CONNECTICUT & THE SEA
Produced, Written &
Directed by Kenneth A. Simon
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TEASE
WALTER
CRONKITE: Long Island Sound, the rivers, the estuaries, the open waters of the
Atlantic. Connecticut’s maritime geography helped establish the state and
define its early culture.
GADDIS SMITH (Larned Prof. of History, Yale
University) the whole economic development and the whole history of ¾ of the colony and then the state is tied up
with the sea and this is true to this day.
CRONKITE: No part of Connecticut is more than two
hours from the Sound. Yet for many
state residents there is no real connection to the sea. For others, the maritime life largely defines who they
are.
FRED CALABRETTA (Assoc. Curator, Mystic Seaport) our experiences and history in relationship with the sea has entered our culture in ways that we don’t always even realize
CRONKITE: Next – Connecticut & the Sea.
CRONKITE: The history of Connecticut has been powerfully shaped by the sea.
For hundreds of years, Connecticut has looked to the open waters of the Atlantic, Long Island Sound, the coastal estuaries and inland rivers -- for both inspiration and livelihood.
Connecticut's people have always aggressively found new ways and new industries to exploit the sea's bounty, pursue adventure on and under its surface, and enjoy its vast beauty.
It is a steadily unfolding story of boundless possibilities met by extraordinary ingenuity. Through new ideas and technologies, fishery development, naval defense, and exploration -- Connecticut’s continuing connection to the sea helped not only to build the state, but also played a large part in America's maritime story.
Although the sea was once the economic mainstay of Connecticut and a dominant part of its culture, many state residents today have little sense of its exceptional role in state history.
But Connecticut’s seafaring ways and its coastal connections continue to spur imagination and stimulate the economy.
These are the sea stories
that make Connecticut history, and that continue to influence Connecticut
today. These are the stories of Connecticut and the sea …
CRONKITE: Native people in
Connecticut from the earliest days looked to the sea for sustenance,
transportation and culture.
MELISSA FAWCETT (Dir., Mohegan Tribal Museum Authority): In the beginning, we believe that the earth came out of the sea upon the back of grandfather turtle, Guganous Tuapas, great sea turtle. Since that time we’ve looked upon the turtle and the sea as the birth and origin of our beginnings and the grandfather turtle as the most sacred of all beings.
In ancient times one of the reasons that the Mohegans chose to live in this area were rumors of the great fishing, particularly the shellfish beds that were supposedly in this area.
Oystering is extremely important to the Mohegan people in ancient times right up to the present. On all our traditional tribal lands you’ll find huge heaps of what we call middens or oyster piles. Oyster piles were used not only for food garbage dumps but also in the wintertime when people couldn’t be buried beneath the Earth you’ll find that Indian people were buried in these huge heaps.
KEVIN
MCBRIDE (Dir. Research, Mashantucket Pequot Museum): The earliest year ‘round settlements that we identify in New England
are always in coastal settings.
These
areas provided the mechanism and the opportunity to settle year ‘round,
establish permanent villages and sort of really establish a very complex
lifeways very closely tied to the sea. 50 percent of the subsistence base of
these native people were tied, directly tied to the ocean.
MELISSA FAWCETT (Dir., Mohegan Tribal Museum Authority): Wampum was one of the most sacred commodities that the Mohegan people drew from the sea.
When belts are created in ancient times, they were traded but they were also used as a medium of preventing spiritual infection. It’s a token of honor. A token of esteem.
KEVIN
MCBRIDE (Dir. Research, Mashantucket Pequot Museum): When Europeans arrived they noticed the importance of this shell
to native people and they would exchange European trade goods to
native people for furs and they would take these furs, ship them back to Europe
that they made into felt.
Natives
in the interior not only desired European trade goods in exchange for their
furs but more importantly they began to demand wampum which was a specific type of bead made from these shells. Purple bead was made from Quahog and a white
bead was made from the whelp
and
the only suppliers of this material was the coastal peoples of Long Island
Sound and very quickly these beads became such an important commodity in the
fur trade that unless you had access to these beads you couldn’t compete very
well in the fur trade.
