All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial used permitted by copyright law.
18 Johnny Cake Hill
New Bedford, MA 02740 www.whalingmuseum.org
Front Cover Image: Jan Van der Straet and Philips Galle, Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters, ca. 1665/75. [Print appears on page 11]
Back Cover Image: Courtney M. Leonard, Wallpaper design, BREACH, 2024. [Image appears on page 52]
Summer 2024 | Volume 3 | Issue 1
President & CEO
Amanda McMullen
Design and Production
Brian Bierig, Graphic Designer
Editor
Naomi Slipp
Selection of scrimshaw crimpers, New Bedford Whaling Museum collection.
Selection of coconut dippers, New Bedford Whaling Museum collection.
Foreword
With summer clearly established, our newest edition of Vistas is the perfect seasonal accoutrement. This edition has highlighted for me the role we play as educators with each essay offering a new way to see something.
Of particular note, don’t pass up the “Fresh Perspectives” contributions from students at the College of Holy Cross. As their professor notes, our collections offer a bevy of insights and inspiration across art, history and science. This interdisciplinary model is one we develop further every day and have been improving for more than a century. I was particularly taken with the essay by Sophie Cassarino in part because it focused on one of my favorite items in our collection, the Jan van der Straet print entitled Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters, 1578; but more so because I learned knew insights into this image which I have grown so incredibly fond of since our Dutch show in 2019.
Feeling familiar with an artifact and seeing it for the very first time through the eyes of another is a gift. As you enjoy this edition, I have little doubt that you too will see the familiar and the new all at once.
Amanda McMullen President & CEO
New Bedford Whaling Museum
Detail: Jan Van der Straet [artist] Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters, Hand-colored engraving, 7 5/8 x 10 1/2 in. New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2001.100.5046.
Melville’s Jackets
Arturo Corujo, Doctoral Researcher at ADHUC—Centre de Recerca Teoria, Gènere, Sexualitat, Universitat de Barcelona
Figure 1. Herman Melville, White-Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970).
Before Moby-Dick (1851), it was White-Jacket (1850). The former eclipsed the latter. And while the universally renowned whale left a mark on many readers, the jacket sadly didn’t. For one of Herman Melville’s contemporary reviewers, the reason was rather obvious: “his stupid invention of a white jacket […] appears to be a stream of egotism, vapidness and affectation, with, here and there, a fragment of amber on its waters.”1 For this reviewer, a sea narrative about a sailor who makes a jacket to keep warm wasn’t entertaining, but monotonous. A century later its luck changed. Harrison Hayford, the scholar responsible for organizing the NorthwesternNewberry (NN) editions of Melville’s works – still today, the authoritative texts in the field – participated in the edition of White-Jacket, together with Hershel Parker and G. Thomas Tanselle.
Hayford’s own copies of the novel are archived in the New Bedford Whaling Museum, where I was lucky enough to find the proofs of the NN edition. While I carefully inspected the book jacket, an annotated bookmark caught my eye: some notes taken by Hayford were tucked into the proofs. One of them read: “there is no main action – & no devised plot […] only the incidents strung along a voyage –incidents which involve not just the ‘I’ but others” (fig. 2). For Hayford, this novel was plotless. And it certainly is. But the book jacket that bears the title may contain an important interpretive key about reading: White-Jacket is a novel about a sailor and his jacket. And contrary to Melville’s reviewer, said garment shouldn’t be read as a “stupid invention,” but as a narrative device that invites us to read White-Jacket not in isolation but (I shall argue) in conversation with novels where clothing is also linked with sailor-narrators, such as Wellingborough in Redburn, and Ishmael in Moby-Dick. As I’ll argue in the following lines, to read Melville for plot is to make the effort to read his book jackets, sailors and garments, and texts and textiles in an interpretive
1 Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1995), 334.
attempt to make meaning out of our experience as readers.
My name is Arturo Corujo, I’m a doctoral student at the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain, where I’m working on a project about one of the less studied works of Herman Melville: White-Jacket, published in 1850, just one year before Moby-Dick. Last academic year, while I was living in Berkeley, CA, I was selected as the recipient of the Walter Bezanson Fellowship for the year 2023. The great privilege of conducting archival research at the Melville Society Archive (housed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum) provided me with an invaluable time to read important material and think about all things Herman in general, and the neglected White-Jacket in particular. Hayford’s papers and notes were an important source of inspiration during my residence in New Bedford, where I could read, write, and think in a unique maritime environment.
It was at said Archive where I found Hayford’s materials, papers, and handwritten notes. In reading his notes and book jackets, I also found myself reflecting on Melville’s jackets. During my twoweek stay at the NBWM, I could intimately get acquainted with scholars like Hayford and engage in their interpretive insights. The experience of reading readers is one of the recurrent images in Melville. Take Ishmael, for instance, who looks at people looking at the sea in Moby-Dick because “meditation and water are wedded for ever.”2 In the following lines, I will briefly read Hayford reading White-Jacket in order to think, not exactly about his notes, but rather with his notes.
In White-Jacket, Melville’s narrator gives account of his daily life on board the Neversink, a homewardbound man-of-war that sails from Callao to the coasts of Virginia after winning an unspecified war. The
2 Herman Melville, The Writings of Herman Melville: The Northwestern-Newberry Edition, Vol. 6: Moby-Dick: Or The Whale, Vol. 6 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 4.
novel denounces naval flogging, defends democracy, and advocates for pacifism. Besides the major themes, the jacket is also worth looking at. Indeed, Melville’s narrator is more interested in privacy rather than in intimacy. One of the many reasons – because there are many – why I find this novel so interesting is the fact that this sailor (named after his jacket) gets so attached to, and dependent on, his garment that he withdraws from his shipmates on board the Neversink, a frigate where he’s the only one wearing an eye-catching white jacket, which makes him feel different. Little wonder that Melville’s narrator gets caught up in the threads of his difference, being unable to dispose of it and condemned to wear it like “the fatal shirt on Nessus.”3
Interestingly, Melville wrote another novel right before White-Jacket where the sailor-narrator also wears a jacket. Said novel is Redburn (1849), where a boy embarks on a voyage to Liverpool, England, aboard a merchant ship. The shooting-jacket he wears isn’t originally his but his brother’s, since he wants to “save the expense of another.”4 But unfortunately, his garment soon compromises his status as a sailor on board the ship, where some crew members mistake him for someone dangerous and subject to suspicion. For Melville’s young sailor in Redburn, his reasons for keeping his brother’s jacket aren’t only economic, but also affective and familial. Said garment becomes a family object that preserves the linearity of traditional forms of genealogy based on sailors’ blood relations.
In White-Jacket, though, Melville’s narrator loses the plot. Both figuratively and literally, as Hayford’s notes may suggest. For White-Jacket, at least so called by his fellow sailors, life on board the Neversink isn’t easy. On one hand, he no longer identifies with his past on a whaler, and he doesn’t ever disclose this information because these kinds of sailors are shamed out of proximity to this kind of ship. On the other hand, he seems to be reluctant to project himself onto the future, since he mentions neither family members, nor friends, let alone
3 Herman Melville, The Writings of Herman Melville: The Northwestern-Newberry Edition, Vol. 5: White-Jacket: Or The World in a Man-of-War, Vol. 5 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 203.
4 Herman Melville, The Writings of Herman Melville: The Northwestern-Newberry Edition, Vol. 4: Redburn: His First Voyage, Vol. 4 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1969), 8.
significant others. Like his jacket, he looks like an actual blank page. Unlike the sailor-narrator in Redburn, who sports his older brother’s old shooting-jacket, the sailornarrator in White-Jacket doesn’t wear a family garment but a piece of clothing that he made for himself. Thus, the white jacket is linked to no one else but its maker.
In Moby-Dick, Melville’s following novel, Ishmael doesn’t get attached to his clothing. Rather, he’s more than happy to break in someone else’s. In chapter 3, “The Spouter-Inn,” Ishmael stays in an inn in New Bedford before enrolling in the Pequod. Given that the inn is overbooked, he shares a room with Queequeg, a harpooner of Polynesian descent. Ishmael, who sneakily inspects the place while his roommate is away, examines some of the personal belongings that lay disorganized in his bedmate-to-be’s private room. Among said objects, Ishmael finds a kind of poncho that awakens his curiosity right away: “I took it up, and held it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt it.”5 Then, he puts it on. Unlike Melville’s narrator in White-Jacket, Ishmael doesn’t get obsessed with his clothes, but shows a manifest desire to try a different outfit and jump into someone else’s clothes. This gesture foreshadows a great friendship: one that’s not based on family membership, national belonging, or religion, but on mutual curiosity about each other’s differences.
To read Melville’s jackets is to read for plot devices, for desire and, ultimately, intimacy. Unlike the harsh contemporary reviewer, for whom a jacket is anything but interesting, the interpretive act of reading across these first-person, sequentially published sea novels and participating in the connections and disconnections among sailor-narrators, is to read for a plot where characters and readers engage in an endless process of unbecoming. Melville’s Redburn, White-Jacket, and Moby-Dick constitute an important trilogy that, read together, one against the other, speak to the passage from maritime blood relations (like the shooting-jacket) to freer genealogies based on our common differences (like Queequeg’s garment). Between Redburn and Moby-Dick, White-Jacket becomes a key novel where the narrator transitions from familial filiations to alternative affiliations structured around a shared sense of belonging to the oceanic world.
