Historic Nantucket, Winter 2002, Vol. 51, No. 1

VOL . 51 , NO . 1

WINTER 2002

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AROUND THE GLOBE

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES Arie L. Kopelman President

Peter W. Nash

Barbara E. Hajim

Alice F. Emerson

Bruce D. Miller

Patricia M. Bridier

First Vice President

Second Vice President

Third Vice President

Treasurer

Clerk

Mary F. Espy Thomas C. Gosnell Julius Jensen III L. Dennis Kozlowski Jane T. Lamb Carolyn B. MacKenzie Albert L. Manning Jr. Arthur I. Reade Jr.

Sarah Baker Rebecca M. Bartlett Laurie Champion Nancy A. Chase Prudence S. Crozier John H. Davis Joseph S. DiMartino

Alfred Sanford Isabel C. Stewart John M. Sweeney Richard F. Tucker Marcia Welch David H. Wood Robert A. Young

Frank D. Milligan Executive Director

RESEARCH FELLOWS Dr. Elizabeth Little

Nathaniel Philbrick

Patty Jo S. Rice

Renny A. Stackpole

FRIENDS OF THE NHA Pat & Thomas Anathan Mariann & Mortimer Appley Heidi & Max Berry Christy & William Camp Laurie & Robert Champion Dottie & Earle Craig Prudence & William Crozier Robyn & John Davis Sandra & Nelson Doubleday Nancee & John Erickson Marjorie & Charles Fortgang Nancy & Charles Geschke Susan & Herbert Goodall

Georgia & Thomas Gosnell Silvia Gosnell Barbara & Robert Griffin Barbara & Edmund Hajim George Heyer Barbara & Harvey Jones Kathryn & James Ketelsen Sara Jo & Arthur Kobacker Coco & Arie Kopelman Sharon & Frank Lorenzo Carolyn & Ian MacKenzie Phyllis & William Macomber

Miriam & Seymour Mandell Ronay & Richard Menschel Aileen & Scott Newquist Charron & Flint Ranney Gleaves & Thomas Rhodes Ellen & Kenneth Roman Marion & Robert Rosenthal Ellen & David Ross Linda & Harvey Saligman Charlotte Smith Genevieve & Richard Tucker Marilyn Whitney Yuriko & Bracebridge Young

ADVISORY BOARD William B. Macomber Paul Madden Robert F. Mooney Jane C. Richmond Nancy J. Sevrens Scott M. Stearns Jr. John S. Winter Mary-Elizabeth Young

Nina Hellman Elizabeth Husted Elizabeth Jacobsen Francis D. Lethbridge Reginald Levine Katherine S. Lodge Sharon Lorenzo Patricia Loring

Walter Beinecke Jr. Joan Brecker Patricia Butler Helen Winslow Chase Michael deLeo Lyndon Dupuis Martha Groetzinger Dorrit D. P. Gutterson

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Thomas B. Congdon Jr. Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham

Mary H. Beman Susan F. Beegel Margaret Moore Booker Richard L. Brecker

Nathaniel Philbrick Sally Seidman James Sulzer David H. Wood

Cecil Barron Jensen

Helen Winslow Chase

Elizabeth Oldham

Claire O’Keeffe

EDITOR

HISTORIAN

COPY EDITOR

ART DIRECTOR

Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research, first-hand accounts, reminiscences of island experiences, historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers.

Copyright © 2002 by Nantucket Historical Association Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, MA 02554.

Second-class postage paid at South Yarmouth, MA and additional entry offices.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket Box 1016 • Nantucket, MA 02554-1016 • (508) 228-1894; fax: (508) 228-5618 • nhainfo@nha.org For information about our historic sites: www.nha.org

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4 Foreword

by Frank D. Milligan

5 Stevenson’s Pillow:

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A Sketch of Austin Strong

The South Seas Room

by Joseph Theroux

by Joseph Theroux

12 A Twenty-first Century “Whaling” Voyage Down Under

17 “Fine Times on the Old Three Brothers”

by Niles Parker

by Leslie W. Ottinger

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Helen Marshall’s Travels Abroad

Historic Nantucket Book Section

by Margaret Moore Booker

Review by Elizabeth Oldham

28 NHA News

On the cover: As printed on this globe in the NHA collections: “Cary’s New Terrestrial Globe draws from the most recent geographical works shewing the whole of the New Discoveries with the tracks of the principal navigators and every improvement in Geography to the present Time.

London, Published by G & J Cary, St. James’s Street, Jan. 4th, 1828.”

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The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that on this earth, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cock-crow.

— G. M. Trevelyan Autobiography of an Historian (1949)

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E NEED THE PAST. WE NEED ITS STORIES

to make sense of the present. We need its memorabilia to make our surroundings comfortable and to enhance our lives. “Without habit and the memory of past experience,” wrote David Lowenthal in his hugely important 1985 book The Past Is a Foreign Country, “no sight or sound would mean anything; we can perceive only what we are accustomed to.” But, as Lowenthal explains, the past we depend on to make sense of the present is mostly recent and stems mainly from our own few years of experience. I discovered this firsthand during the 1980s while working in a museum dedicated to transportation and agriculture. Many of our visitors could remember driving cars and tractors like those that filled the galleries. They reveled in the comfort that this knowledge gave them and the opportunity to share their memories with others.

It was a wonderful experience for all of us who worked there, and the experience personally authenticated Lowenthal’s argument that our “ability to recall and identify with our own past gives existence meaning, purpose, and value.” But the fact remains that Nantucket’s past predates Henry Ford or John Deere by ten thousand years! And the further back in time we go, the fewer the traces that survive, the more they have changed, and the less they are able to anchor us to contemporary reality. This is precisely why museums and historical associations such as the NHA — their collections and the professional staff they employ — are so important. We are transmitters of tradition. Curators, archivists, and historical interpreters are trained to understand that awareness and knowledge of the past can be only partially founded on memory. Just as importantly, they are trained to infer knowledge from the evidence held in their artifacts — the museum’s “stuff.” Museum professionals are trained to go beyond the written word. Why? Because they know that written history is not a portrait of what actually happened.

Rather, it is a story about what happened; even those that are rooted in primary sources such as firsthand accounts, letters, business records, or ships’ logs are themselves accounts of what happened.

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As Lowenthal’s title suggests, the past is indeed a foreign country. Fortunately, we have historical artifacts to enhance the partial knowledge that we obtain through memory and written history. We have the stuff of which history is made. But artifacts are lost, wear out, and are damaged. Many remain as only fragments of what they once were. As custodians of this “material history,” museums and historical associations are charged to care for objects as small as a piece of twine held by a survivor of the whaleship Essex to one as large as a spermaceti candle factory turned Whaling Museum. Our professional duty is to keep only those objects that relate, that we are capable of properly caring for, and to reconstruct and present historical accounts by combining what these objects teach us with our written history and memory. This synergy represents the essence of a museum’s raison d’être.

The NHA adds value to everyday life on Nantucket by creating and presenting the metaphors through which our visitors learn of their past and present. Seen in this light, our job is a huge one. We cannot be, nor should we expect to be, the custodians of all that has come before us. We need to remember that in large part today’s circumstances will determine what stories are told and how they are understood. We need collections such as those held by the NHA because without them we cannot ever hope to reconstruct Nantucket’s past.

History told in isolation is barren, and a past that lacks tangible artifacts will be seen as too tenuous to be credible. That is precisely the reason that the public continually places museum exhibitions and presentations at the top of its credibility scale. We have the stuff with which history can be as accurately reconstructed as is possible by imperfect human beings. The NHA is building a new museum in which new reconstructions of Nantucket’s past will be presented in entertaining exhibitions and reenactments. We are building new galleries that will finally allow us to place on view the stuff of history — our collections — that are now stored away due to inadequate gallery space and environmental conditions. Showing these collections on a yearround basis will make Nantucket a better place in which to live and visit by finally allowing the NHA to fulfill its basic mission — to inspire Nantucketers to shape the future of their island with a greater appreciation and respect for and understanding of the unique historical role that the island has played in the American experience. We will do this by finally putting out on view our wonderful collections. It all starts with the stuff.

— Frank D. Milligan W I N T E R

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Stevenson’s Pillow: A Sketch of Austin Strong

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1906, SEVERAL RETIRED WHALEMEN shucked scallops in a shack on the Nantucket wharf. In stepped an off-islander, dressed to the nines in a blue blazer and gleaming white ducks, the very picture of a weekend yachtie.

He listened to their discussion of various South Sea ports-of-call: “Rarotonga, the Bay of Islands, and Vavau,” he heard, and he mentioned sailing into the bay at Apia, Samoa.

Canny old Captain George Grant, himself born in Samoa (his mother having sailed with his whaler father), challenged the newcomer’s claim to being familiar with the area.

“Talofa, palagi!” he enunciated in Samoan over his basket of scallops. (“Greetings, white man!”)

The yachtie never missed a beat: “O te Ositini o Vailima,” he replied. (“I’m Austin of Vailima.”) There was a pause.

Then he asked, “O oe a aiga Atua?” (“Are you of the Atua family?” or — it’s also a pun — “Are you related to God?”) Captain Grant chuckled his surprise and welcomed the man into their circle. He had passed the test.

He was Austin Strong, grandson of Fanny Stevenson, step-grandson of Robert Louis Stevenson.

His father was the artist Joe Strong, whose Connecticut-born father had preached to heathens from Honolulu to Hyannis. His mother was Belle Strong, née Osbourne. (She had named him Austin to honor an artistic friend, Mrs. Joseph Austin.) Born in San Francisco on April 18, 1881, his first memories were of Hawaii, where his bohemian parents had settled on Emma Street, near downtown Honolulu.

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Later, he had shared the family’s romantic life in Samoa at the novelist’s last home, Vailima, near Apia.

It was there that the childless Stevenson had once made a Thanksgiving toast upon the boy’s arrival: “Vailima is blessed — there is a child in the house.”

It was Austin Strong — also childless — who created a sailing school on Nantucket for his many nieces and nephews, as well as the Cheaper by the Dozen Gilbreth children. It was called the Rainbow Fleet and was established in one of those wharf shacks where he was first welcomed into Nantucket society.

His niece, Helen Wilson Sherman, told me, “He was so spiritual, but he always had time for the children. He made me Commodore of the Rainbow Fleet. He stuck davits on the boathouse he built on the wharf and we learned to sail in a catboat he hung from the davits.”

He wrote successful Broadway plays (The Drums of Oude, Seventh Heaven, among others) and follies for Nantucketers. He led the campaign against paving over the cobblestones on Main Street, and won. When automobiles began making an appearance, Strong and others feared for the safety of children on the narrow streets of the town. He was from a different era: he was more comfortable with horse-drawn carriages. They fought the introduction of cars, but failed in their efforts. How different the town — and the island — would be had he succeeded!

Once he stood before a grand carriage in fear for his life. As a child in Honolulu, he was walking near Kapiolani Park. In his hat he carried contraband — one of the king’s goldfish. He had purloined it in a fishing expedition, defying the sign that banned the

by Joseph Theroux

Austin Strong, looking “the very picture of a weekend yachtie” Photo by Louis S. Davidson

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Above left: the Stevenson clan at Vailima in May 1892: Back row: Austin’s father, Joe Strong, with parrot; Margaret Stevenson; Lloyd Osbourne; Robert Louis Stevenson; Fanny Stevenson; Lafaele (“Raphael”) at post.

Middle row: Mary Carter, Aunt Maggy’s personal maid; Talolo the cook; Austin with his mother, Belle Strong; Simi (“Jim”), the “butler,” and Tomasi (“Thomas”) with axe. Front row: Auvea (plantation worker), Elena (“Helen”) and Arrick (“Alec”).

