About Emma C. Berry (sloop)
Historic Architecture, Architecture, Interesting Places, Other Buildings And Structures
Emma C. Berry is a fishing sloop located at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, United States, and one of the oldest surviving commercial vessels in America. She is the last known surviving American well smack. This type of boat is also termed a sloop smack or Noank smack. Emma C. Berry was built in 1866 at the Palmer Shipyards in Noank, Connecticut by James A. Latham. Well smacks were designed to keep the catch alive in an internal water-filled compartment known as a wet well. Seawater circulated through large holes in the bottom planking. The Noank design was imitated in other regions of the United States, but well smacks had appeared in England previously in about 1775.