5 Melville, The Writings of Herman Melville: Moby-Dick: Or The Whale, 20.
Figure 2. Papers tucked into H-32 Melville White-Jacket NN (Proof) 1970 #2. New Bedford Whaling Museum, MA.
The Museum offers a variety of special programs and learning opportunities for school groups of all ages from K-12 through college and beyond. In this image, students participate in the “What does a Museum do?” school program. Launched in January 2024, it is meant to be an introduction to Museums geared towards children in grades K-2. Here, young learners explore ways to organize a collection, using our incredible local glass collection as an example.
Fresh Perspectives
Introduction
By Patricia Johnson, Professor of Art History and Rev. J. Gerard Mears, S.J., Chair in Fine Arts, College of the Holy Cross
Collections from the New Bedford Whaling Museum played a key role in a seminar on American art, nature, and ecology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts in the spring of 2024. The seminar spanned the history of American art, with focus on case studies of visual imagery that revealed cultural ideas about the environment. They studied colonial maps that proclaimed the ownership of land, nineteenthcentury landscapes of the picturesque and sublime, modern abstractions, enormous earth-moving art projects of the mid twentieth century, and finally, the work of contemporary artists who are confronting the climate crisis.
Following a visit to the museum in early February 2024, five students closely examined artifacts for the historical insights they provided, and they analyzed the collection as a whole as a model of how earlier Americans collected, categorized, and used natural materials. The goal of the New Bedford project was to investigate how people engaged in the whaling trade used natural materials to craft objects that told the story of their experiences. The students observed how mariners saw potential in diverse parts of marine mammals, such as whale teeth and bones, baleen, and walrus tusks, and how these craftsmen took advantage of the strength, color, and surface qualities of the materials to transform the once-living material. The students did extensive investigation into each object they wrote about: they searched databases of whaling crews, researched the characteristics of biomaterials, and learned about domestic objects found in nineteenth-century homes, many of which are unfamiliar to us today. They also studied life aboard whaling vessels, and learned about maritime patterns, commerce and industry, and the ecological impact of the trade.
The first essay in this series explains early modern ideas about whales in different parts of Europe and their conflation with ancient sea monsters. The next paper describes how, in his spare time, a surgeon on board captured the exhilaration and brutality of the hunt in an image that he engraved into the flat panbone of a sperm whale. Three papers investigate how craftsmen transformed nature into art by sculpting objects that might be used on ship, such as a fiddle and cribbage board, or made a common tool such as a pie crimper that might be gifted to a loved one at home. As whalers circled the globe, they made cultural connections with Indigenous people and other trading partners. Sometimes hybrid objects developed from these interactions. And, as the industry sought more and more prey, devastating ecological consequences resulted. Taken together, these essays use visual culture to see the experiences of those involved in the dangerous endeavor of whaling, and facilitating the increasing industrialization of the nineteenth century.
I thank Sophie Cassarino, Amy Hampson, Nathan Howard, Maggie McCracken, and Peter Kehoe for their warm collaborations and support for each other during this and other projects over the last semester.
Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters:
The Conflation of Whales with Sea Monsters across 16th-century Europe
Sophie Cassarino, Undergraduate student, College of the Holy Cross
Figure 1. Jan Van der Straet [artist] (Flemish, 1523-1605), first printed by Philips Galle [publisher] (Dutch; 1537-1612), reprinted by Joannes Galle [publisher] (Flemish; 1600 – 1676), Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters, first printed in 1578; reprint ca. 1665/75. Handcolored engraving, 7 5/8 x 10 1/2 in. New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2001.100.5046.
The whales in Jan van der Straet’s 1578 print Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters certainly fit their titular epithet (fig.1). Bearing horns, fangs, and large beady eyes, five monster whales emerge from choppy waves to surround three ships under a cloudy sky. The muddy blue and pale ochre palette dominates the churning ocean so much that the whales blend into the waves as if they are made
more of water than flesh. The whales themselves, while described as “monsters,” are simply amalgamations of terrestrial animals with marine characteristics. The whale to the left of the central ship’s stern, for instance, shows elephant characteristics; the whale beside it resembles a Jackson’s chameleon with a triangular head and central curved horn; a ramheaded whale sits at the bottom center of the work;
and a dog-nosed creature with two blowholes akin to ears spouts water from the lower right corner. There is also a creature with an elongated muzzle resembling a crocodile approaching a background ship in the upper right corner. Of the five whales, four of them reference terrestrial animals (elephant, chameleon, ram, and dog), and three of these creatures (elephant, chameleon, and crocodile) would have been foreign to a European audience.
Four lines of Latin text at the bottom of the work describe the scene. They read in full: Navita Erythraum pavidus qui navigat aquor, / In prora et puppis summo resonantia pendet / Tintinnabula: eo sonitu praegrandia Cete, / Balenas, et Monstra marina a navibus arcet. Irene De Groot and Robert Vorstman have translated this as:
The master who sails in Indian waters, / hangs great bells from bow and stern, / whose tolling frightens the vast sea monsters / and keeps the whale away from the ship’s hull.1 Most significantly, these lines equate whales with monsters, using terms that mean “whale” (cetus, balena) and “sea monster” (cetus, monstra marina) together – a common concept in the European mind at the time. This description of the measures that the ship must take to stave off these “sea monsters” with their unnatural visages illustrates the aura of danger which encompasses ideas about open ocean travel.
Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters was created in one place yet distributed in another, and thus had two different target audiences. The print was designed by the Flemish artist Jan van der Straet, who is credited on the lower right of the engraving with his Latin name, Johannes Stradanus (1523-1605).2 Van der Straet created this image before 1564 during his career as a tapestry and print designer in Florence.3 Many of his works throughout his career were dedicated or
1 Elizabeth Ingalls, Whaling Prints in the Francis B. Lothrop Collection (Salem, MA: Peabody Museum of Salem, 1987), 188.
2 “Jan van der Straet,” National Gallery of Art, 25 March 2024, https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.2765.html, and “Jan van der Straet,” The British Museum, 25 March 2024, https://www. britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG47549.
3 “Allegory of America,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 25 March 2024, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/ search/343845.
sold to the Medici family and other wealthy Italians whose riches were acquired through commerce and banking across Europe; this work was doubtless made for that audience. But Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters did not remain in Italy; this image was transformed from drawing to print in Antwerp by the Dutch publisher Philips Galle (1537-1612) in 1578 and again by his grandson Joannes Galle (16061676) in 1660s.4 Philips Galle, who was born in Dutch Haarlem and ran his publishing business in Antwerp, was one of the most prolific publishers in Europe after 1570. His grandson’s Latin signature is present in the lower right corner of this image (Ioan), although older editions contain Philips’ name. This is because Joannes Galle reprinted many of his grandfather’s works and engraved his own signature over his predecessor’s.
When Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters was first marketed in northern Europe in the late 1570s, Antwerp, its place of publication, was Calvinist; however, by the time of its reprinting, Antwerp had become Catholic.5 Each audience would have interpreted this print in a different way. Yet, the purpose and implications of the whales remained the same. For the purpose of this analysis, I will focus on the original audience this print was made for: wealthy Calvinist art collectors in Antwerp. Philips Galle’s market was aristocratic and affluent just as Jan van der Straet’s Florentine patrons were, but their riches were attained through participation in maritime global trade rather than banking.6 They also differed in religious affiliation. While the Protestant Reformation wracked northern Europe, Italy remained staunchly Catholic, a trait clearly seen in Van der Straet’s Italian religious works. Jan van der Straet was employed by the Medici family in Florence as a tapestry designer as early as 1546, and he dedicated prints of numerous subjects, including religion and the discovery of the New World, to the family during the 1580s. Van der Straet was also
4 “Philips Galle,” The British Museum, 25 March 2024, https:// www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG28279
5 Philip Major, “Funerary Rites in the Royalist Exile: George Morley’s Ministry in Antwerp, 1650-1653,” Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 31. no. 3 (Summer 2008), 35-50.
6 Harm Nijboer, Judith Brouwer, and Marten Jan Bok, “The Painting Industries of Antwerp and Amsterdam, 1500-1700: A Data Perspective,” Arts 8/77 (2019), 1-11.
instrumental in the design of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where many of his prints and tapestries are still on view. It was in this atmosphere of wealth, Classicism, Catholicism, and global exploration that Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters was born.
Galle’s business published several printings of Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters for his northern European audience. The firm was well known for recreations of master artists’ works, and reproductions of van der Straet’s designs were especially profitable for the business. Working primarily in Haarlem, Galle doubtless chose and printed this design with the Dutch art market in mind. The Netherlands’ riches were acquired primarily through investing in overseas trade, and seascape paintings became an important theme in the arts of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. Most contained elements that reflected the country’s Calvinist religion. Common motifs, such as a ship traversing a stormy sea or a sunlit opening in dark clouds, stem from the belief that Dutch trade was ordained by God to overcome dangers and struggles.
Whales had long been symbolic in northern Europe, and often associated with the Devil. Several medieval manuscripts including Beowulf, Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob, and the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon poem The Whale equate the destructive tendencies and size of whales with the Devil.7 The Vulgate Latin Bible closely conflates the Leviathan — a demonic serpent — with whales, sometimes even calling both creatures cetus, a Latin word that refers to sea monsters and whales alike. The late 1500s was an age in which Europeans firmly believed that whales were monsters with evil intentions; writing and art from this era reflects this notion. Perhaps Galle recognized that the subject of Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters, with its monster whales threatening commerce on a foreboding sea, would be a good fit for the northern European art market and its religious atmosphere.