At right: Austin’s Wellington College class picture, courtesy of the Wellington College Archives

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activity and promised punishment to “the full severity of the law.” Sevenyear-old Austin knew that the “full severity” meant death, yet he had caught the large goldfish anyway.

Imagine the boy’s shock upon being confronted with the king’s own carriage on the roadway. He saw the royal crest on the carriage door and heard the king’s booming voice: “Austin!” (for the king knew his parents) “What are you doing so far from home?”

The boy blurted out his guilty secret, adding, “Oh, please don’t cut off my head!”

King Kalakaua replied, “I have no intention of cutting off your head.”

But the goldfish — really a carp — was revived with a calabash of water, and later a royal decree was delivered to the terrified boy at the Strong household.

It gave Austin Strong permission “to fish in the Kapiolani Park for the rest of his days.” It was signed with a flourish, Kalakaua Rex. When the American man-o-war Adams visited Honolulu, the crew took a shine to the boy, who was entranced by ships. When a reception and dance were held on board, the invitation carried the note: “Please bring Austin.” The crew had earlier taken his measurements. Now they presented him with two uniforms, one duck-white, one navy blue. As he was escorted onto the deck, “his big blue eyes shining,” Belle recalled, “someone was overheard saying: ‘There goes the happiest little boy in Honolulu.’”

The next year his family joined the Stevensons in Samoa. The years in the South Seas were among the most idyllic for young Austin, as well as the most painful.

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hold. In the early years at Vailima, he was often the translator between his parents and the giant Samoan handymen around the house, who called him Ositini. RLS called him “the Overseer.” He became a favorite of another servant, Arrick, a Solomon Island cannibal who built him a onestringed harp.

RLS would also tutor him in his lessons. His mother noted that “the boy had the impression that world history consisted largely of Scottish victories.” When Stevenson’s elderly mother came to live with them, she taught Austin poetry. It was noted that he recited with a strong Scots brogue.

In this literary household everyone, not just RLS, was writing. Fanny was keeping a journal and writing an account of their voyage. Belle was called “the Amanuensis,” RLS’s secretary. Her brother Lloyd wrote poetry. Even so, everyone was surprised when one evening little Austin “announced that he would read us several chapters of a story he had written; as yet it has no title,” wrote Fanny proudly in her diary. “It was properly divided into chapters and paragraphs and the conversations were in inverted commas. He looked up before beginning and said, ‘I think I must change one of my names, for Thompson and Simpson rhyme too much.’ We were thunderstruck at this remark from a boy of ten.” Belle recalled that Uncle Lloyd had recently refused to give Austin ten cents. For this, he became the villain of the story, Mr. Morgan. “Eying his uncle rather nervously, Austin read: ‘Though very handsome, Mr. Morgan was a miser.’”

Fanny added that the story so far “was remarkably good.” She overheard his prayers that night. When he was done he added: “And oh, Lord, I thank you that I have wrote — written — a book. Amen.”

On May 11, 1892, a photographer came up from town to snap pictures of the family. Little Austin sat with Arrick and Belle, far from his father. For several years his parents had been bickering, but when Joe Strong was caught in a dalliance with a Samoan girl — followed by thefts and slanders against Belle — RLS banned him from the house. Belle and Joe were divorced in July 1892. Now without his father, Austin relied more fully on Lloyd and Stevenson, who was W I N T E R

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eventually made his guardian. Once, however, Austin met up with his father on Beach Road in Apia. Fanny wrote in her diary that he was “sent home with dashed spirits and damaged loyalty.”

Joe Strong returned to San Francisco, where he remarried and continued painting until his death several years later, estranged from the Stevensons, as well as from Austin.

For amusements, the creative Stevenson invented games and played soldier with Austin, just as he had with Lloyd as a boy. (Together they had drawn a map that inspired Treasure Island). In their war games, Austin was christened General Hoskyns. When he was feeling playful in those happy days, Stevenson would address him by that name.

When it was time for Austin to continue his education in America, Stevenson jotted a poem which included the lines: When far away pursuing your education O don’t forget your friend of ’umble station.

He left in September 1892 and lived with his aunt, Nellie Sanchez, in Monterey, California. He was saddened to leave but looked forward to his letters from “Uncle Louis,” addressed to “General Hoskyns.” He loved visiting Golden Gate Park; the greenery reminding him of the islands. He was away for over a year, returning to Vailima on April 19, 1894.

When the warship Curaçao visited Samoa that month, Austin became a favorite of the crew and was feted aboard. He was fascinated with the ship and its fittings, continuing his lifelong love of ships. He loved sailing in Apia’s bay.

In December, Uncle Louis was tutoring him in French. On the 4th, they practiced a dialogue to be delivered at Christmas. But that day Stevenson died.

A Union Jack was draped over the coffin, as well as finely woven mats. One of these fine mats was given to young Austin, who cried his grief into it. He was also given a personal possession of Stevenson’s, a delicately woven Marquesan pillow, which the novelist had received there in 1888 and had served him on his Casco voyage (see the following article).

Austin attended Wellington College in New Zealand from 1895 to 1898, being a champion swimmer and debater. His class picture shows a dapper and confident seventeen-year-old, sporting a silk waistcoat, watch H I S T O R I C

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chain, and the trace of a moustache.

He also showed an affinity for draftsmanship and later studied landscape architecture in New York. He was so proficient that in 1901 he won a contract to design Auckland’s Cornwall Park. In the design, he recalled Golden Gate Park and incorporated many of its features, including bicycle paths, tennis courts, and children’s play areas, while keeping Cornwall’s natural contours and historic Maori earthworks.

He left New Zealand and met up with his Uncle Lloyd, who was publishing stories and beginning to write novels. They hit on an idea and cowrote a play called The Exile (Napoleon on St. Helena) which was produced in London in 1903.

The experience was so enjoyable that Strong decided at last that he knew what he wanted to do. Over the next thirty years he wrote or adapted some fifteen plays, on the average of one every other year, a remarkable output. One of his most successful plays was Seventh Heaven, which ran to over 700 performances. It was made into a movie with Janet Gaynor and Frederick March in 1927 and won the Photoplay medal, the precursor to the Oscar.

In 1905 he wrote The Drums of Oude, which was first produced in London the following year. It was staged in New York soon after, and during the production he met his future wife, Mary Wilson of Providence, Rhode Island. It was Mary who introduced him to the island of Nantucket, where they honeymooned.

The Strongs were soon spending every summer on Nantucket.

Eventually they purchased a rundown house at 5 Quince Street, a few steps beyond the center of town. It was a 1731

Woven Marquesan pillow given to Robert Louis Stevenson in 1888, bequeathed to Austin upon RLS’s death, and now in the NHA collections.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s funeral mat is finely woven with dyed parrot feather accents.

Photographs by Jeffrey S. Allen.

Below: Austin and dog in the snow outside his home at 5 Quince Street.

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The current resident of 5 Quince Street, Clarissa Porter, a relative of Austin Strong’s, has preserved the attic workshop.

Photo by Jeffrey S. Allen.

Below right: the decorative map Strong created in 1921 as a fund-raiser for the Nantucket Cottage Hospital .

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dwelling, which they renovated; he converted the empty attic into his working study. Throughout his Nantucket summers he wrote there every morning.

Mary’s rosebushes soon clambered on the front trellis.

In addition to his civic work, he wrote follies, which raised money for the Nantucket Yacht Club stage. In 1921 he took up the cause of supporting the Cottage Hospital, which was in need of cash and in search of a fund-raiser. Strong got out his sketchpad and pens and produced a charming decorative map of Nantucket Island, sales of which generated an income for the facility for years to come and is now a collector’s item.

The social event of 1927 was the Nantucket Follies, which he and Robert Benchley — actor, writer, raconteur, wit — conceived as a fund-raiser for the Yacht Club. Benchley, the first of several Nantucket writers of that name (see: The Off-Islanders by Nathaniel, Jaws by Peter), had bought property in Siasconset. He, like Strong, also performed in the follies, which included sea dramas, dancing girls, sea chanteys, and skits.

He somehow found the time to pursue his many interests. An amateur craftsman, he had a small workshop in his attic where he built stage sets and performed puppet shows with his good friend, Tony Sarg. During World War II he organized Victory Gardens and helped enforce blackouts. He was always available to reporters and aspiring authors. He also had a hand in more than a few Hollywood films.

Strong’s film writing went back to 1914 when he adapted Rostand’s play A Good Little Devil, starring Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish. In 1917 he adapted the play The Fall of the Romanoffs. He returned to film

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work in 1927 when he wrote the script for Seventh Heaven. In 1933 he was a “dialogue doctor” for Mary Pickford’s Secrets and Katharine Hepburn’s Little Women. Three years later he cowrote the comedy Along Came Love. The next year saw a new version of Seventh Heaven with James Stewart. In 1946 he adapted Three Wise Fools into a Lionel Barrymore picture.

But he preferred writing for the stage and once told an interviewer that he believed “the public is becoming tired of seeing just shadows and they long for real life and actual personalities such as only can be found on the stage.” He saw no irony in the statement: for him the stage was “real life.”

In the last years of his life he took to recalling vividly his youth in Samoa. Finished with plays, he sketched out his experiences in the islands, like his encounter with King Kalakaua. He wrote “His Oceanic Majesty’s Goldfish” for the Atlantic Monthly, and it was reprinted

by Reader’s Digest and other anthologies. He recalled how his grandmother Fanny had kept the tubercular Stevenson alive for so long and had been his devoted fellow adventurer. Strong chose her for his “most unforgettable character” in the March 1946 Reader’s Digest.

He saw the essays as part of a projected autobiography.

September always meant returning to New York and his apartment on Madison Avenue. But in 1952 he was enjoying his work on his memoirs, and he resisted leaving Nantucket.

On one September Sunday, he felt poorly and took to his bed. He was full of pains and aches. Well, he told himself, he was 71. But he felt no better on Monday, nor on Tuesday. He speculated on the irony that his

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mother Belle would turn 95 two days later. Wednesday morning everyone knew something was wrong. He was taken to the Cottage Hospital, which had benefited from his many fund-raisers. But the little jaunt up the road and back weakened him. Soon after he was put to bed, he suffered a heart attack. He died that morning, September 17, 1952.

Much of Nantucket turned out for the funeral service at St. Paul’s Church on Friday. He was buried in his wife’s family plot in Rumford, Rhode Island.

The New York Herald noted: “Memories of him are scattered around the oceans. . . .”

Strong’s study in the attic of 5 Quince was stuffed with memorabilia from his travels, nautical artifacts, stage sets, an extensive library, as well as his cherished possessions associated with his legal guardian, Uncle Louis.

A sketch of Stevenson, the woven pillow from the Marquesas, the finely woven mat decorated with red feathers, all eventually found their way to the Nantucket Historical Association. A portion of his library — books, manuscripts, logbooks, letters — was donated to the archives.

His generosity made the islanders caretakers of the pillow that had cradled the head of the frail novelist and the fine mat that had been draped at his funeral with the Union Jack.

Like Strong himself, the objects had traveled the far oceans, coming ashore at Nantucket.

Joseph Theroux is the principal of Keaukaha Elementary School, Hilo, Hawaii, but also calls Apia, Samoa, and

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West Dennis, Mass., home. He previously contributed an article on William Cary to the fall 1999 issue of Historic Nantucket.

Sources: “The Unpredictable Austin Strong,” Richard C. Beer, Yankee, March 1956 “Austin Strong,” Helen Wilson Sherman, Historic Nantucket, January 1987 Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, September 20, 1945 and January 1, 1959 Obituaries: New York Times, September 18, 1952 New York Herald-Tribune, September 19, 1952 Newsweek, September 29, 1952 This Life I’ve Loved, Isobel [Strong] Field, Longmans, Green & Co, New York, 1937 Our Samoan Adventure, Fanny and Robert Stevenson, edited by Charles Neider, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1955 Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, edited by Ernest Mehew, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1997 The Light Accepted: 125 Years of Wellington College, A. W. Beasley, The Board of Trustees of Wellington College, New Zealand, 1992 Records Office, Lakeside Cemetery, Rumford, Rhode Island Interview with Helen Wilson Sherman, July 20, 2001

Left: The 1925 Hospital Fête.

