Merlin Classics

Merlin Classics Retro original art apparel for your town. And the lore behind each one. Every purchase supports local hunger relief.

๐ŸŒŽ Wear Local. Feed Local. Stay Classic.

Merlin Classics โ€” Retro hometown apparel made on demand with clean, vintage logos for city and state pride. Shop by city, state, or item โ†’ merlinclassics.store/collections/all-items

05/28/2026

In 1672, with no walls around the town, the Spanish began carving a fortress out of seashells. Everyone thought it was madness โ€” soft stone, against cannon fire?

More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’

The stone was coquina: compressed seashells quarried from nearby Anastasia Island, soft enough to cut with a saw. Then November 1702 came. The British sailed in, burned the town to the ground, and turned their guns on the fort. Fifteen hundred people had fallen back inside its walls.

The cannons fired for fifty days. And the shell stone held โ€” the porous coquina absorbed the cannonballs instead of shattering, swallowing the shot. Some are still lodged in the walls today.

The fort was besieged twice and never taken. Five flags flew over it, four different names, three centuries โ€” and it changed hands five times without once being captured in battle. The town burned and rebuilt around it. The fort never moved.

It still stands on the bay at St. Augustine โ€” the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fortress in America, never taken by force in 330 years. A fort built out of seashells, that never fell.

05/26/2026

St. Augustine, Florida. Founded 1565.
โ €
It was already the oldest city in America when the Pilgrims were still forty years from Plymouth Rock. Spanish explorers came looking for gold and a fountain that would keep them young, and found neither โ€” but they stayed anyway, on a warm crescent of coast where the live oaks drip with Spanish moss and the light comes off Matanzas Bay gold in the late afternoon.
โ €
More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’
โ €
Four and a half centuries later itโ€™s still here. The narrow streets still run the way the Spanish laid them out. The bay still fills with the same tide. Palms lean over coquina-stone walls that have stood through hurricanes, sieges, and five different flags โ€” and out at the mouth of the inlet, the oldest fort in the country still keeps watch over the water the way it has since the 1600s.
โ €
Some places are built. This one was founded โ€” and never left.
โ €
The story of how it survived is one of the best in America.
โ €
This week, we tell it. โ†“
โ €

05/23/2026

He was twelve years old. They almost didnโ€™t run him.

Togo was the oldest dog on Leonhard Seppalaโ€™s team in January of 1925. He had been a runt โ€” small, sickly, given away as a puppy and given back as a troublemaker. Seppala had once decided Togo wasnโ€™t suited to the harness at all.

By 1925 he was the lead dog of the best racing team in Alaska. And when the call came to run diphtheria serum across the interior toward Nome, Seppala took Togo with him.

More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’

Most of what the world remembers from the Serum Run is the last fifty-five miles, when Gunnar Kaasen and a black dog named Balto came in off the trail at five-thirty in the morning on Front Street. Balto got the statue in Central Park. Balto got the films and the books and the legend.

Togo and Seppala ran two hundred and sixty miles. Five times farther than Balto. Through the dark, across the wind-blasted sea ice of Norton Sound at night, in a forty-below wind, on a shortcut that no other musher on the relay was willing to take. They handed off the serum at Golovin with a hundred miles still to go, and Togo never saw Nome on that run.

He went back to Alaska, then to a farm in Maine, and lived out his retirement quietly. He died in 1929. The statue came much later. The truth always does.

In Nome, the Iditarod finishes every March under the Burled Arch on Front Street. A thousand miles, run in their honor.

05/20/2026

January 27, 1925. Nome, Alaska โ€” population roughly 1,400 โ€” was three days into a diphtheria outbreak that the townโ€™s only doctor, Curtis Welch, had radioed to every major city in the territory. The nearest serum was in Anchorage, hundreds of miles south. The two airplanes capable of reaching Nome were dismantled for winter. The harbor was frozen solid. Welch warned that an epidemic was almost inevitable.

The territory sent the dogs.

More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’

The serum was railed to Nenana โ€” the closest point on the Alaska Railroad to Nome, still 674 miles short. From there, twenty mushers and roughly 150 sled dogs ran it in relay across the interior of the territory. Historians of the period have called it the last great event of the dog-team era โ€” the moment radio and aviation watched a dog team beat them to a finish line.

