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Maritime Gallery Hosts International Exhibition

Patrick O’ Brien  “USS CONSTELLATION On Patrol” 24” x 36” Oil.  Honored with an Award of Excellence
Patrick O’ Brien “USS CONSTELLATION On Patrol”
24” x 36” Oil. Honored with an Award of Excellence

The Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport is proud to present the 34th Annual International Marine Art Exhibition and Sale. Open now through December 31, the exhibition is the most comprehensive collection of contemporary marine art in the United States. More than 100 examples of recent work from award-winning artists are on display, including exceptional paintings, sculpture, scrimshaw, and ship models. The show is a commemoration of America’s maritime heritage with both intricately researched historical scenes and contemporary images that document the relationship of man to the sea.

“The Annual International Marine Art Exhibition is such a unique event for both artists and art lovers,” said Jeanne Potter, director of the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport. “Not only is the maritime art on view of such high quality representing the most talented marine artists from around the world working today, but it also gives the public, and especially collectors, the opportunity to view and purchase these works in such a beautiful gallery on the Mystic River.”

Participating artists include Patrick O’Brien, Yoko Gaydos, Geoff Hunt, Russ Kramer, Robert Lagasse, Victor Mays, and Kim Shaklee.

Awards of excellence and prestigious-named awards–including the Rudolph J. Schaefer Maritime Heritage Award, which recognizes the work that best documents our maritime heritage for future generations–were awarded at a black-tie awards dinner on September 22. Judges for this year’s show were Elizabeth Goddard, executive director of the Newport Art Museum and Stuart Parnes, director of Connecticut Humanities and the former director of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum and Connecticut River Museum.The awards and honorees are as follows:

  • Rudolph J. Schaefer Maritime Heritage Award – Walfun Luey “Departure”
  • Rudolph J. Schaefer III Emerging Artist Award — Paul Beebe “Schooner Passing Gay Head”
  • Stobart Foundation Award — Robert Noreika “Seaside Café”
  • Maritime Gallery Yachting Award — Russ Kramer “Last But Not Least, J-Boat WHIRLWIND, 1930”
  • Marine Environmental Wildlife Award — Terry Miller “Paradise Cove”
  • Thomas M. Hoyne III Award — David W. Smith “Dory Mates”
  • The Thomas Wells Award — John Tayson “The White Ship”
  • Museum Purchase Award — Steven Lush “East-West”
  • Award of Excellence — Jeff Weaver “Boatyard Office”
  • Award of Excellence — Ronald Tinney “Quietly Passing”
  • Award of Excellence — David Bareford “Outbound”
  • Award of Excellence — Neal Hughes “Restless Rising”
  • Award of Excellence — Patrick O’ Brien “USS CONSTELLATION On Patrol”

All works in the exhibition are available to view and purchase daily between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. The show can also be viewed online. Every purchase of artwork helps to support the maritime preservation work performed by Mystic Seaport.

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News

New Photography Exhibit

Opens September 13, 2013

Provincetown Tuna_ Milton Moore
Photograph by Milton Moore.

This fall Mystic Seaport is hosting an exhibit of the work of two American photographers who have documented very different aspects of life on the water in black and white. The exhibit features the work of Milton Moore, who documented the work of Cape Cod fishermen during the 1970s, and Barry Winiker, who photographs luxury cruise ships.

“We are very happy to share the work of these two important photographers whose work exemplifies the spectrum of ways we connect with the sea,” said Jonathan Shay, the Museum’s director of exhibits. “From the luxurious environment of cruise ships to the gritty setting on fishing boats, these photos show the extremes of work and play that the oceans provide. I love the photos not only for this documentation but also for their exceptional artistry.”

Milton Moore’s show is entitled Working Men, Working Boats:  Images of the Cape Cod Fishery in its Heyday. Moore is currently a news designer with The Day newspaper of  New London. Thirty years ago, while working for the Cape Cod Times, he produced this body of work. He has recently digitized and restored these historic images. The photographs have a timeless feel, capturing techniques that date back far before the 1970s.

“When I look at these photographs now, these images of men hauling nets and dredges no longer seem connected to my own hand, but are like some family heirloom I have always known,” Moore said. “It is as easy for me to imagine these photographs as records from the 1930s as to conjure the cold winds and shifting light of the days when they were made.”

Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth 2, 1981. Photo: Barry Winiker
Photograph by Barry Winiker.

Barry Winiker’s show is entitled Sun Ships: Modern Cruising. Winiker’s photographs of luxury ships contrast with the rugged environment of fishermen. His fascination with the photography of cruise ships and ocean liners began in 1980 when he boarded a passenger ship in New York City and discovered a world of style, design, and function. His photographs from the past three decades record passenger activities and the architectural and design elements on board.

“My views from the deck are documentary and informative, as well as interpretive,” Winiker explained. “They are concerned as much with architecture and design as they are with weather conditions, time of day and play of light and shadow. The wealth of shipboard visual information is enormous–it is a subject that inspires, challenges, and offers immeasurable possibilities.”

