11/20/13 Technology Aids Restoration of Whaling Ship Morgan - NYTimes.com

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Restoring the Last Wooden Whaler

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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy

Harry R. Feldman, Inc.

Laser scanning is part of the stateoftheart technology being used to examine the Morgan’s structure. More Photos »

By WILLIAM J. BROADPublished: August 16, 2010

MYSTIC, Conn. — The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledgegone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship’smodels.

But the Charles W. Morgan is still here— the world’s last surviving woodenwhaling vessel, built in 1841. Andrestorers are spending $10 million toturn the museum piece into a workingship able to ply the unruly sea. Theyplan to sail the ship on its first voyagein nearly a century, opening a newchapter in its long career.

Built in New Bedford, Mass., a bustling port known as thewhaling capital of the world, the Morgan sailed the globefor eight decades in pursuit of leviathans, escaping fire andcannibals, Confederate raiders and Arctic ice. She broughthome thousands of barrels of whale oil that lighted homesand cities. She also delivered tons of baleen, the hornymaterial from the mouths of certain whales that was madeinto buggy whips and corset stays. In 1941, its centenary,the Morgan was towed to Mystic Seaport for museumdisplay and in 1966 was named a national historiclandmark.

To learn as much as possible about the old ship and ensureits successful restoration, the specialists here are turning tothe art and science of imaging.

They are deploying lasers and portable X-ray machines,laptops and forensic specialists, cameras and recorders,historians and graphic artists to tease out hidden details ofthe ship’s construction and condition. The project, begun in

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11/20/13 Technology Aids Restoration of Whaling Ship Morgan - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/science/17ship.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& 2/4

Dennis A. Murphy/Mystic Seaport

AT REST IN CONNECTICUT TheMorgan, built in 1841, has been dockedin Mystic, Conn., since 1941. MorePhotos »

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Christopher Capozziello for The New YorkTimes

An Xray generator is part of thetechnology being used to examine theMorgan’s structure. More Photos »

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Christopher Capozziello for The New YorkTimes

The radiography images are used toaid in repairs. More Photos »

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Christopher Capozziello for The New YorkTimes

Bill Movalson is an imaging specialiston the project. More Photos »

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Christopher Capozziello for The New YorkTimes

Wood from the ribs of the ship hasbeen replaced. More Photos »

2008, is producing a revealing portrait. It shows the exactplacement and status of many thousands of planks, ribs,beams, nails, reinforcing pins, wooden pegs and other vitalparts of the Morgan, giving shipwrights a high-tech guidefor the rebuilding of the historic vessel.

“When we’re done, she’ll be as strong or stronger as the lasttime she went to sea,” Quentin Snediker, director of theshipyard here, said during a restoration tour. “So why notsail her?”

Minutes later, a specialist was firing X-rays through theship’s keel — a massive oak spine composed of severaltimbers, its length more than 90 feet. He was hunting forthe large bronze pins that hold the keel together. Therestorers want to assess the so-called drift pins 169 yearsafter their installation and plan to replace or reinforcethose that show deterioration. The pins are between oneand two feet long.

In a more sweeping assessment, specialists have sent laserbeams racing across the Morgan, inside and out, seeking torecord inconspicuous details and form a digital archive ofexact measurements. The laser scans can track details assmall as an eighth of an inch and have swept the entireship across its 114-foot length and 28-foot width — once acramped home to a crew of 35.

The scans have produced “millions of points ofinformation” and a wealth of three-dimensional images,said Kane Borden, research coordinator of the restoration.“The results are pretty spectacular to look at.”

Historians here say the restoration, for all its high-techsophistication, is fundamentally about remembering andhonoring the past. The Morgan is the last representative ofa fleet of 2,700 American whaling vessels that put theyoung country on the map and nourished its growingeconomy. The industry was so important that the whalinglife became a distinctive part of the American experience.

“The scope and scale of it is something that people have noidea of today,” said Matthew Stackpole, a Mystic Seaportofficial. “It was the first time the U.S. presence was feltaround the world.”

The Morgan was built in the shipyard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman and named afterCharles Waln Morgan, a Philadelphia Quaker who was its first main owner. The year of itsinaugural voyage, 1841, also marked the departure from New Bedford of another ship,carrying an aspiring author by the name of Herman Melville. His whaling experienceresulted in “Moby Dick,” and his realistic portrayals of the industry gave it new visibilityand status.

