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Mystic Seaport Museum named #2 Best Open Air Museum by USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Award!

Mystic, Conn. (February 26, 2024) – Mystic Seaport Museum proudly announces its second place position in the Best Open Air Museum category of the 2024 USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice awards out of twenty exceptional open air museums featured in the competition. The top ten winners were officially announced on Friday, February 23.

“This acknowledgment of Mystic Seaport Museum by an expert panel and the public, underscores the institution’s unwavering commitment to preserving maritime heritage and captivating audiences with immersive experiences,” says Museum President and CEO, Peter Armstrong.

Nominees were selected by an expert panel comprised of editors from USA TODAY and 10Best.com, as well as contributors and sources from Gannett brands. Votes were cast in each category over a four-week period starting in January on the 10Best.com website. A sincere thank you to USA TODAY, 10Best, and all the contributors for including the Museum in this year’s nomination.

Mystic Seaport Museum extends our heartfelt gratitude to the dedicated supporters and voters who contributed to this achievement, reinforcing our position as a destination for cultural enrichment and maritime exploration. Congratulations to all the open air museums: 1st place winner Plimoth Patuxet Museums, Oconaluftee Indian Village, National Museum of Transportation, Jamestown Settlement, Strawbery Banke Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, Conner Prairie, Hagley Museum and Library, and Fort Monroe.

Visit here to see the complete list of winners and their ranking.

Learn more about USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards here.

About Mystic Seaport Museum

Mystic Seaport Museum is the nation’s leading maritime Museum. Founded in 1929 to gather and preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of America’s seafaring past, the Museum has grown to become a national center for research and education with the mission to “inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience.” The Museum’s grounds cover 19 acres on the Mystic River in Mystic, Connecticut, and include a recreated New England coastal village, a working shipyard, formal exhibit halls, and state-of-the-art artifact storage facilities. The Museum is home to more than 500 historic watercraft, including four National Historic Landmark vessels, most notably the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan. For more information, please visit mysticseaport.org and follow the Museum on FacebookXYouTube, and Instagram.

About USA Today

USA TODAY is a multi-platform news and information media company. Founded in 1982, USA TODAY’s mission is to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Through its unique visual storytelling, USA TODAY delivers high-quality and engaging content across print, digital, social and video platforms. An innovator of news and information, USA TODAY reflects the pulse of the nation and serves as the host of the American conversation — today, tomorrow and for decades to follow. USA TODAY, the nation’s number one newspaper in print circulation with an average of more than 1.6 million daily, and USATODAY.com, an award-winning newspaper website launched in 1995, reach a combined 6.6 million readers daily. USA TODAY is a leader in mobile applications with more than 16 million downloads on mobile devices. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI).

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Sailors Ditty Box Returned to Antarctica for Historic Anniversary

Suzana Machado D’Oliveira, Expedition Director, Abercrombie & Kent and Alexander Bulazel, Trustee, Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Connecticut  (Photo credit: Christopher Ian McGregor)

Two hundred and three years ago Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer, American seal hunter, explorer, sailing captain, and ship designer sailed down to Marguerite Bay below the Antarctic Circle to discover what became known as Stonington Island, named after Palmer’s hometown of Stonington, Connecticut. The Island would eventually accommodate US and British Antarctic bases. This voyage was Palmer’s farthest point south during his historic explorations of the continent from 1819 to 1831. In 1820 Palmer was credited with the sighting of the Antarctic mainland peninsula from a hilltop on Deception Island while anchored in Whalers Bay. A portion of the peninsula now bears the name Palmer Land. 

Sailors ditty box from Palmer’s 1820 voyage.

A ditty box from the Mystic-built sloop Hero, sailed by Palmer to Deception Island, is part of the Mystic Seaport Museum collections and is the oldest known artifact to exist from the Antarctic age of discovery, along with Palmer’s logbook housed in the Library of Congress. This 7″ x 3″ wooden ditty box from Hero was donated to the Museum in 1950. It is ornately carved and has the inscription, “L.B. Stonington Slp. Hero.” It is believed that the L. B. likely stands for Stanton L. Burdick a 17-year-old crew member who sailed with Palmer in the 1819-20 season to Deception Island and again in 1821.

Mystic Seaport Museum celebrated the bicentennial anniversary of Palmer’s sighting of the Antarctic mainland with the return of the ditty box to Deception Island’s Whalers Bay in January 2020, months ahead of the 200th anniversary. In 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the second historic bicentennial celebration of Captain Palmer’s farthest drive south to Stonington Island, Antarctica, for Mystic Seaport Museum and the community of Stonington, Connecticut; however, on January 25 of this year Alexander Bulazel, Trustee and Chair of the Exhibitions Committee for Mystic Seaport Museum, in association with luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent, once again returned the ditty box to Stonington Island, Antarctica, for the historic anniversary celebration of Palmer’s exploratory voyage over two hundred and three years ago. 

News about the 2020 return of the ditty box to Deception Island can be read at https://mysticseaport.org/news/sailors-ditty-box-returns-to-antarctica-200-years-later/. 

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