The exhibit is now open and is located on the second floor of the Stillman Building.

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News

Museum Receives IMLS Grant

WASHINGTON – The Institute for Museum and Library Services has awarded Mystic Seaport a competitive matching grant of $80,343 through the Museums for America program to help fund a project to digitally catalog nearly 5,000 historical objects, documents, and photographs. The selected artifacts will be incorporated into an online learning project for students and teachers, as well as programming related to the recent launch and planned 2014 voyage of Mystic Seaport’s flagship, the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan.

IMLS LogoRep. Joe Courtney (CT-2) announced the award.

“This grant will assist one of our district’s most important historical institutions in creating a permanent database of significant artifacts from New England’s maritime heritage,” Courtney said. “By creating an electronic archive, Mystic Seaport will preserve these important pieces of our history and give students around the world access to Connecticut treasures. As the Charles W. Morgan embarks on a voyage to share New England’s whaling history, this archive will be a valuable tool for Mystic Seaport to bring that history to life.”

The funds will be used to support a full-time cataloger and purchase of supplies and equipment in support of project activities. The Museum will provide a cost share of $85,864 for a total project cost of $166,207.

The objects selected for the project, all acquired within the past several years, represent an important body of material that is presently not available to support the needs of Mystic Seaport staff or outside users. The project will create detailed catalog records in the Museum’s collection database to enable immediate in-house and external access to support research, exhibit and program development, publications, and teacher professional development, among other activities.

The Charles W. Morgan on the Museum's shiplift awaiting her July 21, 2013 launch.The project will specifically support two key Mystic Seaport initiatives: an online learning project for students and teachers and programming associated with whaling and the Museum’s restoration and planned 38th Voyage of the Morgan. Both of these initiatives informed the object selection for the cataloging project and both will benefit substantially from the project.

The selected objects span more than two centuries of the American maritime experience and include several thousand historic photographs depicting a wide range of maritime people and activities, scrimshaw, fishing and whaling gear, ship and boat parts, tools, ceramics, textiles, ship models, and other three-dimensional objects. Also included are two-dimensional items such as paintings, prints, advertising items, postcards, posters, and printed ephemera.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. Its mission is to inspire libraries and museums to advance innovation, lifelong learning, and cultural and civic engagement. The organization’s grant making, policy development, and research help libraries and museums deliver valuable services that make it possible for communities and individuals to thrive. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov.

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News

The Dabney Cup

An Azorean whaleboat pulls in front of a Yankee boat during the Dabney Cup held in New Bedford on September 8. Photo: Evelyn Ansel
An Azorean whaleboat pulls in front of a Yankee boat during the Dabney Cup held in New Bedford on September 8. Photo: Evelyn Ansel

A Mystic Seaport crew raced in the 7th Annual International Whaleboat Regatta’s Dabney Cup in New Bedford on Sunday, September 8. The Azorean vs. Yankee Whaleboat Race featured three Azorean whaleboats racing against three American Beetle wooden whaleboats. These three boats were built to be on board the Charles W Morgan during the whaleship’s ceremonial 38th Voyage in 2014.

Mystic Seaport sent two boats and one crew to compete in the race. The boats were built by Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway of Vineyard Haven, MA and Rocking the Boat of New York City. The Museum’s crew included Nathan Adams (steering), Susan Funk (stroke), Bror Okerblom (tub), Matt Porter (midships), Jesse Edwards (bow), and Lauren Barber (harpooneer). The third American boat that raced was built for the New Bedford Whaling Museum by the Beetle Cat Boat Shop of Wareham, MA. The Mystic Seaport crew came in fourth overall and was the first to finish among the Yankee boats.

Many traveled from Mystic to New Bedford to cheer on the Mystic Seaport crew, including Evelyn Ansel, a staff member who has been working on the Morgan restoration. Featured below is Ansel’s firsthand account of the race.

The Dabney Cup in New Bedford took place on a beautifully overcast morning–perfect for whaleboat sails reflecting sun against the dark sky. The idea behind the day was to test the Yankee whaleboats against their younger Azorean cousins, and American against Azorean crews. The two boat types aren’t really in the same class- the Azorean boats are longer, have an extra rowing station, and carry substantially more sail than their Yankee counterparts. Additionally, the Azorean boats are trimmer and narrower, reflecting the more modern shore-whaling practices in which they were beached through surf and often towed out to the whales by motorboats. They are excellent at going forward, fast, and straight. Not so good at turning, tacking, or beating to windward, particularly without centerboards. The Yanks, in comparison, are easier and safer handling (obviously a necessity as they doubled as lifeboats and tenders on long voyages), smaller as they had to be hauled up and down davits, rounder in the bilge, more pronounced in the sheer, also making them wonderfully seaworthy.

One unintentional, but very illuminating (and rather exciting), test of one shape against another presented itself when one of each type separately capsized mid-race; both rigs were removed and towed to shore on their own. The Azorean boat had to be towed in awash- couldn’t really be re-floated out on the water, but the American boat popped right back up once the rig was out and the crew got a couple of five-gallon buckets going. Although the crews were a little chilly and perhaps a little sore, it stirred quite a bit of excitement in the spectators ashore.