The print’s Italian and Netherlandish audiences would have interpreted this work differently. In a
7 Tim Flight, Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World (New York: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2021), and “The Whale,” Old English Poetry Project, 25 March 2024, https:// oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-whale/
Catholic sense, the whales could symbolize demonic personifications of the perils a good Catholic would encounter during life.8 Van der Straet’s Florentine connoisseurs might read the ship as progress leading them to their present wealth; the whales, in that case, would exemplify the struggles they dealt with in transcontinental business. Van der Straet’s Medici patrons could have interpreted Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters as a reference to their journey into political prominence in Italy, with the whales representing the perils and struggles they faced. A Catholic connotation can be placed on this Medici interpretation as well, suggesting that the family is blessed or divinely charged with maintaining its status in Italy. The print’s Dutch audience to whom Philips Galle sold these works might have ascribed a similar interpretation. Echoing the imagery of Calvinist motifs in seascape paintings, Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters suggests that the overseas commerce that fueled the Dutch economy was divinely ordained to triumph over the unknowns and perils which the whales represent. Ultimately, for van der Straet’s audiences, whales symbolized an ordeal that must be overcome for successful commerce. In Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters, the allegory of the whales remains the same.
Large, unnatural, foreboding, and threatening, the whales of Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters illuminate a general fear of large sea animals and the unknown depths from which they come. The creatures’ monstrous forms and strange noises not only represent the otherness and danger of the ocean, but also personify the difficulties standing between those who strive for progress and their monetary aims. The interpretations that different audiences brought to this print mirror the commercial and religious conditions of sixteenth-century Europe and illustrate how closely the two threads of commerce and faith can be combined.
8 David Peterson, “Out of the Margins: Religion and the Church in Renaissance Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly, vol 53. no. 3 (Autumn 2000), 835-879.
The Vulgate Latin Bible closely conflates the Leviathan — a demonic serpent — with whales, sometimes even calling both creatures cetus, a Latin word that refers to sea monsters and whales alike. The late 1500s was an age in which Europeans firmly believed that whales were monsters with evil intentions; writing and art from this era reflects this notion.
William Lewis Roderick: Scrimshaw Aboard the Adventure
Amy Hampson, Undergraduate student, College of the Holy Cross
Sailing in the Indian Ocean as a surgeon on a large whaling ship, artist William Lewis Roderick crafted an image that pictured the exhilaration of global whaling expeditions. Roderick used the panbone of a sperm whale that was hunted on his voyage as a canvas for this scrimshaw image. This particular bone, a section of the back of a sperm whale’s jaw, provided a larger, flatter surface area for pictures than the smaller surface available on the whale’s teeth more commonly used for scrimshaw engraving. The panbone offered the opportunity for more expansive scenes to be displayed, reminiscent of paintings.
In Roderick’s picture, a large whaling vessel dominates the skyline. Based on records of the voyages of the surgeon, this ship can be identified as the Adventure, a ship that sailed out of London on three different South Sea whaling voyages between 1847 and 1856.1 The ship’s complex mast system identifies the ship specifically as a barque, a common type of whaling ship in the nineteenth century. The fore and main
1 Janet West and R. H. Barnes, “The scrimshaw of William Lewis Roderick: a whale bone plaque dated 1858 showing the barque Adventure of London whaling off Flores and Pulo Komba in the Indian Ocean,” The Mariner’s Mirror 76: 2 (1990): 135-148.
Figure 1. William Lewis Roderick, panbone plaque, ca. 1847-1850. Whale skeletal bone, 5.5 x7.75 in. New Bedford Whaling Museum, Gift of Mr. & Mrs. F. Gilbert Hinsdale, 1959.8.33.
masts of the Adventure are rigged square, while the mizzen mast, on the furthest anterior right side of the ship, is rigged fore-and-aft.2 Generally, the combination of square and fore-and-aft sails allowed for greater versatility of sailing throughout various wind conditions and directions. This versatility supported the long ocean voyages that whalers often undertook, given that wind patterns varied significantly throughout different regions of the world’s oceans. The Adventure traveled from Western Europe to Southeast Asia, a long journey that, with time for hunting and processing whales, lasted for months to years at a time.
The Adventure’s crew was composed of at least twenty-five men. Not all crew members participated in the physical hunting of the whales, as depicted on the seas in the foreground of Roderick’s image. Many different jobs were assigned to the crew members of whaling vessels. On the deck of the ship, tiny silhouettes of the crew are visible. The figures aboard the barque are likely deckhands, men who were responsible for general maintenance and operations,
2 Graham McBride, “Sailing Ship Rigs,” Maritime Museum of the Atlantic Nova Scotia Museum, https://ojs.library.dal.ca/NSM/ article/view/4015
such as handling of sails, rigs, and cargo.3 The foreground of this image, where men in three boats battle several whales, is the most compelling aspect of the picture. Roderick portrays the shifting ocean water with an intricate pattern of short, zigzagging strokes beautifully brought to life with a deep blue coloration. Where lines are engraved closed together, the blues appear darker. Roderick manipulates the contrast of the blue pigment and the creamy bone to create motion of white capped waves that intensifies the activity that takes place throughout the rest of the scene.
Key visuals break the consistent water pattern to construct the narrative. In the lower center, the large head of a sperm whale fractures the surface of the ocean, causing an eruption of white foam. To the left and right of the center whale, the tail flukes of two other sperm whales are highlighted by more white foam as they dive in an attempt to escape the hunters. On the left, only one tail fluke is visible, but Roderick suggests the long bodies of at least three other whales traveling together in a pod, documenting the social behavior of sperm whales. In several locations around the scene, the water is noticeably a darker blue, especially towards the middle of the piece. This use of dark blue creates a shadow effect that indicates to the viewer that below the surface is even more drama.
Out on the sea, the three small whaleboats are each filled with six men. These tiny boats are smaller than the whales they hunt and illustrate the perils of the job. On either end of each boat, two men stand and carry long harpoons. The four men in the center of each boat row, moving the harpooners into a position that allows them to successfully spear the sperm whales surrounding them. The whale on the right side of the panel appears to have been successfully taken down by the boatmen. This whale is noticeably in a vulnerable upside-down position, and its body between its head and tail fluke is submerged. Here Roderick introduces another color of yellowed brown into the waves, as if to indicate that the sea has been discolored by the blood of the large mammal. The harpooner on the far right side of the whale boat
3 “Life on a Whale Ship,” Life Aboard, New Bedford Whaling Museum, https://www.whalingmuseum.org/learn/research-topics/ whaling-history/life-aboard/
directly faces the whale, his weapon disappearing into the water near its head, while the harpooner on the left side of the boat focuses on the whale’s tail. As if to emphasize the importance of the skilled harpooners, Roderick retains the white of the bone as the color of their clothing. This highlights them and sets them apart from the central rowers, who are wearing darker colors and are cloaked in shadows. This is consistent for each of the three whaleboat crews pictured.
Roderick effectively conveys the scale of the enormous sperm whales during the hunt; their long bodies exceed the size of the small whale boats. This evokes a sense of sublimity. Roderick emphasizes that the men are virtually unprotected in the vast ocean. They are hunting fascinating creatures that can easily upend a boat and toss the entire crew overboard if they are unlucky. Not only does this scene highlight the danger of the job, it also highlights the bravery of the crew.
While William Lewis Roderick played a significant role in documenting the whaling expeditions of the Adventure through his scrimshaw art, he did not participate in killing the whales himself, because he was the surgeon aboard ship. The presence of a doctor became mandatory for every British voyage as the whaling industry became more central to the imperial economy. As whaling became more essential, Parliament passed legislation in 1733 that mandated a surgeon be aboard every whaling ship.4 This legislation was put into place with the recognition that whaling was a tremendously dangerous venture for the crew members on board the ships. The surgeon would respond to injuries, accidents, illnesses, and disease, and carry out operations such as amputations if necessary.
Given the long duration of whaling expeditions, scrimshaw art became a pastime that served not only as a means for reducing boredom aboard the vessels, but also a record of history. Roderick immortalized the voyages of the Adventure and conveyed an idea of what commercial whaling was like to viewers of his art.
4 Martin H. Evans, “Statutory Requirements Regarding Surgeons on British Whale-Ships,” The Mariner’s Mirror 91:1 (2005), 7–12.
Scrimshaw Pie Crimpers: Balancing Function and Decoration
Nathan Howard, Undergraduate student, College of the Holy Cross
Pcentury scrimshaw, often carved from whale ivory. The delicate and detailed carving of the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Tetraskele Star Crimper speaks to the careful craftsmanship of nineteenth-century mariners who carved this form of scrimshaw as well as the importance they placed on personalizing and ornamenting the everyday domestic objects used by their families.
Scrimshaw most often takes the form of inked engravings on the bones or teeth of marine mammals, but the term also encompasses carved structures produced from whale bone and ivory. Pie crimpers were small objects that required careful craftsmanship and were often gifted to a mariner’s family or loved ones to ease their separation during long sea voyages. Pie crimpers were useful tools that gift recipients could employ in their everyday routines, while also being ornamented, decorative reminders of their family member at sea.1
Throughout the nineteenth century, pie crimpers or jagging wheels, as they were often called, were
1 “Scrimshaw Pie Crimper,” Australian National Maritime Museum, https://collections.sea.museum/objects/15760/scrimshaw-piecrimper
efficiency in the kitchen. Specifically, the work wheel at the end of the crimper would be used around the perimeter of a pie to seal it before it went into the oven for baking. As the wheel pressed against the pie’s perimeter, it compacted the edges of the crust against the edge of the pan to better retain the steam heat for more even baking. The crimper saved time by eliminating the technique of crimping the pie by hand. Pie crimpers also added decorative, patterned designs to pie crusts.2 They were an extremely popular gift given by whalemen scrimshanders, as evidenced by the thousands that were produced during the nineteenth century.
