Matthew Stackpole of West Tisbury grew up on the grounds of the Mystic Seaport Museum. Today he is the 67-year-old ship historian for the Chas. W. Morgan who speaks of his lucky life.

Making history, the bark Morgan, the last remaining wooden whaling ship, has left Newport, R.I. and is bound for the Vineyard. The ship will be visible from the north shore as she sails through Vineyard Sound. She is scheduled to arrive at Tisbury Wharf Wednesday afternoon.

In the early days of whaling on Martha's Vineyard, foul weather and ferocious whales were the least of a whaler's worries.

The Charles W. Morgan's enduring cargo is not the oil and bone of her travels, but the story that she alone survives to tell. Matthew Stackpole, ship's historian for her restoration at Mystic Seaport and a West Tisbury resident, recounts the whaleship's many Vineyard connections.

For the first time in nearly a century, the whaleship Charles W. Morgan had seawater under her hull and the wind billowing her sails as she cast off Saturday from New London for a sea trial.

One day next week citizens of the Island will look out over Vineyard Sound and watch as a striking vestige of our whaling heritage passes by.

Whether the whaleship Charles W. Morgan will sail into Tisbury Wharf on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday depends, fittingly, on the seas. Her final ceremonial voyage completes a journey that began in 1841 when she set sail from New Bedford for the first time with a Vineyard captain and seventeen Island crew members aboard.

Charles W. Morgan visits Martha's Vineyard June 21 to 24. Martha's Vineyard Museum gears up for visit with lecture on history of whaling by author Eric Jay Dolin.