Standing from left: Samuel Merwin, Tony Sarg, Captain Walter Chase, Austin Strong, Breckinridge Long, Captain Benjamin Joy, and John Martin.

Kneeling from left: G. F. McMillen and John Cross.

Right: Austin gives the thumbs up to a little Nantucketer.

Photograph by Louis S. Davidson

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The South Seas Room by Joseph Theroux

Below: The recently redesigned South Seas Room displays a particularly fine collection of war clubs.

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South Seas frequently put in to such places as Apia and Levuka and Honiara and Lahaina to refill their watercasks and fill their holds with pork and limes. They also took aboard island artifacts, prized for their novelty, and packed them into sea chests as treasured souvenirs. Some were gifts; others were bartered from the islanders for muchdesired iron, often in the form of ship’s nails from the carpenter’s bin.

The Nantucket Atheneum Museum was founded by local sea captains to house the “curiosities” assembled over the years on their voyages. Just as their fellow captains in Salem had done with the East India Marine Society (now the Peabody Essex Museum) in 1799, they realized that — taken together — it represented a substantial exhibit describing the material culture of foreign peoples. The first site was at the corner of Federal and India Streets, and it remained on display for some seventy years. But eventually the collection grew too large and in 1905 it was donated to the Nantucket Historical Association, which had come into existence in 1894.

The South Seas collection itself — war clubs, carvings, tools, decorative ornaments — became part of the Whaling Museum. In the last hundred years, valuable donations from Nantucketers such as George Grant (1870–1942), Mary Starbuck (1856–1938), and George Rule (1781–1859); and summer residents Austin Strong (1881–1952) and Edward F. Sanderson (1874–1955) enriched the collection. Grant became the first curator of the Whaling Museum, while Starbuck, writer and daughter of a whaleman, was the NHA’s first recording secretary. In 2000, curators Aimee Newell and Niles Parker, with technical assistance from Pacific expert Norman Hurst, (of the Hurst Gallery in Cambridge), redesigned the South Seas Room.

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The collection of war clubs rivals many of those in major museums. They come from Fiji, Samoa, the Solomons, the Austral Islands, New Caledonia, the Marquesas, and New Britain. As elegantly carved as they are lethal, they were meticulously shaped and hewn from ironwood with basalt adzes and chisels. For final polishing, the islanders used a sandpaper made from shark skin. They were then hand-rubbed to a high gloss and hue that strongly resembles the coppery skin of the Polynesians themselves.

The South Seas Room displays a dozen clubs that are particularly fine: ➤ New Caledonian bird’s-head club — a go-poropuara-maru; it is a straight shaft that is topped by a sharp, beak-shaped blade. ➤ New Caledonian mushroom-head club — a go-maace; the name refers to the phallic-shaped (“mushroom” in polite parlance) head, symbolizing strength and virility. ➤ Marquesas idol club — decorated with delicately carved faces and figures of war gods.

[Edward F. Sanderson Collection] ➤ San Cristobal parrying shield — a gracefully carved weapon topped with a wing-shaped club; the base of the shaft becomes a human figure; called a roromaraugi, it is from the San Cristobal area of the Solomons. ➤ New Britain club — a long shaft with a blade-shaped club, the handle is wrapped with a cane binding. ➤ Samoan fa’alaufa’i — toothed club made of Samoan toa (ironwood, Casuarina). [Edward F. Sanderson Collection] ➤ Samoan amuamu — ironwood club, the business end made up of square ridges.

[Edward F. Sanderson Collection] ➤ Samoan uatogi — ironwood club; the business end is a tapering blade, so it may have developed from a paddle club; uatogi is the generic term for Samoan war club, from the root word togi, “to throw.”

[Edward F. Sanderson Collection] ➤ Fiji kiakavo — two classic Fijian spurred clubs, sometimes called a“gun- stock club.” The Fijians W I N T E R

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had a name for each part of this club: grip: lake-na; proximal butt end: teki lake; distal butt end: ulu-na; large horn: meto; raised ridge: tere; sides of head or “cheeks”: balu-na; carved lines along the head: tavatava. [Edward F. Sanderson Collection] Fiji tree-root club — called vunikau or mada, made of the root of the moivi tree; the roots and tendrils are cut off at the base, leaving a solid mass. It was polished but left in its natural irregular state. Also called moivi, it was used in war dances.

Fiji mace club — called a bowai, it is devoid of ornament, shaped very much like a stout baseball bat.

Other items on display show the variety of the collection: a bow and arrow set from the San Cristobal area of the Solomon Islands; a coconut scraper from Pohnpei, and a tackle box from Chuuk (formerly Truk) in Micronesia; an elaborately carved ceremonial adze from the Cook Islands; and a fishing lure from Kiribati (formerly the Gilberts).

The shell pendant that Mary Starbuck donated is almost surely from a Samoan tuiga, the ceremonial headdress worn by the taupou, or village virgin. The miniature Samoan-style kava bowl was carved by George Grant, possibly on one of his whaling voyages.

The shark-toothed sword and spears from Kiribati are among the best specimens anywhere. The beautifully detailed model of a Maori war canoe (waka) was a gift of George Rule. The carved Austral Island paddles show delicate female figures dancing on the pommels.

More gems in the collection are presently housed at the Bartholomew Gosnold Center, and slated for future display. They include: ➤

➤

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Funeral Mat — an ‘ie toga, or Samoan fine mat, displayed in December 1894, at the novelist’s home at Vailima, Samoa; made of pandanus leaf and ornamented with dyed parrot feathers. Linguistically, the name suggests that the pattern originated in Tonga.

[Austin Strong Collection] Marquesan Pillow — a closed oblong tube, tapering to a slightly narrower midpoint; the pandanus is woven in a variant herringbone pattern; collected by Stevenson on his Casco voyage. He was at Nuku Hiva and Hiva-Oa from

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July 20 until September 4, 1888.

[Austin Strong Collection] ➤ Samoan Nifo ‘Oti Knife — Samoan-made from a British factory-produced machete or cane knife (its original identifying tag reads, incorrectly, “Sugar Cane Knife”); based on the design of an ancient wooden war club, it has a hook, welded onto the tip of the blade, called a nifo ‘oti or “death tooth.”

Nowadays these knives are ceremonial, used only in dances, but in Stevenson’s time they were swung about in battle, when the heads of enemy warriors were taken as trophies. [Austin Strong Collection] Hawaiian Lei Niho Palaoa — a necklace composed of carved whalebone and woven human hair, an adornment of royalty. (The similarity of Polynesian languages is seen here in the words for “tooth”: nifo in Samoan, niho in Hawaiian.)

Hawaiian Kahili — a pair of royal standards (or wands) once belonging to Princess Ruth Keelikolani (1826–83); feather ornaments on wooden staffs (mounted in a frame surmounting a photograph of Princess Ruth, with attendants holding the kahilis).

New Ireland Masks — decorative masks used in ceremonial dances; made of feathers, bone, fiber, and shells. (New Ireland and New Britain are part of the Bismarck Archipelago of the Solomon Islands.)

Other clubs in the Gosnold Center include a Fijian totokia or “pineapple club,” a dance club from the Santa Cruz Islands, a Marquesas u’u or Janus-faced club, and a Samoan throwing club.

The South Seas Collection — an exhibit of artistry and warfare — represents the material culture of the Pacific found by Nantucket whalemen years ago.

Nantucketers, themselves capable of producing articles of elegance and simplicity (see any island-forged harpoon or elegant Nantucket lightship basket), were quick to appreciate the same virtues in a hand-tooled war club or finely woven pandanus mat.

The whalemen saw islands that boasted lush and lovely tropical views; but beneath the lagoons were jagged, hidden reefs that were sometimes fatal to their ships. A visit to the South Seas Room dramatically evokes this tropical duality of beauty and danger.

Above: View of the South Seas Room including a model of a Maori war canoe, Austral Island paddles, a color reproduction of an excerpt and drawings from Susan Veeder’s logbook, and a case containing various artifacts.

Photographs by Jeffrey S. Allen

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A Twenty-first Century “Whaling” Voyage Down Under by Niles Parker

Chief curator Niles Parker standing in the base of a karri tree, common to southwestern Australia

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200 YEARS AGO NANTUCKET whalers established a connection between their small island and the islands of the South Pacific and Australia, as culture and commerce from the regions traveled back and forth aboard whaleships. In November 2001, I was able to continue those ties into the twenty-first century while I studied the previous nineteenth-century connections. I was fortunate to represent the Nantucket Historical Association as part of a group of twenty-one museum curators and scrimshaw collectors traveling to Hawaii and Australia for a seventeen-day tour. In addition to visiting many of the historic ports the whalers once frequented, we toured numerous museums, studied maritime and whaling history, and had the pleasure of examining first-rate collections of scrimshaw. In the tradition of the earlier, intrepid whalemen, I kept a log of our travels. I offer an excerpt here.

EARLY

November 1 Los Angeles to Honolulu/Honolulu to Lahaina, Maui The first stop on our journey was to the historic whaling port of Lahaina, on the northwest coast of Maui.

Lahaina had served as the wintering port for whalers in the Pacific Ocean during the first half of the nineteenth century. Its mild climate and location – ideally situated en route to and from the popular whaling grounds in the Arctic and off the coast of Japan – made Maui an extremely popular destination for Americans long before the first beachside hotel or resort was built.

Whaleships could provision in Maui and the sailors went ashore for N A N T U C K E T

rest, relaxation, and carousing. Our group learned quite a bit about the history of Lahaina from Lewis Eisenberg, director of Whalers’ Village Whaling Museum, a small but informative and enjoyable museum located among high-end retail shops and restaurants on the beach just north of Lahaina. We closely examined its collection of scrimshaw and then headed into Lahaina itself for a walking tour of the town and a group of nineteenth-century buildings operated by the Lahaina Restoration Foundation.

November 4–5 Honolulu to Sydney A long flight to Sydney, approximately ten hours, but obviously nothing like the several years it took Nantucket whalers in the first half of the nineteenth century. I bet the comforts of flying ten hours on Qantas beats years aboard a rolling whaleship, but I confess that part of me secretly hoped the flight attendants would come down the aisles with hardtack and rum followed by the passengers singing a rousing chorus of sea chanteys. Alas, chicken and Australian shiraz sufficed before most folks donned satin sleeping masks and began snoring. Meanwhile, on the constantly looping movie being shown throughout the plane, Mark Wahlberg in Planet of the Apes was doing his best to make ten hours seem like several years.

Crossing the International Dateline and somehow “losing a day,” we arrived in Sydney on Monday morning November 5— a beautiful spring day.

November 5–8 Sydney Our group spent three days in Sydney visiting museums and galleries including the award-winning Powerhouse Museum, the Sydney Aquarium, the Barracks Museum, and the Art Museum of New South Wales. In addition, we made our pilgrimages to the requisite sites like the W I N T E R

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Opera House, Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair, the botanical gardens, and the Rocks. A beautiful, vibrant city, Sydney was still basking in the glow of hosting a successful Summer Olympics only a year earlier and getting ready for another long, hot summer.

