Historic Nantucket
A c r o s s T h e Boat B a s i n T o Old N o r t h W h a r f
January, 1985 Published Quarterly by Nantucket Historical Association Nantucket, Massachusetts
NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OFFICERS President: H. Flint Ranney Vice President: Robert D. Congdon Treasurer: Donald E.Terry
Secretary: Richard Austin Walter Beinecke Alcon Chadwick George W. (ones
Edward B. Anderson Mrs. Kenneth Baird Mrs. John A. Baldwin Mrs. Marshall Brenizer
Honorary Vice Presidents Albert Brock Mrs. Bernard Grossman Presidents Emeritus Leroy H. True
Edouard A. Stackpole
COUNCIL MEMBERS Mrs. George A. Fowlkes Mrs. H. Crowell Freeman
Philip C. Murray F. Philip Nash, Jr. Mrs. Alan Newhouse
John Gilbert Mrs. Walker Groetzinger
Mrs. Paul A. Callahan Hugh R. Chace
Albert F. Egan, Jr. Mrs. R. Arthur Orleans
Francis W. Pease Charles F. Sayle, Sr.
Reginald Levine
Mrs. Jane Woodruff
Mrs. Carl M. Mueller
Mrs. James F. Chase
Mrs. Bracebridge Young, Jr. ADVISORY BOARD
Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Carpenter
Stuart P. Feld
William B. Macomber
F. Blair Reeves
STAFF John N. Welch, Administrator Victoria Hawkins, Curator Renny A. Stackpole, Director of Education and Whaling Museum Elizabeth Tyrer, Executive Secretary Edouard A. Stackpole, Historian; Director, Peter Foulger Museum Historic Nantucket, Editor, E. A. Stackpole Assistant Editor, Mrs. R. Arthur Orleans Librarian, Mrs. Louise Hussey Archivist, Mrs. Jacqueline Haring Curatorial Assistant, Laura Evans
Oldest House: Mrs. Margaret Crowell, Mrs. Abram Niles Hadwen House-Satler Memorial: Mrs. Richard Strong Whaling Museum: James A. Watts, Alfred N. Orpin, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Dougan, Gerald Ryder Greater Light: Dr. Selina T. Johnson Peter Foulger Museum: Registrar, Peter S. MacGlashan; Mrs. Everett Merrithew, Alcon Chadwick, Everett Finlay Macy-Christian House: Miss Dorothy Hiller, Mrs. Helen S. Soverino Old Mill: Millers: John A. Stackpole, Thomas Seager Fair Street Museum: Mrs. William Witt, Mrs. Kathleen Barcus Archeology Department: Vice-Chairman, Mrs. John D. C. Little Museum Shop: Manager - Thomas W. Dickson
HISTORIC NANTUCKET Published Quarterly and devoted to the preservation Nantucket's antiquity, its famed heritage and its illustrious past as a whaling port.
of
Nantucket Historical Association Officers and Staff
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Editorial — "Nantucket's Challenge of the Present''
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Waiting for the Telegraph Cable to be Completed -1886
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The Swain Saga by Mrs. Nancy Foote
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In Memoriam — Robert G. Metters
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A Beggar's Funeral Near Concepcion, Chili Observed in 1834
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Address Changes/Bequests
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The Nantucket Historical Association Publishes''The Loss of the Essex''
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The Young Boy and the Sea: Ernest Hemingway's Visit to Nantucket Island by Susan F. Beegal
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Embarking on a New Voyage
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Historic Nantucket (USPS 246460) is published quarterly at Nantucket, Massachusetts by the Nantucket Historical Association. It is sent to Association members and extra copies may be purchased for $3.00 each. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Nantucke' Historical Association, Box 1016, Nantucket, Ma. 02554. Membership dues are: Individual $15, Family $25, Supporting $50, Patron $100, Life $300. Second-class postage paid at Nantucket, Massachusetts. Communications pertaining to the Publication should be addressed to the Editor, Historic Nantucket, Nantucket Historical Association, Nantucket, Massachusetts 02554.
