Historic Nantucket, Winter 2003, Vol. 52, No. 1

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES Arie L. Kopelman President Peter W. Nash First Vice President

Barbara E. Hajim Second Vice President

Alice F. Emerson Thzrd Vice President

Bruce D. Miller Treasurer

L. Dennis Kozlowski JaneT. Lamb Carolyn B. MacKenzie Bruce Percelay Arthur I. Reade Jr. Susan Rotando Melanie R. Sabelhaus

Rebecca M. Bartlett C. Marshall Beale Robert H. Brust Nancy A. Chase John H. Davis JosephS. DiMartino Mary F. Espy Julius Jensen m

Patricia M. Bridier Clerk Harvey Saligman Alfred Sanford ill Isabel C. Stewart Lawrence L. Stentzel John M. Sweeney E. Geoffrey Verney Marcia Welch Robert A. Young

Frank D. Milligan Executive Director RESEARCH FELLOWS Dr. Elizabeth Little

Pauline Maier

Nathaniel Philbrick

Patty Jo S. Rice

Renny A. Stackpole

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

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

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

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

Patricia Loring William B. Macomber Paul Madden Robert F. Mooney Jane C. Richmond Nancy J. Sevrens Scott M. Stearns Jr. Mary-Elizabeth Young

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

Mary H. Beman Margaret Moore Booker Richard L. Brecker Thomas B. Congdon Jr.

Nathaniel Philbrick Sally Seidman James Sulzer David H. Wood

Peter J. Greenhalgh Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham

Cecil Barron Jensen

Helen Winslow Chase

Elizabeth Oldham

Claire O'Keeffe

EDITOR

HISTORIAN

COPY EDITOR

ART DIRECTOR

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

Copyright© 2003 by Nantucket Historical Association Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, MA 02554.

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

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

NANTUCKEf VOLUME 52, NO. 1

WINTER2003

4 Foreword

by Frank D. Milligan

BETS~

5

1' J iS£ W J.l 0,

BOOK OF GOAKS

Nantucket's Master Mason: Christopher Capen

fH£00.\tTSIIIP .lSDlll!lDG£

11 Wtlliam Comstock's Nantucket Goak

by James L. Dunlap

by Thomas Farel Heffernan

15 Captain Ahab of West Barnstable

19 Historic Nantucket Book Section

by Jim Patrick

by Joseph Theroux

20 Old Gaol Restoration

by Cristin Merck

21 NHANews

On the cover: After the Great Fire of 1846, every available mason, including Christopher Capen, was called into action to rebuild the town. The Mitchell candle factory, as seen dunng a snow/all on Thursday, December 5, 2002, is one of the bnck structures that were butlt at the time.

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

WINTER

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3

F R 0 M

THE

EXECUTIVE

DIRECTOR

Foreword Keeping Fresh the Memories a/Past Days

T

HE WONDERFULLY ECLECTIC MIX OF

articles in this issue of Historic Nantucket continues a trend within our association that goes back to its nineteenth-century roots. To gain a firsthand appreciation of that tradition of publishing articles and lectures covering all aspects of Nantucket history, one need look no further than the NHA's annual meeting minute books.

Some months ago, I set out to read all NHA meeting minutes and published reports going back to its founding in 1894. Having just completed the 1949 reports, I find that throughout the first fifty years of its institutionallife the association's leaders were never so happy as when they succeeded in keeping Nantucket history alive by displaying a new artifact or presenting a research paper on one of Nantucket's historical figures who, through sheer Nantucket ingenuity and hard work, had succeeded "against all odds."

In all cases those members seemingly loved nothing better than to come together and bask within the rekindled glow of island history. "Like true Americans," Elizabeth Bennett, the NHA's corresponding secretary in 1903 proudly reported, "we are not chary of boasting of departed glories, and doubtless a yearly burst of common admiration is salutary."

Doubtless Mrs. Bennett spoke for many who attended that 1903 meeting in the Old North Vesuy when she stated her conviction "that the great virtue of these Historical gatherings is that they keep fresh the memories of past days." But she hastened to add that the NHA was not confined to preserving and cherishing the past, but was a forward-looking institution with a vision.

"We are not a society dedicated only to men1ories," she said, "we are a society dedicated to the service of noble memories, and in that word service we imply a look to the future and definite aims."

For the NHA's leaders during its first decade, the association's future lay in the need for a "fireproof building" in which to safely and professionally display the hundreds of artifacts that were coming through its doors. By 1904, a short ten years after its founding, the

4

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

NHA achieved what its curator, Susan Brock, referred to as "our cherished ambition, that we have talked, written, thought and dreamed of, by moving into our castle in the air, a fine commodious building absolutely fireproof ... well fitted to display to the best advantage our large and varied collections."

The more one reads of those early institutional aims, the more they seem vaguely familiar. The need for new galleries in order to "keep alive Nantucket's storied past" is as true today as it was a hundred years ago.

And the same could be said for our earliest leaders' passion for the NHA's educational mission. Whether through an ongoing array of fascinating articles on Nantucket's people and places in the pages of Historic Nantucket or through the display of artifacts in ways that engage visitors enough to stay just a little bit longer in our historic properties and galleries, the NHA has been, and remains, deeply committed to keeping yesterday alive in order to make a difference in today's world.

Perhaps Secretary Bennett said it best in her report less than two years after the NHA had opened its new galleries on Fair Street: "All of us, Nantucket born and strangers, are one in our love for Nantucket and all of us ... must be aware of the needs which voice themselves on every side in Nantucket. It is our privilege to be here a force /or education [my emphasis]. ... It is not an idle boast when we say that we have something more than a pretty collection of curios to amuse the visitor for a rainy hour. This room [the new gallery] in which we sit speaks of lofty things. There are faces in the adjoining rooms, faces on canvas, in which any one of us with the blood of Nantucket in his veins or the love of Nantucket in his heart may take pride. An Historical Association may reasonably play a part in making that past of meaning to the present." j Well said, Mrs. Bennett.

-Frank D. Milligan

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2003

Nantucket's Master Mason:

Christopher Capen

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in those days: stage to New Bedford and steamer the 1830s. Nantucket's "golden age of to Nantucket.

Settling down at a boarding house on Hussey Street whaling" had resulted in unprecedented with a few clothes and his mason tools, Capen likely wealth. The austere values of Quakerism no sought work immediately, since he came with no longer controlled the life and culture of the island as resources other than his integrity and his trade. He they had over the previous hundred years. This new must have made an early and strong impression on the freedom was no more vividly expressed than through leaders of his newly adopted town, for by 1831 he was the changing architecture of the town of Nantucket. under contract with Henry and Charles G. Coffin to Whaling merchants and captains were in a building build their brick houses at 75 and 78 Main Street. The mode, providing lucrative employment for "mechanhouses still stand, majestically gracing each side of the ics," as building tradesmen were called, including brick street a short distance from the Pacific Bank, a strucmasons, carpenters, and plasterers. The fruits of their ture built of brick in 1818. labor arose in grandeur along Main, Union, At the time Capen began work on the Pleasant, Orange, Broad, and many other Coffin houses, brick structures were prominent streets of the island. few. Not a single residence of brick This is the story of one Nantucket existed except for a home under building craftsman. His story, like the history of the whaling industry construction by Jared Coffin at 19 itself, is inseparable from the Pleasant Street, known as Moors End. The only other brick buildpedigree of the island's great ings at the time were the Old brick structures. Like a tradesTown Building on Union Street man's personal journey to and from the island, so came the and the Rotch Market at the island's wealth before it departlower end of Main Street facing the Pacific Bank. William Rotch, ed, not to return again for over a Nantucket's most famous whalhundred years. But while people ing merchant and international and wealth have flowed in and statesman, built the market as his out of Nantucket with the predictability of a slow-moving tide, the counting house in 1775. By 1818, Main Street was framed by two beauisland's brick structures have remained, stalwart and immobile, like tiful brick structures three blocks apart, beacons for better times, past and future. with wooden stores lining each side of the street between the two.

