A photo identified as the Charles W. Morgan from the NHS collections.
The prize of Mystic Seaport is the world’s oldest whaling ship, Charles W. Morgan, built in 1841. As cars whiz by it on Route 95, few people know of the origin of the name and her Newport connections.
CHARLES WALIN MORGAN (1796 – 1861) was a Philadelphia born Quaker who married Sarah Rodman of New Bedford in 1819. He was engaged in the spermaceti oil and candle business founded by his wife’s Rodman and Rotch families from Nantucket and New Bedford. He built the ship bearing his name in 1841. The whaling industry started to decline shortly thereafter and Morgan invested in iron and steel works in Pennsylvania. The ship was passed down to kinsman Col. Edward Green, the son of financier Hetty Green “The Witch of Wall Street,” who died childless in 1935. His heirs donated the decayed vessel to Mystic Seaport in 1941.
The mergers of Quaker families were made from economic necessity and matchmaking at New England Yearly Meeting gatherings. Three Newport Rodman siblings were married to three New Bedford Rotch siblings as a way to escape the squalor in post Revolutionary Newport and invest in the up and coming whaling industry started with the help of a little known Portuguese mariner named Aaron Lopez. Consequently, when the spermaceti industry collapsed in the 1850s, the same Quaker business and family ties forged reintermarriages with Philadelphians, who had interests in the new traction, iron and steel industry such as Charles W. Morgan, Morrises, Whartons, and Wistars. These folks ultimately returned to Newport and Jamestown as summer vacationers.