Mystic Seaport Museum or Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea in Mystic, Connecticut is the largest maritime museum in the United States. It is notable for its collection of sailing ships and boats and for the re-creation of the crafts and fabric of an entire 19th-century seafaring village. It consists of more than 60 historic buildings, most of them rare commercial structures moved to the 19-acre (0.077 km2) site and meticulously restored.
A pilot boat is a type of boat used to transport maritime pilots between land and the inbound or outbound ships that they are piloting. Pilot boats were once sailing boats that had to be fast because the first pilot to reach the incoming ship got the business. Today, pilot boats are scheduled by telephoning the ship agents/representatives prior to arrival.
Effie M. Morrissey is a schooner skippered by Robert Bartlett that made many scientific expeditions to the Arctic, sponsored by American museums, the Explorers Club and the National Geographic Society. She also helped survey the Arctic for the United States Government during World War II. She is currently designated by the United States Department of the Interior as a National Historic Landmark as part of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. She is the State Ship of Massachusetts.
Boston Light is a lighthouse located on Little Brewster Island in outer Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. The first lighthouse to be built on the site dates back to 1716, and was the first lighthouse to be built in what is now the United States. The current lighthouse dates from 1783, is the second oldest working lighthouse in the United States, and is the only lighthouse to still be actively staffed by the United States Coast Guard, being automated in 1998 though there is still a keeper acting as tour guide. The structure was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
Zodiac is a two-masted schooner designed by William H. Hand, Jr. for Robert Wood Johnson and J. Seward Johnson, heirs to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals fortune. Hand intended to epitomize the best features of the American fishing schooner. The 160-foot-long (49 m), 145-ton vessel competed in transatlantic races. In 1931 the vessel was purchased by the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association, brought from the Atlantic, modified and placed in service as the pilot vessel California serving as such until retired in 1972.
Adventuress is a 133-foot (41 m) gaff-rigged schooner launched in 1913 in East Boothbay, Maine. She has since been restored, and is listed as a National Historic Landmark. She is one of two surviving San Francisco bar pilot schooners.
Adventure is a gaff rigged knockabout schooner. She was built in Essex, Massachusetts, USA, and launched in 1926 to work the Grand Banks fishing grounds out of Gloucester. She is one of only two surviving knockabout fishing schooners – ships designed without bowsprits for the safety of her crew.
Emma C. Berry is a fishing sloop located at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, United States, and one of the oldest surviving commercial vessels in America. She is the last known surviving American well smack. This type of boat is also termed a sloop smack or Noank smack. The Noank design was imitated in other regions of the United States.
Mercantile is a two-masted schooner berthed in Camden Harbor, Camden, Maine. Built in the 1914-16 on Little Deer Isle, Maine, she is one of a small number of such vessels still afloat from a time when they were one of the most common cargo vessels of the coasting trade. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991, she now serves as a "Maine windjammer", offering multi-day sailing cruises to tourists.
The three-masted schooner Victory Chimes, also known as Edwin and Maud or Domino Effect, is a US National Historic Landmark. She is the last surviving Chesapeake Ram schooner. The boat on the Maine State Quarter is meant to resemble the Victory Chimes.
Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun is the California state agency responsible for licensing and regulating pilots within one of the largest harbors in the world and the tributary Sacramento River delta. It licenses and regulates up to 60 pilots of the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association. They are called "bar pilots" because they maneuver ships across a large and dangerous sand bar just outside the Golden Gate at the mouth of San Francisco Bay.
Pet No. 9 was a pilot boat used by the New York Sandy Hook Pilots in the 19th century. The schooner was used to pilot vessels to and from the Port of New York and New Jersey.
The schooner Timberwind is a historic former pilot boat, now berthed in Portland, Maine. Built in 1931, she served as a pilot boat in Portland Harbor until 1969, and was then converted into a schooner as part of the Maine "windjammer" tourist fleet. She is one of a very small number of early 20th-century purpose-built pilot boats that has survived major alteration, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. She moved to Rockport in 1969 and then to Belfast in 2015. She was purchased by the Portland Schooner Company in 2018.
Thomas Francis McManus was a fish merchant who became a naval architect, responsible for introducing the shortened bowsprit and long stern overhang to give speed to his vessels. He was well known for revolutionizing the Gloucester fishing schooner. He made the fastest vessels of their type in the world and was honored on two continents for his skill as a naval architect. He became known as the "Father of the Fishermen's Races." 500 fishing schooners used his designs to improve speed. He was a friend of Sir Thomas Lipton and President Theodore Roosevelt.
The Northern Light was a 19th-century yacht, built in 1839 at the Whitemore & Holbrook shipyard for Colonel William P. Winchester, a Boston merchant. She was designed by Louis Winde, an early yacht designer and shipbuilder. She sank en route to California in 1850. A second Northern Light, was built in 1927 and bought by the Boston Pilots' Association to serve as a pilot-boat from 1934 to 1941. She was sold to the United States Army in 1941 to serve in the war effort during World War II.
The Pilot was a pilot boat built in 1924 and designed by yacht designer William Starling Burgess. She was purchased by the Boston Pilots' Association to take the place of the pilot boat Louise that was withdrawn from service in 1924. The Pilot was in service for over fifty years before she was sold in 1976. She became the longest-serving pilot boat in American history.
The Coquette was a 19th-century yacht and pilot boat, built in 1845 by Louis Winde, at the Winde & Clinkard shipyard in Chelsea, Massachusetts for yachtsmen James A. Perkins. Her design was based on a model by shipbuilder Dennison J. Lawlor. The Coquette was a good example of an early American yacht with a clipper bow. As a yacht, she won the attention for outsailing the larger New York yacht Maria at the second New York Yacht Club regatta in 1846. Perkins sold the Coquette to the Boston Pilots' Association for pilot service in 1848. She continued as a pilot boat until 1867 when she was sold as a Blackbirder to be used on the African coast.
Ambrose A. Martin, was a 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts yacht and boat shipbuilder. He built the Ambrose A. Martin shipyard in 1882 at Jeffries Point, East Boston, where he built many notable Boston yachts and schooners. Martin died in Boston in 1934.
The William Starkey was a 19th-century pilot boat built in 1854, by Benjamin F. Delano at the Thatcher Magoun shipyard for W. W. Goddard, of Boston. Starkey helped transport Boston maritime pilots between inbound or outbound ships coming into the Boston Harbor. She was named for Captain William Starkey, one of the founders of the Boston Marine Society. The Virginia Pilots' Association purchased the Boston schooner William Starkey in 1865, where she became a pioneer of the associations' fleet and the oldest pilot boat on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. In the age steam, she was sold in 1899 to Thomas Darling of Hampton, Virginia.