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Nantucket's Challenge of the Present THE SENSE OF responsibility as concerns the future of Nantucket grips all of us who feel the present challenge. The effect of increased building in the once open land of the Island has brought dismay to many who recognize the necessity of preserving the natural landscape. This awareness of the paramount issue is a good omen. It is vital to our future that the challenge must be met. In the modern terminology what is called the "built environment" is an encroachment on the natural features of the out-lying land, and a destructive influence as it affects the future economy of our island. What we must guard against is the selfish ideas of those who are deter mined to live in the present to the exclusion of how this affects our future. They fail to realize the experience of the past. They ignore what has been Nantucket's greatest asset - its historical past. This is a fac tor which has a direct and immediate appeal - the old island landscape and the old town in the sea. It is an asset which requires protection con stantly. It is a vital part of the future of Nantucket. Land owners, developers, architects and speculators are now in volved in a significant struggle, but their perspective seems to be con cerned with only the present scene. Yet it is against the background of the future. In the foreground is an historical past which has become our Island's "stock in trade." In nibbling at the outlying land we have damaged to a considerable degree those scenes which have been aspects of our past and which have also become a powerful factor in laying the course for our future progress. Because the present directly affects the future, this new Nantucket challenge must be met. We face various conflicts of interest. But we must recognize the future well-being of Nantucket is the important issue. We must preserve those vital factors which have sustained Nan tucket over the years. The Historic Districts Commission should be strengthened and supported, the Conservation Foundation encouraged, the Land Bank and similar organizations maintained. Public support is essential; the recognition that the average citizen understands the pre sent situation and wishes to do something to protect the Island - and to protect his own future, as well - is one fact which can not be ignored. Edouard A. Stackpole
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Waiting for the Telegraph Cable To be Completed - 1886 THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL submarine telegraph cable to Nantucket became a reality on November 18, 1885, when the tug Storm King brought the shore end up from the sea and established it in a hut erected at Madaket. But it took a considerable length of time to bring the cable line into the town, where the U.S. Government was to establish a Signal Station, later the Weather Bureau, at the Pacific Club. This was not completed until several months had elapsed. In the interim, the townspeople were impatient to see the culmination of the plans, and the local opinion was ably expressed by William Hussey Macy in his "Here and There" column of The Inquirer and Mirror, January 30,1886, and reads as follows: "We scarcely knew whether to growl or to laugh, At the slow-moving progress of our telegraph. What's the Government doing? We waited so long. We cannot help thinking that something is wrong. We've cheerfully waited, and waited in vain, Till now we feel sure we've a right to complain. We were long enough, Heaven knows, in getting the cable, But now the whole business seems laid on the table. So long we were bothered in bringing the wires, We thought their arrival had crowned our desires. But the ground, if they ever do bring us those poles, May be frozen so hard we can't dig the holes. And the earth round the poles is no subject of mirth When 'tis frozen as hard as the poles of the earth. We may be so delayed by bad weather and frost, That we'll consider the winter as already lost, And may set it down, now, as a well settled thing That the work won't be finished 'till far into spring. For, what with delays and surveys and inspections, Much time will be lost in these land connections. And most of us can't, for our lives, understand, Why some of this work wasn't done beforehand. For in soft Christmas weather it might be done free ly, And not be like the searching the north after Greely. It may seem a rather hard statement to make, But, seriously now, we believed it would take No longer to pay out a cable to Burmah, Than to hang those few miles of wire on terra fir m a .
"Tempus Fugit Obed Ellis, Nantucketer of the 19th century, has finished cut ting a field of oats, and looks at his watch to determ ine the prop er time to quit.
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The Swain Saga (continued from July, 1984 issue)
Part Two DURING THE PAST few years, the genealogical records of the Nan tucket Historical Association have been enriched through the contribu tion of those descendants of the original white settlers of the Island. Among such valuable contributions are a series of studies on the Swain Family, prepared by Mrs. S.C. Foote, of Chelmer, Brisbane, Australia, which she has titled "The Swain Saga". Mrs. Foote's ancestor was Cap tain Samuel Swain, of Nantucket, one of the island's whaling masters out of London. After four voyages to the Pacific, all successful, Captain Swain took out the ship Bermondsey, of London, and this was his last command. He put in at Sydney, Australia, and died on board his ship, being buried in a cemetery ashore.
The Swain Saga by Mrs. Nancy Foote (nee Swain) RICHARD SWAIN, FIRST of that name in the new world of America, settled in Hampton, N.H., and with his son, John Swain, was one of the original purchasers of Nantucket in 1659. Richard married the widow of George Bunker (Jane Godfrey Bunker), and brought the family of Bunker children with his own to Nantucket. There were five Bunker children, and two children born from the marriage of Richard and Jane (Bunker) Swain, John and Richard Swain. John Swain was the founder of the Swain family on Nantucket, as his brother, Richard, Jr. moved to settle in New Jersey. Richard Swain, the father, lived in the area of Hummock Pond, now called Clark's Cove, and here his wife, Jean, died on October 31,1662, the first death to be recorded among the white settlers. Richard died twenty years later, April 14,1682. John Swain had married Mary Wyer in Hampton, and their first child, Mary, was born before the couple moved to Nantucket. On the Island, eight more children were born to them. Their first son, named John, was born September 1, 1664, and was the first white male child born on Nantucket. John Swain II married Experience Folger, daughter of Peter and Mary Folger, and the sister of Abiah Folger, the mother of Benjamin Franklin. The couple had nine children. A great-grandson of John
THE SWAIN SAGA