November 6 Spent the day at the Australian National Maritime Museum in scenic Darling Harbor in downtown Sydney. The museum curators had kindly pulled the entire scrimshaw collection for our group to examine privately and provided tours of the impressive facility and its USA Gallery. This gallery, which was largely supported by a gift from the United States government, highlighted the cultural and commercial interaction between the Aussies and the Yanks, beginning with the whaling industry in the early nineteenth century. They also invited us to watch the Melbourne Cup — a horse race something like our Kentucky Derby but akin to a national holiday in Australia. Everything in the country seemingly stopped and/or closed down during the race, including the museum, and we found ourselves grouped with the museum staff in the Education Room cheering for horses we knew nothing about, yet the staff had roped us into betting on them. Needless to say I didn’t win any money, but I did get free advice on horses and the intricacies of museum lighting from an exhibit technician who, at the last minute, put his tools down and hurried into the room to catch the race and have some champagne.

November 8 Traveled approximately eight hours by bus to Eden on the beautiful southeast coast of Australia. On the way, we stopped in Huskisson, which didn’t seem like much more than a small pit stop just off the highway. It proved to be one of the gems of the trip, however, as far as material culture and artifacts were concerned.

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A newly developed museum and visitor center, the Lady Denman Heritage Complex, was still partly under construction during our visit. We were warmly greeted by the staff of the museum (including fresh-baked scones and tea that the director’s wife had brought from home) and toured through the exhibitions.

To our astonishment, the little museum had a fabulous collection of nautical instruments and whaling artifacts that was on a par with anything we had seen.

Aside from the compasses, octants, and harpoons, what captivated my attention was a sperm whale’s tooth of average size that had been scrimmed with an American flag and a woman’s head on one side and a house on the other side. To my eye, the house looked exactly like one of the Starbuck houses on Main Street in Nantucket. I was intrigued.

What was this piece of American scrimshaw, possibly depicting a Nantucket house, doing in this little out-of-the-way place in Huskisson, New South Wales?

That evening we arrived in Eden and proceeded directly to the Eden Killer Whale Museum where we were welcomed with a delicious seafood banquet hosted by approximately seventy-five friends and supporters of the museum. Most of the food had been brought from their homes and the seafood was local and fresh.

The hospitality of our hosts was touching, and they displayed keen interest and sympathy for how all Americans were doing in the aftermath of the September terrorist attacks. They had even made sure that an American flag was flying at the gateway to the town during our visit. Our group leaders, Stuart Frank and Mary Malloy, entertained the entire crowd singing American songs and whalemen’s ballads after dinner.

The museum chronicles the history of the region and the whaling industry that once thrived on the shores of Eden’s Harbor and the surrounding Twofold Bay. For the most part, the people of this area practiced shore

Can this be one of the Three Bricks depicted on a piece of American scrimshaw owned by a museum in the small town of Huskisson, New South Wales?

Photograph by Robert Hellman

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whaling, pursuing whales that only came close enough to the land or strayed into the bay. Many of the whales were supposedly lured into the bay by killer whales that frequented the area. It was said that the killer whales were “trained” by the whalers to accomplish this task and rewarded with a meal of left-over whale parts. The most famous of these killer whales was named “Old Tom” by the locals. He died in 1930 and the whaling industry faded in Eden not long thereafter. Today Old Tom’s skeleton is hanging in the Eden Killer Whale Museum. Several people pointed him out to me with pride over the course of the evening.

nature of long sea voyages. It reminded me that the inside of a 747, even with Planet of the Apes, was a far more preferable mode of travel.

That night, we were treated to another dose of warm Australian hospitality. Owners of a local Adelaide pub who knew of our group’s tour invited us to dinner and an evening of folk music and sea ballads. Again, delicious food was had by a jovial crowd who spent the night talking about whaling and maritime history, singing boisterous sea ballads, and watching the Australian election returns, which ended with the incumbent prime minister, John Howard, easily winning reelection.

November 10

“Old Tom,”

After a long return bus ride to Sydney, we flew to Adelaide on the south central coast of Australia.

November 11

Another beautiful city, though much smaller than

west coast of Australia. The passengers on the plane mostly consisted of our group of American scrimshaw enthusiasts and the Australian women’s national soccer team. Members of the team were far less interested in discussing the finer points of scrimshaw than in being left alone to watch an American movie or sleeping before their big game in Perth. Flying coast to coast over what is mostly uninhabited outback, I was reminded of how big the Australian continent is (comparable in size to the continental United States) and its unique settlement pattern, which is almost entirely limited to its coastal regions. The middle of the country is a vast area of nearly uninhabitable desert and bush.

Upon arrival, we took a bus tour through downtown Perth, a modern city located on the scenic banks of the

the most famous of Sydney, Adelaide is the capital of Southern Australia the trained killer whales and is the country’s premier wine region. We only had who frequented one day in Adelaide — it happened to be Australia’s Twofold Bay in Eden.

Photograph by Robert Hellman.

Eden Killer Whale Museum.

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national election day — and we made the most of it with a visit to the South Australian Maritime Museum in Port Adelaide. Housed within a restored 1850s brick warehouse, the museum bore a striking resemblance to our own Whaling Museum. The exhibits inside touched on a variety of topics concerning shipping, travel, and the maritime trades in southern Australia.

On display, the museum had a remarkable collection of figureheads as well as the recreated section of a ship’s “below-decks” (with audio effects of wind, waves, and creaking wood) that emphasized the dark, cramped

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We took an early flight from Adelaide to Perth on the

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Swan River, just miles from the Indian Ocean. One of our first stops was in King’s Park, a beautiful hilltop park with panoramic views of the city skyline. We arrived just in time to join a large gathering for a solemn Remembrance Day ceremony. On the two-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks and with daily news of war in Afghanistan, the ceremonies took on an added measure of significance.

We then climbed on the bus, had an introduction to the city, and regrouped at the Western Australian Museum — an impressive museum in a complex of buildings in downtown Perth. There we met some members of the staff and were treated to a fascinating lecture on whales by Dr. John Bannister, who has spent years tracking whales and monitoring the population trends of various species. Of course we were also pro-

popular provisioning and rest stop for whalers in the nineteenth century. On the day we walked about the town, it was blindingly bright and hot with temperatures reaching nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We, from the Northern Hemisphere, remarked at the seeming incongruity of watching Christmas decorations being installed on such a hot day. At the mouth of the harbor, we had a chance to tour the construction site for the new Western Australian Maritime Museum. A state government initiative, it is a stunningly modern building resembling an abstracted boat’s hull, going up on the very edge of the ocean and the river. Rising up above the wharves, the structure reminds me of the Guggenheim’s success with building a modern, iconic structure in Bilbao, Spain. It is clear that the museum’s architects, planners, and staff are hoping that this new facility — currently being mar-

vided with a chance to inspect the museum’s scrimshaw collection and take our time touring through the large facility. Of special interest in the natural-history section of the museum was a spectacular 80-foot-long skeleton of a blue whale, the largest creature on earth.

keted as the “first museum of the Indian Ocean” — will enjoy similar success. The Maritime Museum’s current facility, housed in an 1850s warehouse, is an interesting place in its own right and attracts nearly 250,000 visitors annually. Its exhibitions are concerned primarily with shipwrecks and underwater archaeology. On display in the museum was a portion of the excavated hull of the Dutch ship Batavia, which sank off the coast of Western Australia in 1629.

November 12 Fremantle A port city that bounced back from relative obscurity after hosting the America’s Cup, Fremantle is now a colorful, thriving town dotted with restored Victorian hotels and brick warehouses. Situated at the mouth of the Swan River, which flows directly into the Indian Ocean, the town serves as the working port for Perth and all of Western Australia. It, too, had once been a H I S T O R I C

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November 13–15

Left: Fremantle’s current Maritime Museum housed in an 1850s warehouse; middle: site of the new Western Australian Maritime Museum; right: Remembrance Day

ceremony in Perth.

Albany We flew from Perth to Albany on the southern coast of Australia — a small town with surroundings that are jaw-dropping. The deep, protected harbor surrounded W I N T E R

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Top: Gary Tonkin’s scrimshawed and carved whale jawbone depicts scenes from the whaleship Kathleen, which was rammed and sunk by a whale; above: Gary and group leader Stuart Frank with the thirteen-foot jawbone.

Photographs by Robert Hellman

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by mountains and dotted with islands is truly beautiful. It had been a favorite haven for whalers in the nineteenth century and, in the twentieth century, a home port for a thriving whaling industry that lasted until 1978. The newest trend for Albany is to sell itself as a resort destination, as well as a launching port for travel to Antarctica.

Once again, our group was treated with wonderful hospitality. The mayor of Albany, Alison Goode, whose father and uncle had both been whalers, threw a lovely luncheon in our honor. There we were greeted by nearly 100 residents, many of whom had worked at the whaling station in Albany or aboard modern whaleships. It was the first time I had a chance to speak with someone who could provide firsthand accounts of whaling. The men and women were eager to tell their stories and experiences of whaling and, in addition, learn more about American whaling in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

From there we headed to what is touted as the “world’s largest whaling museum” — Whaleworld. The Cheynes Beach Whaling Station in Albany was the last modern whaling station left in Australia. Though it stopped operating in 1978, it remains intact and has been converted into a popular heritage attraction. The history of this industry is retold on the grounds through tours, exhibitions, and restored machinery that still operates.

Our guide during our stay in Albany was the renowned Australian scrimshaw artist Gary Tonkin.

Gary once worked at the Cheynes Beach Station as well as aboard whaleships, so his familiarity with the industry and its processes lends an uncommon insight into his work as a scrimshander. Gary’s energy and interest in scrimshaw and whaling history is infectious. He is also a tireless researcher regarding nineteenth-century whaling and the techniques of earlier scrimshaw artists.

I had met Gary the previous summer when he made a trip to Nantucket as the Kendall Whaling Museum’s artist-in-residence. At the time, he told me about a large project he had been working on for years — a thirteenN A N T U C K E T

foot jawbone from a sperm whale that he was carving from end to end. The carvings told a single story, that of the whaleship Kathleen, which like the Nantucket ship Essex was attacked and sunk by a whale. Now, Gary had planned for our entire group to see the piece, and I was thrilled. The jawbone is remarkable — completely scrimmed with the individual teeth in place and all individually carved as well. From deeply incised lines to relief-carved images of waves that give the impression of leaping out of the bone, every part of the work contributes to a unified whole, relating the saga of the Kathleen. The jawbone remains a work in progress, but it is already a masterpiece. Having the chance to see it in person and hearing Gary describe his work was truly a highlight of the trip.

November 17–18 Perth-Sydney-Los Angeles-Chicago-Providence Going halfway around the world, from the west coast of Australia to the east coast of the United States, in one day (actually about thirty-four hours) was both amazing to me and exhausting. I couldn’t help but wonder what the whalers would think — waking up in Australia and going to bed back at home — it would surely be inconceivable. When they set out for home, their joy must have been tempered by the fact that the journey itself could take a year or more. Now, it was one day.

However, while they may have suffered seasickness, they never experienced jetlag. Getting the day “back” that we had “lost” previously was a small reward for returning east across the dateline and dealing with jetlag for about two weeks. If that’s what “getting a day back” feels like, I prefer losing a day. That was painless, you didn’t even know it was happening. Getting a day back felt like waking up after too many Victoria bitters.

Whereas the whalers returned with barrels of oil, whalebone, and pieces of scrimshaw for their loved ones, we returned with photographs, a few souvenirs, and a much better understanding of whaling history, scrimshaw’s many patterns and motifs, and an appreciation of a country that doesn’t seem so far away anymore. I’m also left with a puzzle. Why does a whale’s tooth, with what might be a picture of a Nantucket house on it, sit silently on a shelf in a small building on the southeast coast of Australia — in a museum where the director’s wife makes delicious scones?

Niles Parker is the NHA’s chief curator.

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“Fine Times on the Old Three Brothers” All quotations in italics are from the log of the Three Brothers kept by Charles Coffin, the ship’s cooper. The journal is held in the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association Research Library.

