Collections
Preserving the past and ensuring a bright future.
The Collections Research Center (CRC) is the nation’s leading maritime research facility. Located across the street from Mystic Seaport, the former J. Rossie Velvet Company houses the Museum’s collections and offers safe and easy access to maritime researchers and scholars. Artifacts at the CRC include more than two million examples of maritime art, artifacts, tools, buildings, imprints and other documents, photographs, 1,000 ships registers, 600 audiotaped oral history interviews, 200 videotaped interviews, and 1.5 million feet of historic and contemporary maritime-related footage. The CRC opened in the fall of 2002 and was designed to exceed national museum standards for conservation, preservation, accessibility, and safety. The research center provides cutting-edge temperature and humidity control for the Museum’s artifacts and also boasts audio/video production suites and extensive photo processing and digitizing labs.
News From the Collections
Between 1874 and 1878 Captain John Orrin Spicer of Groton, Connecticut commanded the whaleship NILE on four voyages to the Eastern Arctic bringing back, primarily, whalebone (or baleen) and whale oil. On at least one of those voyages Captain Spicer brought back tusks from the narwhal, a small arctic whale. These he had fashioned, along with walrus tusk ivory and exotic wood, into one of the most unusual coat racks you are likely to encounter. It was made as a gift for his wife and after quite a number of years, and at least one other owner, it was donated to Mystic Seaport in 1964. The tusks are fitted into four wooden ball-shaped feet that support a wooden platform from which sprouts the central wooden column, topped by a crown of walrus tusk spindles. The narwhal tusks are connected to the central column with more ivory pegs supporting a ring of ivory. The tallest of the tusks is just over seven feet high.
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| Doug Currie, Randy Wilkinson and Chris White prepare the coat rack for an X-Ray. |
Unfortunately, the coat rack has not been on exhibit for many years due to its poor condition. It was once again pushed into the spotlight, however, when Dr. Stuart Frank of the New Bedford Whaling Museum did a thorough examination and detailed report of the scrimshaw collection at Mystic Seaport. While not a piece of scrimshaw, the unusually constructed piece of furniture does incorporate a number of ivory elements. Stuart calls this a masterwork that is a “unique survivorof what must even in its day been a rare form…” Interest in the coat rack has continued to grow. Obviously, the time to act on repairing, or at least stabilizing, this artifact has come. With that in mind, we have contracted Fallon and Wilkinson Furniture Conservators to assess the piece and suggest treatments that will enable us to once again share this unusual object with our visitors.
As a first step, our Collections manager, Chris White, and Randy Wilkinson transported the coat rack to Fallon and Wilkinson’s studio with a four hour layover at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. The stop at Mashantucket was essential in helping us determine what treatments we might be able to perform because the Research Center there has an X-Ray facility large enough to examine all elements of the item. Doug Currie, the Head of Conservation at the Mashantucket Museum, maneuvered the tools of his trade to get internal views of the fittings used to keep the coat rack together. Doug’s work confirmed a number of suspicions about the piece that tries to meld narwhal tusks, walrus ivory, exotic wood and iron fittings into a single entity. Unfortunately all those materials are not very compatible as they expand and contract at different rates and react to each other in ways that are less than beneficial to the object, resulting in a now wobbly construction that needs to be remedied.
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| Notice of acquisition in the January, 1965 Log of Mystic Seaport. |
As can be seen in the picture taken at the Mashantucket facility, this is just the beginning of the journey for this nearly 140-year-old relic. The second picture is from the January, 1965 Log of Mystic Seaport.
Wish us luck and look for it to be on exhibit in the not-too-distant future.
Posted: July 29, 2013, 5:25 pm
Back in November of 2012 we posted an item about a piece of scrimshaw done by a person known as the MECHANIC artist, so-called because the work was done on the whaler MECHANIC of Newport. Spencer Pratt was identified as that artist in that posting. Since then, Richard Donnelly of Rhode Island, an avid sleuth where Spencer Pratt and his handiwork are concerned, delivered a paper about Pratt at the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Scrimshaw Weekend. A new development in his presentation was the fact that Mystic Seaport also owns a whalebone swift and inlaid box made by Pratt. The box is almost identical to one owned by the Bristol Historical and Preservation Society in Bristol, Rhode Island. Not only has Mr. Donnelly made an almost fool-proof case that Pratt is the MECHANIC artist, he has made just as strong a case that these two swift boxes, and another four boxes held elsewhere, are from the same hand.