Christopher Capen was born in 1810 in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He was descended from Christopher Capen's role as a Nantucket mason Bernard Capen, who came from England in 1630 and might have involved working simultaneously amidst settled Dorchester. Christopher, like his four brothers, competing sets of client ambitions, both within and was prepared for life through apprenticeship. He was between families. Capen first began construction on contracted out to his uncle, William, who was a master Charles G. Coffin's house at 78 Main in 1831. It was a mason, and so began his life-long trade at age thirteen. two-and-a-half story, all-brick structure on a granite Seven years later, in 1830, opportunity drew him from I foundation. Designed in a simplified Greek Revival the continent to the island. He came the common way style, the house had four chimneys. Henry Coffin's HE WAS AT HER ZENITH OF PROSPERITY IN

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

by James L. Dunlap

Christopher Capen ca. 1870s

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house at 75 Main was started a year later. It was similar in size but more elaborate in its late Federal style. We are fortunate that Henry Coffin was a prodigious record keeper; the Nantucket Historical Association now holds documentation of many of his investments and expenses.

Christopher Capen was paid $503.63 for his masonry work at 75 Main Street on June 1, 1835.

Having that sum of money, along with Charles G. Coffin's probable payment of a similar amount, Christopher Capen married Lydia Coffin on August 2, 1835. She was the daughter of Christopher Coffin and Nancy Bridger, and therefore a seventh-generation descendent of Tristram Coffin, one of the original proprietors of Nantucket in 1659.

Lydia's parents lived at 59 Centre Street, where she was born. Her father ran a small neighborhood store connected to the house, as was customary in those days. Lydia's mother had borne seven children but died in childbirth with the eighth. Three weeks later her father died, some said, of grief. The seven orphaned children lived together with a guardian looking in occasionally.

It was said to be a happy home with the older children caring for the younger. Lydia's situation would improve later in her life: she and Christopher remained married and lived together for the next forty-two years, a rarity in a community known for many "whaling widows."

In 1836, Joseph Starbuck hired (now master) mason Capen to build three brick homes for his three sons, William, Matthew, and George.

Starbuck was one of Nantucket's most prominent nineteenth-century whale-oil merchants and shipowners, counting among his sea-faring assets President, Hero, Omega, Three Brothers, Loper, and Young Hero. These ships made over fifty voyages, bringing back more than 80,000 barrels of oil valued at an estimated $2,500,000. An oil baron of his day, Starbuck could easily lavish his wealth on his three sons; he did so by building them three identical and elaborate houses on Main Street .

From his home on New Dollar Lane, Starbuck could walk out and see the large brick house being built by Jared Coffin on Pleasant Street.

Directing Capen to begin the foundations in early WINTER

2003

1837, Starbuck refused to be outdone by his competitors in the Coffin clan. The first of the Three Bricks was up by the autumn of 1837 and the other two were roofed out in 1838. Joseph Starbuck closed out his real estate journal in November of 1840, having paid master mason Capen $3,248. Today, the Three Bricks are described as transitional Federal-Greek Revival style.

The large two-and-a-half story residences were bigger and more stylish than Henry and George Coffin's houses just seven doors down Main Street.

While elaborate houses arose in newly developing areas, community prosperity translated to a number of municipal improvements to the town. Main Street was paved with cobblestones from the wharf to the Pacific Bank. Three large cisterns were built on Main Street after a disastrous fire broke out in 1836. Another fire broke out on the east side of town, resulting in the establishment of the first Nantucket Fire Department in 1838.

Driving the economic engine of the community was, of course, whaling. In 1832, a large fleet of whaleships sailed from Nantucket. Of the thirty-seven vessels that left that year,Joseph Starbuck owned two. He built the last whaleship constructed on the island in 1838 on Brant Point and named it, unabashedly, the

Joseph Starbuck.

Meanwhile, Christopher and Lydia Capen, settled down in rented quarters at the corner of Centre and Quince Streets, had their first child, Mary Hatch, in 1836. The next year they moved to rented rooms in Captain James Barker's house on Centre Street just across from the Congregational Church, a few doors down from where Lydia grew up. There, Lydia bore their first son in 1837, a child who died in 1840. Around 1839 Capen built a wood-framed house on Hussey Street, three blocks away, where they remained only a year or two. Perhaps it was a slowing demand for masonry work and the increasing cost of a growing family that pressured Capen to sell the house, as it ended up, to his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Coffin, and her whaling captain husband, Uriah Russell. The Capens then bought an existing house at the corner of Pearl, now known as India Street, where they had four more children.

Little is known of Capen's work as a master mason after completion of the Three Bricks. In 1845, at 29 Broad Street, Jared Coffin, who had built the first brick house in 1829 on Pleasant Street, commissioned Nantucket's last brick home of the century. It was said HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Opposite: One of Henry Coffin's 1834

. /A ledger pages detazling

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Chnstopher Capen's

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masonry work .

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at top.

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an aencil view of

Thzs page, middle,

78 Main Street; and bottom,

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Coffin's final tally for Capen's services.

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7

Inset: Joseph Starbuck.

The Three Bricks, commissioned by Joseph Starbuck /or his sons.

8

that Jared Coffin's wife insisted they move away from Moors End because of the smell of Joseph Starbuck's tryworks behind them on New Dollar Lane.

Whether Capen worked on the "new" Jared Coffin house is not known for certain.

Lacking his mason's imprint on every structure he built, it is nonetheless quite a testament to his skill that he is known to have built at least five of the twelve brick houses on Nantucket still standing today.

Compounding the malaise left by the decline of the whaling industry, disaster struck the island again on July 13, 1846, when Nantucketers heard the desperate cries of "fire, fire" late that evening. Capen had business downtown that night and was very near the fire when it broke out. He, like many islanders, helped fight the inferno in whatever way he could. Volunteers worked the fire c~rts, threw wet blankets on exposed buildings, and earned out children, furniture, and valuables.

The flames stopped at Pearl Street, before reaching the Capens' home. The Great Fire, as history has renamed it, had destroyed one third of the community, or over four hundred buildings. Everything between the Rotch Market and the Pacific Bank on Main Street was destroyed, leveling the economic center of town.

The Jared Coffin House withstood the flames but the Episcopal Church next door burned to th~ ground. The differing fates of the buildings provided an~ther standing testament to the enduring value of bnck construction.

With a renewed sense of pride and Yankee industri-

- H- I -S _T_O _ R_I_C_ _ N_A_ N_T U C K E T

J

ousness, citizens banded together and rebuilt the town within a few months. Town fathers gave renewed priority to fire protection. Most of the new stores in the central business district were rebuilt of brick, including fourteen new commercial buildings. Every available brick mason, including Christopher Capen, was drafted for the effort. Thomas Macy built a new brick warehouse on Straight Wharf and the Mitchells built a new candle factory in 1847 at 11 Broad Street. We enjoy that building today as the Nantucket Historical Association's Whaling Museum.

By 1848, Nantucket's golden age of whaling had come to an end. The whale fisheries had been depleted and Nantucket could not compete with its old rival, New Bedford. That year, seventy-four whaleships set out from New Bedford but only eighteen sailed from Nantucket. The dismal economic scenario was compounded by the enormous toll taken by the Great Fire.

Jobs became scarce as rebuilding-related jobs came to a close. Records show Capen was still doing work for Charles G. Coffin as late as May of 1849, but fortune called the master mason elsewhere.

The cry of gold from California rang across the nation and reached Nantucket in the weekly Mirror on December 9, 1848. The rush was on from all over America, nowhere more so than from Nantucket.

By the end of 1849 more than 500 Nantucketers had sailed for the West Coast.

The Hope Mining Company was established on May 31, 1849. Twenty-two original Nantucket incorporators unanimously elected master mason Christopher Capen treasurer of the company. Directors also agreed that Uriah Russell, Capen's brother-in-law, and Capen would form a committee to purchase a vessel for the voyage to San Francisco. They found their ship, the Fanny, in Sag Harbor, New York, and sailed to Holmes Hole (now Woods Hole) and prepared to sail to California. By August everything was ready. As an agent for the company, Capen was paid one hundred dollars for his travel and incidental expenses over the previous several months. On August 22, 1849, the directors approved a promissory note payable to C. Capen in twelve months with interest as follows:

$ 409.16 150.00 559.16 22.36 (4.5% interest) 581.52 WINTER

2003

The minutes of the Hope Mining Company state that on the evening of August 22, 1849, following dinner, the Fanny's crew boarded the vessel with Uriah Russell as their captain. The anchor was lifted and they sailed out of Holmes Hole under a light wind. Friends aboard the Nantucket steamboat cheered as the Fanny's company departed, sailing south around Cape Horn at the tip of South America and then north to California.