The
first place that Europeans chose to settle tended to be those areas along the
coast and along the rivers because of access for transportation and
communications for their ships and they slowly pushed native people into the
interior. So the history of native people in this region is directly tied to
the – to the coast, both prior to European contact and after European contact.
CRONKITE: Colonial Connecticut was quick to exploit the sea for economic growth.
Connecticut’s farmers and merchants prospered during the colonial period and
the early 19th century with a huge maritime trade to the West Indian
islands of the Caribbean.
Connecticut shipped endless amounts of livestock,
…to the West Indies as well as a lot of grown products: wheat, corn, potatoes, butter,
cheese and what they generally brought back was rum, molasses and it was a
very, very lucrative trade.
WILLIAM PETERSON (Senior Curator, Mystic Seaport): When you think of the West Indies Trade in Connecticut you ¾ you think of New Haven, you think of New London, Norwich, Stonington, ports along the Connecticut River, particularly Middletown and Hartford, Glastonbury all were deeply involved in the trade to the West Indies. If you look at the marine lists …in the various newspapers of the time vessels were constantly leaving … for the West Indies.
BRENDA
MILKOFSKY (Dir., Wethersfield Historical Society): The trade was an impetus for shipbuilding all over the state and
for all of the allied trades for the anchor forgeries for sail makers for rope
walks. It created a great deal of prosperity that a lot of people shared in,
farmers as well, coopers, and it really led to the development of much of the
great architecture that remains in Connecticut and the furniture and paintings
that we find in museums and collections.
SALLY
RYAN (New London Municipal Historian): This is the home built by William Coit
1763 But actually the Coit family in New London – goes back to the 1660’s when
Coit came here and became involved in shipbuilding. The family was always
involved in shipbuilding and they had shipyards right down on this cove here.
If you look, you see it’s still land, you can see behind the houses across the
way was where the Coit had their shipyards.
People like Coit built the ships that the mariners used in the West
Indie trade.
New London, from the very beginning was a
seaport. Merchants like Nathaniel Shaw
who lived here, this was his home, he was involved in the West Indian trade and
people like Nathaniel Shaw became extremely wealthy.
In the 18th Century the islands of the
Caribbean, the West Indies, most of them their one big crop was sugar and they
completely cleared the islands and planted every bit of land they had into
sugar. So places like New London, supported the plantation system down
there in the West Indies.
BRENDA MILKOFSKY (Dir., Wethersfield Historical
Society): The trade lasts really until the 1830’s when the
plantation system in the islands begins to break down and the London investors
who were backing all of those sugar plantations are looking to new industry for
investment. The slaves are freed down there and so the mass markets for
agricultural products and – and lumber begins to dissipate
CRONKITE: Shipbuilding -- for pleasure, commerce and defense -- is an enduring Connecticut industry, starting in the Colonial era and continuing through today.
BRENDA MILKOFSKY (Dir., Wethersfield Historical
Society): Shipbuilding along the
Connecticut River was one of the largest industries with the exception of
agriculture during the 18th and 19th Century.
Some two dozen vessels were built across the river
here in the Goodspeed Shipyard between 1848 and 1881. Over the years there were about 42 shipyards between Saybrook and
Springfield, Massachusetts. In the early period they built small coastwise
vessels, sloops and schooners many of them in response to the – the stone
industry, to carry brownstone and cobble and granite from the Connecticut River
Valley to New York.
In the later years the shipyards congregated
in the lower valley and they began building 700 to 1,000 tonners. Many of those
cotton packets for the cotton packet trade that many Connecticut families
invested in. Many of them whalers …and vessels in the European packet trade as
well.
WILLIAM PETERSON (Senior Curator, Mystic Seaport):
In the 19th Century I think of the principal activities as
shipbuilding, fishing and coastal commerce as the great sort of triumvirate of
activity
The number of vessels sailing along the rivers and the Sound were just tremendous …today we don’t really get a glimpse of it at all because of the size of the vessels have changed, the types of vessels have changed.
CRONKITE: For a small state,
in the 19th Century, Connecticut had a far-reaching impact in the
maritime industry. Although most of the oceangoing long-distance vessels sailed
from large ports like New York City or Boston, ownership often was
Connecticut-based.
