Back in April, when I went to the Seaport for training for the 38th Voyage, one big part of the day was to try climbing the rigging, in preparation for doing so while underway. I have climbed the Morgan’s rigging many, many times, but most often it was 20 years ago, when I worked on the Demo Squad at the Seaport. I’ve been aloft occasionally since then, but wasn’t sure how I’d do this time.

My main concern was my shoulder – I’ve got this annoying “frozen shoulder” that limits my range of mobility, and can occasionally be anywhere from painful to excruciating if it gets bumped in just the wrong way.

So, after spending the day in the Seaport library, I met up with a friend who has worked at the Seaport, and been in charge of the Demonstration Squad, for many years. She had some other friends who wanted to give a try at climbing before the full training day. She has the authority to let us try this when the grounds are closed – or, I imagine, whenever she feels like it.

We went over to the Joseph Conrad, because the rigging on Morgan wasn’t done yet, and it wouldn’t have been advisable to try climbing that rigging yet. I had been dressed for the library, but I gave climbing a try, anyway. We started heading up the foremast rigging, and I was very pleased to see that I did just fine. My lack of range in my shoulder isn’t that big a deal; you mostly keep your arms close in to you when you’re climbing. I didn’t climb over the top, but I felt like that was more because I was cold than because I couldn’t do it.

And the next day, with the other Voyagers, I did climb over the top on Conrad’s mainmast. Here are some photos I took from there.

    These are all looking forward, from the mainmast to the foremast, where another Voyager (in yellow) was going over the top with the assistance of Seaport demo guy extraordinaire Tim (in orange).

Here’s a view from the main top toward the whaleboats that other Voyagers were in. We’d done some whaleboat rowing before going aloft. Whaleboats are a blast to row (and sail) and the Seaport received a set of ten new whaleboats for the voyage from a variety of schools and museums.

 Here’s a bit of a selfie from the main top. It was hard to take any good pictures of myself from up there, unfortunately.

In late April, I went to Mystic Seaport Museum, as part of training and preparation for the 38th Voyage. As previously noted, I’ve been to the Seaport many, many times, and have lived in Mystic twice – once while studying at the Seaport, and once while working there. So it is not a new place to me, but it is always a favorite.

This time, I went early so I could spend a day and a bit more working in the G.W. Blunt White Library, collecting information to add to my ShipIndex.org database. I got some help in the form of a smart young boy who was there with his mom; she was doing some genealogical research, and his computer wasn’t working, so I asked if he’d like to help me. I gave him a quick rundown on using the Library of Congress classification (because of course he was more familiar with the Dewey system used in his school and public libraries) and then we were off.

I had this view of a model of the whaler Two Brothers, from my desk:

After posting this on my Facebook page, several friends described how they’d seen the real ship, at its wreck site, in Hawaii.

The actual training program began the next morning. All the Voyagers who attended that training session (there was one other) gathered in the morning to do introductions, and learn a bit about the Seaport. As far as I could tell, only one Voyager had never been to the Seaport before. He was leaving early, too, to get to Vienna – I felt like maybe he wasn’t taking this thing seriously enough.

We broke into three groups, and my group was the first to visit the Morgan. Built in 1841, she has just completed a five-year restoration project. Many timbers were replaced, but some originals still remain, as seen here:

The portion on the left dates to the ship’s construction (so, 1840 or so) and the portion on the right is brand new, with this restoration, to replace rot.

In the hold, we saw some of the extensive fittings and changes made for the voyage. Extensive fire safety systems, and plumbing systems, have been installed for the voyage, including a bank of heads (toilets). While they’re installed in a permanent fashion, most of these will be removed when the ship returns to Mystic in August. Look at all of this:

Here’s the crew bunks, where we’ll sleep. (We may have the option of sleeping on deck, if we so choose.) We’ll board at about 7pm the night before, spend the night on board, then sail away very early the next morning.

