Courtesy of Mystic Seaport Museum Early English colonists to Plymouth, to Boston and ultimately to Connecticut, initially hoped there would be mineral wealth or fertile, arable land to farm. It didn’t take long to realize that…
Courtesy of Mystic Seaport Today Mystic holds a very special place in the history of American whaling for one primary reason. The Mystic Seaport. Since 1941, the Charles W Morgan, the sole remaining whaling…
In addition to the massive annual Mystic Art Fair — as usual there were plenty of other hidden gems going on in Mystic on the most recent weekend. Our walking tour stumbled across an amazingly cool obscure event — A “J Boat” regatta featuring 10 foot high, radio-controlled, model sail boats. These guys were dead…
Yes, the Mayflower (II) is in Mystic. Why? Because the Mystic Seaport Museum has an elite wooden shipbuilding center that was chosen to prepare the Mayflower for its 400 year birthday sail! In case…
We have several reasons we start our guided tours of Mystic at the Spicer Mansion. First of all it’s a beautiful, recently restored classic example of a sea captain’s mansion. The views from…
There’s gold in California! That discovery in 1849 had huge repercussions across the country. In New England it meant ship builders and mariners needed to figure out how to get there (and back) quicker! The golden age of Clipper Ships, that “clipped” time off the journey from…
Heck, Captain Joseph Holmes rounded it 84 times, how bad could it be? Between 1850 and 1900 at least 100 ships were lost with all hands. That’s a lotta ships. Until the Panama Canal was built (1914), ships moving…
Depending how you measure, the Mystic River is between 5 and 6 miles long…..technically it’s an estuary, given the impact of the tide. Despite it’s modest length, between 1784 and 1919, shipbuilders launched over 1,400 vessels into its deep,…
Ok we’ve researched a wide array of sea captains with Mystic roots or Mystic connections. There’s a ton. If you look at typical living conditions and consider the weather and seas many of these captains faced, you could make…