Nantucket HISTORIC
FALL 2014 VOLUME 64, NO. 2
A PUBLICATION OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
The World of the
A SOUNDING LEAD ON A DISTANT REEF PACIFIC PARALLELS: NANTUCKET 1819
MARQUESAS ISLANDERS AND THE ESSEX CREW OF MELVILLE, TORTOISES, AND THE GALÁPAGOS
“I KNOW HIM NOT, AND NEVER WILL.”
NANTUCKET
FALL 2014 | VOLUME 64, NO. 2
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
BOARD OF TRUSTEES PRESIDENT
Janet L. Sherlund VICE PRESIDENT
Kenneth L. Beaugrand VICE PRESIDENT
Kennedy P. Richardson TREASURER
William J. Boardman CLERK
Mary D. Malavase Josette Blackmore Maureen F. Bousa Anne Marie Bratton William R. Camp FRIENDS OF THE NHA PRESIDENT
Calvin R. Carver Jr. Circle of twine made by Benjamin Lawrence during the ninety days he spent in Owen Chase’s whaleboat after the sinking of the Essex 1914.15.1
Olivia Charney Constance Cigarran W. Michael Cozort
3
INTRODUCTION
All research is a kind of time travel NATHANIEL PHILBRICK
4 6
Nantucket 1819 BETSY TYLER
Pacific Parallels:
Franci N. Crane Ana Ericksen Whitney A. Gifford Georgia Gosnell TRUSTEE EMERITA
William E. Little Jr. Victoria McManus Christopher C. Quick
Marquesas Islanders and the Essex Crew
FRIENDS OF THE NHA PRESIDENT
EMILY DONALDSON
L. Dennis Shapiro Maria Spears
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Of Melville, Tortoises, and the Galápagos
Jason A. Tilroe
MARY K . BERCAW EDWARDS
Phoebe B. Tudor Finn X. Wentworth
16 20
“I know him not, and never will.”
Kelly M. Williams
PHILIP HOARE
David D. Worth Jr.
A Sounding Lead on a Distant Reef:
EX OFFICIO
Captain Pollard’s Lessons Learned
William J. Tramposch
KELLY GLEASON
GOSNELL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR EDITOR
26 28
NHA Research Fellows New Nantucket Books
Betsy Tyler COPY EDITOR
Elizabeth Oldham
News Notes & Highlights
DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION
Eileen Powers/Javatime Design HISTORIC NANTUCKET (ISSN 0439-2248) is published by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts. Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P .O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554 –1016; (508) 228–1894; fax: (508) 228– 5618, info@nha.org For information visit www.nha.org. ©2014 by the Nantucket Historical Association.
2 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Printed in the USA on recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks.
INTRODUCTION
» NATHANIEL
PHILBRICK
All research is a kind of time travel FROM BOOK TO MOVIE , A WORLD IMAGINED
I WROTE In the Heart of the Sea during the fall,
merchant Obed Macy. With Macy’s help, I was able
winter, and spring of 1998–99. The sperm-whale
to provide an almost day-by-day sense of what life
skeleton that is now the centerpiece of the NHA’s
was like on Nantucket in the summer of 1819. But
whaling museum was then a collection of freshly
my research was not confined to the archives.
harvested bones (still oozing whale oil) in a storage
In many ways, the town of Nantucket is a living
shed off Bartlett Road. The NHA’s library was a far
museum, and I spent the afternoons of the fall of
cry from the climate-controlled hive of scholarship
1998 wandering the crooked streets with thoughts
on Fair Street that it is today. Back then, it was on
of how Owen Chase, who lived on Orange Street,
the second floor of the Peter Foulger Museum on
would have walked up the hill to the Second
Broad Street, and innovation in 1998 was the new
Congregational (now Unitarian) Meeting House, or
computer-generated
how 14-year-old orphan Thomas Nickerson might
Eliza
Starbuck
Barney
Genealogical Record, which I used to determine
have wandered out to the Old North Burial Ground
how the Essex crewmembers were related to one
to visit the graves of his parents, or how the wharves
another. (Not surprisingly, almost all the Nan-
might have looked when they were crowded with
tucketers were cousins various times removed.) The
whaleships being outfitted for the next voyage.
most important resource at the library was Thomas
All research, whether it’s in archives or on foot, is
Nickerson’s account of the Essex disaster, a recently
a kind of time travel. I must say, however, nothing I
discovered composition book of handwritten prose
had so far experienced in the fifteen years since
and sketches that provided a revelatory window
writing In the Heart of the Sea had prepared me for
into a story that had been previously told, almost
that drizzly morning last November when I walked
exclusively, from the perspective of the ship’s first
onto the set at the Warner Brothers lot in Leaves-
mate, Owen Chase.
den, England. They had done it. They’d reimagined
As I’ve relearned in writing each of my books, the
the world of Nantucket in 1819—from the seaweed
hardest chapter to write is the first. In the case of In
growing on the pilings of the wharves (which were
the Heart of the Sea, I needed to create the world of
surrounded by a huge water tank) to what looked
Nantucket in 1819, a world the whalemen would
like a dead ringer for the Pacific National Bank. It
take with them as they suffered unimaginable
was disorienting, thrilling, and wonderfully strange,
hardships in some of the remotest places on the
and I, for one, can’t wait to see the movie.
planet. Fortunately, the NHA possessed an essential resource: the journals of the Quaker whaling
NATHANIEL PHILBRICK is the award-winning author of books about Nantucket and American history.
ON THE COVER: The World, by Betsey J. Garrison, 1821 M A P R E P R O D U C T I O N C O U R T E S Y O F T H E N O R M A N B . L E V E N T H A L M A P C E N T E R AT T H E B O S T O N P U B L I C L I B R A R Y
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NA NT UC K ET: 181 9
» BETSY
TYLER
Nantucket: 1819 Portrait of Obed Macy by unknown artist, ca. 1888 1997.102.1
AS NAT PHILBRICK relates in his introduction to this issue, journal keeper Obed Macy (1762–1844) provides a little window onto the life of the island from the viewpoint of an educated, conservative, Quaker man in his late fifties, writing from his home at 15 Pleasant Street in the early nineteenth century. How we wish there were other views from other windows—by a resident of the New Guinea neighborhood, or a young woman, a shopkeeper, a clergyman. But, unfortunately for us, there were not a lot of people on Nantucket in 1819 with the time and inclination to record the daily life of their community. Or else their journals have been lost. Eight or so years before the Essex sailed, however, a peripatetic travel writer named Joseph Sansom visited Nantucket and wrote about the island and its inhabitants. He also sketched a vista of the harbor and town that was engraved by Joseph Tanner and published in The Port Folio, a Philadelphia journal, in 1811. Sansom describes the town:
The Town of Nantucket, in the State of Massachusetts, contains about eight thousand inhabitants; nearly a third part of the population are Quakers, and they are, taken together, a very industrious and enterprising people. On this island are owned about one hundred vessels, of all descriptions, engaged in the whale trade, giving constant employment and support to upwards of
It is pleasantly situated upon a gentle slope, on the
sixteen hundred hardy seamen, a class of people
south-west side of the harbor, surmounted by a row of
proverbial for their intrepidity.
windmills, and flanked, to the right and left, by extensive ropewalks. There is generally 15 or 20 sail of square rigged vessels in port, with twice or three times that number of coasters, presenting a lively scene, as you enter from the sea; the stores and houses, which are built of timber, being mostly painted red, or white, and crowned by the steeples, or rather towers, of two Presbyterian meeting houses.
Sansom was fortunate to see the island before the War of 1812 disrupted the tranquility and stifled the maritime ventures of a seafaring population. But after news of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve, 1814, reached Nantucket, whaling expeditions were launched, everyone hoping to make up for lost time and income.