The longest and most dangerous leg fell to Leonhard Seppala, a Norwegian musher considered the best in Alaska, and his twelve-year-old lead dog Togo. They covered 260 miles, including a shortcut across the wind-blasted sea ice of Norton Sound at night. The temperature reading on the relay logbook the night Seppala crossed the Sound: minus 40.

The final 55 miles into Nome fell to Gunnar Kaasen and a black husky named Balto, in an 80-mile-an-hour blizzard the men later described as a moving wall of ice. Kaasen crossed Front Street at 5:30 in the morning on February 2 and handed the serum to Dr. Welch. Not a single vial of the twenty in the package was broken. The epidemic was averted.

Balto got the statue in Central Park. Togo, who ran nearly five times farther, lived out his retirement quietly on a farm in Maine. The Iditarod has finished under the Burled Arch on Front Street every March since 1973 โ€” a thousand miles, run in their honor.

Front Street โ†“

05/18/2026

Nome, Alaska. 1925.

Three thousand five hundred people on the edge of the Bering Sea, 161 miles from Russia, where the aurora rolls overhead half the year. Gold dust still washes up in the black sand of the beach if you know where to look. Itโ€™s been called one of the most remote inhabited places in America, and the town has been quietly, stubbornly hanging on at the edge of the map since 1898.

In the last week of January of that year, a dog team saved it.

More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’

Diphtheria broke out in Nome. The townโ€™s only doctor radioed south: two cases, twenty more suspected, no serum. Children were going to start dying within days. The nearest antitoxin was six hundred and seventy-four miles away in Nenana, the harbor was frozen solid, and the planes were grounded. There was one way left to move medicine across Alaska in January, and that was by dog.

What followed is now called the Great Race of Mercy. Twenty mushers and about a hundred and fifty sled dogs ran the serum in relay across the interior in temperatures that hit forty below. A Norwegian musher named Leonhard Seppala and a small Siberian husky named Togo took the longest and most dangerous leg โ€” two hundred and sixty miles, including a shortcut straight across the wind-blasted sea ice of Norton Sound at night. A musher named Gunnar Kaasen and a black lead dog named Balto brought the serum the last fifty-five miles into Nome through an eighty-mile-an-hour blizzard, arriving on Front Street at five-thirty in the morning on February 2, 1925. One hundred and twenty-seven hours, end to end. Not a single vial was lost. The town was saved.

Balto got the statue in Central Park. Togo, who ran nearly five times farther, lived out his retirement quietly in Maine. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has finished under the Burled Arch on Front Street every March since 1973 โ€” a thousand miles, run in their honor.

Anvil City Square โ†“

05/16/2026

Whatโ€™s with the town that beat the Royal Navy โ€” twice? ๐Ÿ‘€ Same point of land. Thirty-nine years apart. Two British squadrons sent against one square mile of Connecticut shoreline. Two British squadrons sent home.

More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’

The first time was August 30, 1775 โ€” fourteen weeks after Bunker Hill, and almost a year before the Declaration was signed. Captain James Wallace anchored the 20-gun frigate HMS Rose off Long Point with three armed tenders and opened fire on the village. The Stonington militia met him at the wharves with cannon of their own and drove him off before sundown. Per the Stonington Historical Society, it was the second British naval assault anywhere on the American continent โ€” and the first one the colonists won. Governor Trumbull wrote to Washington afterward that Stonington had been โ€œmarvelously protected.โ€ Washington wrote back calling Connecticutโ€™s spirit โ€œunquestionable.โ€

Thirty-nine years later they came back. August 1814. Commodore Thomas Hardy โ€” the man who had held the dying Nelson at Trafalgar โ€” brought four warships and 160 guns against the same harbor. Stonington had three cannons. Over four days the British fired roughly 50 tons of ordnance into the village. Merchant captain Jeremiah Holmes hit HMS Dispatch below the waterline. The 16-star flag over the breastwork was shot through seven times and kept flying. British casualties: 21 killed, 50 wounded. American: two dead, two wounded. The squadron sailed away at noon on August 12.

Two squadrons. Thirty-nine years apart. Same point of land. Both beaten.

The flag still hangs in the Old Lighthouse Museum. The two surviving 18-pounder cannons sit in Cannon Square, pointed at the water they defended.

Start here โ†’ Cannon Square ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ

05/13/2026

August 9, 1814. Stonington, Connecticut โ€” population roughly 1,000 โ€” woke up to find four British Royal Navy warships off the point. The squadron was commanded by Commodore Thomas Masterman Hardy, the man who had held the dying Nelson at Trafalgar nine years earlier. Hardy sent a message ashore at sunset: evacuate within the hour, or he would commence firing.

