U.S. Charges Back to Win America’s Cup!

Looking at the title above, you would be justified in thinking this was about the miraculous comeback of Oracle Team USA in beating New Zealand in San Francisco recently. The truth is that it relates to the 1920 America’s Cup race that took place off of New York.

Sir Thomas Lipton challenged the New York Yacht Club for the fourth time and brought his SHAMROCK IV across the pond in 1914 for a scheduled September race. While in transit, SHAMROCK IV learned of Germany’s declaration that began the First World War, thus postponing the race until July of 1920. Leaving the boat to sit six years in a cradle in New York did not deter Lipton from continuing his quest after the War was finished.

The American boat, RESOLUTE, was skippered by Charles Francis Adams, the great-great grandson of President John Adams. Adams was hailed as America’s best sailor in 1920 and took on the challenge of defending the Cup. And he did…..just barely.

For the first and only time in his five challenges, Sir Thomas’ boat won a race. And then he won the second race in the best of five challenge. And all of a sudden the Americans were one race away from losing the Cup. Thanks to the handicap rule then in place, and Adams’ experience at the helm, RESOLUTE came back to win the final three races to keep the America’s Cup at home in the New York Yacht Club.

NYYC certificate honoring Charles Francis Adams as the successful skipper of the 
1920 America'sCup challenge. HFM 7. G.W Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport.

The picture shown is of a certificate in Mystic Seaport’s collection. The exquisite document praises Adams as the club member who had “such unusual qualities and nautical skills as top accomplish this difficult defense with unqualified satisfaction to both Club and Country.” Lipton would challenge one more time in 1930, but would go home once again without the “Auld Mug.” Click on the image to read the entire document.

When Krakatoa Blew its Top

    Exactly 130 years ago, when the island of Krakatoa, located in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, erupted on August 26^th, 1883, the shock was felt (and heard) for thousands of miles. The extreme seismic event killed tens of thousands of people from both the initial explosion and the earthquakes and tidal waves that followed and affected global weather for years to come.  Mystic Seaport’s collection of The Nautical Magazine includes copies for the period. Because of the strong British naval and commercial presence in the area, the magazine carried a number of reports about the devastation surrounding the explosion. “This remarkable disturbance of the sea made itself felt in various parts of the world…notably in Australia and Southern Africa, also at Karachi in India. The vast amount of pumice which lay upon the surface of the sea, in some places many feet in thickness, gave an appearance as if the ocean bed had appeared above water.” More important to the Schuit family, proprietors of the Anjer Hotel that appears in the accompanying image of an advertising card from the Museum’s collection, “A succession of earthquake waves swept the shores of the strait, utterly destroying the towns of Anjer, Merak, Tyringin and Telok Betong, together with some of the lighthouses on both shores.”

Mystic Seaport, Accession # 1994.99.5 

Enhanced image from front of 1994.99.5

    The London and China Telegraph for Feb. 27, 1868 lists G. Schuit as the proprietor of the Anjer Hotel in Anjer in the Sunda Strait. When Krakatoa erupted 15 years later, another member of the Schuit family, H. Schuit, was the proprietor, and other reports tell us that the hotel, which was set above a seawall, was ripped from its foundation by the waves. An issue of Popular Science for 1884 states that while Mr. Schuit survived the incident, his family did not. This earlier picture is one of the few reminders of the idyllic setting of the Anjer Hotel before 1883.

    This business card, showing Mr. Schuit’s multiple enterprises, was probably obtained by Capt. Timothy Benson in the 1870’s or ‘80’s while on trading voyages to the Orient. There is evidence in our manuscript collection that Capt. Benson visited Anjer as late as 1881, 2 years before the Krakatoa cataclysm.

A Coat Rack Like No Other

Between 1874 and 1878 Captain John Orrin Spicer of Groton, Connecticut commanded the whaleship NILE on four voyages to the Eastern Arctic bringing back, primarily, whalebone (or baleen) and whale oil. On at least one of those voyages Captain Spicer brought back tusks from the narwhal, a small arctic whale. These he had fashioned, along with walrus tusk ivory and exotic wood, into one of the most unusual coat racks you are likely to encounter. It was made as a gift for his wife and after quite a number of years, and at least one other owner, it was donated to Mystic Seaport in 1964. The tusks are fitted into four wooden ball-shaped feet that support a wooden platform from which sprouts the central wooden column, topped by a crown of walrus tusk spindles. The narwhal tusks are connected to the central column with more ivory pegs supporting a ring of ivory. The tallest of the tusks is just over seven feet high.

Doug Currie, Randy Wilkinson and Chris White prepare the coat rack for an X-Ray.

Unfortunately, the coat rack has not been on exhibit for many years due to its poor condition. It was once again pushed into the spotlight, however, when Dr. Stuart Frank of the New Bedford Whaling Museum did a thorough examination and detailed report of the scrimshaw collection at Mystic Seaport. While not a piece of scrimshaw, the unusually constructed piece of furniture does incorporate a number of ivory elements. Stuart calls this a masterwork that is a “unique survivor of what must even in its day been a rare form…” Interest in the coat rack has continued to grow. Obviously, the time to act on repairing, or at least stabilizing, this artifact has come. With that in mind, we have contracted Fallon and Wilkinson Furniture Conservators to assess the piece and suggest treatments that will enable us to once again share this unusual object with our visitors.

As a first step, our Collections manager, Chris White, and Randy Wilkinson transported the coat rack to Fallon and Wilkinson’s studio with a four hour layover at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. The stop at Mashantucket was essential in helping us determine what treatments we might be able to perform because the Research Center there has an X-Ray facility large enough to examine all elements of the item. Doug Currie, the Head of Conservation at the Mashantucket Museum, maneuvered the tools of his trade to get internal views of the fittings used to keep the coat rack together. Doug’s work confirmed a number of suspicions about the piece that tries to meld narwhal tusks, walrus ivory, exotic wood and iron fittings into a single entity. Unfortunately all those materials are not very compatible as they expand and contract at different rates and react to each other in ways that are less than beneficial to the object, resulting in a now wobbly construction that needs to be remedied.