One member of the ship's company, John Bridger Coffin, Lydia's brother, became ill and died on board ship October 24, 1849, and was buried at sea on the equator. Records show that Christmas Day of that year marked their 126th day out, and placed them off of Valparaiso, Chile. By the 184th day on the high seas, they dropped anchor in San Francisco Bay. It was February 21, 1850. The ship's company spent the afternoon on shore and saw a great many young men from Nantucket already there. Their journals reflect disappointment in the business and appearance of the place, with money scarce and all kinds of goods in short supply. At a February 23 directors meeting they considered sending the ship to Panama, and appointed C. Capen and Thomas S. Sayer a committee to sell their cargo of lumber. On April 14, at A. Swain's storehouse, by mutual consent the directors dissolved the company.

Their last official act was declaring a final dividend of $900. A previous dividend had been paid in the amount of $138.50, making each share (1/48) worth $21.16. It was not much of a gold strike for the shareholders after 184 days at sea.

While there are no clear records, Christopher Capen may have gone to Panama on the Fanny and then crossed the Isthmus of Panama and taken passage back to Nantucket. His wife and children surely called him back when he observed the drinking and debauchery of San Francisco, since he was a teetotaler and nononsense man. Upon his return, at age forty, he learned that his baby, Walter, had died while he was away. His last child, another Walter, was born on Nantucket July 22, 1856. Lydia was forty-four and Christopher was forty-six years old.

The 1850s must have been very difficult for islanders, including the Capen family. Of brick construction during that period, only the Coffin School was built, in 1852. It was the last brick structure built in the nineteenth century. But the difficulty of the 1850s yielded to the greater struggles of the Civil War. HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

The island was in a depression even before the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter. The population had fallen to about 6,000 in 1860, down from 9,000 in 1840.

Six whaleships set sail for the Pacific in 1860. One of the six was Hero, owned by the Starbuck brothers still living in the Three Bricks. The last whaler to leave Nantucket, Oak, departed the harbor in 1869. It was sold in Panama in 1872, never to return home, meeting the same fate as the Fanny twenty-two years earlier. By 1870, the island's population had fallen to around 4,000.

Islanders overwhelmingly voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and undoubtedly Christopher Capen was among them. Capen was 51 when the War Between the States broke out, too old to march with the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Over the course of the war more than 500 volunteers from Nantucket joined Union forces. Seventy-three lost their lives. Many young men might have become the mechanics of the future, but work was scarce at home.

Many stayed in uniform, signing up for the lucrative bonus offered by the Union government.

Capen could no longer support his fanlliy and decided in 1863 to leave the island. During the war, New England cities were booming economically, producing the materials needed by the Northern forces.

The Thomas Mac)' Warehouse on Straight Wharf, built in 1846 after the Great Fire.

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9

Lydia Coffin Capen, ca. 1890s.

Bridgeport was such a city. Christopher, Lydia, and the children moved to the industrial Connecticut city in search of masonry work It must have been emotionally difficult leaving behind such a large extended family on the Coffin side.

Never one to face defeat, Capen made one last shrewd deal before leaving the island. He advertised for the sale of their home on Pearl Street and sold the house to a man from Rye, New York. The house was taken down piece-by-piece and shipped by schooner to Rye where it was rebuilt.

Certainly this was unusual, but the payment was even more so. The purchase price was one case of New York Mills muslin. Since the start of the war, the South had withheld its cotton from the North, thus grossly inflating the price. At the time of the sale, cotton sold for ninety cents a yard. While the exact value of the house is not known, a comparable one was sold at auction in 1865 for $450. At least this was a start to help resettle his family in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He worked on and died on March 22, 1877. Lydia survived him and lived until 1897.

Christopher Capen was one of the last great master mechanics or master masons of his era. His work still stands today for our admiration 17 0 years later.

James Dunlap is the great-great-grandson of I Christopher Capen.

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HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Sources: Christopher Capen. Constitution and Minutes of Stockholders Meeting of Hope Mining Company, Nantucket, and Ship Fanny and San Francisco, 1849-50.

Christopher Capen. Diary aboard Ship Fanny on voyage from Nantucket to San Francisco, 1849-50.

Fred Capen. Personal collection of documents regarding genealogy of Capen family, Pebble Beach, California, 2002.

Will Gardner. Three Bricks and Three Brothers, Cambridge, 1945.

Inquirer and Mirror. Nantucket Argument Settlers 1602-1993, Nantucket, 1994.

Clay Lancaster. The Architecture of Historic Nantucket, New York, 1972.

Richard W. Miller and Robert F. Mooney. The Civil War: The Nantucket Experience, Nantucket, 1994.

Nantucket Historical Association. Ms. Collection 152, Business papers of Charles G. Coffin and Henry Coffin, 1829-62.

Nantucket Historical Association. Ms. Collection 328, Henry Coffin Journal, Carlisle Collection, 1828-59.

Nantucket Historical Association. Ms. Collection 335, Edouard A. Stackpole Collection, 1750--1990.

Nathaniel Philbrick. Away Of/Shore, Nantucket, 1994.

Mary Hatch Capen-Wyant. Memoir of Capen Family, New York, 1916.

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William Comstock's Nantucket Goak: Knot a Pracktickle One but Trew to I lund Life ("Notwithstanding their smooth professions, they are events of the 1824 Globe mutiny led by the most proud, aristocratic, selfish and spiteful people Nantucketer Samuel Comstock was one on the face of the earth.") written by William Comstock (1804-82), As the bibliographical note below suggests, the mutineer's brother, and published under William's range as a writer is considerable; if more of what should have been an irresistible title: The Life his work can be discovered, that impression will probably be strengthened. He can of Samuel Comstock, the Terrible Whaleman. William be not only witty but sensational, and even philosophiis the only writer to offer a DE T S E Y JANE WARD, picture of the mutineer's cal; in the very middle of his [BETTER-HALF TO A.RTE~WS] early life before his murder of account of the Globe mutiny the captain and three mates he places a profound exposiHUR of the Globe. tion of the nature of reality, an almost startling piece of He is also-hard to imagine as this may soundwriting. He is an experiWll'H A HULL AKKOWNT the only one to tell the story menter in style; one of his of the mutiny with wit. experiments is a venture in William, two years younger the idiom of Artemus Ward, THE COAilTSHIP AND MAiliDGE than Samuel and, like him, one chapter of which is set TO born on Nantucket, was a in Nantucket. professional writer with a disCharles Farrar Brown A+SAID ARTEMUS, tinctive voice and an unfail(1834-67), who adopted the ing flair that seems, unfairly, pen name Artemus Ward, liiiS'fER WUID'S CUTTING-UP to have been squandered on began his career as a columWITll popular and less perceptive nist for the Cleveland Plain TilE :I!OR:I!OX FARE SECKS audiences-most of whom Dealer writing, in a yokel dicwould doubtless miss the tion, satirical sketches that drollery in his description of targeted the pretentious with Pikturs drawed By Mrs B. Jane Ward Edgartown in The Terrible and self-absorbed. Later, as Whaleman: "This place is editor of Vanity Fair, as a .KEW YORK: much improved of late years; contributor to Punch, and as JAMES O'KANE, PUJJLISHER SO .

X.ASSA.U ST. they have places of public a witty platform lecturer, worship; cannibalism has he enjoyed a considerable become almost extinct, and following in the United our hero walked the streets in open day without being States and England. William Comstock's Betsey Jane molested by the inhabitants. " William's wit abounds Ward . .. , written in the vein of Artemus, devotes a and sometimes turns acid when he brings it to bear on chapter to Nantucket that matches, it is probably safe his most hated targets: whalemen in general (for their to say, nothing else written about the island. For the breathtaking ignorance), Nantucket shipowners and record, therefore, and for fun, here's Nantucket's own officers (for being illiberal and abusive), and Quakers William Comstock on his home town.

A

MONG THE ACCOUNTS POPULARIZING THE

Foreword by Thomas Farel Heffernan Text (starting on page 12) by William Comstock

BOOK OF GOAKS OP

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HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Title page of

Hur Book of Goaks [Ed. note:

I Goaks reads jokes]

WINTER

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11

BETSEY JANE WARD, [better half to Artemus]

HUR BOOK OF GOAKS with a Hull Akkownt of the Coartship and Maridge ofA4sazd Artemus) and Mister Ward s Cutting-up with the Mormon Fare Seeks 1

Woodcuts by

THE TRAVELLING SHOW.

