Mystic Seaport

The old seaport town of Mystic, Connecticut, is home to the Museum of America and the Sea, a sprawling, multifaceted complex most often called, simply, Mystic Seaport. Its official name reflects its mission to promote understanding of America's maritime heritage.

Each year, more than 400,000 people visit the museum complex, which is housed in several buildings over nineteen acres, according to the museum's website. The most popular and best-known of the museum's collections are its watercraft. These include the Charles W. Morgan, the last American wooden whaling ship; the Joseph Conrad, a square-rigged training ship built in Copenhagen in 1882; the L. A. Dunton, a 1921 fishing schooner; the Sabino, a 1908 steamboat; and the Amistad, a re-created nineteenth-century Cuban schooner built by hand in Mystic Seaport for the Steven Spielberg film Amistad.

Open to visitors, these ships sometimes attract tourists expecting a sort of theme park to Mystic Seaport. However, visitors quickly learn that what is moored along these banks or housed in the assemblage of white buildings is much more than a theme park attraction.

History

The town of Mystic, which originally inspired the museum and still houses it, has been associated with shipbuilding since the first European colonists settled there. Between 1784 and 1919, at least six hundred sailing vessels are known to have been constructed there. Early settlers included farmer-shipwrights, who farmed during the summer and in winter sailed their own small ships to the Caribbean and the southern colonies. Between the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War, Mystic was a fishing and whaling town, and it gradually became known for its shipbuilding. At its peak, five very successful shipyards were building sloops, clipper ships, and steamboats in the relatively small town. After the Civil War, the building of large wooden ships declined, though small yards in Mystic produced schooners, fishing boats, and yachts until 1920.

The museum began modestly in 1929 when three Mystic residents, regretting the passing of Mystic's shipbuilding and maritime heritage, joined to found the Marine Historical Association and to preserve what records and artifacts they could. They housed their collection in a building beside the Mystic River, a part of the defunct shipyard of George Greenman and Company. The association and its collections grew steadily until, in 1941, they acquired the Charles W. Morgan. Their holdings expanded rapidly after World War II, including not only additional ships but also endangered buildings associated with maritime life and large collections of artifacts associated with life at sea and the port.

As the collections grew, so did the Mystic Seaport's mission. From the start, its founders had seen its purpose as educational, preserving and transmitting knowledge of past maritime achievements and skills. Its scope has expanded to include the maritime history of the entire United States, and the museum's manuscript and research collection is known worldwide. Researchers value the Seaport's maritime photography and print collections.

Educational Programs

The Joseph Conrad was a training ship before the Mystic Seaport acquired it in 1947, and it remains a training ship today. For over fifty years, the Seaport has offered a summer sailing camp to learners aged ten to fifteen years, who bunk and eat on the Joseph Conrad and learn to climb the rigging. Although the ship remains moored in the river, campers learn small boat seamanship in a fleet of dinghies on the Mystic River. Learners are carefully taught and supervised at three levels, starting with beginners, and former campers over sixteen may choose to come back as "sailing assistants" (junior counselors). Among the many historic buildings included in Mystic Seaport is a planetarium. Here, visitors can learn to navigate by the stars as their sailing ancestors once did.

During the school year, Mystic Seaport provides a full range of age-appropriate field trip experiences for schoolchildren and teenagers. These include ninety-minute "school programs," three-hour "study programs," and, for students in the fourth through the twelfth grade, "overnight programs," using the Joseph Conrad. The "school programs" may tour museum highlights or emphasize one focus of the Seaport's holdings, such as whaling. "Study programs" and "overnight programs" also focus on particular themes and involve students in related hands-on activities. The museum's on-site restoration shipyard, where the "fleet" is maintained and where the Amistad was recreated, is another educational facility, one where the old techniques of wooden shipbuilding are skillfully practiced and taught.

For adults, Mystic Seaport offers well-established graduate work in maritime studies, and has joined Williams College in offering an undergraduate degree in maritime studies. To facilitate these programs, to safeguard its collections more efficiently, and to make them more accessible, Mystic Seaport embarked on a ten-year building program. The Collections Research Center opened in 2001; a research library within the center includes more than seventy-five thousand volumes. In 2007, Mystic Seaport witnessed the opening of the Carlton Marine Science Center. In 2013, following a five-year restoration, the Charles W. Morgan was relaunched, more than 170 years after the ship's initial launch. Meanwhile, a website was launched to provide teachers with primary source materials and other resources from the museum to use in classrooms. By 2016, the museum had opened the 14,000-square-foot Thompson Exhibition Building, and in 2018, it began its first artist residency program with Kevin Sampson. Mystic Seaport continues to value, study, and restore artifacts and documents that preserve the maritime history of the United States.

Bibliography

"About Mystic Seaport Museum." Mystic Seaport Museum, www.mysticseaport.org/about/. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

Blume, Kenneth J. Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Maritime Industry. Scarecrow, 2012.

Fought, Leigh. A History of Mystic, Connecticut: From Pequot Village to Tourist Town. History, 2007.

Foulke, Patricia, and Robert Foulke. "Mystic." A Visitor's Guide to Colonial & Revolutionary New England. Countryman, 2012. 146–49.

"History of Mystic Seaport." Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea. Mystic Seaport, 2021, www.mysticseaport.org/about/history/. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

"Mystic, Connecticut." Data USA, 2023, datausa.io/profile/geo/mystic-ct. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.

Mystic River Historical Society. Mystic. Arcadia, 2004.