WILLIAM PETERSON (Senior Curator, Mystic Seaport):
Being so close to New York which was the chief entrepot, chief port …of the
nation …during the 19th Century was very important to the
development not only of New York but of Connecticut itself. Connecticut built
the vessels that sailed out of the Port of New York, supplied the merchants who
operated the counting houses and the commission houses on South Street and also
supplied the ship captains who sailed many of these vessels as well.
During the era of the clipper ship, for example,
Connecticut furnished 22 clipper ships to the Port of New York and these
vessels would sail from New York. A clipper ship actually is a vessel that was designed to carry cargo …in the
quickest possible fashion to the ¾ to the gold fields of
California. They were very heavily
sparred, heavily canvassed vessels, carried a lot of sail
The clipper ship era lasted about 10 years, from
1850 to 1860, essentially, …Connecticut participated in it principally through
the port of Mystic. The Mystic clippers
were ¾ were kind of a distinctive vessel. In fact, the speed record from New York to
San Francisco during that 10-year period was held by Mystic built clippers
three of those years
One of the clippers built here in …Mystic was a ship
called the Andrew Jackson whose master was also a Mystic man, Captain John E.
“Kicking Jack” Williams. And he is credited along with the famous Massachusetts
built Flying Cloud as making the fastest passage from New York to San Francisco
and he made that voyage in 89 days and 4 hours.
CRONKITE: There are few
remaining shipyards in Connecticut today.
The building of wooden boats is all but a vanishing trade. Howard
Davis is a fourth-generation Connecticut shipwright whose years of experience
inform his work as an exhibit interpreter at Mystic Seaport.
HOWARD DAVIS (Retired Shipwright): Well, you know, when you grow up next door to a boat shop, your father and grandfather are both working in the shipyard which is just over the hill, why, it just kind of came natural to me that that’s what I wanted to do.
I went in the shipyard as soon as I was out of high
school at 18 years old and I learned to be a ship carpenter.
By
1941, I was ready to go to work in the Noank Shipyard. So after I had been there a while I was
moved into the carpenter’s crew and worked on the building of the ships which
were 97-foot wooden mine sweepers.
After we finished the boats for the Navy we worked
on pleasure boats, fishing boats and all this general maintenance of all kinds
of boats, then I was offered a job at the Eldridge Boatyard in - down in Noank
in 1947. We built smaller boats mostly
in the 35-foot class, by 1958 though something had happened to wooden boats. I
spent 17 years learning to build them, then they build them out of fiberglass
and so the Eldridge shop closed in 1958.
I
haven’t worked on anything but woodworking because I wanted to build wooden
boats. To me it’s the best work anybody
could get. You start out with a pile of
oak and a pile of cedar, two piles of wood and by April, if you’d start around
Christmas, by April you’ve got a finished boat that’s ready to slide down into
the water and the sense of satisfaction, I can’t describe it, but you’ve got
it.
SALLY RYAN (New London Municipal Historian): Being a
seaport, New London has always had a customs house. This customs house was
built in 1833, designed by Robert Mills who actually designed the Washington
Monument. A customs house was important because the federal government depended
on custom duty to finance the government. …The whaling ships that came in,
their cargo would come through this customs house.
Today, this building is now a museum. … but … the
federal government still does maintain an office here as a customs office
because New London is still an active seaport.
CRONKITE: Connecticut’s impact on America’s maritime
naval tradition goes back to the very beginning of the country.
In the American Revolution, Connecticut’s government protected the
seacoast and the commerce of the state with a small state navy of about 13
vessels. In both the American
Revolution and the War of 1812, Connecticut, like other states, also licensed
privateers, which were commercial vessels converted to military use in order to
disrupt British shipping. Captured cargoes
would be divided among the privateer crew and the government.
REAR ADM. DOUGLAS H. TEESON (Supt., U. S. Coast Guard Academy): in the time of the American Revolution New London was the home to the greatest concentration of privateers who went out and helped win the revolution. I think that’s why Benedict Arnold came here and burned the place down.
CRONKITE:
In addition to privateering, smuggling helped win the revolution. But after the
Revolution was won, Alexander Hamilton founded the Coast Guard to help the
custom service collect shipping revenues.
