THE CAMPAIGN FOR WELLS BOAT HALL
THE SEA CONNECTS US
The Campaign for Wells Boat Hall at Mystic Seaport Museum will raise necessary funds to conserve the historic Rossie Velvet Mill and develop it for use as a public exhibition space for the Museum’s signature small craft collection. Numbering more than 560 vessels, this collection is the largest and most diverse small craft collection in the United States. The $15,000,000 campaign presents an opportunity to finally make this collection accessible to the public. We invite you to have an impact on the future of the largest maritime museum in the country by considering a gift to the Campaign for Wells Boat Hall.
GOALS
• Conserve the historic Rossie Velvet Mill, and develop it for use as public exhibition space.
• Preserve the signature small craft collection numbering more than 560 vessels, the largest and most diverse such collection in the United States.
• Allow full public access to the collection for the first time.
• Develop new learning experiences and programs to capitalize on educational opportunities.
• Expand the indoor visitor experience to reduce the challenge of inclement weather and seasonality.
• Create flexible space for community use for lectures, talks, presentations, and educational programs.
• Further develop the collection through accessioning and de-accessioning to ensure its relevance for the future.
MYSTIC SEAPORT MUSEUM BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Michael S. Hudner, Chairman
Peter Armstrong
Greg Bauer
Jay S. Benet
Alexander D. Bulazel
Grant L. Cambridge
Richard W. Clary
Sharon E. Cohen
J. Barclay Collins, II
Hugh Davis
Maarten C. de Jong
Joseph M. Dwyer
Skip Finley
William D. Forster
Casey K. Frye
Peter Gleysteen
Chester W. Kitchings, Jr.
J. Robert Mann, Jr.
Robert C. Martin
CAMPAIGN LEADERSHIP
Sheila McCurdy
Robert L. W. McGraw
Cayre Michas
Robert C. Musetti
Laurie J. Olson
Robert B. Rodgers
Kenneth S. Siegel
Jake Siewert
Raymond B. Strong, III
Alexandra T. Thorne
Barbara Vietor
Richard R. Vietor
Robert A. Vincent
Susan Wayne
Stanley T. Wells
Michael M. Wiseman
Grant L. Cambridge, Chair
Laurie Olson, Co-Chair Gary Jobson, Co-Chair
PROJECT
Mystic Seaport Museum is widely regarded as the preeminent maritime museum in the world. A hallmark of the Museum is the in-water display of some of our most significant vessels, including four National Historic Landmark vessels. Like many museums and museum collections, nearly 75 percent of our vessel collection is in storage, currently in the Rossie Mill. Aside from private tours, this remarkable collection has largely been hidden from public view.
Now after decades of planning, it is time for the collection to be revealed and for these important artifacts and their stories to be displayed to the public.
For nearly a century our signature collection of American small craft has been largely inaccessible to the visiting public—their stories left untold.
PROOF OF CONCEPT
Two exhibitions, Story Boats: The Tales They Tell and Streamlined: From Hull to Home were developed as “proof of concept” to engage visitors in the human-interest stories and the influential maritime design encompassed within the watercraft collection. Strong visitor interest in these exhibitions inspired us to move forward with this project.
“Providing relevance and context for collections is a significant component of the mission of any museum, and in the age of virtual realities, synthetic experiences, and the eclipsing of education by entertainment, the unique value of true artifacts has become increasingly critical. Even now, many museums struggle to be noticed. The challenge then is to connect these artifacts with the lives of human beings because it has become too easy to dismiss them as insignificant in modern times, almost no matter what or where they are.”
— Jon Wilson, Founder of WoodenBoat Publications, Mystic Seaport Museum Trustee 1988-2002
WELLS BOAT HALL PLANS
The Wells Boat Hall will consist of 35,000 square feet of space in the Rossie Mill that will be converted from low-value warehouse space into high-value public exhibition space.
Visitors will be immersed in fascinating sea stories, both historic and modern, as they wander among the watercraft collection filled with vessels from near and far.
The project is estimated to require a $15,000,000 capital investment to convert the current warehouse space into a dynamic public exhibition, create an inviting new visitor entrance to the facility, make essential repairs to the existing roof, and upgrade the heating/ cooling mechanicals to align with industry standards. To date, we have secured $8,000,000 in gifts and pledges.
Work began in June of 2024 and will take approximately 18 months to compete.
