New London Maritime Society (NLMS) CUSTOM HOUSE MARITIME MUSEUM l 150 Bank Street l New London, Connecticut 06320 l 860-447-2501 l email
The Custom House Maritime Museum - your local, independent, community museum - open year-round - telling the stories of New London's waterfront!
New London Maritime Society is a New London-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
New London Maritime Society - open year-round - your local, independent, community museum - telling the stories of New London's waterfront
Contact: 860.447.2501 email
Hours: Wednesday-- Sunday, 1 to 5 PM
$7 Admission; $5 Children age 7 to 14; Free for NLMS members, New London students & their families (with local ID), USCG cadets, active-duty military & their families.
If you require accommodations due to a disability please email us to discuss your needs. The request should be provided with enough time to reasonably set up the accommodation.
Open from 9 AM-1 PM for school groups and 'by request',
150 Bank Street, New London, CT 06320
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NLMS in the NEWS
by Emilia Otte, CT Examiner, May 28, 2021
by Sean Elliot, The Day, May 28, 2021
By Lisa McGinley, The Day, May 16, 2021
By Brian Hallenbeck, The Day, May 14, 2021
by Brian Hallenback, The Day, May 8, 2021
New London magnet school student wins MacCluggage scholarship,The Day, April 6, 2021
Stephen Spinella, The Day, March 1, 2021
Bartlebys unleashed: ‘Citizen scriveners’ answer maritime society’s call By Brian Hallenbeck, The Day, Jan 29, 2021
By Brian Hallenbeck, The Day, Sept 12, 2021
Postscripts: Lords Point basement is an unlikely canvas for Ellery Thompson seascapes The Sun 4.12.20
Norwich Native Son credits family, coaches, scout leaders and teachers for his success The Day 5.30.18
NEWS
NLMS in the NEWS
by Emilia Otte, CT Examiner, May 28, 2021
How do you practice social distancing in a dance studio? Look at the way birds fly, always in tandem, but never colliding.
It’s one of many suggestions that Dr. Sten Vermund of the Yale School of Public Health has been giving to theaters, museums and other arts venues that want to find a balance between keeping visitors safe and getting back to business.
The Yale School of Public Health partnered with Shoreline Arts Alliance in March 2020 to advise businesses on the best ways to navigate the myriad and ever-changing public health regulations over the course of the pandemic. The group has hosted twelve webinars on public health practices that have been viewed by thousands of people in the U.S. and abroad.
Reopening arts venues has taken on even more relevance recently with the relaxation of certain guidelines. Last Wednesday, Gov. Ned Lamont repealed social distancing and mask mandates, apart from non-vaccinated individuals indoors. Centers for Disease Control has also recommended that vaccinated individuals could go without masks indoors.
But museums and theaters remain cautious about returning too quickly to the days of a full house on opening night, according to Eric Dillner, chief executive director of the Shoreline Arts Alliance.
“We don’t want to have anything to spread in any of these facilities. My mantra is ‘Let’s open right the first time,’” said Dillner.
Susan Tamulevich, executive director of the Custom House Maritime Museum in New London, said that she has been watching the webinars all year. She said it helped her keep abreast of all the changing guidance.
“It’s all been tremendously helpful in a time when you feel kind of helpless,” she said.
Vermund visited the museum two weeks ago in anticipation of its full re-opening for Memorial Day Weekend. Tamulevich said the visit felt like a kind of “seal of approval” that she hopes will assure patrons that they are doing everything possible to keep them safe.
During visits, Vermund asks venue directors to walk him through as if he were a patron and makes suggestions about things like air quality, how to control traffic patterns and cleaning policies. He said there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
“We’ve been to museums that are essentially historic homes and have no HVAC at all,” he said. “We’ve been to large theaters, small theaters, performing arts and ballet studios. Every one of those has nuances.”
Moving the air
Vermund has faced plenty of challenges — from figuring out how to sanitize railings made of rope to minimizing particle spread in the woodwind section of an orchestra (plexiglass shields can help) — but every venue shares a common need: air filtration — one of the most effective ways of preventing spread of viral infections like COVID-19.
Krystal Pollitt, a professor of epidemiology and chemical and environmental engineering at the Yale School of Public Health, explained that air filters are able to capture particles containing the virus that would otherwise remain airborne for anywhere from minutes to hours, potentially infecting people nearby.
She recommends that venues fit their HVAC systems with a MERV-13 filter, which has a tight weave and is able to catch the virus more effectively.
But even venues with HVAC systems that can accommodate the higher-grade filters without major renovations will face an increase in energy costs, given the greater force required to push air through the filters.
Vermund noted the irony of asking people to reduce the efficiency of their air filtering systems in light of his focus on climate change and global warming.
“I really don’t have a choice,” he said. “I welcome the day where we can relax some of the rigor of the air quality and if everyone would agree to be vaccinated we’d get there.”
Pollitt said she stops short of recommending thatvvenues upgrade their HVAC systems immediately.
“Whenever you start talking about retrofits to HVAC systems … [people] start to panic, thinking about what the costs mean,” she said.
“The arts organizations are not rolling in dough in the best of times,” admitted Vermund.
Vermund and Pollitt have been working on creating more affordable options — for example, taking a MERV-13 filter and attaching it with duct tape to a box fan, which Pollitt says can move around a “significant” amount of air.
Tamulevich said they would be building two such fans before the museum fully reopens. She said it cost less than $125 and the additional energy costs would be negligible.
Donna Lynn Hilton, the artistic director at Goodspeed Opera House, also had a visit from Dr. Vermund just over a week ago. She said that after the visit, they installed MERV-13 filters into their HVAC system.
While she’s aware that changes will cost more money, she considers them necessary.
“We have to do what we have to do to make sure people are safe, it’s just a reality,” said Hilton. She added that performing arts venues “cannot afford to get this wrong.”
As safe as possible
Another question facing venues is whether they can — or should — continue with some of the safety protocols, such as social distancing and masking, now that much of the public has been vaccinated.
Vermund said he didn’t see any problem asking people to keep masking, despite recent guidelines.
“By no means do we have anything close to herd immunity,” he said, adding that it’s impossible to know who is or isn’t vaccinated.
Tamulevich said her organization was still asking patrons to wear masks, and that all their docents were vaccinated. But she said the Custom House Maritime Museum typically doesn’t have large numbers of people in their space.
“We are the perfect COVID museum, because we never get large crowds,” she said.
Although Goodspeed does not plan to operate indoors until the fall, Hilton said she was encouraged that their plan appeared to be in good shape.
“I think the thing that surprised me was how optimistic Dr. Vermund was,” she said. “It was reassuring to hear the amount of faith he had in the vaccines.”
For now, she said, Goospeed will continue to be cautious. The theater plans to begin outdoor performances the week of June 10, and performers will be tested once each week, but Hilton said she was still not sure whether the theater will require masks.
“We want to be as safe as we possibly can be,” she said.
by Sean Elliot, The Day, May 28, 2021
New London — When Edward Singer passed away in February, his daughter Tamara went to work finding homes for the 25 scale ship models her father had crafted over the last two-plus decades since he settled into retirement in Florida.
On Friday, Singer and her son Brodie arrived with John Haskell to deliver five of her father's models to the Custom House Maritime Museum in New London.
The five models, depicting the ice breaker USCGC Eastwind, the cutter Spenser, a 44-foot motor life boat and 41-foot utility boat, and the Navy tug Kiowa, will be stored in the ship model gallery on the museum's lower level until they can be moved to a large glass display case on the main level this summer.
Edward Singer retired from the U.S. Navy submarine service as a master chief petty officer, and also served in the Coast Guard Auxillary, and worked as an engineer at General Dynamics Electric Boat after his Navy career.
Other models from Edward Singer's collection have been donated to museums around the country and a few have gone to private collectors.
By Lisa McGinley, The Day, May 16, 2021
Everyone old enough to watch television on Sept. 11, 2001 knows where they were when the planes hit the north and south towers and the Pentagon. The terrorist attacks using four commercial aircraft as weapons changed history in a way that seems unforgettable to those who lived through it. For some it has already faded; that is proving to be a danger.
The people bringing this lapse of memory to attention are members of the group Friends of Flight 93, who support the Flight 93 National Memorial in Stoystown, Penn. When they volunteer on the site where United Flight 93 crashed into a field, they find visitors are often surprised to hear about what happened there. The guides tell them the story of passengers and crew who knew, from mobile phone calls with friends and family on the ground, that three other planes had hit major targets. Rather than let their flight slam into the U.S. Capitol or the White House, they fought for control of the plane. All aboard died when it crashed.
The Friends have opened nominations for the Flight 93 Heroes Award, "searching for extraordinary people across the country who embody the spirit and resilient courage of the 40 passengers and crew members of Flight 93, who displayed incredible heroism and bravery on 9/11 in the skies over Shanksville, Pa." The deadline is July 4.
An annual award should help keep alive the memory of ordinary Americans responding with a sacrifice that saved other lives and preserved the center of U.S. government. But the lack of awareness that prompted the award is confounding, given that the images of 9/11 are seared into the minds of those who witnessed it.
We should ask these questions: How could anyone who remembers the 9/11 near-miss on the Capitol wave away the implications of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on that very building? Same target, same destructive purpose — only this time the attackers were Americans. From the looks of those who stormed in that day, most are old enough to clearly recall 2001.
Both assaults mean that a destructive force wanted to obliterate the seat of government and would, even though unsuccessful, rewrite history. The most influential nation in the world changed in that September and in this January. The Associated Press reported in announcing the award that many states have no particular requirement to teach about the most infamous day between Pearl Harbor and this year. If they don't teach 9/11, don't expect them to contend with the political pressures around Jan. 6.
Connecticut, it is good to know, renewed its commitments to teaching U.S. History and social studies in recent years. The state has added requirements and resources for African-American, Black, Puerto Rican and Latin studies to fill in longstanding silences on those cultures.