Naoko Matsubara from

Nantucket Woodcuts

12 H I S T 0 R I C

1

YEER ARTEEMASS & ME WENT AROUND WI11I

our sho of wax figgurs & beastesses, into a grate minny cliffurunt towns till we come 2 Cape Cod, & arfture we had finished there, we was tolled that we could make a grate deel of munny by going 2 Marthaz Vinyard & Nantuckit, which they air 2 ilans sittuated into the water.

Arteemass got the capting of a bote calld a skoonur two take awl his things into it, & we rid down two Marthaz Vinyard two a place calld Edgartown whare we shode the sho two awl the peple; & then we went two the other ilan, which it air calld Nantuckit.

We saled around a peace of land calld Bran Pint that runs out into the water & has got a steeple onto it, but know church under it. The steple stans rite onto the sand awl alone by itself.

We went up two a place calld Long W arf, & tyed up the bote two a big post.

Awl the peple come running down two see arteemass & some were on little hoss-karts that went slamslam-slam.

When we got orf the bote & stood onto the world onct more, the sand came into our shuze. We walked along the rode a peace & soon got tired, for our feet sunk into the sand so bad that it was like wading into the water.

Then a old man calld Starbuck come along with hiz boss-kart & took us in, & away went the kart, slamslam-slam, up the rode into the town.

We boarded into a house kep by Miss N A N T U C K E T

Flussy, hoo air a very fine woman, only she takes snuff awl the time, & says thee whenever she speaks two you.

Awl the rest of the feemails was named Eunia except Rebecca Bunker, hoo, they say, kep skool into the Freemason loge a long time aggo.

We put up our tent into a street that was called Eunice Mitchell street, & was named arfture a rich lady that lived onto the island a grate minny yeers aggo & owned the ship Mara, which was named arfture a grate pote by hur dawtur Liddy what marrid a man named Greene.

The peple begun two come two the sho, but we couldn't underestand much that they sed. 1 lady tolled us the kangaroo had brought hisself two an ankur & wanted us two gaily him. Another lady sed we must excuse hur rigging which was a little out of order as she

I \

had been ketched in a squal. Another 1 sed it was 2 hot into our tent & she must go out &blow.

When arteemass & me was going down a place calld W eskot Hill, we hearn somebody behind us sing out: "Heave two! back yure main-top-sail, and let us range up alongside of you."

We lookd around & seed 2 wimmin hurrying up two us as ef they hadn't a minnit to live.

"Hullo! " sez they; "we've been trying 2 overhawl you this 2 ours. Why didn't yu luff up & shake yure sales, or drop yure anchor under foot."

Arteemass thawt they wanted 2 see the wax figgurs, & he sed "Fifteen scents-children half price."

"We want yu 2 gam with us," sez one of the ladys.

"What's thet?" sez arteemass, hoo begun 2 think they was arsking for a treat.

"Yu fuggit these fokes air off ilund, & don't no notting," sez the other lady 2 hur friend. Then she sez 2 me: "Tell your husband that we want 2 take yu into our mess to-day; you'll ete some grub with us, won't you. Dinner reddy at two okklock. Call up in Meeting House street & enkwire for Eunice Cartrite's house, next two Obed Macey's store."

"Thank you kindly," sez arteemass; "we'll sartainly come, & we'll reesiperkate yure horsepitality by letting you see the wax figgurs & beastesses for 10 scents betwixt you, awl clear gain."

They smiled HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

like 2 clams openmg their shells at hi watur.

We hurrid back 2 the tent. I put on my black silk & arteemass he drest up into his best, & we sot out 2 find the place.

Arfture enkwiring of 2 peple. we found the house. It was painted tea green with a red door. The two wimmin was thare, & 3 men. 1 of urn was a tall dark-looking yung man with a white cane that was maid of a whale's gawbone, the other two had whale's teeth into thare pockits, & black neck-hankurchurs which the eends was held togethur by rings made of whale's gaw-bones.

They had on long boots which they sed was Cape Horn boots, & about everything we seed there come from round Cape Hom. Arteemass was introdoosd two the 3 jentlemen; they shook hans with him & arsked him ef he had ever struck a whale.

Arteemass sed he never had thet plezure but he had been upsot into a bote & Betsey Jane (that air me) 2.

Arteemass pulled out his hankurchur & wiped his hand with it, as his hand felt Greecy arfture having shook hands with the men; he thawt there was a smell of lamp ile onto his hand for a hole weak arfturewards.

They arsked arteemass ef he had ever been round Cape Hom. Arteemass ansurd & sed no, but he'd been two noo Orleans, & put up his tent on the comur of Maggazine & Canal street into the open lot whare 3 stores was burnt down; & afturwards in a place in Poydras street whare 2 stores had been burnt up; & awl the big fokes from Carondelet & Prytaina street, & Colisewn Place, & Colonel Baxter's comer come 2 see the wax figgurs, & sed they air so natteral that ef they only winked & walked about, they would think they was alive.

Then the black-looking yung man with the whalebone cain sed thet wax figgurs was nothing 2 a Sperm whale which he was biggur than awl of urn put together, & then he arsked arteemass efhe had ever harpoond apoppus.

Arteemass sed "No." Then he arsked him ef he had ever ketched a shirk

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dinner was put upon the table.

We sot down with the remarkablest apetight we ever node.

There was 3 coarses 2 the dinner.

The fust coarse was whale-scraps & salt, which it was like sole leather dipt in lamp ile, lestwise arteemass & me diddend parse up our plate for a seckond cut.

The 2nd coarse was something white with a black skin, in skware junks. They tolled us it air swordfishes, tho we diddend see know sword.

The 3rd coarse was poppusses fins & tales, a sort of sticky stuff, but arteemass worrrid a little of it down.

For drink, we had mullassus & water. They called it switchell, & gin it 2 us in tin pots that holt about a kwart apeace.

Arfture the dinner was over, the 3 men took out short, black pipes, & begun to smoke till the rheum was so dark with tobakkur smoke thet arteemass & me couldn't see 1 another.

But, onct into a wile, a voyce would come out of the smoke & say something, & arteemass & me couldn't tell hoo it belonged two.

At larst, I felt arteemass's hand onto my head, & he wispurd into my year: "Betsey Jane, pick up yure bonnit, & we'll make our eskape into the smoke, & be gone be4 they no it." a thief."

So, he reeched me my bunnit, & we opent the door Then the yung man sez: "I spose yu no Mrs. Rawson softly, & run out into the street. that keeps a boarding-house for sea-faring men in We never excepted a invite arfture thet, & we got orf the ilund as kwick as an induljint providunz would Noo Bedford."

"No," sez arteemass. let us.

"Flukes & fins!" hollurs out the yung felure; "whare have yu lived awl yure born days? You belong orf the Bibliographical note: ilund, don't ye?'

For a detailed review of William Comstock's known "Sartainly-bet I do," sez arteemass. writings and of the evidence that William's A Voyage to "Well, so does Mrs. Rawson," sez the yung felure; the Pacific was a Moby-Dick source, see Thomas F arel "there's knot a boy into Nantuckit that hi (&he held Heffernan, Mutiny on the Globe (2002), p. 279. his hand about 4 foot from the floor) but whet nose Highlights of William's publishing record areA Voyage Mrs. Rawson. Why, she used 2 be Sally Swain & lived to the Pacific (1838); The Life a/Samuel Comstock, the up by the windmills.

Terrzble Whaleman (1840); Mysteries a/New York "Very likely," sez arteemass; "come to refleck onto (1845, anonymous), and Betsey Jane Ward ... (1866, it, it's 1 of the most likelyest things into the world; anonymous). Betsey Jane Ward ... is attributed to though I hevn't scene know windmills sense I've been William by Don C. Seitz in Artemus Ward: A Biography onto the ilund." and Bzbliography (1919), p. 338.