REAR
ADM. DOUGLAS H. TEESON (Supt., U. S. Coast Guard Academy): Smuggling had been a
time honored practice. …but as soon as the …war was won it was then necessary
to build the economy and so the Coast Guard got its start as a maritime force
to enforce the customs laws …of the day.
IRVING KING (Prof. Emeritus of History, U. S. Coast
Guard Academy): It was the only
source of revenue that the nation had at the time that which it took in from
tariffs and tonnage duties.
The Coast Guard Academy was begun in 1876, ’77 to
provide a well-trained professional officer corps really in response to a
problem of corruption in the old collecting service.
REAR ADM. DOUGLAS H. TEESON (Supt., U. S. Coast
Guard Academy): The Coast Guard Academy started on a school ship, not as big as
the Eagle but a schooner. It was called the Dobbin. Initially out of Baltimore.
Later it sailed out of New Bedford. The
skipper of the first school ship wanted the home port to be New London but the
Coast Guard Academy didn’t come here until about 1910. And initially the
academy ran at Fort Trumbull
IRVING KING (Prof. Emeritus of History, U. S. Coast
Guard Academy): The Coast Guard
Academy again began to outgrow the old revolutionary era fort site at Fort
Trumbull in the 1920’s which was the result of the fact that the service
expanded so during its fighting the rum war at sea to enforce prohibition.
CRONKITE: In 1932 the present Coast Guard Academy,
built on land donated by New London, was occupied by cadets for the first time.
IRVING KING (Prof. Emeritus of History, U. S. Coast
Guard Academy): We here at the
academy train officers who end up being important to the shipping of the world to
the safety of life at sea in the world to the saving of the environment.
REAR ADM. DOUGLAS H. TEESON (Supt., U. S. Coast Guard Academy): One of the things we try to teach our future leaders as – as we say it, a liking for the sea and its lore and as far as a place to have the Coast Guard Academy this city and this stretch of coast has it all. We have the harbor here with its commercial activity, we have the passenger ferries coming and going, we’ve got the recreational use of things like Ocean Beach, and then we’ve got great neighbors like Mystic Seaport. And then when you think about the Navy’s presence here in terms of the submarine force, I could go on and on but basically the stretch of coast here has everything you’d want if you were picking a place to put the Coast Guard Academy.
CRONKITE:
It was during the War of 1812 that the British made several major raids along
the Connecticut shore, including a raid on the river port of Essex that led to
the destruction of several dozen vessels.
In 1814, the British attacked Stonington and bombarded the town.
JAMES TERTIUS DEKAY (Author, The Battle of Stonington):
On August 9th, 1814, the war was going badly for America in
the War of 1812and the Royal Navy under the command of Thomas Hardy who was a famous
British Royal Navy Officer, came in and he didn’t want to hurt the people in
the town, he just wanted to destroy the town. And he sent in a note to that
effect.
MUSIC: Tom Callinan – Battle of Stonington
Four gallant ships from England came,
Trade indeed with fire and flame,
And other things we need not name,
To have a dash at Stonington.
JAMES
TERTIUS DEKAY (Author, The Battle of
Stonington): And the people rose
up, they were outraged by this, they said, no you’re not. We’re gonna fight
back. Which was an extraordinarily
brave and, let’s face it, foolhardy point of view to take because they had two
cannon, this is one of them, and the Royal Navy had at least 120 cannon on
these five ships that they brought in.
They made as though they little cared,
For that came so very hard,
The cannon played on Stonington.
For the bombs were thrown,
The rockets flew.
All
of a sudden Commodore Hardy is sitting there saying, hey, look, I’m a hero, I don’t
want to be known as someone who killed a lot of innocent Yankees because they
were brave enough to try to protect their homes and things like that.
He tried to attack but he tried to attack in ways
that wouldn’t hurt too much, and that didn’t work. So then he tried to send
some marines in, in boats, and the cannon, they brought the cannon down to the
point and they started firing at the boats and they sunk a couple of the boats
and so Hardy pulled them back.
This thing went on and off for like three or four
days and finally the British left.
The Battle of Stonington was a tiny little military
operation but a remarkably important piece of propaganda for America at a time
…when America was desperately in need of one. We were absolutely losing the war
and the Battle of Stonington gave great heart to people at a time when they
desperately needed it.
