There has been a tremendous spotlight shown on the city of New Bedford these past few weeks with the arrival of the whaling ship the Charles W. Morgan, which sailed under her own power from Mystic, Connecticut to New Bedford with much fanfare. We were in Greece for her arrival, and also missed the “Parade of Boats” to honor her, but were told by a marina friend that the inner harbor was like a big parking lot; you could have stepped from boat to boat.
We didn’t tour her while she was in port. We were busy with July 4th preparations and visits from family, and, of course, a hurricane, so we thought it fitting to at least watch her departure.
The American whaling fleet numbered more than 2,700 vessels. The Charles W. Morgan is the last of them. She was built in New Bedford and launched in 1841, and she is America’s oldest commercial ship still afloat – only the USS Constitution is older. The Morgan’s past is quite fascinating and I urge you to check out the Mystic Seaport’s website for her full history. The part that most interests me is that after she was decommissioned as a whaler in 1921, she was preserved by Whaling Enshrined, Inc. and exhibited at the estate of Colonel Edward H.R. Green (the son of the infamous “Witch of Wall Street”, Hetty Green) at Round Hill in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts until 1941. So she even survived the hurricane of 1938. The Morgan was then sent to Mystic Seaport in November of that year. And there is the rub. New Bedford, famous world over for it’s Whaling Museum, Seamen’s Bethel and even for Moby Dick, let this historic vessel slip through its fingers and become a treasured attraction for Mystic Seaport.
I am not condoning or glamorizing whaling, certainly not. But it was a part of our history and determined the cultural makeup of our region. It connected us with the world, and put the Northeast on the map. The Whaling Museum and the New Bedford Art Museum display pieces born of the hard journeys these ships made, and while some of the paintings are difficult to view others are spectacularly beautiful. As are the scrimshaw, sailor’s valentines, and rope work that returned from those trips. Did you know that perfume was made using ambergris, the undigested squid beaks found in whales’ digestive systems? Synthetic versions are still used today.
Perhaps staying in New Bedford would have caused The Morgan’s demise, especially if funds couldn’t be raised for restoration, which certainly wasn’t cheap. But it is sad to see such an integral part of the history of the city slip away. And New Bedford is repeating history with the Schooner Ernestina, built in 1894 and currently awaiting funds for restoration while berthed at New Bedford’s waterfront. Much restoration has happened before and since she was gifted to the US by the people of the Republic of Cape Verde in 1978, but in 2005 Ernestina could not earn her U.S. Coastguard Certification to continue to be a small passenger and sailing school vessel because of her deteriorating condition. Loss of income and budget cuts have brought restoration to a halt, and The Ernestina is manned by volunteers and kept afloat by grants and donations. I hope she makes it.
So we watched The Morgan, part of our history, sail out of New Bedford harbor last week, under much happier conditions that her last departure. Police boats, tug boats, and the harbor master, all with flashing lights, guided her to open water where she could raise her sails and make way to the next stop of her journey. When we saw a perfect photograph in the newspaper the next day we were stumped. When the Morgan was abeam of the Butler’s Flat lighthouse she still had a tugboat on her port side. After close inspection we saw faint dots where the tug should have been. So much for historical accuracy: they didn’t have photo-shop in 1841.