Future generations will know what happened on history-changing occasions only if they are taught about them. They have a right to know, and as future responsible and patriotic citizens they will need to decide what obligations for freedom those events put into motion.
This is a key moment to recall that when history is preserved and studied, it gives up an ever-expanding Big Picture. On a smaller scale, a recent volunteers' project to transcribe a log from a whaling ship led Laurie Deredita, the librarian of the New London Maritime Society to the identity of the man who kept the journal: Frederic Olney, the third mate on the Merrimac in 1844, was a person of color and lived in Canterbury. The log project was supposed to add to knowledge about whaling, but it went much further and gave insight into an extraordinary life that sounds like material for the state's newest curriculum requirements.
Mr. Olney's log is a small but critical piece of a Connecticut industry and who worked in it, but the principle of knowing the history is the same: What happened, and what does it mean for the future? Everyone needs to know.
Lisa McGinley is a member of The Day Editorial Board.
By Brian Hallenbeck, The Day, May 14, 2021
New London — Don’t look for the owners of the three lighthouses directing New London Harbor traffic to be snapping up any more of the aging sentinels anytime soon — including two the Coast Guard’s trying to shed off the coast of nearby Rhode Island.
“New London Maritime Society will not be applying for either of these Rhode Island lighthouses,” Susan Tamulevich, the society’s executive director, said Friday of Watch Hill Lighthouse in Westerly and Beavertail Lighthouse in Jamestown.
Declared excess to the Coast Guard’s needs, the lighthouses, both of which date to 1856, can be had for free. But you have to keep them up, which is the whole reason they’re being made available.
In notices officially issued a week ago, the General Services Administration, the federal agency in charge of such things, announced “eligible entities” interested in a lighthouse or two — federal, state and local agencies, nonprofits, educational services and community development organizations — could submit a letter of interest and inspect the properties with contractors in tow. Applications are due within 90 days of a site visit.
The process, spelled out in the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000, is the very one the New London Maritime Society followed in landing New London Harbor Light at the foot of Pequot Avenue in 2010; Race Rock Light at the eastern end of Long Island Sound off Fishers Island, N.Y., in 2013; and New London Ledge Light at the entrance to the harbor in 2014.
Tamulevich said the availability of the two Rhode Island lighthouses was “disappointing news.”
“Lighthouses are not obsolete,” she wrote in an email. “These two lights (as well as the three owned by NLM) are all active aids to navigation. They are important back-ups, like street signs in support of today’s GPS — a system that is not infallible. Lighthouses are important day markers for the ferries, fog sirens in a storm, beacons in the dark. They are significant, meaningful, historic landmarks.”
Tamulevich said the federal government was asking a lot in turning over lighthouses to small, nonprofit groups while providing them with little support. Potentially worse, she said, are cases in which lighthouses are auctioned to insolvent entities or individuals who pass away.
She cited the example of Little Gull Light, a lighthouse off Fishers Island that the society sought to acquire in 2012. The businessman who outbid the society died a couple of years ago, Tamulevich said.
At times, the society has struggled to maintain its three lighthouses.
Litigation between the society and neighbors living near New London Harbor Light prevented the society from conducting tours of that lighthouse for years. No tours of the hard-to-reach Race Rock Light have taken place since 2019. The society intends to unveil plans for the property’s preservation this summer.
Hoping to reinstate New London Ledge Light tours, the society’s looking for a licensed captain with a boat.
In good hands
Current operators of the “excess” Rhode Island lighthouse properties are seeking to retain control of them.
“We’re very much looking forward to being chosen to continue our stewardship of the lighthouse,” Ann Snowden Johnson, president of the Watch Hill Lighthouse Keepers Association, said Friday.
She said the association, supported by grants and donations, has been licensed to oversee Watch Hill Light since 1986, and is required to maintain the property “financially and physically.” The 4.5-acre site includes a 45-foot lighthouse tower and an attached two-story, brick keeper’s dwelling, as well as other buildings. It’s located on a peninsula accessible by Lighthouse Road.
If the association gets to keep the lighthouse, the change in ownership will be “mostly emotional,” Johnson said. “The group that’s part of the association, all the directors, are from Greater Westerly. Everyone has a deep and abiding love for the town and this iconic landmark. It’s truly a labor of love to preserve it in perpetuity.”
In anticipation of the Coast Guard’s move to rid itself of Beavertail Light, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, the Town of Jamestown and the Beavertail Lighthouse Museum Association agreed to have the DEM pursue the property. The association has long operated the museum and helped maintain the site, which includes the 64-foot granite lighthouse at the mouth of Narragansett Bay.
The original lighthouse was built in 1749 and was burned down by British soldiers leaving the Newport area in 1779. The foundation remains.
"We are engaged in the surplus process with a plan, and remain optimistic about acquiring and preserving this gem for generations to come,” Gail Mastrati, assistant to the DEM director, said in a statement.
b.hallenbeck@theday.com
by Brian Hallenback, The Day, May 8, 2021
New London — It’s a project that keeps on giving — and might keep on giving for some time to come.
You never run out of history.
“It’s not quite done, but it’s good enough for people to look at it, to get something out of it,” Laurie Deredita, the New London Maritime Society librarian, said of “Voyage of the Whaler Merrimac,” the society’s newly posted transcription of the 19th century whaler’s journal it acquired last summer and has kept under wraps at the society's Custom House Maritime Museum.
Accessible on the society’s website, nlmaritimesociety.org, under “Online Exhibitions,” the posting includes an "easy, readable” version of the journal and the transcript of an interview with an expert who provides historical analysis of whaling’s economic impact on America.
The online exhibit’s centerpiece, of course, is the work of the scores of “citizen scriveners” who transcribed the writing of the journal’s author, whose identity they helped pin down along the way.
More than 80 people contributed to the effort, according to Susan Tamulevich, the society’s executive director, who around the first of the year reached out to the society’s membership and took to social media to solicit volunteers. The response was immediate, exceeding Tamulevich’s expectations. Many of those who signed up to transcribe one of the journal’s 156 pages asked to do more.
“People from the New London community are into whaling,” Tamulevich said in a recent interview. “Laurie (Deredita) learned that some of them had talents like genealogy” — expertise that came in handy in helping them confirm the identity of the journal’s author.
“There is no ‘by line’ in the manuscript of the Journal of the Merrimac,” Deredita writes in the online exhibit. “But there are many clues within the text itself to convince me that the author is Frederick Olney, third mate aboard Merrimac.”
Born around 1810 in Brooklyn, Conn., Olney died March 14, 1869, in Canterbury, where he is buried with his wife, Olive Smith Harris (1822-1902) and their son Oliver (1848-1864) in the Carey Cemetery. Olney’s name is on the crew list of the 1844-47 Merrimac voyage described in the journal and appears as “Frederick Huey” on the list of an 1851-54 voyage from New London of the whaler General Williams.
In fact, the journal recounts a portion of that General Williams voyage, concluding with a Nov. 7, 1852, entry recorded in Maui, Hawaii.
Olney, described in the crew lists as a towering 6 feet, 5 inches tall with “yellow” skin and black hair, was recently married when the ship set sail in 1844, Deredita writes. Interestingly, his wife was a younger sister of Sarah Harris Fayerweather (1812-1878), a Black woman who in the 1830s enrolled in Prudence Crandall’s Canterbury Female Boarding School, the first integrated school in the country. Facing backlash, Crandall (1803-1890) turned it into a school for Black girls only, prompting her arrest in an incident that gained national publicity and led to the first major civil rights case in U.S. history.
At the time, Deredita writes, Frederick Olney, employed as a handyman at Crandall’s boarding school, was falsely accused of setting fire to the building and was acquitted in an 1834 trial that lasted 15 minutes.
Other contributions
The journal author's identity is not the only thing revelatory about the "Voyage of the Whaler Merrimac" exhibit, Tamulevich said in discussing the history contributed by Steve Purdy, a volunteer transcriber who was lead interpreter for the Charles W. Morgan, the whaleship exhibited at Mystic Seaport Museum.
Purdy, a retiree who had previously done much research on the social, cultural and ecological aspects of the American whaling industry, in his free time had launched an independent project examining the industry's "financial, political and diplomatic power."
In "A Different Perspective on the American Whaling Industry," Purdy says whaling helped fuel U.S. dominance during the Industrial Revolution, contributing, in 21st century dollars, nearly $11 billion worth of whale oil and baleen, or whalebone. In the 19th century, more than 1,100 whaling voyages originated in New London, fifth-most among U.S. ports, and another 350 or so set sail from Mystic and Stonington, Purdy says.
Another transcriber, Craig Showalter, whose late mother, Lucille Showalter, founded the New London Maritime Society, provided the readable version of the transcription written in modern language. In the original version, some odd punctuation, spellings, archaic phrasings and place names complicate things.
A church business administrator and pastor in Ohio, Showalter earlier wrote in an email that he has volunteered as a transcriber of 18th century documents while participating in the National Archives' citizen archivist program, "So, I was thrilled to see a similar opportunity made available to help an organization I care a lot about."
Tamulevich said the online exhibit and the community's involvement in its ongoing preparation say something about New Londoners' interest in reclaiming their past.
"There was some sense that this city surrendered the legacy of its adventurous whalers' spirit to the nearby (Mystic) Seaport and to New Bedford — two places where the 19th century whaling enterprise is given its due," she writes in the exhibit's introduction. "... Although for several decades New London was one of the leading whaling ports in the world, the Custom House did not have a whaling journal, nor did we have a single whaling log. The City has not retained it artifacts. They are almost all, well, in Mystic and New Bedford."
But Tamulevich thinks that tide might be turning, that "a true pent-up passion for New London's whaling legacy became evident" after the society received the Merrimac journal — a gift from an Oak Bluffs, Mass., woman — and announced plans to transcribe it.