There was a significant crowd in attendance, maybe 150 people, perhaps nine full whaleboat crews and a pulling boat from one of the local rowing clubs, as well as numerous chase boats on the water. Portuguese was far and away the dominant language; we from Mystic were some of only a handful conversing in English. For the American teams, Mystic sent two boats and one crew, while the New Bedford Whaling Museum furnished one boat and two crews for a total of three Yankee boats. There were also three Azorean boats with extra crews.

The rowing race began at 9 a.m. It seemed more like two simultaneous races really, what with the extra hull length and extra oarsmen in the Azorean vessels–the Azoreans against themselves, the Yankees in the second heat. The race was simply a half-mile sprint. The Mystic boat came in 4th overall, 1st among the Yankee boats. The sailing race included several tacks roughly in a triangle, and the Mystic boat again came in 4th. The Azorean boats were brightly painted and fully equipped with paddles as well as oars, and watching them paddle out away from the beach I couldn’t help but be reminded of native American canoes (sometimes credited as forebears to the whaleboat) and pacific island dugouts. It was wonderful.

-Evelyn Ansel

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Charles W. Morgan News News

NEH Awards Mystic Seaport $614,280 in Grants

The Morgan's stern back in the Mystic River
The MORGAN is now back in the water after her July 21 launch and the final phase of restoration has begun in preparation for her 38th Voyage.

Today the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $33 million in grants for 173 humanities projects nationwide. Mystic Seaport is thrilled to be included in this group and is the recipient of two substantial grants.

The Museum was awarded $450,000 to support public programming related to the 38th Voyage of the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan. The funds will be used for dockside and onboard activities and programming during the ship’s ceremonial voyage in 2014. The grant will also help fund a new permanent exhibit on whaling at Mystic Seaport titled “In the Wake of the Whalers.”

“This grant will help us fully express the Morgan’s significance to maritime heritage and indeed American history,” said Mystic Seaport President Steve White.

The Morgan will go back to sea on her 38th Voyage in May 2014 to visit historic ports of New England in celebration of America’s maritime heritage. After a period of refitting and sea trials based in New London, the vessel will sail to Newport, Vineyard Haven, New Bedford, and Boston. She will also venture onto the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and participate in the centennial celebration of the Cape Cod Canal. The 38th Voyage will be a commemoration of the role of the sea in America’s history and an appreciation of our changing relationship with the natural world.

Munson Institute
University faculty can immerse themselves in American maritime history at the Museum’s Munson Institute.

The NEH award is an America’s Historic & Cultural Organizations Implementation Grant, which is used to support museum exhibits, library-based projects, interpretation of historic places, websites, and other formats that excite and inform “thoughtful reflection upon culture, identity and history,” according to the NEH. Mystic Seaport was awarded a $40,000 planning grant in the same category for the Morgan in 2011.

The NEH also awarded $164,280 to support the 2014 NEH Summer Institute “The American Maritime People” at the Museum’s Frank C. Munson Institute. The grant will enable the Institute to bring 20 college and university faculty members to Mystic Seaport in the summer of 2014 to teach them about the cultural influence of the nation’s maritime past so they can share that knowledge with undergraduates across the country.

“It is very rewarding to receive our fourth NEH grant in the last nine years,” said Dr. Glenn Gordinier, Robert G. Albion Historian at Mystic Seaport and the Co-Director of the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies. “That kind of affirmation from such an esteemed body confirms the importance of our work and gives a great boost to everyone involved.”

Mystic Seaport is grateful to the NEH for its continued support.

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Charles W. Morgan News News

Ric Burns’ Keynote Address

The 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan was launched at Mystic Seaport on July 21, 2013. After a nearly five-year restoration, the ship returned to the water in front of thousands of spectators during a ceremony at the Museum’s Shipyard. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ric Burns delivered the keynote address at the launch ceremony and described the ship as “an ambassador from a crucial moment in American history.” He continued, “This one ship has embodied, made possible, made real and brought alive the experience of whaling as no other single artifact on the planet.” Read Burns’ speech in its entirety below.

“The Re-Launching of the Charles W. Morgan”
Mystic Seaport, July 21, 2013

This is the first totally good thing I’ve been to in ten years!

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ric Burns delivering the keynote address at the Morgan launch ceremony on July 21, 2013 at Mystic Seaport. Seated (l to r): Chairman of Mystic Seaport's Board of Trustees Richard Vietor, U.S. Congressman Joseph Courtney, Museum President Steve White, Conn. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, and Rev. Ann M. Aaberg.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ric Burns delivering the keynote address at the launch ceremony.

