Experts are using cutting-edge technology such as laser scanning, X-rays, and computed radiography to examine and restore the Charles W. Morgan, the world's last surviving wooden whaling ship built in 1841. This high-tech approach is producing detailed digital models and assessments of the ship's structure to guide its rebuilding and ensure its seaworthiness. The goal is to have the restored Morgan sail again by 2013, the first time in nearly a century, to honor the historic role of American whaling and the ship's long career.

1. 11/20/13
Technology Aids Restoration of Whaling Ship Morgan - NYTimes.com
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A Quest to Make the Morgan Seaworthy
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Laser scanning is part of the state­of­the­art technology being used to examine the Morgan’s structure. More Photos »
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: August 16, 2010
MYSTIC, Conn. — The shipbuilders are long dead, their knowledge
gone. The shipyard no longer exists. No blueprints survive, nor ship’s
models.
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But the Charles W. Morgan is still here
— the world’s last surviving wooden
whaling vessel, built in 1841. And
restorers are spending $10 million to
turn the museum piece into a working
ship able to ply the unruly sea. They
plan to sail the ship on its first voyage
in nearly a century, opening a new
chapter in its long career.
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Built in New Bedford, Mass., a bustling port known as the
whaling capital of the world, the Morgan sailed the globe
for eight decades in pursuit of leviathans, escaping fire and
cannibals, Confederate raiders and Arctic ice. She brought
home thousands of barrels of whale oil that lighted homes
and cities. She also delivered tons of baleen, the horny
material from the mouths of certain whales that was made
into buggy whips and corset stays. In 1941, its centenary,
the Morgan was towed to Mystic Seaport for museum
display and in 1966 was named a national historic
landmark.
To learn as much as possible about the old ship and ensure
its successful restoration, the specialists here are turning to
the art and science of imaging.
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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 of
the ship’s construction and condition. The project, begun in
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2. 11/20/13
Technology Aids Restoration of Whaling Ship Morgan - NYTimes.com
Dennis A. Murphy/Mystic Seaport
AT REST IN CONNECTICUT The
Morgan, built in 1841, has been docked
in Mystic, Conn., since 1941. More
Photos »
Enlarge This Image
2008, is producing a revealing portrait. It shows the exact
placement and status of many thousands of planks, ribs,
beams, nails, reinforcing pins, wooden pegs and other vital
parts of the Morgan, giving shipwrights a high-tech guide
for the rebuilding of the historic vessel.
“When we’re done, she’ll be as strong or stronger as the last
time she went to sea,” Quentin Snediker, director of the
shipyard here, said during a restoration tour. “So why not
sail her?”
Christopher Capozziello for The New York
Times
An X­ray generator is part of the
technology being used to examine the
Morgan’s structure. More Photos »
Enlarge This Image
Christopher Capozziello for The New York
Times
The radiography images are used to
aid in repairs. More Photos »
Enlarge This Image
Christopher Capozziello for The New York
Times
Bill Movalson is an imaging specialist
on the project. More Photos »
Enlarge This Image
Christopher Capozziello for The New York
Times
Wood from the ribs of the ship has
been replaced. More Photos »
Minutes later, a specialist was firing X-rays through the
ship’s keel — a massive oak spine composed of several
timbers, its length more than 90 feet. He was hunting for
the large bronze pins that hold the keel together. The
restorers want to assess the so-called drift pins 169 years
after their installation and plan to replace or reinforce
those that show deterioration. The pins are between one
and two feet long.
In a more sweeping assessment, specialists have sent laser
beams racing across the Morgan, inside and out, seeking to
record inconspicuous details and form a digital archive of
exact measurements. The laser scans can track details as
small as an eighth of an inch and have swept the entire
ship across its 114-foot length and 28-foot width — once a
cramped home to a crew of 35.
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The scans have produced “millions of points of
information” 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-tech
sophistication, is fundamentally about remembering and
honoring the past. The Morgan is the last representative of
a fleet of 2,700 American whaling vessels that put the
young country on the map and nourished its growing
economy. The industry was so important that the whaling
life became a distinctive part of the American experience.
“The scope and scale of it is something that people have no
idea of today,” said Matthew Stackpole, a Mystic Seaport
official. “It was the first time the U.S. presence was felt
around the world.”
The Morgan was built in the shipyard of Jethro and Zachariah Hillman and named after
Charles Waln Morgan, a Philadelphia Quaker who was its first main owner. The year of its
inaugural voyage, 1841, also marked the departure from New Bedford of another ship,
carrying an aspiring author by the name of Herman Melville. His whaling experience
resulted in “Moby Dick,” and his realistic portrayals of the industry gave it new visibility
and status.
The Morgan completed 37 voyages from her home ports of New Bedford and San
Francisco 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. The
logs of Charlotte Church, the wife of Capt. Charles S. Church, who sailed on the Morgan
from 1909 to 1913, recorded not only latitude, longitude, heading, distance and barometric
pressure but the death of a pet cat.
Dry humor marked her entries. “We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almost
twenty 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 to
dismember their carcasses and boil their blubber down into more than 50,000 barrels of
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3. 11/20/13
Technology Aids Restoration of Whaling Ship Morgan - NYTimes.com
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 protecting
whales 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 from
colossal hunks of live oak salvaged after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 uprooted many trees
along 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 makes
portable 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 a
series of beeps and then a continuous hum.
Mr. Movalson stepped behind the keel to retrieve the exposed plate, which he fed into a
small machine. It read the plate by a method known as computed radiography, using
lasers and electronics rather than chemicals to uncover the invisible. In a few seconds, a
ghostly image appeared on his laptop screen.
“We got it,” Mr. Movalson said, pointing to the image of a bronze drift pin. “Look, it’s all
eaten away right at the seam.” Decades of exposure to seawater had corroded the pin at
the 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 the
image. He added that the discovery of the corrosion “validates the technique,” showing
that the X-ray exposures are sensitive enough to distinguish faulty drift pins from those
that 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 of
shipwrights who dismantle old wooden structures in an effort to capture subtle insights
into ship construction.
“We get layer upon layer of information,” he said. The least technical of the methods
centers on a group of young artists who are sketching the various stages of the Morgan’s
disassembly 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, papers
and computers. At his desk, Mr. Borden, the research coordinator, showed how a
computer served as the library for the accumulated information. A blueprint-style image of
the 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 a
central joint.
If all goes as planned, the refurbished Morgan will be outfitted with new rigging in late
2012.
And the next year, in early summer, if the weather proves fair, the whaler will pull away
from the granite pier at the seaport and once again sail with the wind at her back, rocking
though the waves, making history. The goal is to visit places along the New England Coast
of 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 living
issue rather than a dusty old artifact,” her voyages a new page in the story of American
whaling.
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
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