Collections & 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.

News from the Collections

Artistic Inspiration at Sea

September 29, 2017

A new book about illustrations by whalemen has connections to Mystic Seaport collection.

Michael P. Dyer is the Senior Maritime Historian at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. He recently wrote a book entitled “O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea: Original Art of the Yankee Whale Hunt.” In the book are a myriad of illustrations created by whalemen in logbooks and journals depicting the hunt and much more. In a New York Times interview Dyer notes that he had “not yet been able to connect a whaling scene drawn in a journal with a whaling scene engraved on a whale’s tooth.” However, a number of other interesting connections can be made between ships, sailors, illustrations and objects.

Published 2017, Old Dartmouth Historical Society, New Bedford, MA.

The following image is taken from a journal in the New Bedford collection. Sailing out of Mystic, Connecticut in 1843, seaman Washington Foster kept this finely illustrated journal during a voyage to the Indian Ocean in search of elephant seals, more commonly known to sailors as sea elephants. Like whales, sea elephants were killed for their blubber which could be boiled down into oil that could be used for lubrication and lighting.

Washington Foster Journal. From Dyer’s “O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea” , page 101.

Mystic Seaport has an object directly related to the journal kept by Foster and while it was supposedly used as a club in the killing of the giant seals that can range between 3 and 4 tons in weight and 15 to 20 feet in length, it is likely that it was kept more as a showpiece than a killing tool. A heavy sperm whale tooth with a handle bound in rope, the carver’s name and ship and date appear on one side, while the other side has this unusual and imaginative scene probably dreamed up after reading one of the many books on pirates and shipwrecks of the period.

Sea Elephant Club by Washington Foster. MSM accession number 1939.2077

The scantily clad woman bound to the ship awaits a savior while crying out, “Help, Help, Help. Is there nowon to save the fair damsle from the freebooters lewd embrase.” It’s clear that Foster, like so many other whalers and sealers of the time, had an active artistic streak and kept himself occupied during the long sailing days with pen, ink, paints and scimshanding tools. Michael Dyer’s book is a tremendous resource for examining the art of the whaleman and is a great jumping-off point to make other connections to the creative side of these roamers of the world’s oceans.

New MORGAN Model Gift

August 25, 2017

Mystic Seaport receives a new gift in the form of a miniature ship model of the CHARLES W. MORGAN.

Literally thousands of people over the years have built models of the CHARLES W. MORGAN. Some makers used kits to build full-rigged models of the whaler, including at least one kit that was made for a “MORGAN in the bottle” model. We have one kit in our collection that was originally produced in 1939. MORGAN plans are one of our hottest sellers in the Ships Plans collection and many have used the lines from here to make their own hand-crafted version of the pride of our Museum. We field calls weekly from people who want to donate their, or their family member’s, home-made model. Unfortunately, the Museum only has so much space to house models and if we accepted every MORGAN model offered to us we’d have no room for any other model, and we have nearly a thousand. Any MORGAN model we accept has to be truly exceptional. For example, we have one that was given to us a number of years ago that was made by master model maker Lloyd McCaffrey.

Lloyd’s miniature cutaway model is extraordinary, with exposed interior accommodations and a center section of built-up frames all of which are treenail fastened. The mid-ship section shows interior ceiling planks installed and authentic stowage of gear and whale oil casks. On deck includes all appropriate furniture, fittings and details (binnacle, skylights, anchors, companionways, windlass, hatches, tryworks, cooper’s bench, etc). It is a truly magnificent piece and any maritime museum would be thrilled to have it.

We feel the same way about a new MORGAN model that just came in to us from a California collector and member. This model is more than a model. The creator of this model was highlighted in an article in the Fall/Winter issue of Mystic Seaport Magazine by Curator Fred Calabretta. In the article Fred quotes the model maker, Alexander Law, as stating that he feels his models are more akin to marine fine arts because of the detail he puts into the map making that graces the base under the model; the research that goes into creating the model and the scene; the cabinetry work to create the base and more. We have a fine collection of Law models that came to the Museum in 1961, so it is very satisfying to add one of the Museum’s flagship, the CHARLES W. MORGAN, this year.

Model of the CHARLES W. MORGAN by Alexander Law. A 2017 donation.

Dozens of museums around the globe have exquisite models of the MORGAN, making her one of the best-known vessels in the world. Go to the website for the 38th voyage of the MORGAN and you can see why so many people remain excited about this icon of American sea voyaging, and why we are excited to have such a fine representation of the whaler in miniature.

The Map and Chart Collection at Mystic Seaport

July 28, 2017

Two grants from private foundations helped to arrange, describe and create a database of the chart and map collection at Mystic Seaport, a heretofore underutilized collection.

Beginning in the early 1930’s, Mystic Seaport began collecting, among many other things, charts and maps of the entire world. Many of the charts we received came as parts of larger gifts that included logbooks and business papers of ships from ports up and down the east coast. Many of the charts were used aboard ship and show the wear and tear of numerous sea journeys as well as the penciled tracks that the ships folowed on their trek around the globe. One such chart in our possession belonged to Mystic captain Joseph Warren Holmes, someone who spent almost his entire life at sea. Indeed, Holmes holds the record for any sailing ship captain going around Cape Horn on journeys between the east and west coast. 84 times around the Horn.

Captain Joseph Warren Holmes of Mystic, CT. Photograph accession number 1937.63

And we have the charts he used on many of those trips. One such chart shows the penciled markings of numerous trips around the Horn with many separate lines converging at the tip of South America to form one thick, black line that looks as if the good captain was using fat-tipped magic markers instead of a pencil.

Some incredible people represented in our collection of well over 10,000 charts and maps include Irving and Exy Johnson, the husband and wife team that began taking young adults around the world on adventures in the 1930’s. We have hundreds of the charts used by the Johnsons as they made there way to Tahiti, New Guinea and other exotic areas both before and after World War II.

Other charts express the American spirit of enterprise and exploration. The whalers of the early to mid-1800’s who ventured into the unknown in search of their quarry whose oil would light the lamps of the world. Below is an advertising label that appears on one of those charts used by a whaler out of New Bedford.

Most of the charts and maps date from the 19th and 20th centuries, but there are a number that predate the period as well, such as the collection of charts from 1671 called the English Pilot and published by John Seller. As the world experiences rising sea levels, accurate charts such as the Atlantic Neptune, a series of detailed charts of the American coastline published by the British Admiralty in the late 18th century, can be used to compare the current coastal outlines to those of centuries past.

Two grants over the last three years from the Acorn Foundation and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, gave us the resources to hire an expert to both assess and catalog the collection to make it more readily accessible to our research community.

Title page from The English Pilot, 1671.

The chart and map collection is one of many truly extraordinary collections at Mystic Seaport. You can see the description of the entire collection and the list of charts here.