Mystic Seaport Museum photos

[Chris Meyer]

Greetings everyone,

In July of 2007 I took the family to the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT. The Seaport is fairly large and located right on the Mystic River. It has tall ships, a re-created 19th Century Village, museum buildings, etc. While checking out the 19th Century Village shops, we saw a Shipsmith’s Shop and a Cooper’s shop (barrel maker). Each of these shops had large numbers of old tools. Very cool! I took a bunch of digital photos, some of which I’d like to share with you here.

This is the Shipsmith’s shop

Here is the Shipsmith himself. He said his name, but I forgot it.

In his shop he had a DuPont-Fairbanks 50lb power hammer, which he said was appropriate for the time period of his 19th Century re-enactment shop.

The power hammer says “Toomey” on the side. The Smith said that Toomey was a distributor for DuPont-Fairbanks.

The Smith used a coal forge and had numerous anvils around the shop.

 

[Chris Meyer]

Mystic Seaport Museum continued…

The Shipsmith had quite the collection of hammers and swages laying around.

These are some harpoons the Shipsmith made. He was making Marlin Spikes for re-enactors at the Seaport while I was in the shop. He said he made knives for them too, but I didn’t see any of those.

 

[Chris Meyer]

Mystic Seaport Museum photos continued…

The Cooper’s Shop was interesting too. I love old tools, and he had some really beautiful tools. Most of them were specialized for barrel making, so I can’t tell you their names.

The Clockmaker’s Shop had a nice old metal working lathe.

While we were there, we checked out some of the big ships.

Naturally, I was on the lookout for Blacksmithing tools.

I played a trick on the museum and carried this little anchor home with me.

 

[Chris Meyer]

Mystic Seaport Museum photos continued…

There was a guy that had a boat building shop on site. He built this beauty. (He also rents them out.)

All in all, we had a good time. I thought the tickets were a bit over priced though.​

 

[Doug C]

Chris,
The 50 lb DuPont-Fairbanks/Toomey power hammer is pretty cool,
as are the hammers,anvils and other tools there.A trip back into the past for sure and nice pics.
Great stuff.


My two brothers worked at Gen Dynamics from '80 to '91 or 92,both built houses,New London,Niantic, and I visited fairly often,meant to do the Mystic scene most every time I visited and something always seemed to sidetrack us.

So thanks for this.:thumbup:

Beautiful family.The kids have fun?

Doug

 

[SharpByCoop]

Thanks Chris. This looks to be a worthy 90 min drive for our family. (Yes, it takes over 90 mins to drive from one end of CT to the other.... )

Nice & clear shots. Thank you!

Coop

 

[Chris Meyer]

Beautiful family.The kids have fun?

Thanks for the compliment Doug. The kids enjoyed the trip, all though my middle daughter was tired and somewhat grumpy. Of course with kids, you never seem to get them all happy at once anyway.

I really would have loved to rent one of those rowboats. If they work half as well as they look, they'd be great!


Coop, If you want to spend the entire day in Mystic, the Mystic Aquarium is only a couple of minutes away from the Seaport.


PS. Mace has identified the Shipsmith as Bill Sheer.

 

[Keith Montgomery]

Looks like a very cool place to spend a day.