“Mr. Welt! Where are the bathrooms?” called 12-year-old Deb after playing on the green near the Seaport gazebo.

“They’re right over there” I replied, “The long white building.” And with that Deb ran off, going in the door on the right side of the building. When she returned to me, I asked her if she knew that she’d gone in the men’s room by mistake.

The ladies room was on the left side of the building. She said she didn’t realize it. I guess she really had to go! And since the Seaport was closed to visitors in the evening when I had my kids there, it really didn’t make much difference.

The Seaport is a great place to take kids on field trips. I remember being there one day over 40 years ago when I overheard an out-of-state teacher telling her class about the cannons that were near the Stillman Building. Pointing at the Morgan, she said, “See children, those are the cannons that used to be on that pirate ship!”

The trip Deb was on had been sponsored by LEARN, a regional educational center. I worked part-time for LEARN in a variety of capacities over the years, including as the Fitch Middle School adviser for the Amistad Friendship Society.

This group, which met after school each week, was created in response to the Sheff v. O’Neill desegregation case, and was an attempt to have youngsters from middle schools throughout the area meet and get to know each other in an effort to overcome what was determined to be racial isolation.

LEARN was anxious to have Fitch as well as West Side and Bennie Dover Jackson involved with the program as these three schools had diverse student populations.

Each group met one day a week after school, and LEARN sponsored several field trips that involved two or more schools.

The program revolved around the Amistad story, about which we learned a great deal. We even were able to visit the Seaport to see the famous Speilberg movie being made. As the old saying goes, it was “about as exciting as watching paint dry.”

Our culminating group activity at the end of each year was an overnight on the Conrad. Saturday would include a variety of activities, including climbing the rigging on the Conrad.

Traditionally on these overnights I would tell stories: one for the girls and one for the boys. Shortly before bedtime, I’d tell the girls to go down to their berthing area and get ready for bed and then come back up on deck with a blanket or something to keep them warm. We’d all sit on the deck and I’d tell the story.

I explained to them that the hill with the large house on top, across the river from the Seaport, had been owned by Mary Jobe (later Mrs. Akeley), who operated it as a camp for girls about their age in the ‘20s. It was called Camp Mystic. The girls, dressed in their camp uniforms, which resembled sailor dresses topped with a straw boater hat, enjoyed sailing and rowing on the river. It seems that one sunny day a camp sailboat struck a sandbar near where the Conrad was docked (a spot I’d pointed out to many of the girls during the day).

Suddenly a whirlpool erupted and spun the boat around and around. The three girls who had been in it disappeared. When the water calmed, all that could be seen was the capsized sailboat and the girls’ hats floating on the surface. The campers’ bodies were never recovered.

I went on to tell the girls that when I was about 13 I had ridden my bicycle up the long driveway to the house on the hill, trying to sell tickets to a Boy Scout event. Mrs. Akeley, who was then very elderly, invited me in and we chatted for quite some time (though she never bought a ticket). I noticed a clothes tree in one corner of her rather dark living room and it had sailor dresses hanging from it. They appeared to be damp. I was too polite to ask about them, and, disappointed that I hadn’t made a sale, I coasted my bike down the driveway.

Mrs. Akeley’s property eventually came into the possession of the Thames Science Center and her house served as the home for the director and his family. When my daughter was a youngster she was friendly with the two young girls who lived there. Once they invited her to a sleepover. On Sunday morning when I picked them up to take them all to church, I asked how the evening had gone and they sheepishly admitted that they’d been scolded by the girls’ mother for leaving wet footprints on the wood floor after their bath. They didn’t want to admit to her that they hadn’t taken a bath, even after having been told to do so.

The next day the female chaperones were a bit unhappy with me. It seems the girls were up half the night wondering if what I had told them was true.

The boys’ story, like the girls’, was about 90% fiction. I told them that in 1972 I served aboard an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War. The ship visited Subic Bay in the Philippines regularly. It was during one of these visits that I had quite a surprise.

While seated at an establishment in Olongapo City, just outside the naval base, I noticed that the barmaid, an older lady, was wearing a Mystic Seaport t-shirt. Naturally, I asked her about the shirt. It seems that one of her ancestors on her father’s side had come from Mystic. In fact, his family owned part of the land on which the Seaport now stands. This headstrong young man chose not to stay and participate in the family’s business, but after a dispute with his father, ran away to sea.

After sailing all over the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Pacific, he finally settled in the Philippines and began a family. The barmaid knew this family history and told me that someday she was going to go to the United States and see about her ancestor’s share in the sale of the property.

I went on to tell the boys that I had been at the Seaport a couple of weeks ago and had seen an elderly Filipino lady being escorted around the grounds by two or three men in suits who looked very nervous. I advised them to watch the newspapers – things could get interesting!

I still enjoy visiting the Seaport and seeing school groups there. By the way, the Morgan was not a pirate ship and the long white building is now brown. However, the right end is still the men’s’ room!

Robert F. Welt is a retired teacher in the Groton Public Schools system.