Good afternoon. What a remarkable, moving, incredible day this is. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it is to be here with you all. And so first of all, I want to say from the bottom of my heart – to Steve White, the president of Mystic Seaport – to Mystic’s valiant and stalwart board of trustees – to the talented and committed and heroic staff of this extraordinary institution – to all the many friends and associates of Mystic, the Museum of America and the Sea – Governor Malloy, Senator Richard Blumenthal – ladies and gentleman – distinguished guests:

Thank you so very much for what you’ve done here today. All of us are so honored and humbled to be here – and awed to see this happening. And so profoundly grateful to Mystic Seaport for what you’ve accomplished. Having taken in and cared for and lovingly provided a home for the Charles W. Morgan since 1941 you have now done something even more extraordinary. You have given her back her wings, made it possible for her to sail again, and given her back to the sea. I can’t begin to express to you what an honor and a joy it is to be here with you on this glorious and joyful occasion – to mark and celebrate the restoring, the re-launching – the rebirth – of the Charles W. Morgan – the oldest American commercial vessel floating, and the last wooden whaleship in the world. The last of her kind…. now reborn.

There is nothing more magical than a ship. And just as there is something magical about ships in general, there is something especially magical and deeply moving about the extraordinary compounded human alchemy – the commitment, the ingenuity, the passion, the dedication, the skill, the imagination – the sheer stubborn seaborne love and wizardry – through which this unique American treasure has been so lovingly restored, and brought back to life – re-timbered, re-caulked, and soon to be re-canvased, re-roped, re-masted, re-sailed, re-borne – set back out onto the waters to float and sail and go forth again.

The 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan on the Museum's shiplift awaiting her launch. July 21, 2013
The 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan on the Museum’s shiplift awaiting her launch. July 21, 2013

With ships as with life there is always a ratio of the seen to the unseen – a ratio between what we clearly see above decks, and what we can’t see below the water line – between what is visible and invisible about the structure that sustains her, about the forces that propel her, about the meanings she holds within. We see the Morgan here and now and she is grand enough. But we have to remember or imagine or realize or be told that in the 172 years to the day since she slid down the launch in New Bedford on a bright July morning in 1841, she has been around the world on 37 voyages, carrying men and whale oil and whale bone and treasure in an eighty-year career. She has seen every corner of the globe. She has visited every port of call in every ocean, withstood innumerable storms, carried every kind of human being. What this single ship and this historic moment connects us to – looking back into the depths of our history – looking out into our bonds with the world – looking forward into the future – is nothing short of miraculous. That miracle is a gift. Those who made her, those who sailed her and those who have salvaged her from the depredations of time have collectively given us this gift, and we and those whom come after us are beneficiaries in ways we can only begin to imagine.

Of all the things we can’t see of a ship, the kelson and the keel are in many ways the most awesome: the keel timbers, the gigantically long, immensely strong timbers that runs from bow to stern all the way along the length of the ship far below what we can see; the things that hold it all together – where all the lines of force meet and converge – that sustain the ship’s buoyancy. They are the unseen center of the ship’s structure and creation – the physical equivalent of what binds human beings to either other – as Walt Whitman – a contemporary of the Morgan in every way – understood when he wrote in 1855, in “Song of Myself” – that “the kelson of the creation is love.”

Long before we Americans were a westering people, and learned to define ourselves by continuous westward expansion across the continent, we were a maritime nation, huddled along the eastern Atlantic seaboard. The sea was our life. Seafaring, and its many adjacent handmaiden industries were part of virtually everyone’s heritage.

And in all seafaring there was no harder core kind than whaling – America’s first global industry – the engine and rocket that first took us out across the globe – the industry that first fueled the industrial revolution – lighting the lamps and lubricating the gears of industry – the oil industry of 18th and 19th century.

Ships like people can be born under a good sign or a bad sign or star, and from the start the Charles W. Morgan has always enjoyed good fortune – however much she sometimes, like Blanche duBois, has been forced to rely on the kindness of strangers.

What does it take to be the last of your kind?

Shipyard Director Quentin Snediker (leaning against the shiplift) and shipwrights who worked on the MORGAN restoration.
Shipyard Director Quentin Snediker (leaning against the shiplift) and shipwrights who worked on the Morgan restoration.

“The Morgan was a lucky ship from early on,” Quentin Snediker, master of the shipyard here at Mystic, once said – a thousand choices made with care over the years by those who designed and built her, and by those who sailed and navigated and commanded her, by those who thought to keep her painted and caulked, or to sew her sails.

At every turn along the way, people have cared for her, and she seems always to have had her own special spirit and power of survival, and inventiveness. She has been the magic seed in the pearl of the study of whaling in many ways. This one ship has embodied, made possible, made real and brought alive, the experience of whaling as no other single artifact. We have scrimshaw and paintings, harpoons and all the paraphernalia, manuscripts and letters and log books and journals, and each one of them is precious, each one of them discloses something indelible and profound and key. But the ship itself, the whale ship, is something else entirely – it is the basic unit of construction of the industry and of the experience of whalemen – it is a microcosm that shows us what the experience was like – the crucial link that not only conveyed individual whalemen to every part of the globe – but that conveys us back to that time and experience, in all its danger, wonder, excitement, fear and mystery – like nothing in the world.

