The water came first. The Pequot people lived and fished at the mouth of the Thames, and the settlement John Winthrop the Younger began here in 1646 was called Pequot until it was renamed New London in 1658 — for the city in England, on a river the colonists renamed the Thames to match. With one of the best deep-water harbors on the coast, New London became a shipbuilding and shipping town, and in the Revolution a base for privateers who captured hundreds of British vessels. That made it a target: on September 6, 1781, a British force led by the turncoat Benedict Arnold — born just up the river in Norwich — burned much of the city and stormed Fort Griswold across the Thames in Groton. New London rebuilt; chartered as a city in 1784, it turned back to the sea.
Today New London is a working harbor city and a college and Coast Guard town, proud of its whaling past, its academy, and its place at the mouth of the Thames on Long Island Sound. Its story runs from the Pequot shore and Winthrop's 1646 founding through the 1781 burning, the whaling boom that made it the world's second-busiest whaling port, and the arrival of the Coast Guard Academy and the Eagle. Our New London designs gather that identity into wearable form — the whaleship, the oyster shell, the Coast Guard, the deep harbor. New London, Connecticut — the Whaling City on the Thames.
Why People Visit New London Connecticut
People come to New London for its deep maritime history and its working-harbor life — the whaling heritage, the Coast Guard Academy, the lighthouses and ferries, the literary thread of Eugene O'Neill. It is a real seaport, not a recreated one: a small Connecticut city with a great harbor and a long view down the Thames toward the Sound.
