Research

Preserving the past and ensuring a bright future.

The Collections Research Center (CRC) is the nation’s leading maritime research facility. Located across the street from Mystic Seaport, the former J. Rossie Velvet Company houses the Museum’s collections and offers safe and easy access to maritime researchers and scholars. Artifacts at the CRC include more than two million examples of maritime art, artifacts, tools, buildings, imprints and other documents, photographs, 1,000 ships registers, 600 audiotaped oral history interviews, 200 videotaped interviews, and 1.5 million feet of historic and contemporary maritime-related footage. The CRC opened in the fall of 2002 and was designed to exceed national museum standards for conservation, preservation, accessibility, and safety. The research center provides cutting-edge temperature and humidity control for the Museum’s artifacts and also boasts audio/video production suites and extensive photo processing and digitizing labs.

Shipwreck Tales: Melancholy Women Found and Lost at Sea.

May 17, 2018

This project was sparked when I came across a description of Marian Moore’s personal narrative in the Mystic Seaport Collections Research Center online catalog. I wanted to know more about this “melancholy” woman who presented as a man at sea, and the harrowing details of her experiences with cannibalism and shipwreck, but there was no digital version of the text available at that time. Thus, a partnership began between the University of Rhode Island and the Library at Mystic Seaport Museum which allowed me to collaborate with the Museum in an effort to make several compelling narratives of shipwrecked women at sea available to scholars and enthusiasts around the globe through digital access.

Below are links to the digital archives of some of the most captivating shipwrecked women’s narratives that I worked to make available in the spring of 2018. In my selection of narratives that focus on the hardships endured by women while at sea, I wanted to make more visible the gendered and moralizing constraints placed on women while on land and how voyages at sea, while dangerous, often presented the promise of a more negotiable and open space for self-definition. More broadly, I wanted to make narratives that have often been overlooked or neglected more accessible to a larger audience.

Marian Moore’s narrative invites many ways to interpret Moore’s piece, from focusing on larger genre categorization (is this text truly a personal narrative as it presents itself to be, domestic fiction, a blend of genre?) to the provocative poetic disruptions which break Moore’s at times journalistic approach and at other times pathos-driven style of narration.

Julia Dean’s narrative, touted as a tale of a “veritable female Robinson Crusoe” depicts the wonderful adventures of a woman who remained on an uninhabited island for nine years. Positioning herself as a novice writer and most certainly not an egoist, Dean recounts her acts of bravery, most notably the depiction of her wrestling and bludgeoning an amphibious animal’s throat.

Since the Father of Mercies has seen it fit to deliver her from “the hands of barbarians,” Mrs. Eliza Fraser feels justified in publishing her own captivity narrative in spite of her reluctance and fear of her “indifferent education” and being deprived of her husband’s influence and support. Her self-described “plain, unvarnished tale” depicts her suffering experienced at the hands of what she disparagingly describes as “savages”, an unspecified group of Indigenous captors, which she finally evades with the help of a thirteen-man crew led by Lieutenant Otter and Graham. In the afterward, the reader is told that “probably through modesty” Mrs. Fraser has omitted the account of the birth of her baby which drowns while onboard the rescue vessel.

Flora A. Foster recounts her experiences of being wrecked en route to Peru off the coast of Patagonia with her husband, First Officer Robert Foster while aboard the MARY E. PACKER, a vessel built in Mystic, Connecticut. As fate would have it, after surviving their time on Carmen and finding passage back to New York aboard the brig EMILY T. SHELTON, Robert Foster plummets to his death from the topsail when only 300 miles from New York, making Foster’s descriptions early on in the narrative of how perilous the “cruel partings, the months and years of separation, the long dreary hours of loneliness and anxiety, the constant, unremitting strain of heart and brain” to only be understood by those separated from “dear ones at sea” all the more poignant.

Caroline Stoddard’s diary details her train trip from Boston, Massachusetts to San Francisco, California to join her husband Captain Thomas C. Stoddard for a voyage to Australia. Of particular note are Stoddard’s descriptions of her natural surroundings. Her style of writing can be likened to the “very pretty sheets of water, lying so quietly many hundred feet above the sea” that she uses to describe Donner Lake. This focus on the pleasantries of nature shifts from depictions of the Salt Lakes and the Sierra mountain range to a more critical tone of her physical environment after she experiences a harrowing shipwreck. Having to spend five days in a boat before being rescued by the brig COMMERCE of Sydney, Australia deeply unsettles Stoddard, but she continually returns to a focus on descriptions of nature to soothe her anxiety as she finds comfort in the “large bushes of heliotropes” in New Zealand that remind her of familiar “lilac bushes.”