Our good friend, Matthew Stackpole, is here in the audience today. He’s a historian and sailor and a lover of ships, and it’s true to say that of the people who made this day possible and without whom we wouldn’t be here, Matthew is second to none. His passion, his knowledge, his commitment have made this day possible as much as anyone. His love for ships, and whaleships and history is legendary, runs from Nantucket and Mystic, where he grew up, to Martha’s Vineyard, where he built ships and ran the historical society, and back again.

I know this ship means everything to Matthew. The Charles W. Morgan is an emissary and ambassador from a crucial moment in American history – and restoring her, Matthew recently wrote movingly, was like entering a time machine that magically transported the team back 1841.

As she sits here in Mystic, powerful cords of history link this glorious 107-foot-long, 351-ton wonder – built not for beauty and speed but for stamina, and staying power and perseverance – to whaling’s origins and to its great capitals – and of course from there all across the globe. All whaling in a sense went into making her what and who she is, and all America – and she is linked in time and space and by pedigree to the entire panorama of American whaling. Her builder and first owner, Charles Morgan himself started out in New Bedford in the counting house of the Rotch family – the greatest dynasty whaling ever saw – a family originally from Nantucket, who went on to pioneer and build New Bedford in the early years of the 19th century.

She was launched 75 miles east northeast of here at New Bedford, in the summer of 1841. On July 21st of that year, Charles W. Morgan made a fateful entry into his diary. Though he wasn’t quite sure that this brand new addition to his fleet of whaleships should be named after him, he was unambiguously ecstatic about the birth of the Morgan.

“A fine warm day,” he wrote, “– but very dry. This morning at 10 o’clock my elegant new ship was launched beautifully from Messrs. Hillman’s yard — and in the presence of both half the town and a great show of ladies. She looks beautifully on the water, she was copper-bottomed on the stocks. She is to be commanded by Captain Thomas Norton.”

The very first entry of the MORGAN's first voyage in 1841. Read the entire journal and others here.
The very first entry of the Morgan’s first voyage in 1841. MSM Log 143

She set sail on her first whaling voyage six weeks later on September 6, 1841 bound for the Pacific.

Her second mate, James Osborn, recorded in his journal: “May kind Neptune protect us with plesant gales and may we be successful in catching sperm whales.” Kind Neptune complied. She returned three years, three months and 27 days later with a cargo of 1,600 barrels of sperm oil, 800 barrels of whale oil, and 10,000 pounds of bone. She had cost $27,000 to build and $26,000 to outfit, and she almost always returned a handsome profit. Over the next eighty years, traveling to every ocean of the world, she would make 37 voyages in all – one of the 2,700 whaleships that made the worldwide whaling fleet over time, which embarked on a combined 14,864 voyages. Her longest voyage was almost five years; her average voyage was 2.

The whole world in all its diversity was part of her experience, and her timbers are imbued with that reality to this day. During that time, she traveled to every part of the globe – part of the whaling advance guard of American globalization, and a laboratory of the multi-cultural society we were on the verge of becoming. According to a New Bedford physician who vaccinated her crew in 1906 – as recounted by Matthew Stackpole’s father Edouard Stackpole, one of the grandfathers of American whaling history, the Morgan’s crew that year alone included – and I quote – “Americans, Chileans, Hawaiians, Germans, Australians, British, kanakas, Swedes, West Indians and two Chimoeans from the Island of Guam.”

During the eighty years the Charles W. Morgan sailed, from 1841 to 1921, America became America. She was launched on the very eve of our immense expansion West – an expansion that hadn’t even begun in earnest by 1841, but that would make the country what it is. During those eighty years as she went around the world, America fulfilled what the newspaper editor John O’Sullivan called her “manifest destiny” – which was he said in 1845 to spread with extraordinary speed across the magnificent continent providence had allotted her for her yearly multiplying millions.

In the next ten years alone, millions of square miles would be added to the American nation – an expansion that would trigger a lethal civil war over the meaning of freedom on the American continent.

In the decades following the Civil War scores of millions of new peoples would pour into the explosively growing country in one of the biggest demographic expansions and most spectacular movements of human beings in history – a huge combined geographical and demographic expansion.

Whaleship Charles W. Morgan under sail in 1920.
Whaleship Charles W. Morgan under sail in 1920.

By 1921, the year she retired, the adolescent nation of country people that was spreading its wings and flexing its muscles the year she was launched had become a world power and a main player on the world stage.

She was retired in 1921 – three years before the wreck of the Wanderer off Cuttyhunk left her an orphan and the last wooden whaleship in the world. Her career it turned out had been almost exactly co-terminous with the beginning of the peak years of American whaling – and the commencement of whaling’s decline.

But 172 years ago, all that was far in the future and beyond anyone’s ability to reckon. The Hillman Brothers Shipyard who built her completed seventeen ships in the years between 1826 and 1852 – and certainly no one on that warm July day 172 years ago could have imagined she would be the last of her kind, and eventually the only whaleship left in the world.