17, 1854, THE NANTUCKET whaleship Three Brothers anchored at Holms’ Hole (now Edgartown), Martha’s Vineyard, back from a two-and-a-half year cruise to the North Pacific. This was the fifth of ten whaling cruises, spanning the years from 1833 to 1875, for the famous ship. Displacing 384 tons and owned for most of those years by members of the Starbuck family, the Three Brothers held the distinction of returning to Nantucket in 1859 with the largest cargo of oil ever recorded — 6,000 barrels. On this particular cruise, though, she carried 2,285 barrels and 21,000 pounds of bone, the product of thirty-five whales — mostly bowheads. This cargo was actually above average for the time and, with additional oil and bone that had been sent back from Hawaii, was large enough to bring the owners more than a satisfactory profit.

The Three Brothers had sailed from Martha’s Vineyard on October 15, 1851. 10/16/1851: Underway from Tarpaulin Cove with heavy hearts. Ten weeks later she rounded Cape Horn and entered the Pacific.

1/1/52: Thus New Year had come and we had two goonies for supper. I wish you a happy year in Nantucket. Here I am off the Cape in the old hail squalls. After recruiting (provisioning) ship in Talcahuano, Chile, and taking two sperm whales off the east coast of South America, she reached the Hawaiian Islands in April of 1852. In May the Three Brothers sailed through the Kurile Islands and into her primary destination, the whaling grounds in the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan, off the coast of Siberia.

There followed a return to Hawaii, then back to the Okhotsk in the summer of 1853, Hawaii in the fall,

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by and then around Cape Horn and north to home.

The NHA Research Library holds both the log and Leslie W. Ottinger the account book for the voyage. The log, which in many ways seems more a journal, was apparently kept for the first four months by Tobias Tyler of Pittstown, New York, but after that by Charles Coffin, the ship’s cooper. Coffin was a twenty-seven-year-old Nantucket native and son of Obadiah and Lucretia Coffin. He subsequently married Almira Gardner, also of Nantucket, and this explains the name “Almira” scripted several times in the margins of the brown, ruled logbook. It has the usual details of whales taken, land sightings, notations of latitude and longitude, ships spoken, weather and storms, damage and repairs, ship maintenance, courses steered, and sails deployed.

Beyond that, though, it is the personal journal of an observant and opin- 3/5/54 ionated young man who found much Old Joe likes the Bible Sunday that was remarkable and interesting to add to the daily entries. They are but can’t bear the idea rich in the vernacular of the whaler to see any one person — wild whales are “galleyed,” deserters “take leg bail,” and the drunken idle of a Sunday or captain is “over the bay.” There are to read even the Bible short pieces of mid-nineteenth-century humor: a long religious tract writ- as he checked the steward ten by a shipmate while in the gloom for reading the same of the Okhotsk Sea, an example of the usual bill of fare for a week, and a short time since. poems and songs from various Oh, he is a Vineyard-Christian. sources. Especially, there are observations and comments on the “old man” (Captain Adams). 4/12/52: . . . in all my going to sea I never see a meaner man than this same Capt.

Adams (but I will except old Joe Mitchell). [Joseph Mitchell II had been the master of the Three Brothers on its two preceding cruises.]

The account book was kept in the hand of the captain. It lists, for later accounting to the owners, the W I N T E R

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2/12/54 Old Joe very quiet.

Keeps by himself on his throne & what he will do for a throne when he arrives at home, I can’t conceive, but at all events I think if there is not one made for him he will certainly have to go to Davy Jones.

Above: Nantucket, April 28, 1841.

Oswald Brett’s colored print shows the ship Three Brothers being towed into the harbor by the steamer Telegraph, with Brant Point at right and town at left.

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expenditures from the cash funds provided to him. There are also pages for each member of the crew. These show the value of clothes, shoes, tobacco, and other items issued, along with advances of cash when in port.

The roster of officers and boatsteerers notes that the captain, Joseph S. Adams, was a native of Holms’ Hole.

It was his only cruise as master of the Three Brothers. It was also the first time the ship had ventured into the Sea of Okhotsk, then known to be a site rich in bowhead whales. Perhaps the owners selected him because of his prior experience on the Arctic whaling grounds. Captain Adams was clearly a skilled whaling captain, something that was especially important for ships venturing into the treacherous sea with its storms, sudden dense fogs, and floating ice. The log includes a list of six other whaleships lost there in the first season alone: 5/10/52: . . . the sea running mountains high, as the old saying is. 5/20/52: Ice found on things about deck 3 and 4 inches thick: Cold Cold Cold quantities of fish frozen in the sea — first rate, none better, if as good.

With the loss of only an occasional boat, Captain Adams brought them through two seasons in the

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Arctic and many storms. Two of the storms were violent hurricanes, in the second of which the ship Heroine, sailing with the Three Brothers, lost all boats, bulwarks, and eight men. He was compulsive in the care of the ship, attentive to obtaining all necessary provisions, and relentless in the pursuit of whales.

1/16/54:The old man is bound to some whaling ground and I wish he had a right whale about his neck but I must grin and bear it. [In the Atlantic Ocean on the way home.]

In the log there are almost daily notes detailing the duties and work accomplished, not just of the author but also of the other members of the crew. The first weeks these included the preparations to take whales. The gear and tools for the task were made ready as were the inexperienced members of the crew. 12/6/51: Lowered three boats to practice the boys and learn them to row. Although the officers were New Englanders, two boatsteerers were from the Cape Verde Islands and the crew also included Spaniards, Kanakers [Kanakas] from the Hawaiian Islands, and men from islands of the South Pacific.

While desertion and the necessity to sign on new members were common occurrences on whaleships, the numbers of replacements for this cruise of the Three Brothers were unusually high. 1/20/53: Boatsteerers and officers keep watch to prevent the men from taking leg bail. Hawaii; 11/6/53: All hands kept aboard to fit the ship for sea. It was my liberty day but the old man was afraid some of the old crew would take leg bail.

The daunting task of the captain was to mold this conglomeration of men into an efficient crew. Central to this was to establish and maintain his authority and control. Captain Adams was clearly up to the job.

Rigid rules and standards were imposed. A severe breech was followed by the irons or a flogging, usually at the hands of the captain himself. Other punishments included extra work assignments such as knocking rust off eye bolts, cleaning the deck pot, a long stretch at the masthead, or being seized in the rigging. Nothing was allowed to disrupt the steady attention of the members of the crew to their work. In fact, some of the rules seem quite extraordinary for a small ship on a long cruise. 4/14/52: I had a touch of the old mans schooling this morning. – don’t allow no sport, no skylarking and no loud talking. Also prohibited were W I N T E R

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singing, eating between meals, and, as far as possible, any leisure time whatsoever.

8/3/52: . . . several incidents of his humor. Was afoul of the cabin boy. Caught two skylarking and one he see eating bread and meat before meal time. All these he gave work up jobs. Eat 3 times as much as you can and don’t let me catch any more of you eating before grub time. So says Capt.

Adams. Lovely man.

Charles Coffin leaves no doubt that, at least in his opinion, this complex man was an overbearing bully, cruel and difficult.

6/23/53: Two of the men forward had a sort of knockdown — the old man happened to see them — seized in the rigging on each side of the deck. He laid on the Kanacker 17 cuts and on the Spanish boy 12. Captain Adams who thinks his dignity and power is equal to queen Victoria.

3/12/53: The old man was blowing a gale of his dead wind having caught two of the men asleep on the lookout. He boxed one, beat the other with a rope end.

The men were driven ceaselessly. Illness and injuries brought no special consideration.

4/29/52: The Capt. has no sympathy nor feeling for any person that is hurt or sick. 9/12/52; One of the crew fell down the main hatch and hurt himself badly. After we got him up on deck the Capt. instead of examining him to see if any of his bones were broken commenced to curse him for folly. What the H… was you doing down there?

He was described as cross as a “mad dog” and “cross grained as a piece of curly maple.” This behavior was especially notable when he was drinking, which was often.

4/16/53: The old man for the last two days had been cross and ugly, having turned to at his rum bottle again. 6/1/53: The old man is in a bad fix cursing everything an inch high and a minute old — so goes so much for a fine Captain.

There are many descriptions of the captain’s episodes of intoxication and it is clear that when drinking his rum he was not always ready to exercise his usual incisive judgment.

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Good night, good night, my dearest.

How fast the moments fly; ’Tis time to part thou hearest That hateful watchman’s cry.

Past twelve o’clock! — good night!

Yet stay a moment longer — Alas! why is it so? — The wish to stay grows stronger The more ’tis time to go.

Past one o’clock! — good night.

Now wrap thy cloak about thee, — The hours must sure go wrong For when they’re past without thee They’re oh! ten times as long.

Past two o’clock! — good night!

Again that dreadful warning!

Had ever time such flight?

And see the sky, — ’tis morning So now indeed good night!

Past three o’clock! good night.

CHARLES COFFIN MISS ALMIRA GARDNER

[Ed. note: After Coffin finished writing the above, a friend appears to have bracketed their names together and written “Happy Couple;” added his name: B. G. Norton; and a last commentary, A little past four o’clock.]

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7/12/52: While the boats was ashore the old man was well over the bay. He could see better than any person and a sample of his sight was looking through the spyglass with the cover on the end.

Swore he could see nothing with that glass and sent out for another.

On December 2, 1852, while the Three Brothers was provisioning in Hawaii, it is noted that the mate and the second mate and boat steermen Crawford and Ned Breland went to the American consul to sign a protest.

This, we may at least infer, was related to the captain’s abuse of the crew.

It was also the captain’s drinking that led to two remarkable episodes with the ship’s steward (or stewards), the first rather comic and the second tragic. The first began on June 5, 1852, when the captain, being drunk, accused the steward of stealing rum and “banged and beat him about.” Four days later, 6/9/52 . . . when the old man turned out he found that his rum tasted rather different so after the breakfast the first and third mates tried some and found that it was poisoned. Then called the steward down and made him drink some. The darkey run up on deck and spit it out before the old man could have much a chance to stop him . . . what the poison was can’t find out. Fine times on the old Three Brothers.

The second episode involved Frances B. Graham, the twenty-six-year-old Negro steward who was from New Orleans. It began on May 27, 1853, when Charles Coffin noted “noon whilst the boats were off the old man sent me with the steward on the run to fill up his keg of rum.” The boats returned with a bowhead whale. This is the account provided by Coffin: 5/28/53: We turned to in cutting in the whale, the Captain in the meantime drinking deeply.

About 4 o’clock PM the steward come on deck.

Went to the cooler for some oil, then went off in the galley (he was then well over the bay.) The captain observered it. (I was then grinding spades and see the whole.) Went at the steward, beat him several times over the head. Swore when he was sober on the morrow he would flog him, so help him God and the steward went below. No more was seen of him after that. . . . The Capt. in the meantime was staggering drunk, could not walk

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straight nor talk straight, was insulting to his officers and everyone else. . . . At 5 AM the mate gave orders to call the steward (it being the first time he was thought of) to prepare for breakfast. They went in where he was last seen and behold he was a corpse, cold, and stiff and all drawed up and blood coming from his nose. [There follows a description of the burial at sea.] He was beloved by all on board. Had not an evening here or ashore but rum brought him before his maker before he was prepared for in life we are in the midst of death. Went on with the work as if nothing happened. The old man soon forgot it for he was soon aswearing, etc.

In the account book there is, in the captain’s hand, a page for each member of the crew listing items dispersed from the slop chest and their value. (The slop chest was a chest of clothing, shoes, tobacco, and other items that every ship of the day carried to meet the needs of the crew while at sea.) The amount was to be deducted, or discharged, on completion of the cruise from his wages. At the bottom of the page for F. B. Graham, Captain Adams recorded “5/27 died,” and put a credit of ten dollars against his account for “sale of used clothes.” That was, apparently, the end of the episode. We cannot say whether or not this event—or if Adams’s excessive indulgence in rum was the reason — but Charles Cleveland, the first mate, replaced him as master on the next cruise of the Three Brothers. Just as we do not know whether any specific response to the death was taken by the owners, or anyone else for that matter. While at sea, at least, the captain was the law, and there was no practical recourse or appeal for the crew short of mutiny.

