Historic Nantucket, Fall 2008, Vol. 58, No. 4

Historic Nantucket A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association

Whaling!

Mutiny on the Potomac

Nantucket & New Zealand Eber Bunker: Pioneer of Australian Whaling

Fall 2008 Volume 58, No. 4

NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Board of Trustees

Historic Nantucket A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association

Fall 2008

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Vol. 58, No. 4

E. Geoffrey Verney, PRESIDENT Janet L. Sherlund, 1ST VICE PRESIDENT

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Kenneth L. Beaugrand, 2ND VICE PRESIDENT Thomas J. Anathan, TREASURER

Mutiny on the Potomac JUSTIN A . PARISEAU

Melissa C. Philbrick, CLERK

Eleven black sailors mutiny off Nantucket harbor

C. Marshall Beale Robert H. Brust Nancy A. Chase Constance Cigarran William R. Congdon Nancy A. Geschke

10 “…my home is on the deep waters.”

FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE

Georgia Gosnell, TRUSTEE EMERITA Nina S. Hellman Hampton S. Lynch Jr.

WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH

Mary D. Malavase

Nantucket and New Zealand in History

Sarah B. Newton Anne S. Obrecht Elizabeth T. Peek Christopher C. Quick David Ross

15 Captain Eber Bunker

FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE

Melanie R. Sabelhaus Nancy M. Soderberg

TIM BLUE

Bette M. Spriggs

Nantucket-descended pioneer of Australian Whaling

Isabel C. Stewart Jay M. Wilson William J. Tramposch executive director

editorial committee Mary H. Beman

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From the Executive Director WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH

Thomas B. Congdon Jr. Richard L. Duncan Peter J. Greenhalgh Cecil Barron Jensen

Friends of the NHA Purchase Paintings of the Whaleship Spermo 19

Robert F. Mooney

BEN SIMONS

Amy Jenness

Elizabeth Oldham Nathaniel Philbrick Bette M. Spriggs

COVER: Spermo Cutting In Whales On Japan, 1822

Fifty Years Later: The Crash of Northeast Airlines Flight 258

James Sulzer

John Fisher (1789–?)

Oil on canvas, 2008.31.2

STEVE SHEPPARD

Ben Simons

GIFT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE NHA

NHA News

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Editor Elizabeth Oldham

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

Copy Editor ©2008 by the Nantucket Historical Association

Eileen Powers/Javatime Design Design & Art Direction

Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts. Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554 –1016 (508) 228–1894; fax: (508) 228–5618, info@nha.org For information log on to www.nha.org

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

He lives on the sea…

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. . . .There is his home; there lies his business which Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he come to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.

Moby-Dick, Chapter 14

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s you read this issue of Historic Nantucket, hands could not know what we know today: that three please note especially the article by Ben decades later, sister ships from our harbor would be rotSimons on page 17. Its conciseness belies the ting in San Francisco Bay; their whaling days over, they importance of the key made their final voyages—delivering acquisitions he discussboth young and older jobless yet es: two oil paintings of the Nantucket hopeful Nantucketers to the gold whaleship Spermo by self-taught fields of California.

Nantucket artist John Fisher. Thanks Even more evocative is the other to the generosity of the Friends of the painting, which depicts Spermo in Nantucket Historical Association, we 1822, far to the west, off Japan. have recently acquired these two Although Fisher’s focus is on the evocative paintings, which represent ferocity of the whaling process, the one-third of Fisher’s known works; painting conveys the menacing two others hang in the Whaling immensity of an ocean that is often Museum, a fifth hangs in Nantucket’s anything but pacific.

Atheneum, and the sixth is in a priThe Nantucket Historical BILL TRAMPOSCH vate collection. In his article, Ben Association owns and cares for twenexplains the process of acquiring the ty-two island sites, including the paintings. Here, I would like to emphasize just why the Whaling Museum; yet, ironically, none begins to depict paintings are of such significance to us. the home that many grew to know better than “home” The newly built Spermo was one of forty-five whaleitself: the whaleship. Thank you, Friends of the Nantucket ships to depart our harbor in 1820. It would be its first and Historical Association! only departure from Nantucket; more whaleships left Nantucket than from any other American port that year, most of them heading for the newly opened Japan Grounds. One of the paintings shows Spermo in the William J. Tramposch Executive Director Pacific Ocean off the coast of California in 1821. Its deckFall 2008

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Mutiny on the Potomac:

Race & inthe New England

Whalefishery

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In February 1815,

New England’s seafaring towns erupted in celebration at the news that the War of 1812 was over. With British warships no longer a threat, New Englanders eagerly set out again in the hunt for whales. Sixty-three whaleships sailed from ports in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1815 alone, with sixty additional vessels joining the whaling fleet in the following year. Captain Alfred Alley guided one of the whaleships out of Boston harbor on June 5, 1816, destined for the coast of Patagonia at the southernmost tip of South America. With an able crew and a little luck, Alley would have expected to return home in about a year with a valuable cargo of whale oil, elephant seal oil, and sealskins stowed away below decks. On the surface there was little to distinguish the Potomac from the rest of the New England whaling fleet. The Potomac received only a brief mention on June 8 in the “Shipping List” of the Boston Columbian Centinel to mark the vessel’s departure. The fact that Captain Alley commanded an almost entirely black crew received no mention at all.

Shipping agents and captains gladly turned to the ranks of black mariners who called ports like Boston, Nantucket, and New Bedford home to fill empty berths. Enough vessels were once again sailing that the racial composition of the Potomac’s crew probably would have gone unnoticed by outsiders. This would change barely a week later, when an account of a mutiny orchestrated by the Potomac’s black crewmembers made its way into the newspapers.

With events unfolding in the New England press and beyond, the mutiny brought the issue of black participation in the whaling industry to the attention of a great many people beyond New England’s shores.

The June 17, 1816, issue of the Nantucket Gazette provides the most complete narrative of what happened aboard Captain Alfred Alley’s vessel.

Arriving at Nantucket on Monday, June 10, Alley anchored the Potomac off the sandbar that blocked the approaches to Nantucket’s harbor and town.

Intending to take on “some necessary articles needful for the voyage,” Alley and his crew set to work preparing for an extended voyage. Captain Alley, his first and second mates, and the cooper were the only white men aboard the Potomac. The rest of the crew consisted of eleven blacks.

For unknown reasons, these eleven men “mutinized [sic] and peremptorily refused to do ship’s duty” on Wednesday, just two days after anchoring off Nantucket. Although most of the crew returned to duty by nightfall, their refusal “to do ship’s duty” so soon into the Potomac’s voyage offers one of the few clues regarding what caused the Potomac mutiny. The Potomac’s eleven black whalemen were clearly unhappy with how they had been treated between June 5 and June 12. Whatever happened between the

Log of the Nantucket whaleship Fabius (1840–44) whose crew list mentions “Colored Gents.”

AN ENDOWMENT GRANT FROM THE JOYCE AND SEWARD JOHNSON FOUNDATION SUPPORTS PERIODIC ARTICLES IN HISTORIC NANTUCKET ON TOPICS OF DIVERSITY.

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Potomac’s white officers and black crew during that time, tensions between the two factions continued to escalate.

Later that Wednesday evening, one of the mates refused the crew’s demand for rum. Conditions aboard the vessel were dire enough that a simple work stoppage turned into open mutiny: …three of the blacks went aft and demanded rum; which the mate refused to give them. One of the blacks armed himself with an iron pole, seated himself across the gangway, and prevented the officers from coming on deck. On Thursday the second mate called upon the crew to come on deck—four of the blacks refused. One of the mutineers held an adze over the mate’s head, and swore he would have the boat and go ashore. To prevent which, the mate hove the boat into the water, sprang into her, and floated from the brig.

Not long after one of the mates escaped, a carpenter working on the Potomac “went into the cabin in order to discharge a loaded gun” to prevent the mutineers from using the weapon. Unbeknownst to the carpenter, two mutineers armed with knives had followed him into the cabin and “wrested it [the gun] from him by force, after having threatened to stab him.” Documents in the archives of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, including the recognizances, complaint, and indictment, reveal that the carpenter working aboard the Potomac at the time of the mutiny was David Andrews, a “house wright” from Nantucket. In the complaint signed before Nantucket Justice of the Peace Josiah Hussey on June 15, 1816, Andrews testified the mutineers “did then and there with force as aforesaid heave at the windlass of said Brig, and swore they would run her [the Potomac] on shore.”

Although the mutineers were persuaded to stop raising the New Bedford Medley, anchor, they were June 9, 1797. still in physical control of the Potomac.