The Morgan alone it turns out has survived the apocalypse that was visited on the whaling industry and its fleet of ships, once 2,700 strong. She is – in that sense, as in many others – so movingly like Ishmael – the lone survivor of the whale ship Pequod when she went down apocalyptically in Moby-Dick. She alone has returned to tell the tale.

At yet, whales and whaling and whaleships keep speaking to us, it turns out, across great gulfs of time and space – long after whaling itself and all but one of the world’s whaleships have passed from the scene – or almost passed from the scene.

What a wondrous mystery.

Perhaps it’s because whales – after all, the first creature God thought to create in Genesis, after making the world – have always seemed to stand for something larger than ourselves – something deeper, something vaster, something beyond.

Perhaps, it’s because ships, too, have always been powerful metaphors for us humans – metaphors for experience, for existence, for the human community – a metaphor for passage – for crossing over – for transport – for movement from one place to another, from one time to another, from life to death and beyond.

So if whales and ships are metaphors – perhaps whaleships – both as facts and as symbols – are metaphors on steroids – as the great novelist Herman Melville knew so well.

Museum shipwrights working on the Morgan's hull - March 2012
Museum shipwrights working on the Morgan’s hull – March 2012

Human beings having always celebrated resurrection, restoration, renewal, and return. The only thing greater than the miracle of life itself can sometimes seem to be the miracle of something being brought back to life – after being buffeted by the tempests and storms and high seas of life, after have been battered, or sunk or stranded or given up for lost, perhaps simply after having weakened, retreated and retired. In “The Tempest,” Shakespeare’s late great sea-washed play, possibly his last, of loss and redemption, the spirit Ariel – chief agent and magical engineer of Prospero’s campaign to conjure a fantastic transmutation of loss into renewal – says to Ferdinand who mistakenly believes his father Gonzalo to have been lost in the shipwreck that stranded them all on Prospero’s island: “Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes, Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange.”

We’re here today to celebrate the wondrous fact that the whaleship Charles W. Morgan has this day finished undergoing its own kind of sea-change – has been restored like Prospero to her proper estate and proper regency…. and herewith takes another step forward to restoration to her full glory – not as it turns out for the first time.

It’s not just a restoration, of course. It’s an incredible transformation of purpose – sensibility – outlook – philosophy – world view – a transformation from instrument of death to vehicle of knowledge and wonder and understanding.

The occasion – the emblem – the instrument of an extraordinary alchemy: like magicians and sorcerers, Prosperos on our own island, we have transformed an instrument of commerce, of killing and rendering, into a source of wonder and imagination and knowledge and understanding.

Once it went out across the world and brought back profit. Now it sails here, both really and in our imagination, and brings back another kind of treasure far more valuable – information about worlds past present and to come….

“When the restoration is complete,” the literature for the restored Charles W. Morgan proclaims, “we plan to take the Morgan to sea once again on a ceremonial 38th Voyage. This time her cargo will not be oil and whalebone but knowledge and experience.”

Nature has given us brains for instrumental purposes – to compete, survive, prevail, to extend ourselves in space and time, to reproduce and to pass along our genes. But as socio-biologists and evolutionary theorists have noted for a very long time, our brains are far bigger than they need to be for mere survival – and are – accidentally, it seems – capable of so much more than simply getting by. We have many times more matter up there than we need for mere reproduction and survival. We alone, apparently, look forward and backward, and construct our lives into narratives with a meaning, think and dream of times before us and times when we are long gone. It’s never been clear how this helped anyone compete better or adapt more happily or pass on their genes with greater success. We are the creatures with a strong sense of before and after; and that imaginative power – not just now, but before and after, here but also there – is the gateway to wonder. We are the beings who are not just trapped in the here and the now, but have been blessed and cursed with an understanding of the far away, the before and the after – in the beginning and after I am gone – being able to understanding what we are now, where we are not now and times before and after our own existence – that is what we humans are capable of doing, as perhaps only a few other species can, and more completely.

The Charles W. Morgan awaiting her launch. July 21, 2013
The Charles W. Morgan awaiting her launch.
July 21, 2013

The brain that fashioned the Morgan and its many sister ships – ingeniously, brilliantly, successfully – as instruments of commerce, sometimes instruments of war – never imagined the wonder of what it feels like to stand on her decks at the masthead, sensing and experiencing the infinite largeness and grandeur of the world, and the connection we all have to all creation.

“There you stand,” Herman Melville wrote as Ishmael, remembering what it was to stand at the top of the masthead looking out to sea – “– a hundred feet above the silent decks – striding along the deep, as if the masts were giant stilts – while beneath you, and, as it were, between your legs, swim the hugest monsters of the sea …. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, [until] at last … thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came – becomes diffused through time and space …. forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.”

Thank you all, and God bless the Charles W. Morgan.

