The Eyes Have It – A Day at Mystic Seaport

Recently we invited friends from where we used to live to come and visit Mystic Seaport with us. So, on a recent beautiful sun-drenched day, when the Mystic River has that extra diamond-like sparkle, my husband and I acted as tour guides for the Davis’s.

We made our way from the South Gate to the North Gate, taking in the sights along the way. Our friends’  enthusiastic interest in the ships, the exhibits and the village itself made me think how easily we often take for granted the special beauty and wonder of familiar surroundings.

Fran is a talented artist and Bob is masterful at crafting all things wooden, like boats, Shaker boxes, furniture, a country house for themselves, etc.  Bob had taken the boat building course at Mystic Seaport back when John Gardner was the teacher and not just a picture on the wall. With a smile, he fondly recalled Mr. Gardner’s special teaching style. I think Bob could have spent most of the day in the shipyard! Fran could visualize setting up her easel just about anywhere on Museum grounds to capture the essence of Mystic Seaport.

Awesome, beautiful, delightful, relaxing,  impressive were some of the adjectives voiced by our friends as we lunched outdoors on the Seamen’s Inne patio and talked about their impressions of Mystic Seaport today. How refreshing it was to enjoy the Museum through their eyes.

If you’re feeling down about summer’s official end, here’s your antidote. Visit Mystic Seaport, The Museum of America and the Sea. On our website: www.mysticseaport.org  you’ll find a listing of  fun and exciting special events coming up.

Yeah, summer is great, but fall’s sweater weather days can be pretty wonderful, too. Come and see for yourselves. 

Blog written by Trudi Busey.

Flash Card Quiz

All right all you educators out there. Now it’s your turn to take a quiz (with a little blogger help!).

 

Q.   What special event is happening at Mystic Seaport this weekend (April 4 and 5)?

A.   Educators’ Weekend. This year’s event will celebrate the International Year of Astronomy.

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Q.   Who is invited?

A.   Teachers, school administrators, support staff and their families (but of course, the general public, too!).

 

Q.   How much will it cost Educators?

A.   Show your school or union ID card or a copy of school letterhead at the Museum gate and your admission is FREE! (Up to four people total.)

 

Q.   What does the weekend offer educators?

A.   Planned activities will acquaint you with all the Museum has to offer in helping you reach your classroom goals in a fun, outside-the-textbook manner.

 

Q.   Some examples?

A.   Attend the amazing Treworgy Planetarium program, “Finding Your Way through the Stars.” Learn more about celestial navigation in the Planetarium lobby’s exhibit.  Go on a special compass-guided scavenger hunt in the Museum’s Nautical Instruments Shop.  Take a 30-minute sampler tour of the Museum’s science-based guided tours, specially designed for school groups.  Try out different shipbuilding tools and do some hands-on rope making. All this an much more… you get the idea!

 

Bull’s Eye — you passed the quiz!

 

A $5,000 grant from Target has enabled Mystic Seaport to host Educators’ Weekend for a seventh year.  Your assignment is to take advantage of this very special opportunity. For more information and a detailed list of scheduled activities, visit www.mysticseaport.org/ews.  

I’m Hooked

“What did you do at work today?”

“Oh, you know, pounded iron.”

Working at Mystic Seaport definitely has its privileges. Having a bad day? Can’t seem to escape writer’s block? A visit to the Museum’s Shipsmith shop and a lesson with blacksmith Craig Hill quickly erases all worries. Emails, deadlines and meetings are long gone. Now, for a brief respite, it’s just the methodical pounding of iron, the twisting of molten metal and the practicing of tried and true 19th-century techniques.

Mystic Seaport’s James Driggs Shipsmith shop can be found in the heart of the Museum’s  re-created village. Originally located in Mew Bedford, MA, the shop arrived at Mystic Seaport in 1944. It is the only manufactory of ironwork for the whaling industry known to have survived the 19th century.

Museum visitors can not only visit the shop and watch Craig in action, they can try their hand at the trade as well. Hands-On History returns in late June, giving everyone (not just lucky Museum employees like me!) the chance to hammer away on something other than a computer keyboard. And when you’re finished, you walk away with a one-of-a-kind keepsake.

Make a bit of your own history at Mystic Seaport.

Not too bad, huh?  I think I just might quit my day job.

For more information about the Museum and its offerings, visit www.mysticseaport.org.

Warm up by the fire

It’s March in New England, and as of about 7 a.m. this morning, Mother Nature dumped a little inside joke on us. Between 8-15 inches of fluffy, white inside joke, depending on where you are.

Given what’s going on outside, I can think of a lot of places INSIDE that I’d like to be, and near the top of my list would be the Buckingham-Hall House at Mystic Seaport. I’d like to head inside, and warm up in a room heated by a fireplace so big I could stand in it.  I’d like to linger in the warmth of the kitchen while watching the deft work of the Museum interpreter while drinking in the heavenly aroma of baking bread, codfish cakes and warm, cinnamon-scented apple pie.

