The Charles W. Morgan's enduring cargo is not the oil and bone of her travels, but the story that she alone survives to tell. Matthew Stackpole, ship's historian for her restoration at Mystic Seaport and a West Tisbury resident, recounts the whaleship's many Vineyard connections.
For the first time in nearly a century, the whaleship Charles W. Morgan had seawater under her hull and the wind billowing her sails as she cast off Saturday from New London for a sea trial.
One day next week citizens of the Island will look out over Vineyard Sound and watch as a striking vestige of our whaling heritage passes by.
Whether the whaleship Charles W. Morgan will sail into Tisbury Wharf on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday depends, fittingly, on the seas. Her final ceremonial voyage completes a journey that began in 1841 when she set sail from New Bedford for the first time with a Vineyard captain and seventeen Island crew members aboard.
Charles W. Morgan visits Martha's Vineyard June 21 to 24. Martha's Vineyard Museum gears up for visit with lecture on history of whaling by author Eric Jay Dolin.
More than 170 years after the wooden ship first set sail, and nearly 100 years after her last whaling trip, the Morgan’s 38th voyage is fast approaching. She will visit the Vineyard in June.
Nearly 173 years after she first set sail, the Charles W. Morgan has survived to earn a new distinction. She is the last surviving whaling ship and this spring she sets sail once again.
Last weekend the Charles W. Morgan was relaunched on her 172nd birthday after a major rebuild; much of her remains original including the keelson. The live oak in her massive double sawn frames was salvaged after a southern U.S. hurricane, and she has been rebuilt absolutely true to her original design and methods of construction. She was originally launched from the Hillman Shipyard in New Bedford (the Hillman family came from Chilmark) on July 21, 1841, and sailed on 37 voyages with the last voyage in 1921.
The Charles W. Morgan, the last of the wooden whaleships, will be refloated Sunday, July 21, at Mystic Seaport after an extensive and expensive restoration. A large crowd is expected at the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard, which is on the grounds of the Mystic Seaport.
On Saturday afternoon a crowd gathered at the Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway. They had come to witness the launching of a 28-foot replica whaleboat which had been built at the shipyard as part of the restoration of the Charles W. Morgan, the only remaining wooden whaling ship in the U.S. The crowd was not filled with mere bystanders, though. Muscle was needed.
“It takes a village to put one of these together,” said Nat Benjamin, one of the shipyard’s founders. “It looks like it’s going to take a whole city to launch it.”