12 Sailing from Nantucket on August 12, 1819, the Essex was one of thirty-two whaling vessels that embarked on voyages that year, at the beginning of 4 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
the golden era of Nantucket whaling, when the island’s maritime community thrived and wealth accumulated among ship owners and oil refiners. Owen Chase, first mate of the Essex, briefly described Nantucket in the introduction to his 1821 account of the wreck and its aftermath: Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex of Nantucket; Which was Attacked and Finally Destroyed by a large Spermaceti-Whale in the Pacific Ocean; With an Account of the Unparalleled Sufferings of the Captain and Crew. . .:
Chase portrays Nantucket simply as a land of hard-working Quakers and brave whalers, and then dives into his story. Although whaling was the center of Nantucket’s economy for decades, and a source of great pride to those involved in it and benefiting from it, there was more to the community than one industry supported by allied trades. A sense of Nantucket in the era of the Essex can be gleaned from a reading of the Nantucket Inquirer, a newspaper that began publication in the summer of 1821. Primarily an anthology of news notes from the continent and abroad, the Inquirer printed only a few local news items. The first issue of the paper, published just three weeks after the Eagle arrived in Nantucket with four survivors of the wreck of the Essex—Owen Chase, Charles Ramsdell, Benjamin Lawrence, and Thomas Nickerson—made no mention of the tragedy. Instead, it reported that a mad dog was killed on
NA NTU C K ET: 1 8 1 9
Main Street; Captain Pinkham of the ship Akerly had brought home a sea turtle weighing a hundred and eighty pounds; and in the “Died” column: “a child of Mr. Matthew Joy, late mate of the ship Essex, aged eighteen months.” A picture of life on the island emerges most readily from the advertisements in the newspaper, which include goods and services—a commodious house for sale in Newtown; a shop with “readymade clothing of every description at the lowest cash prices”—as well as personal communications, like the one from John Orpin, who advised no one to trust his wife: “. . . I am determined to pay no debts of her contracting after this date—we now live separate and apart from each other.” Each weekly issue of the newspaper expands our knowledge of the community: a professor of botany from Brown University was arriving to examine local plants and give a series of lectures for gentlemen and ladies; Rescom Taber had procured a license to sell spirits and offered rum, brandy, gin, cordials, and wine for sale at his house; Mrs. Elkins respectfully informed the public that she had opened a genteel boarding house; and it was positively the last night to view the Fantasmagoria (“wherein will be exhibited various Apparitions, of Spectres, Ghosts, etc. etc.”) at Market Hall, admittance twenty-five cents.
12 Obed Macy took the town census in the summer of 1820, going from door to door to collect information on each household and tallying 3,346 white males, 3,646 white females, and 274 “coloured persons” for a total of 7,266 inhabitants.
He noted in his journal that the winter of 1820–21 was as cold as the previous one, with the harbor frozen so long that sixteen mails (two mail deliveries a week were usual) were overdue. From April 1821 to the end of August that year he made no comments in his journal, and during that time the survivors of the Essex tragedy returned to Nantucket. Macy chose not to editorialize after the fact, and even in 1835, when he wrote the first history of Nantucket, he kept mum on the subject of that shipwreck. An unidentified visitor left what is perhaps the most revealing description of Nantucket in the period 1815 to 1833, an account so dated because of references to the bell of the Second Congregational (now Unitarian) Meeting House, installed in 1815, and the Reverend Seth Swift of that congregation (who left in 1833). Revealing, because rather than describing the landscape, or the primary industry, or providing statistics, he describes the island psyche.
The Town of Sherburne in the Island of Nantucket, engraved by Benjamin Tanner Jr. from a sketch by Joseph Sansom, ca. 1810 1952.9.1
Never did I visit a place where there appeared such a spirit of affection for one another and hospitality towards strangers. Yet they are a people of strong prejudices—to express dislike for their sand-banks, or to ridicule their whale (fish) stories—you would stand in great danger of a ducking, or harpooning—for in their opinion there is no employment half so honorable as whaling or no place half so pleasant as their barren sandbanks; their sons are taught to aspire to a harpoon and their daughters to a whaleman. BETSY TYLER is the Obed Macy Research Chair of the NHA and editor of Historic Nantucket.
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Pacific
Parallels: BY EMILY DONALDSON
The story Head of a U’u club from the Marquesas Islands 2000.1101.18
ABOVE RIGHT:
Marquesan warrior from Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff’s Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World, 1813
of the whaleship Essex is a heartrending drama set in 1820, an age when Western voyagers faced a vast Pacific of unknowns, risks, and opportunities. Forced to choose between taking refuge in the nearby Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia and making a desperate race for the shores of South America, the shipwrecked Essex crew in their tiny whaleboats picked the latter course and battled for months against the prevailing winds and currents. Raised on stories of “eluding cannibals in the Pacific,” many of the whalemen were predisposed to avoid a group of islands that no Nantucketer had ever seen. Those whisperings proved enough to drive Captain George Pollard to consider sailing thousands of miles of open ocean rather than encounter unknown islanders.
6 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Marquesas Islanders and the Essex Crew The cruel irony is that the whalemen were ultimately driven to cannibalize each other to survive their prolonged voyage. Their tragic decision begs the question: What kind of welcome would they actually have had in the Marquesas Islands? Of course, it is impossible to say. Yet a look at the islands of today illustrates how the same currents of suspicion and fear that influenced the whalemen two centuries ago still linger in the consciousness of Marquesans and visitors alike. My research in the Marquesas reveals how little distance separates the cannibal stories of yesterday and today, despite the passage of time. By way of introduction to the islands, let us imagine we are visiting them today. My second home for the past thirteen years, the village of Vaitahu is located on Tahuata, the smallest inhabited island of the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. At the time of the Essex’s fateful last voyage, Tahuata was the best known of the islands. To get there from Boston today, you fly for a total of eighteen hours to Los Angeles, Tahiti, and finally to Hiva Oa, the neighboring island. Upon arrival at
P H O T O G R A P H B Y E M I LY D O N A L D S O N
ABOVE:
Hand-drawn map of Essex wreck site MS1000-3-1-5
Hiva Oa RIGHT:
Detail of Hiva Oa and Tahuata from Marquesas Islands by M. Tessan, under the orders of M. Le Capitaine Dupetit Thouars of the French Royal Navy, 1844 FAR RIGHT:
Tahuata
Fatu Hiva
Beach at Iva Iva Nui, Tahuata, Marquesas Islands
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PACIFIC PARALLELS
AS
YOU CRUISE ALONG THE COAST , CRASHING WAVES
BREAK AT THE BASE OF THE CLIFFS , STRIKING A CONTRAST WITH THE SERENE GREEN HILLS AND TOWERING MOUNTAINS ABOVE .
8 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARYJANE SHERWIN
the tiny island airport, you catch a ride down to the main harbor of Tahauku, where a sprinkling of yachts from faraway places bob at anchor under the blinding sun. On shore, Hiva Oa’s sole gas station bustles with a steady stream of local pickup trucks. A Tahuata fisherman, waiting on the dock, will transport you across the water. He and his teenage matelot, or first mate, load your bags and some groceries from town into their pitching open boat as you scramble into it. The voyage across the heaving swells of the Bordelais Channel to the village of Vaitahu takes about forty-five minutes. As you cruise along the coast, crashing waves break at the base of the cliffs, striking a contrast with the serene green hills and towering mountains above. Every so often the boat rounds a corner of volcanic black rock to reveal a sheltered bay where a beach of white sand, turquoise water, and waving palms looks like something out of a tropical dream. Throughout 2013, I lived in the Marquesas conducting research for my doctoral thesis in anthropology. Although I was based on Tahuata, I spent much of the year visiting the other islands of the Marquesas. In that peculiar way facilitated by travel, I was alone and yet never alone, living with Marquesan families in almost every valley of the six inhabited islands and working the land and sea with farmers and fishermen. My experiences were diverse, ranging from coconut-chopping contests and dancing in an art festival to fishing for twelve consecutive hours and witnessing my first in-person slaughterings of pig, goat, and shark. I took part in a variety of local traditions, from Bingo Sundays and the celebration of All Saints’ Day to storytelling and sacred tapu rituals. The focus of my research, which was on the relationship between the livelihoods, land-use practices, and heritage of contemporary islanders, allowed me to delve into how Marquesans interpret the stories, traditions, and mysteries of their past in their current lives and activities. One such mystery is cannibalism, whose power and scope were demonstrated to me on a sunny weekday in Vaitahu last year. I was swimming with some friends at the village dock when a young couple came motoring in from their yacht. We struck up a conversation, and before long we were chatting about the islands. “Is this where that German guy was eaten a
Emily Donaldson shells coconuts in a contest during the 2013 Bastille Day celebrations in Vaitahu, Tahuata.