Knowledge that a black crew had taken control of a whaleship and its ample supply of harpoons, lances, hatchets, and other weapons soon spread to shore. According to the Nantucket Gazette the Potomac’s mate, who had escaped in the whaleboat, “was soon after brought ashore [on Nantucket] by a boat from the ship South America” and “gave the alarm” to Captain Alley and the rest of the town. Now aware that at least some of the crew had mutinied, Alley set a plan in motion to take back command of the Potomac. Alley first secured a large enough vessel for himself, the mate, “and a considerable number of men” recruited from Nantucket before they all “proceeded to the brig and quelled the mutiny.” With the situation aboard the Potomac under control, Alley left “a sufficient force on board” before returning to shore with two of the black crewmembers identified as the mutiny’s ringleaders. 

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Not long after of the mates escaped, a carpenter working on the Potomac “went into the cabin in order to discharge a loaded gun” to prevent the mutineers from the weapon.

First report of the mutiny in the Nantucket Gazette, June 17, 1816.

Cutline cutline cutline spermo Cutline cutline cutline spermo

Jail window on Nantucket. P7058 A black crew member on the bark Calfornia, 1903. P14847

Jailing the two principal mutineers in Nantucket, however, failed to bring Alley’s troubles to an end. According to an article posted on July 1 and July 8 in the Nantucket Gazette, four members of the crew deserted in the aftermath of the mutiny:

Twenty Dollars Reward.

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ON the 17th of June inst. in

the latter part of the night, Charles Jones, John Ryla, John Thompson, and Jesse Bergen, (black men,) and part of the crew of the brig Potomac, of Boston, took a Whale-Boat belonging to the brig, and made their escape. They carried away with them the brig’s Compass and their cloathing. It is presumed they landed on some part of the continent between Falmouth and Bass river. Whoever will return the above persons to the Island of Nantucket, so that they can be apprehended and secured in Jail, shall receive a reward of Twenty Dollars—and whoever finds the Boat, shall receive a reward of Fifteen Dollars, by returning the same to JOSIAH HUSSEY, Esq at Nantucket.

ALFRED ALLEY, Master of brig Potomac.

Nantucket, June 20th, 1816.

In spite of the twenty-dollar reward Alley offered for their capture, and the fifteen-dollar reward for the return of the whaleboat, the record remains silent as to the ultimate fate of the “black men” who deserted the Potomac. Whether Charles Jones, John Ryla, John Thompson, and Jesse Bergen made it, as suggested, to “some part of the continent between Falmouth and Bass river” on Cape Cod roughly thirty miles distant, or disappeared at sea altogether, the four whalemen never answered in court for their theft and desertion.

The two whalemen singled out as the ringleaders of the mutiny were not so lucky. Though identified in the Boston Gazette on July 25 only by their last names and along with their fellow crewmates as “black men,” court and prison records reveal much more about the men at the center of the Potomac mutiny. The Charlestown, Massachusetts, state prison commitment register for 1816 lists Richard Taylor as a twenty-two-year-old mulatto who was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Fellow crewmate Robert Smith, born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, appears in the record as twenty-four years old, with his eyes, hair, and complexion all described as black. Both men are listed as mariners and “late resident[s] in Nantucket” in their indictment. Removed from Nantucket to Boston for trial, Smith faced a charge of assault “with a certain dangerous weapon, to-wit, a carpenter’s adze” with “his malice aforethought to kill and murder, and other wrongs to the said Ruben Ray.” The Commonwealth of Massachusetts also leveled the accusation in its indictment against Smith and Taylor that “with force and arms” the two whalemen “did beat wound and ill treat; and other wrongs to the said David Andrews . . . to the great damage of the said David Andrews, against the peace of the Commonwealth aforesaid, and the Laws of the same.” Neither Fall 2008

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Smith nor Taylor chose to contest the charges, and both defendants “severally plead guilty” to assault with intent to murder. Convicted on July 19, Smith and Taylor arrived at the state prison the next day to begin their respective sentences of ten days’ solitary confinement and three years’ hard labor.

The Potomac mutiny was significant for the widespread attention it received in the press. By the first of July, newspaper accounts of the mutiny had appeared in cities as far north as Portland, Maine; and as far south as Baltimore, Maryland; and Alexandria, Virginia.

Widespread knowledge of the affair may have complicated matters for the five remaining black crewmembers who had not deserted and were not charged in the incident. Involvement in a well-known mutiny would have made it difficult for any whaleman to find work.

The details of the case and the racial identity of the Potomac’s remaining crew would only have made whaling agents and captains more wary of the men.

Stories throughout the affair focused on the complexion of the mutineers, emphasizing that “black men” had perpetrated the mutiny. Race clearly played a part in public perceptions of the Potomac mutiny. During the 1800s, at a time when reformers were fighting in New England to abolish slavery, integrate schools, and reform seamen, the issue of race played a prominent role in the dayto-day life of whaleships at sea. While the newspapers and court records identified the Potomac mutineers as “black men” for the dual purpose of narrating the course of events and establishing a criminal case against the mutineers, the frequency of references to the skin color of minorities working aboard whaleships in other documents raises questions about white attitudes toward blacks and other minorities who served in the whaling industry.

Log and journal keepers offer some of the best insights into the day-to-day experiences of ordinary seamen. The journal of the Nantucket whaleship Fabius kept by the its cooper, Joseph U. Downing, included a separate heading for the ship’s “Colored Gents” in the crew list. Such language is common in surviving documents, and shows that black whalemen were viewed as distinct from the rest of the crew. Working and living conditions aboard American whaling vessels were notoriously bad and often led to conflict amongst crewmembers in an already racially charged environment. An entry in the Fabius journal dated March 24/25, 1842, described how members of the “after gang”—the officers in the rear part of the ship— “took up arms against the crew (or rather the Darkies).” Downing added, somewhat sarcastically, “not many lives lost nor much blood spilt but 2 men seized up when the Capt came on board but not floged [sic].” Even the most basic of everyday occurrences aboard ship appear to have been influenced by race. Having been at sea for nearly two years, Downing wrote an entry in his journal on July 2, 1842, describing how the white members of the Fabius’s crew sat down to a celebratory Independence Day meal apart from their black crewmates: Today the white portion of this community have A 4th [of] July dinner it not being convenient to cook A very sumptuous dinner for all hands at once Tomorrow the sable sons of Africa dine in honor of the glorious anniversary and I suppose the Nobles will come out on the 4th.

Conscious of the official hierarchy aboard the Fabius—Downing referred to the ship’s officers as “Nobles”—the unofficial but understood racial hierarchy aboard the vessel factored heavily in day-today life.  | Historic Nantucket

Lookouts in the crosstrees, ca. 1900.

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Race played a part in public perceptions of the Potomac

Records of conflicts between black crewmembers provide similar evidence of how white log and journal keepers viewed their black crewmates. The November 6, 1842, entry in the log of the whaleship Charles Phelps took note of an incident between the ship’s cook and its steward: I like to forgot to mention the Negro Squable we had at 5 AM to day the Cook a real Guinea Descent and the Steward a Clear Blooded African could not agree about their business it put me in mind of the old adage pot calling Kettle Black . . . at it they went hamer and tongs the old Cook butted the Steward aft as far as the Companion Way the Capt and others interfering took them apart but the cook was raving and declared he could eat the Steward up in 2 minutes But they were parted and ordered by Capt H[all] not to wrangle again on penalty of being seized in the rigging and take a flogging he the Capt told the cook to go to his gally and the steward he ordered into the cabin who hesitating a little about it the Capt raised his foot and gave him a boost on a certain unmentionable part of his body which seemed to quicken his pace without further hesitation.

Instances of insubordination and crew unrest such as this were not uncommon aboard whaleships. Captains and ship’s officers recorded ample evidence of dissent and refusal to do“ship’s duty” in the logs and journals they kept as records of whaling voyages. What makes this account and others like it significant is how people interpreted everyday life and conflict aboard the Fabius, Charles Phelps, Potomac, and countless other whaleships in terms of race.

Whaling agents and ship owners were on the other hand openly ambivalent in their attitudes toward black whalemen. While the language used at sea to describe black whalemen shows that they were marginalized, agents and ship owners used the language of race to issue direct appeals for black whalemen to serve aboard their ships. An advertisement posted by Samuel Proctor of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in the June 9, 1797, issue of the New Bedford Medley made specific Black crewmembers on the Wanderer, ca. 1920.

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agents and ship owners were openly ambivalent in their attitudes toward whalemen demands regarding the crew desired for an upcoming whaling voyage: Wanted Immediately, A COOPER, also a man capable of heading a boat, and two or three good black men for the SLOOP NANCY, bound on a WHALING CRUISE—To whom good encouragement will be given.