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Swain II was James Swain, and he was the father of Captain Samuel Swain, the grandfather of Nancy Swain Foote. Captain Samuel Swain was born in Nantucket in 1799. Soon after the War of 1812 had ended he was in London, where he shipped out on the whaleship Indian, owned by Samuel Enderby, the famous English firm, and commanded by his cousin, Captain William Swain. But to return to John Swain, son of Richard. In 1672, John was chosen one of the four-man board of Selectmen. In 1676, John decided to obtain land at Polpis, where he could build a homestead. This locality became a favorite farming center, and several generations of Swains grew up in this area. Early in 1708, the record reads: "The Town grants Benjamin Swaine liberty of that stream of watter which runs by John Folgers house to dam it up & sett up a fulling mill on it one the Conditions he shall Injoy the same so Long as he shall resionably comply with ye fulling of their cloath they paying for the same." The following information was furnished me by Edouard A. Stackpole, Historian for the Nantucket Historical Association, and reads as follows: ...There were three Swain houses in the Polpis area at one time; John Sr., who was granted the land in 1680, having purchased it from the Indians, and the title confirmed in 1684. In 1676, John Swain, Sr. had moved from the area of Hummock Pond to the Polpis area, and his original dwelling was on the pres ent Donald Craig land, formerly the Chadwick Farm. John Swain, Jr., who married Experience Folger, was born in 1664, and after his marriage built a house near his father, north of the site of the old Polpis Schoolhouse. Thus John Sr. erected his sec ond house almost opposite the site of the land he gave to his daughter Elizabeth, who married Joshua Sevolle. Most of the authorities consider the date of this "Swain" house as being around 1711. The last to live there was Mrs. Love (Swain) Smith, who moved into town in her later years. Thus, the old Swain-Sevolle house soon took over the name "Old Swain House." It was photographed by Henry Wyer and was a picturesque ruin when it
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HISTORIC NANTUCKET
was struck by lightning in 1905 and partly burned. It was taken down, probably for firewood. The late Charles Chadwick recalled seeing that one room had a cobble-stone floor, no doubt a "milk room," for the farm. My reason for placing the date of the erection of the house at 1692, is that Elizabeth (born in 1676), and Benjamin, her brother, who was born in 1679, both had habitations at Polpis, built by John Swain, Sr. for his children. You have mentioned the story of a house being raised for Benjamin who had taken over the operation of the fulling mill for his father. The marriage of his sister, Elizabeth, to Sevolle must have come earlier, and so I think that the date of that Swain house was earlier than 1704. When Donald Craig built the replica of the "Swain House," some twenty-five years ago, he used photographs and drawings of the "Swain-SevolleSmith house" as a model. When the Swains from Canberra visited two years ago, I took them out to see the old Charles Swain House, built around 1760. The date 1902 is the correct one for the demolishment of the old "Swain-Sevolle House," but I am not at all sure as to the actual date of its construction perhaps, "around 1700" would be a possible solution...
Obed Macy, the Quaker historian, has written of the launching of the Friends Meeting in Nantucket. John Swain, Sr. had joined the Quaker faith before he came to Nantucket, and his presence in the com munity was important to the organization. Macy wrote in his History of Nantucket: "The Society of Friends, on Nantucket, originated about or after the year 1704, when Thomas Story went there on an religious visit. He found but two of the denomination of Friends or Quakers at that time, but that the people consisted of various persuasions. He advised them to establish a meeting under the auspices and direction of the Society of Friends, since there appeared to him to be a great number who believed in their principles. A meeting was established and from this beginning the Society in-
THE SWAIN SAGA
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creased until at one period the number of members was about 1200. Nearly as many more attended their meetings, who were not members but fully believed in their principles. From the establishment of a Friends Society in Nantucket in 1708 the men and women had held separate meetings, each having its own records, and within prescribed limits transacting its own business. The first ministers belonging to the island were Mary Starbuck, her son Nathaniel, Nathaniel Gardner, John Swain, and Priscilla Cole man. In 1704, 5th month, Thomas Story visited the island. In his journal he says:... "17th. This Evening we ascended toward the up per Part of the Island, to John Swain's (one who came to our Meetings, and there was only one more, that is, Stephen Hussie, in all that Island under our name) and there we met with a great Company of Indians and other People together, having been rais ing a Timber House for him - his new home at Polpis, in the eastern part of the Island." George Swain (youngest son of John Swain II) married Love Pad dock (daughter of Nathaniel and Ann) on the 5th 12th month, called February, 1729. Until late in the 1700's, March was called "1st month." Their eldest child was Daniel Swain, born 1st 7th month, 1731 (Town Records); 1st 9th month, 1731 (Friends Records). The next in my line was James Swain, son of Daniel, who married Rebecca Baker, and their son Captain Samuel Swain was born in Nan tucket on October 4,1799. Captain Samuel Swain went to London with an older cousin, Cap tain William Swain, who was in the employ of the famous London whal ing merchant Samuel Enderby & Sons. Like other Nantucket ship masters in British vessels, Samuel Swain rose rapidly in the whaling business, and at twenty-six he was placed in command of the whaleship Indian of London, in which he made two voyages to the Pacific. His next command was the Vigilant, and after successive voyages in her he was given command of a new vessel, the Bermondsey. In 1831, Captain Swain married Louisa Flowers Fulcher, daughter
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HISTORIC NANTUCKET
of William and Mary Fulcher, of Deptford, England. Of the five children of Samuel and Louisa Swain, their only daughter and two of their sons came to Sydney in 1859 and 1864. Their youngest child, Ed ward Plant Swain, arrived in Sydney on the Duncan Dunbar on December 6,1864. Captain Samuel Swain left London in October 1841, in command of the new ship Bermondsey. This was to be his last voyage. After rounding Cape Horn, the ship sailed through the South Pacific, and on Feb. 24,1842, arrived at Sydney, Australia. After loading needed sup plies, the ship sailed on May 26,1842, to resume her whaling voyage. On July 9, the Bermondsey returned to Sydney, "....in consequence of her captain being in the last stages of consumption, and he expired on Saturday night." Captain Swain was then only 43 years old. His body was brought ashore and buried in the parish of St. James, Cumberland County.