"What doe yu hev eyes for? sez 1 of the other men; "knot seen our windmills! why every skoolboy knows Matsubara, Naoko. Nantucket Woodcuts, with text them air."

by Fritz Eichenberg, Barre Publishers, Barre, The wimmin arsked us into the other rheum, whare Massachusetts, 1967.

with a crooked spike betted with a junk of pork.

Arteemass sed "No." "Thunder & litening!" sez the yung felure; "whare did yu come from? I spose yu never ketched a skipjack nor a gooey?"

Arteemass tolled him he never had the onor; he sposed that a skipjack was some kind of codfish, but as for gooey, he dido' no whet those air.

The yung man moved his cheer further orf from Arteemass, the other 2 men shook their heads, & the 2 ladys sithed & turned up the whites of thare eyes.

Then sez 1 of the other men: "I spose yu no Mister Smith, don't ye?"

"Which 1?" sez Arteemass.

"Why, the 1 thet lives orf ilund, two be shure; you come from orf the ilund, diddend ye?"

"Yes, from the mane land," sez Arteemass.

"Well, then," sez the man; "Mr. Smith live orf ilund, two; & so yu no him, r dare say. " "What does he follow," sez Arteemass.

"He follows his knows, ef he's got 1," sez the man; "&he's a sea-faring man, of coarse. He's met of a ship, & come in over the bows; he didn't krawl in at the stam windurs."

"He's very rite," sez Arteemass; "I never seen a felure krawling in at a windur but I allus took him for

14

HISTORIC

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Captain Ahab of West Barnstable The character of the demonic sea captain who chased Moby Dick across the ocean may have been based on a West Barnstable native whose nickname was "Mad Jack."

Though references in the novel suggest Ahab was a Nantucketer, his model may have had his origins on Cape Cod. Most people agree that Queequeg was based on Herman Melville's Maori shipmate Benbow Byrne; that Father Mapple's sermon was delivered /rom a real New Bedford pulpit; and, as recounted in Nathaniel Philbrick's best-selling In the Heart of the Sea, the saga of the avenging whale was inspired by Owen Chase's account of the doomed whaleship Essex.

But few know of Captain John Percival ofScorton Hzll and his connections to Melvzlle. Most critics assume that Ahab was a composite, or a lightning bolt /rom Melville's fiery imagination. Melville was planning a straightforward story of the whale fishery when he was inspired by his reading of King Lear and Rabelais to make it something more powerful. He transformed his account into a great American myth. And Ahab began, I believe, with John Percival.

L

EMUEL SHAW OF WEST BARNSTABLE, EVENTU-

ally chief justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, was a close friend of John Percival. They played as boys together at Scotton Creek. They corresponded when Percival was away at sea. Later in life, when they both settled in the Boston area, they frequently dined together. In 1841, Percival chaperoned Elizabeth, Shaw's daughter, at a fancy dress ball at Faneuil Hall to honor French royalty.

Elizabeth married Herman Melville in 1847.

Both Melville and Percival were at sea during the early 1840s. Melville was in the Pacific, first aboard whalers, then signing on the naval vessel United States.

Percival had served aboard the United States twenty years prior, and its crew had recounted stories of the brave, crazy lieutenant they called "Mad Jack." Melville HISTORIC

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arrived at Charlestown Naval Yard in October 1844.

Percival had left the previous April, commanding the USS Constitution on her only world cruise. As commandant of the naval yard he had supervised the refitting of "Old Ironsides." He had ordered walking sticks made from pieces of the ship's oak timbers that had been replaced. One he gave to Lemuel Shaw, suitably inscribed with a brass plate (it's now owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston). But the voyage had been a difficult one for him. He was over sixty and suffered from crippling gout in his hands and feet. He suspected that he might die on the voyage so had a coffin built-and took it along. Much of the time he was confined to his cabin-where he stowed his coffin. (Legend says he slept in his coffin, but an early naval historian, Allan Westcott, and others, reported that "at Canton it was filled with silks, teas, and curios."

Percival later converted it to a watering trough at his home in Dorchester.)

by Joseph Theroux

The woodcut of USS Constitution in The Youth's Companion

was "executed upon a piece of wood, /rom one of her live oak knees, which has helped to support her old szdes through the battle and the breeze, and will now,

THE YOUTH'S â&#x20AC;˘

COMPANION.

A f ,\\IILY rAPU, DEVOTED T O PIETY , loi ORALlTÂĽ, IIROTHERLY LOVE-NO SCCTAlliANii M, NO OO~TROVERSY

we trust, aid in passing down

NO.9 .

achievements to posterity."

The two-column article was wntten while the ship was on her world cruise with John Percival in command Courtesy

USS Conrlttution JUornl ilrnlcs.

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Museum, Boston

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Percival returned to the Charlestown Naval Yard on the Constitution, disembarking September 27, 1846, having completed the circumnavigation in two and a half years. He retired from active command in 1848, but remained on duty at the yard until1855, when he was put on the reserve list, or in his parlance, "beached."

Nathaniel Hawthorne had met Percival when he was the commandant at Charlestown. Hawthorne wrote in his notebook that the captain was "the roughest old devil ... but a kind good-hearted man at bottom ... a white-haired, thin-visaged, weather-worn old gentleman, in a blue Quaker-cut coat, with tarnished lace and brass buttons, a pair of drab pantaloons, and brown waistcoat. There was an eccentric expression in his face . ... " Melville, having finished his third book, Mardz; or a Voyage Thither, was already making plans for his next, White Jacket, or the World in a Man-ofWar, which would be an account of his experiences on board the United States. He visited the naval yard in early April 1849 and heard that Percival was around. When he saw the old captain limping toward him, he introduced himself as Lemuel Shaw's son-in-law.

Melville wrote in White Jacket: "Mad Jack was expressly created and labelled for a tar. Five feet nine is his mark, in his socks; and not weighing over eleven stone before dinner. Like so many ship's shrouds, his muscles and tendons are all set true, trim and taut; he is braced up fore and aft, like a ship on the wind. His broad chest is a bulkhead that dams off the gale; and his nose is an aquiline that divides it in two, like a keel. His loud, lusty lungs are two belfries, full of all manner of chimes, but you only hear his deepest bray in the height of some tempest-like the great bell of St. Paul's, which only sounds when the King or the Devil is dead."

Hershel Parker wrote in his Herman Melville: A Biography that "Melville paid attention to [Captain I Percival's] appearance ... for this gentle man ... was 'Mad Jack'-famous as the hero of the Globe mutiny, and notorious for the brutal treatment of his men and the vulgarity and even blasphemy of his language. The rogue captain had outraged the missionaries on Sandwich Islands almost two decades before Herman did and had done a better job of it."

Though Percival had made a name for himself by capturing a British gunboat outside New York harbor in the War of 1812, it was his service in the Pacific while I assigned to the United States that made him a legend.

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In 1825 (recently married to Maria Pinkerton of Trenton, New Jersey), he was given command of the Dolphin and ordered to seek out the Globe mutineers-Samuel Comstock and his band, who had perpetrated the bloodiest revolt in whaling history, butchering the captain with an axe. The search would take Percival completely across the Pacific.

He departed Chorillos, Peru, on August 18 and searched the Galapagos, the Marquesas, the Society Islands, the T okelaus, the Gilberts-all the way picking up clues to the whereabouts of the mutineers. He was a driven man, under a compulsion to find the Globe's crew. On November 11, he reached lonely Mili Atoll, and after some detective work, some diplomacy, and some deviousness, he located and snatched the two survivors of the mutiny who were being held by the islanders. The rest had been murdered.

In gratitude, the survivors dedicated their book Mutiny on Board the Whaleship Globe

TO JOHN PERCIVAL, Esq. OF THE U.S. NAVY Who ... visited the Mulgrave Islands, to release the survivors of the Ship Globe's crew, and extend to them every attention their unhappy situation required-the following Narrative is most respectfully dedicated ....

On the return trip several incidents occurred, clouding Percival's reputation. Hearing that the Honolulu missionaries had tabooed the wahines (Hawaiian females), some of the Dolphin's crew, other sailors, and a few beachcombers rioted and attacked the house of missionary Hiram Bingham and that of a local chief.

