Used Book Sale!

Sat. June 25th from 11:00AM to 4:00PM

G.W. BLUNT WHITE BUILDING
at the North End of the Campus

To benefit Mystic Seaport’s library

Mostly nautical books include:
* 700 Book Dutch Auction
(prices $10 11AM-1PM, $5 1PM-3PM, $2 3PM-4PM)
*100 Special Value Books $10 and up
*Over 100 $1 books, charts, etc.

ALSO
tables of free items
(periodicals, charts and more)

*All Proceeds of the Sale to be used for Library Materials
*Sale conducted by the Fellows of the G.W. Blunt White Library

It's a Small World.....

This pocket terrestrial globe is illustrated with a cartouche carrying the phrase “Lane’s Improved Globe, London.” It is approximately 3.5 inches in diameter overall. This little globe has metal pins at the poles which allow the globe to turn inside the shell. The globe is hand colored and shows the routes of various explorers. One note at the Sandwich Islands states “Here C. Cook was killed.” The interior of the shell is illustrated with the signs of the zodiac. The exterior of the shell is covered in what is referred to as “fish-skin” and helped to protect the globe from the elements. It most likely dates from the first quarter of the 19th century. It is accession number 1953.2872 and it can be found in the Collections Research Center. Photo by Andy Price.

Fellowships Awarded For Research at Museum

IN A RECENT MEETING OF THE NEW ENGLAND REGIONAL FELLOWSHIP CONSORTIUM, a collaboration of 18 major cultural agencies, the consortium awarded 12 fellowships from a pool of 90 applicants for 2011–2012. Each grant will provide a stipend of $5,000 for a minimum of eight weeks of research at participating institutions. Grants are designed to encourage projects that draw on the resources of several agencies. Each award will be for research at a minimum of three different member institutions. Fellows must work at each of them for at least two weeks. In ten years the Consortium has handed out over 100 fellowships totaling more than $500,000. The initial funding came from a $150,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation and is supported annually by dues from the participating institutions.

Once again the G.W. Blunt White Library at Mystic Seaport will be hosting 2 of the 12 Fellows this year. One, Hari Vishwanadha from Thousand Oaks, California, was a participant in last summer’s Munson Institute that was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Hari spent six weeks combing through our collections and along with his planned visits to other institutions in the consortium, will spend two weeks concentrating on logbooks, letters and business papers relating to his topic “Passages to India”.

The other Fellow, Hannah Farber from the University of California at Berkeley, will be working on completing her dissertation for her Ph.D. This dissertation project (expected completion in spring 2014) explores the ways in which the growth of the American maritime insurance industry shaped international relations, domestic politics, and the cultures of commerce and finance between the American Revolution and the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Our collections in both areas are quite rich and will easily support the two weeks’ worth of work each Fellow will be completing here.

Paul J. O'Pecko

Literary Scrimshaw

The Museum has a wonderful piece of scrimshaw entitled "The Sailor Boy." (Accession number 1974.691) The illustration appears on a large, nine-inch sperm whale and is very nicely done. Richard Malley, who was the Assistant Registrar at Mystic Seaport when he wrote about the Museum's scrimshaw collection in his 1983 book Graven by the Fishermen Themselves, states, "Though the scrimshander's skill is of the highest order, the artist did not concoct the scene on his own." Indeed, as so many other sailors did, this particular jack tar copied a scene from a published source that would have been well known at the time. In the accompanying image, the scrimshaw piece appears on the left, and the published source on the right. The published scene was used as the frontispiece for Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea by Charles Ellms, first published in 1836. The verse that appears below the boy as he ascends the ratlines reads "Though the strained mast quivers as a reed, And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, Still I must on...Byron." A poignant look at the perils of a young man at sea as seen through the eyes of both a poet and a scrimshander. It is a prized piece at Mystic Seaport.

New CHARLES W. MORGAN Painting for the Collection

Mystic Seaport recently acquired a watercolor of the CHARLES W. MORGAN painted in the 1920's by Frederic Schiller Cozzens. Entitled "CHARLES W. MORGAN, 1841, Homeward Bound," the painting shows the MORGAN as a full-rigged ship rather than her more familiar bark rig. The painting was done just prior to her being put on exhibit at the estate of Colonel Green at Round Hill in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

Frederick S. Cozzens was a prolific illustrator and artist born in 1846 in New York City. Along with illustrating books and magazines he painted many maritime scenes. While mostly known for his yachting images, Cozzens painted a variety of subjects from whale ships to naval fleets to iceboats, lifesaving scenes and more. He died in New York City in 1928.

This pretty little painting is one more addition to our collection of CHARLES W. MORGAN material, honoring the MORGAN's restoration work currently being done at Mystic Seaport.

New Hours For Accessing the Collections!

Along with a New Year, comes a new set of hours that we will be open to the public. Beginning Wednesday, January 5th, the new hours are:

Wednesday 2:00-5:00
Thursday 10:00-5:00
Friday 10:00-3:00

Robert Louis Stevenson and Mystic Seaport

A number of objects belonging to Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and numerous other well-known works, came to the Museum in the 1950's. Stevenson spent his last years in Samoa, dying there of a probable cerebral hemorrhage in 1894 at just 44 years of age.

Stevenson speaks frequently of drinking kava (or ava) in numerous letters written while in Samoa and kava appears in some of his novels as well. He describes the process of making this "intoxicating" drink from the root of a pepper plant, where the root is chewed by "fair damsels" to soften it and then it is combined with water and strained in a wooden bowl. That wooden bowl is known as a kava bowl. The kava bowl pictured here is from Stevenson's household in Samoa. It is carved from a single piece of wood, has eight legs and is four and a half inches deep. Kava was a ceremonial drink and Stevenson writes of making speeches to, and listening to speeches by, chiefs in Samoa before imbibing. To drink kava, one traditionally used a kava bowl or a cup made from a coconut. Our collection also contains one of Stevenson's coconut cups and numerous other objects from his years in the South Pacific.