With America’s long history of maritime commerce and adventure, it is not surprising that a research center dedicated to man’s relationship with the sea and inland waterways would be of interest to researchers around the world. And not surprising either to find this research center at Mystic Seaport, the nations’ premier maritime museum. What is surprising, however, is to find a research center where everything maritime, from manuscripts to fine art, exists together in one location. The Mystic Seaport Collections Research Center is not just a library, or an archive, or a museum, it is all of these things.
Housed in new quarters in a renovated velvet mill, the Center boasts a variety of maritime collections, many available for research and study in the Center’s reading room. Visitors include students, researchers, genealogists, hobbyists, historians, boat owners, ship builders, and many others. Those who cannot visit the Center will find extensive online resources. There are online catalogs of book, manuscript and art collections. Online databases include crew lists, seaman’s protection certificates (like a passport for sailors), and yacht registers. Besides online catalogs and databases, the Center has digitized many of their more popular collections. Center staff have digitized about a half million items and continue digitizing daily. No wonder, then, that the Center attracts so much interest from researchers world-wide.
The Manuscript Collection includes “ships’ logs and journals, ledgers, diaries and documents from the whaling, fishing and shipping industries, and various business and personal papers of yacht clubs and naval architects.” These manuscripts, many dating back to the 18th century, give researchers some of the most valuable and straightforward ways of accessing the experiences of men and women at sea. Ships’ logs give a glimpse of the day-by-day life of sailors . Of interest to genealogists, historians, and model builders, ship registers provide information on the owners, captains, and sea-worthiness of thousands of ships on the seas in 19th century America. Of particular interest recently are the insights the manuscripts give into the ethnicity of sailors, the experience of women at sea, and the early labor activity of sailors. The race, gender, and ethnicity of sailors are listed in many of the ships logs and journals. Students and scholars make good use of this primary research material.
The Book and Periodical Collection specializes in American maritime history. The G.W. Blunt White Library has around 75,000 volumes, including 3,000 rare books and 700 periodical titles. Subjects include “ships (passenger ships, merchant marine, ocean liners, Coast Guard, naval and pleasure), immigration, yachting, voyages, women at sea, crew lists, whaling, exploration, and discovery.” Of particular note is a full run of the periodical The Rudder, a famous yachting and boating magazine which started in the late 19th century.
The Ships Plans Collection includes over 125,000 sheets of plans for ships traveling by wind, steam and gas. There are plans of existing boats and historic boats, merchant vessels and private yachts, rowing boats and naval vessels. Of particular note are the plans, correspondence, and design drawings of L. Francis Herreshoff, a famous ship designer and author. Herreshoff’s ship plans and drawings are of particular interest to boat and ship builders and hobbyists. For the study of ship-building architecture, the ship-building industry, and the sheer artistry of ship-building, the Ships Plans Collection is invaluable.
The Center has many non-print collections of use to maritime students and scholars. The Photography Collection covers “more than150 years of commercial and recreational activity and include onboard, shipyard, and waterfront scenes; portraits of shipmasters and other mariners and Inuit life and culture.” The Film and Video Collection “covers a broad range of subjects, including storm scenes, boating, ocean passages, yachting, various ports and cities, boat building and restoration, lighthouses, whaling, rowing, Gold Cup races, sail making, ice boating and fishing.” The Sound Archives includes oral histories and recorded lectures and events on maritime activity.
As noted earlier, the Center is not just a library or archives, it also includes an Art and Objects Collection. This collection “includes American marine art, ephemera, nautical instruments, ship models, scrimshaw, industrial fishing gear, furniture, whaling implements and myriad tools from the various maritime trades.”
All these collections, from nautical folk art to the log books of the Charles W. Morgan are found under one roof and made available for study by the staff of the Collections Research Center. The staff provide a number of research and copy services.
Before any visit, researchers should look at the extensive resources already available online at http://library.mysticseaport.org . Digital materials can also be found on Connecticut History Online http://www.cthistoryonline.org . The Mystic Seaport Collections Research Center is located at 75 Greenmanville Avenue in Mystic, a stone’s throw from the Seaport Museum.
An edited version of this article appeared previously in Connecticut Libraries.