Percival is said to have waded in amongst the ruffians and clubbed them with his whalebone cane. Bingham, in his book A Narrative o/ Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands, claimed that Percival himself had instigated the riot. The real reason for Bingham's anger, however, may have been because Percival had barred him from a meeting with the chiefs. When Bingham had insisted on his right to attend, Percival replied offhandedly, "If you do, I'll shoot you." There was also the gossip that Percival had been seen "promenading" in the company of the lovely Charlotte Holmes, a halfBritish, half-Hawaiian town girl, and that the two had shared a room together at a local inn called The Wooden House.

In addition, there was the affair of tl1e London, captained by Alfred Edwards of New York, wrecked on WINTER

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Lana'i. A local chief, Hekili, also called "Chief Thunder," helped protect the cargo, while Percival assisted in the recovery of the specie on board. When Edwards balked at paying salvage fees, Percival called him "a damned Connecticut lying son of a bitch."

All of this prompted the missionaries to write letters to the Department of the Navy in Washington saying that Percival had presented himself as "a high chief" and that he was guilty of "whoremongery, blasphemy, and foul language." There was hardly a naval commander who had not been charged with worse, and, as the first American to make an official call in Honolulu, he was "a high chief." Nevertheless, when he arrived in New York Harbor on April22, 1827, the scene of his heroism fifteen years before, he was arrested and jailed.

The Navy put him on involuntary leave.

A court of inquiry was convened on May 1, 1828, at the Charlestown Navy Yard where Percival was defended by his boyhood friend Lemuel Shaw. For over a month testimony was taken for and against, but on June 12, Percival was cleared of all charges. He was not given a command for three years, though libels were published in Hawaii and elsewhere that he was denied a ship for twenty years. And Bingham never mentioned the salient fact that Percival had been completely cleared by the court.

It was not until 1832 that Percival was made commander and not until 1841 that he became a captain.

This, Percival attributed to the work of his enemies in Washington. He had no doubt upset people when he spoke frankly about his superiors. For instance, in 1837 he told Nathaniel Hawthorne that Commander William Bainbridge had been a drunk and a coward or, in Percival's colorful language, "a sot and a poltroon."

In the intervening years he was made head of the Charlestown Navy Yard and captained many ships: the Porpoise, the Columbus, the Erie, the Independence, and the Cyane. Aboard the Cyane was a young lieutenant named Henry Wise, who listened to his captain's stories, which he would later put into his adventure novel Tales /or the Marines, over the pen name Harry Gringo. In it, the main character is one Captain Mad Jack Percy, brave and salty in his speech, but much loved by his men. He was "a very paragon of a seaman ... subject to the most ungovernable passions at times .. . but on occasions of real danger, he was as cool as marble, his faculties at full command HISTORIC

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and his iron will the devil himself could not shake . . . his crew fairly worshipped him ... our captain, John Percy by name, but better known among sailors and in the service generally as Mad Jack." Most reviewers recognized Percival.

Percival's wife Maria died in September 1857.

Despite his long years at sea and his indiscretions (he never denied having a mistress in Honolulu), he loved the Quaker girl from New Jersey. When Lemuel Shaw invited him to share Thanksgiving dinner that year, Percival declined. "My mind is broken," he wrote to Shaw in despair. But his adopted daughter Maria cared for him and helped to make him a happy man in his later years.

It leads me to wonder, if having met the man and listened to Shaw's anecdotes about Percival limping with gout, sailing with his casket in his cabin, pursuing evildoers across the Pacific, may have put Melville in mind of a mad, blasphemous captain.

Melville had written in White-Jacket: "Mad Jack was a bit of a tyrant-they say all good officers are-but sailors loved him all round; and would much rather stand fifty watches with him than one with a rose-water sailor." The Mad Jack in White Jacket is a composite, says Melville critic Charles Anderson, based partly on the lieutenant who sailed with Melville, Latham Avery. But it seems to me that it was only Avery's love of the bottle that found its way into the character. Howard Vincent, in his book about White Jacket, suggests that the Mad Jack of the novel does deeds not attributed to Percival or Avery. This is true, but there are many tales of Percival's heroism.

For instance, how he had once quelled a mutiny by tossing the ringleader overboard or when he had escaped from a pressgang by grabbing a pistol and threatening the shipmaster with a hissed, "Silence or death!" A year before his death, in 1861, he suggested to a reporter his plantypically bold and undiplomatic-for ending the Confederacy: take a group of cutthroats down South, where he would capture and hang Jefferson Davis.

Percival's nickname may only have been the starting point for Melville, but nameslike Ahab and Queequeg-were significant to the novelist. Captain Ahab's nickname was "Old Thunder." (Possibly Melville had heard this name mentioned as part of Percival's court record,

This portrait a/John Percival (28 x 24 in), dated 1817, is by Ethan Allen Greenwood (1779-1856),

a Boston painter.

It is now in the collection of the U. S. Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland.

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This photograph of "Mad Jack" with sword was taken ca. 1860

by Black, who had a studio at 163 Washington Street in Boston.

It is now in the collection of the U. S. Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland.

recalling the Hawaiian chief Hekili, "Chief Thunder"). He limped, not from gout, but from a missing leg, bitten off by a white whale. He scoured the oceans, not for mutinous killers, but for a murderous whale. And while he did not sail with his coffin, Queequeg, the ship's harpooner, did.

The Maori harpooner, Queequeg, does not, according to critics, have a recognizable Maori name. There is no Q in Polynesian. A. Grove Day, in his Melville's South Seas, laments that it is "hardly a Polynesian name." But in fact Kuikui is, from the Polynesian root word kui, "to stab or strike,"- a most fitting name for a Polynesian harpooner.

Tattooed Queequeg may pray to an idol but his loyalty and goodwill are more Christian than those of his white captain. It is Queequeg's coffin that saves Ishmael in the end, becoming his life buoy. White is evil, black is good; everything is turned from its traditional literary symbol.

Captain Ahab, the epitome of evil (his namesakeKing Ahab in the Bible-worshiped Baal), carries a burn scar down the side of his face, possibly from a lightning strike. Percival's face was twisted, said Hawthorne, in an "eccentric expression."

But every writer who met Captain Percival saw that beneath his tyranny and obsessions was a kind heart.

"Mad Jack" Percival died September 17, 1862. In his will he cursed his enemies and rewarded his friends.

He left money to his daughter, $400 to the Barnstable County Agricultural Society, $100 for the poor of Barnstable, $2,000 for the teachers of Barnstable, and $5,000 to the Massachusetts General Hospital "for a free bed for any indigent sailor."

Percival had once contracted with Charles Bursley to build a stone wall around the West Barnstable Cemetery, abutting Bursley's property on the Old King's Highway (now Route 6A) . Legend has it that Percival paid Bursley with a portrait of himself, which an irate Bursley promptly turned toward the wall. In his will, however, Percival left $50 each to Bursley's wife and daughters. An entablature, built into Bursley's wall, reads:

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IN THIS CEMETERY LIE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF CAPT. JOHN PERCIVAL KNOWN AS "MAD JACK" IN COMMAND OF "OLD IRONSIDES" ON 52,279 MILE VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD 1844-1846

Joseph Theroux is an elementary-school prindpal in Hawazi and a previous contributor to Historic Nantucket. Growing up, Theroux heard stories of "Mad Jack" /rom his father, Albert Theroux, an oral historian, and /rom the much-published historian, Edward Rowe Snow, in tours they gave of Boston harbor and the Constitution,/orty years ago.

Repositories of Percival papers: Percival's Court of Inquiry was conducted May 1828 at the Charlestown Naval Yard. The transcript is in the National Archives, Washington, D. C. Percival's letters are at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, the Boston Athenaeum, Brown University, the New-York Historical Society, the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, the University of Michigan, Yale University, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York.

Selected Sources: Bingham, Hiram. A Residence a/Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands, Canandaigua, New York, 1855.

Day, A. Grove. Melville's South Seas, New York, 1970.

Lay, William and Cyrus Hussey. Mutiny on Board the Whaleship Globe, New York, 1963.

McKee, Linda. "Mad Jack and the Missionaries,"

American Heritage, April1971.

Parker, Hershel. Herman Melville: A Biography, Vol. 1, 1819-51, New York, 1963.

Paulding, Hiram. Journal ofa Cruise of the U. S. Schooner Dolphin among the islands of the Pacific Ocean and a visit to the Mulgrave Islands in Pursuit of the Mutineers of the Whaleship Globe, Honolulu, 1960.

Westcott, Alan. "Captain 'Mad Jack' Percival." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1935.