Overall, the shape of the Tetraskele Star Crimper seems anthropomorphic. Read in this way, the circular work wheel references a head, with the handle a simplified body. The decorative end of the tool, called a pommel, may suggest feet. The pommel could be used to press a different pattern into the dough or to cut the pastry. The pommel on this specific crimper is pierced with diamond shapes and trimmed with semi-circular drops.
Figure 1. Maker once known, Tetraskele Star Crimper, 1800s. Whale ivory, baleen, non-ferrous metal, ferrous metal, 1 3/4 x 1 3/4 x 6 1/8 inches, New Bedford Whaling Museum, 00.154.5.
The Tetraskele Star Crimper is characterized by the delicate balance of its intricately carved parts. This pie crimper’s work wheel is unusual in its design. The wheel is pierced to create a six-pointed sunburst hub and the edges are intricately fluted. The lozenge-shaped handle is formed by two pieces of ivory bound together, each of which is pierced with its own unique carvings. There is a narrow slot between the two ivory sides that is filled with a plank of dark wood.3 The dark background created by the wood plank allows for the ivory carvings to become dramatically more visible.
On one side of the handle, there is a perfectly rounded, central cavity which is filled by a tetraskele-shaped carving. The object’s name references this unusual sculpted motif, which can be described as a symbol consisting of four “arms” that radiate from a center and all bend in the same direction.4 The round cavity filled by the tetraskeleshaped carving is flanked by additional openings sculpted to take the form of a heart, a shield, two teardrops, and two diamonds.
On the other side of the handle, a star-shaped structure surrounded by another perfectly round pierced opening dominates the center. The precision of the rounded cavities on both sides of the handle attest to the careful craftsmanship executed by the mariner who carved this object. The central star is surrounded by other open shapes on the handle. Like the other side of the handle with the tetraskele carving, there are heart and shield carvings at the handle’s opposing ends. These are flanked by two small teardrop and semicircleshaped openings. During the nineteenth century, the heart shape became viewed as a symbol for love and affection, which in the case of the carvings on the Tetraskele Star Crimper, may symbolize the love between the marine craftsman and the gift’s recipient.5 The shield was often used by American
3 “Object Number 00.154.5,” New Bedford Whaling Museum catalog record.
5 Evan Andrews, “What Is the Origin of the Heart Symbol?,” History.com, https://www.history.com/news/what-is-the-origin-ofthe-heart-symbol
mariners during the nineteenth century as a symbol of nationalism, referring to the Great Seal of the United States.
The Tetraskele Star Crimper was constructed primarily from the ivory of a whale tooth but the handle is rimmed with baleen strips. These contrasting materials serve both functional as well as decorative purposes. Utilizing whale ivory for scrimshaw carvings added a luxurious dimension to this functional object, as evidenced by the material’s smooth, homogeneous texture, rich color, and ability to be highly polished and glossed. Whale ivory is also an ideal material for sculpting, as it is relatively soft with a uniform surface. In contrast, baleen was often very difficult to work with for crafting. It is somewhat brittle and can become a host for parasite larvae. However, it is fairly pliable and was used for certain functional objects such as corset stays and busks, umbrella ribs, and skirt hoops.6 Due to its brittle nature, it was often utilized in small quantities. In the Tetraskele Star Crimper, the slots and edges of the handle are faced with baleen strips, which serve the functional purpose of providing a grip for the crimper and adding textural and color contrast to the smooth, rich ivory of the sculpture’s body.
Due to their complex construction, pie crimpers carved from whale bone or ivory served the dual purpose of passing the long hours at sea through artistic endeavor, while also easing the separation between a mariner and his family through gifting a functional, yet personalized object. Personalizing pie crimpers allowed them to serve decorative purposes both in function and design. They could decorate the edges of a pie with unique patterns, and their distinct carvings reinforced the uniqueness of the gift. The Tetraskele Star Crimper, in particular, reveals the importance placed on this personalization through the sculpture’s precisely executed pierced motifs. These carvings attest to both the sculptor’s impressive craftsmanship as well as his ability to elevate a functional, everyday object to a piece of decorative art.
6 “Overview of Scrimshaw,” New Bedford Whaling Museum, https://www.whalingmuseum.org/learn/research-topics/whalinghistory/art-and-literature
Daniel Weeks’s Fiddle: A
Musician’s Scrimshaw
Maggie McCracken, Undergraduate student, College of the Holy Cross
Daniel Weeks’s fiddle, adorned with a scrimshaw fingerboard, tailpiece, and tuning pegs, brings together two creative shipboard pastimes—art and music—that sailors engaged in during long months out at sea. The archives record that Daniel Weeks was an ordinary sailor working on the whaling vessel the Daniel Webster, which operated out of New Bedford from the 1840s to around 1880.1 His unofficial role may have been much more, perhaps an amateur musician offering entertainment for the crew.
Weeks’s violin, which was likely called a fiddle aboard ship, gives modern day audiences a view of the encounters, experiences, and daily lives of common people on sailing voyages in the mid nineteenth century. The pictorial scrimshaw on the tailpiece of the violin is engraved with the craftsman’s initials, D.W. These initials match the name Daniel Weeks, carved into a whale bone plaque on the storage case for the instrument. Weeks was likely the owner of the instrument and its ornamentor, as sailors occasionally signed their scrimshaw artwork.
Weeks inscribed other images into the smooth whale bone surfaces on the violin and made them an integral part of his instrument. These reference daily life on the sea and memories of his homeland and reflect the maker’s personal identity, maritime occupation, and American national identity. On the tailpiece made from whale skeletal bone, just above his initials, Weeks carved scrimshaw motifs that depict a three masted barque, perhaps the Daniel Webster. Barques are distinguished by their rigging with five squarerigged sails on the main mast, three square sails on the foremast and two or three jibs, and a spanker on the mizzen mast. This carving gives us a glimpse of the type of ships on which the violinist and sailor
1 “Whaling Crew List Database,” New Bedford Whaling Museum, https://www.whalingmuseum.org/online_exhibits/crewlist/search. php
was a crew member. Barques were common whaling vessels, more maneuverable than vessels with other types of rigging, and because of their larger size they had dozens of crew members and their voyages could last for several years. Completing the tailpiece are four upside-down hearts which outline the four holes for the strings; their shape mirrors the heart shape that surrounds the maker’s initials. Scrimshaw shading techniques overlap with drawing and printmaking: decorative patterns including hatching surround the ship, suggesting waves and sky.
The violin’s fingerboard is also made from whale skeletal bone, and its motifs are a salute to the ship’s and sailor’s nation. The eagle with a breastplate shield with stars and thirteen stripes surrounded by olive branches derives from the Great Seal of the United States, often used in artworks and for official uses. It was a familiar motif to most people, and it was employed even by artists without formal training after its adoption in 1782.2 The radiating triangles above the eagle are sometimes part of the seal but they also resemble the compass rose that orientates map readers to north, south, east, west, and the intermediate directions. Compasses themselves would have been common on sailing ships as a navigation tool while sailing on the open ocean. The buildings depicted on the middle of the finger board may be a view of home or a visited port seen from the water. The hilly topography of the town view, intensified by the narrow shape of the fingerboard, recalls New Bedford’s hills as they would have been seen from shipboard. It is possible that the church refers to the Seamen’s Bethel, a chapel many whalemen visited before they started out on a voyage and depicted in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick. The anchor that fills the top third of the finger board is a nod to maritime life. This symbol is still recognized today as essential to life on the water, especially for sailing
2 Milo M. Naeve, “American Art and the Great Seal,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, 70, no. 4 (1976): 2–12.
Figure 1. Attributed to Daniel Weeks, Violin with scrimshaw ornamentation, ca. 1835-1850. Whale bone, brass, and wood, three-quarter-size violin, 21 1/8 x 7 x 3 inches. New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2001.100.1198.
vessels without technology like motors and propellers. Based on its maritime use, it became a symbol of a firm base or foundation providing stability, support, and confidence especially in uncertain situations, and as a source of safety or security.3
The final scrimshaw element on the fiddle are the tuning pegs decorated with designs from nature, including a sun, flowers, and playing card suits, including hearts and spades. Playing cards with suits as we know them today date back to the Renaissance or earlier. Eighteenth and nineteenth century prints and paintings show sailors playing cards on ships.4 Along the edges of the small pegs and throughout the other pictures, repeating triangles and triangles within triangles create geometric borders. These show carefulness and precision in craftsmanship. The scrimshaw pegs, fingerboard, and tailpiece contributed to another hobby of sailors: music.
Many ships strove to have a musician on a vessel to maintain high spirits among the rest of the crew. The violin had multiple musical roles aboard a sailing vessel. One was to accompany work chants like shanties that provided a familiar rhythm that helped sailors move together to increase power, for example, when turning the capstan to lift the anchor or heave on ropes to raise and lower sails. Sometimes a fiddler stood on the capstan to play for the men heaving it around, to fill long evenings on the vast water, or to lessen irritation during monotonous work.5 Another use of the fiddle on a voyage was to keep up morale. The crew worked and waited for months with little to no contact with home. The fiddle accompanied storytelling and led community songs for recreation in crews’ leisure time. These were called forecastle (pronounced foc’sle) songs.6 They can give listeners today insight into daily lives and adventures on
3 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “anchor (n.1),” March 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/9923826490.
