The Captain's Study




Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Here we see the Study almost as it looked when the house was built. A small fire in 1822 claimed a few of Zachariah's books and personal items from his sea-faring days, but the oak sea-chest and authentic vintage Jacobean four-poster bed luckily survived intact. Zachariah loved his study. After he ordered the Scarlet Parlor locked up, he did most of his reading and correspondence here. In his later years, he would take his meals and often sleep in this room; usually propped up against his desk with his log-book open and an empty rum bottle resting in the crook of his arm. The sailing Carters had hard luck at sea. Howard Sr.'s twins, Jonas and Joseph were lost during a whaling expedition and presumed drowned. Zach's father and grandfather perished aboard clipper ships, and several fourth-generation Carter men lost their lives aboard warships (including the USS Indianappolis). Even pleasure-sailers were subject to this 'Posieden's Curse', as Maude and Maurice Carter on their honeymoon cruise, discovered aboard the doomed Titanic. Ernestine Carter's plane was thought to have gone down somewhere in the Indian Ocean. I guess it's fair to say that in the dark bowers of Neptune's garden rest almost as many Carter bones as those buried on dry land! The books on this little shelf are mostly journals and log books - some of them are all that survived their owners' ill-fated voyages. To the north lies the West wing corridor. East will take you to a private bathroom.