It cost the king ten
thousand pounds,
To have a dash at
Stonginton.
CRONKITE: In the 1850s, shipyards on the Connecticut
River and in Mystic and New London specialized in building shallow-draft
vessels used in the coastal cotton trade in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.
When the United States entered a commercial
depression in the late 1850s, this cotton trade business enabled many
Connecticut shipyards to survive.
When the Civil War arrived these shipyards were
still active and during the Civil War played a very important role in
shipbuilding.
WILLIAM PETERSON (Senior Curator, Mystic Seaport):
Right here in Mystic, for example, 56 steamers were launched in a 4-year
period. Probably the most famous was
the gunboat Galina which was the nation’s first ocean going ironclad vessel
ever. And it was one of the first of the three ironclad vessels ordered by the ¾ by the United States Navy during the Civil
War. The other two being the vessel called the ¾ the New Ironsides, and the
most famous, of course, was the Monitor.
CRONKITE: The Galena was built by Madison’s
Cornelius Scranton Bushnell, a successful shipbuilder and owner of the
Shoreline Railroad.
After starting construction of the Galena, Bushnell
met John Ericsson, a ship designer who had plans for a radically different type of ironclad. Bushnell recognized the
cutting-edge technology and brought the plans to Washington, where he lobbied
Congress for another shipbuilding contract.
It was a Connecticut connection in Washington –
Gideon Welles -- that helped win Bushnell his second ironclad contract, for a
ship, to be called the Monitor.
WILLIAM PETERSON (Senior Curator, Mystic Seaport):
Gideon Welles, is a good example of
the broader influence that Connecticut has had on the nation’s maritime affairs
over the years.
He was Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. And
Gideon Welles, although he wasn’t really a seafarer himself, had great
organizational skills and was instrumental in putting together
the American Navy during the Civil War, and building that up to a ¾ to a point where it grew from a relatively
small fleet of vessels to the largest naval fleet in the world by the time the ¾ the Civil War came to an end.
On
March 9th 1862 the Monitor
fought the battle, with the Merrimack which
was the first significant battle
of ironclad vessel against ironclad vessel and it was the – the final proof
that a wooden hull vessel really has no more utility in this form of warfare.
Although it attacked the British several times
during the War of Independence, the reality of operating in open harbor waters
proved too much for the technology of the time. But Connecticut’s place in
submarine history would continue with Electric Boat in Groton.
John Welch (Sr. V.P. General Dynamics Marine Systems Group): The first time submarines were actually built here in New London was in 1924 when we set up the shipyard here
and the first submarine we built for the United States was in 1933, here in New London, The Cuttle Fish. And then we built … about 112, 114 diesel submarines. Most of those were delivered during World War II
CRONKITE: Submarines built by Electric Boat played a critical part in the Allied war
effort in World War II.
At the peak of World War Two, Electric Boat employed 12,500 people and was launching a submarine every two weeks.
But when the war ended, EB struggled to adapt to
peacetime.
John Welch (Sr. V.P. General Dynamics Marine Systems
Group): And it really wasn’t till
the early 50’s that we started building submarines again post World War II and
that really was to start to build the workforce, the production workforce back
up for the emergence of nuclear power.
NEWSREEL: USS
NAUTILUS KEEL LAYING
CRONKITE: USS Nautilus was christened by
Mamie Eisenhower and launched into the Thames River in January 1954.
It was a soul-stirring moment for the thousands
who came to see her and the millions who heard or read about the launch.
From her maiden voyage a year later, she
shattered records -- running deep, fast and long, powered by the first
practical nuclear power plant.
Nautilus’ spectacular success was the beginning of
the nuclear navy so critical to Cold-War strategy, andthe birth of the controversial civilian nuclear electric
power plant program
Meanwhile, business would never be better for
Electric Boat.
John Welch (Sr. V.P. General Dynamics Marine Systems
Group): We grew the workforce a total of about 28,000 people in the early 80’s
and that was associated just with the high production rate of submarines. About
3, 4 submarines a year were being delivered out of this facility
CRONKITE: The USS Connecticut, commissioned in 1998,
was the 98th nuclear submarine delivered by Electric Boat to the U.S. Navy.