4 As for example in works by Henry Scott Tuke and Karl Emanuel Jansson.
5 Arthur Havergal, “Music in the Royal Navy. An Appeal!” Proceedings of the Musical Association 17 (1890): 1–12.
the sea because many had nautical themes.7 A fiddler’s repertoire mixed their own traditions with influences from interactions with diverse cultures. These included other mariners and places where ships stopped or traded, including among Indigenous communities in remote places. Fiddlers learned or sometimes composed new songs influenced by the cultures they contacted. For instance, the Shetland tradition evolved with Inuit additions and was spread to North America and other European countries.8
For the crew, New Bedford’s whaling industry was as much about patience and passing time as it was about dangerous or adventurous interactions with whales. Participating in creative activities, such as engraving scrimshaw or playing musical instruments, were common on the sea. The size of most whale bones made them ideal for such portable objects as instruments. Among the extensive collection of scrimshaw artifacts at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Daniel Weeks’s violin highlights the merger of these two artistic pastimes, scrimshaw and music, that were common on-board whaling vessels in the mid-1800s for work and leisure.
7 “Foc’sle Songs and Shanties: The Foc’sle Singers,” Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1959, https://folkways.si.edu/the-focslesingers/songs-and-shanties/american-folk-celtic/music/album/ smithsonian
8 Frances Wilkins, “‘Da Merry Boys o Greenland’: Explorations into the Musical Dialogue of Shetland’s Nautical Past,” Folk Music Journal 11, no. 2 (2017): 17–37.
Weeks’s violin, which was likely called a fiddle aboard ship, gives modern day audiences a view of the encounters, experiences, and daily lives of common people on sailing voyages in the mid nineteenth century.
A Cross-Cultural Cribbage Board from the School of Happy Jack
Peter D. Kehoe, Undergraduate student, College of the Holy Cross
Figure 1. Follower of Angokwazhuk (Iñupiaq), Cribbage Board, ca. 1895-1925. Walrus tusk, 25 x 5 1/2 x 3 3/8 inches, New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2001.100.51.
The intricate art of scrimshaw has roots in European culture. However, as mariners moved around the world and came into contact with Indigenous people, new forms of scrimshaw emerged. A cribbage board carved onto walrus tusk in the collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum is one example of this crosscultural connection.
The United States expanded rapidly throughout the nineteenth century, and in 1868 America gained a new addition to its ever-expanding coastlines: Alaska. Here whaling expeditions developed trade with the Inuit and learned about their livelihood and culture. The Inuit had long hunted whales, walrus, and other sea animals and used materials derived from these animals to make art forms. Inuit carving pre-dates the emergence of scrimshaw, but there are indications that after cultural contact Inuit scrimshaw co-evolved with European and American practices. Pieces carved from walrus tusks, especially of creatures that are spiritually important to the Inuit, demonstrate the hybrid forms resulting from these contacts.
The Whaling Museum’s walrus tusk cribbage board, which is attributed to a follower of Angokwazhuk, is an ideal road map into the cross-cultural influences between Inuit and European carving practices. On the bottom of this tusk is a map of the coast of Alaska engraved into the ivory, and it may trace the path of whaling expeditions. This map names Port Clarence, Nome, St. Michael’s, and others, all significant harbors on the west coast of Alaska. These ports served as points of cross-cultural contact. Officers and crew on whaling expeditions that docked in these harbors learned local knowledge from the Inuit, including whale locations and migration patterns, survival practices in icy conditions, and other Indigenous knowledge.1 Much of this knowledge was gained as they traded with the Inuit.
Indigenous people provided local products in exchange for food, tools, and other goods. As the Inuit learned about European styles of carving and the types of souvenir commodities mariners would
1 “Life Aboard,” New Bedford Whaling Museum, https://www. whalingmuseum.org/learn/research-topics/whaling-history/lifeaboard/
purchase, Native craftsmen adapted their carving to create more marketable styles of scrimshaw for trade.
On the top side of this walrus tusk is a uniquely European invention: the cribbage board. Invented by the British gambler Sir John Suckling in the 1400s, cribbage was played in the US colonies and adopted by mariners to pass the time.2 Thus, this Inuitproduced scrimshaw board game was intended for sale to passing whalers. It had a fully European function, but its engraved map referenced local Alaskan ports that were points of exchange and the game board was ornamented with Inuit embellishments. This walrus tusk cribbage board is arranged in the game’s typical layout: twelve rectangles, each with six holes paired together. It is decorated with seven carved figures: two Arctic seals, a polar bear head, a sitting polar bear, a walrus, and an Inuit man in a kayak holding a harpoon over his head, most likely on a hunt. All the animals are native to Alaska; these carvings signify the interconnection of Inuit livelihood and natural resource-based hunting.
The depiction of the animals and hunt also referred to Inuit spiritual beliefs. The Inuit believe their hearts and souls are free to go where animals go, and their future is free like the wild animals of the Arctic. Inuit tradition expresses the closeness between humans and animals and adheres to the idea that animals willingly give themselves to the hunter, including the walrus whose tusk was transformed by the Native artist.3 Thus, this scrimshaw cribbage board gains further significance from its Inuit source, and the Inuit belief in the sacredness of animal products.
It was through whaling and trade that Inuit craftsmen such as Angokwazhuk (Iñupiaq; Ayasayuk, Cape Nome, Alaska, ca. 1870-1918), known colloquially as “Happy Jack,” gained worldwide recognition. This cribbage board was likely influenced by this Inuit carver, who captured the attention of Captain Hartson Bodfish in 1892 with his carvings on walrus tusks. Angokwazhuk is believed to have spent winters
2 “The History of Cribbage,” https://mvhm.org/wp-content/ uploads/2020/04/THE-HISTORY-OF-CRIBBAGE-Latest-1.pdf
3 “Inua: The soul. human, Animal & Spirit in Inuit culture,” Google arts & culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/usergallery/ ZQLSgp4T9xozIw
with Captain Bodfish.4 He developed a distinctive pictorial style that became a culturally significant marker of the merger of Native and Euro-American styles of scrimshaw. Inuit carvers who trained with him or worked independently created artworks for the increasing numbers of visitors to Alaska from whaling expeditions and the Alaskan Gold Rush. The “School of Happy Jack” now serves as an umbrella term to identify carvings made in the period between 1895 and 1925 that are similar to those made by the well-known craftsman.
Inuit carved scrimshaw became economically important. Economic prosperity was problematic for Indigenous Alaskan communities because the increase in economic activity also brought some negative effects. While Native whaling and walrus hunting were sustainable, increased whaling traffic in Alaska brought a subsequent decrease in the populations of whales, walruses, and other marine creatures. The decline in whales caused a subsequent surge in walrus hunting, with a single whale ship hunting up to 500 walruses during a seasonal run, leading to a dramatic drop in the walrus population.5 The estimated decrease in numbers from around 300,000 to 50,000 walruses brought drastic ramifications for Alaska’s Indigenous people. Walrus hunting had supplied 60 to 80 percent of subsistence food in parts of Alaska, and its near disappearance threatened social and economic structural collapse. Indigenous ways of life based on up to 6,000 years of knowledge were wiped away, and the Inuit were forced to adapt to a changing environment with less self-dependence. Economic prosperity from trade benefited individuals, but at an environmental cost.
The walrus tusk cribbage board illustrates a paradigm of cross-cultural influences between Native and EuroAmerican peoples. It presented an opportunity for beneficial economic gain as well as representing the negative overconsumption of walrus by foreign
4 Arthur W. Erickson, “Let’s talk...scrimshaw,” May 20, 2016, https://arthurwerickson.com/blogs/news/126279235-let-s-talkscrimshaw
5 Igor Krupnik and G. Carleton Ray, “Pacific walruses, indigenous hunters, and climate change: Bridging scientific and indigenous knowledge,” Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography, 54 (23–26) (2007), 2946–2957. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.dsr2.2007.08.0.
whalers. From the Inuit seller’s perspective, this trade good potentially evoked a sacred animal. The material was intricately understood and carefully worked. From the Euro-American buyer’s perspective, they acquired a local souvenir of contact with Native people and their lands. They would use it as a source of entertainment to help pass the endless hours until the next walrus or whale could be snatched up and sold.
The Whaling Museum’s walrus tusk cribbage board, which is attributed to a follower of Angokwazhuk, is an ideal road map into the cross-cultural influences between Inuit and European carving practices. On the bottom of this tusk is a map of the coast of Alaska engraved into the ivory, and it may trace the path of whaling expeditions.
All About stuff
Looking at a Print of Lahaina from Two Directions
Naomi Slipp, Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Chair for the Chief Curator
The New Bedford Whaling Museum began planning for The Wider World & Scrimshaw, a 2024 special exhibition, over two years ago. The project is an attempt to focus attention on understudied areas of the collection—namely, items from the Pacific world and Arctic—and place them in conversation with scrimshaw. In the process of preparing for this exhibition, the curatorial team improved catalog records, created high-quality object photography, and completed conservation assessments on over 350 items. We restored lost provenance and resolved incorrect identifications, uncovering new and exciting stories. One such story relates to the town of Lahaina, and a rather incredible previously unidentified print of the town in the NBWM collection.