"Nothing prepared us for the flood of community support that materialized," Tamulevich said.
b.hallenbeck@theday.com
By Erica Moser, The Day, April 10, 2021
New London — Almost immediately after Guy Fishman played the last note of the prelude from Bach's Suite No. 1 for unaccompanied cello, the bell of an Amtrak train coming through New London sounded.
This was the small downside to filming a concert at the Custom House Maritime Museum.
The upside was the background and natural light of the second-floor Lucille M. Showalter Lecture Gallery, which is dedicated to the story of the Amistad and has windows facing the Thames River.
The Connecticut Early Music Society began its filming with the solo cello performance, but the raison d'être for the concert — which will be available for viewing as a virtual benefit for $65 — was the 1814 square piano in the middle of the room.
The piano isn't actually square, but has a rectangular case with a shorter keyboard than seen on modern pianos.
It's the fifth and newest one at the Maritime Museum, and the process of finding a permanent home for the piano was a few years in the making.
By Peter Huopi, The Day, April 10, 2021
An 1814 Thomas Butcher square piano, donated to the New London Maritime Society by the Grady-Keith/Keith Schumacher Family of Ledyard, CT, will be featured in a virtual concert by the Connecticut Early Music Society on Sunday, April 18th at 3:00 p.m. The day before the concert was recorded, Ken Huebner of Huebner Piano service worked to tune the piano, and pianist Aymeric Dupré la Tour performed a short piece. Concert info at https://www.ctearlymusic.org
The Day, April 6, 2021
New London — Arielle Frommer, a senior at the Marine Science Magnet High School, has won the 2021 Reid MacCluggage Black Maritime History Scholarship Competition, with her original entry, "Ballad of the Dragon Tree: A Tale of Cape Verdean Glory."
Frommer will receive a $1,000 scholarship award, which is sponsored by the New London Maritime Society. This year's MacCluggage Scholarship entries were judged by MacCluggage, the former editor and publisher of The Day whose gift established the competition 20 years ago.
"I selected Ms. Frommer’s ballad for its creative use of historical fact, colorful writing and lively story-telling. The story, the poetry, the rhythm and beat all creatively celebrate the people of Cape Verde, their 'robust sailors . . . (and) captains and whalers,' and the spiky native Dragon tree," MacCluggage said. "My wife, Linda, and I were singing it around the condo. I hope that it will be performed at the Custom House once the pandemic has ended."
The ballad is in the form of a forecastle shanty, which were sung during times of lull in a sailor’s work day. The story captures the arc of Cape Verde from colonization by the Portuguese, through the dark history of the slave trade, to what the islands are today — a prosperous port of call and independent representative democracy, according to a news release from the maritime society.
“I was inspired by the perseverance and bravery of the people of Cape Verde,” Frommer wrote. “I titled this poem 'Ballad of the Dragon Tree: A Tale of Cape Verdean Glory' as a reference to the island’s native tree, which is also a national symbol of Cape Verdean resilience.”
She performs the ballad at youtu.be/OkoEQlIxGlo.
The Reid MacCluggage Black Maritime History Award was established in 2001 to foster an awareness of the experience of African Americans in the context of maritime history.
By Stephen Spinella, The Day, March 1, 2021
New London — Historian Sandi Brewster-walker presented her research on seamen of color and their role in the city's rich whaling history during a Zoom event held Sunday afternoon by the New London Maritime Society and Custom House Maritime Museum and the Henry L. Ferguson Museum on Fishers Island.
Her discussion covered the seamen of color who sailed from 1640 to 1880 with a focus on New London and the whalers who set out from the city from 1790 to 1860. An author and historian from Long Island, she has used genealogy as well as old newspaper stories and historical records to track the lives of people of color in the whaling industry.
“Sandi is unusual in her research because she combines the (ship) log research with really thorough genealogies and tracking the families down,” NLMS Executive Director Susan Tamulevich said during the event. “The information that she cross-references is really unmatched.”
Brewster-walker said seamen’s protection certificates, which she scrutinized, were a way beginning in 1796 for individual seamen to show they were U.S. citizens to avoid impressment by the British Royal Navy. But for men of color, the seaman a protection certificate was even more important, as it identified them as free.
“Until slavery was abolished, seamen of color were always in danger of being enslaved at U.S. and international seaports,” Brewster-walker said. “The seamen’s protection certificates assisted in identifying them as free men of color while sailing the oceans of the world.”
These certificates gave a seaman’s age, birthplace, current residence, physical description, height, hair and eye color, distinguishing marks and their “complexion.”
“In most cases the seaman’s complexion was not his race,” Brewster-walker said. “They’d call people ‘yellow,’ ‘light brown,’ ‘dark brown,’ ‘black,’ ‘mulatto,’ ‘Indian,’ — so I had to keep checking. Every time a seaman went out they filled out a new protection certificate.”
Brewster-walker traced a sailor a few years back who was listed as “dark.” She later found out he was Italian.
Her research has yielded 944 men of color who sailed out of New London in the 19th and late 18th centuries. On one level, some free men of color could make a living whaling. On another, though, some would “owe their souls to the company,” Brewster-walker said.
Despite their more transient jobs, seamen of color during the period often lived in New London.
“A number of them settled in New London,” she said. “They were all young men — 90% of them were young — and they probably met somebody in New London and got married.”
Brewster-walker provided specific examples of seamen of color in New London, such as John Bents, who was born in New York and listed as “mulatto” on his protection certificate. While living in New London, he sailed out of the city on the 338-ton ship Flora in 1829. The ship’s master was Lyman Allyn, and it was built in Mystic in 1811. Two other men of color — Russel R. Hewlitt of Stonington and Austar Freeman of New London — were also a part of the crew.
Brewster-walker told the story of Henry Payne of Long Island, who sailed on a ship called the Tuscarora. In 1860 the U.S. Census listed him as an Indian fisherman. Around this time, Payne set out on whaling voyages. These voyages usually lasted two or three years. Ships would round Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope and visit the Sandwich Islands.
“While in the islands, they did ship repairs, and sometime shipped their cargo home,” Brewster-walker noted. “The date Henry stopped sailing as a wheelman on the world’s oceans is unknown.”
Brothers Lewis and Jacob Carll, who were seamen of color, sailed on the Nathaniel P. Tallmadge out of New London in 1851. When they returned home in 1855, they brought with them 1,435 barrels of whale oil and 24,950 pounds of baleen.
Brewster-walker said thousands of seamen of color became captains, worked on commercial ships, transported passengers and prisoners and removed the blubber of the whales during the period. Many seamen of color were from New York and New England and sailed from as far north as Maine.
“I’m interested not only in the stories about the ships they went out on but the individual story, what they did before, what they did after, their experience as whale men,” she said. “There’s so many stories to tell.”
s.spinella@theday.com
By Brian Hallenbeck, The Day, Jan 29, 2021
New London — In its weekly email blast last Sunday, the New London Maritime Society put out a call for help transcribing the 19th century whaler's journal the society's Custom House Maritime Museum acquired last year.
Within a day, 31 people had responded, “citizen scriveners” eager to start deciphering the writing of the anonymous crewman — or crewmen — who chronicled voyages of the bark Merrimac, which sailed from New London on July 17, 1844. At least four more had signed up by the end of the week, Susan Tamulevich, the museum’s executive director, reported Saturday.
It seems she hit on the perfect pandemic diversion.
“I didn’t expect so many,” said Tamulevich, who brainstormed ways to advance the project while recovering from foot surgery. “The society’s email blast goes out to more than 4,000 people every week and we know more than 1,000 people open it. That’s why I put so much effort into it. Plus, we’re on Facebook.”
Some of the respondents already have signed up for second and third pages. Nearly a third of the journal’s 155 pages have been assigned.
“They’re coming back fast,” Tamulevich said.
Among those poring over the journal’s finely scrawled cursive are Patty Oat, a researcher whose ancestor was a whaler out of New London; Bill Adler, a Floridian who grew up across the street from Mystic Seaport; John Mock, a Nashville-based musician who grew up in New London and whose father was a Coast Guardsman; Craig Showalter, an Ohioan whose late mother, Lucille Showalter, founded the society; and Sandi Brewster-walker, a society trustee, historian and author who once held a communications post in the Clinton administration. More than a few, Tamulevich noted, have been lawyers or schoolteachers, professions that know some things about transcription and deciphering handwriting.
“I jumped on board immediately,” Adler wrote in an email. "In my younger years, the Seaport was like a playground to me. I learned to sail there and became passingly familiar with the whaling industry. ... Despite living in Florida, I ... remain very interested in all things nautical ...”
Tita Williams, a transcriber who taught third grade in New London schools for “many, many years,” recalled having her students take on the roles of a whaling crew while teaching New London history.
“'Gale winds building,’ ‘Thar she blows’ and the like would garner some wonderful creative writing,” she emailed.
Jo Ann Morris, a retired Fitch High School math teacher with a master’s degree in library science, wrote that studying the journal has made her reflect on the ways the world has changed since the Merrimac sailed.
“First, you are swept away by the physical beauty of the writing,” Morris wrote. “It is very similar to calligraphy and is executed in ink and quill. How very different and difficult from computer entry or texting. ... This written word does seem so much more permanent than our digital ones.”
Laurie Deredita, the society’s librarian, is building an online display of the journal and the transcription, posting pages as they become available. Tamulevich said the goal is to have the effort completed by the end of February, when Brewster-walker is scheduled to deliver a Zoom presentation titled “Seamen of Color: Living and Sailing from the Port of New London, 1640-1880.” The presentation is scheduled for 2 p.m. Feb. 28, the last day of Black History Month.
Deredita said she was "really pleased with the energy and enthusiasm" of the citizen scriveners as well the "the quality of their work."
b.hallenbeck@theday.com
By Brian Hallenbeck, The Day, Sept 12, 2020
New London — For decades, the aged journal sat on her roll top desk, a gift from her grandmother, its provenance a mystery.
