Pictures from Connecticut

Connecticut is one of America's smallest states. Actually only Delaware and Rhode Island are smaller. In 2008 we came to the state, specifically the city of New London with ferry from Long Island, and the next day we drove north towards Boston. We had however, time enough to visit the small town of Mystic and visit the maritime museum, Mystic Seaport. If anybody wonders about the name of Mystic, it has nothing to do with mysticism, but it comes from a word in the now extinct Mohegan-Montauk-Narragansett language, "missituck" which simply means "a river that is so large that it has waves. "

Click on a picture for full size.

	Mystic River, seen from a rest area on I-95.
	Along the Mystic River are some big houses, many of which were previously homes of ships captains.
	This picture showing some of the big houses was taken from Mystic Seaport
	In this picture of the river, you can spot an old wooden ship in the left side of the picture.
	The port itself is protected inside the Mystic River estuary.
	Perhaps this shows better in this picture
	Just outside the entrance to Mystic Seaport you will find this small lake and fountain
	Dorte, outside the entrance to Mystic Seaport. The place claims to be the world's largest maritime museum
	And then we entered the museum.
	Here you will find, among other things, a large number of old wooden ships.
	One of them is a copy of the slave ship "Amistad", known from the novel and movie of the same name. The ship was not in port while we visited the museum as it was on a trip across the Atlantic
	In return we got there on the last day of the annual wooden ships festival, so the port was loaded with wooden ships and boats of all sizes and flavors, from dinghies to sailing ships to motorboats.
	In the museum there are also some 30 old houses, especially workshops related to shipping, some original, others are moved to the museum from other places on the east coast of the U.S.
	A number of these buildings contain exhibits.
	Like this model of Mystic as it looked around 1870.
	The model is around 50 feet long and very detailed. It is actually possible to see the outhouses behind the houses in town.
	Other buildings in the museum houses workshops.
	Or shops.
	On the occasion of the wooden ships festival you could buy a little of everything from beef jerky, hats made from seaweed to birch bark canoes.
	The museum also houses shops that are used for maintenance of the ships that are on display at the museum.
	In this shed, you should be careful when you move, so you do not get hit by the swallows, which nest under the roof.
	The building contains the remains of the old schooner Australia, which has led a tumultuous life. Now it is preserved as a wreck, so you can see how such a ship was constructed.
	Even the city's old lighthouse is now located inside the museum area.
	The largest ship in the museum is the Charles W. Morgan. The ship is America's only remaining wooden whaling ship, built in 1841. The ship has been declared a National Historic Landmark, and is worth a visit. Here you can feel transported back to Herman Melville's Moby Dick
	Another of the great wooden ships are the training ship Joseph Conrad. This ship, built in Copenhagen in 1882, was until 1934 known as Danish Training Ship Georg Stage. In 1934 the vessel was sold and the the current Georg Stage (built of steel) got the name.
	The ship sank in 1905 and 23 sailors and cadets drowned, but the ship itself was salvaged and sailed on for 29 more years as a Danish training ship. From 1934 the vessel was privately owned, and in 1947 it came to the museum.

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