Mystic Seaport

Mystic Conneticut was a very famous shipbuilding town in the 1800’s. They made ships, wooden barrels, rope and everything else necessary for whaling. What is a bit confusing is that Mystic wasn’t much of a whaling town, but it was a huge ship building town.

The Mystic Seaport Museum first opened to the public in 1934. The village that is there is a reproduction of what use to be there. One thing I am not completely sure about is if all of those buildings were there in the same spot. There is a bank, houses, a cooperage (which is a place where they build the barrels that carried water and oil), a printing press, a drug store, a cordage shed (that is where they make rope), a blacksmith and lots over other stuff. They also have multiple ships, but I do not think any of them were built there. There is a ship named the Charles W. Morgan and it was built in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was a very famous whaling ship. It is the oldest commercial vessel still afloat in the US.

My favorite part of the museum was the Charles W. Morgan because it was interesting. They had so many different things that I never knew about such as the try pot. A try pot is a large cauldron incased with bricks and there was a fire underneath it. They would take the books of whale blubber that they cut from the whale and they would put it into the boiling water. The oil would float to the top and they would take a large spoon like thing with holes in it and scoop out the oil. And if you didn’t know, oil separates from water. As it separates, it would get picked up by the spoon which is called a skimmer. The oil that was collected was then put into wooden barrels.

I hope you liked this post. The drawing above is the Charles W. Mogan. I drew it with colored pencils and crayon while we were underway from Northport, NY to Port Washington, NY. I will be writing about NYC next! Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

-Theo (I dictated this to my Mom and she typed it for me)