Lahaina was the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from 1820 to 1845. In August of 2023, wildfires broke out on the island of Maui. This natural disaster was devastating, killing over 100 people, and destroying over $5 billion dollars in property, including the historic town of Lahaina, which housed multiple museums. This incredible tragedy, both in loss of life and tangible cultural heritage, cannot be measured.
Against the backdrop of the Lahaina wildfires, author Robert Becker published an article on the colonial causes of Maui’s wildfires for Hyperallergic. In the essay, Becker explores a group of rare copperplate engravings of Lahaina and the surrounding countryside made at an American Protestant seminary, arguing that these prints romanticized landscapes endangered by White settlers. Reading that article, one print (fig. 1) caught my eye: “Lahaina as seen from Lahainaluna.”
I immediately recognized it as a match to a print on a tentative checklist of over 500 items being considered for inclusion in the upcoming exhibition The Wider World & Scrimshaw. That item had no identifying cataloguing information: only a bare description of the scene depicted.
What did this delicate print show? Made sometime in the 1830s, it presented a view of the Lahainaluna Press and Seminary, with the seminary wall running the length of the foreground, the settlements of Lahaina in the middle-ground beyond, the bay with whaleships at port, and a towering volcano in the distance.
The town of Lahaina has direct ties to New Bedford. American whalers from New Bedford reached Hawaiʻi in 1819. The most important ports of call for these haole (outsiders) were Honolulu, Oahu, and Lahaina, Maui. The following year, the first US Christian missionaries arrived and in 1823, Reverend Charles Stewart and Reverend William Richards settled in Lahaina and established the First Christian Mission at the invitation of Queen Kaʻahumanu. Hundreds of US whalers visited the port between 1820-1873. In 1824, more than 100 whaling ships anchored off Lahaina; by 1850, it rose to 400 ships per year. During the reign of Kamehameha III (1825–1854), US whaling shaped the entire Hawaiian economy and was the primary source of income for the islands.1 However, tensions between US whalers, Hawaiian chiefs (aliʻi), and Christian missionaries were also considerable during this period, leading to brawls, riots, and military
1 “Lahaina Historic District,” National Park Service, https://www. nps.gov/places/lahaina-historic-district.htm
Figure 2. Kepohoni, “Kamehameha I,” ca. 1840. Copperplate engraving, American Antiquarian Society. Image courtesy Wikimedia commons.
engraving, 16 1/2 x 23 1/2 in., New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2001.100.7309.
Figure 1. Kepohoni (Native Hawaiian), after a painting by Persis Goodale Thurston Taylor (1821-1906), “Lahaina as Seen from Lahainaluna (Maui), Hawaiʻi,” ca. 1840. Copperplate
actions. The missionaries came from New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. They established schools and a written form of the Hawaiian language. They also introduced the printing press. This tool would prove pivotal to the continuance of Native Hawaiian cultural traditions, sovereignty, and cultural survivance in the pre-annexation period.
During this period, Lahaina was rapidly transforming. In around 1834, the Seminary imported an intaglio printing press and, as part of their Christianizing mission, taught Native Hawaiian students how to make copperplate engravings. The students made maps, landscapes, portraits, and floral studies. The print medium became both a colonial tool of domination and indoctrination and a means of resistance. As Becker describes, quite rapidly: “the wider Hawaiian population became one of the most literate on earth … The press also became a tool of resistance for Native Hawaiians in staving off efforts to relegate their customs and language to irrelevance by foreigners. … the Lahainaluna curriculum did offer a kind of advancement for the people of Hawaiʻi through the political and individual empowerment of written literacy and, theoretically, the possibility of stepping onto the world’s stage as equals.”2
The Seminary stopped printmaking in 1844, bringing this short ten-year period of production to a close. But, not without leaving behind a small but powerful collection of images made during the early colonial period in Hawaiʻi by Native makers.
Was there another viewpoint hidden in these images? Could we read these prints in both directions? Let’s look closer. As Becker explains, “Lahaina as seen from Lahainaluna” was a collaboration between Persis Thurston, the daughter of a missionary teaching art at Lahainaluna, and Kepohoni, a Native Hawaiian student. Kepohoni translated Persis’s painting of the mission into a highly detailed panoramic view of the area. His careful and varied mark making delineates different kinds of built structures, plants, trees, and animals. Kepohoni uses the medium of printmaking as a record, capturing his world and presenting it to
2 Robert Becker, “Tracing the Colonial Causes of Maui’s Wildfires Through 19th-Century Engravings,” Hyperallergic (Sept. 19, 2023), https://hyperallergic.com/845194/tracing-the-colonialcauses-of-mauis-wildfires-through-19th-century-engravings/
the viewer. This was a process of visual translation; one that offered opportunities for personalization.
Who was Kepohoni and how did he view his role in the printmaking studio? Might Kepohoni have rendered his surroundings—his homeland— to appeal to different audiences at once? The American Antiquarian Society and Massachusetts Historical Society both house collections of prints from Lahainaluna Press—vividly illustrating the role Massachusetts residents played in the early colonization of Hawaiʻi.3 Prints by Kepohoni in these collections provide tantalizing evidence of an alternative viewpoint. For example, a print of Kamehameha (fig. 2), first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi who died in 1819, celebrates Hawaiian identity and Native history during a period of political uncertainty and over a decade after the ruler’s death.
The landscapes are less straightforward in their politics but ultimately reveal a tension, I would argue, between colonial occupation and the surrounding land. A scene at Hilo (fig. 3) shows New Englandstyle clapboarded saltbox houses next to large hales, traditional Hawaiian structures with thatched roofs. The foreground is a raucous and disorganized field of vegetation. There are no orderly rows here, and the variety of plants implies abundance not order. In the view of Lahaina, the volcano in the distance is topped by puffs of smoke and traces of lava cascade down its sides and into the sea. Finally, in a view of Lahainaluna (fig. 4) the small town is nestled into the surrounding mountains and populated with colonial structures. But, the sky around the mountains in the background is masked by torrential rain, marked by diagonal long dashes.
Despite the visible dominance of settlement in these images—such as, windowed houses and agricultural allotments—a conspicuous, wild, and unruly form of nature dominates. In all of these it is almost as if, despite signs of farming and an attempt to master this new land by White missionaries, whalers, and 3 “’I think we shall succeed in copper plate printing’: Views of Hawaii Engraved at the Lahainaluna Seminary,” Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/object-of-the-month/ january-2014, and “Hawaiian Engravings Collections Inventory,” American Antiquarian Society, https://www.americanantiquarian. org/hawaiian-engravings-collection-inventory
settlers, Hawaiʻi—the literal land itself—refuses to be managed and contained. It will not be occupied.
This is vividly made manifest in the print of “Lahaina from Lahainaluna.” Above the “as” in the inscription, one unruly tree (fig. 5) has beaten efforts at its containment. It stands, alone, on the other side of a long wall that stretches across the entire foreground. The wall presents a barricade visibly denoting colonial possession and the assumption of land ownership by the haole. However, the tree’s branches reach above this barrier and grow onto a road that bifurcates the picture and draws our eye into the distance where the volcano hovers. The tree, situated where it is on the other side of the wall, unites a foreground that exists in the viewer’s space—beyond the frame of the picture—with the inner world, the scene as presented in the print. It serves as a bridge between the living “real” world of the audience and the fiction presented
in the image. How is the dispossession of land by missionaries recorded in this print? Who stands on the outside and who is on the inside? I see that tree as a mark of resistance, movingly inscribed onto a copper plate in a mission almost two hundred years ago by Kepohoni. It is an invitation to consider the different positionalities that shaped colonial visual culture and a stark demonstration of survivance.
The unruliness of nature—signaled metaphorically and visually in these prints in the 1830s—had disastrous implications in 2023 in the Lahaina wildfires. Some critics attributed the wildfires to a shift in non-Native agricultural practices and overgrowth of invasive species (direct products of settler colonialism). Yet, this print survives. Made by Kepohoni during a period of intense colonial pressure and changing ways of life, it is an incredible, tangible reminder of individual resistance and self-expression.
Figure 3. Kepohoni, after Edward Bailey, “Hilo, Hawaiʻi,” ca. 1837. Copperplate engraving, American Antiquarian Society. Image courtesy Wikimedia commons.
Another viewpoint
Sarah Kuaiwa, Bishop Museum
The Sandwich Islands Mission was founded in 1820 by missionaries with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). As acolytes of America’s Second Great Awakening, the missionaries were excited by the idea of Christianizing “heathens.” However, this young group did not anticipate the difficulties of navigating the complexities of Hawaiʻi’s social hierarchy. The missionaries needed to gain the favor of the Hawaiian ruling family, which made conversion slow in the first decade of the Mission.
But one tool proved to be extremely popular for the Mission: the printing press. In the 1830s, the Mission started two newspapers to share Biblical teachings in Hawaiian across the kingdom. Hawaiians who were extremely literate by this time, were fascinated by printed pages for their own reasons. By submitting content to the newspapers, Hawaiians could transmit information across the kingdom quickly. Stories penned by Hawaiians about famous places, people,
and histories were published in some of the earliest Christian newspapers.
The intent of this image was to illustrate the Mission’s new buildings. But knowing that Hawaiians reappropriated Christianizing tools for their own interests, how might we read this image from a Native perspective? Perhaps interest was placed on the narrowness of the Pailolo Channel between Maui and Molokaʻi. Maybe viewers searched the print for a glimpse of the sacred site Puʻu o Kekaʻa or the royal residences at Mokuʻula. Others may have been interested the famous coconut groves at Olowalu and Kaʻanapali. Storied Lahaina would have been the true focal point.
