Photo: Picton Castle at Jost Van Dyck, British Virgin Islands

MYSTIC SEAPORT Sails Around the World with the Picton Castle

Anybody who is fascinated by ships and the sea has either been to Mystic Seaport—The Museum of America and the Sea—many times or hopes to.

Mystic Seaport lies along the banks of the Mystic River in eastern Connecticut, where Long Island Sound meets Block Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. Once home to major wooden shipyards, now the town of Mystic is home to one of the preeminent maritime museums of the world. This is no dusty gathering of odd nautical knick-knacks. No, Mystic Seaport is home to an outstanding assemblage of small watercraft, rare artifacts and, and of particular interest and significance to us in the Picton Castle, one of the world's most significant fleets of sailing ships, particularly wooden sailing ships from the days of working sail. All this is beautifully presented in a seaport-like village of houses and original buildings that would have served the working waterfront of days gone by. Stone wharves, blacksmith shop, boat-building sheds, village greens, chantey-men, sail-loft, rope-walk, old-time chandlery, a sextant and instrument shop, a waterfront tavern, and old houses of captains and merchants. We see whale boats a-pulling, catboats sailing about, a gang setting sails on the ships alongside, and salty-looking sailors explaining to all the visitors how all this worked together. We see a working shipyard tending to one of the many craft at any given time. Perhaps a visiting vessel is moored to one of the granite wharves. Sometimes the Clipper Schooner Shenandoah sails into Mystic Seaport. A stunning topsail schooner with no auxiliary motor, she sails from nearby Martha's Vineyard, giving a new generation of young people a chance to haul braces on a canvas-winged wind ship. Or perhaps the Maine-built Schooner Harvey Gamage is just in from a voyage to the West Indies with students sailing a semester at sea. Mystic Seaport has acres of maritime museum naturally set out under the New England sky for the visitor to wander about. It truly takes days just to get a glimpse of everything: Scrimshaw, figureheads, rigging tools, house-wares and working kitchens, marine art, historic photo collections, night-time candlelight walks, horse wagons, even a wooden ship half taken apart-perfect for exploring and getting an idea of how one goes together. A family membership is well worth it to fully explore Mystic Seaport.

But most of all we see the Museum's historic ships tugging gently at their mooring lines in the river's still tidal waters. These are beautiful ships, working ships, ships that after a lifetime of hard service at sea now serve a high purpose-one their builders would most likely never have thought of when laying the keels or driving home the shutter plank of these wooden ships. In honorable retirement now from gales, breaking seas, lee shores and reefs, trade-wind passages and calms, these vessels now are engaged in new careers. They have important jobs to do at Mystic Seaport. These ships, which have been the crucibles of and witness to so much hard work and heartbreaking challenge, now serve to teach us how previous generations lived, grew, and were connected by the unbroken highway of the oceans in days not so long ago, resulting in the world we know today. Virtually all the major exploration of our watery globe took place in ships just like these wooden vessels. In one case we have the very ship herself here at Mystic Seaport, a former whale ship, the Bark Charles W. Morgan. We will return to her shortly.

The lofty fishing schooner L. A. Dunton, named for a sail maker and launched with some hopes of racing the powerful Schooner Bluenose of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (she had not a chance but was swift nevertheless) is one of the last fully rigged of the famous Gloucester fishermen. Fast and able schooners, these vessels sailed winter and summer from New England and Nova Scotian ports to the Grand Banks and treacherous Georges Bank to bring to shore catches of fish to feed these two growing nations of Canada and the United States. The Dunton is the only survivor to be restored exactly as original and available to the walking public to come aboard any time of the year. The big iron wood stove in the fo'c'sle is often warming some coffee or cocoa in the wintertime. From afar she looks like a lean, elegant yacht. When you get up close, you can see that she is very much a working vessel. Rent the movie "Captains Courageous" (1937) with Spencer Tracy, to get an idea.

