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Wolfgang, you wrote:
"Nice photographs, Frank. It's almost 13 years that I've been there myself,
but it looks like it hasn't changed a lot. How about making some pictures of
the instruments that they have."


Mystic Seaport has barely survived the past 13 years. Though the museum has
substantial hard assets, and I don't mean the items in the collections, they
have had exceptionally poor attendance and very bad management of their
other sources of revenue. So, yes, there have been almost no changes in the
past 13 years. They have been treading water. In fact, the biggest change is
that they are now far more dependent on volunteers and on many days
significant exhibits, including major vessels, are closed to the public.

One interesting bit of hardware they've acquired is a large new liftdock.
They needed it badly in order to work on the Charles W. Morgan, which has
not been out for maintenance in twenty years. The Morgan is coming out of
the water at the end of this year, and it will be dis-masted and largely
closed to the public for two to three years. When I proposed this year's
navigation weekend last fall, Seaport management requested that we wait
until 2009 since that's when the museum would need visitors while the Morgan
was inaccessible. To me, that's very weird logic. But that's life in the
museum world: 'let's invite people when there's less to see and send them
away when there's more to see'.

As for photographing navigational instruments, there are only a few on
display. There is a large collection in the "other" museum. Mystic Seaport
is a public museum, with watered-down content since museum curators in this
part of the world tend to think of their daily visitors as ignorant cattle.
And then there is the research museum, which we will be touring (for a fee,
paid by the Susan P. Howell Fund incidentally) on Friday. It's like visiting
a treasure room in a hollywood movie. Unfortunately, they do not allow
photography in the treasure rooms except via complicated procedures, so I
can't take any pictures of the instruments there.

But I will try to get some photos of the few interesting instruments that
are, in fact, on display. Even more impressive is the vast store of
logbooks. While I was helping Don Treworgy photograph some pages in a
logbook yesterday, he mentioned that this navigator, C.H. Tonwshend (see the
schedule), did a few lunars. This was fascinating since the voyage took
place in 1865. This is the first example I've seen in the Seaport's
collection of lunars after 1850. But the wonderful thing was seeing the page
where he worked one out. I think he must have done this on a bet or to amuse
himself: the entire lunar calculation is worked out in a space smaller than
3x3 inches. It's written out in ridiculously tiny script, but it's all
there. If he had done the work in his normal size lettering, the calculation
would have filled an entire page. Incidentally, his reasons for shooting a
lunar are interesting, but I don't want to spoil the fun...

 -FER



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