Notice of acquisition in the January, 1965 Log of Mystic Seaport. 

As can be seen in the picture taken at the Mashantucket facility, this is just the beginning of the journey for this nearly 140-year-old relic. The second picture is from the January, 1965 Log of Mystic Seaport. 

Wish us luck and look for it to be on exhibit in the not-too-distant future.

Sleuthing a Sailor-made Object

Back in November of 2012 we posted an item about a piece of scrimshaw done by a person known as the MECHANIC artist, so-called because the work was done on the whaler MECHANIC of Newport. Spencer Pratt was identified as that artist in that posting. Since then, Richard Donnelly of Rhode Island, an avid sleuth where Spencer Pratt and his handiwork are concerned, delivered a paper about Pratt at the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Scrimshaw Weekend. A new development in his presentation was the fact that Mystic Seaport also owns a whalebone swift and inlaid box made by Pratt. The box is almost identical to one owned by the Bristol Historical and Preservation Society in Bristol, Rhode Island. Not only has Mr. Donnelly made an almost fool-proof case that Pratt is the MECHANIC artist, he has made just as strong a case that these two swift boxes, and another four boxes held elsewhere, are from the same hand.

Mystic Seaport Accession #'s 1964.1134 and 1964.1135 

The box (with swift attached)  is the Mystic Seaport object. The other is from Bristol. The size of the box, method of construction, motif and more give a solid indication that they were built by the same person. Additional evidence from other known boxes all point to the same hand. Not only was Pratt an accomplished box maker, but as existing sperm whale teeth attributed to him attest, a talented scrimshander as well. Thanks to Richard Donnelly for the research and photographs and for adding depth to the understanding of our collection. 

Unsure of the actual use of a swift? Visit YouTube and search for swift and wool for a tutorial on how a swift works. Consider that the swift pictured above is all hand made. A coin dated 1830 is inserted into the end of one of the swift's knobs, shown at the base of the box.

Stormy Weather....

“If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head…”

-          William Shakespeare, The Tempest

     The tornado that recently devastated Moore, Oklahoma reminds us of the fickle and furious temperament that Nature can exhibit. While tornadoes are few and far between in New England, the same cannot be said for hurricanes. Take as an example the destructive 1938 hurricane that rampaged through New England, killing hundreds and leveling, it is estimated, up to two billion trees. In this image taken at the time of that hurricane, it is quickly discernible that boats are not supposed to be traveling along the railroad tracks in Mystic, CT. This image is from the Post Collection of Photographs at Mystic Seaport.

Mystic Seaport Accession # 1987.58.523

     Texas has the unfortunate geographical location that puts it in the path of both tornadoes and hurricanes. The second picture shows the remains of a church in Galveston, Texas after the deadly hurricane that swept through there in 1900. This storm took an estimated 8,000 lives and is still the worst natural disaster on record in the United States. This photo is part of the Merrit-Chapman & Scott collection of marine salvage photographs at Mystic Seaport.

Mystic Seaport Accession # 2008.28.3.159

First Responders on the Water

The week of April 15, 2013 was one that will not soon be forgotten. The bombings at the Boston Marathon and the explosion of the fertilizer plant in West, Texas were the two major events of the week that required extraordinary action on the part of American first responders.

Mystic Seaport. Rosenfeld Collection. Accession number 1984.187.27083

This photo showing two New York City Fire Department fireboats reminds us that firefighters and police work on the water as well. The two boats, JOHN D. MCKEAN in the foreground along with FIRE FIGHTER, are pictured with the Statue of Liberty in the background. The two boats were not only the most powerful fireboats in the NYFD fleet pumping 19,000 and 20,000 gallons per minute, but also the most famous. FIRE FIGHTER responded to more than fifty fires, including the fire that destroyed the NORMANDIE in 1942. Among other incidents, the JOHN D. MCKEAN, named after a marine engineer killed aboard the fireboat GEORGE B. MCLELLAN, was quickly on the scene in Manhattan after September 11 and rescued passengers from U.S Airways Flight 1549 in 2009, the crash that became known as the Miracle on the Hudson.

To read more about these extraordinary boats and the exceptional people involved with them, visit the Marine 1 FDNY website.

Imagine That! Whales!

Imagine! That's exactly what Conrad Gesner seems to have done in his depiction of these two whales in his 1560 epic work entitled Nomenclator Aquatilium Animantium. Gesner was a Swiss naturalist with an extremely curious mind. Although he only lived for fifty years (1516-1565), he was exceptionally productive in his studies. For example, he attempted to name every known animal (and some unknown); he wrote extensive treatises on botany; he tried to identify all existing languages; he published a catalog of all the known authors to that time, and much more. If Gesner had not died of the plague in 1565, who knows what else he might have accomplished?

A depiction of whales in Nomenclator aquatilium animantium, published in 1560.

While his book on aquatic animals does contain mythical creatures such as mermaids, he tried to describe as many animals as he could from direct observation, not just from hearsay as was the custom of the time.

In this picture of the two bizarre-looking whales, the strangest part is not the whales themselves, but the man standing at the rail with what looks like a trumpet, obviously blowing it in the direction of the beasts. Is he trying to call them or scare them or communicate with them? If your Latin and German are good enough, you can try to find out when you go to this link at Archive.org to read the work in its original format. Click on the picture to get a larger version.Mystic Seaport is fortunate enough to have this extremely rare book as part of its research collection in the G.W Blunt White Library.