Occasionally, Edwina Owens Badger would look at it and wonder where it came from, its tiny, painstaking cursive barely discernible to her. Over the last 20 years, retired and living in Oak Bluffs, Mass., on Martha’s Vineyard, she came to believe it belonged in a museum.
A couple of weeks ago, Federal Express delivered it to the Custom House Maritime Museum on Bank Street.
It’s a ship’s journal, an account of the voyage or voyages of the Merrimac (or Merrimack), a 19th century whaling bark that between 1833 and 1857 sailed four times from Newburyport, Mass., and a half-dozen times from New London. Written by a crewman who so far remains anonymous, the journal chronicles the ship’s first New London voyage, which left on July 17, 1844, and returned in May 1847. It brought home 25 barrels of sperm oil, 2,975 barrels of whale oil and 5,000 pounds of whalebone, a haul worth $36,080.59, according to Robert Owen Decker's "Whaling Industry of New London."
The journal's last entry is dated Nov. 7, 1852, in Maui, a Hawaiian port of call on a subsequent New London voyage.
A roster of the 35-man crew shows more than half were from southeastern Connecticut, mostly New London, including the captain, or master, George Destin. Among the crew’s surnames are Avery, Brushel, Kimball and Watrous.
“I never expected it to be so thrilling,” said Susan Tamulevich, executive director of the New London Maritime Society, which operates the Custom House museum. “Each entry follows a pattern of date, weather, winds — but then you never know what comes next. The entries are brief, but so revealing about the writer’s character, from his parochial views of other cultures to his innate sense of righteousness.”
Laurie Deredita, the society’s librarian, got to examine the journal, now open and delicately cushioned atop a small table in the Custom House, which remains closed to the public amid the coronavirus pandemic. Tamulevich is photographing the journal, a precursor to having it transcribed, microfilmed and prepared for display.
“Such an amazing manuscript,” Deredita said. “The opportunity is just fabulous.”
Handbound in what seems to be canvas, stained and water-marked, the journal is in remarkably good condition, its 76 leaves, or pages, covered with writing on both sides, except for two that are blank. The author’s personal observations and tone mark it as a journal, as opposed to a log, Deredita said, though neither are strictly defined.
One entry stood out right away.
On Christmas Day 1844, after 5 months and 8 days at sea, the anonymous chronicler describes a hearty dinner of “roast beef, pies and gingerbread, new bread and old butter.” Then, he adds, “Those that wished it were treated to gin brandy and wine by Capt. Destin and our Chief Mate — And right glad am I that there were some that had the moral courage enough to refuse even wine.”
Elsewhere, the author recounts the severe punishment endured by a crewman found guilty of some offense: “Danielson abstained from food of any kind (of his own consent) from Sunday night to Thursday night during which time he has been kept shut up (on an average 16 hours out of 24) under the cabin stairs ...” The next day, “The Black Smith imployed makeing handcuffs ... and Capt. D. put them on to him in the afternoon and at this moment while I write — the harsh + gloomy ginglings of his Irons causes my blood to chill within my being.”
When a landing party went ashore on the Cape Verde islands, hoping to trade old bread, flour, rice, clothes, cloth shoes, knives, etc. for pigs, goats, sheep, cattle and fruit, the author found the natives' houses "comfortable I suppose for the climate. But there is nothing but the walls + cieling, furniture not being fashionable as I suppose not necessary. Clothing too is not very fashionable."
'This needs to be someplace'
It was Skip Finley, a retired broadcaster, writer and historian who has lived on Martha’s Vineyard since 1999, who contacted Tamulevich to gauge the maritime society’s interest in the ship’s journal. Badger had brought it to Finley's attention through a bit of serendipity.
Badger belonged to a book club that had begun reading Finley’s “Whaling Captains of Color: America’s First Meritocracy,” which came out in June, and realized he might be able to help her find a home for the journal. She asked Finley’s wife, a fellow book club member, if she could bring Finley the journal.
“I knew immediately what it was,” Finley said. “The fact that it even existed was amazing. In my research, I’ve looked at quite a few ship’s logs and they’re awful reading. I’d rather read a telephone book. They’re difficult, stilted. They often include a lot of technical language. More often than not, they’re incredibly boring."
“But this wasn’t that,” he said of Badger’s journal. “This was legible, well maintained, a journal that, combined with the ship’s log, could give some context to what went on. As soon as I saw it, I said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got this — this needs to be someplace.’”
Finley approached the Martha's Vineyard Museum, where the research librarian, Bow Van Riper, dug into the Merrimac's history, accessing online databases the Mystic Seaport Museum and the New Bedford Whaling Museum have developed at whalinghistory.org. The Seaport's G. Blunt White Library, in fact, has a log, or perhaps it's another journal, from the Merrimac's 1844-47 voyage.
"Because the crew was almost exclusively from New London, we passed on it," Van Riper said of the Badger journal. "I remembered there was a maritime museum in New London. I suggested it might be interested."
To put it mildly, Tamulevich welcomed the offer of such a rare treasure, one that immediately elevates the Custom House Museum's whaling collection.
“What’s so exciting about the journal is that it will lead us in other directions,” she said. “It will lead us to learn more about George Destin and the others who were on the ship. Mystic Seaport has a picture of him (Destin). Since our founding in 1983, we had ceded whaling to the Seaport, which has the Morgan (whaling ship). We didn’t have so much. But now we have quite a few whaling things. We’ve started a whaling corner.”
The maritime society got a boost a year ago from Citizens Bank's donation of a dramatic whaling scene painted in 1929 by the late Lars Thorsen of Noank. Now gracing the Custom House's newly refurbished interior, it previously hung in the bank's former Eugene O'Neill Drive location.
While the ship’s journal has arrived at what may well be its final destination, intriguing questions about the route it took to get there remain. How did Edwina Owens Badger’s grandmother come to possess it?
“She didn’t tell me the story behind it,” Badger said. “I know nothing about it.”
She said her grandmother was from Connecticut and could have had ties to New London. Now 80, Badger always thought she’d make a “winter project” of researching her family’s genealogy.
“It’s unlikely it came from an old boyfriend of her grandmother. You’d need another generation to get that far back,” said Finley, who believes those who study the journal will be able to determine who wrote it. “It could have come from another relative through marriage.”
“Some great stories are going to come out,” he said.
b.hallenbeck@theday.com
By Steven Slosberg Special to The Sun • Apr 11, 2020 Updated Apr 11, 2020
One serendipitous outcome of The Quarantine, besides day-by-day health and community goodwill, is the grand revelation, at least to a couple of friends and me, of an 8-foot-wide by 5-foot-deep wall painting — a seascape — by Ellery Thompson, among this seafaring region’s most enduring and singular souls, in what is now the basement of a neighbor’s home.
But before going ahead with my tale of discovery, let me recommend a visit to the New London Maritime Society (aka the Custom House Maritime Museum) website and a superb online exhibition entitled “Remembering Ellery Thompson: Fisherman, Writer, Artist and Free Spirit.” It was curated by Brian Rogers, of Mystic, librarian at the Custom House, on Bank Street in New London, and retired college librarian at Connecticut College.
Therein awaits a vast trove of the Stonington dragger captain, who was born in Mystic in 1899 and died in 1986 at a Colchester nursing home at age 87, who once wrote about himself:
“Cap’n Ellery Franklin Thompson of Mystic, Connecticut, appears to be the only Atlantic Coast commercial fisherman to have fully recorded his life with his own words and pictures. He has written several books and painted two thousand oil painting(s) — chiefly of storm-tossed fishing vessels, but a few nudes including a seaworthy mermaid coming up under the bow of a hard sailing Gloucester fishing schooner.”
I interviewed Thompson once, toward the end of his life, when he was living in a red shack at Fort Rachel in Mystic, and wrote this about him some years later, when the Stonington Historical Society staged an exhibition dedicated to him in 2005: “As a celebrity, Ellery Thompson, that rooster-neck buzzard of a Stonington draggerman who was up to his ears in fish all his life, has lost none of his sex appeal, particularly to men.’
Among those beguiled by him, I wrote, were Joseph Mitchell, the famed writer for The New Yorker, who inspired readers and Thompson himself to write about his life with a 1947 profile called “Dragger Captain”; Henry Fonda, who toyed with the idea of portraying Thompson in a film and invited him to New York where Fonda was appearing on Broadway in “Mister Roberts”; and Gary Cooper, who did sign on to play a character based on Thompson in a Warner Brothers film to be called “Dragger Captain,” but the film apparently was scuttled by the Korean War.
Based on his fondness for painting nudes, Ellery had a renowned eye for women, too.
All of which leads to a bit of excitement the other week when friends living at Lords Point in Stonington gave up their home to family members from New York, and while the New Yorkers were self-quarantined at Lords Point, my friends moved into temporary quarters up the hill in a house on Lords Hill Road owned by Richard and Liz Stern.
The Sterns bought the house in 2005 from Clarence and Bertha Coogan, career educators who in their later years ran a nursery school in the basement of their home, and where the Sterns have since fashioned an apartment.
Adjacent to the apartment, in what initially was a garage when the home was built in the mid-1950s, is the wall covered by a signature Ellery Thompson coastal seascape with fishing boat, navigational light, ample, rippling ocean and mildly clouded skies. The wall painting was signed by Thompson in 1956, and the discovery of it by my friends did pique my interest as well.
In fact, there was a second wall mural, depicting a full-masted ship under sail, but the concrete outer wall bearing the painting was so badly deteriorated by moisture that the Sterns were unable to salvage it. They did manage to bolster the foundation to save the existing painting.
One question, first and foremost: What was the dragger captain doing up there while the house was going up?
The house was being built for Milton Berry, who owned a pharmacy near the flagpole in downtown Mystic. According to Jim O’Boyle, retired owner of the Mystic Funeral Home and longtime denizen of Lords Point who married Berry’s daughter, Thomasine, Thompson, then living on West Main Street in Mystic, was a crony of Berry and other businessmen in Mystic and likely offered to present his friend with a work of art or two for the new house.