The town didnโ€™t evacuate. The town wrote back.

More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’

โ€œWe shall defend the place to the last extremity. Should it be destroyed, we shall perish in its ruins.โ€ The reply was carried to Hardyโ€™s flagship, HMS Ramillies, a 74-gun ship-of-the-line. Combined, the four British ships โ€” Ramillies, Pactolus, Dispatch, and Terror โ€” mounted roughly 160 guns. The town had three, operated by merchant captain Jeremiah Holmes and a handful of militia.

Naval historian James Tertius de Kay, who spent decades researching the battle from Royal Navy and American sources, called it one of the strangest small-unit actions of the war. Over four days the British fired roughly 50 tons of ammunition into the town โ€” solid shot, Congreve rockets, mortar bombs. Cannonballs lodged in walls; some are still there. But the Stonington gunners kept firing back, working as their own fire brigade between volleys.

On the third day, Holmes hit HMS Dispatch below the waterline. The flag over the American battery โ€” sixteen stars, sixteen stripes โ€” was shot through seven times and kept flying. British casualties: 21 killed, 50 wounded. American: one elderly woman, already mortally ill, and two militiamen wounded.

At noon on August 12, the squadron weighed anchor and sailed away. They had fired more ordnance into Stonington than into any engagement on American soil during the entire war โ€” and failed to take a village of 1,000 defended by three cannons. The flag still hangs in the Old Lighthouse Museum. The two surviving 18-pounders sit in Cannon Square.

Most towns build monuments to the wars they win. Stonington just kept the flag flying.

Start here โ†’ Cannon Square ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ

MerlinClassics

05/11/2026

What's with the prettiest mile in Connecticut? ๐Ÿ‘€ Have you ever been? One square mile of coastline. The salt air off Little Narragansett Bay. White picket fences leaning into Water Street. Greek Revival cottages, a working harbor, and the first lighthouse the federal government ever built โ€” still standing at the end of the point. Yankee Magazine named it one of the Top 10 prettiest coastal towns in New England, and the borough has been quietly, stubbornly beautiful since 1801.

There's more to it than picket fences and harbor light though. The prettiest mile in Connecticut also happens to be the place that discovered Antarctica.

More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’

In the autumn of 1820, a 21-year-old Stonington sea captain named Nathaniel Brown Palmer sailed south out of this harbor on a 47-foot sloop called the Hero. He was hunting fur seals. The fleet had been working the South Shetland Islands off the tip of South America, and the seals there were getting scarce. Palmer was sent further โ€” past the known maps, past where any American ship had reliably gone โ€” to look for new rookeries.

On November 17, 1820, barely past his 21st birthday, Palmer sighted a coastline that no one in his hemisphere had ever charted. He sailed close enough to see mountains rising directly out of the ice. What he was looking at would later be named Palmer Land, and the entire peninsula extending north toward South America is now the Antarctic Peninsula โ€” the seventh continent's northernmost reach. He was the first American, and arguably the first person, to confirm Antarctica existed.

He came home to Stonington. Lived the rest of his life here. His house still stands at 40 Palmer Street, two blocks from the lighthouse he sailed past on his way south. A continent named for a kid from a one-square-mile village.

Start here โ†’ 7 Water Street ๐ŸŒ…

05/09/2026

The Mystic River runs five miles. You can walk its length in an afternoon. Most people who visit Mystic, Connecticut today see the boats, the drawbridge, the seafood places, the seaport museum โ€” and assume the maritime history is something preserved, decorative, behind glass. It isnโ€™t. The river itself is the history.
โ €
More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’
โ €
Between 1784 and 1919, more than 600 vessels were launched along its banks. The full inventory of American sail and early steam โ€” clipper ships, schooners, sloops, fishing smacks, merchant brigs, deep-water barks, coastal barges, yachts, side-wheel steamers, screw transports. Twenty-one classic clipper ships in the 1850s alone, eleven of them from a single yard, George Greenman & Company, on the site where the Mystic Seaport Museum stands today. The David Crockett, launched in Mystic in 1853, would round Cape Horn 27 times โ€” more than any other sailing ship in history. The Andrew Jackson, built by Irons & Grinnell in Mystic, set the New York-to-San Francisco record at 89 days, 4 hours, breaking the Flying Cloudโ€™s mark by nine hours.
โ €
Maritime historian Carl Cutler spent decades cataloging American shipping records. By his accounting, Mystic produced more noted captains, more fine tonnage, and more important sailing records than any place of its size in the world. He noted that the coves between Stonington and New London held twice as many shipyards as Boston Bay, despite Bostonโ€™s far larger population. Five Mystic yards. One 5-mile river. A pace and quality of shipbuilding that nowhere of comparable size ever matched.
โ €
And during four of those years โ€” 1861 to 1865 โ€” Mystic launched 56 steamers, including the ironclad USS Galena. More than any other New England port. From a town of 2,500 people.
โ €