few years ago?” the man asked. I paused, stunned and saddened. Where to begin? The story he referred to brings the brevity of nearly two hundred years into sharp relief. In 2011, a German man named Stefan Ramin and his girlfriend stayed on their yacht in the Marquesas for several months. Just before their departure, they stopped in Nuku Hiva, and Ramin decided to go on a goat-hunting trip with a local islander. He never returned, and a search party found his charred bones among the coals of a campfire a few days later. No evidence exists to indicate that Ramin was eaten, and the events leading to his death remain unknown. But reading about the incident on my computer at school in Montreal, I cringed. European newspapers instantly tagged it as a potential case of cannibalism, with flashy headlines like “Missing German sailor eaten by cannibals” and “A case of cannibalism in the Marquesas Islands?” Without a shred of proof, the international media thrust these remote, little-known islands back into their shadowy past, inflicting a lasting and insidious slur on Marquesan Islanders. Historic confirmed instances of cannibalism are extremely
P H O T O G R A P H B Y E M I LY D O N A L D S O N
PACIFIC PARALLELS
The Catholic church of Hakahetau with the peaks of Ua Pou in the distance.
difficult to prove. There are no eyewitness accounts from the Marquesas, and some have argued that abundant secondhand stories were intentionally propagated to terrorize Westerners. Still, the frequent appearance of cannibalism in both historic accounts and the tales shared with me by today’s islanders lead me to believe that at least some form of cannibalism probably occurred in the Marquesas, historically. More important, cannibalism remains alive and well in the imaginations of not only visitors to the islands but Marquesans as well. My research took me into homes and isolated valleys where stories of cannibal feasts and raids for human victims animated faces with disgust, fear, and humor. When I asked about historic sites, islanders responded with their knowledge of their ancestors’ lives. The extent to which these ruins represent both mystery and danger became clear as our topics
ranged from evil curses to ghosts, and sometimes cannibalism. Voices would drop or switch to Marquesan when talking about certain sites inhabited by spirits. By contrast, many islanders speak easily about cannibalism, even if a grandmother or grandfather happens to be the subject of the story. Others joke, tossing around shocking tales to tease naughty children or amuse eager tourists. Still, I found myself wondering, do they actually believe cannibalism happened? By the end of last year I was convinced that many islanders do. According to the accounts of missionaries, researchers, and other travelers, islanders once practiced a ritualized form of cannibalism that contributed to the stability of Marquesan social and political structures, helping to maintain social relations within and between tribes. In nearly all the cases described, cannibalism was used to exact revenge and symbolically appropriate the enemy’s power. Most of the FALL 2014
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PACIFIC PARALLELS
stories told among Marquesan families today portray a different type of cannibalism. Instead of the more ordered, socially integrated cannibalism described by some historians of the islands, these tales depict a dark, unpredictable, and isolated practice. In order to obtain fresh water, one tribe from Puamau, Hiva Oa, was forced to deliver babies to an enemy tribe, who then ate them. A similar story is told about the historic population of Haoipu, Tahuata: “You want water, you give them a child! The children were money back then,” joked one islander. In the village of Hanatetena, Tahuata, people spoke of an old man who once lived in the neighboring valley and used his young nephew to lure children to his house, where he would kill and eat them. Elderly men and women elsewhere spoke of how, as children, they avoided the house of “the last cannibal” in town. The subjects of these stories are often evil, haunting characters, some more fantastical and fictional than others. In one tale from Vaitahu, the last cannibal was a grizzled man who received his food through a tiny window in a house with no other windows or doors. In another discussion, an old woman from Hane, Ua Huka, casually mentioned that her grandfather, who was still alive when she was a child, was a confessed cannibal. In general, the individuals described to me as cannibals were lacking in humanity, their terrible dietary tendencies fueled by a kind of involuntary animal desire. For Western observers, this question of whether the practice was voluntary has carried great importance. For the Essex survivors and other whalemen, eating one’s shipmates was a real and acceptable possibility in the face of starvation and impending death. Yet, observers of cannibalism among the “natives” of the Pacific and elsewhere generally interpreted the practice as voluntary and a firm indication of the savage, barbaric nature of the islanders. Despite the fact that cannibalism in the Marquesas does not appear to have featured the kind of random, wild acts of violence that played in the imaginations of some visitors, this perception of the islanders remains today. It fuels Marquesans’ ideas about their ancestors even as it influences their understandings of ancient sites and historic places. For many islanders, ancestral spirits haunt certain areas and hassle people walking alone at night. Trudging up the road to my house in Vaitahu on a pitch-black night, this is easy to forget. The village is quiet but for the chirping of crickets and the stars are a magnificent, vast, and twinkling blanket overhead. In all my time living here I have rarely felt unsafe, and serious crime is extremely rare. Still, I know a number of 10 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Taawattaa, priest of Nuku Hiva, from Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean, by Captain David Porter, 1815
grown Marquesan men who are not at ease in the dark due to the threat of malign spirits. People around the world tell ghost stories for various reasons, but for Marquesans, their stories of cannibalism are more immediate and real. Adult men and women have looked me in the eye and told me that the stories they shared were true. In many cases, they were experiences lived by a grandparent or great-grandparent. Others were careful to preface their stories with “I have heard” or a similar caveat. True or not, the mystery and fear associated with cannibalism have given it a unique power in the imaginations of many islanders, young and old.
The events
of history have also contributed to the way contemporary Marquesans view their past. Contact with trading vessels and colonial powers in the nineteenth century introduced myriad diseases that, together with ongoing tribal warfare, brought drastic change to the islands. By the 1920s, the Marquesan population had dropped to about 2,000,
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y E M I LY D O N A L D S O N
PACIFIC PARALLELS
LEFT: Wooden paddles carved with traditional Marquesan motifs, made by Ernest Teikipupuni of Hapatoni, Tahuata. RIGHT: The Catholic cross of the village cemetery stands out against the mountains of Hanavave, Fatu Hiva.
