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PRIME Editor She was stripped well below her gunwales, her ribs bared like some strange jack-o-lantern smile. A shipwright, maybe in his 30s, his long blond hair fastened safely back in a ponytail, stood on the scaffolding pounding thin shims of wood between the planks that made up her outer hull, trying to realign boards that had weathered decades of salt and spray. And there on the broad catwalk overlooking the work was my seven-year-old son, leaning on the railing as he happily shouted questions to the man working just a dozen feet away. Between swings of his mallet, the shipwright shouted back his answers. I thought to myself as I watched the exchange, this isn't the Mystic Seaport I remember. We were in the barn of the Henry B. Dupont Preservation Shipyard, one of the last stops on our day trip to the Seaport, watching reconstruction work on the Eastern-rig dragger "Roann", a 1940s-era fishing boat that originally hailed from Point Judith, Rhode Island. Getting a glimpse of history being preserved was just one of the pleasant surprises we encountered during our visit. Water taxis and river cruises, exhibits designed to engage and entice young and school-age children, ongoing demonstrations of all types of ship-related activities from sail-setting to cargo hauling (I was caught off-guard by the Dead Horse Ceremony as we passed by the tall ship, "Joseph Conrad"), horse-drawn carriage rides, garden talks, costumed reenectors .there was certainly a lot more to see and do at Mystic Seaport than I remembered from my last visit, back in, well, we won't talk about that. And there was still the chance to climb aboard the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaling ship in the world, as well as tour the buildings and exhibits in the recreated Seaport village. Those, I remembered. A typical visitor "You fall into the pattern of a lot of people visiting the seaport," said Michael O'Farrell, publicist for Mystic Seaport, as he gave my family and I an orientation to the grounds and some background on the 78-year-old museum, founded in 1929 by three local shipbuilders, brothers, George, Clark and Thomas Greenman. "We try to convince people that there's more here than they remember." He said a lot of people's first Seaport experience is as part of a school field trip. "They remember going aboard the tall ships," he said, "[And] there may be a mentality that you've 'been there and done that', but you really haven't." As I looked over the map of the grounds and listing of activities we could observe or participate in during our visit, I realized O'Farrell was right. "We're bigger than people expect," O'Farrell continued. "[The Seaport encompasses] 19 acres, we have a full calender of special events and we turn exhibits over every year, so there's always something new." Something new at every turn Our second surprise of the day was the opportunity to get a daylight look at the planet Venus through a telescope set up across from the Seaport's Planetarium. Yes, Mystic Seaport has a planetarium, another thing that I didn't remember from my visit of years back. We also took in the planetarium show (an additional $2.50/person charge for adults), and spent about 45 minutes learning about the stars in the summer sky, how light pollution affects our view of the heavens, and how to find many of the more common constellations. Based on what we saw, I think I can now confidently find the North Star . it's just off the handle of the Little Dipper and no, it isn't the brightest star in the sky. All of this was adjacent to the Seaport's recently-added children's area another pleasant surprise to a family traveling with an active seven-year-old. This kid-friendly spot includes three actual wooden ships "anchored" in the green (designed for the under-9 set to climb on and play in) and a hands-on museum where kids can play with assorted sea-themed puzzles and toys, "cook" in a pretend galley, take the wheel on a kid-size bridge or try out a sailor's bunk. Evan, I might add, took great delight in climbing all over all three ships (a great energy release), cooking for my husband and I in the "galley" and trying out both the ship's wheel and bunk. But his favorite children's activities by far were at the Art Spot across the green from the Planetarium, where he dressed up in sea garb and posed at the wheel in the still-life mock-up, composed and lit his own diorama and drew clouds at the watercolor stations. As for my husband and I, we were captivated by an exhibit in the rear gallery of the Art Spot building called "From Model to Masterpiece, the Work of Thomas Hoyne and Erik Ronnberg." Here exquisitely and painstakingly crafted ship's models and the beautiful paintings which used those models as a guide were displayed together in a unique synergy of art forms. Taking to the water Our third surprise was how much was actually happening aboard the many vessels that make up so much of Mystic Seaport. For example, a quartet of interpreters were demonstrating how cargo would have been loaded and unloaded as we stepped aboard the Seaport's showpieces vessel, the whaler Charles W. Morgan, and Evan rushed ahead of us to get a good view of the goings-on. I marvelled at how much work went into moving a few casks or boxes from deck to dinghy (and they weren't even hauling cargo up from the hold!), and my ever-inquisitive son was full of questions about how and why things were done as they were. He had just as many questions such as how big the tall ship Joseph Conrad is from bow to stern for the skipper of the water taxi, the Necessity, as we took the 15-minutet ride from one end of the Seaport to the other. This free trip, by the way, was a terrific way to get a different perspective on the Seaport, and to get a feel for the true scale of ships such as the Morgan, Joseph Conrad, Brilliant and L.A. Dunton as you glide across their sterns or along their beams. Our Maritime History Another surprise was how much there was to interest both adults and children in the maritime history exhibit "Voyages: Stories of America and the Sea." We were lucky, the exhibit interpreter was just beginning a sea story, that of the boat mounted just inside the doorway as we entered this exhibit. All of us, Evan included, stood fascinated as she told of the Cuban refugees who had set out in that small craft, their peril as the crossing became dangerous, the kind Carnival cruise ship captain who picked up the refugees and set the boat adrift. But that wasn't the end of the tale. It seems another set of refugees, in danger of sinking, found the same boat and managed to make it to American waters. It was there that the Coast Guard came into possession of the boat, and later gave it to Mystic Seaport for the exhibit. Mystic, she said, was later able to track down some of the original boat people, and invited them to the exhibit. One older man, she said, had cried when he saw his freedom boat was still intact. From that moving introduction we worked our way through three floors of photos and artifacts that told tales of our country's connection to the sea. We lingered at one point to show Evan the exhibit on Ellis Island, where both my and my husband's grandfathers had entered America, then stopped several more times to peer over Evan's shoulder as he tried his hand at the many kid-friendly computer kiosks offering learning games with sea themes (we got as far as "Mate" on the game that tested our knowledge of navigable waters in America!). It was late afternoon before we bid the Seaport goodbye, sad that we hadn't gotten to climb aboard every one of the ships on display, or taken a ride on the Sabino, the museum's coal-fired steamboat that cruises the Mystic River, or asked one of the costumed reenactors to tell us more about life in 1876. But there's always another time. And next time, it won't be so many years between the days I climb aboard the Morgan. | ||||||
