Mystic Seaport
Mystic, Connecticut
Part 5
Friday, September 18
Our next stop was the Joseph Conrad.
We walked a short distance to a building that housed the skeleton of another ship.
The Australia a shallow-draft schooner, formerly named AIma, was built in 1862 in Great South Bay, Long Island, New York. She was sold to British interests in Nassau for use as a blockade runner in the Civil War, and was eventually captured by Union warships, and later sold at auction to become a coaster in the Chesapeake.
The 70’7″, two-masted vessel came to Mystic Seaport in 1951 for use as a sail education vessel. In 1962 she was hauled out for restoration, but the decay was too extensive to make rebuilding worthwhile. It was therefore decided to preserve the Australia as an exhibit of ship construction. Today you can walk through and around this beached vessel, examining her “bones” as you might examine a skeleton.
A nearby building housed information on growing oysters.
A variety of methods used to harvest oysters.
Another pathway took us to Lighthouse Point.
A cormorant kept a close eye on everything going on around it – on land and in the water.
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Tomorrow night: Restoring an Icon – The Charles W. Morgan is the last wooden whaling ship in the world.
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