The youngest child of James Swain and Rebecca Baker, of Nan tucket, was named Nancy Swain, and she was the younger sister of Samuel Swain. She died in 1821, on May 1st, in Nantucket. On May 1st, 1918, Nancy Swain II was born in Australia, the granddaughter of Cap tain Samuel Swain. Now Mrs. S.C. Foote, she has compiled an account of the Swains in three parts of the world - Nantucket, England and Australia.
3n fflemoriam
ROBERT G . METTERS
1912 - 1984 Vice President
Council Member
Committee Chairman
Loyal Member of The Nantucket Historical Association
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A Beggar's Funeral Near Concepcion, Chili. Observed in 1834 AMONG THE PAPERS in the collection of Captain Thomas Nickerson, whose narrative of "The Loss of the Essex" has now been published by the Association, was a personal account of an unusual funeral which he observed in Chili during one of his voyages. This is his description: I visited Concepcion in 1834 in company with several American gentlemen and all seemed in the highest enjoyment of prosperity. How little could we know of what an awful fate awaited that noble but devoted city which was so soon to lay a heap of ruins. We spent a few very pl(e)asant hours and formed some very pleasing acquaintances amongst the inhabitants. On our way to town we were met by an old man bowed down with years who accompanied by his son was bearing a burthen upon their shoulders. This consisted of a long pole with a sort of bag suspended horizontally between them and seemed to contain a human body. As the old man beckoned us, we stopped our horses to find what he wished of us. He came to us with tears gushing down his furrowed cheeks and only wished us to aid him by giving him a trifle towards the burial of his daughter. He said this was the third day in which himself and his son had laboured almost without food carrying around the dead body of his daughter striving to obtain enough money by begging to satisfy the de mand of their priest to perform for them the burial service and suffer her to be laid in consecrated ground. Ah, how unlike the good old Father Francisco, who but a few years before occupied the very same situation now held by this wretch. I ask ed the old man if he had known Father Francisco. "Ah," said he after crossing his forehead and uttering a few half broken sentences, "I knew him well, but we find none like him now." We raised among us the amount the old man said was the demand and gave it to him. It gave us pleasure in seeing the countenance of the old man display the workings of his heart as we reached him the desired sum. I dismounted to be sure they had not been deceiving us. And hauling open the shroud, found it to be a face with which we had been familiar. Although somewhat changed in death, we recognized it to have been a girl who used to attend in market, and of whom we used to buy our vegetables. "Ah," thought I, "how little do we know what we enjoy in our own country until we visit abroad."
A BEGGAR'S FUNERAL
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We turned our horses heads and rode to town, followed no doubt with the blessings of the old man, who could now return and demand of that priest the burial which, for want of a little paltry trash, had been denied him. I shall cherish the remembrance of the eager desire displayed by my companions to join me in making up the amount of money requisite for the decent burial of the dead and to thus relieve the old man's wants."
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The Nantucket Historical Association Publishes "The Loss of the Essex" AN HISTORIC MANUSCRIPT, written a century ago by Thomas Nickerson, one of the survivors of the tragic loss of the whaleship Essex, of Nantucket, sunk by a whale in mid-Pacific, has been publish ed by the Nantucket Historical Association in December, 1984. Prevail ed upon by a professional writer to tell the story of his experiences, Nickerson completed his narrative in 1876. A century passed and then, through the interest of Mr. and Mrs. James M. Finch, of Hamden, Con necticut, the manuscript was presented to the Association two years ago, and now, through the process of editing by Mrs. Helen Winslow Chase and Edouard A. Stackpole, was prepared for publication. Nickerson wrote his story fifty years after Owen Chase gave the first account of the whaleship being rammed by a giant bull sperm whale. Nickerson's narrative tells in detail of the voyage of the Essex from the time she sailed from Nantucket in 1819, the attack by the whale, and the incredible open boat voyage of one of the whaleboats which sailed for 89 days, through the Pacific before three of her crew were saved by passing ship. Only one other of the three whaleboats managed to make the long journey across the open sea and two of her crew were saved by another whaleship, and in this boat were Captain George Pollard, the master of the Essex and his shipmate, Charles Ramsdell. All five of the survivors of the Essex tragedy returned to the sea, in cluding Thomas Nickerson, the youngest crew member. Although he never lived to see his narrative published, Nickerson had prepared his manuscript with an awareness that some day it would appear in book form. He died on February 7,1883, and a century later his story brings to many readers one of the most remarkable adventures in the history of the sea. As stated in the foreword, the recovery of the original manuscript is somewhat of a literary miracle. Fortunately, the professional writer who was supposed to revamp the narrative did not attempt it and, the story told by Thomas Nickerson emerges stronger than ever. As the last survivor of the ill-fated Essex, his story deserved to be published. It is a proper companion piece to Owen Chase's printed account. Both of these whalemen were in the same whaleboat and Nickerson gives full credit to Chase for guiding him to the completion of his own story of that great ordeal.
"His Head half out of water . . . he again struck the ship."