reduced from an estimated 80,000 a century before. Vast valleys once inhabited by thousands emptied out. Tribal chiefs, priests, and elders disappeared from communities along with their critical political and spiritual guidance. This massive loss affected every aspect of the islanders’ lives, from religion to subsistence. Traditional practices of all kinds, once carefully categorized and controlled by a system of tapu, or sacred rules, were ripped from their moorings and left to drift on an open sea like the men of the wrecked Essex. As their social context dissolved, the daily rituals and habits of an entire population foundered. In place of the priests and chiefs that had once served as their compass, Marquesans came to rely on the guidance of Christian missionaries who worked actively against the perpetuation of Marquesan dance, tattooing, music, and language. These events, and the historically biased perspective of Western missionaries and other visitors regarding the “savage” cannibal practices of the islands, contribute to the foundations of today’s Marquesan stories. Islanders’ apprehension about their ancestors springs in part from tangled roots that combine the overlapping influences and accounts of outsiders and local villagers. As they continue to debate the truth of the cannibal stories, Marquesans also navigate the meaning of such tales for their contemporary lives and identities. Activities like preparing and administering traditional remedies, performing Marquesan dances, and depicting classic motifs on wood, bone, barkcloth, or skin, each call upon the past. Here and in their interaction with tourists and one another, islanders are constantly asked what their history means. In some cases, their responses avoid the uncertain or uncomfortable. Thus, public celebrations of Marquesan culture tend to avoid overt references to sacrifice,
cannibalism, or evil spirits. This is closely linked to the ongoing power of the Catholic church as well as to the fact that these topics remain shadowed by the unknown. Severed from their social and cultural foundations by the chaos of the 1800s, islanders are still trying to regain a meaningful and positive connection to their past. So, who are the castaways and who the cannibals? The cruel irony of the Essex whalemen being driven to consume one another, after avoiding French Polynesia for fear of being consumed, echoes the tragic story of the Marquesan culture metaphorically shipwrecked not by a vicious whale but by the advance of colonialism. One thing is certain: no one savors a heritage of cannibalism. Like the people of Nantucket in the years following the Essex disaster, Marquesans continue to struggle with an ambivalence about their past, perpetually cautious in where, and how far, to venture into local history. Feelings of regret, shame, and discomfort complicate cultural revival and efforts to build a Marquesan future. As the tragic story of Stefan Ramin illustrates, forgetting is not an option for Marquesans. Indeed, the same lines of reasoning that prompted the Essex crew to avoid French Polynesia remain unsettlingly clear today. They are the sinister, insidious rumors that fuel Marquesan ghost stories and uneasy jokes; that lead to the labeling of a mysterious death as cannibalism; that spark a glimmer of anxiety (or excitement?) in the visitor’s eye; and that hover silently over local observances of historic traditions. For better or worse, they are the whispers of a history not yet past, or at peace. EMILY DONALDSON, a PhD student in anthropology at McGill University, recently returned from a year of fieldwork in the Marquesas and authors the blog Marquesan Now. FALL 2014
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xxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxxxx
Galรกpagos Islands, survey by Captain Robert Fitzroy, RN, and the officers of the HMS Beagle, 1836 MS 335-2-2-4
12 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
BY MARY K. BERCAW EDWARDS
The Galápagos Islands were a world ravaged by whalemen. One such whaleman was Herman Melville, who wrote of the islands in ten “sketches” entitled The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles, first published in the March, April, and May 1854 issues of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine and later reprinted in The Piazza Tales in 1856. Melville transmuted his time in the Galápagos and his sometimes leaden written sources into the heady, evocative, golden language of The Encantadas. What were Melville’s actual experiences of the Galápagos? What did he take from other written accounts of the islands, and how did he combine and transcend his actual experience and his printed sources? The Galápagos, Melville tells us in The Encantadas, are a place to which “change never comes.” He continues: “In no world but a fallen one could such lands exist.” Of course, Melville is wrong—just as he is wrong in the “Nantucket” chapter of Moby-Dick. Change does come to the Galápagos, just as Nantucket is more than “a mere hillock, and elbow of sand.” Yet it is Melville’s stunning word pictures of both the Galápagos and Nantucket that soar within us. When he writes of the Galápagos, “Like split Syrian gourds left withering in the sun, they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky,” we feel that, to misquote Moby-Dick, “these extravaganzas only show that [the Galápagos are] no Illinois.”
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OF MELVILLE
Capturing tortoises in the Galápagos. Illustration from Harpers New Monthly Magazine, August 1859
The Encantadas is based in part on Melville’s time in the Galápagos aboard his first whaleship, the Acushnet. In November of 1841, the Acushnet spent six days at anchor off Chatham Island. The Acushnet returned to the waters of the Galápagos for the month of January 1842, but the six days at Chatham in 1841 were the longest continuous period during which Melville may have had the possibility of going ashore. Whaleships were common visitors to the Galápagos. In earlier days, whaleships had come in search of whales, which frequented the waters north of Albemarle Island, but later they came with only one purpose: the Galápagos tortoise. Is it any wonder then that the tortoise haunts the early sketches of The Encantadas?
The Galápagos tortoise is a massive animal. Charles Darwin, who visited the Galápagos in 1835, only six years before Melville, writes: “Some grow to an immense size: Mr. Lawson, an Englishman, and vice-governor of the colony, told us that he had seen several so large, that it required six or eight men to lift them from the ground; and that some had afforded as much as two hundred pounds of meat.” Victor Wolfgang Von Hagen, who led a six-month scientific expedition to the Galápagos in the 1930s, adds: “The ancient mariners did not exaggerate their size. The tortoise has been known to reach a weight of five hundred pounds and measure across the length of the shell a full sixty inches.” Vessels came to the islands to gather the tortoises for food. Sailors believed that tortoises could live up to eighteen 14 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
months without food and water, thus providing a continuous source of fresh meat. Darwin found the meat “indifferent” to his taste, except “young tortoises [which] make excellent soup.” However, David Porter, who visited the Galápagos twenty-two years before Darwin, in 1813, strongly disagrees: [H]ideous and disgusting as is their appearance, no animal can possibly afford a more wholesome, luscious, and delicate food than they do; the finest green turtle is no more to be compared to them, in point of excellence, than the coarsest beef is to the finest veal; and after once tasting the Gallapagos tortoises, every other animal food fell greatly in our estimation. Fresh meat of any kind was indeed a wondrous change for sailors restricted to a diet of salt meat. It is hard to imagine how unpalatable and disgusting salt meat truly was. Beef and pork—and occasionally horse—were chopped up, with no attempt to separate the bones and fat, and then thrown into wooden casks of salt brine where the meat would turn green with age. Tortoise hunting was brutal work because of the sharp lava over which the men had to walk, carrying animals weighing hundreds of pounds. The sailors first turned the tortoises on their backs, then placed a large stone on their shells to keep them from drawing in their legs. They then bound the legs of the tortoises with strips of canvas and slung them on their backs. The average weight was about eighty pounds, but could be much more. According to Thomas Nickerson aboard the
OF MELVILLE
