Community Corner

Maritime Museum Opens Exhibit on War of 1812

The U.S. Custom House Maritime Museum will showcase a War of 1812 exhibit featuring work from an unpublished book by Robert Bachman, an experimental racing sailboat by Kevin Ferrar, and a hat from an American soldier.

As New London gets ready to celebrate OpSail 2012, the two-hundredth Anniversary of the War of 1812, the U.S. Custom House Maritime Museum in New London will be marking the occasion with an display commemorating a solicitation of Robert Bachman.

Bachman, a early history teacher at Waterford High School in the former 1960s, began researching a book that would discuss the War of 1812 ‘s impact to Long Island Sound and our regional towns of New London, Mystic, Stonington, Niantic, and Essex. While the book was never written, Ruth Reluga, Bachman ‘s niece, has given Bachman ‘s archive to the Frank L. McGuire Maritime Library inside the U.S. Custom House. According to librarian Brian Rogers, the collection includes “ photocopies of naval manuscripts and images from the national archives of Great Britain and the United States, copies of pages from New London ‘s Connecticut Gazette reporting war news, published articles, and pages copied from books obtained on interlibrary loan through the Waterford Public Library. ” Bachman ‘s interest in the War of 1812 led him to England in 1970 where he obtained documents from the Public Records Office and other depositories. “ There are not besides many who have written on the war in this area, ” Linda Deredita, volunteer cataloger of the library, said. Susan Tamulvich, Director of the U.S. Custom House, said that some of the papers will be on expose as separate of the center ‘s War of 1812 exhibit which will be open during OpSail and throughout the month of July. The expose besides showcases information from “ parlous fight : America ‘s Intrepid War With Britain on the High Sears, 1812-1815 ” by Stpehen Budiansky and “ The Battle of Stonington : Torpedoes, Submarines, and Rockets in the War of 1812 ” by James Tertius De Kay.

While the papers and books will alone be separate of a mutable exhibit sphere which was merely recently put on display, they will always be housed in the library for researchers to access. The War of 1812 expose will besides feature an experimental race sailboat by Kevin Ferrar along with two Buffalo artifacts with one of those being an american officeholder ‘s hat with feathers and a hat box. The name of the early military officer has not been released but he was a local resident. Tamulvich said the owner of the hat did not want to loanword it out for a several calendar month long expose at the Lyman Art Museum and rather chose to loan it for a few weeks to the Custom House. Those parts of the display should be up by the end of June. The Lyman Art Museum is besides doing an expose entitled “ The Rockets ‘ Red Glare : Connecticut and the War of 1812 ” from July 6 to December 31. That exhibit is separate of a collaboration with Mystic Seaport, the Stonington Historical Society, the New London County Historical Society, and the New London Maritime Society.

The museum is hosting an possibility reception July 6 from 6pm to 8 phase modulation which is being sponsored by Connecticut Explored cartridge holder. A tour will be conducted by Fred Calabretta, Curator of Collections of the Mystic Seaport Museum and a node curator for the show. This class, OpSail will run concurrently with Sail Fest, dubbed on their web site as “ southeastern Connecticut ‘s premier summer event ” .