What it turned to was whaling. New London had chased whales since the early 1700s, but the trade peaked in the 1840s: in 1847 the port passed Nantucket to stand second only to New Bedford, and by mid-century it was the second-busiest whaling port in the world. The fortunes that came home built the Greek Revival mansions of Whale Oil Row, and in 1833 — at the height of that wealth — the city raised a Custom House on Bank Street designed by Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument; it is the oldest U.S. Custom House still in operation, and when the schooner Amistad was towed into the harbor in 1839, it was this waterfront that received her.
As whaling faded, the harbor found new work. The Coast Guard's officer school — afloat since 1876 — moved ashore to Fort Trumbull in 1910, was renamed the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1915, and in 1932 built its permanent campus on land New London citizens gave up the Thames. Since 1946 the academy's training barque Eagle has sailed from New London: a 295-foot square-rigger built in Germany in 1936 and taken as a war reparation, today the only active square-rigger in U.S. service. The city kept a literary fame, too — the playwright Eugene O'Neill spent his boyhood summers at the cottage on Pequot Avenue he later set on the stage, down to the moan of the harbor foghorn that runs all through Long Day's Journey Into Night.
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.
