Groton, CT
On the west bank of the Thames River in New London, Connecticut — the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, established 1876 as the Revenue Cutter School aboard the schooner Dobbin, made permanent on shore in 1910. It is the smallest of the five federal service academies (corps of cadets around 1,100) and the only one that does not require a Congressional nomination — admission is by merit alone. The academy's training barque USCGC Eagle (WIX-327) is the only active commissioned sailing vessel in the U.S. military. Built in Germany in 1936 as Horst Wessel for the Kriegsmarine and used to train Nazi naval cadets, she was surrendered as war reparations in 1946 and sailed to New London by an American crew that included her former German captain teaching them the rigging. Across the Thames in Groton, on Naval Submarine Base New London (the Navy's primary submarine training base since 1916), the Submarine Force Museum hosts USS Nautilus (SSN-571) — the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, launched 1954, the first vessel to reach the North Pole submerged (August 3, 1958). Nautilus is open to the public, free admission.
The largest maritime museum in the United States, on the Mystic River in Stonington, Connecticut — a 19-acre recreated 19th-century seafaring village with more than 60 historic buildings (most relocated to the site from coastal New England communities), four major historic ships, and a working preservation shipyard. The crown jewel is Charles W. Morgan, built 1841 in New Bedford — the last surviving wooden whaling ship in the world and the oldest American commercial vessel still afloat. She made 37 voyages between 1841 and 1921 (one lasted nearly 5 years), traveled to the Indian Ocean, Pacific, Arctic, and Antarctic, and killed approximately 2,500 whales for an oil yield of 54,000 barrels. Restored 2008–2014, she was sailed again on a 38th voyage in 2014 with a small crew. Also on site: L.A. Dunton (1921 fishing schooner, only surviving example of her type), Joseph Conrad (1882 Danish-built training ship), Sabino (1908 wooden coal-fired steamboat — the oldest U.S.-built coal-fired passenger steamboat still operating). The Treworgy Planetarium teaches celestial navigation as the whaling ships used it.
On April 12, 1792, President George Washington signed a congressional act authorizing the construction of a lighthouse at the eastern tip of Long Island, where the Atlantic-bound traffic out of New York Harbor needed a navigation mark before the open ocean. The lighthouse was completed in 1796 — the fourth-oldest active lighthouse in the United States and the first public works project authorized by the new federal government in the State of New York. Washington personally selected the site. He chose a 200-foot bluff at Montauk Point, the highest ground at the easternmost extreme of Long Island, 120 miles east of Manhattan. The original tower was 110 feet tall, built of Connecticut sandstone, with a fixed white light visible 19 miles out. The current automated light still works. The lighthouse keeper's quarters are now the Montauk Point Lighthouse Museum, which preserves the original Fresnel lens (a 4-1/2-order lens added in 1903), keeper's logs from the 19th century, and shipwreck records — over 200 ships have wrecked along the surrounding coast, including the General Slocum (lost off here in 1904 after the East River fire). Erosion has been a continuous problem — the bluff has lost about 200 feet over the lighthouse's lifetime, and an Army Corps of Engineers revetment was completed in 2024 to stabilize the cliff for another century. Working west from Montauk back toward the rest of Long Island, the Hamptons unfold: Amagansett, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, Southampton, Quogue, Westhampton. Each is its own village with its own history. East Hampton's village green is one of the oldest in America (founded 1648). Sag Harbor was a major 19th-century whaling port — Herman Melville visited and based much of "Moby-Dick" on Sag Harbor whaling captains. The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs (East Hampton) preserves the studio where Jackson Pollock painted his great drip paintings between 1945 and 1956; he died in a car crash a mile away on Fireplace Road in 1956. Krasner kept the studio and the house until her death in 1984. Other Springs artists included Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Roy Lichtenstein. The South Fork ocean beaches — Main Beach in East Hampton, Cooper's Beach in Southampton, Ditch Plains in Montauk — are consistently named among the best in the US. Ditch Plains is the East Coast's most famous surf break.
On the grounds of the former Naval Construction Battalion Center Davisville, just north of the runways of KOQU, sits a 6.5-acre memorial park run by a small group of Seabee veterans and their families. The Seabee Museum and Memorial Park preserves the history of the Navy's construction battalions — the "Seabees" who built airfields, harbors, and forward bases under fire across the Pacific and in every theater since. Davisville is where they started. The Seabees were organized at the Davisville Advanced Base Depot adjacent to NAS Quonset Point in 1942. By 1945 there were more than 325,000 men in 151 battalions, and Davisville had become the primary East Coast Seabee training and supply hub. The site is exactly what its volunteers built it to be: a working memorial. Seven original WWII-era Quonset huts, saved from the demolition of Camp Endicott during the 1990s industrial-park redevelopment, sit on the original concrete pads. The former Navy chapel — built of poured concrete by Seabees in 1943 — is being restored as the centerpiece. The "Bee at the Gate" statue that once stood at the main NCBC Davisville entrance has been refurbished and reinstalled. Inside the main exhibit building: Quonset hut manufacturing artifacts, the original WWII pontoon causeway designs (also developed here), Seabee uniforms and equipment from every conflict from WWII through Iraq, and the records of Operation Deep Freeze, the Seabee mission that built and maintained the U.S. Antarctic stations from 1955 onward. Note: this is a separate, independent museum from the larger U.S. Navy Seabee Museum at Port Hueneme, California. Davisville is the original home and gets less traffic. It is staffed entirely by volunteers.