Figure 4. Kepohoni, after Edward Bailey, “Lahainaluna,” ca. 1838. Copperplate engraving, 5 5/8 x 7 15/16 inches, American Antiquarian Society. Image courtesy Wikimedia commons.
We restored lost provenance and resolved incorrect identifications, uncovering new and exciting stories. One such story relates to the town of Lahaina, and a rather incredible previously unidentified print of the town in the NBWM collection.
Curatorial research on the Lahaina print and the text by Sarah Kuaiwa were generated for “The Wider World & Scrimshaw,” a special exhibition open June 14 – November 11, 2024 at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. For this project, we collaborated with over forty external contributors, including museum professionals—like Sarah Kuaiwa, scholars, artists, community members, and culture bearers, to help interpret items in the museum collection from diverse perspectives. Visit the exhibition to explore more stories about colonial encounter and resistance in the Pacific world.
Figure 5. Detail, Kepohoni, “Lahaina as Seen from Lahainaluna (Maui), Hawaiʻi,” ca. 1840. NBWM, 2001.100.7309.
NBWM on Loan
Stitching for the Cause:
Cynthia Walker Hill’s Abolitionist Dolls
Margi Hofer, Museum Director Emerita, New-York Historical Society
Exhibition: Black Dolls, New-York Historical Society, February 25 - June 5, 2022; The Strong National Museum of Play, September 23, 2023 - January 7, 2024.
In 1836, abolitionist Angelina Grimké (18051879) implored American women to join the fight against slavery using whatever tools they had at hand, whether needles, paint brushes, or pens. “May the points of our needles prick the slaveholder’s conscience,” she urged.1 The exhortations of Grimké and other crusaders prompted many New England women to take up their needles for the cause. Two Black dolls at the New Bedford Whaling Museum are powerful examples of such political action (figs. 1, 2).2
The dolls were stitched by Providence, Rhode Island abolitionist Cynthia Walker Hill (1771-1848) in the 1840s. A hotbed of abolitionist activity, Providence was one of many New England towns that formed antislavery societies in the 1830s. According to family tradition, one doll (fig. 1) represents Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). Born into slavery, Douglass escaped to the North and settled in the abolitionist stronghold of New Bedford. In 1841, he began giving lectures about his struggle for freedom and urging others to join the abolitionist movement. Hill may have been inspired by an eloquent speech or his compelling autobiography to create the doll in Douglass’s image.
1 Angelina Grimké, “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South,” The Anti-Slavery Examiner 1, no. 2 (September 1836): 23.
2 Acc. nos. 1953.1.1, 1953.1.2. The dolls were donated by Mrs. M. Motley Sargeant (Grace Edgerton Howland, 1881-1965), the great-great granddaughter of the maker.
Hill’s other doll (fig. 2) makes the horrors of slavery palpable: it represents a fugitive wearing a threepronged slave collar. Enslavers used these heavy iron collars to punish runaways and hinder their ability to escape. A striking illustration of the practice survives in the 1863 photograph of Wilson Chinn taken the year after he was freed by the Union Army (fig. 3). Underscoring the barbarity of slavery, the image was sold to raise funds for formerly enslaved people. Chinn’s collar resembles the doll-sized version made from silk-covered wire.
A portrait of the dollmaker held by the Rhode Island Historical Society provides vivid context for these remarkable survivals (fig. 4). Painted in the final years of Hill’s life, the image highlights her industrious hands engaged in a knitting project. The artist—likely Providence portraitist James Sullivan Lincoln (18111888)—depicted Hill with deeply etched wrinkles and steely eyes, suggesting fierce determination.3
Cynthia Hill’s dolls featured in the New-York Historical Society’s 2022 exhibition Black Dolls, co-curated by Margi Hofer and Dominique JeanLouis.4 Drawn primarily from the extraordinary private collection of Deborah Neff, the exhibition presented more than 100 handmade dolls made in the US between the 1840s and 1950s, a tumultuous period of American history marked by slavery, legalized segregation, and entrenched racism. The show explored issues of identity, race, and resistance through the eyes and hands of the doll makers,
3 Rhode Island Historical Society acc. no. 1968.40.1. Though the portrait is unsigned, it is remarkably similar to Lincoln’s 1853 portrait of Dorcas Reynolds Updike, RIHS acc. no. 1948.1.2.
4 For a virtual tour of the exhibition, see blackdolls.nyhistory.org.
largely Black women. Worked by hand, and lovingly personalized, the dolls helped to humanize history and bring focus to women’s lives (fig. 5). Because Black dolls with identified makers are exceedingly rare, the curators were delighted to be able to include Hill’s meticulously documented pair. They eloquently demonstrate that dolls can transcend mere playthings to serve as powerful political tools.
Figure 1. Cynthia Walker Hill (1771-1848), Doll representing Frederick Douglass, ca. 1840-48. Cotton, silk, glass, porcelain. New Bedford Whaling Museum, Gift of Mrs. M. Motley Sargeant, 1953.1.1
Figure 2. Cynthia Walker Hill (1771-1848), Doll representing an enslaved man, ca. 1840-48. Cotton, silk, glass, wire, pearl. New Bedford Whaling Museum, Gift of Mrs. M. Motley Sargeant, 1953.1.2
Figure 3. M.H. Kimball, "Wilson Chinn, a Branded Slave from Louisiana," 1863., 1863. Courtesy, Library of Congress.
Figure 4. Unidentified artist, Cynthia Walker Hill (1771-1848), ca. 1845. Oil on canvas. Rhode Island Historical Society, Gift of Mrs. W. A. Cushman, 1968.40.1
“May the points of our needles prick the slaveholder’s conscience,” she urged. The exhortations of Grimké and other crusaders prompted many New England women to take up their needles for the cause.
Figure 5. Installation view of Black Dolls at the New-York Historical Society. Photo: Glenn Castellano
Spreading the Word
The Journal of Adeline Heppingstone (Matthews) (1868-1957)
Ellen Stone, Volunteer Transcriber
Born March 24, 1868, in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, Adeline Heppingstone went to sea in 188182 at the age of 14 on the Bark Fleetwing. The vessel (fig. 1) was built in Port Jefferson, NY and owned by the New Bedford family of Joseph and William R. Wing. The Captain of the Fleetwing was Adeline’s father, John Heppingstone of Augusta, Western Australia. Also on board was Adeline’s mother, Adeline Coffin Heppingstone (née Morgan). The Fleetwing set sail from San Francisco heading for the Arctic. Based on an earlier voyage of the Fleetwing, she most likely went to sea with a crew of about 32 men hailing from Cape Verde, the Azores, New Bedford, and surrounding towns on the South Coast of Massachusetts. There may have been a few sailors from San Francisco on the voyage as well. We do not know if this was Adeline’s first adventure at sea, or if she subsequently made many more. We do know about her experiences on the Fleetwing because she kept a daily journal from April 14th to November 5th, 1882. Her writings start after the Fleetwing was well into the Bering Sea.
Over 2000 New Bedford whalers traveled to the Western Arctic between 1848 and 1915. The Fleetwing was part of the fleet of US whalers chasing bowhead whales into Arctic waters. Adeline, clearly in sync with the attitudes of the times, wrote very comfortably about the capture of whales, seals, and walruses and even of the “cutting in” of the whales and boiling of their blubber. Her handwriting is very legible, with some amusing punctuation gaffes and a few spelling errors. Adeline’s formal education may have ended in 8th grade just before she boarded the Fleetwing, though she does write about continuing her lessons on board and making time for them along with her other activities. Overall, she offers an informative account of daily life on board the Fleetwing, with observations about the weather, sea creatures, birds, and the social life between voyagers on the whaleships who were sailing near them.
Everyday non-whaling activities that Adeline writes about include doing embroidery or sewing with her mother, mounting Arctic flowers (fig. 2), and taking
Figure 2. Adeline Heppingstone, framed botanical specimens, 1882. NBWM 2019.79.31. Pair of fern leaves from the Bonin Islands and a single unidentified specimen, possibly Liagora from Saipan, Ladrone Islands, 1882 (Marianas Islands). Adeline Heppingstone is said to have collected these specimens while onboard the bark Fleetwing
walks on deck when the weather and sea conditions permitted. Adeline describes the many ships nearby, and the letters and newspapers they bring to the Fleetwing.
It appears that the Fleetwing was rarely without company from other ships. These other ships’ crew members visited the Fleetwing while the captains (sometimes with their wives) joined the Heppingstones on board for dinner. When visiting, the captains would often bring gifts such as mittens, cigars, butter, nuts, flowers, and books. At one point there were 23 ships in the vicinity of the Fleetwing. On April 29th Adeline writes: “I beat Capt. Cogan and Capt. Barker playing checkers.” She also describes several visits by “Esquimaux,” Inuit or Iñupiat individuals, when the Fleetwing was at anchor. Native Alaskans looked to trade for items that whalers might have, though Adeline records only one trade for boots and ivory from them.
Weather and sea conditions dominate almost all of her journal entries and were naturally important to their lives at sea. At the extreme, on October 8th, Adeline writes: “The Weather is no better, and Very rugged. We do not know where we are and Father Stayed on deck all night, as he thought we were near land. Mother and I did not take our clothes off, we laid down on the bed.” The wind, the state of the sea and the sea ice, and how they affect her daily life and those of the crew are constants in her writing.