eleven of the fifteen subspecies of Galápagos whaleship Essex: “[The tortoises’] constant tortoise still survive, despite the onslaught of the uneasiness whilst carrying them . . . [and] whalers. the very uneven walking and constant Melville does not write of tortoise-hunting in giving way of stones beneath ones feet The Encantadas, but only of the tortoises makes it[,] I have often thought[,] the themselves. That leads Von Hagen to suggest hardest labour that can be given to man.” that “Melville seems not to have carried the The number of tortoises captured by tortoises himself over the yawning crevices of visiting vessels, especially whaleships, is the islands, for he spends no time on this phase astounding. Von Hagen writes: “We have of the hunt.” Perhaps. Or perhaps Melville was estimated that whalers alone, in a period transfixed by the image of the tortoises of seventy-five years, removed more than themselves rather than by the work involved in 250,000.” Further research confirms his Herman Melville, woodcut print hunting them. estimate. by Dan Miller, 2012 In Journal of a Cruise, Porter tells of sending a crew ashore for approximately five days in 1813, Birds, fish, tortoises, and castaway humans all during which “they succeeded in getting on board between play a role in The Encantadas, but Melville concentrates little four and five hundred” tortoises. When the whaleship Essex on the other animals. He mentions lizards, snakes, and spiders, visited in 1820, the crew collected a hundred and eighty but he does not dwell on them. Indeed, “that strangest tortoises on Hood Island in four days. Then, on Charles Island, anomaly of outlandish nature, the iguana” receives only one they collected another hundred tortoises, including a sixmention. Darwin, in contrast, was intrigued by this creature, hundred-pounder that took six men to carry. Between especially the marine iguana. He finds them “hideous-looking October 13, 1832, and August 30, 1833, thirty-one whaleships . . . of a dirty black colour, stupid, and sluggish” and observes called at Charles Island. If each took two hundred tortoises, that they feed on underwater seaweed. The terrestrial species that would be six thousand in less than a year. also interested Darwin; he notes that “they consume much of By the time Charles Darwin arrived in 1835, the number of the succulent cactus.” Porter, too, had noticed the land and sea tortoises was greatly diminished. “Their numbers have of iguanas and often comments on them; he writes, in one course been greatly reduced,” he writes. “It is said that formerly example, “The only quadrupeds found on the island [Charles] single vessels have taken away as many as seven hundred, and were tortoises, lizards, and a few sea guanas; the land guana that the ship’s company of a frigate some years since brought was not to be found.” Yet despite such references in his sources, down in one day two hundred tortoises to the beach.” Melville shows little interest in the iguana. When the Acushnet visited the Galápagos on her second In The Encantadas, Melville takes his experiences in the voyage in June of 1847, tortoises were very scarce. A group of Galápagos and his extensive reading and transforms them sailors sent ashore for two and a half days found only sixteen. into haunting tales set in “[a] group rather of extinct volcanoes “Sunday 20th [June 1847]: At Meridian came to anchor at a than of isles; looking much as the world at large might, after a bay under the lee of Chattam island.[,] one bay to the penal conflagration [prison fire].” Richard Tobias Greene, westward of Stephens bay[.] two boats went [to] . . . the Melville’s shipmate aboard the Acushnet, noted both the tales’ E[ast]ward to look for Terrapin[.] Capt wen[t] to wrack bay[,] charm and their basis in fact. He wrote Melville on June 16, bought Some. . . . Wednesday the boats haveing arived the 1856, “I have just been reading the ‘Piazza Tales,’ which my night before with 16 Terapin . . . Thursday went round to brother-in-law . . . presented me. The ‘Encantadas’ called up Stephens bay for terrapin which we had bought.” reminiscences of days gone bye—the Acushnet—the ‘turpin’ Charles H. Townsend searched the logbooks of whaleships &c. The tales are charming. I read them with delight.” and found that in the thirty-seven years between 1831 and Countless readers since have read them, too, with delight. 1868, seventy-nine vessels visited the Galápagos and carried off 13,013 tortoises. From this study and further research has MARY K. BERCAW EDWARDS, author of Cannibal Old Me: Spoken come the estimate of a hundred- to three hundred thousand Sources in Melville’s Early Works (2009), is Associate Professor of English taken. Had travel to the Galápagos been less arduous, the at the University of Connecticut. For a more extensive annotated version supply of tortoises would hardly have lasted. Remarkably, of this article, see Research Paper 144 in the NHA Research Library. 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PHYSETER MACROCEPHALUS — “BIG-HEADED BLOWER”
16 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Sri Lanka, 2010 All sperm-whale photographs courtesy of London-based photographer Andrew Sutton
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“ I know him not, and never will.”
BY PHILIP HOARE
—Moby-Dick, Chapter 86, “The Tail”
HERMAN MELVILLE WAS REFRESHINGLY HONEST. Sperm whales off the island of Pico, in the Azores, 2011
HAVING WRITTEN an entire book about sperm whales—and one particularly notable, noble beast —he had to admit defeat. Above all of God’s creatures, Physeter macrocephalus (“big headed blower ”) remains almost as enigmatic now as it did to Melville a century and a half ago. It is an ironic state of affairs, given that this is the Ur-whale, the whale we all drew as children—that big square head, smiley low-slung mouth, and a gushing spout. Yet it is more ironic, considering that it is this species above all others that was pursued by humans, generally men, to near-extinction in search of the light and oil its vast body could furnish. That oil was an implicit part of our Industrial Revolution and contemporary with the start of what scientists now term the Anthropocene—the new period of geologic time in which Homo sapiens has made its indelible mark on the world.
18 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Is there any other animal on Earth that represents the essential disjuncture between human and natural history? Any other so storied and hymned, so pursued and dissected, and yet so little studied? The sperm whale continues to defy our attention. The reasons are manifold. It is an almost exclusively pelagic cetacean, favouring the deep, open ocean. Unlike most other great whales, it spends most of its time far below the surface; it is, if you like, a natural submarine, capable of actually transforming its body to enter its benthic domain. A sperm whale’s square head may seem counterintuitive, lacking a diver’s sleekness. Yet as it readies itself to dive, it actually contracts its head to form a hydrodynamic wedge shape. Its pectoral fins fit into pockets in its flanks, much like an aircraft’s undercarriage. And having charged its blood with oxygen in readiness for what may be up
“I K NOW HI M N OT ”
to two hours spent below, it shuts down every organ in its body, save for its heart and brain. And so it descends, clicking all the while through what is in effect an overgrown nose, filled with bioacoustical oil—the spermaceti of oil—which acts as a focus for its echo-locating clicks, scanning the Stygian darkness for its main source of food: squid. A mature male sperm whale possesses massive ivory teeth, the largest in the animal kingdom. Yet it does not use these with which to feed. Rather, it sucks in its prey, whole, into its series of stomachs, there to digest it with gastric juices so strong that when, in the days of whaling, human beings were (probably accidentally) swallowed by whales and later retrieved, their bodies were bleached white by the process. A sperm whale may dive for a mile or more in depth; only its toothed cetacean cousins, the beaked whales, can rival this subaquatic feat. It is the largest, loudest predator that ever lived. Add to these superlatives the biggest brain of any animal, and one is left feeling as helpless as Melville in the face of these challenges to our understanding. We do know now, however, that these magnificent animals are highly socialised, sentient creatures, with a matrilineally learned culture, and perhaps even a sense of abstract selfdom. Sperm-whale science is barely three decades old. What will we have learned a hundred years hence? Will we look back and ask ourselves, why didn’t we realize? I must confess, if you hadn’t already realized, I am in love with sperm whales. I saw my first off the shores of the Azores, that nine-island archipelago of half-drowned volcanoes that sits atop the midAtlantic ridge like the bones of a vast vertebral column. These are, already, mysterious places, caught between three tectonic plates in the process of pulling them apart. They appear to belong to neither America, Europe, nor Africa, but have a mixture of all those places. And their waters are mind-bogglingly miles-deep—the perfect home for sperm whales. I was used to seeing the great whales of Cape Cod: acrobatic humpbacks, sleek fin whales, shy minkes. I wasn’t prepared for sperm whales. They just didn’t compute. As they lay at the surface in a socially active group, that first sight of more than a
dozen animals put me in mind more of logs rather than anything animate. It was only when they raised those great square heads, or those characteristic flukes, that they organized themselves into real animals. And under special licence from the Azorean government, I was allowed to enter their domain. It was an unforgettable experience. As I swam, ineptly, in their direction, the largest of the whales , probably their matriarch, I later realized, began to swim toward me. Suddenly, I realized I had no idea of what I was doing. What was the etiquette, the choreography of such an encounter? I’d never been so scared in my life. As the whale came closer, I was sure it was either going to ram me with that pugnacious head or open its mouth at the last moment (which might have been mine, too). But then I felt, rather than heard, its echolocating clicks moving through my body—clickclick-click—from my head to my toes. I was being appraised, in sound, by the whale, scanned as if in an MRI machine. As a writer, I’d spent ten years trying to describe whales; here was a whale, trying to describe me. Then she, as I must call her, turned alongside, close enough to touch (although that was certainly not part of the deal) and looked me straight in the eye. A sperm whale’s eye is about the size of a grapefruit; it is utterly sentient. Her eye read me, curiously. What did she think at that moment? What have whales ever thought about us? What might a whale’s version of Moby-Dick be like? Perhaps one day we’ll know. Until then, we will have joined Melville in his ignorance, and awe.
