Tuesday September 29, 2009

 

 

Mystic Seaport

Mystic, Connecticut

Part 4

Friday, September 18

 

 

 

 We continued our interesting walk into the past.

 

 

Burrows House

Welcome to the home of storekeeper Seth Winthrop Burrows and his milliner wife, Jane.  (Milliner: somebody who designs, makes, or sells women’s hats.) 

 

 

 Mrs. Burrows ran a household and contributed to the family’s stretched finances. 

 

 

  Mystic in the 1870s was a well-established, hard-working coastal community bustling with civic, church, and social activities, but a national recession and steady decline in wooden shipbuilding had hit local families and businesses.

 

 

 

 

 

 A few more steps took us to Mystic Print Shop

 

 

 Because my occupation involves layout and design, printing, and mailing newsletters for the TFC staff, I found this shop quite interesting.

 

 

 We’ve come a long way from rolling ink.

 

 

 Although the result was pretty good.

 

 

 The hoop maker specialized in the manufacture of wooden mast hoops of assorted sizes which held the sail to the mast on fore-and-aft rigged vessels. The equipment in this building was used by the Smith family in Canterbury, Connecticut, until well into the 1930s.

 

 

 Hoops were only one of the many products that came from their woodworking shop: the Smiths also produced wagons, wheels, clothespins, washboards, stable forks and belaying pins. 

  

 

Block Island Fire Engine #1

This Gleason & Baily hand pumped fire engine was manufactured in the 1850s and is a typical “crane neck, piano body fire engine.”

When the fire alarm sounded, four men pulled the engine while other volunteers pulled the hose reels.  The engine was pumped by pushing up and down on the long wooden handles called “brakes.”  Sufficient pressure could be built up inside the dome to force water through two 500-foot hoses and throw an effective steam over 100 feet.

 

 

In coastal towns, shipbuilders often used fire engines to pump water into the hulls of vessels awaiting launch.  The water would swell the planking and tighten the seams – and also indicate any major leaks.

 

 

 

 

This shipsmith shop was built at the head of Merrill’s Wharf (now Homer’s Wharf) in New Bedford, Massachusetts, by James D. Driggs in 1885. It is the only manufactory of ironwork for the whaling industry known to have survived from the nineteenth century.

 

 

 Smiths produced whaling harpoons, cutting irons, ship’s fittings, etc.

 

 

 On the day we visited, the smith was making hooks from scrap metal. 

 

 

 We are on the way to visit the Joseph Conrad training ship – but that story will have to wait until tomorrow night.