The advantages “two or three good black men” would provide over white crewmembers remains unclear. According to an August 21, 1824, entry in the account book for the whaleship Peru, Nantucket ship owners were also partial to black whalemen: The Owners of the Ship Peru wish thee to apply to Stewart for Six black men and one white man to go round Cape Horn, we wish those that are not aged about 26 or under one of them must be a Fiddler, they must be shipt in the schooner Enterprise by Capt Hussey, we shall be willing to pay about ten dollars each. Further debts with the brokerage and passage all to be deducted from their voyage at their return; we wish them to understand what voyage they are bound, we shall see to their outfits, the usual lay is about 1/130, if more convenient he might git 2 white men & five blacks.

Both documents advertised a clear preference in favor of black mariners for the whaling voyages in question. By the late 1700s, both Nantucket and New Bedford had transitioned away from Indian labor out of necessity. Black whalemen had quickly filled the labor gap. Presented with few better economic alternatives to the whalefishery, African Americans and other minorities were forced to carefully negotiate the racism and inequality that existed both at sea and on land. The men who served aboard the Potomac and countless other whaleships were accordingly treated not simply as whalemen, but as black whalemen.

Viewed in context with the rest of the historical record, a seemingly isolated case like the Potomac mutiny takes on added significance.

Despite the professed egalitarian leanings of many of Nantucket’s and New Bedford’s Quaker residents, whaling merchants, agents, and captains were pragmatic about how to succeed in the dirty and dangerous business of whaling. Some of the best whalemen were those with few other options to pursue. White participants in the whaling industry needed and actively sought out blacks to serve on whaleships, but did not welcome them.Whether generated in counting houses or at sea, in newspapers or in the courts, documents show that skin color and other differences in physical appearance led white northerners to view and treat minorities as something “other.”

Mutinies always attracted attention in the press, but the added racial element turned the mutiny on the Potomac into a national headline.

Nantucketers and outsiders alike understood that “black men,” not whalemen, had committed a crime when something went wrong off the shore of Nantucket in 1816. justin a. pariseau earned his B.A. in history from Boston College and his M.A. in history from the College of William and Mary. He is currently writing his dissertation on the whaling industry’s role in the nineteenth-century reform movements of Nantucket and New Bedford, and will be teaching this fall as an adjunct faculty member at Prairie State College in Illinois. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Mystic Seaport’s Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime History for funding the research for this article through the 2007 Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellowship, and the Nantucket Historical Association for its support during a recent research trip to Nantucket.

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“. . . my home is on the deep waters.”

Nantucket &New Zealand

BY WILLIAM J . TRAMPOSCH

ON THESE EARLY autumn mornings, it is easy to imagine those who were here before we were. From the bench at the Pacific Bank, looking down the cobblestones to the Pacific Club, it becomes clearer still—the international significance of this tiny, sandy New England landscape. Like bookends, these buildings contain between them myriad memories of the comings and goings of families like the Mitchells and the Bunkers, the Macys and the Brocks. The setting reverberates with history. The mortar of the bank was hardly dry when Captain George Pollard Jr. set out from our harbor on the whaleship Essex in 1819, and years later he would pass by this spot, his mind crazed with images of the unmentionable.

Although only two hundred yards separate the Pacific Bank from the Pacific Club, more than a quarter of our earth is covered by the distant ocean from which they acquired their names. Just as startling is the fact that for many young Nantucketers, this place was often less home to them than the whaleships upon which they sailed. Just behind the bank, for example, at 26 Liberty Street, lived Benjamin Worth . . . sometimes. He actually spent most of his life at sea. Between the years of 1783 and 1824, he made five Pacific voyages covering more than 870,000 sea miles.

The Nantucketer, he alone resides and rests on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business. . . .

Moby-Dick, Chapter 14

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From this bench, it is easy to imagine a time when water connected distant peoples, wind propelled them to and fro, and we possessed a drastically different sense of time. Today, we complain about the length of a plane flight to New Zealand; it takes the better part of a day and at least two different planes. Imagine that!Yet, here one gains a perspective, sparing a thought or two for the three-to-five-year voyages.

And thus have these naked Nantucketers,these sea hermits,issuing from their ant-hill in the sea,overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. . . .

Moby-Dick, Chapter 14

Famille rose punch bowl (ca. 1750) recovered from Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn Island by Capt. Mayhew Folger in 1808, NHA collection.

GIFT OF MARGARET FOLGER.

New Zealand,

by Way of the Pacific Speaking of Moby-Dick, remember the interminable pages pertaining to the cytology of the sperm whale, page upon page of notations about folio, octavo, and duodecimo whales, etc., all to make very clear that this is a book about “the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood.” Consider the Pacific Ocean in the same context, for the immensity of it cannot be understated. Nantucketers knew the Pacific, and they knew it early.To get a fuller sense of this, let’s walk down Main Street from the Civil War monument to the bank.

107 Main Street was the home of Reuben Joy. He was among the first of Nantucket’s whalers to enter the Pacific Ocean. And, earlier still, Eber Bunker of the famous Nantucket Bunkers, is generally credited by New Zealanders as having started whaling around New Zealand itself, and also earned the cognomen “the father of Australian whaling” (see the article in this issue by Tim Blue). In January of 1792, Bunker sailed into the wide inlet of Doubtless Bay near Mongonui, Northland. He took no whales, but he was looking.

100 Main Street was the home of Captain Joseph Mitchell, who, in August of 1847, lay off the island of Pitcairn. Fully twenty-nine years earlier, in 1808, Nantucket’s own Captain Mayhew Folger was the first to

come upon the Bounty mutineers’ hideaway on Pitcairn. A Chinese export bowl from this encounter is now on display in the Whaling Museum.

81 Main Street was home to Christopher Burdick, whose log of a sealing voyage was discovered by Edouard Stackpole over a century after his 1821 voyage. In it Burdick makes note of a landmass that he suspected was a continent. He was right. It was Antarctica, and he holds the honor of its first confirmed sighting.

Melville walked past 84 Main Street when he visited Nantucket in 1852, a year after the publication of Moby-Dick. The home later housed William Hussey Macy, who, years earlier, noted in his Pacific log that three whalemen had deserted into the Marquesan bush. One of the deserters was Melville himself, and in the intervening years he had penned his very popular South Sea adventures, Omoo and Typee.

The Pacific is immense and often anything but pacific. At 5.5 knots, a whaleship would take about twenty-nine days to sail from New Zealand to the Marquesas; about twenty-five days to reach Pitcairn; and, Antarctica is just so far away that even today it is a ten-hour flight from Christchurch, New Zealand, on an Air Force Orion. No wonder the Pacific needs two days to contain it!

In February of 2009, a group of adventurers will join my wife, Peggy,

View down Main Street from the Pacific Bank to the Pacific Club, ca. 1890.

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my home is on the deep waters

New Zealand is one of the youngest countries on earth, having been discovered by Maori only a little over a thousand years ago.

and me on an NHA Explorations tour to New Zealand. Many on our tour have never been there. Once in New Zealand, our tour will focus on Nantucket connections. Yet, as we fly there I hope that our fellow travelers will do what I often do when I return: regularly lift the shades on the plane to view the moonlight playing upon the bosom of the wide Pacific Ocean. For twelve dark hours we will have this opportunity—twelve hours at 500 miles an hour! Talk about a “faraway land!”

New Zealand, because of its distance from the United States, has always seemed to be only partially understood by Americans. Just read Mark Twain’s Following the Equator to get a sense of this. Twain tells of a professor from New Zealand who is about to arrive at Yale University for a term. In preparation for his arrival, hisYale professorial hosts take stock of what they already know about the Antipodes. Quickly and confidently, they all agree upon two facts: first, that New Zealand is connected to Australia by a land bridge; and second, that New Zealanders are accustomed to traveling around on the backs of Giant Moas. (Twain, by the way, has his own Nantucket connections. Publisher Charles HenryWebb lived at 77 Main Street. It wasWebb who printedTwain’s best-selling short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County.” Had it not been for a falling-out between the two, he may well have published Following the Equator as well).

Aotearoa: Land of the Long White Cloud New Zealand is one of the youngest countries on earth, having been discovered by Maori only a little over a thousand years ago.Yet, do not infer that this country is pleasantly behind the times, for history is “fast” here, and the country has moved from European settlement to cell phones in less than 170 years. Captain James Cook, in the late eighteenth century, was the first European to set foot on New Zealand. Impressively, only a handful of years later, Eber Bunker was sailing into Northland, New Zealand. That is how early Nantucketers arrived on the scene!