We also do not know whether Charles Coffin made other whaling voyages. He did twice suggest that he would not. In the fog and ice of Okhotsk Sea he declared his decision: 6/22/52: The first man that ever says or asks me anything or to go in another ship awhaling I shall be so good as to knock him or her over. Later, he repeated his pledge: 8/12/52: Well it’s my last voyage so I take it all in good part — gurry and iron rust and smoke. How it makes me think of Nantucket.

When conditions were better, though, he was sometimes of a more cheerful mood. 5/24/52: Had for dinner roast pig and sea pie. Who would not go a right whaling and have roast pig.

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At any rate, by December of 1853 the Three Brothers was bound for the Cape and home. Coffin often describes the progress as being aided by “the Nantucket girls” hauling in the lines. And even Captain Adams could not entirely smother the good spirits of the crew.

Caught a gooney and put a label around marked Ship Three Brothers Full Bound Home and let it fly to the four corners and we hope it will bring us to Nantucket.

On February 24, 1854, as was traditional when they were no longer of use, the tryworks were thrown overboard. Three weeks later the Three Brothers anchored off the Vineyard.

So how typical was Captain Joseph S. Adams? Was Charles Coffin simply free to express the unvarnished truth about this off-islander, someone he would not meet regularly on his rounds of Nantucket in the future? Or was he truly an exception to the stern, dedicated, brave, and strong but reasonable and balanced captain of a Nantucket whaler many other accounts describe? The journal leaves little doubt that he was a masterly captain, a fact attested to by the safe return of the Three Brothers with a full cargo of oil after a twoand-a-half year cruise, which would have been considered short for the time. His ruthless administration of “sea justice” was probably justified by the risks of the venture and the unrelenting need for discipline and teamwork. Beyond this, though, to extend control to the prohibition of even loud talk and singing, skylarking, and the other behavior that might relieve the tedious and relentless work, the “gurry, smoke, and rust,” seems to go beyond this. Perhaps his drunkenness was not unusual, but the associated rages were certainly something more. One way or another, his own description of himself, as noted by Charles Coffin, does seem to have been remarkably close to the mark, 6/16/52: Old Adams is as he says as whole horse and two Jack Asses.

Leslie W. Ottinger, a physician, retired to Nantucket in 1996. He has been a volunteer in the Research Library since February 1999 and previously contributed “Sally Takes the Smallpox” to the fall 1999 issue of Historic Nantucket.

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4/12/52 At 2 PM orders was given by the old man to kill old Jack and preparations made accordingly at one half past 2.

He fell beneath the steel of Wm. Channing and great was the fall thereof.

“Oh bloodiest picture in the book of time That grunter fell unwept without a crime Dropped from his nerveless jaw a half gnawed ear Closed his dark eye and curbed his high career Hope for a season bade the sty farewell And porkers squealed when that big grunter fell.”

Alas for poor Jack.

He was one of his kind that could bear some severe thumps without a grunt or squeal.

We have laughed at his famous battles with the dog for his grub.

We have laughed at his other sports which will take too much time to enumerate but suffice to say that he will make good dinners but with a sigh will I think of my old shipmate as I put my knife and fork into some of his tender flesh. He was born on board ship Three Brothers in Okhotsk Sea May 30th.

Died with a knife being run in his throat.

Died as he lived, a peaceable citizen.

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“Helen Marshall’s Adventures Abroad” by Margaret Moore Booker

An illustration from Three Vassar Girls on the Rhine

by Lizzie W. Champney, with illustrations by “Champ,” Boston: Estes and Lariat, Publishers, 1887, from the collection of the Nantucket Atheneum.

On this page: “The Wide and Winding Rhine.”

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in the early nineteenth century made leisure travel feasible, and the years after the Civil War witnessed an exodus of American female tourists, traveling with their families or female companions. A “Grand Tour” of Europe became almost a standard excursion for well-to-do New England women; in some ways touring was considered one of the accomplishments, like needlework or drawing, that young American women aspired to. Many of these women wrote about their sojourns, and among them was Nantucketer Helen Marshall (1851–1939), who steamed across the Atlantic in 1876 in search of adventure and edification in foreign lands.

During her seven months abroad she wrote detailed letters to her parents, Joseph Marshall (1811–79) and Malvina Pinkham Marshall (1820–85), which serve as a fascinating journal of Helen’s remarkable experiences.

European vacations caused a stir on the island; the newspapers recorded the names of the lucky travelers, many of them women. Some islanders expressed great envy about their friends’ transatlantic trips. Elizabeth Pinkham Crosby wrote to her brother, Seth Pinkham Jr., in the early 1850s: “Our neighborhood is now in commotion at the startling intelligence of Mr. Hadwen & Lady, Matthew Starbuck & Lady, G.H. Wright & lady, M.C. and Miss Sarah Barney, sailing for Europe in the steamer Arctic on Wednesday next. They leave here on Monday for New York — How I want to go!” Among

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the intrepid Nantucket females who traveled abroad were astronomer and educator Maria Mitchell, who toured Europe in 1858–59 and 1873, and her sister Phebe Mitchell Kendall, a Nantucket-born painter and art instructor who went on a Grand Tour in 1873 and 1882.

Helen Marshall’s wanderlust can be traced to her childhood. The daughter of a Nantucket whaling captain and his seafaring wife, Helen was born in a small village in the Azores and spent the first eight years of her life sailing with her parents around the Pacific on the whaleship Sea Queen. Her travels eventually brought her to Nantucket where she spent the remainder of her childhood, but she was off again in 1872–73 to attend Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. After further study she became a teacher on Nantucket, and later in Norwich, Connecticut.

Marshall’s journey began in London in late October of 1876. With the unbridled enthusiasm of a first-time traveler to Europe, she wrote to her parents that even the first few days of her Grand Tour were “well worth a week and a half on the Atlantic.” Shortly after arriving she discovered that her lodgings in London had “dark walled rooms — [that] reminds me of the old life at sea.” Over the next six months she visited Heidelberg, Cologne, Antwerp, Florence, Rome, and Paris. As convention dictated that females traveling abroad in the nineteenth century must be accompanied by suitable companions, Marshall was chaperoned by fellow islanders Ann Mitchell Macy, a W I N T E R

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former teacher and sister of Maria Mitchell, and Ann’s daughter Fanny.

Like many of her female contemporaries, Helen Marshall’s Grand Tour was more than just a leisure trip; it also provided the twenty-five-year-old with an opportunity for an informal cultural education. Her letters include many descriptions of the historic art and architecture she saw. From Heidelberg, for instance, she described visiting a castle that was “entirely in ruins except one or two rooms — that are kept in repair and have some relics of its former grandeur. It is the most enchanting spot imaginable, towers and battlements crumbling now but built of huge red stones . . .”

During her visit to Florence she wrote that the Pitti Palace had rooms “magnificent enough for royalty” and floors of “different colored marbles,” and in Rome she characterized St. Peter’s Cathedral as “magnificence itself frozen in marble.”

The letters are also filled with Marshall’s impressions of the art she studied in galleries, museums, and churches. Shortly after arriving in London in October of 1876 she wrote: The first day F[anny] and I visited the Doré Gallery where there are only his [Gustave Doré] pictures exhibited. We remained til noon, unable to turn away from these wonderful paintings. The figures are so real and life like, they look as if they were only pausing, and would speak in a few moments. Two are perfectly immense, thirty feet by twenty; in one there are two hundred figures life size.

When she was in Florence the following month she found that the gallery at the Pitti Palace “is very beautiful and has the paintings of the best artists who have H I S T O R I C

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ever lived.” And in Paris in January of 1877, Marshall reported that “Last Wednesday Fanny and I went to the Louvre, a royal picture gallery that is truly magnificent and immense.

We staid [sic] several hours and did not begin to see all the rooms. We can go often . . .”

Later that spring she enjoyed the more than 3,000 paintings on view at a grand exhibition in the Palace of Industry in Paris.

Marshall was also entranced to see some of the historic places she had read about in college.

For example, when she was in London she explored the narrow streets of the city, “the old parts made famous by Dickens, who is constantly in my mind,” and “buildings made familiar by [other] writers.” In Florence, she wrote to her parents, “There are the same bridges across the Arno that were there in twelve and thirteen hundred, and the same narrow streets that Dante and Petrarch and Michael Angelo [sic] trod.”

Music was as much a part of Marshall’s cultural edification as the art and architecture. She enjoyed choral music in the churches of London, where the singing “was glorious” and “the little boys in the choir are young cherubs.” In Florence and Paris, Marshall and Mrs. Macy attended magical performances of opera.

When she heard Faust performed at the Paris Opera, Marshall reported that “the orchestra was very fine and the singing also,” but she seemed even more awestruck by the fact that she heard the music in a gorgeous interior with “a grand staircase of the finest marble” and the auditorium with “gilding that resembles gold.”

It appears that it was important for Marshall to impart to her parents, who paid for her trip, that her

Top: The cathedral at Cologne, from Three Vassar Girls on the Rhine.

Bottom: The Sea Queen was Helen Marshall’s home for the first eight years of her life.

Illustration courtesy of The New Bedford Whaling Museum

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Clockwise from left: “Heidelberg Castle from the Terrace;” “Heidelberg Terrace;” and “Ruin of a Castle” from Three Vassar Girls on the Rhine

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journey abroad was not purely for entertainment.

Perhaps to impress this point upon them she reported that in Paris she hired a tutor to teach her French, and she explained: “I do not feel that the past two months have been idle, exactly, for in each place I have read up on the various spots of interest and gained a little knowledge of their history.”

As her letters clearly express, the European sojourn offered Marshall a change from the ordinary and familiar existence of life on Nantucket and brought her in contact with the new, the strange, and the romantic.

Going for an exhilarating walk in the Heidelberg mountains during a driving snow storm, followed by cups of “hot Jamaica Ginger”; observing the large numbers of “real genuine monks” dressed in brown serge cloaks traversing the streets of Florence; discovering “Carnival” in Paris, which was celebrated with “tootings and horn blowings”; watching porcelain being handcrafted in Sèvres; and enjoying the “Highlanders . . . dressed in their Scotch costume, bagpipes and all” in London, are just some of the many wonderful experiences enjoyed by Marshall and her companions.

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Paris, where Marshall and the Macys stayed the longest, appears to have been Helen’s favorite city on the tour. In Paris she splurged on the purchase of yards of black silk to have dresses made once she returned home, and she described the glorious flowers in the city’s parks and the porcelain at the Sèvres factory as being so wonderful as to “make your mouth water.”

After her trip to the grand palace of Versailles, she exclaimed, “of all the days thoroughly delightful this was the chief.” In particular she loved their springtime “delightful” rambles and rides in the expansive parks and gardens. In May of 1877 she wrote, “One evening Mrs. Macy and I took a walk in the Champs Elysées, to see the gardens by gas light; for the cafés and pavilions are all illuminated every evening. A more fairy like scene you cannot imagine.”

Life abroad was a little more luxurious, too. In London, Marshall was pleasantly surprised that the “housemaid sets the table in the parlor in the morning thus far with rolls (funny ones) & steak, butter & coffee.” At their hotel in Heidelberg they were “waited upon like royal ladies” and enjoyed the extravagance of a room decorated “in the true German style” and slept in great comfort between two feather beds.

The meals they ate in Heidelberg were also a special treat. Marshall explained to her parents that they typically ate: Breakfast – delicious rolls, either coffee, chocolate or milk; beefsteak or cold meats. Dinner – first course soup; 2nd fish, 3rd veal cutlets; 4th roast meat; 5th chicken; 6th pudding, 7th and last nuts, grapes, apples, and confectionery. No ‘sour crout’ [sic] has yet made its appearance. . . .

