James Driggs Shipsmith Shop
This shipsmith shop was built in New Bedford, Mass., by James D. Driggs in 1885. It is the only manufactory of ironwork for the whaling industry known to have survived from the 19th century.
Village Life
Visit the houses and gardens of a 19th-century New England seafaring village. Meet a roleplayer. Explore the businesses and shops, and talk to interpreters demonstrating 19th century trades and crafts.
Nautical Instruments Shop
Here the ships’ officers could purchase or have adjustments made to their precise and somewhat delicate navigational tools–quadrants, sextants and chronometers.
Seamen’s Friend Society Reading Room
Often you will find one of the Museum’s roleplayers in this building, ready to talk to you about what it is like to live in an 1870s maritime community.
Ship Carver
Figureheads and other carvings which decorated wooden ships in the Age of Sail are sometimes all that remain from the many vessels built in the 19th century. The staff who work here carve nameboards, trailboards, figureheads, and sternboards for boats, as well as shop signs, tobacconists’ figures, and decorations meant for the home.
Charles Mallory Sail Loft
This sail loft was originally located downriver from the Greenman shipyard where the Museum now stands and was brought here by barge in 1951.
Buckingham-Hall House
Originally situated in Saybrook, Connecticut, near the only ferry crossing at the mouth of the Connecticut River, this house was the home of the family of William Hall Sr., a New York import merchant, in the 1830s.
Cooperage
The cooperage was a shop where round wooden containers, which we often call barrels, were manufactured. These casks were an essential element in life both at sea and ashore, and wooden containers made from staves and hoops served many storage purposes.
Greenmanville Church
During the 1850s and for a generation thereafter, the Greenmanville Seventh Day Baptist Church was the focus of the town’s considerable Seventh Day Baptist community.
Buckingham-Hall House Gardens
The gardens at the Buckingham-Hall House are a representation of the Hall family’s coastal homestead in the mid-1830s.