It was cold and raining when we visited Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut last week. But, the bad weather turned out to be a good thing when we decided to go outside and explore the Charles W. Morgan, shown here. We had her all to our wet and shivering selves. The Morgan is one of the Seaport’s most popular sights; she’s had tens of millions of visitors walk her restored topside and lower decks and she’s apparently still seaworthy.
The Morgan’s popularity stems mostly from the fact that she’s the last remaining American wooden whaling ship. She was built in 1841 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and spent her first 81 years whaling in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. She sailed as a double topsail bark with a capacity of over 300 new tons. Her other vital measurements in feet: overall length 113; beam (widest width) 27 ½, and depth 17 ½.
The Morgan hung five whaleboats on her side davits and stored a spare one atop her after house. These approximately 30-foot vessels were light, fast, and highly maneuverable by oarsmen who got dangerously close to a whale to enable a harpoon throw. The boats often had different trim colors to allow identification from a distance. Whaleboats were “double-enders” (pointed at both ends), a design that allows beaching and refloating without turning around.
The Seaport’s historic Danish training ship Joseph Conrad was moored for the winter close by. She was built in 1882 in Copenhagen to train Danish merchantmen and was christened the Georg Stage. She was sunk in 1905, but raised and repaired. She was bought and put under the British flag in 1934, when she was renamed after the famous adventuring author Joseph Conrad. In 1936, she was bought by an American and served as a merchant marine trainer in this country. In 1947, she bacame the property of the Seaport by act of Congress.