Contained within William Dorset Fellowes text describing the tragic events of the Lady Hobart is the inclusion of the curious particulars of Emmanuel Sosa and his wife, Eleonora Garcia Sala, who were shipwrecked on the east coast of Africa. The hero identified in the narrative is Emmanuel, while his wife Eleonora is also described favorably but also complicatedly gendered as “a woman of a masculine courage.” Finding themselves in a compromising position with a group of Caffres, the heroic Emmanuel fails to listen both to the advice he received previously from a king about the threats he faces in the region and the admonitions of Eleonora that Sosa not trust the Caffres. Eleonora alone resists the attacks from the Caffres and is stripped of her clothing. Refusing to be seen in a vulnerable state, Eleonora buries herself in the sand while Sosa wanders aimlessly in search of resources to rescue his family to no avail.

In the longest text that I digitized this spring, William Allen’s Accounts of Shipwreck and of Other Disasters at Sea, is not only useful for mariners, but arguably for a larger public. What follows is what can be described as a compilation of melancholic and tragic greatest hits in the annals of shipwreck. Of particular interest are the sparse representations of women at sea, sometimes mentioned only by their first name with a reference to the vessel they were aboard, or cataloged simply by a number, such as the “317 women aboard who were lost at sea.” This particular text provides many narratives which can undoubtedly be mined for further historical and literary analysis.

Drew of the Sloop Nautilus and Others

Danielle Cofer is a third-year PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Rhode Island.

A “New” Mediterranean Passport

April 25, 2018

The G.W. Blunt White Library acquires a Mediterranean Passport, also known as a ship's passport, for a locally-built ship.

A recent acquisition by the Library has links to both the local area and our own collections. The document pictured below, a Mediterranean Passport, pertains to the ship ORRIS of New York in 1809. The ORRIS was built in Old Mystic with Christopher Leeds as the master carpenter. She measured 249 tons and was 87 feet in length. The signature at the bottom right belongs to the collector of the port of New York, David Gelston, whose digitized collection of papers is in our library.

Mediterranean Passport for Ship ORRIS

According to Doug Stein’s American Maritime Documents:

“The Mediterranean Passport, commonly called a ship’s passport, was created after the United States concluded a treaty with Algiers in 1795. During the early years of independence, America was one of several nations paying tribute to the Barbary states in exchange for the ability to sail and conduct business in the Mediterranean area without interference..…the “Passport” would be recognized by Algeria and later by other Barbary states through similar treaties……

…it was a printed document, on vellum, that measured approximately 15″ by 11″. Centered in the upper half were two engravings, one below the other. Signatures of the President of the United States, Secretary of State, and Customs Collector appear in the lower right-hand corner. The United States seal is in the lower left-hand corner.”

A distinct characteristic “was the presence of a scalloped line of indenture across the upper part of the document which was used as a method of authentication.”

Although faded, you can see that our example has the signature of the President, James Madison, the Secretary of State, Robert Smith and the Collector of Customs for the port of New York, David Gelston.

Royals in the Collections

January 31, 2018

During a visit to Nassau in the Bahamas in 1944, Cora Mallory Munson spent time with former King Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor and his wife, the former Wallis Simpson. Some mementos from the trip are in the manuscript collection of the G.W. Blunt White Library.

The manuscripts collection in the G.W Blunt White Library is full of surprises. You never know what you will find while looking for something completely different.

The following pieces from the collection should be of some interest to those of you who are Netflix fanatics and currently enjoying the second season of The Crown about the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II. The cards, personal notes and photograph all came to us through the Mallory family, many of whom have been involved with the Museum since the 1930’s. Cora Mallory Munson, to whom the items are addressed, was the sister of Clifford Day Mallory and Philip R. Mallory, both of whom served as President of the Board of Mystic Seaport. Mrs. Munson was married to Frank C. Munson, a shipping executive who was memorialized by Mrs. Munson with the creation of the Munson Institute graduate studies program at Mystic Seaport in the 1950’s.

The cards and photo were sent separately to Mrs. Munson by Edward, the Duke of Windsor and his wife, Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. At the time the cards were sent to Cora, Edward was in his last months as Governor of the Bahamas, resigning in March, 1945 with his last official day being April 30, coincidentally the day that Hitler committed suicide. The optics of this was certainly unusual as Edward had been labelled a Nazi sympathizer.

One of two cards sent to Cora Mallory Munson at Christmas, 1944 by Edward and Wallis.

Edward’s refusal to leave Wallis led to his abdication in 1936, turning the crown over to his brother who became George VI, the father of Elizabeth. In 1941 Edward became the governor of the Bahamas. In 1944 the pair made a trip to the States, including Newport, Rhode Island. Wallis had surgery in New York in August to remove some cancerous tumors, but obviously by the time the Christmas notes were sent, she was feeling much better. She went on to live another 42 years.

Note from Wallis to Cora thanking her for a gift and mentioning a get together.

Unfortunately, we do not have further documentation concerning the circumstances around reason for the note and cards to Cora, but she was obviously well acquainted. Her note is signed “Wallis Windsor.”

Note from Edward to Cora.

Wallis and Edward coming ashore.

While there is nothing written on or with the photograph, the context of the notes along with the image of the harbor suggests that this picture was taken in Nassau.

There are many such surprises hidden in our collections and it is always a pleasure to unexpectedly happen upon one.