Ellery Thompson

Ellery Thompson (1899–1987) was an American sea captain and writer. In 1950 he wrote Draggerman's Haul: The Personal Story of a Connecticut Fishing Captain which described Captain Nick Nelson and other residents of Noank, Connecticut.^[1]

He was a fisherman, a painter of ships and ocean scenes, and a writer and storyteller. He lived and worked in Noank. He was profiled in The New Yorker magazine in a 1947 series of articles by Joseph Mitchell. Come Aboard the Draggers was a sequel he wrote which was published in 1959.

The Stonington Historical Society ran a major exhibit in 2005 about his life and work, curated by Bernard L. Gordon, who had fished with Thompson on Thompson's ship, the Eleanor. The historical society reported:

In his 1947 profile, Mitchell characterized Thompson as a "sad-eyed, easygoing Connecticut Yankee" and as a member of a family that had "fished and clammed and crabbed and attended to lobster traps" in Stonington waters for three hundred years. Thompson is "the most-highly respected captain in the Stonington fishing fleet," Mitchell wrote. Thompson himself fished the waters around Stonington for more than 50 years. What's more, he told wonderful stories, played the trumpet and painted for fun until it began to make him money, too. Born in Mystic in 1899, he retired from fishing in 1958 and died at the age of 88....^[2]

The New London Customhouse Maritime Museum in New London, Connecticut displays a number of Thompson's paintings and other artifacts from his life as part of its permanent collection.^[3]

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