In April 1861, Mystic, Connecticut had a population of 2,500 people. It was a clipper-ship town. Beautiful, fast sailing...
05/06/2026

In April 1861, Mystic, Connecticut had a population of 2,500 people. It was a clipper-ship town. Beautiful, fast sailing vessels โ€” the David Crockett, the Andrew Jackson โ€” but the clipper era was already winding down by then. The Panic of 1857 had hollowed out demand. Steam was beginning to replace sail. A small Connecticut town that had built its identity around a dying technology should have faded with it.
โ €
Then Fort Sumter fell, and Lincoln called for warships.
โ €
More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’
โ €
Within months, the Mystic yards had pivoted entirely. The same shipwrights who had been laying clipper keels were welding steam boilers and bolting iron plate. Five major shipyards โ€” George Greenman & Company, Charles Mallory & Sons, Maxson Fish & Company, Irons & Grinnell, and Hill, Grinnell & Company โ€” ran day and night. The Mystic Pioneer newspaper editor wrote on May 18, 1861: "All our shipyards are hard at work. Whatever the effect of the war in other places, we believe it will prove a benefit to Mystic."
โ €
He had no idea.
โ €
Between 1861 and 1865, Mystic launched 56 steamers โ€” five percent of all Northern steamship construction. Among them was the USS Galena, one of the three original Union ironclads, launched at Maxson, Fish & Company in February 1862. Galena fought up the James River alongside the USS Monitor in the dash to threaten Richmond. She took 28 hits at Drewry's Bluff and survived. The USS Varuna, built by Charles Mallory & Sons, fought at Admiral Farragut's capture of New Orleans in 1862. The side-wheel steamer Es**rt, built by Greenman in 1862, ran a Confederate gauntlet on the Tar River carrying Black Union soldiers and supplies to a besieged garrison at Plymouth, North Carolina, in 1864.
โ €
When the smoke cleared in 1865, no other New England port had built more steamships than Mystic. Not Boston. Not Portland. Not any of them. A town of 2,500 people, on a 5-mile river, had outbuilt them all.
โ €

05/04/2026

What's with the Sea Legends of Mystic? ๐Ÿ‘€ Have you ever been? A working harbor naturally breeds stories: masts creak, fog slides in, and the river mouth feels like a doorway to bigger water. Sea Legends is the habit of giving every bend and dock a tale โ€” from old ships to near-misses โ€” because the place has always lived by tide and timing.
โ €
There's more to it than atmosphere though. Every harbor has its lore, but Mystic's runs deeper than most.
โ €
More history & lore in the link in bio โ†’
โ €
Take, for instance, the saying among old shipwrights that a wooden ship never really dies as long as someone remembers how she was built โ€” the joints, the fastenings, the shape of the keel under her ribs. Knowledge passed hand to hand, master to apprentice, for generations along this five-mile river. By the early 1900s, that kind of knowledge was vanishing everywhere else in America. Steel hulls were cheaper. Steam was simpler. The shipwrights who could still build a proper wooden vessel were aging out, and the next generation had no reason to learn.
โ €
But Mystic kept the knowledge alive longer than anyone. And in 1941, when the last wooden whaling ship in the world needed somewhere to retire, she came here. Not to her birthplace โ€” she'd been built in New Bedford a century earlier, in 1841 โ€” but to the only town left in America that still knew how to keep her standing. Today she's moored at a shipyard that has preserved her continuously for over 80 years.
โ €
Start here โ†’ 75 Greenmanville Ave ๐Ÿ‹
โ €

Address

3400 Equestrian Club Drive
Wellington, FL
33414

Website

https://merlinclassics.store/tx_corpus_christi, https://merlinclassics.store/corpus-chris

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Merlin Classics posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category