Historians believe that the Maori traveled from their original home in the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea; that they sailed to Fiji and then from Fiji south. The farther south one goes here, the colder it gets, so those who landed in Aotearoa (meaning “the land of the long white cloud” for the characteristic cloud cover on its alps), tended to settle in  | Historic Nantucket

the more tropical northlands. They carried with them a valuable vegetable called kumara. Resembling a yam, kumara remains a staple in the Kiwi diet today, as in “fish and (kumara) chips!”

Folklore has it that seven Maori canoes, or waka, arrived in Aotearoa, and so seven tribes settled here. Each tribe had its own distinct identity, and cooperation among tribes was never a hallmark of Maoridom.

Cannibalism was common, and Captain James Cook himself lost crew to the Maori appetite. Today, of course, things have changed, though ritual vestiges of the savagery can be seen just minutes before the All Blacks begin play: the haka.

It is believed that this haka, or challenge, originated on the island of Kapiti, just north ofWellington, the country’s capital. The most threatening and powerful of all Maori chiefs, Te Rauparaha, dwelled here, and to many American whalers he was simply known as “Satan.” He played favorites, or not, and his whims kept all on their toes. Kapiti Island itself was a whaling station, and sacred ground for this most aggressive of New Zealand tribes.

New Zealand whaling had it roots nearby as well, springing up in the bays of the Marlborough Sounds on the South Island, just across the Cook Straight fromWellington.Today, an Interislander Ferry service passes right by these bays while also providing travelers with a vivid look at the very last of New Zealand’s whaling stations, run by the Perano family.

In the heyday of New Zealand’s own whaling, stations dotted the country’s coast. The most colorful were under the feudal rule of a gentleman named Johnny Jones. At one time Jones held sway over 280 employees, and New Zealand Historic Places Trust cares for one of his properties at Matanaka, between Christchurch and Dunedin. Even farther south, still, the French and Norwegians built whaling stations, reminding us of the time when it was not only the English who vied for this land.

Although our NHA Explorations will not take in Johnny Jones’s station, it will deliver us to another remarkable setting, Kaikoura. Here sits a historic home so steeped in whaling history that its very foundation rests upon whale vertebrae. Meanwhile, offshore, today’s visitors are treated to encounters with the giant sperm whale itself. Four miles off the beautiful beaches and snow-covered mountains of Kaikoura the ocean floor drops precipitously. In the near mile-deep darkness, male rogue sperm whales search for giant squid. These natural conditions ensure that sperm whale regularly will be seen in these waters, and the experience is unforgettable.

Nantucketers in New Zealand No part of New Zealand, though, is more resonant of Nantucket history than the Bay of Islands, especially its now-picturesque town of Russell, once known as Kororareka. In 1831, Australia lifted its ban on American whaling, and the fields were quickly filled. In 1839, 150 American vessels whaled off New Zealand. In that same year, sixty-two American whaleships called in at the Bay of Islands; one of them was the Nantucket, which on a later voyage would collect the model Maori war canoe that graces our Whaling Museum today.

One of the many Nantucket whaleships that entered the Bay of Islands carried a remarkable Nantucketer named Eliza Brock. She sailed with her husband, Captain Peter Brock, on the Lexington from May 21, 1853, to June 25, 1856, leaving four children at home. Her journal is among the NHA’s most valued possessions. Now, you can find it digitized online at www.nha.org. Let me have Eliza Brock bring you into the Bay of Islands. Note the rise and fall of her emotions as they approach and later leave the bay:

Tuesday noon the 13: Ship Enterprise of New Bedford here five months from home.Deck still thronged with natives loaded down with peaches. If I could only pass a few baskets of them to my children at home, I should like it. One Large Canoe paddled by eigh[t] ladies, they seem to manage them as easily as our sailors do their boats. It is a matter of great wonder to me how they do it.

Capt Nickerson of the Ganges called on Board. Mrs. Nickerson on shore, has an infant six weeks old. Staying at Dr. Fords. This is a beautiful bay. . . . Tomorrow morning we go on shore. . . . Eggs 50 cents per dozen. Onions 6 dollars per barrel. Board for three, Four dollars per day.

Wednesday the 14. All ready for a start. Boat waiting. Carpenter on board repairing the mast. Deck thronged with native visitors with loads of Peaches, and pears, honey, fish, &c, one head of tobacco will buy a Basket full.

[February 1855]

Joseph Chase [Joseph Chase Brock, her six-year-old son who accompanied his parents on this voyage] quite delighted running about seeing the Goats, and Dogs, which are very plenty.

Thursday the 8: Begins with light Gales . . . only about Forty miles from the Bay of Islands, drifting about at the mercy of the waves, dashing over the Deck, drenching all Hands . . . wind dead ahead, and Blowing furiously.

Thursday the 15: A fine Morning, been out walking round about viewing the scenery. This is a beautiful Climate, very healthy, but very thinly settled, by white people, all Englishmen, very quiet here, only now and then a Fracas with the Sailors.

Friday the 9: Begins more moderate . . . sea growing smooth . . . barometer rising.

Saturday the 17: Rose at five O’clock, been out to take a walk round.

Crew on shore . . . some of them drunk already. Jack Jones taken up and put in safe keeping for stealing a dog from a native and strikeing an old Chief.

Sunday the 11: Light wind . . . at Daylight saw the land. Cape Brett BearingWest, 15 miles. This is the largest island I have seen in my wanderings. High headlands and vallies low, hills very green.

Monday the 12: Light aires Stearing west....

Passed Arch Rock.

This is the largest rock I have ever seen, a great curiosity, a large hole through it in the shape of an arch, large enough for a Whale Boat to pass through. Pilot reports the Planter and Ganges of Nantucket here. Mohawk . . . gone out.

Tuesday morning the 13: Fine weather, but Cool, two boats along side loaded with peaches, the Decks thronged with natives, men, women and children, their faces all tatooed and for an ornament, a whale’s tooth tied around the neck. Dresses made lose [loose] and very short . . . all barefooted, quite amusing to hear them jabbor and see them and go up and down the side of the Ship just like cats.

Tamati Waka Nene (1785–1871), head chief of tribes about Bay of Islands, ca. 1870. P19500 Left: Log of the Lexington “Bound to the Bay of Islands,” Feb. 7, 1853

Sunday the 18: Been up to St. Paul’s Church, Episcopalians, the native meeting at 8 O’clock and services for the whites 11 O’clock.

This Church stands in the graveyard, a beautiful spot full of trees. Saw a great many gravestones, one lately set. . . . [inscribed thus]: “Nobly, he did his Duty here below But now he has gone aloft. . . .” They had smoked the ship for Rats. This young man was left on board to look out.When the Capt went on board in the morning he was missing and they supposed drowned. The next day they went Below and found him Lying Dead on the Cabin floor, they supposed he must of gone down in his sleep. . . . This is a hard looking church, no better than our barn at home.

Fall 2008

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my home is on the deep waters

The whaleships that anchored in the Bay of Islands were looking for provisions, rest, repair, strong drink

Monday 19th : I am not very well pleased with my Boarding house. I can live much more comfortable on Board the Ship.

Jack Jones had his trial this morning was fined Twenty Five dollars.

The captain refused paying so large a sum, Jack carried back to the Calaboose [jail].

Friday morning February the 23: Blacksmith still in irons [for refusing duty]. This is the worst part of voyage, so much trouble with the Sailors, deserting, Jack on shore yet in the Calaboose. Blacksmith’s irons taken off, he returned to his Duty &c.

Monday eve February the 26: Tomorrow morning, if it is a fair wind we leave port this Beautiful Bay of Islands, and wend our way to the Cold Stormy Regions of the North, there to spend one more Summer amongst the Ice and Snow.

Tuesday the 27 of February Tuesday Evening: Ship out all clear of the Land. Pilot gone on Shore, the Planter going along in Company with us. Strong wind and Rugged, the shades of Evening fast approaching and the dim distant land receding from my view, causing me to feel sad and lonely, my home is on the deep waters.

*** The whaleships that anchored in the Bay of Islands were looking for provisions, rest, repair, strong drink, etc. So unusual was this place that almost all who stepped on shore had something to recount of their experiences here in this place that had become known as the “hellhole” of the Pacific. Darwin visited here in 1835, and the Beagle’s captain, Fitzroy, noted that several whaleships had anchored away from town in order to avoid the spirit shops. Nelson Cole Haley of the Charles W. Morgan recalled: The poor unfortunate policemen of Russell at times would be dancing around . . . like performing monkeys brandishing their clubs, shouting, “Order in the Queen’s name!” and getting tumbled heels over head by some of the crowd when they tried to drag off one of the number who had been laid sprawling on his back too drunk to do more.

