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The Charles W. Morgan Ship

Charles W Morgan Limited 32" Tall Model Ship Already Built Not a Kit!

The Charles W. Morgan is on exhibit today in Mystic, Connecticut at the Mystic Seaport museum. She is the world’s oldest surviving merchant vessel.

She served as a U.S. whaling ship in the 19th and early 20th century. As merchant vessel she harvested the blubber of whales for oil. Back in those days the oil was used for lamps.

Charles W. Morgan was a Quaker whaling merchant that had the ship built and named after him. He had the ship built by Jethro and Zachariah Hillman of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

The ship was first launched in September of 1941. And her first voyage was to take her around Cape Horn then cruise the Pacific Ocean.

Her first voyage took three years and 4 months, upon her return she was loaded with 800 barrels of whale oil, 1600 barrels of sperm oil and around 10,000 lbs of baleen or whalebone. The load was valued at $56,000 thousand dollars.

The ship remained in service for 80 years, during this time period it was said the she made 37 voyages. The voyages lasted anywhere from 9 months to five years. Over this time period the Charles W. Morgan brought to market 54,483 barrels of sperm whale oil and 152,934 lbs of baleen. Her voyages took the ship to the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans. Over the years she survived snow and ice storms and once a cannibal attach in the South Pacific. The Morgan’s home port was based out of San Francisco.

The Morgan ship was a working ship built to perform three jobs of a whaling ship.

The primary job was to serve as the mother ship to the smaller whale-boats and also to store them on davits when not in use.

Her secondary job was to serve as a refinery which extracted the oil from the whale blubber.

The last job but not the least she also served as an oil tanker to return the oil to market.

Over the lifetime of service the Charles W. Morgan had over 1,000 whale-men to serve aboard her. The crew was a diverse group of races and nationalities. They included not only Americans but sailors from many different places. Some came from Cape Verde, Guadeloupe, New Zealand, and Norfolk Island over the years.

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On the average voyage the ship carried around 33 men to carry out the duties of the whale-ship. Most often whale-ships of the 1800’s were the primary home to the Captain’s family.

Over the years of service there were a number of movies made the used the ship in some of their scenes. The movies were “Miss Petticoats” in 1916, “Java Head” in 1921 and “Down to the Sea in Ships” in 1922.

In June of 1924 the Sankaty steamer being on fire drifted across the Acushnet River in New Bedford harbor and collided with the Morgan. Fire spread to the ship causing some damage and just barely escaped destruction.

Thankfully the whaling days came to an end once refining petroleum was perfected. The ship was under the care of Whaling Enshrined, Inc. up to 1941. The whaling ship was transferred to Mystic Seaport where she remains to this very day. She holds the distinction of being the only surviving wooden whale-ship from the 1800 and is still sea worthy today. The ship is declared a National Historic Landmark and has a listing in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Charles W. Morgan is she is one of the four oldest sailing ships in the United States. The other three are the USS Constitution of 1797 and The Star of India 1863 along with the USS Constellation of 1854.