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with whom she spoke French, and she was particularly enamored with a German baroness who had rooms next to hers. Marshall explained to her parents that the baroness had a “masculine head and features” and “had a cigar in her hand and continued to smoke during the evening. I don’t know when I have been so pleased with anyone. . . . She was a queer looking person in her dress, however, . . . it consisted of a plaid skirt and a brown sack.”

Occasionally Marshall showed her irrepressible spirit by flirting with danger and crossing the boundaries of convention. She told her parents that after listening to a choral service at Westminster Abbey in London, “It was nearly five when we started for home and I thought how you would feel if you knew we were alone in the streets of London at that time.” In Rome, following her tour of the dark, cramped passages of the Catacombs, she wrote to her mother, “When Mrs. Macy and I were in the middle of them with only a slim wax taper in our hands and a stranger for a guide, I said to her, ‘What do you think Malvina Fitzalan Marshall would say at this moment if she knew where her daughter was?’” In fact, Helen’s mother would have probably been extremely proud of her adventurous and independent daughter. Malvina Marshall was a spirited and independent woman herself. She spent the early years of her marriage “keeping house” aboard a whaleship and traveling to exotic places in the Pacific, and later in life was chosen to represent Nantucket at the state convention of the “friends of Woman Suffrage” in Boston.

As was often customary for American women traveling abroad in the nineteenth century, Marshall received letters of introduction that gave her entrée into an aspect of European society that she might not have experienced otherwise. In Paris she was invited to a private exhibition of paintings at an art club and in Rome she received an invitation to meet the Pope (Pius IX), arranged by the director of the American Catholic College in that city. Meeting the Pope was one of the highlights of Marshall’s tour. “Such a dear, fatherly old man,” Helen wrote to her parents, “we all felt more like putting our arms around his neck, than merely kissing his hand. He leaned on a cane and seemed quite infirm but spoke to each as he was introduced in a clear voice. The whole ceremony was very pretty and I would not have missed it for anything.”

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were fascinated and challenged by the details of transport, setting up lodgings and the necessity of a budget.

In London she wrote “Everything is cheap” and in Paris she noted “one could live for very little here compared with a city at home.” Their lodgings, always arranged before they arrived at their next destination, were not always a success. In December of 1876 Marshall wrote, “Rome is delightful but the fleas are horrid. I am nearly eaten alive and my skin is a sight; covered with spots from head to foot.” In general, Helen found the different currencies easy to learn and was surprised at how many people spoke English, but found knowing French extremely helpful.

It is interesting to note that during Marshall’s adventures abroad, Nantucket was never far from her mind. From London she wrote, “The dear old home is before me in memory, as plainly as if in a picture,” and from Florence, she reported, “The air is very clear and the clouds and sky beautiful, but no more so than we have at home.” She looked forward to letters from home and “devoured” the Nantucket newspapers when they were occasionally sent over.

Marshall’s letters to her parents indicate that she began to run out of funds when she was in Paris in March of 1877, and although it was “like pulling a molar,” she wrote, to ask her parents for money, she had little other choice. She admitted that she had tried to earn a little extra money by teaching English, but

“Watering the Champs Elysées,” from Paris of To-day, translated from the Danish of Richard Kaufmann

by Miss Olga Finch, New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 1891, from the collection of the Nantucket Atheneum

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“not because I have tired of sightseeing. Sometimes I feel as if I can hardly wait for the Island Home to blow her whistle, and creep up to the wharf.”

Although Marshall had been away from home before, for long periods of time, she felt that her European tour was “the most valuable of all and I shall live it over for a long while after it has been counted a thing of the past.” Her experiences abroad made the world seem like a much smaller place. “Do I seem very far away to you?” she asked her parents toward the end of her stay. “I do not feel so. . . . Not that the wide Atlantic has had a tuck taken, but that the unexplored and unknown always are rather vague and indefinite.”

As her travel account reveals, the Grand Tour provided Helen Marshall with an opportunity for tremendous personal growth and an incomparable education, and she returned home wiser in the ways of the world.

Margaret Moore Booker is associate director and curator of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies at the Coffin School. She is a past contributor to Historic Nantucket and is the author of The Admiral’s Academy: Nantucket’s Historic Coffin School and Nantucket Spirit: The Art and Life of Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin.

Sources:

This excerpt from few responded to her ads. Her parents seem to have one of Helen’s letters agreed to send her more money, as she stayed in Paris mentions Cologne and through May and returned to America in early June on

the steamer China. In May of 1877 she expressed mixed feelings about returning, but in the end the lure “arriving in a strange city of Nantucket and her family won out. “I am very in a strange land” happy to be returning, but it is because you are at the at midnight. other end of the route,” she told Malvina and Joseph, her trepidation about

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Correspondence between Helen Marshall and Joseph and Malvina Marshall, Pinkham Family Papers/Mason Collection, 1841–1932, Nantucket Historical Association collection 302, folders 8 and 8.5.

Correspondence between Elizabeth Pinkham Crosby and Seth Pinkham; and correspondence between Joseph Marshall and William H. Crosby; Marshall, Pinkham Family Papers/Brown Collection, 1850–72, Nantucket Historical Association collection 283, folders 1 and 8.

“Equal Suffrage,” Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, 6 October 1877.

“For Europe,” Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, 21 October 1876.

Montgomery, Maureen E., Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton’s New York.

New York: Routledge, 1998.

“Miss Helen Marshall,” obituary, Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, 28 October 1939.

Robinson, Jane. Wayward Women: A Guide to Women Travellers. Oxford University Press, 2001.

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Historic Nantucket Book Section Nantucket Only Yesterday

by Robert F. Mooney Paper, $19.95 Backward, turn backward, O time in your flight, Make me a child again just for to-night!

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TARTING AT THE BEGINNING

and going right on to the end, the twentieth century spins off the reel of anecdote and memory in this native son’s affectionate chronicle.

Nantucket didn’t exactly come kicking and screaming into 1900, but began to make its sleepy way down the road of progress, nudged along by entrepreneurs of one ilk or another. All the big hotels had been built by then and the island was well established in the business that rescued it from extinction after the whaling stopped.

The affluent colony of summer residents began to call some of the shots, establishing the first yacht club and demanding expanded electric service. One of their number was responsible for pushing through the legislation that in 1918 made automobiles legal on Nantucket, after almost two decades of lively debate on the only automobile-exclusion law ever enacted in the United States.

The island economy had had its ups and downs, even through the somewhat heady days of the Gay Nineties, but World War I and the years of the Great Depression would take their toll, catapulting the island into a period of bleak uncertainy for the future.

The thirties could be considered almost a cultural renaissance, with a flourishing artist colony and myriad theater companies marking the languid summer days and nights. People didn’t have much money then, but summer rentals were cheap and visitors could get here from New Bedford on the steamer for $2.50.

Only after World War II ended did Nantucket begin to see the changes that by the end of the century would H I S T O R I C

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transform our little slice of Paradise into world-class destination and playground for the beautiful people.

What is best in this book are the sketches of the people the author grew up with and the featured profiles of Nantucketers who made a difference: you’ll recognize them — some gone, some still with us — all of them people only Nantucket could produce, and nurture.

As the book has it, “Nantucket has survived the century.”

Review by Elizabeth Oldham

Elizabeth Oldham is research associate in the Nantucket Historical Association’s Research Library. She is also a free-lance copy editor and writer.

NANTUCKET RAILROAD

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HE NANTUCKET RAILROAD IS THE SUBJECT OF

one of the upcoming exhibitions in the Peter Foulger Museum for 2002. We are currently looking for artifacts, paintings, photographs, and souvenirs related to the railroad. If you have something you would agree to loan to the exhibition, please call chief curator Niles Parker at 508-228-1894, ext. 120, or e-mail him at nparker@nha.org before March 31. “We want it to be a really enjoyable, community-oriented exhibition,” said Parker.

“The more we have to tell the story, the better.”

ILLUSTRATION BY CLAY LANCASTER

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Rambler

Elizabeth Starbuck

Henry Astor

Hero II

John Adams II

1818–1855

1834–1846

1839–1849

1816–1861

1819–1831

Join the Fleet, Support the Capital Campaign

At right: festival cochairs Jackie Peterson and Jo-Ann Winn.

Photograph by Jeffrey S. Allen

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Capital Campaign Update

The 2001 Festivals of Wreaths and Trees

The year is off to a terrific start. Through the generosity of 175 individuals and foundations that have already contributed, The Campaign for the Nantucket Historical Association has achieved $15.5 million in gifts and pledges toward our $18-million goal.

Our focus now turns to the new Museum Center and the NHA’s permanent endowment. I am pleased to say that we are finalizing the museum design plans and look forward to sharing them with the membership as they become available.

During the spring and summer, with Marcia Welch chairing the major-gifts initiative, we will be approaching other interested individuals and additional members about the campaign to secure their help in meeting our goals. One of the ways we will recognize the support of our leadership-gift donors (gifts of $100,000 and above) and major-gift donors (gifts of $50,000 to $100,000) is to assign each donor’s name to a historic whaleship flag.

The original flags are depicted in “Signals of the Nantucket Whaling Fleet, 1788–1865,” which hangs in the Whaling Museum’s Navigation Room.

Donors will select an individual flag under which their names will be printed. Posters and displays of the flags will be distributed and exhibited during the final months of the campaign. At the conclusion of the campaign, a permanent display will be exhibited in both the Whaling Museum and the Research Library.

Nantucket’s history is a vital part of the experience of living on the island or visiting here. Preserving and interpreting that history is the essence of the Nantucket Historical Association’s mission and of the capital campaign. Thank you for supporting the campaign and helping to preserve the island’s past for future generations.

On a personal note, you will read a tribute in this issue of Historic Nantucket to Tucker Gosnell, a fellow trustee and friend. Tucker chaired our major gifts program, and the campaign greatly benefited from his enthusiasm and dedication to the NHA. He leaves a strong legacy. We miss him.

— Peter Nash Chair, Capital Campaign

“Passion and patriotism were hallmarks of the themes used by designers for both festivals this year,” say cochairs Jo-Ann Winn and Jackie Peterson. First, more than seventy wreath designers donated their creations to the NHA for display and silent auction at Sherburne Hall, courtesy of the Preservation Institute: Nantucket, over Thanksgiving weekend, November 23–25. Final sales yielded $12,050 for the NHA’s ongoing mission of interpreting Nantucket’s history.

Then, just two days later, many of the same designers joined with other artists to decorate fifty Christmas trees in the Whaling Museum to create what, according to many people, was the best Festival of Trees to date.

Started in 1994 at the suggestion of Kim Corkran’s mother, Lucille, to be a Nantucket community celebration at the onset of Christmas Stroll, the festival was first mounted at the Thomas Macy Warehouse and then the Fair Street Museum but found its permanent home in the Whaling Museum four years ago. With so many still recalling the tragedy of September 11, 2001, it could not be predicted how the festival would be received, but when over 450 ticket-holders attended the preview, we knew it would be a success. For the first time — thanks to the investment in artificial trees, the generosity of the decorators, and loyal volunteers — the festival remained open on weekends through December 23. Close to 2,300 visitors, many with their children and grandchildren, came to the Whaling Museum to enjoy the beauty and creativity of the decorations. Both HGTV and WGBH Boston’s Victory Garden came during December to videotape segments for nationally televised productions.

“There were so many people we needed to thank that we bought advertising space in the Inquirer and Mirror!” remarked Winn and Peterson.

When invited by the board of trustees, they both agreed to serve as the 2002 cochairs. Thank you, Jo-Ann and Jackie!