The Morgan completed 37 voyages from her home ports of New Bedford and SanFrancisco and sailed farther than any other American whaler, according to historians.Near a remote Pacific isle, the crew took up firearms to fend off canoes full of cannibals.

Captains could bring along their wives, and two of them served as expert navigators. Thelogs of Charlotte Church, the wife of Capt. Charles S. Church, who sailed on the Morganfrom 1909 to 1913, recorded not only latitude, longitude, heading, distance and barometricpressure but the death of a pet cat.

Dry humor marked her entries. “We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almosttwenty canary bird — no fear of starving for a while.”

The ship’s great luck in escaping from serious threats translated into bad luck for whales.Over the decades, the ship’s harpooners took in more than 2,500 of the behemoths todismember their carcasses and boil their blubber down into more than 50,000 barrels of

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11/20/13 Technology Aids Restoration of Whaling Ship Morgan - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/science/17ship.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& 3/4

oil. Whales were the petroleum wells of the day.

“We’re not apologizing for the past,” Mr. Stackpole, the seaport official, said of the hunt.“But we have to understand what happened and do better,” especially in protectingwhales threatened with extinction because of the long decades of concentrated whaling.

On a beautiful day in late July, the restoration shipyard here was alive with specialists.Some cut wood in the sawmill. The tons of replacement timbers include some carved fromcolossal hunks of live oak salvaged after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 uprooted many treesalong the Gulf Coast.

The Morgan rested high and dry on supporting beams, stripped of masts and most gear.Experts scrutinized her for construction details to add to the growing library.

Bill Movalson, an official with Allpro Imaging, a company in Melville, N.Y., that makesportable X-ray machines, took aim at the thick keel.

“Stand back,” he advised.

The X-ray source, mounted on a tripod and looking like a large video camera, emitted aseries of beeps and then a continuous hum.

Mr. Movalson stepped behind the keel to retrieve the exposed plate, which he fed into asmall machine. It read the plate by a method known as computed radiography, usinglasers and electronics rather than chemicals to uncover the invisible. In a few seconds, aghostly image appeared on his laptop screen.

“We got it,” Mr. Movalson said, pointing to the image of a bronze drift pin. “Look, it’s alleaten away right at the seam.” Decades of exposure to seawater had corroded the pin atthe area where it connected the keel to a protective timber known as the false keel.

“This is what we’d expect,” Mr. Snediker, the shipyard director, said while examining theimage. He added that the discovery of the corrosion “validates the technique,” showingthat the X-ray exposures are sensitive enough to distinguish faulty drift pins from thosethat show no deterioration.

Mr. Snediker said the project was seeking to harness every conceivable tool and method“to learn as much as we can.” The restorers are even recording the comments ofshipwrights who dismantle old wooden structures in an effort to capture subtle insightsinto ship construction.

“We get layer upon layer of information,” he said. The least technical of the methodscenters on a group of young artists who are sketching the various stages of the Morgan’sdisassembly and repair. “It’s great to see it through their eyes,” Mr. Snediker said.

Nearby was the project’s headquarters, lodged in ramshackle offices full of files, papersand computers. At his desk, Mr. Borden, the research coordinator, showed how acomputer served as the library for the accumulated information. A blueprint-style image ofthe Morgan glowed on his computer screen, as did a series of X-ray icons.

“You can zoom in,” Mr. Borden said, clicking on one. The underlying image revealed acentral joint.

If all goes as planned, the refurbished Morgan will be outfitted with new rigging in late2012.

And the next year, in early summer, if the weather proves fair, the whaler will pull awayfrom the granite pier at the seaport and once again sail with the wind at her back, rockingthough the waves, making history. The goal is to visit places along the New England Coastof special significance to whaling, like New Bedford.

“She’s the last of her kind,” Mr. Stackpole said of the Morgan. “We want her to be a livingissue rather than a dusty old artifact,” her voyages a new page in the story of Americanwhaling.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 24, 2010

A picture caption last Tuesday about the restoration of a whaling ship, the Charles W.Morgan, misidentified the year the Morgan arrived in Mystic, Conn. It was 1941, as