Mystic Seaport Museum

Our Mission

Mystic Seaport's mission is to create a broad, public understanding of the relationship of America and the Sea. In order to accomplish this we: document, preserve, and stimulate scholarship in American maritime history and convey to a wide and diverse public the stories of America and the Sea through the Museum's collections, exhibitions, education programs, library, communications, products, and publications; collect and preserve representative examples of American maritime material culture emphasizing art, commerce, technology and science; collect and preserve examples of significant commercial and recreational watercraft related to America's maritime history, focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; perpetuate skills associated with America's maritime past; and interpret representative elements of life in nineteenth-century New England maritime communities.