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Gardening Series: Hopeful Harbinger of Spring A Saturday series of three gardening programs, from a historical perspective, will be offered to our hardy winter residents February 23, March 9, and March 23 at 10 A.M. in the Research Library. Landscape designer Marion Pressley from the Radcliffe Landscape Design Program will present an illustrated lecture on Colonial, New Republic, and Romantic gardens on February 23.

A second program on March 9 will focus on gardening with heirloom plants and seeds and developing specialized gardens such as herb, knot, and color theme.

A third program, on March 23, will take a look at botanical art, from the early herbarium specimens in the collection at the Maria Mitchell Association to botanical watercolors and present-day illustrations for journals and guides on flora. The program will end with a hands-on workshop on pressing flower specimens. The NHA thanks the Nantucket Garden Club for their assistance in developing the gardening series.

To celebrate the gardening series, curator Niles Parker will offer a small exhibition in the Whitney Gallery at the Research Library. The collection will include glass flowers created by native Meg Hunter Michelsen, an eighteenth-century illustrated garden journal from the NHA collection, herbarium specimens, and Victorian pressed-flower displays.

Other Gardening News NHA members and gardeners Dr. and Mrs. John W. Espy and Eleanor Weller Reade will open their Nantucket gardens for visitors on Thursday, June 27, as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program. The cost to visit each garden is $5 and a portion of the proceeds will be given to the Nantucket Historical Association. For more information on the conservancy’s national garden-visiting program, visit www.gardenconservancy.org.

Nantucket Wine Festival: Late-breaking News Nantucket Wine Festival president Denis Toner, in partnership with Russ Cleveland of Nantucket Island H I S T O R I C

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Resorts, has recently named the NHA as the “charity” partner for the 2002 Wine Festival. The festival will be a week-long event featuring seminars and tastings with wine and food experts from across the nation. A Gala Dinner on Thursday, May 16, will provide an opportunity to reconnect with Nantucketers and meet new friends while sampling five-star foods and wines. Book early to obtain the NHA member rate of $100 (nonmembers, $125). The following evening, Friday, May 17, at 9:00 P.M. the second annual Wine Auction will take place. Call Jean Grimmer at 508-228-1894, Extension 111, or send an e-mail to jgrimmer@nha.org for more information or to make a donation of collectible wines or other unique items. Remember, the net proceeds from the Wine Auction as well as $50 per person from the dinner will go to benefit the NHA. For additional information on this year’s week-long festival, May 13–19, log onto www.nantucketwinefestival.com.

Sue Fine, Richard Kemble, Peggy Silverstein, and George Korn at the Festival of Trees preview party; Roseanne McGuinn, Peggy Kaufman, Jo-Ann Winn, Peter Greenhalgh, Peggy Silverstein, Terry Dupuis, Ida Rinfret, and Jackie Peterson at the Festival of Wreaths.

Photographs by Jeffrey S. Allen

New Trustees At the July Annual Meeting, the NHA board of trustees welcomed two new members. Both Nancy Chase and Isabel C. Stewart bring considerable experience to the board and the NHA welcomes their contributions.

Nancy Chase is one of Nantucket’s special assets.

Not only is she a Nantucket native, her ancestry traces back to the island’s earliest days. Her vivid memory spans decades and she is a walking encyclopedia of Nantucket’s past. As a scrimshander, Nancy pays homage to those who spent many hours aboard whaleships crafting works from ivory. Nancy has been a long-time supporter of the NHA, having previously served two terms on the board of trustees concluding in 1997. In addition, she was recognized as honorary chair of the Antiques Show in 2000.

Isabel C. Stewart has a long family connection to Nantucket and is pleased to offer her skills to the NHA. Her grandparents, John and Mabel Carter, first came to the island in 1926 as a respite from summers in Philadelphia. Currently, she serves as the executive director of the Chicago Foundation for Women where she champions the needs of women and girls through W I N T E R

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fund-raising, grantmaking, and advocacy. Isabel earned a B.A. from Wellesley College and master’s degrees from New York University and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to being a teacher at a number of respected institutions, Isabel was the president of Girls Inc. in New York. Some of the boards she has served on include CARE, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, North Carolina Outward Bound, the Salzburg Seminar, and Wellesley College.

Exploring with the NHA Destination Salem is the first NHA excursion designed for both education and enrichment during the off-season — the doldrums.

On Tuesday, February 26, departing from Hyannis at 9:00 A.M., we will travel to Salem, and after check-in at the historic and newly renovated Hawthorne Hotel we will be treated to a customized guided tour of the Peabody Essex Museum. Free time will allow for independent wandering in the many exciting galleries of the fascinating museum and the historic houses in Salem, before assembling for a wine and cheese reception at the hotel.

The next morning, Wednesday, February 27, after breakfast and check-out, we will leave the hotel for Cambridge and the Hurst Galleries for a private viewing of Norman Hurst’s oceanic artifacts. Before returning to Hyannis, we will also be treated to a guided tour of the WGBH (Channel 2) production studios in Allston, arriving back in Hyannis at 4:30 P.M. The cost to members is $180 per person, double occupancy. Travel to Hyannis and back and meals are not included. Pick-up and drop-off in Hyannis will be at the airport and at the ferries. A blizzard would postpone departure to Wednesday, February 28.

For more information, call (508) 228-1894, Extension 111. Nina Hellman, Volunteer Coordinator, and Niles Parker, Chief Curator.

The Heritage Society The Board of Trustees of the Nantucket Historical Association announces inauguration of the Heritage Society. The society’s Honor Roll will acknowledge individuals and institutions who from the beginning have provided the resources that make the Nantucket Historical Association the principal interpreter of the island’s unique history.

Although major monetary contributions have been — and will continue to be — the life’s blood of the NHA, the association has also benefited profoundly from the perception of donors and the creative nature

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of the material gifts received: historic houses; important paintings and portraits; silver and china; furniture; ships’ logs; scrimshaw; manuscript collections; photographs; business papers; whaling memorabilia; rare books and maps. . . . Many of these artifacts, naturally and reasonably — for they are of great value — might have been handed down to family members, but came to the NHA because the donors recognized their significance to the very fabric of the institution and wished to ensure that they would be accessible to the public and available to research scholars.

Because this issue of Historic Nantucket is concerned in one way or another with collections and travel, we’d like to tell you about someone on the Honor Roll and the nature of his gift, which is about another kind of travel.

William H. Tripp (1880–1959) of New Bedford was a renowned maritime scholar and curator of the Whaling Museum there for a quarter of a century. In 1925, he went on the voyage of the John R. Manta, the last whaler to sail out of New Bedford, and wrote a book about it, There Goes Flukes (it’s in our library).

Although he lived in New Bedford, he often referred to Nantucket as his “second home” and enjoyed many friendships here.

In 1956, Mr. Tripp presented to the NHA fifty bound volumes containing all issues of the Whalemen’s Shipping List. The WSL was a weekly newspaper published in New Bedford between 1843 and 1895 that reported on the voyages of whaleships from all American ports and every other aspect of the whaling industry: shipbuilding, owners, masters, crews; oil prices in world markets; marriages and deaths; events and occurrences in all places the whalers went; major advances in the whaling industry; copious advertisements for services and products unique to whaling. It is a treasure trove for researchers, as well as being a pretty good read just for the heck of it. One of the Research Library’s volunteers, Donna Cooper, has made it her personal challenge to enter into the manuscript database synopses of all matters found in the WSL pertaining to Nantucket, and that record has become invaluable, all the more because it is accessible on our website. Recently, a curator from the Kendall Institute (now annexed to the New Bedford Whaling Museum) called the library and asked us to check a particular issue of the WSL because Kendall’s copy was torn at a place where critical information was being sought. So Mr. Tripp’s gift keeps on giving.

We shall continue to inform the membership about the Heritage Society in the hope that others, whether during their lives or through bequests, will be inspired to add their names to its Honor Roll.

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For more information, call or write Jean Grimmer, Associate Director/Director of Development: (508) 228-1894, ext. 111; jgrimmer@nha.org.

Messages from the Editor We offer sincere apologies for errors in the fall 2001 issue of Historic Nantucket. Leslie Hoag Hope wrote to tell us that we spelled her name incorrectly in the listing of donors to the library wish list on page 20.

She kindly donated Descendants of David Coltrane & James Frazier of North Carolina, compiled by Robert H. Frazier, “because I am descended from the Nantucket families who went to North Carolina during/after the Revolution.”

We also erred in our reprinting of the late Jean Boutyette’s poem Prospect Hill. The poem was written October 8, 1997, not 1987, and the final line should have read “Is there beyond the silent night, an endless day?” Thank you to Barbara Cohen for calling attention to our mistakes.

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However, we received a letter of praise from Susan Beegel, the author of “Journal of the No-Name Gale.”

She writes on December 21, 2001: Just wanted to say that I thought the fall issue of HN came out beautifully! Naturally it’s always gratifying to see one’s own work in print, but beyond that I loved the work you did in finding exciting, illustrative photos (especially the little one of the catwalk in calm, to contrast with the prize-winning shot on the cover, and also the one of the Ruthie B and of the Polpis Road starting to flood). And the text was flawlessly reproduced — I didn’t see a single typo. I appreciate what a great job someone is doing with proof-reading. I also really enjoyed the pieces on Moby-Dick — Mary K’s of course — but especially Donald Yannella’s book review. In the first week of the magazine’s being out I have had more people tell me that they read the article than has ever happened with any piece I’ve published on Nantucket.

We always welcome your comments and corrections and will print them as space allows.

IN MEMORIAM THOMAS C. “TUCKER” GOSNELL incisive, and succinct. Underlying these visible E HAVE LOST A LEADER . contributions lay a passion for the Thomas C. “Tucker” Gosnell — NHA, a passion fueled by a burning lawyer, investment manager, desire to expose his young son — in fact, all author, and NHA trustee — died December children — to new and unique historical 31, 2001. Tucker was actively involved in a learning experiences. number of key NHA committees and was We have lost a friend. Despite his many chair of the major-gifts component of our capother commitments and the island’s cold ital campaign. In meetings, his goal was to spring winds, Tucker always said yes to our help set out a plan and then quietly roll up his annual plea to join our NHA Iron Man relay sleeves and get the job done. He was a doer, team’s efforts to raise money for other island and I am certain that he spent many beautiful Nantucket mornings in the NHA offices, writcharities. His quiet, yet timely, encouragement to me during the home leg of last year’s race ing letters and making phone calls, when he now remains a very special memory. He was would have much preferred spending them generous to the NHA in so many ways. To say outdoors with Silvia, Philip, and other family members, or crisscrossing Nantucket on his Frank Milligan and Tucker Gosnell he will be sorely missed is not enough. Rather, at the 2000 Nantucket his all too early death has fueled our commitracing bike. But there he would be — quietly, Iron Man Competition ment to fulfill his dream of providing children but oh, so effectively — giving his precious time and energy to an organization that he cared deeply with thought-provoking, meaningful learning experiences and for. He spoke with a calm voice but one that was to make our island a better place to live. inevitably clearly heard, for his words were always earnest, — Frank Milligan, Executive Director

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Published quarterly by the Nantucket Historical Association 15 Broad Street / P.O. Box 1016 Nantucket, Massachusetts 02554 © NHA 2002 ISSN 0439-2248 USPS 246460

Nantucket Wine Festival May 13–19, 2002

The NHA has been named the Charity Partner of the week-long event featuring seminars and tastings with wine and food experts from across the nation.

Join us!

Gala Dinner, Thursday, May 16 $125/$100 for NHA members SECOND CLASS

POSTAGE PAID AT

To make a donation for the Wine Auction, please call (508) 228-1894.

For more information about the Nantucket Wine Festival: www.nantucketwinefestival.com

NANTUCKET, MA

(Net proceeds benefit the NHA)

AND ADDITIONAL

Wine Auction, Friday, May 17

ENTRY OFFICES

($50 of ticket benefits the NHA)