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Historic Nantucket Book Section

Reflections on the publication of Scallop Season: A Nantucket Chronicle The following is an introduction to Scallop Season: A Nantucket Chronicle. Writer Jim Patrick and photographer Rob Bench ley journeyed with the Nantucket scalloping fleet during the 1999-2000 season, on the heels of the worst scalloping year in history. The book, comprising 336 pages and 148 photographs, is a photojournalistic record a/Nantucket's scalloping industry, present and past, as well as a snapshot of the island's winter community at the dawn of the millennium.

W

HEN THE NHA ASKED FOR AN EXCERPT

from Scallop Season: A Nantucket Chronicle, the book had not yet been released. My first instinct was to submit something both entertaining and informative from one of the old scallopers we interviewed, in order to place scalloping in a historical perspective. But the way in which this book was accepted by the community during the first two months of release, coinciding with the beginning of scallop season, surprised us both and led me to wonder if some larger sentiment wasn't at work.

Nantucket, perhaps more than any other place in the world, preserves, cherishes, and celebrates its historic roots. But maybe the time was ripe for the community to reexamine that instinct. Not to forget or rewrite the HISTORIC

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history made by its forefathers-the proprietors, Quakers, and whalers-but rather to acknowledge the equally important legacy of its parents and grandparents, and in the case of scalloping, even its sons and daughters. The similar recent success of other projects such as Nancy Newhouse's We Are Nantucket, the Inquirer and Mirror's retrospective Nantucket: The Last 100 Years, John Stanton's film Last Call, and Robert Mooney's Nantucket Only Yesterday served to confirm the reaction to our own work: Nantucket, as it really exists, was getting lost in the shuffle of its three-decade-long economic boom and almost complete conversion to a tourist economy. The island wanted to remember its equally important legacy as a small, predominantly fishing community that, in summer, graciously hosted a community of appreciative summer residents.

Scallop Season: A Nantucket Chronicle follows both the fleet and the community during one scallop season, beginning November 1 and ending March 31, with an introductory chapter devoted to the family season beginning October 1. Using a journal format, the date and

by Jim Patrick with photographs

by Rob Benchley

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---..... weather conditions are recorded and the season unfolds without revealing beforehand any knowledge that was to be gained by the writer and photographer as the season progressed. The obvious large questions are brought up: Will this season be better than last year's disastrous one? What causes are behind the decline? What actions are being taken to halt the decline?

What are the political stakes, the pros and cons, the economic stakes?

Who are the major players? What will they do or say next?

But many more questions relating to this fascinating community are asked and answered in a lighthearted vein that describes the real life of Nantucket's community, shared by scallopers and non-scallopers alike: Will the Whalers beat the Grapes?

Will Nantucket or Lubec, Maine, get the first millennium sun? Will

Oscar Bunting

"eighty-two combined years on the water."

the drug-sniffing-dog article pass at Town Meeting?

What became clear during the writing of this book was that scalloping and the community of Nantucket are irrevocably intertwined. From the turn of the century to well into the 1980s, scalloping exerted an enormous economic and cultural influence and was perhaps even the defining icon of that era. It is hard to find a year-round islander among today's shopkeepers, schoolteachers, tradespeople, and professionals who arrived before the 1990s and did not in some way make part of their living from scalloping-as a shucker or a culler or working at a fish market-and who does not recall those times with great joy. And although that economic impact has sadly lessened by tenfold in the past two decades, its cultural impact is still something very dear to the heart of Nantucket's off-season community.

This impact was not something that either the author or the photographer imagined would be so strongly felt at the beginning of the project, but was clearly so significant that it took on a life of its own.

To order a copy of Scallop Season: A Nantucket Chronicle, please call the Museum Shop at (508) 2285785, or e-mail gwinton@nha.org.

OLD GAOL RESTORATION COMPLETE uring the hundred and twenty-seven years it served as Nantucket's jail, the Old Gaol on Vestal Street housed its share of the island's rowdies and renegades. Constructed in 1806 of massive oak timbers reinforced with iron rods running its length and width, this veritable fortress withstood any number of prison-break attempts. But the ravages of time and Nantucket's climate would put a chink in the venerable building.

This past summer, the NHA completed the second phase of the Old Gaol restoration by rebuilding the fireplace and repairing the chimney on the building's west side.

"The chimney and fireplaces were in critical condition due to weather damage and a bit of vandalism," said NHA chief curator Niles Parker.

D

The building is one of the oldest surviving prisons in the country. The town closed the four-cell facility in 1933 and deeded the land and building to the NHA in 1946.

Island mason Henry Varian rebuilt the fireplace using the existing brick as well as brick that was matched to the characteristics of the original material. Varian also repaired and put back into place a cracked granite lintel. In 1996, the NHA completed the first phase of the restoration work at the Old Gaol by replacing the shingles on the exterior walls and repairing the window frames.

The Old Gaol, at 15R Vestal Street, is closed for the winter and will reopen on Memorial Day Weekend 2003.

The Old Gaol. Be/ore and after shots of the recent restoration.

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- Cristin Merck WINTER

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Endowment for Properties Raises Campaign Goal With a unanimous vote that emphasized the importance of building a significant endowment, the Nantucket Historical Association's board of trustees increased the goal of The Campaign for the Nantucket Historical Association from $18 million to $21 million.

In late summer, the board determined the need to raise $3 million for permanent endowment funds for the maintenance of NHA historic properties, including the land across from the Old Mill. Led by trustees Rebecca Bartlett, C. Marshall Beale, Nancy Chase, and Robert Young, a committee dubbed "Mill Hill and Beyond" was established to work toward that goal.

The vote at the October board meeting rolled the $3 million goal into the existing $18 million capital campaign goal. The new goal of $21 million reflects the association's increased emphasis on the importance of raising the endowment. The interest from the endowment fund will support the NHA's mission of preservation and education and enable the organization to be fiscally strong.

In addition, the trustees endorsed the work of the

capital campaign committee leaders Peter Nash, chair, and Marcia Welch, vice chair. Working as a subcommittee within the overall capital campaign, Bartlett, Beale, Chase, and Young will continue the efforts of the Mill Hill and Beyond Committee to raise $3 million.

A further decision was made to remove the previously stipulated three-year timeline for raising the Mill Hill and Beyond money. The trustees are confident that with the community's continued support the capital campaign will reach its new $21 million goal.

Launched in 1998, the capital campaign, which to date has achieved $15.5 million in gifts and pledges, had three goals: to restore the Whaling Museum and build additional gallery and education space; to build a strong endowment fund; and to create in the former Fair Street Museum a state-of-the-art library. The NHA reached the campaign's first milestone with the successful completion and dedication of the Research Library in April2001.

I Above /rom left.

Jeff Butler, Bob Winn, Jo-Ann Winn, Nonie Slavitz, Terry Malis, Joan Clark, and Tony Malis at the Festival a/Wreaths Preview Party.

Festival a/Trees chair Jackie Peterson and Festival a/Wreaths chair Jo-Ann Winn.

George Korn at the Festival of Wreaths.

FROM THE DEVELOPMENT OFFICE

How can I make a gift and can I restrict how that gift is used?

T

here are many ways to give. Your decision will depend on your financial situation and the advice you receive from your financial advisors.

All gifts, regardless of tender, can be unrestricted or restricted to a specific project or fund such as the Mill Hill and Beyond Fund, which seeks to build endowment funds. The interest income from this endowment fund will support the maintenance and upkeep of the NHA properties.

Other restrictions could include the Research Library or the Museum Center. It is prudent to talk with the NHA before making your gift for assurance that your interests can be met by the NHA in perpetuity.

For more information, please contact Jean Grimmer, Associate Director & Director of Development, at (508) 228-1894, extension 111, or jgrimmer@nha.org.

HISTORIC

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The 2002 Festivals of Wreaths and Trees The holiday season opened this year with an outstanding collection of seventy-seven wreaths creatively decorated by community businesses, schools, and individuals for a silent auction held over Thanksgiving weekend, November 29-December 1, at the Preservation Institute's Sherburne Hall. Under the leadership of chair Jo-Ann Winn and the creative direction of Reggie Levine, the Festival of Wreaths drew in more than 1,500 visitors, with final bids tallying a record $13,000 to benefit the NHA's educational programming and community outreach. . Nantucket businesses and nonprofits teamed up wtth many generous community volunteers later in the week for the opening of the Festival of Trees, showcasing a record fifty-one fabulously decorated trees. Held on a beautiful snowbound night, the Preview Party featured delicious fare from 21 Federal, American Seasons, Bluefin, Even Keel Cafe, Fifty-Six Union, Le Languedoc, Seagrille, Sfoglia, and West Creek Cafe.

