Around 200 American watercraft will soon be displayed at a new boat hall at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut.
The museum is converting 32,000 sq. ft. of its historic Rossi Mill to display an indigenous dug-out canoe, modern vessels used by U.S. presidents, and a fishing boat used by Cuban refugees in the 1990s.
Peiter Roos is curating the exhibit.
“I really hope that we convey the stories of the people who built them and the people who used them,” Roos said. “The fisherman who used them. The people who enjoyed using them. The people who used them for survival and adventure and were rescued by these boats as well as just the simple fun of going out on a beautiful day like today on a boat and enjoying the surroundings.”
The new Wells Boat Hall is expected to cost $15 million and is scheduled to open to the public in the fall of 2025.
The boats are as old as 182 years old.
“It is the largest collection of small watercraft anywhere in the country and they’ve never really been on view. And yet our stories that we tell here are so bound up in all of these boats,” Roos said. “ It will be amazing to have them all on view and for the public to get to see them for the first time.”
