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.
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.