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The Young Boy and the Sea: Ernest Hemingway's Visit to Nantucket Island by Susan F. Beegal University of Massachusetts, Nantucket Field Station THE NAME ERNEST Hemingway is synonymous in American literature with islands, the ocean, and deep-sea fishing. One thinks of Key West, with its rum-runners and smugglers, so prominently featured in To Have and Have Not; of Bimini, where Thomas Hud son and his sons hunt swordfish in Islands in the Stream; and most of all Cuba, where the old fisherman Santiago fights his lonely, losing bat tle with a giant marlin. So ascendant are these Caribbean isles, waters, and monster fish in Hemingway's fiction that few people realize his lifelong romance with the sea began off the coast of New England, on Nantucket Island. Nantucket was the first island Hemingway set foot on, Nantucket Sound the first salt water he sailed on, Nantucket sea bass and mackerel the first marine fish he caught. It was on Nantucket that Hemingway first met an old fisherman with a yarn to spin about catching a swordfish, and his trip to Nantucket that inspired his very first short story. He was eleven years old. Hemingway was born and raised far from the sea in a suburb of Chicago: Oak Park, Illinois. His father, Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hem ingway, was also born in Oak Park, and Ernest's mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, in Chicago. But although a Midwesterner by birth, Grace Hemingway had inherited a love of the sea through her English grand father, Captain Alexander Hancock of the five-masted schooner Elizabeth. When his wife died in 1853, Captain Hancock took his three young children and three hundred passengers bound for the Australia gold rush around Cape Horn to Sydney (2). Captain Hancock disliked Australia, and soon took his children to the United States, where they settled in Dyersville, Iowa (2). Nevertheless, the voyage of the Elizabeth left a lasting impression on Captain Hancock's descendants. His son Benjamin, Grace Hemingway's uncle, would fill the heads of his niece and her children with stories of that dimly remembered cruise, and Captain Hancock's daughter Caroline, Grace's mother, would insist on taking her own children away from Iowa to Nantucket Island, for summers by the sea.
Captain Alexander Hancock, Ernest Hem ingway's sea-faring great-grandfather. (From the scrapbooks of Grace Hem ingway.) from J.F. Kennedy Library Collections
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Grace Hemingway remembered those childhood summers on Nan tucket fondly, and wanted her own children to see the ocean and learn more about their Hancock heritage. She also longed for a vacation from the combined cares of raising a large brood of children and teaching music in Oak Park. Unfortunately her husband, a hard working doctor, could not leave his practice for long trips, nor super vise all of his children without hired help while his wife was away on a pleasure jaunt. Of necessity, Grace's trips to the sea must be infre quent. Finally she hit upon a scheme. Each year that one of her children turned eleven, Grace and that child would travel east for a month alone together on Nantucket Island. In this way she hoped not only to get to know her children as individuals by having them alone for awhile, but also to see "dear old Nantucket" again. Ernest's turn to visit Nantucket came in September, 1910. Mother and son embarked for the island from Woods Hole, where the ferry put in to collect passengers from the Boston train. They steamed across Vineyard Sound to dock briefly at Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, then began the last leg of the voyage to Nantucket. W.B.R. Mason, editor of the Bound Brook, New Jersey Chronicle, has described what it was like to enter Nantucket Harbor in 1910. One must imagine young Ernest Hemingway and his mother standing on the deck of the ferry, straining to catch their first glimpse of the town, as tourists still do to day: ...the town of Nantucket is sighted, beautifully situated on a slope rising from the harbor to a con siderable elevation in the residence section. Promi nent objects on the hill, outlined against the sky, are the Unitarian and Congregational Churches, the Sea Cliff Hotel, and the old Windmill that ground the corn of the natives many years ago (ll). Once disembarked from the ferry, the Hemingways made their way to Miss Annie Ayers' guest house at 45 Pearl Street. Pearl Street is now India Street, and while the Ayers Guest House still operates on Union Street, the original was destroyed by fire long ago when a careless guest left a cigarette burning downstairs (15). However, in 1910, Ernest and his mother were welcomed to a traditional Nantucket home then over a hundred years old (14). The ceilings were just six feet high, and Mrs. Hemingway would "hit the ceiling regularly on the up ward strokes of her brush as she dressed her long hair every morning." (14). Miss Ayers' guest house was "beautifully kept," and the company congenial (15). Grace wrote to her husband that there were "many good people" in the house (6). Certainly she enjoyed her hostess: Grace Hemingway and Annie Ayers were both fervent suffragettes, Miss
"Ernest and Mama: Off to Nantucket" (From the scrapbooks of Grace Hemingway) from J.F. Kennedy Library Collections