Sperm whales off the island of Pico, in the Azores, 2011, where the author is seen swimming with them
PROFESSOR PHILIP HOARE lives in Southampton, UK. He is the author of The Whale and The Sea Inside, and cocurator of the Moby-Dick Big Read, a free online rendition of Melville’s book, featuring readings from Tilda Swinton, Sir David Attenborough, John Waters, Mary Oliver, and Nathaniel Philbrick. www.mobydickbigread.com Twitter: @philipwhalej FALL 2014
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BY KELLY GLEASON
Ship’s telltale compass made by Thaxter & Son, Boston, ca. 1830 98.1119.1
20 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
A S OUN DI N G L E A D
Thomas Nickerson’s sketch of the Essex MS106-4
IMAGINE THE PANIC ENSUING ON A VESSEL THAT WINDS UP IN THE SHALLOW WATERS OF A DISTANT CORAL REEF
ONE OF THE MORE IRONIC and emotionally charged artifacts to be discovered at a shipwreck site is a sounding lead, a navigational tool that is lowered on a line over the side of the ship to establish the depth of the water. Imagine the panic ensuing on a vessel that winds up in the shallow waters of a distant coral reef at French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, the shipwreck site of the Nantucket whaleship Two Brothers. The site is a scrambled mess of tools of the whaling trade scattered among standard shipboard features like anchors and rigging. Long gone are the wooden hull, the sails, and fathoms of line that took the ship to such a faraway shoal. Resting near harpoon tips, ceramic sherds, and an intact ginger jar is a sounding lead, sturdily concreted into the reef. The master of the Two Brothers, George Pollard Jr., in his first trial as a whaling captain, had survived the wreck of the Essex, stove by a whale in the South Pacific. Five survivors were rescued off the coast of South America after a harrowing open-boat voyage of three thousand miles in ninety-four days. It was the Two Brothers that brought the men back to Nantucket, and it was only shortly after returning to Nantucket that Pollard was given command of it. Imagine the horror he must have felt upon realizing that a second voyage was going to end in disaster. FALL 2014
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P H O T O G R A P H B Y G R E G M C F A L L / N O A A , 2011
A SO UND ING LEAD
R ESTING
NEAR HARPOON TIPS , CERAMIC SHERDS , AND AN INTACT
GINGER JAR IS A SOUNDING LEAD , STURDILY CONCRETED INTO THE REEF.
22 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
A S OUN DI N G L E A D
F IRSTHAND ACCOUNTS REVEAL THAT P OLLARD WAS NEITHER EXCEPTIONAL NOR DEFICIENT AS A NAVIGATOR .
Dr. Kelly Gleason discovers a sounding lead.
He had possessed the necessary skills to sail the route from New England to whaling grounds in the Pacific. Had he been more aware of the challenges that lay ahead, he may have attempted to acquire more diverse navigational skills. When the Essex was stove by a whale in 1820, she was by all accounts being navigated by observations with sextants and quadrants. According to Captain Pollard, once stove, the crew was able to escape with meager rations, two sextants, a quadrant, and three compasses, which were divided among the three small boats. However, toward the end of the small-boat voyage, the men were virtually sailing blind, without glass or log-line; there was no way for them to estimate longitude. Pollard was unable to take a lunar observation (reading the angle between the moon and another celestial body), and with nothing to sight from, dead reckoning did little to aid their attempts at navigation. It was not necessarily unusual for a captain to be unable to take a lunar, but under the circumstances, Pollard must have wished he possessed that challenging navigational skill. Pollard and five others made it back to Nantucket alive, and the Essex episode remains as perhaps the most dramatic tale of a disaster the island has ever known. How any man could survive such a tragedy at sea and wish to ever sail again is a mystery, but Pollard waited barely a month before taking command of the Two Brothers, the same vessel that had given him safe passage back to Nantucket. One of the more fascinating details of Pollard’s next attempt at sailing to the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean is that along with him were two men who had survived the Essex tragedy as well: Thomas Nickerson and Charles Ramsdell. Their optimism and resilience cannot be overlooked either. It seems that Pollard’s reputation as a fine seaman was not tarnished by his first epic disaster. The stove ship reflected tragic misfortune, rather than any fault of Pollard’s or his lack of skill as a mariner. Having made his way back to Nantucket on the whaleship Two Brothers, it seems that Pollard may have gained more than just renewed optimism on his journey home. The captain of the Two Brothers, George Worth, entrusted the ship to Pollard’s command, and he learned new skills as a navigator during the FALL 2014
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A SO UND ING LEAD
two-and-half-month voyage from Valparaiso to Nantucket, including the ability to take a lunar reading, a skill he tragically lacked on his previous voyage in the Pacific. Pollard set off in command of the whaleship Two Brothers on November 12, 1821, and met up with another Nantucket whaleship, the Martha, off the coast of Peru. They sailed together for the Japan Whaling Grounds, just beyond the farthest reaches of the Hawaiian Island Archipelago. In February of 1823, the ship under Captain Pollard’s command would become a total loss. Once again, Captain Pollard faced the ordeal of an open-boat voyage, but this time he and his men were rescued by the companion Nantucket whaler Martha. Though his career as a whaling captain was over, all lives on board were saved and Pollard himself was fortunate enough to make a new life for himself on the island of Nantucket as the town’s night watchman. Few firsthand accounts of the Two Brothers shipwreck exist, but Eben Gardner’s and Thomas Nickerson’s accounts provide perhaps the most colorful descriptions of the wreck, as do the secondhand accounts of Pollard’s personal reflections during his voyage home on the American brig Pearl, where he spoke to the missionaries Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet. At the time of the wreck, no one on the Two Brothers was certain of their location when they went aground, and their accounts of the wreck reflect their confusion. Their navigation was faulty, and once again we wonder whether Pollard was simply terribly unlucky, or not a very good mariner. In his account, Eben Gardner describes wrecking in squally weather at latitude 24° 4 N by longitude 168º W. His calculation of where the wreck occurred is slightly off. There is no shallow reef or remains of a shipwreck at the point he identifies. French Frigate Shoals lies directly to the east at 23º 45 N/166º 15 W, which is the only spot in that part of the Pacific fitting his description. The survivors describe a “50 foot rock,” which they took to be a ship in the middle of the night. This is an important clue; the only “50 foot rock” in that area is La Perouse Pinnacle at French Frigate Shoals. Several decades after the Two Brothers wreck, in a letter to Leon Lewis, Thomas Nickerson reflected on where the disaster took place: “As Regards Pollards Reef, or Shoal, I have just been talking with Captain Thomas Derrick, who was Chief Mate of the Ship Martha, which was in Trouble with us at the time, and which ship saved us and took us to the Sandwich Islands. He agrees with my Opinion as regards to the Reef. He as well as myself, believes that this was French Frigate Shoal, notwithstanding our two Captains believed and Reported that this was a new discovery. The Lattitudes were very much the same and owing to thick weather we had had 24 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
no Lunar Observation for ten or twelve days, hence the Mistake. . . .” [Thomas Nickerson in a letter to Leon Lewis, 1876]. Despite Pollard’s ability to take a lunar observation on this voyage, it did him little good in the rough, stormy weather. Regardless of all he’d learned and prepared for, Mother Nature had other plans. The debate lingered as to whether or not the shipwreck resulted in the discovery of a new reef. Nickerson reflects: “We have not seen a vestige of our ill-fated ship nor haven’t heard what a vestige of her has ever been seen since. I believe this reef has been claimed as a new discovery, but although our reckoning places its position one degree of Latitude to the northward and three degrees to the westward, still I believe with Captain Derrick that it is no other than the French Frigate Shoals and that our navigations were mistaken the more so as I remember that owing to thick weather we had been several days without observation.” For years “Two Brothers Reef” was marked on charts in a deep part of the Hawaiian Island Archipelago, which reflected the coordinates Eben Gardner reported. Pollard himself thought that, despite his misfortune, he had made a new discovery. For many years, maps reflected this but the location was off. “Two Brothers Reef” appears on nautical charts beginning in 1867 but was taken off after the Robert King report of 1931, which determined the location to be a mistake, since the water was too deep. When the Two Brothers wreck was discovered by NOAA maritime archaeologists in 2008, the ship’s final resting place was finally confirmed. Scattered on the seafloor among the tools of the whaling trade and the rigging of an earlynineteenth-century sailing ship are artifacts that remind us of what an immense challenge navigation was for the brave sailors who ventured into the Pacific. Lured by the wealth promised by the pursuit of whales, they ventured into poorly charted waters, often playing the role of explorers as well as hunters. Pollard’s legacy will never be his luck or skill as a navigator; however, he serves as a poignant reminder of how dangerous his trade was, and how even competent navigators needed luck and fortune on their side. Despite all of his efforts, Mother Nature proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for Pollard’s attempt to safely navigate the Pacific. An artifact as simple as a sounding lead resting on the seafloor brings to the surface this story, and Pollard’s attempts to navigate these waters. KELLY GLEASON, PhD, is the Maritime Heritage Coordinator of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
A S OUN DI N G L E A D
Taking a Lunar Distance Illustration from The Midnight Sky: Familiar Notes on the Stars and Planets, by Edwin Dunkin, 1869
Taking a Lunar Lunar distances, or “lunars” for short, were used to determine
absolute time, valid everywhere on the globe, today called
longitude at sea from the late eighteenth century through the
Universal Time and formerly known as Greenwich Mean
middle of the nineteenth century (rarely thereafter). Lunars
Time. Once we have absolute or “Greenwich” time from a
were especially popular on New England whaling ships
lunar, we get longitude by comparing it with local time,
before chronometers became common and relatively
which was usually determined by measuring the sun's
inexpensive. Using a sextant, a navigator would take a lunar
altitude. The difference between local time and Greenwich
by measuring the angle across the sky from the bright “limb”
time, converted at exactly 15° per hour of difference, yields
of the moon to the sun or a bright star. With the most
the longitude. Lunars involved some calculation work,
accurate of readings, that angle could be measured to about
known as “clearing the distance,” notoriously difficult in
1/600 of a degree and from that the longitude could be
legend, but easily taught and only a little tedious in practice.
