Mattapoisett

Though now a lazy waterfront town that stirs only with summer square-dancing and sailboats on the harbor, Mattapoisett thrived in shipbuilding in the 1800s, with three busy boatyards cranking out ships for New Bedford’s whaling trade.                          

Mattapoisett is now a mix of older houses that sprang up with the shipbuilding boom and newer homes of wealthy summer residents. But the shipbuilding legacy has survived, visible everywhere, from Ned’s Point Light to marinas busy with leisure craft to Shipyard Park, where Josiah Holmes’ boatyard built the Wanderer in 1878, the last whaling ship made in Mattapoisett and the last whaling vessel to leave New Bedford. The ship’s mizzenmast stands as the park’s flagpole, recovered from the Wanderer’s wreck off Martha’s Vineyard during a 1924 storm.