Egan Maritime Institute is pleased to announce the opening of the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum for the season on Friday, May 26, 2023.
This year’s featured exhibition, Rum Runners and Rum Chasers: Nantucket, Prohibition & the U.S. Coast Guard, continues our series honoring the organizations that came together in 1915 to form the U.S. Coast Guard. The exhibit presents how demands of war, technology, and law enforcement changed America’s oldest maritime military force. With the enactment of Prohibition, the government tasked the Coast Guard and its unique law enforcement powers to go after smugglers, bootleggers, criminal gangs, and Rum Runners. Nantucketers cooperated and sometimes did not. Partying remained a mainstay of life on the island.
Located 3.5 miles from the town center at 158 Polpis Road, the Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum is open from May until October. Courtesy rides to the Museum on The Shipwreck Shuttle depart from the Visitors’ Center Monday through Saturday.