O’Boyle, who knew Thompson, had his own share of Ellery stories.
“Ellery was working at the (Mystic) Seaport as kind of a local character at one of the sheds on the docks,” O’Boyle recalled. “One weekend some money went missing. It was supposed to be deposited in the bank. The head of the Seaport said he was going to give a lie-detector test to everyone. Ellery said, and I heard him tell this to a large group of tourists, ‘I ain’t taking no lie-detector test. I tell so many lies all day I wouldn’t know when I was telling the truth.’”
O’Boyle had another one: “Ellery had this big red Chrysler he drove around. One day he was first in line when the drawbridge went up and he fell asleep. The bridge keeper had to come down and wake him up. That was Ellery.”
And now I know there is one more colorful piece of the Ellery legend and legacy around, and right next door.
Steven Slosberg lives in Stonington and was a longtime reporter and columnist. He may be reached at maayan72@aol.com.
New London — The New London Maritime Society has announced that it is hosting a livestream of New London Harbor during Sailfest, including the fireworks Saturday night.
The New London Harborcam, fastened to a flagpole atop the Custom House Maritime Museum on Bank Street, faces southeast toward Long Island Sound, providing round-the-clock views out to the New London Ledge Light and Race Rock lighthouses. Find it on the Maritime Society website, nlmaritimesociety.org.
The camera was donated and installed by Ervis Rusi of Eagle Electrical Services of Waterford.
In keeping with its name, Citizens Bank did the right thing. A couple of New London leaders deserve due credit for helping persuade them to do so. In the process, these local leaders landed their whale, symbolically speaking.
On Wednesday, Hugh Peltz, a Citizens Bank executive, will present to the New London Maritime Society a large 1929 painting depicting a historic whaling scene. The ceremony will take place at the society’s annual National Maritime Day luncheon, beginning at 12:45 at the U.S. Custom House Maritime Museum, operated by the society at 150 Bank Street. There it will become a permanent exhibit.
The painting is coming home.
The 1929 painting by Lars Thorsen had long adorned a wall of the Citizens Bank building on Eugene O’Neill Drive, perhaps dating back to the time it was the Savings Bank of New London and served as a center of city commerce, including when the whaling trade drove much of that economic activity. The bank building is the next-door neighbor of The Day offices.
But when the painting disappeared as Citizens prepared to close the bank, which it did in April and relocated services to a Howard Street office, fears grew that it might be lost to New London.
Custom House Maritime Museum director Susan Tamulevich was no more inclined than 19th century whalers to let this big catch get away without a fight. With a push from Mayor Michael Passero, who made it clear the “Whaling City” would not quietly tolerate anyone making away with this treasure, Tamulevich remained persistent. It paid off.
Thorsen, an immigrant from Norway who lived in Noank and died in New London in 1952, served on several sailing expeditions. His dramatic oil painting, 49 inches wide and 56 inches high, depicts a whaling boat being upended in pursuit of a whale, the frantic action frozen in history. Our history.
New London — A dramatic whaling scene removed from Citizens Bank on Eugene O'Neill Drive before its closure last month will return to the city for permanent exhibit at the Custom House Maritime Museum, director Susan Tamulevich said Monday.
Tamulevich said the 1929 painting by the late Lars Thorsen of Noank will be unveiled Wednesday during a National Maritime Day celebration at the museum, when Citizens Bank officially donates the whaling scene.
Tamulevich, backed by Mayor Michael Passero, had been pushing for the return of the painting since its removal in February as Citizens consolidated its operations to a new location off Howard Street. But until a couple of weeks ago, she said, she didn't think it was going to happen.
"I really was quite shocked and happy," she said.
Tamulevich said a reporter for The Providence Journal finally got Citizens Bank to acknowledge that some of the items from New London had to be returned to Mystic Seaport because they apparently had been on loan. But when she called the Seaport, officials there said the painting she desired was not among the returned items.
When she called the bank to again request the painting, Tamulevich said, she was told "we'll see," because other museums might also want it. Then, just two weeks ago, a bank official called and told her about the donation.
The 49-inch by 56-inch oil painting arrived Thursday, she said, and will be hung in the main gallery at the museum.
"It depicts the whole drama — men in small boats, the danger, the immensity of the whale, the power of the sea — in one image," she said in an email at the time.
Thorsen, a native of Norway, was a self-taught painter who reportedly had gone on four expeditions to Cape Horn by the time he turned 20. He held a succession of jobs, from mess-boy to sail-maker to rigger, and in his later years won art prizes, became a member of the Mystic Art Colony and completed more than 80 works as part of the Works Progress Administration's FDR-era Federal Arts Project, according to an online biography.
He died in 1952 in New London, which had been one of the nation's whaling capitals during the 19th century. His paintings now generally sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars, according to an online search.
"Whalers were merchant seamen; their hard work and dedication built New London into a prosperous 19th-century port," Tamulevich said. "The painting will become the centerpiece of the museum's whaling exhibition."
She said Hugh Peltz, head of corporate services, procurement and property services for Citizens Bank, will make the presentation during the New London Maritime Society's annual National Maritime Day luncheon starting at 12:45 p.m. Wednesday. The luncheon, at the former U.S. Custom House at 150 Bank St., is free and open to the public, and it follows a noontime commemoration at Fort Trumbull.
National Maritime Day is held May 22 to honor the first successful steam-powered transoceanic voyage undertaken by New London Captain Moses Rogers, who set sail from Savannah, Georgia, in 1819 — 200 years ago.
"The gift is a generous act to celebrate, especially on National Maritime Day, an event that honors the nation's merchant marine," according to the press release.
The Citizens Bank at 63 Eugene O'Neill Drive, now vacant, had been the home of several artifacts from New London's whaling past, including a model ship and even nautical-themed trash cans. One of the building's larger paintings, the Thorsen work that apparently had been a holdover from the days when the building housed the New England Savings Bank, depicted the harpooning of a whale, with one boat upended and larger whaling ships in the background.
It is unclear how long the Thorsen painting had been at the location, but a 1948 article in The Day noted an exhibition of nine works by the "well known marine painter" that occurred in the lobby of the Savings Bank of New London, which occupied the building at the time.
Tamulevich sent a letter to Citizens Bank earlier this year inquiring about objects in the building related to New London and offering a space at the Custom House Maritime Museum for the painting. She noted New London's long association with seafaring industry and its reputation as the "Whaling City."
"These artifacts and artworks are part of New London's cultural heritage, and nowhere else will they be as appreciated or as meaningful," she said.
Mayor Passero sent his own letter shortly afterward, endorsing the Maritime Society as an excellent home for the painting.
Tamulevich said several residents spoke up about the Citizens Bank artifacts, including Brian McCarthy, a resident of the Bacon Hinkley Home on Pequot Avenue who was the first to suggest the maritime museum as an appropriate home.
By Greg Smith Day staff writer
New London — Members of the New London Maritime Society were optimistic that a ruling by a Superior Court judge opening the Harbor Light to public tours might put to rest years of litigation with neighbors of the historic Pequot Avenue lighthouse.
They were wrong.
A state marshal served Maritime Society Executive Director Susan Tamulevich with a lawsuit Thursday at the Custom House Maritime Museum, just a day after she guided the first tour of the lighthouse in more than three years.
Lighthouse neighbors Randy and Bonita Waesche and Richard Humphreville have each filed suit against both the Maritime Society and the Zoning Board of Appeals arguing that the ZBA’s Feb. 28 decision to allow 12 tours per week, or up to five tours in a day and 600 in a year, is far afield from what a Superior Court judge called “small infrequent, guided tours of the Lighthouse upon request.”
Randy Waesche said he was “shocked” by the ZBA decision that he argues allows a commercial venture in the middle of a residential neighborhood. The Maritime Society is advertising tours on its website for groups of up to five people — with a price between $15 and $30 per person.
For now, Tamulevich said the Maritime Society will continue tours as scheduled. She called the suit a “sad development” amid the excitement of gaining public access back to one of the three lighthouses owned by the nonprofit group.
“The judge made a decision and (the Waesches) were not allowed to weigh in. The case was not about the neighbors, it was about zoning laws and pre-existing rights,” Tamulevich said. “We have a right established by the court.”
Randy Waesche said important to the context of the argument is that prior tours were given when the lighthouse was a government installation.
"That's completely different than what's going on today," he said. "No visitor, as infrequent as they were, ever paid to go there."
The Maritime Society has been locked in land-use battles with the neighbors and the city since not long after it purchased the lighthouse from the federal government in 2009, collected donations and restored the light in anticipation of bringing in visitors.
The Waesches, at 800 Pequot Ave., and another abutting neighbor living in the former lighthouse keeper’s home complained about unpermitted construction work at the site and visitors to the lighthouse treading on private property. Humphreville, whose suit mirrors the Waesches, owns a home at 824 Pequot Ave.
It led to a cease-and-desist order from the city that stopped tours from continuing. The zoning enforcement officer at the time said the Maritime Society increased activity had gone beyond any historical activity there.
There was also a border dispute that led to a federal lawsuit in 2014 filed by the Waesches.
The Maritime Society, after a few attempts to create special zoning regulations, sued the Zoning Board of Appeals.
The Waesches settled the border dispute lawsuit with the Maritime Society by buying a sliver of land from the Maritime Society.
Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knox in October, in response to the Maritime Society’s suit, reversed the ZBA decision that backed the cease-and-desist order. In her decision, Knox agreed the lighthouse was open for occasional tours to the public before the residential area grew around it. Knox ruled that completely denying access to all visitors was an unlawful restriction on the use of the lighthouse but she also banned “large tour groups, open houses, school trips, and regular hours of operation,” things that were inconsistent with the past use.
Knox left it to the ZBA to determine what constituted “small guided tours of the lighthouse upon request.”
The Waesches argue the Maritime Society was able to demonstrate three visits inside the Lighthouse over an 80-year span, between 1928 and 2008 — far different from the 600 allowed per year under the ZBA ruling.