Since the end of the cold war the demand for submarines has gone down. So today we’re just over 9,000 people but the engineering design workforce and the production workforce is as skilled as its ever been,
John
Welch (Sr. V.P. General Dynamics Marine Systems Group): There’s not much like designing
and building a submarine. That’s probably one of the most complicated
structures that ever comes together and it’s a huge systems integration job.
And a lot of the technology associated with the
sonar, the combat system, the torpedo technology, much of that was developed
here in the region. So there became sort of a cottage industry that supported
the production, the research and engineering activities in this region.
I think you can easily call it the “submarine
capital of the world.” The fact that the submarines are based here, that really
becomes the ¾ the key ingredient and the
submarine base is really the heart of the Navy’s submarine training program as
well.
And so that ¾ that core of both
technology production skills and operational skills is as strong today as its
ever been
CRONKITE: The Submarine Base New London was
established in 1868 as a coaling station.’
It was built on land donated by the town of New London and the State of
Connecticut to the Navy.
Through the 19th and 20th Centuries,
the base expanded each time there was international tension or conflict.
In recent years the number of people stationed at
the base has declined, with the end of the cold war to about 9,000 Naval
personnel and 1,000 civilians. The Naval impact on the area remains strong,
however, with an additional 19,000 family members who live on the base or in
surrounding towns.
WHALING CITY 3 –
STAR ST.
SALLY RYAN (New London Municipal Historian): This is
Star Street in New London. This street is really built on land that at one time
was a rope walk. Being a seaport there
was a great need for rope so this – this whole length of this street would be
one long building like a shed where they would make rope by twisting hemp
The rope walk burned in the early part of the 19th
Century and left this whole block here empty so instead of rebuilding the rope
walk, they built this – these lovely houses.
I think it’s a good example to show you how New London was so prosperous
in the first half of the 19th Century. That these were the homes of
the middle-class merchants. And this is where they lived.
CRONKITE: Connecticut's people have always harvested
the sea's resources for profit.
In the early 19th Century,
entrepreneurial New London investors even found a way to profit from South
American bird droppings, known as guano. New Londoners introduced guano for use
as agricultural fertilizer, and shipped it to farmers in New England, southern
plantation owners and after the Civil War to Europe.
GADDIS
SMITH (Larned Prof. of History, Yale University) Connecticut people were actively involved especially to the
Chincha Islands which are islands off Peru and that trade peaked in the 1850’s.
In those islands there were compacted bird droppings that were two to three
hundred feet thick and it was extremely valuable
What was really bad about the guano trade was
digging the stuff on the islands because it ¾ when you broke up this ¾ this compacted bird droppings it was like
talcum powder and would get into your lungs and it was lethal, quite literally
lethal,
Chinese were used and they were virtually kidnapped.
It’s kind of the other slave trade They were brought there and they worked
almost for nothing, like 4-dollars a month, but they weren’t going to survive
because they would die quickly.
The ships that came in also
had their problems because this guano would be loaded on the ships, the dust of
it would envelop the ship. It really stunk. I mean, awful stuff. Ship’s
accounts record that approaching the guano island from downwind 100 miles away
they could smell it, so it was a pretty, pretty dismal business but it helped
grow food in the American south and in Europe.
CRONKITE: One of the first Connecticut maritime ventures was hunting fur seals in the South Atlantic for trade to China in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Most of the fur sealers sailed from New Haven or Stonington and traded fur skins for tea, chinaware and textiles. Vast fortunes were established through the fur seal trade, which lasted about 10 years.
The wealth amassed through fur sealing paled in
comparison with the riches generated from whaling.
The Hempsted house, the oldest house in New London,
was the home of Joshua Hempstead, a New London farmer and ship’s carpenter at
Coit’s shipyard.
Hempstead’s journal provides
the earliest surviving record of whaling in Connecticut -- in 1718. Hempsted wrote of hiring out his whale boat
to locals who pursued the whales then plentiful off Long Island. It was a small harbinger of bigger things
to come.
Dale Plummer (Norwich City Historian): One of the consequences of the Revolution was that New London really became cut out of the West Indies trade. The British controlled much of the West Indies.