determined within three miles. In practice, that degree of
Lunars disappeared from New England whaleships by
accuracy was rarely attained, but navigators were happy with longitudes even ten times less accurate. The principle of lunars is simple enough: The moon travels around the sky once a month and its position relative to the
about 1850 as chronometers became common and reasonably inexpensive. Two or three chronometers aboard a single ship could serve as checks on each other, and lunars were no longer needed. Today, lunars are popular again
sun and stars advances about 13° per day. By measuring the
since they provide a sensitive test of a sextant's accuracy and
exact angular position of the moon relative to other objects
a navigator’s skills.
on the celestial sphere, we can read its position like the hour
FRANK REED, ReedNavigation.com, teaches classes in celestial navigation, including lunars.
hand of a great clock in the sky. This lunar clock gives us an
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U P D AT E
NHA RESEARCH FELLOWS FALL/WINTER 2014 Margaret Moore Booker Seth C. Bruggeman Eric Jay Dolin Mary K. Bercaw Edwards Mark Foster Stuart M. Frank Kelly Gleason Robert E. Hellman
Margaret Moore Booker’s Edward Fitch Underhill: Renaissance Man of Siasconset, published by the Nantucket Historical Association with support from the Judy Family Foundation, was released this summer. Her book titled Southwest Art Defined: An Illustrated Guide (Tucson: Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2013) was awarded the New Mexico Historical Society’s Ralph Emerson Twitchell Award.
Wyn Kelley presented a talk titled “The Poetry of Whaling” at the 38th Whaling History Symposium at New Bedford in June 2014 and participated in the thirty-eighth voyage of the whaleship Charles W. Morgan, focusing on experiential learning and pedagogy.
Seth C. Bruggeman contributed “More than Ordinary Patriotism: Living History in the Memory Work of George Washington Parke Custis” to Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History, and Nation-Making from Independence to the Civil War (UMass Press, 2013). He will be a resident research fellow at Boston National Historical Park during fall 2015.
Edward D. Melillo is the coeditor of Eco-Cultural Networks in the British Empire: New Views on Environmental History (Bloomsbury Press, 2014) and the author of the forthcoming book Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile– California Connection, 1786–2008 (Yale University Press, 2015). He is currently writing Out of the Blue: Nantucket and the Pacific World, which explores the long-term ecological and cultural connections between Nantucket and the ecosystems and peoples of the Pacific region.
Mark Foster continues his study of the whale oilrefining industry. This year he presented papers on the industry at the Society for Industrial Archeology’s annual conference and at the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s The River and the Rail: A Symposium on Enterprise & Industry in New Bedford.
Melville scholar Hershel Parker is now a member of the staff of the webzine The Journal of the American Revolution. His article “The Tryon County Patriots of 1775 and their ‘Association’” appeared in the August 2014 issue. A forthcoming article will recount the murderous Tory David Fanning’s 1782 passage to Charleston, S.C.
Stuart Frank’s The New Book of Pirate Songs (2013) was published by Camsco Music of East Windsor, N.J. In August 2014, Frank was inducted into the Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame at the annual music festival of the National Traditional Country Music Association in Iowa.
Nathaniel Philbrick’s Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution received both the 2014 Nonfiction Award from the New England Society and the Distinguished Book Award from the Society of Colonial Wars. In June, he gave the keynote address on the occasion of the whaleship Charles W. Morgan’s return to New Bedford.
Paula Henderson Frances Karttunen Wyn Kelley Edward D. Melillo Robert F. Mooney Lisa Norling Hershel Parker Nathaniel Philbrick Patty Jo Rice Ken Roman Renny Stackpole Betsy Tyler Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Daniel Vickers Barbara White
Frances Ruley Karttunen is the author of Nantucket’s North Shore: A Neighborhood History (New Bedford: Spinner Publications, 2014), which showcases treasures from the NHA’s historic-image archive. She is currently researching and writing a history of the Nantucket Civic League. 26 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Barbara White is the author of Live to the Truth: The Life and Times of Cyrus Peirce. With coauthor Frank Morral, she is currently researching and writing Hidden Histories of Nantucket, to be published by History Press in 2015.
P H O T O G R A P H O F C H A R L E S W. M O R G A N C O U R T E S Y M Y S T I C S E A P O R T
NHA Research Fellows
BOOKS
NEW NANTUCKET BOOKS BY NHA RESEARCH FELLOWS
Edward Fitch Underhill: Renaissance Man of Siasconset
(NHA, 2014)
MARGARET MOORE BOOKER
Edward Fitch Underhill was a man of sparkling wit and wide-ranging intellect, a New York journalist, court stenographer, humorist, inventor, bohemian, and “free love” advocate with socialist tendencies. Arriving in Siasconset in the summer of 1879, for a season of rest and recuperation from his strenuous city life, he fell in love with the little fishing village on the eastern bluff of Nantucket Island. A gregarious man with a larger-than-life personality, Underhill soon became the beloved champion of the village. Fascinated by the diminutive, haphazard architecture of the ancient fishermen’s houses, he created his own enclave of nineteen small and quirky cottages that remain today a testament to his idea of the perfect summer getaway. Booker’s biography reveals, for the first time, the breadth of Underhill’s accomplishments in a variety of professional and personal endeavors and establishes him in the ranks of Nantucket’s most influential devotees.
Nantucket’s North Shore: A Neighborhood History
(Spinner Publications, 2014)
FRANCES RULEY KARTTUNEN
Island historian Frances Karttunen presents an engaging history of a neighborhood she knows well, the home of generations of her family that date back to the days of the settlement of the island by English colonists in the seventeenth century. Showcasing scores of archival photographs of roads, dwellings, farms, landmarks, and people from the NHA’s online image collection, Nantucket’s North Shore is a pictorial history laced with personal stories, historical vignettes, and recipes for clam chowder, blackberry grunt, Indian pudding, and other delicacies and staples from the past. From Madaket to Lily Pond, Beacon Hill, the Cliff, and along the shore, the evolution of the island is beautifully displayed and discussed.