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HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Ayers holding suffragette meetings in her parlor (14). Ernest found a little girl named Katherine Lucy to play with, and when he caught a Spanish mackerel, Miss Ayers flattered Ernest by cooking it and serv ing it to her guests for dinner (6). Almost as soon as he arrived on Nantucket, Ernest went for his first swim in the ocean. Grace was delighted by her son's "wild yells of joy" and his "Wow! What a surf!" (9). Grace ventured into the water at least once, clad in long black stockings, black canvas shoes, a bathing suit with sleeves to the elbows and skirts over the knee-length bloomers, and a floppy cotton bathing cap with wide ruffles around the brim (14). Yet despite all this clothing, proper swimming attire for ladies in 1910, Grace found the September waters too cold. Ernest con tinued to swim in the sea almost daily, but his mother repaired instead to Hayden's Salt Water Baths. There, in a large building now the Easy Street Gallery, Mr. and Mrs. Hayden pumped sea water into heated tanks when the tide was high so that customers like Mrs. Hemingway could luxuriate in hot salt water baths (15). Years later, Ernest would recall the swimming on Nantucket, reminiscing to his mother about the time when "I'd go in with the kelp and the horseshoe crabs, and you'd swim in salt water baths . ( i 4 ) . When mother and son were not swimming, they were sailing, chartering local catboats to take them out to fish. Writing to one of his little sisters, Ernest boastfully claimed that he had sailed fourteen miles "up to Great Point," a boyish exaggeration of the actual distance, and reported that the water was "fine and rough" (9). These sailing trips were an enormous concession on Grace's part to her son's enthusiasm for the sea. The previous year, visiting Nantucket Island with her eldest daughter Marcelline, Grace had vetoed all sailing par ties. Grace explained that when she was a girl four young people, two of them her first cousins, had been drowned at Nantucket when their sailboat capsized (14). Yet if Grace had misgivings about the safety of sailing, she swallowed her fears to take her son fishing. Another vacation treat for Ernest was a visit to the whaling exhibit at Nantucket's Fair Street Museum (6). There Ernest admired por traits of whaling captains looking very like his seafaring great grandfather Alexander Hancock. Always interested in fishing, he doubtless enjoyed fingering the rack of harpoons on the wall. But the best of all was the toothy jaw of a giant sperm whale, towering over the boy and jutting into the open second story of the Fair Street rooms (12). Perhaps the eleven-year-old Hemingway stood in the enormous arch of the whale's jaw and contemplated the ease with which such a monster might have gulped him down. Back in Illinois, Ernest had enjoyed trips to the University of Chicago's Field Museum to admire the dinosaur skeletons (14). How thrilled he must have been to learn that giant
A sperm whale's jaw, one of the notable exhibits at the Whaling Museum of Nantucket.
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HISTORIC NANTUCKET
beasts the size of dinosaurs still swam the seven seas, and that brave men still hunted them from small boats. The boy who loved the Fair Street Museum's whaling exhibit would grow up to fish with rod and reel for huge black marlin weighing over a thousand pounds (3), and rival Melville's whaling saga Moby Dick with a fish story of his own The Old Man and the Sea. Perhaps Hemingway remembered lessons learned on Nantucket when, in October 1934, a pod of sperm whales surfaced near his fishing boat off Havana. Certainly he could not resist this opportunity to try and harpoon a whale himself: ...Carlos kept shouting, "A whale is worth a fortune in La Habana! A whale is worth a capital for life!" "God bless the Whale!" Enrique would shout. "Death to the whale!" yelled Lopez Mendez. The Maestro was shaking with excitement. There, a little way ahead, was the whale. He was very impressive. He would swim a little way under water then his broad back would come out and he would go along with the slanted top of his back out, seemingly unconcerned, but when we speeded up the engine to come up on him close enough to fire the harpoon into him he would submerge. We tried com ing up on him from the back, but he would go down each time before we were in range. Then we tried coming up on him from an angle, but down he would go again to be out of sight, only to reappear ahead of us, varying his course very little. Time after time we came within thirty feet of him only to have him go down. The speeding up of the motors seemed to frighten him and put him down and only by speeding up the motors could we come up on him. He was about forty feet long and as we came up close to him we could see the indentations along the side of his blunt head running back toward the body, as though someone had made them by rubbing a finger in warm wax. Again and again we were so close to him you could have hit him with a beer bottle, but I knew for the harpoon to hold we should be almost touching him with the boat when fired. "Shoot! For God's sake shoot!" Bolo screamed... "Shoot!" yelled Carlos... "It's no use to shoot unless it's close enough," I
ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND NANTUCKET
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yelled back. "The gun can't carry the weight of that hawser." ...The next time we came close and they began yelling to shoot, I said "All right. I'll show you what I mean," and fired when we were not quite thirty feet from the whale and he had lowered his head to sound. The blackpowder roared, the wire shot out, came taut with the weight of the hawser, and the dart was short. The whale went down and this time he came up a long way ahead and it was hard to see him in the sun.(5) Not every boy has the opportunity to enact in adulthood fantasies conceived in a Nantucket whaling exhibit, but Ernest Hemingway was a notable exception to that general rule. Around the 16th and 17th of September, the midst of the Hem ingways' visit and hurricane season, a storm arose that kept mother and son from swimming and sailing. Undaunted, they walked across the moors to Surfside. Here they watched the storm breakers roll in, and toured the Surfside Lifesaving Station. Grace and Ernest doubtless inspected the Lyle gun that fired a breeches buoy out to a foundering ship, and the lifeboat-on-wheels that strong horses would drive down the beach for launching into the surf (i6). Ernest must have been deep ly interested to learn about the professional heroes of the Surfside Lifesaving Station. Throughout his life, Hemingway remained fascinated by men - bullfighters, boxers, soldiers - who risked their lives to earn their pay. According to his mother's letters home, Ernest talked for a long time to the Lifesaving Station's "head man," then Captain Eugene Clisby (6, 15). Edouard Stackpole, our prominent local historian, remembers Captain Clisby as a "taciturn" fellow who nevertheless might tell a boy who listened well stories of the shipwrecks he had seen (15). Himself privileged as a lad to have heard some of Captain Clisby's stories, Mr. Stackpole remembers that the captain never embroidered his tales - the stories were grim enough without exaggeration (15). Like Captain Clisby, Hemingway would grow up to tell grim true stories with no embroidery or exaggeration. One thinks particularly of the laconic narration of "After the Storm," Hemingway's own account of an actual shipwreck that claimed hundreds of lives off the Florida Keys. Not all of the Hemingways' visit to the island was devoted to amus-
