New London keeps two seafaring identities at once. There is the whaling city — Whale Oil Row, the old harbor, the Custom House where the Amistad captives once came ashore, the lights at New London Harbor and the offshore Ledge. And there is the Coast Guard city — the academy on the Thames, the cadets, and the Eagle standing out under sail, one of the last great square-riggers flying the American flag. Between them runs the Thames itself, with the ferries pulling out for Orient Point and Block Island, the Amtrak trains along the waterfront, and the working harbor that has defined the place since 1646.
The Whaling City on the Thames — a deep-water port that once sent more whaleships to sea than almost anywhere on Earth, and today trains the officers of the U.S. Coast Guard. New London sits at the mouth of the Thames River where it opens into Long Island Sound, on one of the deepest harbors on the Atlantic coast. The Pequot lived on this water long before John Winthrop the Younger founded the town in 1646; by the early 1800s it was the second-busiest whaling port in the world, and in the next century it became the home of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and its tall ship, the Eagle. Whaling wealth, Revolutionary fire, and the Coast Guard — this page tells the story.
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.
