Mystic, CT - Corsets, Cod and Dorymen

And, here we are on our second day at Mystic.
When we got there, we found a model show with lots of people from around the area showing off their models. This guy is trying out his remote control models.

You know how every town and every acreage is divided up between us all. Well, here are the plots that fishermen have in the ocean outside Mystic. Each one has his plots marked out and woe betide anyone who fishes on someone else’s plot. The yellow plots all belong to a guy names Thomas. I always thought that you could fish anywhere - nope, that’s not the way it was.

In one building they had a great diorama of Mystic when it was at its peak, with several ship yards, rope yards, chandleries and a lot of ships cruising the channel. Note the outhouses in the back yards of the homes.

And, yes, it does snow on a ship. Here are two men chipping ice and shoveling snow from the deck. Working on the deck is terribly slippery as it is usually covered in water but when the lines and the sails get iced up, they are much more difficult to work with and can often break and tear under the strain. Imagine being aloft working with a frozen sail. Getting a fingernail torn off trying to furl (roll up) a sail in the ice and rain was very common.

There were 2700 whalers in America at whaling’s peak and Mystic has not only the last of these whalers still sailing, the Morgan but they have an extensive museum devoted to whaling and the ships and crews that went out. (I haven’t seen the New Bedford Whaling Museum for 40 or so years so can’t compare them.)

I’m sure that you all know that whale oil was used for lighting and heating but the whale was also used for other things. It was the lubrication for the American industrial revolution, whale baleen put the 'oomph' into corsets and the hoop in hoop skirts. Bicycle oil was made from from the whale. Hey, even perfume was made from the whale: ambergris, a product of an irritation in the whale's colon, gave perfumes staying power. But, as vibrant as the whaling industry was at the beginning of the 19th century, by the end it was becoming a relic. Electricity helped to kill whaling along with the discovery of the uses of oil for heat and lubrication.

Because we were at Mystic for 2 days, we got to see quite a few demonstrations. Our first day there was a school day and there were several school groups there. We casually stood by them as they were getting their lessons and learned a lot that way. Here is a demonstration of how to furl a sail. There were 6 crew members taking part in the demonstration. Here they are, climbing up the rope ladder into the sail area. Notice how they are climbing around the small wooden perch there. Quite a precarious position, leaning outwards. Imagine doing that in the winds during a rain storm. Sails probably didn’t get furled in nice weather when everything was sunny, the lines were dry and the ship was upright. They got furled most often when it was stormy and windy and rainy and the ship was tilting a lot. Most sailors worked barefoot and the lines could be quite slippery. (Remember that fingernail problem.)

I always seem to be taking butt shots - usually of animals as they are running away from me. Here I have a butt shot of the crew members standing on the foot rope, leaning over and grabbing the sail to pull it in so they can tie some line around it and the yardarm. They are all about 30’ or 40’ up in the air and working without a net. Sailors’ shoes, if they had any, were very slippery leather on the bottom, they didn’t have sneakers like we do now. We actually got to try to stand on a foot rope and lean over a yardarm yesterday in MA, where we are now. Firstly, that small foot rope moves - a lot - and mostly out so that your knees are bent and the only thing holding you up there is your stomach on the yardarm (like the woman on the right). Secondly, when Gary got on the foot rope while I was on it, it moved some more. Scary. And the yardarm we were on was only 6” off the ground.

They had other ships at Mystic also. One was a sailing ship that went out for fish. It carried 8 2-man dories that set off in the morning to set their hooked lines.  At the end of the day, they’d haul in their catch, fill their small boats and bring them back to the main ship. During their ‘free’ time, they’d mend line, put bait on the hooks and keep everything in ’ship-shape’ order. Here are their living quarters. Pretty small since the main goal of the ship is fish not men. Here’s the main crew room. You can see 12 bunks in the bow of the boat (the other bunks were in the stern) with sea chests below but also the stove on which the meals were cooked. The smells that permeated this small ship must have been powerful: fish, lots of fish in the hold, cooking smells, but - imagine the smells of the men who haven’t had a bath for several weeks and the clothes that they are wearing. Below is a mock-up of how the fish were stocked in the hold. They catch them, de-bone them and lay them tightly in the holds. When all the holds were filled, they could go home. Imagine how slippery the deck could get with all those fish being cleaned.

Here’s a chronology of their usual day.

Here’s a boat with a great history. It’s a lighthouse tender and looks pretty harmless, doesn’t it? But, during WWII, when the Germans were after every Jew they could find, this boat was one of the hundreds that ferried the Jews from Denmark to Sweden where Hitler couldn’t get to them. The Jews hid in the hold of the ship and it took off on its usual lighthouse duties but detoured to Sweden to drop its ‘cargo, then returned to its lighthouse duties. Heroic and dangerous. These boats each made many trips across the seas to get the Jews to safety. In the end, 7000 Jews were saved (almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark) and only 500 Jews were rounded up in Denmark, those who didn’t or couldn’t get on the boats. But, the Danes made sure that they were all monitored by the Red Cross, got food packages and were not in the extermination camps. After this the boats rescued Resistance members and Allied pilots who were downed in Denmark.

Mystic was fantastic. We could probably spend another day there.
If you ever find yourself in the area, I’d recommend that you stop here.