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HISTORIC NANTUCKET
ing Ernest, for his mother had strong interests of her own. As a young woman, Grace had studied voice in New York with the reknowned opera coach Madame Louisa Cappiani (10). Before abandoning her career to marry Dr. Hemingway, Grace auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera and gave a successful concert at New York's Madison Square Garden (io). In 1910 on Nantucket, Grace gave two recitals, probably arranged for her by the Atheneum's Arthur S. Wyer (15). She also sang solos in the choir during her girlhood (14). Ernest, of course, went along when his mother sang, and attended his first wed ding on Nantucket when Grace performed a solo as part of the service (7). Grace also kept busy attending suffragette meetings, both in Miss Ayers' parlor and at the Atheneum. Ernest went to these meetings too, but boasted to his father that he slept through them (9). Later in life, when Grace's children were grown and her husband's suicide left her a widow, she visited Nantucket frequently, and actually began planning a book on the island's history, which she titled Tales of Old Nan tucket (8). Grace did not complete the book, but her notes betray her interest in Nantucket's strong-minded and feminist women. She men tioned Keziah Folger Coffin, the entrepreneur; Abiah Folger, mother of Benjamin Franklin; Maria Mitchell, the astronomer; Lucretia Cof fin Mott, the abolitionist and suffragette leader; and Mary Starbuck, one of the leading Quaker preachers of her day (8). Traditionally in the forefront of any movement involving women's rights, Nantucket suited Grace Hall Hemingway, an intelligent, talented and dominating woman in her own right. Grace also pursued introductions in Nantucket's artistic communi ty, and took Earniest to meet Austin Strong, author of Seventh Heaven and Three Wise Fools, and the grandson of Robert Louis Stevenson's wife (6). The Hemingway home contained a ten volume set of Stevenson's work, which Ernest carried off with him as an adult (13). The boy probably enjoyed meeting a playwright who could tell him anecdotes about the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Austin Strong reputedly knew how to entertain children, and may have recounted to Ernest his memories of Stevenson on Samoa (15). Certain ly Grace was thrilled to meet Strong, recording their interview proudly in her letters home, and returning to visit the playwright on subsequent trips to Nantucket. (8).
In spite of her own busy schedule, Grace found time to indulge Ernest's passionate interest in natural history whle they were on the island. Back home in Oak Park, Ernest had just been elected "assis tant curator" of the Agassiz Club, an organization his father had found ed in the early days of the conservation movement to teach boys about
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ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND NANTUCKET
the natural world (7). Now Ernest delighted in combing Nantucket beaches for "specimens," collected "lovely seaweed," horseshoe crabs, and shells (6). Grace complained that her son wanted to bring home all of the shells on Nantucket, but faithfully accompanied him on his collecting expeditions nevertheless (6). Still Ernest yearned for something truly rare and unusual to take back for the Agassiz Club's little museum. On the island's wharves he met a fisherman who offered to sell him an albatross foot for two dollars (6). Prudently, Graced urg ed her son to write his father about this dubious transaction (7). Dr. Hemingway wrote back that Ernest should secure proof as to where and when the albatross foot was collected and whether it was "a real albatross" (7). "Don't get faked," Dr. Hemingway warned his son(7). Two dollars in those days was a lot of money.
Ernest did not buy the albatross foot, but with his mother's help soon found something better. On September 13,1910, he wrote to tell his father that he had purchased the bill of a large swordfish from an old salt named "Judas" (2). Grace, a leading figure in Oak Park's Women's Christian Temperance Union, also wrote home to say that the old salt was "probably drunk" (6). J. Clinton Andrews, an expert on the history of Nantucket's fishing industry, suspects that Ernest's "Judas" was probably Judah Nickerson, by 1910 an elderly retired fisherman given to gossiping with cronies on the wharves.(1) Mr. Andrews remembers hearing that Judah Nickerson was a "fairly aggressive" fellow, both a good fisherman and a good sailor in his prime (1). Accor ding to Mr. Stackpole, Judah did not drink to excess, "but he drank well" (1). On July 16, 1887, the Nantucket I n q u i r e r a n d Mirror reported that Judah Nickerson, then captain of his own fishing vessel, had caught "a noble swordfish" - an exceptionally large specimen for these waters (17). Perhaps it was the bill of that swordfish Judah sold in 1910 t o the boy who would grow up to write Old M a n a n d t h e S e a .
If young Ernest asked how Judah caught his swordfish, he would have learned how the Nantucket fisherman sailed his catboat silently up to a fish sunning itself on the surface of the water (1). Creeping out to the end of a plank projecting from the bow, Judah would have stabbed his prey with a twelve or fifteen foot harpoon specially made for the purpose(l). When the dart went in, the harpoon pole would detach itself, and the swordfish would plunge away (1). The dart embedded in the fish, however, was attached to a long rope tied to a buoyant keg (1). The air-filled barrel would prevent the wounded swordfish from diving and its drag would tire the animal rapidly. The barrel would also mark the swordfish's whereabouts, making it easier for Judah to locate and gaff his prey when it was thoroughly exhausted.