But I think another factor in the early 1800’s was
the rise of New York as ¾ as the great transatlantic
shipping port. Trading was not as
feasible any more because, you know, much of the trade was really being drawn
off elsewhere.
Whaling offered a ¾ a real alternative that was
good because no longer did you have to depend on having something to ship
out. It just required what we had which
was skilled sailors, ships, capital.
And after the War of 1812 New London went into whaling pretty whole hog.
So much so that by the mid 1840’s New London becomes the second largest whaling
port in the world after New Bedford. 78 vessels sailing out after whales, also
seals, sea elephants. This whole area
was lined with wharves associated with the whaling industry.
WILLIAM PETERSON (Senior Curator, Mystic Seaport):
There were other Connecticut ports that were involved from time to time: but it
was New London that was the significant whaling port in the 19th
Century. The whale fishery was probably
the most important fishery that ¾ that Connecticut’s ever had
in terms of dollars.
One cargo of whale oil could be worth as much as a
million and a half dollars in today’s money and so it was worth the risk to
send a whale ship out for two or three years, sometimes longer.
An industry like whaling that was so important to
places like New London also required a lot of supporting trades and
industries. It brought tremendous prosperity
to the city. Fortunes were made, you
know, many of the leading families in New London became wealthy through the
whaling industry.
CRONKITE: Another
rather unique aspect of Connecticut whaling was elephant sealing, known locally
as “elephanting.”
Dale Plummer (Norwich City Historian): New Londoners
were known in the whaling trade as “underwater men” because they spent so much
time in the far north, in the far south where the conditions were so extreme.
One of their favorite ports of call -- if you could call it that, was
Desolation Island in the very south of the Indian Ocean at the fringe of the
Antarctic. Desolation was great because you had humpback whales that sported
about in the bays of Desolation, you had huge sea elephants that would haul up
on shore. You could kill them easily with clubs, spears, rifles …The blubber
would yield an oil indistinguishable from whale oil. So a lot of the whale oil
that was shipped into New London was actually from these giant seals some of them
getting up to 20 feet long.
By the 1880’s the whaling fleet had really reduced
to a few vessels. People are starting
to look at the industry with a lot of nostalgia
SALLY RYAN (New London Municipal Historian): This is
what we call Whale Oil Row. These houses were built in 1834 by Ezrah Chapel on
speculation to sell to people like whaling captains. These were expensive
homes. These homes would have been for people like captains and whaling merchants
who made money. The ordinary seaman
never could have afforded a home like this.
This would be a desirable place to live because they could walk downtown
and be right where the docks were.
This is the home of Acors Barns and Acors Barns was
what we call a whaling agent. The whaling agents were the ones who – they more
often owned the whaling ships but they would hire the captain, they would hire
the crew and they would get the supplies, and they are the ones who were in
charge of the whaling voyages.
They not only got the profits from the whaling
voyage itself but they owned the warehouses and when the whaling ship came
back, if whale oil was not selling at a high enough profit they could store the
oil and then sell it later. …And so they were the ones who became very wealthy.
This is the New London Public Library. This library
was a gift from Henry P. Haven. Henry P. Haven was a whaling agent but he also
was involved in the guano trade … There are many other public buildings in New
London like our hospital and the Lyman Allyn Art Museum and some of the
monuments, our sailors and soldiers monument. That were gifts to the city
from people who made their money from whaling and other maritime pursuits.
CRONKITE: In the 18th and 19th
Centuries New London, Mystic and other shoreline towns were home to numerous
captains of whaling and merchant ships.
WILLIAM PETERSON (Senior Curator, Mystic Seaport):
It was a very honorable position to be ¾ to be known as the master
of a vessel. And sometimes it didn’t really matter whether you were the master
of a small little fishing sloop …or a large clipper ship. …particularly in the
mid 19th Century,
A lot of these men would ¾ would grow up around the water, they would know
about it, they would know how to sail by the time they were teenagers in many
cases
The case of Captain Joseph Warren Holmes is ¾ is a really typical example in many ways. He
was born in Mystic and started as a cabin boy and literally worked his way up
through the ranks, became a whaling master and then moved over to captaining
clipper ships and other large merchant ships through the 19th
Century.
Captain Holmes has the record for rounding Cape Horn more than any other sea captain in a square rigged ship.