PRESERVATION THROUGH USE
John Gardner spent 26 years building up the small craft program at Mystic Seaport Museum. He held the first recreational boatbuilding classes in the country and taught thousands of people the basics of traditional boatbuilding and tool sharpening. He used boats in the Museum’s collection as a study resource, took their lines, and built reproductions. He advocated preservation through use and initiated the idea of a livery program where visitors could use boats on the river. At Mystic Seaport Museum we don’t simply tell other people’s sea stories, we encourage our visitors to get in a boat and find their own sea story.
“ Trust youth, give them room, permit them to develop as whole persons; ask, and set no upper limits in asking, and they will rebuild the world.”
- John Gardner, Associate Curator of Small Craft, Mystic Seaport Museum 1969–1995
“Unlike many historians, John Gardner had a clear, audience-based reason for researching and presenting historic material. It was not lines in a scholarly resume, or a grant-hunter’s demands, or preservation for its own sake that drove him. John showed us how to involve people in the activities surrounding traditional watercraft, for the lessons of designing, building, and using these teach not only about the boats themselves, but about life.”
— Ben Fuller, Curator of Small Craft, Mystic Seaport Museum 1978–1990
WATERCRAFT COLLECTION
The watercraft collection at Mystic Seaport Museum began in 1931 with the acquisition of our first vessel, the sandbagger Annie.
Over the past 90 years we have been building and curating the collection to create a three-dimensional encyclopedia of watercraft.
Of the 560 vessels in our collection, only a handful are currently on public display on Museum grounds and afloat on the river.
Among the largest in the world, and certainly the most diverse with 560 vessels, the watercraft collection is the signature collection within the vast holdings of the Museum. The collection spans 182 years with crafts dating from 1824 (dugout canoe) to modern-day (Mini Transat racer).
In addition to four National Historic Landmark vessels—the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, the 1866 Noank wet-well smack Emma C. Berry, the 1908 steamboat Sabino, and the 1921 Gloucester fishing schooner L. A. Dunton—the Museum’s other noteworthy vessels include:
• 1880 Annie Class A Racing Sandbagger
• 1890 Catboat Great South Bay Catboat
• 1913 Alerion lll Herreshoff Cabin Day-Sailer
• 1947 Roann Eastern Rig Dragger
• 1955 Skiff Thompson Sea Skiff
• 1959 Analuisa Cuban Fishing Launch
The collection is a research library of watercraft.
“Serious students of boat design, and particularly working boat design—which evolved by the rule-of-thumb methodology and the hard-won experience of men who lived or died by their ability to keep watermen safe and able—can find no single collection providing as much wisdom, industry, intelligence, and sheer beauty as the watercraft collection at Mystic Seaport.”
Jon Wilson, Founder of WoodenBoat Publications, Mystic Seaport Museum Trustee
1988–2002
“Upon scrutiny, this full-size, three-dimensional ‘research library’ of watercraft shows which of the variety of boatbuilding and shipbuilding techniques and materials proved most durable. An examination of details, proportions, and overall shapes yields an aesthetic and structural ‘feel’ for a wide range of traditional watercraft that is unmatched anywhere else in these United States.”
– Maynard Bray, Former Director of Henry B. du Pont Preservation Shipyard and Curator of Watercraft, Mystic Seaport Museum Trustee,
1982–1999
DIGITIZING THE WATERCRAFT COLLECTION
Recent advances in photography and software allow digitization of large 3-D artifacts.
We are constantly working to digitize our holdings in an effort to document our collections and offer researchers and enthusiasts access to the collections remotely. This has long been possible for two-dimensional artifacts like photographs, ships plans, and books.
Recently, advances in photography and software have enabled us to capture and create digital files of these boats/vessels. Work is now underway to create a digital library of the vessels in the small craft collection. These high-resolution images can be studied and manipulated in three-dimensional space. The digital files can also be used to generate line drawings and plans, thus creating ships plans for vessels that were often constructed solely by eye and through experience.
UTILITARIAN OBJECTS AS ART
“ When the National Endowment for the Arts underwrote the production of the first edition of Mystic Seaport Watercraft in 1979, it was clear evidence that, whatever the occupational or recreational use for which they were intended, the boats in the Seaport’s collection represent a very significant American art form. Some are true folk art, created by self-taught builders using local materials, yet having grace and a sense of rightness that transcends their simple origins. Others are the art of a finer sort, representing the highest achievements in design and use of materials by the most skilled designers and builders, such as the Herreshoffs or J. Henry Rushton. All of them combine practical and aesthetic considerations in creative ways that can only be called art.”
— Douglas H. Teeson, Mystic Seaport Museum President 2001–2008
Within the collection are ingenious interweavings of form and function in vessels and boats.