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| Mystic Seaport Accession #'s 1964.1134 and 1964.1135 |
The box (with swift attached) is the Mystic Seaport object. The other is from Bristol. The size of the box, method of construction, motif and more give a solid indication that they were built by the same person. Additional evidence from other known boxes all point to the same hand. Not only was Pratt an accomplished box maker, but as existing sperm whale teeth attributed to him attest, a talented scrimshander as well. Thanks to Richard Donnelly for the research and photographs and for adding depth to the understanding of our collection.
Unsure of the actual use of a swift? Visit YouTube and search for swift and wool for a tutorial on how a swift works. Consider that the swift pictured above is all hand made. A coin dated 1830 is inserted into the end of one of the swift's knobs, shown at the base of the box.
Posted: June 26, 2013, 3:58 pm
“If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head…”
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest
The tornado that recently devastated Moore, Oklahoma reminds us of the fickle and furious temperament that Nature can exhibit. While tornadoes are few and far between in New England, the same cannot be said for hurricanes. Take as an example the destructive 1938 hurricane that rampaged through New England, killing hundreds and leveling, it is estimated, up to two billion trees. In this image taken at the time of that hurricane, it is quickly discernible that boats are not supposed to be traveling along the railroad tracks in Mystic, CT. This image is from the Post Collection of Photographs at Mystic Seaport.
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| Mystic Seaport Accession # 1987.58.523 |
Texas has the unfortunate geographical location that puts it in the path of both tornadoes and hurricanes. The second picture shows the remains of a church in Galveston, Texas after the deadly hurricane that swept through there in 1900. This storm took an estimated 8,000 lives and is still the worst natural disaster on record in the United States. This photo is part of the Merrit-Chapman & Scott collection of marine salvage photographs at Mystic Seaport.
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| Mystic Seaport Accession # 2008.28.3.159 |
Posted: May 24, 2013, 2:18 pm
The week of April 15, 2013 was one that will not soon be forgotten. The bombings at the Boston Marathon and the explosion of the fertilizer plant in West, Texas were the two major events of the week that required extraordinary action on the part of American first responders.
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| Mystic Seaport. Rosenfeld Collection. Accession number 1984.187.27083 |
This photo showing two New York City Fire Department fireboats reminds us that firefighters and police work on the water as well. The two boats, JOHN D. MCKEAN in the foreground along with FIRE FIGHTER, are pictured with the Statue of Liberty in the background. The two boats were not only the most powerful fireboats in the NYFD fleet pumping 19,000 and 20,000 gallons per minute, but also the most famous. FIRE FIGHTER responded to more than fifty fires, including the fire that destroyed the NORMANDIE in 1942. Among other incidents, the JOHN D. MCKEAN, named after a marine engineer killed aboard the fireboat GEORGE B. MCLELLAN, was quickly on the scene in Manhattan after September 11 and rescued passengers from U.S Airways Flight 1549 in 2009, the crash that became known as the Miracle on the Hudson.
To read more about these extraordinary boats and the exceptional people involved with them, visit the Marine 1 FDNY website.
Posted: April 25, 2013, 2:00 pm
Imagine! That's exactly what Conrad Gesner seems to have done in his depiction of these two whales in his 1560 epic work entitled Nomenclator Aquatilium Animantium. Gesner was a Swiss naturalist with an extremely curious mind. Although he only lived for fifty years (1516-1565), he was exceptionally productive in his studies. For example, he attempted to name every known animal (and some unknown); he wrote extensive treatises on botany; he tried to identify all existing languages; he published a catalog of all the known authors to that time, and much more. If Gesner had not died of the plague in 1565, who knows what else he might have accomplished?
While his book on aquatic animals does contain mythical creatures such as mermaids, he tried to describe as many animals as he could from direct observation, not just from hearsay as was the custom of the time.
In this picture of the two bizarre-looking whales, the strangest part is not the whales themselves, but the man standing at the rail with what looks like a trumpet, obviously blowing it in the direction of the beasts. Is he trying to call them or scare them or communicate with them? If your Latin and German are good enough, you can try to find out when you go to this link at Archive.org to read the work in its original format. Click on the picture to get a larger version.Mystic Seaport is fortunate enough to have this extremely rare book as part of its research collection in the G.W Blunt White Library.
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| A depiction of whales in Nomenclator aquatilium animantium, published in 1560. |
In this picture of the two bizarre-looking whales, the strangest part is not the whales themselves, but the man standing at the rail with what looks like a trumpet, obviously blowing it in the direction of the beasts. Is he trying to call them or scare them or communicate with them? If your Latin and German are good enough, you can try to find out when you go to this link at Archive.org to read the work in its original format. Click on the picture to get a larger version.Mystic Seaport is fortunate enough to have this extremely rare book as part of its research collection in the G.W Blunt White Library.
Posted: April 1, 2013, 1:17 pm