— Ric Burns

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Charles W. Morgan News News

The MORGAN is Launched

The 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan on the Museum's shiplift awaiting her launch. July 21, 2013
The 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan on the Museum’s shiplift awaiting her launch. July 21, 2013

After a nearly five-year restoration in the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard at Mystic Seaport, the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan was launched into the waters of the Mystic River today. The ship, a National Historic Landmark and America’s oldest commercial vessel, was carefully lowered into the water in a public ceremony to float on her own bottom for the first time since 2008.

The ship was christened by Sarah Bullard, the great-great-great granddaughter of Charles Waln Morgan, one of the original owners of the ship and the man after which she was named. The bottle Bullard broke across the bow was filled with waters from the oceans over which the vessel sailed during her 80-year whaling career. Samples were gathered from the North and South Atlantic, the Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Water from the Acushnet River in New Bedford and the Mystic River were added to represent her original and homeports.

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ric Burns delivering the keynote address at the Morgan launch ceremony on July 21, 2013 at Mystic Seaport. Seated (l to r): Mystic Seaport Chairman of the Board of Trustees Richard Vietor, U.S. Congressman Joseph Courtney (D-CT), Museum President Steve White, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy, and Rev. Ann M. Aaberg.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ric Burns delivering the keynote address at the Morgan launch ceremony on July 21, 2013. Seated (l to r): Mystic Seaport Chairman of the Board of Trustees Richard Vietor, U.S. Congressman Joseph Courtney (D-CT), Museum President Steve White, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy, and Rev. Ann M. Aaberg.

“This launch is a milestone in the life of this great ship,” said Mystic Seaport President Steve White. “Today she turns 172-years-old and we hope this restoration will help preserve her for another 172, so that future generations will be able to walk her decks and hear her tell the important story of our nation’s shared maritime heritage.”

He added, “This moment is a testament to the skill and knowledge of the shipwrights without whose hard work and dedication this day would not be possible.”

Present at the celebration were numerous dignitaries. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (D-Conn.) took the occasion to announce a $500,000 contribution by the State of Connecticut to the ship’s restoration. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) read the text of a U.S. Senate Resolution passed last week commemorating the Morgan’s launch and bestowing upon her the “Ambassador to the Whales.” The resolution supports the plan of Mystic Seaport to “reinterpret the Charles W. Morgan as a vessel of scientific and educational exploration whose cargo is knowledge and whose mission is to promote awareness of the maritime heritage of the United States and the conservation of the species the Morgan hunted.”

Award-winning filmmaker Ric Burns delivered the keynote address, stressing for the crowd the importance of America’s maritime history and the role the Morgan plays for the nation as an authentic link to an important chapter in the country’s past.

The Morgan's stern back in the Mystic River.
The Morgan’s stern back in the Mystic River.

The restoration of the ship began when she was hauled out of the water in November 2008. The focus of the project was to address the hull below the waterline, the majority of which dated to the ship’s original construction. The final phase that begins now will involve rigging, restoring her interior, and installing temporary systems necessary to take her back to sea for a ceremonial 38th Voyage in late May 2014 (the ship completed 37 voyages during her whaling career).

The 38th Voyage will take the Morgan to historic ports of New England. After a period of fitting out and sea trials in New London, the ship will sail to Newport, Vineyard Haven, New Bedford, and Boston. She will also venture onto the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and she will participate in the centennial celebration of the opening of the Cape Cod Canal. The Voyage will be a commemoration of the role of the sea in the history of America and an appreciation of our changing relationship with the natural world.

The Morgan will continue to be open for Museum visitors to board while the restoration continues.

Watch the Launch

Editor’s Note: The launching of the Charles W. Morgan on July 21, 2013 was streamed live on the Mystic Seaport website. Featured below is a video of the event which was recorded by the Museum’s Film & Video Department.

Categories
Charles W. Morgan News News

Watch the Launch Live

After a multi-million dollar restoration lasting almost five years, the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, a National Historic Landmark and America’s oldest surviving commercial vessel, will return to the water Sunday, July 21, at 2 p.m. on the 172nd anniversary of her initial launch. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ric Burns will deliver the keynote address at the public ceremony, at which point the ship will be lowered into the Mystic River. Once launched, Museum shipwrights will complete the restoration with the vessel in the water in preparation for her ceremonial 38th Voyage to historic ports of New England in 2014.

Editor’s Note: The launching of the Charles W. Morgan on July 21, 2013 was streamed live on the Mystic Seaport website. Featured below is a video of the event which was recorded by the Museum’s Film & Video Department.

 

Categories
Charles W. Morgan News News

The Billet Head

Installing the Billet Head
Shipwright Matt Barnes fits the billet head onto the bow of the Charles W. Morgan

As the July 21 launch of the Charles W. Morgan nears, the Shipyard is hard at work completing the various tasks that need to be done before she can be lowered into the water to float on her own keel. One of the special jobs was the installation of the ship’s billet head, which was completed this afternoon.

The billet head is a decorative piece of woodwork that adorns the bow of a ship. In many cases it is a figurehead or a bust, but as the Morgan was a Quaker vessel her billet head was deliberately less ostentatious. The billet head and the eagle on the transom are actually the only decorative pieces on the entire ship.