Live to the Truth: The Life and Times of Cyrus Peirce, (Author, 2014) BARBARA ANN WHITE The story of Cyrus Peirce, who lived between the American Revolution and the Civil war, is a case study of the tensions in American society during that time. Peirce studied at Harvard and prepared for the ministry, but found his true vocation and made his most important contributions in the field of education. He taught in private schools on Nantucket and became the first principal of Nantucket High School. An ardent abolitionist, Peirce helped lead the fight to desegregate the island’s schools. Chosen by Horace Mann to direct the Lexington Normal School, the first publicly funded teacher-training school in the nation, Peirce earned the accolade “father of teacher education.” An activist in the true sense of the word, he was involved in the peace movement, the temperance movement, and woman suffrage. White, a longtime educator in Nantucket’s Cyrus Peirce Middle School, presents a portrait of a man of strong principle, generous spirit, and enlightened views.
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News Notes & Highlights NHA STAFF
NHA Hires New Robyn & John Davis Chief Curator Michael R. Harrison joins NHA crew In July, Michael R. Harrison joined the NHA as the new Robyn & John Davis Chief Curator. Michael has worked as a museum curator and historian for the last eighteen years. He has held curatorial positions at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Transport in Glasgow, Scotland; and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he was lead scholar and cocurator of On the Water: Stories from Maritime America, the museum’s permanent maritime exhibition. For the last five years Michael has been associated with Heritage Documentation Programs of the National Park Service (the
Historic American Buildings Survey, the Historic American Engineering Record, and the Historic American Landscapes Survey), writing extensively about buildings, places, and watercraft. He curated the forthcoming permanent exhibition for the USS Constellation Education and Heritage Center in Baltimore and co-curated the new visitor center displays at the Rosie the Riveter / World War II National Historical Park in Richmond, California. A native of Michigan, he holds degrees in history and museum studies from the University of Pennsylvania and the George Washington University.
NEW NHA STAFF
Jacob Horton, Oral History Intern; Molly McIlvaine, Membership Coordinator; Ed Rudd, Maintenance and Grounds Assistant; Corey Fabian Borenstein, Public Programs Coordinator; and Brittany Thurman, 1800 House Program Manager 28 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
News Notes & Highlights
NHA SITES
Old Gaol is New Again A popular NHA site is restored in time for summer Nantucket’s newly restored Old Gaol quickly became one of our most popular historical attractions this summer. Interpreters were at the site daily, informing visitors about the history of the 1805 building and relating stories of some of the jail’s better known inmates from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To cap off a successful season and reintroduce the jail to those in the community who had not had the opportunity to visit, a celebration was held at the site in September. The restoration, which included
the replacement of exterior stairs to the second floor, was funded entirely by grants from local, state, and national agencies. We are grateful for the support of the Nantucket Community Preservation Committee; the Massachusetts Preservation Projects Fund, Massachusetts Historical Commission; the Johanna Favrot Fund for Historic Preservation, National Trust for Historic Preservation; and the Abiah Folger Franklin Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.
ABOVE: Sheriff
Jimmy Perelman “arrests” Gosnell Executive Director Bill Tramposch at the Community Celebration of the Old Gaol in September LEFT: The newly restored Old Gaol
RESEARCH LIBRARY SUMMIT 2014
THE NHA RESEARCH LIBRARY hosted colleagues from the libraries of the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Mystic Seaport for two days of discussion about common issues and future collaborations. Pictured are Sarah Helm, Library and Curatorial Associate; Betsy Tyler, Obed Macy Research Chair; Bill Tramposch, Gosnell Executive Director, Marie Henke, Photo Archives Specialist; Elizabeth Oldham, Research Associate; Mike Dyer, Senior Maritime Historian at the New Bedford Whaling Museum; Paul O’Pecko, Vice President, Collections and Research at Mystic Seaport; Mark Procknik, Librarian at the New Bedford Whaling Museum; and Jacob Horton, NHA Oral History Intern. FALL 2014
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News Notes & Highlights HOLIDAY EVENTS
Festivals of Wreaths & Trees TOP RIGHT: 2013
Festival of Wreaths, 2013 Festival of Trees, and 2013 Holiday Night of Magic
Thank you to lead underwriter Marine Home Center and to the many businesses that provide generous underwriting support.
Start your holiday season on Nantucket with the Festival of Wreaths and the Festival of Trees! More than eighty decorated wreaths and trees—crafted by individuals from the community and businesses, clubs, nonprofits, and schools—will be displayed in the Whaling Museum galleries. Celebrating its sixteenth year, the Festival of Wreaths features a Silent Auction of donated wreaths and is chaired for the first time by Kathleen A. Walsh of Old Spouter Gallery. Now in its twenty-first year, the Festival of Trees transforms the Whaling Museum into a winter wonderland of trees with decorations from the traditional to the unique. The festival is chaired for the second year by Deb Killen of Killen Real Estate. The festival is open for Stroll on December 5 and on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through December 28 and from December 29 to 31. Admission is free for NHA members and children under six; $5 for year-round Nantucket residents; and $20 for general admission.
A Night of Holiday Magic Saturday, December 13, 5–8 P.M. Free for all children & NHA members $5 for nonmember adults The Whaling Museum will be the site for A Night of Holiday Magic, a family evening filled with the sights and sounds of the holidays. Admire all the decorated Christmas trees and enjoy crafts, performances, and refreshments.
Festival of Wreaths McCausland Gallery in the Whaling Museum November 26, 28, 29 10 A.M.–5 P.M. Wreath bidding closes at 2 P.M. November 30
Festival of Trees Whaling Museum Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through December 28 and Monday–Wednesday, Dec. 29–31, 10 A.M.– 5 P.M.
For more information about these holiday events, visit www.nha.org or call (508) 228–1894. 30 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
News Notes & Highlights GIVING
LEFT: Opening of 2014
Nantucket Cottage Style exhibition RIGHT:
Peter and Bonnie McCausland, center, at the dedication of the McCausland Gallery
McCausland Gallery Named in Recognition of Endowment Gift The NHA was honored to dedicate the McCausland Gallery on May 22, naming it in recognition of the generosity of Peter and Bonnie McCausland, who pledged $1 million to the NHA’s endowment. “We have a strong belief in the NHA’s mission,” says Peter McCausland. “Nantucket has a rich and wonderful history, and the NHA is an excellent steward of that history. So many very interesting stories of Nantucket will be told through the special exhibitions presented in this gallery.”
The McCausland Gallery (formerly called the Peter Foulger Gallery) is the principal venue for the NHA’s major annual exhibitions. Nantucket Cottage Style: Drawing Inspiration from the Oates-Euler Collection, a collaboration with the Artists Association of Nantucket, was the inaugural exhibition in the McCausland Gallery. “We are grateful that the McCauslands chose to support the endowment,” says Janet Sherlund, president of the board of trustees. “Theirs is a gift that will keep on giving, providing important resources for the NHA well into the future.”
Support the NHA’s Mission with a Year-End Gift At the NHA, we tell the inspiring stories of Nantucket through our collections, programs, and properties. What does this mean for you? Over the past year, our programs have inspired, entertained, and informed more than 70,000 people. We hope you were among them and made a special connection with Nantucket history at some of our eighteen historic properties and sites, ninety public programs and events, sixty 1800 House decorative arts and crafts classes, twenty Food for Thought Lectures, and four special exhibitions as well as the daily presentations, films, and tours at the museum.
Historic garden tour during a Member Morning at the Oldest House
Your donation today will help nurture all of the NHA’s programs, exhibitions, and educational activities throughout the year. Thank you—there’s so much you can look forward to in 2015!
To make a year-end gift: call (508) 228–1894; visit www.nha.org; or e-mail giving@nha.org. FALL 2014
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