The Schooner Brilliant sails from Mystic Seaport. Built as a yacht, this exquisite schooner is one of the hardest-working vessels around. Donated to Mystic Seaport years ago, the Brilliant has been taking young people and small groups to sea for years. Fast, beautiful, immaculately kept, and superbly sailed by her skipper, Captain George Moffett, the Brilliant of Mystic Seaporthas been a leader in sail training for 50 years.

The Full Rigged Ship Joseph Conrad is a gem of the sea. Launched in 1885 as the Georg Stage, she was the first-ever purpose-built sail training ship. A perfect little square-rigger, after 50 years of indoctrinating young Danish lads in the arts of seafaring, she was replaced by another similar ship of the same name. Noted seaman and maritime author Alan Villiers bought her and made a voyage around the world in the mid-1930s with cadets. Her service as a training vessel in WWII for the US Merchant Marine ended when she was delivered to Mystic Seaport, to be preserved and to provide a stationary training station for young folks. In Denmark she is considered the Holy Grail of their merchant service, as well she should be.

But now we get to the old wooden bark, the Charles W. Morgan. Built on the banks of the Acushnet River in 1841 at New Bedford, Massachusetts, this vessel is a ship of superlatives. It is difficult to know where to begin. Every angle to her story leads one off into a whole world of stories and history. Many of these stories connect directly with the Picton Castle and our voyages. A review of the life and times of the Morgan reveals a continuum that sails through us today. The significance of the Charles W. Morgan to us in the Picton Castle is manifold. And it turns out that the world voyage of the Picton Castle carries a special message for the mission of Mystic Seaport by way of the Morgan as well.

The Charles W. Morgan is the last wooden whale ship in existence. She is also one of the finest examples of marine architectural preservation in the world today. No mere leftover of the era, she also was one of the longest-working such vessels, with what must be called a charmed career. For 80 years the Morgan pursued her trade. That might be a record for any ship in a single specialized service; sail, steam, or otherwise. That fact alone invites inspection and appraisal. In those 80 hardworking years at sea the C. W. Morgan sailed everywhere all over the world.

Like many other workplaces in the 19th century, whaling was a very dangerous trade. In fact, it was a grim story of death and gore for whale and whaler alike. An extremely hazardous trade for the whale-men, it held out the promise of significant riches to those who survived. Bright lads advanced quickly. Successful captains retired young. Voyages of two, three, and even four years were common. What we can say here is that whaling was one among many horrifically exploitive trades during the Industrial Revolution. Today we are the beneficiaries of those who suffered as well as of those who exploited before us. As much as slavery did, whaling changed our world. Or more to the point, it created the very world we live in today.

Whale ships were both the super tankers and oil wells of their day (and did processing to boot), not only giving our world light and plastics (oil and whalebone) when sputtering tallow smudges were the norm, but stimulating the thirst for what these products gave us. Whaling created the demand for bright constant light and power that we have today. What could be more influential than that? In time, the demand for light and power (and unique lubricants used in nuclear submarines well into the 1970s) outstripped the supply, and a substitute was eagerly sought. Then the pumping and refining of petroleum was discovered. Petroleum of today is but a mere substitute for whale oil. Subtract petroleum and its products from your day and try to imagine what life could be like without. The remaining whales could be forgiven for sighing, in unison, in oceans around the world, Amen. In due course we will run out of oil, too. That will be interesting when that happens. But I digress.

The Morgan had been acquired by Mystic Seaport just before WWII and had been secured in a very protective sand berth next to a wharf at the Museum until 1973, when she was refloated. Well maintained above the waterline (or sand line), quite understandably a concern developed over what might be transpiring below that point. Mystic Seaport leadership then, as always, taking its role as steward of all their craft and collection very seriously, figured it was time to give the ship a refit. This story is best told by Mystic Seaport, but the restoration was a big success. Now wooden ships are made of wood, which is vegetable matter, and wooden ships are all pinned together with nails or bolts. It is very difficult sometimes to get at poor wood without destroying a lot of good wood. And so it is almost impossible to completely restore a wooden vessel in one go without damaging its integrity. The Morgan restoration stands out as one of the most thoughtful, well-executed wooden ship restorations ever undertaken. That process is ongoing. And it is very expensive. Mystic Seaport has plans for a very thorough and public refit of the Charles W. Morgan out of the water soon. This promises to be a completely fascinating and educational internal look at the construction of 19th and even earlier wooden ship construction.