The suit calls the ZBA’s decision an “abuse of discretion,” and asks for a court ruling that declares null and void the recent ZBA decision with a declaration that the number of tours granted is “neither infrequent, nor of the same character as the previous tours given before 1928 or 2009.”
The city’s attorney was not immediately available to comment.
Editor's note: This story was updated to include information about the second lawsuit filed by Richard Humphreville.
By Greg Smith Day staff writer
New London — In a decision that ends years of legal wrangling, the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals has approved ground rules for the reopening of historic New London Harbor Light to public tours.
The New London Maritime Society plans to host its first tour since 2015 on Wednesday. A mother and her two children had requested the tour and Maritime Society Executive Director Susan Tamulevich was happy to oblige.
“I’m excited. I’m just happy to be moving forward,” she said. “It’s time to put all of this behind us.”
The Maritime Society, which owns the lighthouse, was barred from hosting tours by a cease and desist order issued by the city in 2015 as a response to a growing amount of activity at the small Pequot Avenue site. The society was simultaneously entangled in litigation with a neighbor over a property line dispute.
The ZBA upheld the cease and desist order but the order later was overturned in a 2018 decision by Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knox, who ruled that small-scale visits to the lighthouse by request were consistent with historic use of the lighthouse.
Judge Knox left it up to the ZBA to determine the extent of the tours. On Feb. 28, the board announced terms of the “nature and extent of the nonconforming use of the New London Harbor Lighthouse property.”
The tours are limited to a total of six people and no more than five times per day, or a maximum of 12 tours in a week. The six-person limit was a determination made by the city fire marshal’s office. The hours of tours are limited to between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. An electronic log book with dates and times of the tours is to be made available to the city’s zoning official.
The conditions are more stringent than the Maritime Society, through attorney John Casey, had lobbied for. It had requested to be open until 6 p.m. or sunset, whichever came later, and wanted the ability to bring 12 people onto the property. It also had wanted to reserve the right to return to the ZBA to request an increase of the number of tours, should the need arise.
New London Maritime Society President Edward Cubanski III called the ZBA decision “reasonable.” He said the city’s decision to bar access to the most easily accessible lighthouse in New London County was “concerning” and a blow to historic tourism in the region.
Cubanski said the Maritime Society has great things planned for the summer that include not only tours of the Harbor Light but an increase in tours to iconic Ledge Light, another one of the three lighthouses owned by the society. It also owns Race Rock Lighthouse.
Cubanski does not expect any legal challenges to the board’s decision and said the society’s main goal is to be a “good neighbor.”
By Greg Smith Day staff writer
New London — Citizens Bank is moving out of its historic home on 63 Eugene O’Neill Drive to a different location in New London next month, and local historians are concerned it's taking a bit of the city's history with it.
The majestic interior of the former Savings Bank of New London was, until last month, adorned with reminders of New London's whaling past — paintings, a model ship and even nautical-themed trash cans. They have since been removed — their whereabouts unknown.
One of the larger paintings caught the eye of New London Maritime Society Director Susan Tamulevich. It depicts a whaling scene — small whaleboats at sea harpooning a whale, one boat upended with larger whaling ships in the background.
Tamulevich sent an unanswered letter to Citizens Bank Regional Manager Michelle Mercado last month inquiring about the New London-related objects and offered a space at the Custom House Maritime Museum on Bank Street for the painting.
“We would very much like to have this work at the Custom House Maritime Museum and have a wall in our main exhibition room ready. This is after all, the Whaling City,” Tamulevich wrote.
Tamulevich also offered the bank sponsorship opportunities in exchange for loan of the painting.
“The Custom House is a relatively new museum begun just 35 years ago. Much of New London’s whaling heritage was dispersed before we began. We hope that New London will not lose this wonderful whaling scene,” she wrote.
Her cause is being championed by Mayor Michael Passero and New London Landmarks Executive Director Laura Natusch.
“I hope that as you leave, you’ll give the city this one last gift,” Natusch said. “These artifacts and artworks are part of New London’s cultural heritage, and nowhere else will they be as appreciated or as meaningful."
Passero followed with a letter to Citizens on March 4 saying the Maritime Society would be an excellent steward.
The origin and age of the items from the bank is unknown, but locals suspect they were in the bank when Citizens moved there in 1993. Tamulevich said one generic ship painting and model of the clipper Flying Cloud are not specifically tied to New London, as far as she knows, but still interesting.
She suspects the large whaling scene painting, which was on the left wall as one entered the bank, is possibly the work of artist Lauritz Sorensen.
The older portion of the bank building at 63 Eugene O’Neill was constructed in 1852 as the home of Savings Bank of New London, according to a history provided by New London Landmarks. Wings were added later and the current façade was designed by architect Dudley St. Clair Donnelly.
Old Lyme-based real estate development company Readco purchased the building in 1999 and has been leasing the space to Citizens. The city is considering leasing the space from Readco as part of a consolidation plan for city offices.
Reado CEO Michael Lech said terms of the agreement with Citizens were that all property and tenant improvements are left to Citizens, he said. They have the right to remove them, he said.
While he has no legal say in the matter, Lech said his wish would be that the items be left in the hands of New London and somewhere they can be enjoyed by the public.
“These antiquities represent the rich tradition of New London. It would be a magnanimous gesture on the part of Citizens Bank to show the same kind of commitment to New London as its citizens have shown to them.”
A representative from Citizens Bank did not return calls or emails from The Day. A sign posted on the door of its Eugene O'Neill branch announces to customers that the branch will close at 2 p.m. on April 5. The bank will reopen on April 8 at 470 Bank St.
By Benjamin Kail
New London — The fight to block the federal government from selling Plum Island to the highest bidder recently received a boost from four U.S. senators who are pushing to protect the island as an environmental, recreational and research resource.
Joined by leading environmental advocates at the New London Maritime Society on Wednesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., announced a bill that would repeal the government's mandate to sell the 840-acre island, which is home to several endangered species and hundreds of rare plants and insects.
The General Services Administration has tried to sell the property for the last 10 years, after Congress voted to close the island's animal disease center and relocate it to the new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Kansas, a move expected by 2023. The island's sale was supposed to offset costs of the Kansas facility, but Blumenthal said those construction costs have already been appropriated, eliminating any financial need to turn over a "unique environmental treasure that we should preserve, not sell."
"The sale of Plum Island ... would be a waste of an essential opportunity to create a park or stewardship entity of another kind," Blumenthal said. "It's priceless. The federal government can never gain from a sale what this land is worth. It belongs to the people now and it should remain the people's island."
Introduced last week by Blumenthal, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., the Plum Island Conservation Act would protect habitats for endangered species and potentially provide an opportunity to revamp the animal disease center into a research facility.
Blumenthal said he hopes the bill could pass later this year, noting there's some bipartisan support in Congress and backing from lawmakers in both Connecticut and New York.
Chris Cryder, land campaign manager for nonprofit Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound, said a coalition of 107 organizations is fighting to protect Plum Island from development that would "irrevocably damage the habitats and wildlife as well as the historic resources of the island."
"Land protection battles like this one take a long time and require perseverance," said Cryder, noting Plum Island provides "amazing habitats" to more than a hundred at-risk species. It's also home to a lighthouse built in 1869 and unique structures once part of the former Fort Terry, he said.
Patrick Comins, executive director of the Connecticut Audubon Society, said Plum Island provides "800 acres of remarkable, undeveloped coastal habitat" with rocky and sandy shorelines, freshwater and tidal marshes and upland forests allowing for "very high biological diversity." Roseate terns, Piping plovers, common eiders and blackpoll warblers are among the many species spotted on the island, he said.
Louis Burch of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment said this is "a time of great uncertainty with respect to our natural spaces and habitats."
"We're seeing all kinds of rollbacks to our national parks and monuments coming out of Washington, D.C.," Burch said. "This is a real opportunity in the Long Island Sound community to preserve something in its natural state in perpetuity. Future generations can benefit. It makes a lot of sense for further research purposes ... and might be a good opportunity to use those facilities to study the impacts of climate change."
In 2013, President Donald Trump reportedly expressed interest in buying Plum Island and developing a "beautiful, world-class golf course," according to Newsday.
In 2016, Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound led a group of organizations in a lawsuit to block any sale of the island, alleging the GSA and the Department of Homeland Security did not follow federal law during an environmental review process for the proposed sale.
The suit claimed that the government's 2016 environmental impact study failed to address the protection of endangered and threatened species that have flourished on the island.
The federal government then announced last year it would conduct an environmental impact study to address endangered and threatened species. That study is still set to begin this year, according to Blumenthal. A message left with the GSA was not immediately responded to on Wednesday.
By Greg Smith Day staff writer
New London — A Superior Court judge has sided with the New London Maritime Society in what has been a yearslong struggle to reopen the historic New London Harbor Light to the public.
A written decision by New London Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knox reverses a 2015 decision by the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals that upheld a cease-and-desist order and barred public tours of the Pequot Avenue lighthouse.
The decision is being hailed as a win by both sides.
While it overturns the ZBA decision, it also appears to curtail the maritime society’s future plans by limiting activity to “small guided tours of the lighthouse upon request.”
Knox ruled that the New London Maritime Society’s use of the lighthouse should be consistent with its historic use: infrequent and small-scale visits guided by a lighthouse keeper who lived on site during a time that predated the local zoning regulations enacted in 1928.
Knox remanded the matter back to the ZBA for determination of the extent of tours.
New London Maritime Society President Edward J. Cubanski III declined immediate comment on the Oct. 2 ruling because, he said, he was awaiting word on whether the city plans to appeal. Cubanski was elected president in December 2016 at the height of a sometimes contentious battle with neighbors and the city over use of the Harbor Light.
Attorney Jeffrey Londregan, who represented the ZBA in the case, said his recommendation to the ZBA will be to not appeal.
