A maritime museum for Boston
''MOST AMERICAN seaports, including Boston, have shamefully neglected the splendid history of their maritime efforts."
That statement was made by historian Samuel Eliot Morison in his classic ''Maritime History of Massachusetts," and for Boston the sentence rings as true today as in 1921, when that matchless volume was first published.
A most important era of American maritime history, spanning nearly three centuries of wooden shipbuilding in Massachusetts Bay, began in 1631 when colonial governor John Winthrop built and launched his little 30-ton trader ''Blessing of the Bay" from his seat at Medford on the Mystic River, and continued to the end of the great Age of Sail at the turn of the 20th century.
Over that period thousands of vessels of every description were built around the harbor and some of history's most eminent ship-designers did their best work here -- Samuel Pook and Donald McKay of clipper ship fame; Thomas McManus and George McClain, who revolutionized fishing schooner design; yacht designers Edward and Starling Burgess, and others too numerous to mention but whose names are engraved in the chronicles of shipbuilding.
East Boston and Medford were the twin shipbuilding capitals of Boston Harbor in the 19th century, yet it is not widely appreciated today that between 1803 and 1873 some 550 deep-water sailing vessels were built in yards along Medford's Mystic River; or that over in East Boston, the great Donald McKay designed and built in his yards along Border Street the very fastest sailing ships in the history of the world, some of which set records for speed in the 1850s that have never been broken.
It remains a curious irony that Boston, of all cities, does not have a major maritime institution to illuminate and interpret this illustrious history in the sea trades. In a nation that has dozens of maritime museums -- some of them hundreds of miles from the sea -- that seems an anomaly. Perhaps it is time for Boston to begin thinking about creating such an institution. If the idea were to take hold and attract the support of the general public and Boston's corporate citizens, it would furnish an opportunity to build the finest maritime historical institution in the United States -- and while we're at it, why not the world?
It would be hard to overstate the importance and long-term value of such an institution to Boston's travel and tourism industry. Thoughtfully designed, so as to constitute a full and fascinating educational experience for young and old alike -- witness the throngs that turn out to see tall ships here and everywhere -- it could become one of America's must-see travel attractions and raise to an even greater height Boston's status as a destination city.
The Legislature's new Joint Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Cultural Development should examine the present low visibility of Boston's seagoing past and explore what may be done to address that deficiency and raise the profile of things maritime in Boston Harbor. The development of a new institution that finally does full justice to a most colorful era could open a whole new chapter in the historic waterside's story.
In its earliest years this country was a maritime nation, all 13 states fronting on the sea, and America owes much of its success to the imprint that seafaring stamped on the national character. Yet, a full and lively account of Boston's historic achievements in shipbuilding and the sea trades remains a huge story hugely neglected, like some great submerged object barely awash.
If a movement toward building a world-class maritime historical institution were initiated -- the conversation begun, the pros and cons of feasibility discussed in public forums, and the interest and energies of untold thousands of maritime enthusiasts enlisted for its support -- one day that story could enter the stock of common knowledge of every citizen and every new generation of schoolchildren. And what more fitting use could be found for some of those conspicuously undeveloped acres by the water?
Henry Lachance is a marine artist, freelance writer, and a founding member of the Boston Maritime History Committee and the Medford Maritime Heritage Society. 