After we returned to Lunenburg in June 2003 from our third voyage around the world in the Picton Castle, I got a letter from friends and colleagues at Mystic Seaport. They asked me if I would be interested in talking about a project idea they had had to do with the Picton Castle's 2005-2006 world voyage and the Morgan. It seems that the decision had been taken to pay some extra attention to this venerable ship. Any excuse to visit Mystic Seaport is a good one for me, so with Bosun Lynsey Rebbetoy, who has sailed twice around the world in the Picton Castle already, off we went.

Our discussions went something like this: It seems that the craft and industry of whaling, the actual technology, has been well documented and interpreted for all to examine. What has been referred to frequently (but perhaps has not been closely examined in all its possible permutations) is the culture of the whale ships. These whale ships-and the Charles W. Morgan is a preeminent case-sailed everywhere. Very often a whale ship was the first point of contact between an isolated island in the Pacific and the American and European cultures. As the North American West opened up, New Englanders' interest waned in committing to years in a whale ship. This gave the chance for men from all over the world to sign onto whale ships. Some later returned home, but many blended into whatever culture took them in or eventually started communities in the United States-little colonies in reverse, in fact. Language, art, morals, religion, laws, politics, nations and states have all been affected by this unintentional cultural transference. "Let's take a look at it" was the notion on the table that winter's eve in Mystic Seaport. And let's take a look at a small square-rigger on a long deep-sea voyage in a ship of today with seafarers of today, and not labor to contrive some "reenactment voyage" to accomplish the impossible, that of fully and consciously recreating a whale ship voyage. We discussed all these things and more.

Our time together at Mystic Seaport with Susan Funk, Dana Hewson, Rick Spencer, and Jenny Doak opened my mind to possibilities I had not given much thought to before. It turns out that our voyage, our circumnavigation in the Picton Castle, is very similar to a whale ship voyage in so many ways. In fact, to try to make it more like one would take contrivance of a convoluted sort.

Of course, we do not kill whales. We have trouble killing the cockroaches that sometimes find their way aboard. But we do have a large crew in a small square-rigger that is not in any particular hurry, one that sails to many places that whale ships put in. In fact, the Picton Castle visits many islands and ports that the Morgan put into. What else might be similar, parallel, or somehow analogous? We have in davits on the port-side a double-ended longboat, not unlike a whaleboat, at which the crew become quite proficient rowing in and out of lagoons at remote atolls, and even launching at sea over the course of a voyage. Like a whale ship, we visit ports more for rest, provisioning, stretching our legs, and meeting folks than for delivering any cargo. Like a whale ship, we pass by the big ports and sail into ones that are out of the way. Like a whale ship, our crew find they often have time on their hands. In whale ships they often made scrimshaw. What do the Picton Castle crew do in their off-watch onboard?

The list of parallels continues to grow. The rigs of the two ships are even virtually identical, their sizes are much the same, and the voyage itself is curiously similar. The upshot was that, to open a real, hands-on window into the world of the Charles W. Morgan, Mystic Seaport would sign onto the Picton Castle for our fourth voyage westward bound around the world, and we would see what we would see. There is a wonderful exhibit at Mystic Seaport called "Women of the Sea." Well, we've got lots of them in the Picton Castle, too. The chief mate is of such a gender, as is the bosun.

After our meeting we found out that one of the Picton Castle crew was from the Morgan family that built the Charles W. Morgan (bears the name, in fact), and another crew member had a forebear who was a Mate for many years in the Morgan. That's kind of curious. You will hear more about them. So for the next year we, Mystic Seaport and the Barque Picton Castle, will sail around the world together exploring these parallels and see what we come up with. We call this joint adventure "Sailing Through History." Join us as we discover and learn more about this sea-bound world that we all live in (yes, all of us).

Captain Daniel Moreland,
Barque Picton Castle

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