On another page is printed a poem by J. C. A. about the old whaler, Charles W. Morgan, who in her last days is serving the movies in a local color capacity.
Islanders from Nonouti attacked her in the western Pacific. She caught fire off the Azores, shipped seas over her stern during a storm as she approached Cape Horn and steered around mines during World War I. Sailing through and around all this danger while whaling on the far sides of the globe, it’s an irony that the Charles W. Morgan faced her greatest peril three years after she retired and while lying alongside a wharf just across the Acushnet River from New Bedford, the town she called home port.
Newly seaworthy after a restoration project that spanned seven years, the 19th century whaleship Charles W. Morgan has already graced the ports of Mystic and New London, Conn., and Newport, R.I. Now she’s prepared to welcome visitors in droves throughout the four-day docking at the Tisbury Wharf in Vineyard Haven.
The welcoming ceremony is at noon on Saturday.
At 93, S. Bailey Norton is the oldest living descendant of the first captain of the Charles W. Morgan. Fishing, he says, was what his family knew.
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.