Want to try this yourself? The Buckingham-Hall House will be open for an evening of cooking by the fire this winter. For one night, on March 7, you can join the calico-skirted Museum interpreter at Mystic Seaport and learn just how a woman in the 1870s fed her family without a gas range and a microwave oven—and no takeout menus, either.

Just be sure to save me a piece of pie.

Open-Hearth Cooking at Mystic Seaport

DATES	TIME	COST
March 7, 2009	6 – 9 p.m.	$50 / $45 (member)

To register, go to www.mysticseaport.org/registration.

“Here is the Church and Here is the Steeple…

… open the doors and see all the people.”

 

The church we’re talking about here is the Greenmanville Church at Mystic Seaport. The steeple is there and the doors are still open, but these days the only people you’re likely to see in the church are visitors like yourself.

 

It wasn’t always that way. In fact, in the 1850s, and for the next generation as well, this Seventh Day Baptist Church had a vibrant congregation of ship builders and their families. Their beliefs had them involved in all sorts of social issues such as opposing slavery and supporting the temperance movement.

 

However, when the heyday of Mystic’s shipbuilding activity declined in the 1870s and 1880s, the congregation was eventually depleted, and the church finally closed its doors in 1904.

 

Mystic Seaport acquired the church building in 1955 and it was then moved to its present location in the Museum’s Anchor Circle. At that time, the clock in the steeple was added as part of the church restoration process.

 

The clock, manufactured in 1857, is on permanent loan from Yale University where it had been located in the Old South Sheffield Hall of the Sheffield Scientific School. The elaborate clockworks that make this clock tick are quite amazing and can be viewed inside the church.

 

 As devout followers of the Old Testament, Saturday rather than Sunday was the day of worship for the Greenmanville Seventh Day Baptist congregation. Although there are no sermons delivered in the church today, many brides and grooms choose to have their wedding ceremony performed in the historic setting of the Greenmanville Church. Now isn’t that romantic! *

 

So, whether old churches capture your imagination, or old clocks intrigue you, or if you are simply a romantic at heart … there’s a pew waiting for you at Mystic Seaport’s Greenmanville Church. Come sit awhile!

 

Remember to visit our website at www.mysticseaport.org to see all of the Museum’s daily offerings.  

 

*If you would like to get married at the Greenmanville Church, please call Seamen’s Inne at Mystic Seaport at 860.572.5305.

What’s Cooking at the Buckingham-Hall House?

No matter your maritime interest, Mystic Seaport is ready to deliver. Climb aboard a tall ship, wander through exhibit halls or take a stroll through a re-created 19^th-century seafaring village. Learning exactly how people lived during the 1800s is made easy by the many staff members and volunteers who spend countless hours researching and fielding questions. Buildings within the village include an apothecary, a cooperage, a clock shop, a shipsmith’s shop, a ship’s chandlery and a general store, among others. There are three homes you can venture into: the Buckingham-Hall House, the Burrows House and the Thomas Greenman House.

Shirley Gilmartin has been an interpreter in the Buckingham-Hall House for 20 years. She washes dishes, tends the fire and keeps a watchful on the food cooking over the open flames. Shirley has spent this particular morning baking a plum tart and basting a chicken.
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Sitting at the edge of the warm hearth is a tin oven. Used for roasting, the back of the oven faces the fire open to the heat of the coals. The overall shape of the oven is domed, so as heat enters the oven from the back, it rotates around and cooks the meat inside. Ever so often, Shirley rotates the chicken or opens the door to baste it.
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In the back corner of the hearth is a cast iron bucket. Inside is a plum tart, and according to a visiting staff member, “Shirley makes the best dessert.” The bucket has a layer of hot coals in the bottom and the tart pan sits in the middle, surrounded by an additional layer of hot coals. Shirley will also check this every so often, replacing coals and waiting for the tart to finish.
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This method of open hearth cooking is common to the 1830s. Above the hearth is a small compartment where weekly bread baking would take place. What is most interesting about “The Buck” (as staff members fondly refer to the house), is the house garden in the backyard where interpreters can pick vegetables and herbs to use in their traditional cooking. Shirley, along with the rest of the Museum’s interpreters, feel passionately about their role at Mystic Seaport and picking fresh herbs is just another way they try remain as authentic to this past era as possible.  

Though they may have a faucet in a closet, the dishes and pans are cleaned by using a bucket and elbow grease. Take the opportunity to see history living in the present. Stop by and visit Shirley or one of the other interpreters in The Buck’s warm kitchen.  Who knows – you may even be able to taste a piece of that famous plum tart.
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For more information on Mystic Seaport, visit us at www.mysticseaport.org.