Above, the C harl es W. Mo rgan is being repaired in her working life as a whaling ship. At right, the ship 's carpenters of Mystic Seaport do things the old way in 1978. (Photos courtesy Mystic Seaport, I nc.)
GREASY LUCK FOR THE CHARLES W MORGAN:
A New Idea-Doing Things the Old Way by Peter Stanford
More than 30 years ago, the ship's people who ran Mystic Seaport made a fundamental decision about their mission and how it would be carried out. For decades they had collected historic vessels, buildings, photographs, art and documents representing vital aspects ofa maritime heritage that defined a nation. Under the leadership of Waldo Johnston in the late 1960s, the seaport challenged itself to reshape the museum into a living, shipbuilding center, looking to the vessels they had rescued from oblivion to give purpose and definition to all they did. This focus revolutionized the maritime heritage and ship preservation fields and has created new generations of ship 's people among craftsmen, scholars and the general public. The Henry duPont Ship Preservation Yard came out of this new vision ofship preservation, a vision in which ships were renewed and maintained as they had been while they were sailing. The first ships that received this treatment were Alan Villiers 's sail training ship Joseph Conrad and Arthur Story's 1921 Grand Banks fishing schooner L. A. Dunton. Then came the Charles W. Morgan, the only remaining American sailing 16
whaling ship. Peter Stanford reported on this culminating act in Sea History 5 (Autumn 1976):
C
arl C urler ac Myscic, hav ing regrecfully give n up che choughc of saving che wooden full -ri gged ship Benjamin F. Packard, curned ch en ro che disrressed Morgan and his cruscees agreed at lengch ro rake her on, litde knowing-as who could?- th e huge cos ts and immense rewards she wo uld brin g to their Marine Hi sto ri cal Association. She slipped qui edy up ri ver into Mystic in D ecember 194 1, just befo re Pea rl H arbo r-a passage chac wo uld neve r have been undertaken in che wa rtime co nditions chat thereafter prevai led across America. Sirring with rocks in her lower h old, her keel in rhe sand , ch e Morgan made Myscic. Eve n during ch e war, visitacion grew sceadil y. Afterward ir rook off, a sea pon vill age grew up aro und rhe vessel, ocher vessels joined h er. We would now find, and so me found ac rh e ci m e, as peers of che desire simply ro put o n a good show in all this development, so me of whi ch has subseq uently been quietly und o ne. Bur che Morgan remained real in her bones, and peo ple came ro Mystic for that real presence from another age.
How, und er the n ew philosophy, would th e Morgan sail rhe seas of time? There was scant experien ce in this country of perm anent preservation of a wooden ship her size, o utside rh e periodically rebuilt Constitution and Constellation . Johnsto n we nt ro Eu ro pe, wh ere prevailing sentim ent indi cated compl etely dry storage, as rhe Cutty Sark at G reenwich and th e Victory at Portsmouth are kept, or totally enclosed, as in rh e case of rhe Vasa and the Fram in Scandin av ia. A n impressive array of argum ents came back with him in his briefcase. Bur J o hnsto n had ro dig deeper. Wood preserva ri o nisrs we re called in ro ass ist in studi es, engin eers we re co nsulted . Showmanship indi cated rh e simple, superfi cially m ost economical so lu tion, one rhar wo uld visually present th e ship to th e publi c quire chea ply for decades. Simpl y fill h er ho ld with concrete to th e waterline, forger everything below, and m aintain topsid es and deck, cabins and ri g like a dryland stru cture. "I co uld not stay at this place, and see rhar ship destroyed ," says Jo hnsto n now of rhar last op ti o n, wavin g his hands before him , " no r co uld ochers. Bur we loo ked into ir. We looked into , I thin k, everything, every sin gle co urse we co uld imagine and so me yo u mi ght nor want to."
SEA HISTORY 96, SPRING 200 I