“I think it was a resounding victory for the city,” Londregan said. “The judge basically said the public tours and regular hours of operation and intensity the maritime society was putting on the property was not a pre-existing nonconforming use. The judge said all of that should stop. The only thing permitted is informal tours that were historically offered prior to 2009, when the (maritime society) purchased the property.”
The maritime society, the owner of three lighthouses, has argued that public tours of the lighthouse, albeit infrequent and on a small scale, have been allowed since the 1800s.
Knox agreed that the historical use of the lighthouse should continue as a valid nonconforming use in a residential neighborhood. The cease-and-desist order issued in 2015 that completely denies access was, however, “an unlawful restriction on the plaintiff’s use of the lighthouse,” she wrote.
“It’s definitely a win compared to where we were prior to the decision,” said attorney John Casey, who represents the maritime society. “The fact that the public can be brought in for tours is definitely something the maritime society is happy about.”
Knox, however, did not agree with the maritime society’s argument that the lighthouse pre-empts zoning altogether. She also supported the ZBA’s conclusion that “large tour groups, open houses, school trips, and regular hours of operation,” constitute a change of character and are not consistent with the historical use of the property.
The city issued the cease-and-desist order a year after the maritime society performed renovations at the lighthouse and a neighbor filed a lawsuit over a property line dispute.
The suit was settled earlier this year with an agreement that the neighbor buy a sliver of the disputed land and the maritime society open a new entryway through a rock wall for visitors to directly access the lighthouse.
The maritime society has made at least two unsuccessful attempts to alter zoning regulations and have the lighthouse be designated a historic property with special rights and access.
The first Harbor Light, sometimes known as Pequot Light, was built in 1761. Rebuilt in 1801, it is the tallest and oldest lighthouse in Connecticut and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It was acquired by the New London Maritime Society in 2009 as part of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000. The maritime society acquired Race Rock Light and Ledge Light in a similar manner.
Norwich Native Son credits family, coaches, scout leaders and teachers for his success The Day 5.30.18
It’s not often a museum gift can be called transformative, but Charley Moss’s donation of 22 Victorian sailors’ embroideries or “woolies” to the New London Maritime Society is just that. The collection has given the Custom House something that is not only rare but also full of charm, and which provide an authentic glimpse into the minds and hearts of the 19th century sailor.
Charles B. Moss, Jr. is the third of a four-generation entertainment business founded in New York City in 1900 called Bow Tie Cinemas. A modest man, in 2015 Charley Moss was the recipient of ShowEast’s Salah M. Hassanein Humanitarian Award.
About that award an industry website states “Bow Tie Cinemas, B.S. Moss Enterprises and Bow Tie Partners represent four generations of industry leaders and entertainment entrepreneurs that encountered every single up and down this business has ever seen.”
Bucking the trends and believing there remains value in the movie experience, Moss develops new movie theaters, among them a new line of Bow Tie Ultimate theaters featuring luxury amenities.
A belief in the value of the shared experience is key to many of Charley Moss’s efforts. Moss served for more than a decade as president and chairman of Variety: The Children’s Charity. “During that time we changed the focus of Variety from its traditional direction to a more grass-roots approach... I felt very strongly about refocusing Variety on helping children through the arts,” he said.
Moss took a similar approach to the woolies collection he inherited from his parents. He wanted to give the works to a Connecticut maritime museum where it might make a difference.
In December 2017, the Custom House Maritime Museum received a call offering us the collection. The exhibition Victorian Woolies: Sailors’ Stitchery and Other Pastimes: The Charles B. Moss Sr. & Paula Moss Collection, opened at the Custom House in mid-March.
The 22 woolie works were collected in London in the early 1960s and 1970s by Charles B. Moss Sr. and Paula Moss, the second generation of Moss theatrical impresarios, who traveled abroad for business and pleasure.
For many decades the pieces hung in the Moss’s dining room. In 1986, several works were loaned to the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design for an exhibition, “Embroidered Ship Portraits,” the first major exhibition of this seafarers’ art presented in the United States.
Much like scrimshaw, woolies were a result of sailors applying their skills to a craft during downtime at sea. In the days of the great sailing ships, sailors were required to repair canvas sails and make their own uniforms; they already had stitchery skills.
When Berlin Woolworks — embroidery kits with brightly colored yarns — became a fashion in western Europe and North America in the mid-19th century, sailors followed suit. They purchased their wool yarns on shore and scavenged the canvas backings on deck. Most of the embroideries are British. Dates range from about 1840 up to the first World War coinciding with a period of relative calm for the Royal Navy, the opening of the Orient and an exposure to Asian needleworks, and the last hurrah of the great sailing ship.
With the advent of steam-propelled vessels, sewing skills and a large crew to handle the sails became unnecessary.
Only up to a few thousand woolies are thought to have been made, and sailor embroidery collections are rare. At the Custom House, we’ve been surprised at how many die-hard salts have never even heard of a woolie before. Everyone who sees them is captivated.
We met Ben Moss, the fourth Moss generation, when we picked up the collection in February. Ben said “All of the charitable and humanitarian work that [Charley] does is really very much under the radar. He has never been the kind of guy who does those things just so that he can be recognized. Charley will only reluctantly tell you about it.”
By Mary Biekert Day staff writer
Museums tend to acquire strange and often unexpected pieces to complement their collections. The Lyman Allyn Art Museum, for instance, owns a Falcon sarcophagus as well as hundreds of Victorian dolls. The treasures one could find in Norwich’s Slater Museum are countless, and the paintings found at Florence Griswold Museum tell a timeless story about a specific moment in Connecticut history. It’s no surprise, then, that New London’s Custom House Maritime Museum has some thought-provoking pieces of its own: antique scuba diving gear; a 1701 newspaper announcing the building of New London Harbor Light and the embalming of King George II; and large-scale replicas of the lighthouses that sprinkle our shorelines. Their most recent acquisition, a rare 22-piece collection of Victorian-era wool embroidered works created by various British sailors (an art form informally known as “woolies”), melds quite well with their permanent collection and presents an oft-unseen facet of maritime life from a mariner’s perspective.
The hobby of making woolies, the bulk of which were made throughout the 19th century until WWI and reaching a height in popularity from 1860 to 80, is believed to have occupied sailors while on intercontinental ship voyages that would often last for months. These sailors, as one would expect, often depicted images of their own ships (the details of which, ranging from the ship’s rigging to the number of gun portals, are rendered with exacting precision). In the Custom House’s collection, which is being showcased in the exhibit "Victorian Woolies: Sailor Stitchery and Other Pastimes," you’ll see those as well as scenes of ships docked in port with armadas on the horizon or, in one instance, the much-anticipated homecoming to a loved one. But besides images of maritime scenes, it’s the fine details found throughout these woolies that tell another story.
“I love that while looking at these, you can learn so much about this particular moment in history,” says Custom House executive director Susan Tamulevich, pointing to a night sky in one piece that has faded into gray. “This gray was once a vibrant purple. Using vibrant purples in their works became a trend during that time … Purple and mauve were really all the sensation then because they had never been able to fix that dye before.”
Tamulevich also explains that the specific materials used in a piece can help date when and where it was made. Vibrant yarns, in colors such as purple or mauve, for example, would suggest that a piece was likely created after the mid-1850s (artificial dyes were invented around this time), while silk threads might indicate Orient origins where silk embroidery was widespread. One such piece, which Tamulevich believes was made in the Orient, is included in the exhibit.
Oversized flags were also often stitched into woolies, helping to identify a ship’s place of origin as well as where it was sailing. Flags could also determine the function of a ship and the rank of the commanding officer on board. In this case, most of the flags depicted throughout the collection are British. In one of the works, Boston Harbor is shown with American flags (the only American-inspired work in the exhibit), and in another, a long streamer flag flying off the highest mast communicates that the ship was homebound.
“You can also get a sense for each sailor’s individual style,” Tamulevich says, pointing to the various forms that the ocean could take in each, as well as the range of each sailor’s skill levels. In one instance, a ship keeling over in one woolie looks incredibly realistic, while another may feel more elementary, with two-dimensional depictions. An artist may render stormy seas through the use of serrated white stitching, or a monotone blue could represent a calm sea. Beads, bone, metal or pieces of wood were also sometimes sewn into the works, adding personal creative flair.
Donated to the museum in February by New York native Charles Moss, this specific collection was curated throughout the 1960s and ’70s while Moss’ parents traveled throughout Europe, says Tamulevich. Moss’ collection was so prominent that, in 1986, he loaned many of these works to a Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum exhibition showcasing the woolies movement as "a tribute to tall ships," according to the show's description. The show was the first of its kind in the United States. Now, 22 pieces from that same collection are on view at the Custom House Museum until June, and six will be placed in the museum’s permanent collection.
“Most people know that sailors would take up scrimshaw or knot-making hobbies while out to sea, but not many people know about this particular art form. Even experienced sailors today, who know absolutely everything about sailing, have come into the museum and told me that they have never heard of this before,” says Tamulevich. “These works are really a wonder and also are very rare.”
It’s estimated that only a few thousand of these works were ever made — mainly because this particular art form was exclusively created among sailors of that era, Tamulevich says. With the advent of steamships, however, sailors were slowly put out of work. That, combined with growing popularity in photography, eventually extinguished woolies as a practiced art form.
“The sailors were quite facile with their hands. They sewed their own clothing and knew how to quickly make stitch repairs into sails,” Tamulevich says, explaining that sewing talents, combined with free time and a bit of creativity, made woolies a preferable pastime. “That they would make these (woolies), then, is really no surprise.”
By Greg Smith Day staff writer
New London — The New London Maritime Society has reached a settlement with one of the neighbors of Harbor Light, ending a long-running federal lawsuit over a property line dispute.
The nonprofit organization may have smoothed things over with one neighbor but remains in a legal land-use fight with the city over public access to the historic Pequot Avenue lighthouse.
