museum though the ticketing building.  We managed to get senior citizen discounts as well as AAA. That was good. Our tickets came with wristbands to identify us as visitors and a map with a schedule of events. The crisp winter air smelled fresh and we immediately noticed the lack of the odor of pluff mud. There was not much of a smell of salt either. But the the salt content was probably quite low in the river. At first we looked at a couple of steel hulled boats one was a trawler and the other a ferry. Claudette snapped my photo sitting in a dory doing my best impression of the Gordons fisherman. There are over sixty buildings in the restored mid-nineteenth century seaport. Mystic Seaport was the largest shipyard on the east coast at one time during the period of wooden sailing ships.  As we walked the gravel streets among the quaint shops and houses there was almost an eerie feeling. There were few visitors on that early Sunday morning. Some of the buildings were locked and many of the demonstrators were absent they would be there later in the day.  In one building there was the remnants of a large sailing ship.   There were no masts on theAustralia.   It was like a skeleton. Claudette went into the hold, but I could see her since planking was missing between the ribs. It was easy to see how the ship was constructed.  I found that interesting. Later in a smaller building we saw a collection of catboats. Most of those exhibited the epitome of the boatbuilders craft.  From there we saw a most unusual building housing the cordage production machinery. Sailing ships used hundreds of feet of rope of various sizes and it was made in that building which was over three football fields long.  It was an interesting process.  Twisting hemp. The first ship we went aboard had once been a yatch. But that was after the Conrad had been built as a training vessel.  The docent was very knowledgable but there is something about sailing ships with steel hulls that I don't like.  Maybe it's because they don't creak. There are over twenty watercraft of various sizes at Mystic Seaport to explore. There is a lighthouse there as well. I found it rather amusing because it was not very tall. But then it was positioned on a river and not the ocean.  One of the buildings held a 1/128 scale model of the entire seaport. This recreated seaport in miniature was over fifty feet long. The detail was incredible.  Each tiny house had its own privy! Perhaps, the greatest and best known attraction of Mystic Seaport is the Charles W. Morgan. It is an original nineteenth century whaling ship. The ship was launched in 1841 and took her first whale in December of that year. When we first saw the ship which towers over everything they had launched a whaleboat and were moving toward the bow of the ship. We approached the ship from the stern and entered a small building nearby.  It housed harpoons and and other whaling artifacts as well as a whale boat. There was also a diagram of how to butcher a whale. After leaving this display we boarded the ship.  We walked toward the aft part of the ship and Claudette took my picture at the helm.  The helm is where the ship is steered. The ship's wheel was at least four feet in diameter. I was surprised to notice that while at the wheel I could not see the sea.  But I could see the compass. We went below deck by way of a narrow curving stairway. I was surprised that it was not a ladder. At one hundred thirteen feet long and three hundred thirteen tons the ship was big enough to have a stairway which led to the captain's quarters. On whaling ships like merchant ships of the era the captain's entire family followed him to sea. I found it interesting that the captain's double bed was mounted so that it remained level when the ship was not. As we walked forward in this ocean going whale processing plant of wood we went through the crews quarters. There was a compliment of thirty-three men at sea to kill and process the largest mammals on earth. And they had to sail the ship too. Whale oil was in big demand. Until the advent of kerosene whale oil was used in lamps for lighting. Another surprise for me was that I could stand up in most places and I'm almost six feet tall. We left the ship with a better understanding of whaling and the life of a seaman aboard a whaling ship.

We exited Mystic Seaport and began our trek further north.