We receive many enquiries regarding the purchase of Plans. We wrote Mystic Seaport museum to see what is available. The following letter was sent in response. We hope it will be of some help:

Dear Kathleen,

Some of the vessel designs of William Garden, N.A. are preserved at the Ships Plans library and archives of Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc. The plans which are here represent Mr. Garden's work when he was living in the US and are primarily the vessels found in his first book, "Yacht Designs." That particular edition is out of print - however there is a new expanded version "Yacht Designs, Revised and Expanded." I refer people to these books if they are generally interested in information about Bill or his designs. If we do not have a particular set of plans, we refer the researcher right back to Bill Garden.

The Ships Plans area of our website lists only the plans from our Mystic Seaport Watercraft list. This list mainly consists of vessels and ship models you will see while visiting the museum, or plans drawn from measurements taken off watercraft we do not own which are being studied for their research value. This is a very large library with over 100,000 plans in the collection.

The website also contains a section of text providing helpful information on how to do research in the Ships Plans library. I always suggest that researchers look in Bill's 3 books, or narrow down their choices before they ask us to search for them to save the expense of a research fee. If we have to do extensive digging to assist a library patron the cost is $20.00 per hour. Most people are able to narrow down their requests for information about the designs of Mr. Garden using the published sources. I hope this information is helpful to you.

Sincerely, Ellen Stone, Ships Plans Collection Manager Mystic Seaport Museum