Randy and Bonita Waesche, who own the 800 Pequot Ave. home adjacent to the lighthouse, originally filed suit in 2014 shortly after the maritime society began what the Waesches claimed was unpermitted renovation work that included construction of a granite wall and walkway precariously close to their pool.
The Waesches argued the wall was forcing the increasing number of visitors onto their property. The maritime society argued the land was theirs.
In the end, the Waesches have agreed to purchase the sliver of disputed property for an undisclosed amount of money. The final documents were signed last week, Randy Waesche said.
The maritime society has created an opening through the shoreline-facing end of the granite wall that will allow visitors a more direct and safer route to access the lighthouse with less chance of people wandering into the Waesches' yard and onto the former lighthouse keeper's property now owned by Elizabeth Ring.
“It took a little bit to get there but it works out to the benefit of both parties,” said Edward J. Cubanski III, president of the New London Maritime Society.
The lighthouse property is a narrow stretch of land bordered by the Waesches' home on one side and by Ring's on the other. Ring has had trouble in the past with lighthouse visitors on her property.
Cubanski said he hoped the end of the lawsuit would help rebuild a fractured relationship with neighbors. The society also plans some work in the spring to install a railing system at the wall opening.
Randy Waesche said he always had offered to pay for the entrance through the wall but the relationship with certain members of the maritime society has been less than cordial. It was the reason that a settlement in the lawsuit took so long, he said.
“We never wanted to be in dispute with our neighbors. Capt. Cubanski has reached out and has been much more enjoyable to work with,” Waesche said.
Cubanski, a retired captain with the U.S. Coast Guard, was elected as the society’s president in 2016 and replaced George Sprecace, who was the president during a span of time that the society acquired three lighthouses from the federal government. Along with Harbor Light, the society owns Ledge Light and Race Rock Light. The maritime society purchased Harbor Light, the oldest and tallest lighthouse in the state, in 2009.
The resolution of the suit doesn’t mean the ongoing issue of trying to bring more visitors to the lighthouse has ended. Cubanski said the maritime society plans to focus its energy on a lawsuit it filed in 2015 in response to a Zoning Board of Appeals decision upholding a cease-and-desist order.
In June 2015 the city’s zoning enforcement officer issued the cease-and-desist order to block tours, noting the use of the lighthouse at that time had increased and was “no longer a passive operation of a lighthouse where a lighthouse keeper may have allowed visitors from time to time to tour the lighthouse.” Instead, groups of visitors had begun arriving on occasion.
The organization argues in its appeal that the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000 and the deed to the lighthouse require that the society make the lighthouse open for education, recreation, cultural and historic preservation purposes for the general public or risk the property reverting back to the government's ownership. It has made several legal arguments including a claim that the "free tours to the public is a legal nonconforming use" that predates city zoning regulations.
Randy Waesche has filed paperwork to intervene in the case and defend the city’s position. He also vigorously had fought against the maritime society’s past unsuccessful attempts to alter zoning regulations and allow tours of the lighthouse and other historic properties in residential neighborhoods by special permit.
“Their needs and goals are to generate revenue. I totally understand that,” Waesche said. “We bought a home in a residential district and don’t want people parking all over the streets and tromping through our property. It is in conflict with a residential neighborhood.”
Cubanski maintains the city has unfairly placed restrictions on a landmark that has long been open to the public.
“We believe the public is being denied access to a national historic treasure. That’s a shame,” Cubanski said.
Elizabeth Ring, owner of the former lighthouse keeper’s home, said she remains highly skeptical of any promises the New London Maritime Society makes based on its past actions, which has included a lawsuit against her, blatant improper use of her property and attempts to stir up hostility against neighbors.
“No, I don’t anticipate the maritime society being respectful of residents' privacy or keeping promises, based on past experience,” Ring said in an email. “Their proposed plan for the site involves 3,000 visitors a year! The site is simply too narrow, squeezed between residences, with no parking or bathrooms. When they had visitors there before, they wandered all over our properties, not even knowing that our place is not part of maritime society property.”
“If they had behaved legally and ethically from the start, there probably would have been small regulated tours years ago,” Ring said.
With public access to Harbor Light still blocked, Cubanski said the maritime society is making a concerted effort this summer on upkeep at the iconic Ledge Light, applying for grants that would help fund general maintenance work. The group also is seeking a partner to run lighthouse tours.
By Rick Koster Day staff writer
Spend a sea-scented Noank afternoon with Professor Stephen Jones, sitting on the weathered wooden porch at Carson's Store in neighborly October sunshine. Listen to Jones' amused but rapid delivery as he spins witty anecdotes and observations, pausing appreciatively whenever small groups of kids race by, just out of class, many modeling the costumes they officially would wear on Halloween.
Jones is discussing the myriad ideal qualities required of someone who conducts a boat tour — as per his assignment Sunday aboard a ferry trip to and from Block Island. The occasion is the 34th New London Maritime Society Annual Meeting & Cruise, and Jones will regale his audience with stories of Long Island Sound as they apply to our section of the world.
A renowned historian, author, boat-builder, railroad worker, filmmaker, publisher of Flat Hammock Press, lighthouse keeper and raconteur, Jones, in his mid-80s, retired last spring after years as a professor of writing, English literature and coastal and maritime studies at UConn Avery Point. With this resume and charismatic presence, Jones has for decades been in demand for tours and lectures about Noank Island, the Sound and the Niantic, Thames, Mystic and Connecticut rivers.
On Sunday's cruise, Jones' remarks will touch on, among other topics: his friend Ellery Thompson, the renowned dragger-boat captain, writer, painter and trumpeter; Lawrence Malloy, the youngest of a six-generation Mystic boat- and shipbuilding family; Bill McCoy, whose fascination with and expertise aboard sailing ships led to a legendary career as a rum-runner in the 1920s; and Sir Thomas Hardy, the British admiral defeated in Stonington during the War of 1812.
With all of Jones' experience, then, it seems reasonable, in advance of Sunday's cruise, to ask how he distills all this source material into a distinct presentation for maritime enthusiasts.
"You know, my father (Edward Jones) did similar tours as well, and he taught me two things," says Jones, dressed in a straw hat, black blazer and blue denim shirt. "One was that he would never think of doing this sort of thing inland. There's a different rhythm on a boat and a different quality of light being on the water, and the sea as a venue itself transforms the experience in ways you could never achieve on land. Oh, and, also, stay focused."
Teaching the Bard
In one-on-one conversation, though, focus can be a challenge. Jones' conviviality, knowledge and history are such that he seems a sort of biologically alchemical blend of Falstaff, George Lyman Kittredge and G.W. Blunt. The listener can't help but interrupt with follow-up questions — thereby twirling the conversation in all sorts of directions.
He speaks fondly of Shakespeare, for example, acknowledging that an ability to regale groups of folks can be decidedly heightened if one has spent quality time speaking aloud the Bard's work. It's something Jones gravitated to as a child when his father would recite Shakespeare around the house. Later, various English teachers would quote Shakespeare in a machine gun monotone, significantly lessening the power of the words.
"I spent a lot of time reciting Shakespeare or reading him aloud," Jones remembers. "Let's face it, you can get bored with Shakespeare if you're not interpreting the words. Anyway, I developed a perhaps unwarranted confidence in my ability to teach and speak Shakespeare." He describes efforts in his teaching days where he would grow a beard throughout the semester so that, by the end of the syllabus, he had the appearance necessary to portray the course-ending King Lear.
"Of course," he adds, "just as often, someone would want me to be Santa Claus. But I wanted my own students to be able to read Shakespeare when they graduated. And I used those same principles teaching maritime literature. And, working on the water, with long stretches of time, reciting Shakespeare works very well with the rhythm of the sea. There's a quality to hearing words aloud, and so that helps on the boat tours, as well."
Jones generously acknowledges the work of various tour guides in his past whose work has been valuable in his own evolution, citing humor, timing and history as integral elements to the ideal presentation. He references, for example, a tour past a small island in Maine's Frenchman Bay, where the chef Julia Child liked to sunbathe on rocks, adorned by little more than the glass of wine she'd hold aloft in toast to passing vessels. Or a story about Teddy Roosevelt at his family's Long Island summer home in Sagamore Hill on Oyster Bay. Then president, Roosevelt, a lifelong boxing enthusiast who was mostly blind in one eye due to a well-placed punch, once mistook a fisherman landing in the local oyster yard as a sparring partner, greeting the bewildered man on the beach with a pair of boxing gloves.
Jones also transfixes with quick, interwoven stories about the construction of Race Rock Lighthouse; the Vermont Central Railroad and its connection to New London; Sarah Bernhardt's observation that no man can properly portray Hamlet (by the time they understand the character, they're too old to play the role); patrolling beaches for the Coast Guard to see if any dead bodies had washed up; attending famed clarinetist Alphonse Picou's second-line funeral in New Orleans; and why it's not a bad idea to have a grandmother who was an elocutionist.
It all plays into the art of the boat tour guide. Jones says, "After a time, you know each rock and bend in the river, you know all the stories and the history, and the temptation is to tell 'em everything you know."
In that sense, Jones warns against the temptation of a memorized spiel. "There's a performance and spontaneity to a good harbor tour. You can get too slick with pre-written jokes and a certain type of humor that become shtick. It sounds like a recording," he says. "Of course, there ARE tours that use pre-recorded commentary. It doesn't work if the wind or water aren't cooperating and suddenly the tape gets ahead of the pilot."
In the end, Jones says, each tour is unique — and that's part of the fun. "The true art of the harbor tour is to not download them with data, or dazzle them with personal performance, but to quietly help them see what can be there." He chuckles. "And it helps to know when to shut up."
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NLMS Press releases
May 26, 2021
John Michael Corcoran Museum Day Fund provides Free Admission for New London Students & their Families to the Custom House Maritime Museum
May 26, 2021
Februry 1, 2020
January 20, 2020
My View from Great Gull Island - Matthew Male at the Custom House Maritime Museum Exhibition Opening
December 3, 2019
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