William Colenzo, New Zealand’s first printer, commented that Korarareka was “notorious for containing a greater number of rogues than any other spot of equal size in the universe.”

Today, the quiet little town of Russell shows no sign of this past except  | Historic Nantucket

in its museum labels and in quiet corners of the graveyard that Brock mentions in her journal. Here, for example, sits a grave marked: “To the memory of Henri H. Turner who died 23 January 1862 aged 37 years. Native of Nantucket, Mass, USA. Erected by his shipmates of the ship Mohawk.”

Across the bay sits Waitangi, a central setting in the history of New Zealand. It was here that a short and remarkably ambiguous three-paragraph treaty was signed by Maori and the English in 1840. This treaty remains the cornerstone of New Zealand’s bicultural government and continues to serve as a negotiating point between the Tangata Whenua/People of the Land (who are here by right of first discovery), and Tangata Tiriti/People of the Treaty (or all those who have come later, in the wake of the treaty). In common parlance, this equates to New Zealanders either being Maori or Pakeha, the latter designation applying to English, Americans, Romanians, Russians, Australians, et al.

Needless to say, as the country continually becomes more multicultural and less wedded to its bicultural past, issues of national identity abound: what is this country that sits in the South Pacific, that was first discovered by Polynesians, later discovered (again) by Europeans, influenced by Asian markets and American popular culture? For all of these reasons, the government of New Zealand decided in the early 1990s to build a new national museum. Today it is known as Te Papa Tongarewa, or—simply—Our Place. It interprets New Zealand’s distinctive natural history, Maori culture, art, Pacific culture, and modern New Zealand history, all under one roof. And, in this, its eleventh year, 1.2 million visitors enter each year, many of them returning. Te Papa, Our Place, will be our gateway to New Zealand when the NHA Explorations visits in February.

History offers us the extraordinary gift of time travel. From a simple seat in front of the Pacific Bank, one can sit, reflect, and imagine. Here, one can be reminded that many who have lived a while here could say, as Eliza Brock wrote, “my home is on the deep waters.” New Zealand, and our way to and from this special place, will be a vivid reminder of how athome Nantucketers have been away off shore. william j. “bill” tramposch is executive director of the Nantucket Historical Association. He and his family lived in New Zealand for eleven years; he and his wife, Peggy, are dual citizens of the United States and New Zealand. Bill first visited as a Fulbright Scholar while working as a director at Colonial Williamsburg. Later on, he was a director of the new national museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. Subsequently, he was chief executive of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust for five years. Peggy supervised the programs of the Fulbright Foundation in New Zealand..

On a cool, clear midwinter’s morning in August 1791, the British whaler William and Ann dropped anchor in Sydne y Harbou r after a fiv e-month voyage from Engl a nd.

Captain EBER BUNKER

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P IONEER OF A USTRALIAN N E W Z EALAND W HALING

BY TIM BLUE

IT WAS CAPTAIN EBER BUNKER, a young man from Nantucket stock hired to to sail the ship and its cargo of 188 convicts to the colony of New South Wales, then little more than a decade old.

The William and Ann, of 370 tons, was part of the Third Fleet to sail to Australia from the UK, with 1,870 convicts and stores and provisions. Contractors had been engaged to supply the ships, among which were five whalers whose broad beams and large holds were judged most suited to convict transportation, yet whose primary design and purpose were clearly in mind.

Leaving from Plymouth, the William and Ann sailed with its human cargo in company with the Atlantic and another whaler, Salamander, meeting up with another seven vessels from Portsmouth.

Efforts were made by the authorities to protect their human charges in what was always a grueling trip. Storms separated the vessels after a stopover at Rio de Janeiro, and first-person accounts speak of the convicts confined below decks for security, while hatches were battened down to keep out the sea.

Accounts compiled by a descendant of Bunker, Dr. Richard Hodgkinson, speak of the soldier guards of the New SouthWales Corps, comprising a sergeant and twelve privates, being often content to keep their charges below decks and if possible chained together in great privation from overcrowding.

There was trouble on board. Reports claim that Eber was charged with “assault and beating” by Fall 2008

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the soldiers of the Corps on his arrival at Sydney’s Port Jackson. “He pleaded guilty and was fined.”

Eber had driven a fast trip, in what was an old vessel built thirty-two years earlier. He lost seven convicts riddled with vermin and disease; yet only five of the 181 required hospitalization on arrival.

Offloading took little more than a week, leaving Bunker free to roam the settlement and muse on the fortunes of his life, in the aftermath of the American War of Independence.

Within a month of the William and Ann’s arrival in Sydney, the Britannia reached port with a cargo of 129 male convicts. It had lost twenty-one on the voyage.

Britannia was another whaler, owned by the British firm of Sam Enderby and Sons, under the command of Thomas Melville. He, too, was on his first voyage to Australia.

Melville wrote enthusiastically to his owners that off the east coast of Tasmania, “we saw a large sperm whale, but did not see anymore being very thick weather and blowing hard to within 15 leagues to Port Jackson.

Within three leagues of the shore we saw Sperm whales in great plenty.

Tasmania in 1803, until then known as Van Dieman’s Land. In giving five reasons for the settlement, the first to be listed by King was “to prevent the French occupying the country.”

The occupation was initiated in July 1803, when HMS Glatton sailed from Sydney with orders to take twenty-four convicts and a handful of free settlers south to form the settlement. Under charter to accompany was the Albion, commanded by Eber Bunker and carrying most of the convicts and their guard and a collection of livestock that included three rams, a number of fine ewes, an English black bull, twelve cows, an English boar, swine, and a fine mare.

Bunker, spying sperm whales on the way, could not resist the temptation: He captured no fewer than three before arriving at the River Derwent in southern Tasmania, site of the future capital, Hobart.

Although he had given approval for digressions, Governor King was not

Melville’s sightings were well received by Governor Phillip, an enthusiast for a local whaling industry. “I waited on His Excellency . . . and he told me he would despatch every long boat in the fleet to take our convicts out and he did accordingly. . . . The Secret of seeing the whales our sailors could not keep from the rest of the whalers here, the news put them all astir, but we have the pleasure to say we were the first ship ready for sea.”

The William and Ann and the Britannia sailed within ten days to try their luck. They caught seven whales between them, but could hold only one each. This was Sydney’s first locally based whaling adventure—the first two of many fish and many barrels of sperm oil to be carried in the whaling ships from Sydney’s Port Jackson to Europe and America.

After a second cruise to Australia, Eber Bunker sailed to New Zealand, whose coast he is thought to have explored before returning to his wife and four children in England, where, in 1786, he had married Margrett, daughter of Captain HenryThompson, personal pilot for King George III. Bunker’s wife’s mother was Isabella Collingwood, a second cousin to Vice Admiral Collingwood, who succeeded Nelson as Admiral of the British Fleet.

Two years later, at the age of twenty-seven, Bunker scored his first command and made two whaling voyages round Cape Horn before the voyage to Port Jackson.

Back in England and several voyages later, he received command of a new ship, the Albion, which he sailed to Sydney in the record time of three months, fifteen days, its stores of 900 tierces of salt pork much welcomed.

Three months later, Bunker was out hunting whales off the eastern Australian coast, to return within eleven months with 900 barrels of oil.

One more year and the Albion was able to clear for England with 155 tons of oil on board, or nearly 5,000 barrels. Meanwhile, he had bought a hundred acres of land at Liverpool, on the western outskirts of Sydney, that he proundly named “Collingwood.”

While often dubbed the father of Australian whaling, it was Eber Bunker’s sailing skills that secured him a ringside seat in Australia’s political development. Lingering concerns about French aspirations in Australia prompted Sydney’s Governor King to order the settlement of 

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Historic Nantucket

Photo: Tim Blue

We sailed through different shoals of them from 12 o’clock in the day till sunset, all round the horizon as far as I could see from the mast head.

In fact I saw very great prospects in making our fishery upon this coast. . . . I was determined as soon as I got in and got clear of my live lumber, to make all possible despatch on the fishery on this coast.

Collingwood, Bunker’s residence on the outskirts of Sydney, now classified by the National Trust.

happy: “If boats are put off to fish, every convict must be hand-cuffed and confined below until the boats return.”

Bunker was alert to the commercial potential of life in Australia. For his role in helping establish Tasmania, Bunker was granted four hundred acres at no cost, at Liverpool on the southwestern outskirts of Sydney. In 1806 he brought his wife and five children out from England, to set up house in the Rocks area of Sydney harbor, a site near the southern footings of its present landmark harbor bridge.

