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Best of boat worlds
The Watercraft Collection in Mystic is a treasure trove of rare boats that play a crucial role in keeping American history alive
- By Steve Grant, Los Angeles Times- Washington Post News Service
- Published: 23:58 August 15, 2008
Peter T. Vermilya is working his way among hundreds of small boats in an old mill building in Mystic, Connecticut, that is unheated, uncooled, poorly lit and so crowded it is often difficult to move without dodging the bow or stern of one watercraft or another.
He is explaining why the small-boat cognoscenti come from afar for a look at these boats and what happens when they do. “People are blown away. And they should be,'' he says.
“There is a wow factor just from seeing hundreds and hundreds of lovely, traditional watercraft in front of you,'' he adds.
A priceless collection
Despite the 300,000 visitors who visit Mystic Seaport every year, this is the priceless collection of boats that, in all likelihood, you've never heard of, let alone seen.
Some of the boats are nearly two centuries old, virtually all of them are historic and some of them are the sole surviving example of a kind of watercraft. Most of them are less than 25ft long, many powered only by oar, paddle or sail.
Vermilya is the J Revell Carr Associate Curator of Small Craft at Mystic Seaport, the man who oversees this collection, likely the finest collection of historic small watercraft in the Northeast and possibly the United States.
Of the 550 boats on the Mystic campus, 450 are tucked away in this Watercraft Collection, as it is known. The seaport just doesn't have enough exhibit space to display these boats in a public area, though some small crafts are exhibited elsewhere on the grounds.
So the collection, in a former velvet mill now known as the American Maritime Education and Research Centre, is open only to bona fide researchers, who show up at the rate of perhaps a half dozen a week.
One visitor may be writing a book on kayaks, a second perhaps researching early coastal fishing craft, another documenting the precise dimensions of a historic sailboat design.
“We feel it's important that these boats be made accessible to the public, despite the fact that the collection is closed,'' Vermilya said. “The attitude is there but the means to bring it about is not.''
Although there is no firm date but the seaport plans to make at least part of the collection more accessible to the public.
On display
It is an extraordinary collection by any measure. There are dugout canoes nearly two centuries old, rare rowboat designs including the Rangeley guide boat and the Adirondack guide boat, historic sailboat designs, dinghies, small powerboats, Inuit and other kayaks, famous shell designs, even a rare bateaux used in log drives, the interior pocked with holes from the spikes on the bottom of log driver boots.
Many of the boats were designed for work, such as fishing or cargo transport, and evolved into pleasure craft.
There are other museums with strong small watercraft collections in the American Northeast, notably the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York, and the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, also in New York, which has many inland recreational craft including rowboats, kayaks canoes and sailboats.
But the Mystic collection includes both work boats and pleasure crafts, both coastal and inland, with an emphasis on New England boats. “As far as an all-around collection, it is the best,'' said Hallie E. Bond, curator of boats at the Adirondack Museum.
Bond said other museums have received permission from Mystic in not only collecting historic boats, but also in trying to preserve the skills that went into building small boats, a philosophy advanced by John Gardner, a legendary figure in what is considered the small boat renaissance of the 1970s.
Like a library
Gardner “promoted the idea that we don't know these objects until we know how they were built and how they were used'', Bond said. Vermilya likens the collection to a library.
“As with a library, where you might have more than one book on a single subject, we might have a dozen dories,'' he said.
Also in the collection is a vintage sharpie, a vessel used along the Connecticut coast first by oystermen and later by recreational sailors.
And there is a mint condition small canoe, rigged for sailing and built by Robert Culler, one of the builders who helped spark the small-boat renaissance decades ago.
The boat was modelled upon those of an early canoe designer by the name of Henry Rushton, famous for his compact canoes.
Boats in the collection are not restored. They are kept as they were when they were acquired, in keeping with the philosophy behind antiques today. The condition of a boat is taken as part of its history.
Meanwhile, the researchers trickle in. On a recent day, students from the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport, Rhode Island, arrived to take a look at one of the collection's treasures, a 19th-century Whitehall style boat — a rowboat that was the mainstay boat of the Manhattan waters before major bridges were built.
The students will build a replica of the Whitehall, a 15ft craft often used as a water taxi more than a century ago.
“There is nothing like having the artefact to work from, just as a resource,'' said Warren Barker, the school's senior instructor.
Access up close
“You can look at drawings and photographs, but to be able to look at the boat, be able to measure it and have access to the craft is crucial. You can get a sense of the boat if nothing else,'' Barker said.
The Whitehall, named for the area where it is thought to have originated, Whitehall Street in Manhattan, is a good example of the value of the collection.
It is thought to be the only remaining Whitehall built in Manhattan among the thousands that were crafted.
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