Published on 7/14/2006 in the Editorial Section Opinion Page
Throughout its history, from the West Indies trade through the days of whaling to the age of the submarine, New London's history has been wedded to the sea. These stories have been chronicled in The Day for 125 years. The newspaper's perspective on the city's maritime history is featured in an exhibit that opens at 7 tonight at the Custom House on Bank Street.
Enlarged pages and photographs from the newspaper tell of the triumphs and tragedies of New London's maritime history, such as in 1903, when the Minnesota, one of the biggest ships in the world, was launched in Groton and in 1963, when the nuclear submarine Thresher sank, taking the lives of all its crew members based in southeastern Connecticut.
The exhibit tells the story of the time just before the U.S. entered World War I when the German submarine Deutschland visited New London with a cargo bound for the region under a short-lived trade agreement between a German shipping company and the city. The city celebrated the arrival, but wound up mourning after the submarine accidentally sank a New London-ported tugboat as the Germans left port. Another page contains the story of the day Navy tugs towed the whaling vessel Charles W. Morgan into Mystic, where it was restored and became a permanent exhibit. Days later, the nation entered World War II.
These are among the stories that color the history of New London and this region and make this such an interesting news town. They have shaped this newspaper, which celebrates its first century and a quarter of publication this year.
There could be no more appropriate place for the exhibit than the Custom House, home of the New London Maritime Society. For more than a century and a half, the city's maritime history has flowed through the doors of the Custom House, where taxes were collected on the cargoes that came through the port of New London. The Day is proud to have been a part of that history. The newspaper's founder, John A. Tibbits, was one of the customs collectors in the 19th century. The newspaper helped in the effort to turn the building into a museum and found the New London Maritime Society when the government gave up the structure in the 1980s.
This exhibit is a joint effort by The Day and the New London Maritime Society to celebrate the romance and progress of New London's maritime history as people witnessed it on the pages of the newspaper.