Bunker was continually at sea until his last voyage in 1824, when he went on a whaling cruise to the Santa Cruz Islands. He was engaged in cruises by Governor Macquarie, during one of which to the South Pacific he found letters from French explorer La Perouse dated one month before the explorer left Botany Bay and mysteriously disappeared.

Bunker was regarded by Macquarie as “a very able expert seaman and of a most respectable character.”

Collingwood, now classified by the National Trust, has been restored and furnished in the period of Bunker’s life. Perhaps his greatest legacy may be his reputation as a master and employer: There’s an old whaleman’s saying: “Lay me on Captain Bunker. I’m Hell on a long dart.” tim blue is a journalist in Sydney with a national daily newspaper. He is researching a history of American whalers off the south and west coasts of Australia, and has visited Nantucket to conduct part of his research.

NEW ACQUISITIONS

Ben Simons

Rare Portraits of the Nantucket Whaleship Spermo Friends of the NHA Purchase Masterpieces of American Whaling Art

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Spermo Cutting In Whales On Japan, 1822 Ship Spermo Trying With Boats Among Whales On California, 1821 John Fisher (1789–?)

Oil on canvas 2008.31.1–2 GIFT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE NHA

ow often does a museum have the opportunity to add artifacts to its collection that speak to the heart of its mission and, in addition, express the core history of the community that it represents? On Nantucket—where the very fabric of the buildings and the lives of our forebears were built upon the fragile basis of the oil taken from the giant bodies of deep-sea sperm whales, cut in, tried out, and strained—few things could tell that story better than images of men in the act of whaling on the ocean waves. If such images were created by a Nantucketer, depicting Nantucket whaleships, with Nantucket crews, and date to the earliest decade of Nantucket’s Golden Age of Whaling—we could begin to imagine their iconic importance.

Thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association, the collections of the NHA recently received such a remarkable gift: two paintings by Nantucket whaling master John Fisher (b. 1789) depicting the Nantucket whaleship Spermo in two dramatic settings: Ship Spermo Trying With Boats Among Whales On California (1821), and Spermo Cutting In Whales On Japan (1822).

Spermo sailed on its sole whaling voyage from 1820 to 1823, in consort with two other Nantucket whaleships, the General Jackson and the Pacific. John Fisher was master of the General Jackson, and observed his two sister ships very closely through his looking glass.

Created with the eye for detail of a seasoned whaling officer, Fall 2008

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Fisher’s portrayals of the Spermo rank among the most vigorous depictions of whaling before the invention of photography. The cutting-in scene shows the raised blanket piece of the whale twisting in the air while the crew heaves in unison on the capstan to board it.

Meanwhile, the upturned jawbone of the whale rises amidst swirling blood and salt-spray abeam the ship. The trying-out scene captures the blazing fires of the rendering process with trails of smoke and flames, a mincing station, and whaleboats dispatched on a pod of whales. Fisher masterfully portrays the swell of the ocean as Spermo rolls on the waves and circling seabirds swarm to share in the frenzy of the scene. Details like lookouts aloft in the crow’s nest and various figures positioned in the whaleboats add to the vivid expressiveness of the scenes. Fisher’s works are not only among the earliest known oil paintings depicting American whaling, they are by far the most dramatic.

The voyage of the General Jackson, Spermo, and Pacific was a representative venture for the time. Nantucket was recovering from the aftermath of theWar of 1812, and in the early 1820s had regained her exuberant spirit of exploration and profit. The Pacific was virgin soil; ships were fitting out in droves and harvesting vast numbers of sperm whales in its waters. In the year of their departure, 1820, the rich Japan Grounds were discovered by Captain Joseph Allen of the whaleship Maro. The very fact that a vessel was named Pacific tells the story. Fisher’s ship had a moderately successful return of 860 barrels of sperm; Pacific did slightly better with 1,465 of sperm; while Spermo had “greasy luck,” returning 1,920 barrels.

Very little documentary evidence exists to shed further light on the life of Captain John Fisher, the mysterious Nantucket artist, evidently self-taught, who created six known canvases: two of the ship Pacific, also in the NHA collection; a large canvas showing Spermo in a thunder squall, in the Nantucket Atheneum collection; and another in a private collection. Fisher seems to have retired from the sea after this voyage, and never owned property on Nantucket, although he was married to Nantucketer Abiel Coffin (1791–1828), and had one child by her, Mary (b. 1813). Spermo was sold off after this voyage; General Jackson left the Nantucket fleet; and Pacific went on to a long and successful career, having the distinction of counting Nantucket scrimshander Edward Burdett among its crew on a later voyage. From the six extant canvases, it can be seen that the voyage of Spermo, General Jackson, and Pacific were beset by storms, fierce gales, Saint Elmo’s fire, and violent rolling seas.

One remarkable letter in the NHA collection—from the young officer Henry Phelon Jr., on board the 1820–23 voyage of the Spermo, to his brother Thaddeus on Nantucket—tells the whole story of the Nantucket whaleman. Phelon starts by apologizing for his absence, and promises to reveal “. . . the secret of my travels”: Your anxiety must be so great to hear whether I am dead or alive. . . . I know very well the worryings it will give you to hear that I have taken to the seas—The 6th of August 1820 I shipt to the Ship Spermo of Nantucket bound round Cape Horn into the North Pacific ocean on a whaling voyage . . . making our passage to the Coast of Japan . . . twenty two thousand miles from holm [home]. So you may judge that I have seen a considerable part of the world and many has been thoughtful hours . . . I have been tossed to and fro upon the bosom of the ocean . . . lightnings flashing thunders roreing surging billows rowling in upon us and blowing a tremendous tempest. . . . It’s impossible for me to tell when I shall come holm [home].

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The Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association organization is our premier collectors group, comprising seventy-five individuals who pool resources annually to build a reserve of funds dedicated to the pursuit of important art and artifacts for the collections of the Nantucket Historical Association. Since its founding in 1986, the Friends have donated many of the key pieces in the NHA collections, with gifts valued at over one million dollars.

The process of the Friends’ pursuit of the Spermo paintings was a perfect model of its activities, and an exciting example of quick response to an upcoming auction. The paintings were part of the J. Welles Henderson sale at Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the weekend of August 16, 2008, and were instantly spotted by many watchful eyes in the catalog that was distributed just a few weeks prior to the sale. As with many auctions, the catalog issue date did not leave much time to mobilize interest, so we needed to act quickly.

A window into the process might be of some interest: As NHA curator, my immediate responsibility was to alert Friends president David Ross and Arie Kopelman, chair of the Friends Acquisitions Committee. David quickly alerted the other committee members, and the consensus was clear: pursue! Now, it was a question of establishing values and discovering interest from other parties and institutions. We worked the phones exhaustively over a period of about a week. I traveled to Portsmouth to preview the paintings and black-light them; my feeling was strongly positive in terms of condition, using the Fishers in the NHA collection as a basis for comparison. Given what we were learning about values and interest, we immediately enlisted conservator Lydia Vagts, formerly of the MFA Boston, to drive to Portsmouth to give a conservation assessment; this too came back favorably. Now, we canvassed other institutions and dealers to ascertain their interest. What we found only confirmed the importance of the paintings: the interest was strong across the board, but many of the interested parties were generously offering to hold back in order to ensure that the paintings returned to Nantucket—where they belong.

The Friends arrived at an appropriate limit, and I traveled to the auction to undertake the live bidding. The bidding was strong, but we were able to secure these island treasures for a final bid of $330,000, plus $40,000 commission. Friends president David Ross said, “It’s wonderful to have these extraordinary paintings back on Nantucket. The Friends are pleased to be able to contribute such important objects to the NHA permanent collection.”Arie Kopelman added, “These early pictures would be stars in any maritime collection. This acquisition was a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.We are so fortunate to bring them home to our island!”

At the final hammer, auctioneer Ron Bourgeault, a longtime friend of the NHA, announced publicly that the paintings were returning to Nantucket. He said that J. Welles Henderson, the renowned maritime collector whose collection they were in for over twenty years, “would have been delighted that they are returning home.”

The newly acquired John Fisher paintings of the Nantucket whaleship Spermo, historic gifts of the Friends of the NHA, now hang in Gosnell Hall, just feet away from the whaleboat and skeleton of the forty-seven-foot sperm whale. It is gratifying to note that among the known details of their provenance is their one-time ownership by preeminent Nantucket whaling historian and former NHA president Alexander Starbuck. ben simons is Robyn and John Davis Chief Curator of the Nantucket Historical Association.