We then visited the Collections and Resource Center, which will get its own post.

I’ve had a long relationship with Mystic Seaport. When I was 16, my mom, brother, and I drove across the country and my mom included a visit to the Seaport on our itinerary, along with museums like Colonial Williamsburg, the Chicago Art Institute, the American Natural History Museum, Plimoth Plantation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and many more, with stops at the homes of friends and family in Ames, Iowa; Bloomington, Indiana; Winnetka, Illinois; and more. The ultimate destination was a week at a rented house on Martha’s Vineyard; on the way back to Seattle we drove up Michigan to visit Mackinac Island, then into Canada and back across, through Banff, Lake Louise, and Moose Jaw (in the distance).

It was a remarkable trip, and I suppose my introduction to Mystic Seaport on that trip represented a significant turning point in my life. A few years later, I learned about the Williams-Mystic Program in American Maritime Studies, and I delayed my graduation from college to attend the program. A year after that I returned to the Seaport for the spring, summer, and fall, to work on the Demonstration Squad. The Demo Squad shows visitors how all sorts of stuff is done, not just climbing the rigging and setting sails. When I was there, we would show how one splits a cod, we’d set up and run the breeches buoy tool that was used to rescue folks from near-shore shipwrecks, drop the anchor and then haul it back up with the winch on the L.A. Dunton, and of course we also set and furled sails on the Charles W. Morgan and the Joseph Conrad. That was a great work experience that I will always treasure; I made life-long friends while I was there for just a few months.

After that, I returned to attend Sea Music Festivals, either to listen the music, or to present at the associated symposia, or both. And then, my wife and I got married at the Seaport. I’ve returned whenever I reasonably can. Clearly, the place means a lot to me.

When I first heard about the Seaport’s plans to sail the Morgan at the end of her five-year restoration project, I didn’t believe it. I remember that my brother-in-law mentioned an article he’d read in the Hartford Courant, that mentioned these plans. When I’d worked at the Seaport, we had always said to visitors that the ship would not sail again; she was a museum artifact and that simply wasn’t in the cards. But my brother-in-law was right, and a few years ago, at a maritime history conference held at the Seaport, I heard the new Seaport president, Steve White, talk about the museum’s plans to sail the Morgan again. White talked at a jammed session in the Munson Room, in the library building. One audience member had many, many suggestions of where they could go to find sailors for the voyage. White gently assured the audience that finding people to sail on Morgan was the least of his worries at that point! I wondered how I could be one of those folks, but couldn’t imagine how I could possibly arrange it.

Fast forward a few years, to last fall, and the Seaport announced their “38th Voyagers” program. This trip will be the Morgan’s 38th voyage, and the Voyagers program is an application program in which 8-10 people will join each leg of the trip, to work on various projects related to the voyage, whaling, the impact of maritime history on American history, and more. I duly applied, and was thrilled to be accepted to the program.

In a future post I’ll write about what my project will involved (here’s a hint: you’re reading part of it), but for now, I want to briefly lay out what this voyage will look like. Later I’ll write about why I believe it matters so much.

The primary goal of the voyage was to create a homecoming for the Morgan in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The ship was built in New Bedford, and launched there, in 1841. The ship will be at State Pier in New Bedford for nine days, open to visitors, including over the 4th of July weekend. I understand that New Bedford is incredibly excited about the return of the ship, as they should be, and are planning to really put together a great visit for the Morgan. In addition to New Bedford, Morgan will make a number of other visits on the way to and from New Bedford, including Newport, RI, Provincetown, MA, and Martha’s Vineyard, and Boston.

The itinerary for the trip is shown below.

I went back to the Seaport in late April for a training day, and a chance to go climbing, in preparation for climbing the rigging while under sail. All in all, it was a great trip.

I will be sailing on the first leg, from New London, CT, to Newport, RI. I will post more about preparation for the trip, and other events related to it (and ShipIndex.org!) soon.