A Young Whaleman Writes Home

WHALING MUSEUM REPORT

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The committee is constantly striving to protect and improve the museum. The staff also contributes its loyal and helpful cooperation.

Numerous interesting and valued donations have been received, recorded and reported to the Curator.

The large addition, the Whale House, built to house the whale skeleton, is more than welcome but as such, does not solve the need for additional space for our present exhibits and evergrowing number of additions. This is still our foremost problem and need. As stated last year, space is still available on the east side of the museum's main building for an addition to provide needed floor and wall space. Financing the cost of construction is the problem to be solved but with each year's delay, it becomes more difficult because of rising costs.

The museum committee for 1972-73 remains unchanged with Mrs. Kent King, Albert F. Egan, Jr., Charles F. Sayle, and W. Ripley Nelson serving as members.

Young Whaleman Writes Home

Among recent gifts to the Peter Foulger Library is a letter written in 1836 by a young Nantucket man serving on board the whaling bark Richard, of Salem, under Joseph Hodges, of Nantucket. The bark had sailed in October, 1835, and returned in February of 1837. The letter was presented by Alcon Chadwick, great-grandson of Andrew Brooks, and reads as follows:

Falkland Islands, June 14, 1836

Dear Parents:

I take my pen in hand to inform you of my good health, hoping these lines may find you the same. We have succeeded in getting 700 bbls. We shall start for the coast of Patagonia the last of this month, in hopes to fill the ship by Oct. It has got to be very rugged and a-plenty of snow and hail and rain and wind. I went a-gunning the other day and got 100 geese and 7 bullocks. We have a good pilot for the coast of Patagonia. We have got about 200 bbls. of water to get on board and then shall be ready for to start for the coast, where the ships Charles Adams and Mercury got 1600 bbls. of oil. 1300 bbls. will fill the Richard.

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HISTORIC NANTUCKET

The Acasta of Stonington and the Jones of New London came from Cape Horn the first of April with 1400 bbls. of oil, and two New York ships, one with .800 bbls. The Richard is a fine ship and well fitted and has a very good crew. We have had a plenty of geese, hogs and beef ever since we came to these Islands, to last over to the coast of Patagonia. We got one whale that made 130 barrels of oil.

I want you to ask Eliza Brock if she has got the letter that I sent her. If she has I will send another by the first ship that is bound home.

Yours,

Andrew B. Brooks

Andrew B. Brooks was the son of William and Ruth (Brock) Brooks, and was 25 years old when he wrote home. He married Lucretia Coffin in 1837. After another voyage he became First Mate on the Nantucket Whaleship Ontario, Capt. Stephen Gibbs, which sailed in 1843 for the Pacific Ocean.

While off Tecamus, Peru, in August, 1844, while Captain Gibbs and the crew were ashore gathering provisions, a mutinous sailor, who had been confined below in irons, managed to escape, obtain a musket from the cabin, and gained the deck. Mate Brooks attempted to recapture the man and was shot, and the mutineer escaped ashore.

The cook recalled Captain Gibbs and the men, but when they reached the Ontario the wounded mate had died. He was buried in the "foreigners' ground" ashore, with boat crews from the ship E. L. B. Jenney, of Fairhaven, and from the Ontario, escorting the body three miles up the river to the cemetery.

A portrait of Andrew Brooks was also presented by Stuart Chadwick, older brother of Alcon Chadwick, together with a framed newspaper clipping reporting the incident. Both of these are displayed on the second floor of the Peter Foulger Museum. The exhibit constitutes a unique part of the far-reaching history of Nantucket's maritime life.