F I F T Y Y E A R S L AT E R

Steve Sheppard

The Crash of Northeast Airlines Flight 258 On August 15, 1958 a twin-engine Convair CV-240 fell short of the runway on Nantucket in heavy fog

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he summer of 1958 on Nantucket unfolded much like any other—one of the biggest stories of August was the opening of the nation’s first bicycle path along the Milestone Road. Famed heart specialist and bicycling enthusiast Dr. Paul Dudley White was present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony that August 13. A day earlier, representatives from Northeast Airlines met with Nantucket’s airport commission to discuss a new, three-year contract with the airport.

Three days later, however, a tragedy of unimaginable proportions struck the island when a Northeast Airlines flight from New York crashed in heavy fog. At the time it was the worst airline disaster in New England history, but its immediate aftermath served as an example of Nantucket’s compassion for others as islanders acted heroically in the face of tragedy.

Now, fifty years later, the Northeast Airlines crash of a twinengine Convair CV240 with thirtyfour individuals aboard is remembered

still for the selflessness of the many who rushed to the scene with one concern—to help in any way they could.

Twenty-three people perished when the flight from New York’s LaGuardia Airport missed runway 24 by 1,450 feet, cutting a 500-foot swath through the dense scrub oak and pines. The force of the landing broke the airplane apart, and while some passengers were thrown from the plane, others were trapped in the wreckage.

One of the eleven survivors was nineteen-month-old Cindy Lou Young, a Nantucket native whose mother, eighteen-year-old Jacqueline DuceYoung, was flying home to the island to visit her parents. Unable to move, she handed Cindy Lou into the arms of survivor John J. B. Shea with the admonition, “Take the baby”; Jacqueline would be the youngest victim in the tragedy. Shea placed the baby out of harm’s way before going back to help in the rescue mission.

The regularly scheduled flight was two hours late leaving New York because of weather and ramp delays. The plane left LaGuardia around 10:30 P.M. for the one-hour flight to Nantucket.

It was cloudy on the island that night, and at 10:58 P.M. visibility at the airport was still four miles, with a ceiling of 12,000 feet. But fog rolled in quickly. At 11:12 P.M. visibility was reduced to three-quarters of a mile, and by 11:27 P.M., as the plane approached Nantucket, visibility dropped to a half mile. Four minutes later, visibility was down to one eighth of a mile.

The U. S. Weather Bureau agent at the

Battered empennage and rear fuselage after the crash.

PAUL KOZINN COLLECTION

Fall 2008

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airport reported the situation to Northeast station manager Tom Giffin, who radioed the information—but the crew of Flight 258 never acknowledged the transmission.

As taxi driver James Allen told the New Bedford Standard-Times that night: “[The plane] circled the field. I looked up and it was so clear that I could see the stars. The plane started coming in. Then all of a sudden, the weather socked in.”

When word of the crash spread, Nantucketers and vacationers alike rushed to the scene. Like many other islanders, Frank Marks was alerted to the disaster by the insistent call of the fire horn. The next day’s Standard-Times related his story: I heard the fire engines going out Union Street and a moment or two later I heard the State Police siren and the car shot by me. I ran home and got into my car and went out to the airport. I could see the reflection of the fire coming from the woodland on the northeast side of the airport. I drove about a mile beyond along Old South Road and came up behind the State Police car. The firemen were already in the woods. I got out and started in. I got about 100 feet and I saw Sergeant (Robert) Haley walking through the bushes with a baby in his arms. Then a man came behind him with a woman in his arms.

I kept walking and as I got near the plane I could hear someone shouting in the bushes. I saw a man sitting near the ship. The flames were all around the wreck. I dragged him away.

The scene of the wreckage.

PAUL KOZINN COLLECTION

At the newly built Nantucket Cottage Hospital on Prospect Street, island doctors and nurses were aided by visiting physicians as the same scenario of hope and caring amid chaos played out. Physicians were praised for their “superb emergency treatment . . . that may have saved the lives of the Nantucket air crash victims transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital.”

Nineteen-month-old Cindy Lou Young, however, required little care and remained on the island. All she received from the accident was a

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scratch, prompting newspapers to call her survival “miraculous.”

Another survivor, Paul Kozinn, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was also lucky: he was one of the least seriously injured. Although he was thrown from the plane, his first thought was to help others. From his hospital bed in Nantucket, he told of his experience: The plane made a left bank, then leveled off. It seemed just like normal procedure. Then I felt something scraping on the bottom of the plane. It felt like a rough landing strip that should be fixed. Next thing I knew I was on the ground ten feet from the plane. I don’t know whether I had been unconscious one minute, ten minutes or one hour. When I came to, my seat was gone. I don’t know what became of it. I heard people moaning and women’s voices calling for help. I turned around and I saw my friend Don close to the flames and unconscious. He was still strapped into his seat; it came out with him. I got to my feet and reached him and pulled him away. I don’t remember much after that, but I think I went back to pull out a woman. I don’t know for sure.

The friend he pulled to safety, Don Breswick of NewYork, died from his injuries the next day at Massachusetts General Hospital.

After the tragedy, improvements to Nantucket Memorial Airport came: an air-traffic-control tower was built; runway lighting was improved. At the time of the crash, Nantucket averaged 13,000 landings a year. Now, it is the second busiest airport in New England, boasting sophisticated radar and instrument-landing-system capabilities.

This August 15, on the fiftieth anniversary of the disaster, a stone marker on Bunker Road (at the present site of Toscana Construction) commemorated the site of the crash, serving not only as a memorial to those who died, but as a reminder of those who rushed to the scene to help. At the ceremony, Cindy Lou Young and Paul Kozinn, the two remaining crash survivors, met for the first time.

Kozinn has recently donated his comprehensive files concerning the disaster—newspaper clippings, Northeast Airlines interoffice correspondence, and records of the public hearings and witness examinations related to the crash—to the Nantucket Historical Association archives.

Earlier this year, Young published a compelling account of the tragedy and of her ensuing life on Nantucket: Out of the Fog: Tragedy on Nantucket. As Young states in the conclusion of her book: “It has been fifty years since these events took place, and time has changed the face of the community and the landscape. I no longer reside on the lovely isle of Nantucket, but it will always be a part of me and a part of my heart. I still make regular trips back there. For me, there has never been, and probably never will be, the same sense of ‘community’ that I experienced living on this small island.”

Throughout its storied history, the tales of Nantucketers coming to the aid of those in peril, whether on land or sea, are the stuff of legend. The response to Northeast flight 258 stands among all those episodes of heroism. When asked recently if he thought islanders today would respond to a similar tragedy with the same fervor, Frank Marks said without hesitation, “Sure.”

But then he quickly added, “Let’s hope no one ever has to.” steve sheppard, former editor of Nantucket Magazine, is a free-lance writer and musician who has lived on Nantucket since 1980.

News Notes & Highlights

31st August Antiques Show The 31st Annual August Antiques Show was held August 1–3, 2008, at the Nantucket New School. The August Antiques Show is the major fund-raising event for the NHA’s preservation and education programs, and was chaired by Vicki Livingstone; the honorary chair was Marcia Welch.

The prestigious Antiques Council, an organization dedicated to ensuring the quality of antiques and historical works of art at many of the leading national antiques shows, once again managed the August show. Visitors from across the country traveled to Nantucket to view American and English furniture, fine art, Oriental rugs, books, maritime antiques, folk art, and Nantucket memorabilia.

Antiques Show week began on Tuesday, July 29, with a lecture sponsored by the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association, featuring Elliot Bostwick Davis, John Moors Cabot Chair, Art of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

For the fifth consecutive year, the preview party was sponsored by Eaton Vance Investment Counsel, with Trianon/Seaman Schepps underwriting the popular dinner auction, held in honor of Shelton Ellis.

Honorary Antiques Show chair, Marcia Welch with husband Joe. Above center: John Espy, Shelton Ellis, and Polly Espy.

Above left: AAS chair Vicki Livingstone; NHA executive director Bill Tramposch; Liz Verney and board president Geoff Verney.

Family Whale Festival

Memorial Concert by Bill Schustik

On Thursday and Friday, July 17 and 18, the NHA hosted its first Family Whale Festival in the Whaling Museum.

This hands-on festival, led by the Education Department for visitors of all ages, included drawing whales with artist and chanteyman Don Sineti, an overview of the history of whaling and whale biology, making origami whales and imitation scrimshaw, singing songs of the sea, and telling the tale of the tragedy of the whaleship Essex. The festival was a joint endeavor of the Nantucket Historical Association, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), and the Water Education for Teachers Project (WET).

American troubadour and island favorite Bill Schustik performed traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music, dedicated to the memory of his longtime publicist Doris Fellerman, to a full house in the Whaling Museum on the evening of July 26.

