The Charles W. Morgan
You may not have ever heard of the Charles W. Morgan. I know I hadn’t before I arrived here in Mystic. But it turns out that the Charles W. Morgan is, as they say, “kind of a big deal.” More
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Mediaswain
Nautical types like to call people "swains." If you have some sort of job, you're probably a swain. Refreshment-swain, office-swain, and the ur-swain, the boatswain. This column is an extension of my duties as program Mediaswain, as it was coined by the Williams-Mystic program. More
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The Bayou
Williams-Mystic's third and final field seminar took us to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana to experience the third major body of water that borders our fair continent. The Arctic Ocean is, sadly, not a part of our curriculum (not that I wouldn’t have pushed for an Arctic Field Seminar). More
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Drop Sites
For the past few mornings, and for the next few (until mid-December, that is) I’ll been engaging in a fairly constant routine—rare in the Williams-Mystic program. The third and final Williams-Mystic field seminar is approaching: Four days on the bayou in Louisiana, interrupting this routine in its formative stages. For these coming four days, I won’t have to slide across frost-covered docks or wheedle the outboard motor into starting, like I’ll have to for the rest of the semester. At 7:45 I put on waders, watch cap, gloves, and go down to the water. More
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Standing By
It may have been brought to the reader's attention that the "Williams-Mystic Program" that purports to be the subject of this column is a Maritime Studies program. I had heard the same, but over the past 11 days, one of them (that, 24 nonconsecutive hours) have been spent in a van, driving California's highway 1. More
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Nautical Terminology: On Display
Working and studying in the historic Mystic Seaport is one of the aspects that the Williams-Mystic program advertises. They mention the many historic buildings, moved here from all over the [...] More
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Ten Days Before the Mast
"...[T]here is such an infinite number of totally new names of new things to learn, that at first it seemed impossible for me to master them all. If you have [...] More
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Nautical Terminology: Arrival
It was only the second night here, after a celestial navigation lecture, that we looked up through the hundred-foot-high riggings of the three-masted C.W. Morgan and pointed out the stars. [...] More