The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (LCMM) has announced that it will be retiring the Lois McClure, a full-scale replica of an 1862-class sailing canal boat, in October of 2023. The final two seasons of the vessel’s service will “give [the museum] the opportunity to explore how canal boat owners would have evaluated, repaired, and retired their own canal boats in our past,” according to the museum’s website. LCMM is documenting the process for what it calls a “living archive,” which will contain oral histories and other documents; the public is encouraged to share family stories, photos, and documents related to life on the canals, as well as Lake Champlain canal schooner Lois McClure
Records from 370 whaling voyages have been added to the database, and the Dennis Wood Abstracts of Whaling Voyages have been integrated into its offerings. The Dennis Wood abstracts are brief summaries of whaling voyages over the period 1830– 1874, drawing on letters, telegrams, and reports, as well as the Whalemen’s Shipping List and Merchants’ Transcript. More than 2,300 pages of handwritten entries were scanned from the collection of the New Bedford Free Public Library and uploaded
to the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), and can be accessed via the WhalingHistory website. “These new additions to the world’s most comprehensive whaling history database enhance the site’s scope and, most important, make it available for all to use,” said Paul O’Pecko, Vice President of Research Collections at Mystic Seaport. “Researchers, genealogists, students, teachers, and history buffs alike will find it to be the most robust and useful repository of whaling history documentation and
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memories from anyone who volunteered on or aboard the McClure. The Lois McClure was built in 2003–2004 at the Lake Champlain Transportation Company’s Burlington shipyard, based on a set of plans from 1842 and studies of two Burlington Harbor shipwrecks, the General Butler and the O. J. Walker. The schooner is named for museum supporter Lois McClure who, along with her husband, Mac, is a contributor to the schooner project as well as other local community projects. The McClure is 88 feet long with a beam of 14.5 feet, and is constructed of mostly local-sourced wood, including 20,000 feet of white oak from Vermont and Maine for the hull. www. lcmm.org, 4472 Basin Harbor Road, Vergennes, VT) ... New content has been added to the whaling history website WhalingHistory.org, a joint project of Mystic Seaport Museum and the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The site incorporates data from sources such as logbooks, journals, ship registers, newspapers, business papers, and custom house records. SEA HISTORY 179, SUMMER 2022
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