Schustik was first introduced to Fellerman by Kim Corkran when she was NHA president in the early 1990s.

“Doris volunteered Richard Lauer, Rebecca Fellerman Lauer, their at one of my concerts, daughter Meg, and Bill Schustik and almost before I realized what was happening, she took over the management of my performances,” said Schustik. The concert featured many of her favorite songs, and was followed by a wine and cheese reception hosted by Fellerman’s family.

Kaitlin Lloyd welcomes visitors to the Family Whale Festival.

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News Notes & Highlights New NHA Staff Members

New NHA staff members Christopher Mason, Mark Avery, Tracy Murray.

Christopher Mason was hired as Public Programs Coordinator in January. Mason has a B. A. in History and Secondary Education from Castleton State College in Vermont, State College in Vermont, and in 2008 he received a Master of Arts in Public History from the University at Albany.

Longtime Nantucket resident Mark Avery stepped aboard as Manager, Historic Properties, in March. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, with a major in mechanical engineering and industrial design, Avery also studied building technology and civil engineering at Greenfield Community College. On Nantucket, he has been deeply involved in town government and historic-preservation agencies, serving as a board member of the Nantucket Preservation Trust, an elected member of the Nantucket Historic District Commission, and a founding member of the HDC’s Historic Structures Advisory Council.

In May, Tracy Murray was hired to assist the Director of Finance & Administration, Johanna Richard. Murray holds a B.A. in Science with a second major in English from Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. For many years, Murray worked in the administrative and finance offices for the Town of Nantucket, and had a prior stint at the NHA in the 1990s.

Yale Whiffenpoof Alumni Benefit Concert

Tea for Life Members

In a working partnership with the NHA and the Maria Mitchell Association (MMA), the Whiffenpoof alumni performed to a sold-out crowd on Saturday, August 16, in the Whaling Museum. Established in 1909, the Yale Whiffenpoofs are the oldest collegiate a cappella group in the United States, and active alumni members continue to raise their voices in song according to the celebrated Whiffenpoof tradition.

In appreciation for their support, NHA Life Members were invited for tea in the garden at the Thomas Macy House, 99 Main Street, on Thursday, September 4, at teatime. The sun-filled afternoon featured assorted finger sandwiches, cherry scones, lemon squares, shortbread, and strawberries, resplendent in silver platters and bowls. Guests enjoyed an assortment of teas while commenting on the lovely setting during informal tours of the house.

Julie A. Hensler and Susie Robinson

Walden Chamber Players in Concert A favorite of islanders, the players return to play at four island venues

Walden Players at Nantucket Elementary School

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To the delight of numerous island residents—young and old alike—the Walden Chamber Players gave a number of concerts around the island during the weekend of September 26.

Free performances were enjoyed at the Nantucket Elementary School, the Nantucket New School, and the Homestead, culminating in a magical concert Friday evening in the Whaling Museum. Founded in 1997, and comprising twelve dynamic artists in various combinations of string, piano, and wind ensembles, the players showcased rarely heard works by composers of the past as well as music by contemporary composers. The Friday concert included pieces by Boccherini, Augusta Read Thomas, Haydn, Handel/Halvorsen, and Schedl. Each concert was underwritten by an anonymous donor.

NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION HAS EMBARKED ON TWO KEY INITIATIVES The NHA is grateful for the many members and friends who have already provided generous support for these two projects. Fund-raising continues for both initiatives, with the goal to complete them in 2011.

Your continued generosity is greatly appreciated.

RESTORATION OF GREATER LIGHT

Photo: Jack Weinhold

Opening a Window into the Nantucket Art Colony Greater Light—its very name elicits the spirit of the colony of artists that arose on Nantucket in the 1920s.

Among them were Quaker sisters Gertrude and Hanna Monaghan, who lovingly converted a barn at 8 Howard Street into an eclectic summer home and studio.

The NHA is now beginning the timely and necessary restoration of this historic property to bring to life Nantucket’s emergence as an Embroidered narrative of Greater art colony and resort. In Light by Susan Boardman. bequeathing the property and its furnishings to the NHA, it was the Monaghans’ intent that Greater Light would be used “in all ways possible to benefit the public.”

With its restoration, the house and its charming garden will become a venue for lifelong learning in the arts and for small gatherings that extol the arts and culture—exhibitions, poetry readings,

plays, musical performances, and garden parties—much in the way the Monaghans engaged the community.

The $2.4 million Greater Light project is being undertaken in two phases. Later this year, the NHA will begin the Phase I restoration work needed to make the building structurally sound and useable as well as to create a much-needed basement apartment for staff housing. In 2007, the NHA received the community’s endorsement of the restoration with receipt of a $400,000 matching grant from the Nantucket Community Preservation Committee. Through the generosity of its supporters, the NHA has already met the CPC match.

Naming opportunities remain available, and further donations of all sizes are welcome and will help the NHA raise the $330,000 needed to complete Phase I by spring 2010. At that point, the NHA will focus on raising the additional funding for Phase II—restoration and conservation of the interior, furnishings, and the garden; and development of interpretive and educational programs, tours, and exhibitions. Completion of the Greater Light project is anticipated in 2011.

For more information about Greater Light, to schedule a tour of the property, or to make a contribution, please contact Judith Wodynski, director of external relations, at (508) 228–1894, ext. 111, or jwodynski@nha.org.

A “GATEWAY” FILM An Orientation to Nantucket History Following the Nantucket Historical Association’s key interpretive themes, the orientation film will create an overarching and compelling narrative that captures the essence of Nantucket, connecting this “elbow of sand,” as Melville called it, to national and world history. In filmmaker Ric Burns’s unique style, the production will use primary-source quotations and historic images coupled with a memorable musical accompaniment. Nathaniel Philbrick, author/historian and NHA research fellow, and William Tramposch, NHA executive director, will work closely with Burns. When it premiers in 2011, the NHA’s “gateway” orientation film will become a must-see for residents and visitors alike.

Over the past two years, Burns has been a frequent visitor to Nantucket, both to speak at the museum and to conduct research at the NHA Research Library for a major PBS documentary on the history of American whaling, premiering at the Whaling Museum in 2011.

The NHA is just $60,000 away from meeting its $398,000 goal for the orientation film. The NHA is grateful for the generous support it has already received from members and friends; additional Whaleship Atlas by gifts in any amount are welcome, Alexander H. Seaverns and will help the NHA reach its goal this year. Donation levels from $500 to $50,000 and above will be included in the film’s credits.

To learn more about the film or to make a donation, please contact Judith Wodynski, director of external relations, at (508) 228–1894, ext.

111, or jwodynski@nha.org.

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Warren Jagger

Make the Gift of a Lifetime in 2008 & 2009 with a tax-free charitable ira

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 allows you to make a tax-free transfer of your excess retirement assets to the Nantucket Historical Association—only in 2008 and 2009.

If you are age 70 ½ or older, you can rollover up to $100,000 from a traditional or Roth IRA directly to the Nantucket Historical Association.

This amount would be excluded from your income and taxes and count toward your mandatory IRA withdrawals. In addition, your

heirs would not be burdened later by the substantial taxes associated with inheriting an IRA. Making a gift to the NHA during your lifetime lets you see the results of your philanthropy. Gifts may be directed to the permanent endowment, the Annual Fund, or a specific area of interest, such as Greater Light, the orientation film, the Whaling Museum, Research Library, 1800 House, or educational programs.

For further information, consult your financial professional or contact Judith Wodynski.

508 228 1894, ext. 111 email: jwodynski@nha.org

Historic Nantucket P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554-1016

www.nha.org

Periodical POSTAGE PAID at Nantucket, MA and Additional Entry Offices

India Company, and later a third wife, Ann, widow of William Minchin.

Captain Eber Bunker is often dubbed the Father of Australian whaling, Australia's first export industry. He was also a pioneer of the country's pastoral expansion, sending stock and servants to the south and west of New South Wales around the town of Bargo, and north near the town of Keepit on the Namoi River. He died in 1836 at his home, Collingwood, at the head of navigation of the Georges River, about twenty kilometres upstream from Sydney Harbour. His grave lies in St. Luke's Cemetery at Liverpool in Sydney’s southwestern suburbs.

Collingwood, now classified by the National Trust, has been restored and furnished in the period of Bunker’s life. Local historians suggest it originally resembled a traditional Nantucket building in its proportions, while its interior echoes the decor of the times. Perhaps his greatest legacy may be his reputation as a master and employer:There’s an old whaleman’s saying: “Lay me on Captain Bunker. I’m Hell on a long dart.” tim blue is the bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio biobio bio bio bio bio bio bio

Eber overset please cut

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