The Morgan‘s billet head may not be flashy, but it is certainly beautiful as the pictures show. The current piece was carved in 1991 for the 150th anniversary of the ship’s launch in 1841. Shipwright Roger Hambidge was given the assignment to copy exactly the original which is presently stored in the Collections Research Center. He had to carefully determine the actual dimensions through many layers of paint, and then trace the outline of the decorations onto a wooden blank. After bandsawing it to a rough shape, it was all hand carving from there. The wood he used is one solid piece of white pine salvaged from a tornado-damaged church in western Connecticut.

Installing the Billet Head
The MORGAN’s billet head was carved from one solid piece of white pine.

The end result was so nice he was asked to carve another one that was presented to the Chubb Insurance Group in recognition of their longtime support of the Museum.

The billet head re-installed on the Morgan was sent out to have its gilding redone. Now freshly golden, it was fitted and fastened into place by shipwright Matt Barnes.

The Morgan will return to water in a public ceremony on Sunday, July 21.

 

 

Categories
Charles W. Morgan News News

Whaleboat Delivery by Sea

Whaleboat Arrival
The Apprenticeshop’s whaleboat crew approaches the end of their voyage at Mystic Seaport.

After an open water voyage of some 300 miles, the crew of the Apprenticeshop delivered their whaleboat for the Charles W. Morgan in style with a brisk row up the Mystic River. They were greeted at the Mystic drawbridge by a Museum crew rowing one of the demonstration whaleboats and the two proceeded in tandem to arrive at Middle Wharf at Mystic Seaport to the enthusiastic cheers of a welcoming crowd.

The crew set sail in the 29-foot open boat on June 16 in Rockland, ME and proceeded to row and sail through the Gulf of Maine, Massachusetts Bay, the Cape Cod Canal, Buzzards Bay and along the Rhode Island coastline. They made it as far as Point Judith where uncooperative weather and a looming arrival deadline forced a brief portage via trailer to a marina downriver of Mystic Seaport.

Apprentice Whaleboat
Rowing up the Mystic River en route to the Museum.

The voyage began at 5:45 a.m. on June 16, departing The Apprenticeshop pier in Rockland on the outgoing tide. The first port of call, Portland, ME, was reached on June 18. Next it was Rockport, MA where they staged for the trip through the Cape Cod Canal. Accompanying the whaleboat on the trip was a chase boat, the 35-foot Bud McIntosh schooner, Advent, owned and captained by Anna Rich and her father Ken Rich, both of Rockland. Advent was essential in journeying the Canal, as only boats under power are allowed passage.

The Apprenticeshop is a school for traditional boat building and seamanship. Five students (called apprentices) were assigned the whaleboat project in August 2012. Their task was to build a replica of a 29-foot 10 1/2-inch New Bedford whaleboat, designed by Ebenezer Leonard, from plans dated 1935. The whaleboat was one of ten ordered from different boat building organizations by Mystic Seaport to compliment the restoration of the Morgan. The whaleboats will become part of the equipment of the ship on her 38th Voyage in 2014. The Apprenticeshop boat is the only one being built to the Leonard design. The others are all Beetle designs, including the boat being built by the Beetle Boat Shop for the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

AppApprenticeshop Expedition Crew
The crew poses at the end of their journey..

The student construction team consisted of second year apprentice Simon Jack with first year students Chris Konecky, Daniel Creisher, and Kirk Folk. Assigned to lead the build was second year apprentice Tim Jacobus.

In January 2013, during the course of the build, Jacobus and lead instructor Kevin Carney were invited to a whaleboat builders’ meeting at Mystic Seaport.  Along with construction details were questions on how the various outfits were planning to transport their boats to Mystic. The accepted plan was to transport them on trailers; the apprentices had a bolder idea in mind, travel by water. Thus, the Leonard Whaleboat Expedition was born.

The Apprenticeshop’s boat was completed in early May, 2013 including a full set of oars, and the students actively trained in the craft by rowing early mornings before classes and on weekends. Besides having the responsibility of completing their own daily projects, the apprentices all had active roles in the planning and provisioning for the trip.

The expedition crew included:

Apprenticeshop Staff

Bryan McCarthy, Shop Director, Skipper, Course and Navigation
Kevin Carney, Lead Instructor, 1st Mate, Course and Navigation

Apprentices

Simon Jack, Graduating Apprentice, Personal Gear
Timothy Jacobus, Graduating Apprentice, Waypoint Coordination
Christopher Konecky, Tides & Weather
Daniel Creisher, Safety and Boat Gear
Bridget Jividen, Fundraising and Accounting
Rachel Davis, Crew Provisioning
Garrett Farchione, Contingency Planning

Chase Boat

Anna and Ken Rich, Expedition Support

The other whaleboats at The WoodenBoat Show are from from the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia; New York City’s Rocking the Boat; Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway of Vineyard Haven, MA; the Great Lakes Boat Building School in Cedarville, MI; and the Beetle Boat Shop of Wareham, MA.

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