Down to the Sea in Ships: Mystic Seaport
The age of sail never ended at Connecticut's Mystic Seaport.
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| Mystic's open-air maritime museum preserves the area's nautical heritage. |
Mystic Seaport, by itself, is not a fundamentally important historic site, at least in terms of great events. It witnessed no pivotal battles and provided homes for no founding fathers. Other ports played more significant roles. What it does offer, however, is a tangible sense of a vanished time and the importance of the country's maritime heritage.
Until early this century, Mystic was a shipbuilding center. But after steam replaced sails, there was a danger that the skills and knowledge of the era would be lost. Founded in 1929 to preserve the area's nautical heritage, Mystic Seaport today bills itself as the Museum of America and the Sea. Housed on 17 acres along the Mystic River, the Seaport includes galleries, museums, ships, and a recreated port town from the 19th century, complete with the shops and businesses, now almost extinct, that would have kept a seaport flourishing. Several of the buildings are on their original sites; others are authentic structures moved to Mystic.
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| Today she's the only wooden sailing whaler left in the world. | |
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The Seaport's centerpiece is the three-masted whaling ship Charles W. Morgan. Launched in 1841 and named after her Quaker owner, the Morgan joined a U.S. whaling fleet that soon numbered more than 700 vessels. Today she's the only wooden sailing whaler left in the world. Her visitors can get a hint of what it was like to ship aboard her when a day's work could mean either "a dead whale or a stove boat," and American whalers roamed the world on voyages that often lasted years. It was a way of life that inspired one of the great works of American literature, Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick.
Mystic Seaport is about one mile south of I-95 on Route 27. It's open year-round except for Christmas. There is an admission charge. For more information, call Mystic Seaport at (860) 572-5315 or find the Seaport's website at www.mysticseaport.org. For area information, contact Connecticut's Mystic & More at (800) 863-6569.
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