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| Our Lady of Good Voyage, wood
carving |
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|
Gloucester 1892 |
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| Emile Gruppe, Captain Ben Pine's Docks,
n.d. |
The Museum’s fisheries and maritime galleries contain three historic vessels - the
small boat used by Alfred Johnson in the first solo crossing of the
Atlantic Ocean in 1876; an outfitted Cape Ann dory; and the Gloucester
sloop Great Republic which the legendary Howard Blackburn sailed
single handed (and fingerless!) to Portugal in 1901.
Among the most important objects in the fisheries and maritime galleries are a group
of wood models representing Gloucester buildings and ships. They were
exhibited in the 1892 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the centerpiece of
a large display created by the proud Gloucester community. They are now
shown in a diorama which includes a scale model marine railway. All the
vessels are accurate portraits of schooners that fished out of Gloucester
in 1892.
Also on display is the original painted wood statue of Our Lady of Good
Voyage, a madonna cradling a ship in her arms, from the Portuguese church
in Gloucester. A fiberglass cast of this original now stands between the
church’s bright blue domes where, lighted at night, she continues to help
fishermen and sailors navigate the harbor.
Poet T. S. Eliot (who spent many summers in Gloucester as a young man)
invokes the Lady of Good Voyage and warns of the dangers at sea in The
Dry Selvages IV:
Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ship, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.
Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have not seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.
Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea’s lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sounds of the sea bell’s
Perpetual angelus.
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