and sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretenses, that will not put up with bad art from their masters. Another Kind of Voyage One comes back to the ship as museum, the ship preserved-to what purpose? One thing immediately noticeable about the working ship alongside a pier is that she attracts people. And that attraction can be harnessed to build museums , as the Mystic, San Francisco and New York museums were built, or to improve waterfronts through commercial development supported by that traffic of interested visitors. From the educational point of view, the historic ship as museum may be said to open a door on the wider world of history. And this marvelous power of attraction goes beyond the Sunday visitor. The historic ship equally well attracts scholars, historians and craftsmen , and is the natural centerpiece for a cluster of related activities. Boat builders, chanty singers, riggers, wood carvers and sail makers expand the ship's story and culture. Alone such activities or displays might founder, but as part of a maritime center with the ships as the focal point, they reinforce and nourish each other. It is not only the ship-specific trades but the whole epoch in which these trades flourished that comes to life in the presence of these ships. Evolving plans for a maritime museum in Bristol, England, to complement Isambard Kingdom Brunel's iron steamship of 1843, Great Britain, Richard Goold-Adams writes of his impressions of Mystic Seaport and the maritime museum in San Francisco: The main lesson borne in on me in both places, was that almost everything which helps to illustrate the contemporary background of maritime lifebuildings, tools , equipment, people's customs-against which a vessel operated is likely to make a visit to her in the present day more interesting and comprehensible, provided that its proper significance is brought out by the way it's shown. A second most noticeable thing about the museum ship is that she is vividly real and speaks to visitors in a language that all can understand. The ship is twelve inches to the foot and needs far less interpretation and conceptualizing than does a model, photo or painting . Youngsters eagerly ask where people slept and ate; and from that almost universal starting point, they then become curious about how the ship worked and why she went to sea. Most grown ups follow the same pattern. The spaces of a ship are radically differ14
No model, no drawing or description can convey the conditions of a warship's gundeck like the real thing , whether it' s HMS Warrior's gundeck of68 pounders (above) , the USS Constitution or HMS Victory . Once seen, the conditions of life, so different from ours today, will not be forgotten .
ent from the rooms in a building , and no model can convey the cramped feeling of the Charles W. Morgan's tweendeck, the fore-and-aft sweep of the Victory's gun decks , the immensity of the aircraft carrier lntrepid' s flight deck, or the antediluvian shape of the Great Britain's engines , nonworking replicas , to be sure, but in their proper place. But in addition to having the real spatial dimension of the ship, whatever her type, her purpose or her size, the ship as museum is the keeper of the ship 's-and her people's-legacy of purpose. Frank Carr, savior of the tea clipper Cutty Sark and chairman of the World Ship Trust calls ships "cathedrals of the sea": We go to a cathedral and see a beautiful building . We go into a ship and see a beautiful vessel. But, in the cathedral there is something more-something of the religious spirit and something of the spirit of the people who have worshipped there, who have served there, who may have been buried there-that remains . So, to me, when I go aboard the Cutty Sark, she is not a dead ship, she 's not just iron and elm and teak and hemp. [She is pervaded by] something of the spirit of the men who created that ship , imagined her, built her, put their loving craftsmanship into her because the shipwrights were proud of their skills. And the men who sailed in her, who hated her, who suffered in her, and yet, who loved her. I do not believe that all those generations of people left Cutty Sark with nothing of their spirit behind . To me, she's alive, and when I go aboard I feel as I feel when going into a cathedral. Because the ships are attractive and exciting, people tend to linger on them . Good shipboard displays take advantage of this and entice the visitor to stay even longer and understand even more . Some criticize the displays as interfering with
the authentic look of a ship. But well designed displays that respect the fabric and space of the vessel are a way of keeping the ship's seafaring culture, which pervaded the ship in her working life, alive and present on the ship today . By filling the vessel with her people's personal belongings, their work gear, their photographs or portraits and, most important, their words, the ship comes back to life in a way that is direct, personal and specific ... in a word, real. These displays become, in effect, a materialization of the vanished culture that lived on and around the ship in her time . \ Finally, while the real ship requires labor, money and expertise to an extraordinary degree, it is also able to inspire the devotion that can provide for its needs . Most ships are saved because of the determination of one person who will not take no for an answer. That person engages others of like mind to help find solutions where none are apparent. Devotion and determination are at the heart of most ship saves, which is as it should be, because the initial saving of the vessel is just the beginning. The restoration and long-term preservation are equally demanding . And the ship's demand for archaic skills and expertise means that those skills and that knowledge will survive because they must. Her expensive repetitive maintenance, her need for renewal makes it essential that her culture, as well as her fabric , stay with us. Most historic ships depend on a loyal support group-both paid and volunteerto provide the variety of skills , from the commonplace to the arcane, which they need for their existence. Whether it's the paid crew learning to splice wire rope, or the old salt bringing in his memorabilia and sharing stories from his youth, or the hardbitten rivetter passing on his skills to a new generation, or the vol unteer office SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88