Events

Teacher Workshop, Public Program

Maritime Massachusetts: Salem Stories and Sources


Monday, July 20, 2015, 9:30AM - 4:00PM
Registration required at a cost

Over the past four centuries, Massachusetts’s coastal towns have served as sites of exchange: places where sailors, merchants, slaves, craftsmen, and native peoples shared goods and ideas. In the years after the American Revolution Salem’s wharves and shipyards served as symbolic connections between exotic places like Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, and the world of everyday life. Join us for this three-day workshop as we explore the maritime history of Salem, in particular the town’s connection to trade routes in Asia and the Pacific. We will visit historic sites and landscapes, take a cruise on a (replica) nineteenth-century schooner, and analyze documents and artifacts that connect people, places, documents, and artifacts to stories of the sea. Along the way we will explore the influence of the sea on local architecture, art, and literature.

This program is open to educators and history enthusiasts. Educators can earn 22.5 PDPs.

Dates: July 20-22, 2015

Times: 9:30am - 4:00pm

Fee: $35 per person

Lodging Option: Workshop participants can stay at Salem's Hawthorne Hotel for a discounted rate! Contact us for details.

To Register / For more information: complete this registration form, or contact the education department at education@masshist.org or 617-646-0557.

Program Highlights

  • Tour the Phillips House (an Historic New England property) and participate in a hands-on activity using the Phillips’ extensive collection of Hawaiian and Polynesian artifacts.
  • Take a cruise in Salem Harbor and learn how to sail a traditional wooden schooner onboard the Fame, a replica of an 1812 privateer.
  • Discuss global trade, art, and culture as you tour the Peabody Essex Museum, including the maritime galleries and he Chinese Export art exhibition Fish Silk Tea Bamboo.
  • Sail along Triangle Trade routes and relive the experience of fluctuating markets and danger on the high seas through a role-playing game at the House of Seven Gables.
  • Engage your five senses to analyze objects that traveled through Salem's ports in the nineteenth century though a hands-on program at Salem Maritime National Historic Site.

This program is funded in part by the Richard E. Saltonstall Charitable Foundation.

This program will take place in Salem, Massachusetts.