There was Captain Nathaniel Palmer of Stonington, Connecticut, for example, who discovered Antarctica in 1820 in a little sealing vessel called the Hero built right in Mystic, Connecticut.
CRONKITE: Captain George Comer was the last of New London’s
whaling captains.
FRED
CALABRETTA (Assoc. Curator, Mystic Seaport):
He was born in Quebec in 1858. His
father was lost at sea and his mother couldn’t support the children and
apparently he spent some time in an orphanage and then was placed out with a
foster family in East Haddam, Connecticut as a young boy and lived in East
Haddam for the rest of his life.
At the age of 17 in 1875 he walked from East Haddam
to New London and shipped out on a whaler. And over the next 44 years only 3
years passed during which he didn’t spend at least some time at sea. He sailed as captain or master of a ship
for the first time in 1895. He
specialized in arctic whaling. A typical voyage would be 27 months, about 16
months of which would be spent in winter quarters when the ship was completely
frozen in the ice and there was virtually no activity possible.
They had to survive on everything that they brought
with them, and for fresh meat they obtained deer meat and salmon from the Inuit
in trade
There would be a community of Inuit camped through
the entire winter right near the vessel and they became part of the social
activity and all the activity during the winter season.
Comer had
an interesting relationship with the Inuit.
He really developed an affection
for them.
He was also interested and became involved in arctic
exploration. He collected for some of
the great natural history museums not just in the United States but in the
world and became the leading authority in the world of the Inuit of the Hudson
Bay region
Captain Comer retired from the whaling industry in
1912 but it wasn’t the end of his career at sea. He participated in a couple of
arctic expeditions in association with the American Museum of Natural History,
Despite the fact that he was 59 years old he
enlisted in the Navy during World War I. and made several cruises onboard naval vessels. When he came back he became involved in a
trading and exploration venture heading again for Hudson Bay. Went back one
more time in 1919 at the age of 62. I think the primary reason he went back was
because he wanted to visit his Inuit friends.
And he returned to East Haddam permanently at that
point, was somewhat of a local celebrity,
He served a term in the Connecticut State
Legislature. He was in declining health later in life in part because of
the rigors of arctic whaling and died in 1937.
CRONKITE: The life of a captain was often a
privileged one. But for the men who crewed the whaling ships, their standard of
living and their lives at sea proved to be radically different.
Dale Plummer (Norwich City Historian): Each vessel
would carry a complement of men not only to work the sails and the rigging of
the ship but also to go out in small boats after whales, kill the, bring them
back in, strip off the blubber …and render it down into oil. So you might have
1,500 plus men, …maybe even 2,000 on the whaling vessels.
You might have at the height of the industry several
hundred sailors roaming the streets looking for a good time. I mean, New London was notorious for having,
you know, grog shops along Water Street and Bank Street, Reed Street. There was
Hell Hollow which was the local red light district.
The whaling merchants often encouraged sailors to
have a good time, you know, spend money. They would advance them money prior to
the voyage. The sailors would be
charged for loading the ship, they’d be charged for whatever advances they had
been given and they’d work it off as they were on the vessel and it was in the
interest of the owners to actually have the sailors start out the voyage in
debt to them.
The captains would be paid a share or what was
called “a lay” in the voyage. In fact, each member of the crew, the officers
and so forth would get this lay or share. The captain’s lay might be as much as
say a 12th or 16th. A green hand or a Portuguese from the
Azores or something else, they might be signed on for 195th or 175th.
WILLIAM PETERSON (Senior Curator, Mystic Seaport):
After a couple of years at sea, with a wage advance, and with the debts run up
through purchases at the ships store, known as the slop chest, many crewmembers
would be left in debt or with maybe $30 or $40 dollars. Life at sea was no
leisure cruise.
A lot of whale men when they first went to sea in the
whaling industry had great ideas of seeing the world and what a romantic kind
of opportunity it was to go on the high seas and capture the great leviathan,
…but if you read a lot of the journals that are in
the libraries around the state and elsewhere you’ll see that after a few months
most of these crewmen became very disillusioned with the …whole business.
MUSIC: Tom Callinan-
The Connecticut Whaler
I traveled far out in the
ocean,
Hunting and searching for
whales,