Celebrate Maritime History and Marine Innovation North of Boston

From the mid-17th century onward, shipbuilding, maritime trade, and commercial fishing shaped the economy and the character of the coastal and Merrimack River towns of Essex County. Learn about this rich legacy on a seven-stop driving tour encompassing fascinating maritime-history collections, art and model-ship exhibitions, and workshops that preserve the region’s time-honored wooden-boat building traditions.

Marblehead

Start in the colonial heart of Marblehead at the Dr. Ray Cole Maritime Museum, on the ground floor of Abbot Hall. The museum contains a trove of memorabilia related to boating in this community that supplied the Continental Army with its first armed schooner, the Hannah, in 1775, thereby establishing Marblehead’s claim as the birthplace of the U.S. Navy.

Salem

Continue just up the coastline to explore the Salem Maritime National Historic Site’s restored buildings and half-mile wharf. This engrossing living-history museum shines a light on the region’s seafaring prowess, including the inglorious period of Triangle Trade, when ships carried rum, sugar, cotton, and enslaved people. Highlights include the 1819 Salem Custom House and the Friendship of Salem, a replica of a 1797 East Indies merchant ship. A few blocks away, check out the exceptional Maritime Art and History gallery of the Peabody Essex Museum.

Andover

Cut inland to Andover’s stately Addison Gallery of American Art to view its impressive collection of 24 1/4-inch-scale ship models, including a 1930 model of the lightning-fast Flying Cloud clipper ship. The collection also includes a remarkable newer model, Wanderer, created in 2006 by Yinka Shonibare, which depicts the last ship to (illegally) carry enslaved people from the Congo to the United States, in 1858.

Haverhill & Amesbury

Drive northeast through Haverhill, where the Merrimack riverfront was a prolific hub of wooden shipbuilding during the colonial era—it would decline with the advent of larger ships that were too big to navigate the river. Follow the Merrimack to Lowell’s Boat Shop in Amesbury. Founded in 1793, it’s the country’s oldest continuously operating boat builder. You can watch artisans produce these famously sturdy and sleek dories using traditional techniques and even sign up for classes.

Newburyport

Continue downriver to Newburyport’s handsome Custom House Maritime Museum, constructed in 1834 by renowned architect Robert Mills of granite quarried on Cape Ann. It contains three floors of model ships, maritime paintings, and relics tracing the seafaring heritage of this bustling town near the mouth of the Merrimack. You can view an 1897 Fresnel lighthouse lens, an exhibit that documents Newburyport’s role as the 1791 birthplace of what would become the U.S. Coast Guard, and the interactive Children’s Discovery Center.

Follow Route 1A about 17 miles south into Essex, which lies along a sweeping marsh bisected by the Essex River. A center of boat building since 1668, the town grew dramatically in importance after the British decimated New England’s fishing fleet during the American Revolution. The Essex Historical Society and Shipbuilding Museum displays several historic boats and some 8,000 artifacts, dioramas, and tools related to the manufacture of wooden schooners and two-masted Chebacco boats, which were critical to the fishing industry of nearby Gloucester. Like Lowell’s Boat Shop, the museum invites visitors to watch shipwrights build boats and also offers classes.

A scenic eight-mile drive southeast leads to Maritime Gloucester, an engaging open-air museum overlooking the picturesque harbor. Here you can explore the family-friendly Maritime Science Education Center, an art and history gallery containing the cockpit of a fishing trawler, a small outdoor aquarium, and a wharf featuring the nation’s oldest continuously operating marine railway, several historic wooden vessels, and a dory-building workshop.

Photos top to bottom: Maritime Gloucester by Mary Barker; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, by Bob Packert; Lowell’s Boat Shop by NBCVB; Custom House Maritime Museum, Newburyport by NBCVB

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This blog is an excerpt from our digital guide “250 Ways to Explore, Discover, and Celebrate North of Boston”. To view the full guide, click here.