''Seasoned and Weather-stained'' How the Charles W. Morgan Lives at Age 150 by Andrew W. German, Editor, Mystic Seaport Museum Sailing vessels are wondrous things. Graceful curves, towering spars that dwarf the viewer, an intricate tracery of rigging, and taut clouds of sail epitomize them in our imagination. There is harmony in them too, as they harness the wind and rely on natural patterns to make their way at sea. Yet, anthropomorphize them as we may, seeing in them individual personalities and even calling them "she," ships are not living beings. Humans conceive them, build them, and sai l them. As aesthetically pleasing as they may be, they cannot be fully understood or appreciated except in their relation to human endeavor. This is the lesson the Charles W. Morgan has taught us at Mystic Seaport. Built in 1841, the Charles W. Morgan is America's oldest surviving oceangoing commercial ship. Although she was built specifically as a whaleship, in size and design she represents hundreds of sailing merchantmen that floated America's commerce in the first half of the nineteenth century. Her business, however, was whaling-stalking the leviathan throughout the world's oceans during voyages that might last four years or more. With our latter-day perceptions of our environment, we condemn the slaughter of whales, but through much of the nineteenth century whale products were essential for industry and consumer goods. Four years after Quaker shipbui lders Jethro and Zachariah Hillman launched the Morgan, the American whaling fleet peaked at 731 vessels, operated by nearly 20,000 mariners. As with so many seaports, whose decline preserved their nineteenth-century character from twentieth-century replacement, so the whaling industry in its decline kept older vessel s in service far beyond their expected life spans. The Charles W. Morgan was finally retired at 80, only four years before the industry ended on the East Coast. Her home port of New Bedford, once the whaling capital of the world, had long since embraced the textile industry, so there was little interest in an old whaleship that, like Melville 's Pequod, was "long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and calms of all four oceans." The one man with the vision to realize that she had significance for, future generations was marine artist Harry Neyland , who made the Morgan's survival his personal quest. When neither New Bedford nor Massachusetts could be persuaded to preserve her, Neyland enlisted millionaire Col. Edward H. R. Green, whose grandfather once owned the ship. Green built a wharf at his Round Hill estate, near New Bedford, and there the old whaler was entombed in a sand berth. Neyland 's group, Whaling Enshrined, with Green's financial support, exhibited the ship from 1925 until after Green's death in 1936. To the disappointment of the old seamen, artists, literary folk and tourists in search oflocal color who had come to know the ship in her retirement, Col. Green provided nothing for her in his will. Without adequate funds for proper upkeep, she began a downhill slide.
Enter Carl Cutler Harry Neyland's foresight saved the Morgan from public neglect, but Carl C. Cutler was the man who preserved her for the ages. Cutler had made an ocean voyage under sail as a young man, and throughout his legal career he looked back on that voyage as a formative experience. Distressed by America's maritime decline, he became a student of the country's nautical heritage. During research for his renowned history of 10
clipper ships, Greyhounds of the Sea, he discovered how little regard modem New Englanders had for their maritime past and the artifacts that represented it. In order to gather likeminded members and collect and preserve maritime artifacts, Cutler and two of his Mystic, Connecticut, neighbors established the Marine Historical Association on Christmas Day, 1929. But from the beginning, Cutler had a larger plan in mind. He hoped not only to foster an interest in the past, but also to build a maritime commitment for the future. "Above all," Cutler wrote in the Association 's statement of purpose, "the youth of America must be imbued with the spirit of the sea and all for which it stands." Courage, sacrifice, the pioneer spirit of adventure, cooperation, loyalty, and high aspiration-all these, he reasoned, could be taught by the lessons of the past and could contribute to the rebirth of a powerful maritime civilization. So Cutler wanted a real ship as part of the growing complex at Mystic. The big down easter Benjamin F. Packard was desirable but impractical. The smaller Charles W. Morgan, damaged by the 1938 hurricane and in desperate need of a sponsor, was an ideal second choice. Cutler obtained financial comm itments for her support at Mystic, then offered to take the Morgan with the assurance that she would be preserved. Neyland's Whaling Enshrined might have fought to keep their sh ip, but they loved her too much to see her disintegrate while they begged for money. In August 1941, Whaling Enshrined deeded her to the Marine Historical Association. Arriving at Mystic only a month before the US entered World War II, the Morgan was again berthed in sand for convenience. For the next thirty years, the growing institution now named Mystic Seaport maintained her routinely, replacing her masts, much topside planking, and decking. But maintenance is not necessarily preservation. By the mid-1960s it was clear that the Museum 's few shipwrights could not keep up with the Morgan's deterioration. Under the leadership of Director Waldo C. M. Johnston, the Seaport reviewed the possibilities. Simplest would be to sacrifice her bottom and maintain her topsides like a land structure. Or, she cou ld be moved indoors, away from the elements, and stabilized, like the Fram . Perhaps she could be put in drydock, like the Victory and the Cutty Sark (and later the Great Britain) for full visibi lity and maintenance. Or, she could be hauled from her sand berth and returned to her element like the USS Constitution. It all depended on the Museum's philosophy. The Human Element After study, the Museum 's position was boldly enunciated by then-curator Edmund Lynch: "certainly our philosophy of conservation in the museum field is that the changes and additions to an item, whether it be a figurehead or a ship, are a true representative history of that object." Consequently, to continue to repair a vessel as if she were still in service, rather than embalming her as a dead artifact, would maintain the continuity of her existence. The Museum chose to refloat the Morgan, and, with the generous financial assistance of Henry B. duPont, constructed a complete shipyard to restore and maintain her and the rest of the Museum 's fleet. Who would do the work? Here was an additional obligation that could be turned into a preservation opportunity. Like the ships themselves, wooden shipbuilding skills were fast dying, and only by training new generations of shipwrights could SEA HISTORY 60, WINTER 1991-92