The Manuscript Collection at Mystic Seaport includes ships’ logs and journals, ledgers, diaries, and documents from the whaling, fishing, and shipping industries. Business and personal papers of prominent yacht clubs and naval architects, including correspondence, design data, construction information, notes, and photographs. This entire collection is a multiple-perspective, firsthand account of trade patterns, travel routes, shipboard working and living conditions, race relations, politics, and American encounters with other Americans as well as with European and non-Western cultures, given by the people who actually experienced them.
Manuscripts are defined as items that are created in the course of everyday life. Such items are usually handwritten or typed, although printed forms and documents are also generally considered manuscript material.