Festival of Trees chair Jackie Peterson led creative directors George Kom and Richard Kemble in the creation of a winter-wonderland atmosphere in the Whaling Museum, and Peggy Silverstein, Sue Fine,

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Above /rom left.

Diane LaFrance and Sue Fine; Peggy Silverstein; Louise and Bill Hourihan, of Festival sponsor Nantucket Bank.

Former NHA president Kim Corkran of Cape Air with NHA executive

NEWS

and Diane LaFrance transformed the tent on Broad Street into Restaurant Row. Thanks also to Edythe Travelstead for her skill in planning an after-party at the Harbor House Village. Attendance over Stroll Weekend topped 4,200 visitors.

In adclition to the many restaurants, businesses, and volunteers who contributed to the resounding success of both events, the NHA would like to thank Nantucket Bank, which has served as lead underwriter since the inception of the Festival of Trees, for its continued sponsorship.

director Frank Mzlligan conductingaspedal

Nantucket Fashion Exhibition

The NHA' s major exhibition of the 2003 season will present three hundred and fifty years of Nantucket at the Festival of Trees. fashion. From early Quaker dress to modern-day Below: Making sailors' Nantucket Reds and the splashy fabrics of Lilly valentines--one of the Pulitzer, the 350 Years a/Nantucket Fashion exhibition NHA's winter activities. will outline changing tastes in dresswear throughout Nantucket history. "Part of the excitement will be Charlotte White in the juxtaposition of different eras," said the with her valentine. NHA's chief curator Niles Parker. "Lnagine a simple Quaker dress in the company of a pair of bright green whale pants."

The exhibition will draw from the NHA' s sizable textile collection at the Gosnold Center, which includes specimens of traditional Quaker outerwear, wedding skirts, gentlemen's silk vests and waistcoats, and a large sampling of petticoats, corsets, and undergarments from the late nineteenth century. One of the oldest items on clisplay will be a quilted bluesilk wedding skirt first worn by Damaris Gayer for her marnage to

drawing/or ticket holders

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Nathaniel Coffin in 1692, donated to the NHA in 2000 by Coffin descendants Miles and Henry Carlisle.

Costumes and accessories from the turn-of-thecentury 'Sconset Actors Colony and hospital fete pageants may also appear.

Many exciting loans of historic clothing have already been offered by members of the Nantucket community, and more are eagerly awaited. Of particular interest is clothing and costume from the early twentieth century, including dress related to the Actors Colony, the roaring twenties, the two world wars, and vintage resort wear. Please contact Niles Parker at (508) 228-1894, ext. 120, with any clothing information.

2003 NHA Explorations The Nantucket Historical Association is enthusiastic about continuing its popular Exploration trips in 2003.

With the help of Nina Hellman, enjoyable trips were taken in 2002 to Salem, Cambridge, Sandwich, and Providence. The trips include visits to museums, galleries, historic houses, and restaurants. Destinations planned for the winter/spring of 2003 include Newport, R.I., Old Sturbridge Village, and the Worcester Art Museum, plus the New England Spring Flower Show and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

For more information please call (508) 228-1894, ext.

0, or stay posted; we will have more information on the NHA website, www.nha.org.

Programming for Island Families This winter, the NHA is pleased to provide three new programs for island children, cosponsored by the Nantucket Community Network for Children. "The Mystery of History," an after-school program for students in grades three through six, will give children the opportunity to unravel the mysteries of Nantucket's past by using artifacts from the NHA collections as dues. Over February vacation, the Whaling Museum will serve as the backdrop for the Time Travelers day camp. Each day, children in grades three through five will step back in time to a clifferent era in Nantucket's past. They'll learn Wampanoag games, sing sea chanteys, and put on a play just like the 'Sconset Actors Colony! Finally, the NHA will facilitate a WINTER

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history-based book club for children and their parents.

The NHA and CNC will also sponsor returning favorites like the Family Scavenger Hunt in March and Valentine's Day Sailors' Valentines in February. Please contact Education and Public Programs Coordinator Kirstin Gamble at (508) 228-1894, ext. 123, for more information on any of these programs.

Family History Preservation Workshop Curator of library and archives Georgen Gilliam is conducting a Preservation of Family History Materials workshop on February 8 at the NHA Research Library under the auspices of the Nantucket Community School Georgen will cover the fundamental principles of preservation and provide information on the handling and storage of paper documents and photographs. For more information about the workshop and the Research Library, call Georgen at (508) 228-1655.

Survey Results Thank you to everyone who filled out the Historic Nantucket survey inserted in the summer 2002 issue.

Below you will find statistics from the eighty-eight responses. We were pleased with the results and appreciate the feedback on a variety of fronts. We now know, for instance, that our readers value the news items and book reviews, and the vast majority of you feel adequately informed about the NHA. We also understand that not all of our readers visit our sites or exhibitions on a regular basis, which leads us to wonder if we should do a better job of covering the exhibitions in the magazine.

It was also clear that few respondents have visited our website; many reported not even owning a computer, which is as interesting as it is surprising. We are convinced, however, that there is a growing audience of web surfers out there who are looking for information about the NHA and Nantucket and we are currently trying to establish new ways for people to find us. Look for a newly designed website in 2003 and more Historic Nantucket features and articles on Nantucket history at the Eprint site of www.nha.org.

Finally, we are grateful for the many interesting tips for future themes and articles. Some of the topics suggested were Nantucket's Native Americans, gardens, restaurants, Quakers, the Civil War, historic preservation, and Nantucketers abroad. There was interest in reading about the working people of the island such as dairy farmers, fishermen, coopers, sailmakers, silversmiths, and shipbuilders. We were charged with writing about the samplers, scrimshaw, and lightship

HISTORIC

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NEWS

baskets in our collections and our historic properties.

Readers would like us to write about "old Nantucket / families," and could certainly take advantage of the vast genealogical resources in our Research Library.

And thanks to one member, we will always include ordering information with every book review.

Please stay in touch. We do appreciate hearing from you and will publish your letters in the magazine, as space permits. Please forward all letters to the editor at Nantucket Historical Association, P. 0. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554-1016, or email to cbj@nha.org.

Thank you.

Survey Results in Percentages: 97% 82% 71% 66% 64%

read the news items feel adequately informed about the NHA read Historic Nantucket right away visit annual exhibitions visit Whaling Museum and other NHA sites annually 64% purchased a book based on a review in Historic Nantucket 60% read the whole of Historic Nantucket 40% use Historic Nantucket as their link to Nantucket 28% visit the NHA website

SAVE THE DATES IN 2003 May 13-19 Thursday, May 22

NANTUCKET WINE FESTIVAL PETER FOULGER MUSEUM EXHIBmON

Friday, May 23

Members Preview Reception Exhzbition opens to the public

Friday, July 11

NHA ANNUAL MEETING

Saturday, August 2

AUGUST ANTIQUES SHOW

Founders, Bene/actors, Patrons Reception Thursday, August 7

AUGUST ANTIQUES SHOW

August 8, 9, 10

26TH ANNUAL AUGUST ANTIQUES SHOW

Tuesday, November 25

FESTIVAL OF WREATHS

November 28-30

FESTIVAL OF WREATHS

Thursday, December 4

FESTIVAL OF TREES

Friday, December 5

FESTIVAL OF TREES

Preview Party

Preview Party

Preview Party opens

W I N T E R

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May 13-18,2003 The NHA has been named the Charity Partner of the week-long event featuring seminars and tastings with wine and food experts from across the nation.

~~¡~ - US/.' cruuv

Gala Dinner, Thursday, May 15 $I25/$Ioo for NHA members ($5o of ticket benefits the NHA)

Wine Auction, Saturday, May 17 (Net proceeds benefit the NHA)

To make a donation for the Wine Auction, please call (508) 228-1894, ext. 130.

For more information about the Nantucket Wine Festival:

www.nantucketwinefestival.com