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Ernest returned sunburned and happy to Oak Park, where he entered the sixth grade (2). There, at Holmes Grammer School, he wrote his first short story in a class exercise: Mon April 17 1911 MY FIRST SEA VOUGE
Ernest H
I was born in a little white house on the Island of Marthas Vineyard in the State of Massachusetts. My mother died when I was four years old and my father, a catain of the three masted schooner "Elizabeth" took me and my little brother around the "Horn" with him to Australia. Going we had fine weather and we would see the porpoises playing around the ship and the big white albatross winging its way across the ocean or follow ing the brig for scraps of food; the sailors caught one on a huge hook baited with a biscuit but they let him go as soon as they had caught him for they are very superstitious about these big birds. One time the sailors went out on a barrel fasten ed to the bow sprit and speared a porpoise (or sea pig as they call them) and hauled him up on deck and we had it fried for supper it tasted like pork only it was greesier. We arrived in Sydney Australia after a fine vouge and had just as good vouge going back (2). This little tale shows traces of Ernest's visit to Nantucket. Although he obtained the story of the Elizabeth from his great uncle Benjamin Tyley Hancock, who had lost his mother at the age of four, Ernest had seen Martha's Vineyard with his own eyes on his first sea voyage to Nantucket. The story about catching an albatross he may have gleaned from whatever old salt tried to sell him an albatross foot, while the business of harpooning a porpoise shows signs of Judah Nickerson's in fluence. If, as Wordsworth observed, the child is father of the man, Nan tucket Island may pride itself on helping to shape the imagination of Ernest Hemingway, a child who would grow into one of American literature's foremost writers about the sea.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND NANTUCKET
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LIST OF WORKS CITED 1. Andrews, J. Clinton. Interview with the Author. 30 July 1983. 2. Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Avon Books, 1968. 3. Farrington, S. Kip Jr. Fishing with Ernest Hemingway and Glassell. New York:: David McKay Co., 1971. 4. Hemingway, Ernest. Selected Letters 1917 - 1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1981. 5. "There She Breaches! or, Moby Dick Off The Morro." Es quire, 1936. Rpt. in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway. Ed. William White. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1967. 6. Hemingway, Grace Hall to Dr. Clarence Hemingway. 2, 7, 9,11,13, 15,19, 24 September 1910. Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. 7.
Scrapbook IV. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.
8. "Tales of Old Nantucket." Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. 9. Hemingway, Leicester. My Brother, Ernest Hemingway. Green wich, CT.: Fawcett Publications, 1967. 10. Keit, Bemica The Hemingway Women. New Yak: W.W. Natai&Co., 1983. 11. Mason, W.B.R. "Impressions of an Editor." The Chronicle. Bound Brook, New Jersey: 12 August 1910. Rpt. in The Inquirer and Mirror. Nantucket, MA.: 3 September 1910. 12. Photograph of Fair Street Museum, ca.1910. 13. Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway's Reading 1910 - 1940. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981. 14. Sanford, Marcelline Hemingway. At the Hcm'ngways. London: Putman & Co., 1963. 15. Stackpole, Edouard. Interview with the Author. 29 July 1983.
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16.
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Life Saving Nantucket. Stern-Majestic Press, 1972.
17. "Waterfront News." The Inquirer and Mirror. Nantucket, MA.: 16 July, 1887.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am particularly indebted to Mr. Edouard A. Stackpole, of the Peter Foulger Museum, and to Mr. J. Clinton Andrews of the Universi ty of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Station. Both men gave generous ly of their time and considerable knowledge of Nantucket history. Professor Max Westbrook, of the University of Texas at Austin, shared with me his copious notes on Grace Hall Hemingway's letters and her sketch for a book on Nantucket. Librarians Barbara Andrews, of the Nantucket Atheneum, and Joan O'Connor, of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library's Hemingway Collection, rendered me expert assistance in my quest for information. Last, but never least, I must thank my husband, Dr. Wesley N. Tiffney, Director of the University of Massachusetts Nantucket Field Sta tion, for the use of his Nantucket library and the benefit of his con siderable local knowledge and exacting editorial counsel.
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Embarking On A New Voyage RENNY A. STACKPOLE, who has served as Curator of the Whaling Museum, has accepted a position as the Educational Director of the new schooner Bowdoin Associates, an organization launched recently. The historic Maine-built schooner which, under Admiral Donald B. MacMillan, made twenty-one trips to the Arctic, taking groups of students to Greenland and Baffin Land waters, has, over the past five years, been completely rebuilt. It will now enter a new phase of its unusual career, one in which the former use of the vessel will embrace invitations for students and teachers to "come aboard" and learn the maritime history of New England and America. The wide range will in clude students from schools and colleges in the Boston area, and, dur ing the summer months, voyages to the Labrador coast, under Captain John Nugent. In embarking on his new duties, Mr. Stackpole will have his head quarters at Camden, Maine. He has been a teacher in the field of History for a number of years, having taught at Tabor Academy, Moses Brown, and in the Nantucket schools. A graduate of Boston University he also participated in the Munson Institute of Maritime History at Mystic Seaport, and received his M.A. at the University of Connecticut. His work at the Nantucket Whaling Museum has attracted wide attention. His many friends wish him much success in his new activities, feel ing that his enthusiasm for these studies will be an asset for his new work. They also hope that this new voyage will have the customary end result of the return to the home port.