When winds are calm, she describes ice freezing over all the ship, making both deck walking and working conditions hazardous. She writes of days on end when the Fleetwing is trapped in the ice. While waiting for the ice to open, the ship shakes and groans so much that she can barely write. When winds are very strong, she notes sea conditions become rough, creating a dangerous situation for cutting in any whale or boiling blubber. Ultimately, strong winds and rough seas with lots of ice around make it almost impossible to sight whales or catch them.
Adeline’s encounters with sea creatures are sometimes touching but at other times quite gory. She describes seals as attractive on May 29th: “When we went on deck this evening for a walk we saw lots of Seals.
Some came close to the Ship. One dear little fellow came close alongside of us and looked up in my face once or twice. It was very small but we saw some Very large ones.” Seals were often killed on the ice floes when whales were not around. Sunday, April 30, 1882: “Our men got two or three Seals on the Ice today. They go after all they see around, as the skins make warm clothing for them.” Walrus too fall into this category. She never flinches in her writing about the crew shooting walrus and bringing them aboard. The last count of walrus shot by the Fleetwing crew comes in at over 105. Birds are a constant as well. On August 9th: “This morning a beautiful little bird came on board of us. We put him in a cage, but he only lived a few hours. I felt Very sorry for it, he was so pretty and sweet.” On October 26th: “This morning we caught an Owl. It is very pretty.” October 27th: “Our Owl is getting along nicely although he does not eat any.” October 28th: “The Owl is doing nicely. We have him tied up outside on deck. It is quite tame.” October 29th: “Our Owl got away. This morning we found him gone. We miss him very much. He was So tame and pretty.”
Adeline’s descriptions of catching whales, along with the cutting in and boiling, are by far the most gruesome, yet remarkably matter of fact: August 20th: “We lowered for a whale and had the good fortune to get him. It was a very large whale. The bone was 12 feet long and it was very fat.” On May 17th, the crew spotted a whale and her calf. Adeline writes, “We got the calf too – it was very small. We took it in on deck. We are cutting.” By May 24th she writes “This afternoon Father and Mother covered the sofa to save it from getting any oil on it.” Ultimately, the Fleetwing brought in a moderate amount of whale oil: 125 barrels of sperm oil, 1200 barrels of whale oil, and 19,000 pieces of baleen.
Adeline and her family returned to San Francisco in November 1882. On January 16th, 1890, she married Albert Matthews of Yarmouth, MA. Records indicate that Albert was a mariner. Their son John Heppingstone Matthews was born in New Bedford on May 12, 1895. By 1900, Adeline’s parents were living with Adeline, Albert, and son John on Main Street in Yarmouth. Albert passed away on October 10, 1953, at the age of 90. Adeline died on November 9, 1957,
and was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery, Yarmouth. Adeline’s daughter-in-law, Mrs. John Heppingstone Matthews, donated Adeline’s Fleetwing journal to the New Bedford Whaling Museum in 1977.
Long after Adeline’s family finished their journey, the Fleetwing, along with several other ships, was caught in a storm and ice off Point Barrow, Alaska. It wrecked on August 3, 1888.
Weather and sea conditions dominate almost all of her journal entries and were naturally important to their lives at sea. At the extreme, on October 8th, Adeline writes: “The Weather is no better, and Very rugged. We do not know where we are and Father Stayed on deck all night, as he thought we were near land. Mother and I did not take our clothes off, we laid down on the bed.” The wind, the state of the sea and the sea ice, and how they affect her daily life and those of the crew are constants in her writing.
Developing Teacher Resources
Monique Roy, Former Visitor Experience Associate
The New Bedford Whaling Museum aims to make its collections accessible for educators, researchers, and students online and in person. One way we cater to classroom use of our collections outside the museum is through the creation of teacher resources, student activities, and digitized primary sources with contextual framing. For the upcoming exhibition, The Wider World & Scrimshaw, I developed teacher resources on four Iñupiaq drawings. I designed questions to accommodate educators across diverse grade levels, ranging from kindergarten to twelfth grade. These resources encompass instructional worksheets and guidelines meticulously crafted to facilitate meaningful engagement and have students comprehend the information in a culturally appropriate way. By leveraging these materials, educators can foster an understanding of cultural awareness through these artworks. This activity is focused on the lives and lived experiences of Indigenous people. Guiding questions facilitate critical reflection and empathy among students.
I referenced multiple resources on content requirements for teaching and how to develop classroom resources using primary sources. I referred to the Massachusetts Content Standards Guidelines and looked up what Massachusetts requires for every grade level. Then, I devised questions according to each standard. Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a method of teaching that relies on observation over content knowledge and open-ended questions, helped me formulate open-ended questions about the drawings. By referring to the VTS guidelines, along with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework and Content Standards, I chose a drawing of walruses on ice floes (fig. 1) and a drawing of a whale hunt scene (fig. 2).
One significant challenge, aside from creating grade appropriate questions for the worksheets, was the cultural sensitivity required when dealing with Indigenous experiences and histories. I needed to use the correct terminology and be respectful of Iñupiaq culture. It is essential to avoid perpetuating stereotypes associated with these communities in educational resources. Through research, I was able to devise culturally appropriate worksheets following a template and designed in Canva. These worksheets contain a brief background paragraph, vocabulary, questions for thought, an image of the drawing, and additional resources.
The collection itself leaves much to wonder about. Who made these drawings and what did they aim to record? We know that the drawings were accessioned by the museum in 1914. They were collected by whaling captain Horace P. Smith (1854-1913) and his wife Marian Shaw Smith, probably while they were at Port Clarence, Alaska. Scholar Elizabeth Hutchinson has written about a similar group of ten drawings in the Columbia University fine arts library.1 Created by students of Tom and Ellen Lopp, who staffed a mission school on the Seward Peninsula in the 1890s, these drawings show how Iñupiat children were trained in picture-making. As Hutchinson contends, mission schools worked to assimilate Iñupiat children and youth, and the drawings were used as evidence of their success. But the pictures have more complex meanings. They also indicate individual points-of-view and cultural survival.
1 Elizabeth Hutchinson, et. al., “Messages across time and space: Inupiat Drawings from the 1890s at Columbia University,” https:// edblogs.columbia.edu/AHISG4862_001_2015_1/
These themes are explored in the worksheets, and in the corresponding exhibition, The Wider World & Scrimshaw, which opens June 14-November 11, 2024, at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The teacher resources for the exhibition will be available online and free to download.
Figure 1. Iñupiaq maker once known (Inuit nunaat), possibly Port Clarence Mission School, Walruses, ca. 1890. Pencil and ink on paper, 3 1/2 x 7 7/8 in., New Bedford Whaling Museum, 1914.35.14.
Figure 2. Iñupiaq maker once known (Inuit nunaat), possibly Port Clarence Mission School, Whale Hunt, ca. 1890. Pencil and ink on paper, 3 1/2 x 7 7/8 in., New Bedford Whaling Museum, 1914.35.13.
Animal Issues
Museum Artifacts Support Genetic Research in Sawfishes
Robert Rocha, Associate Curator of Science and Research, and Dr. Nicole Phillips, Associate Professor at University of Southern Mississippi
The collections of the New Bedford Whaling Museum have attracted artists, authors, genealogists, and other researchers from around the globe. Our collections, including primary source documents, scrimshaw, historical artifacts, photographs, whaling implements, and other objects, have answered questions, enhanced scholarship, and added visual context to publications.
Over the past few years, objects from our natural history collections have served as a source of information for current research. Baleen plates helped with understanding microplastic retention by filter feeding whales, and have been investigated for hormone levels. Vertebrae have been measured for a study to determine forces created by whales as they swim. The numerous audio files in the William A. Watkins Collection of Marine Mammal Sound Recordings are being used globally in a variety of scientific research projects.
Two years ago, three rostra (saws) from three species of sawfish were sampled to assist in an ongoing project at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). The Museum responded to an online story about this project and then received a sampling kit in the mail. In April 2022, we took samples from three unidentified sawfish teeth (fig. 1) and shipped them to USM. Their staff identified the species origin for each as a knifetooth (Anoxypristis cuspidata), smalltooth (Pristis pectinata), and largetooth sawfish (Pristis pristis). This new detail was added to the
object records in our collections database.
Sawfish and cetaceans may not seem to have much in common. Unfortunately, all five species of sawfish and more than a dozen species of cetacean are listed as threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. More pointedly, all five sawfish species are considered Critically Endangered, as are four species of cetacean.
Human activities have led to declining populations and degradation of habitats for many marine species. Species that have undergone such drastic declines are at risk of having reduced levels of genetic diversity, limiting their long-term survival potential. The most direct way to assess whether a species has a lot of genetic diversity is to compare the levels of genetic diversity in populations today to those in historic populations. For many Critically Endangered species, this is an impossible task. But for sawfishes, historic dried rostra held in public collections, such as the New Bedford Whaling Museum, provide an avenue to study historic populations. Through the DNA that remains in the tissues of sawfish saws, researchers Dr. Nicole Phillips (Associate Professor) and Annmarie Fearing (PhD student) are able to provide a snapshot of the genetic health of sawfishes before they were heavily exploited. This gives researchers much needed, and often absent, baseline data to draw comparisons with populations today.
Preliminary data for the largetooth sawfish suggest that populations historically had high levels of genetic diversity, and a substantial loss of global diversity likely occurred during the range declines that restricted viable populations to northern Australia. Within Australia, however, largetooth sawfish populations have not experienced a decline in diversity since at least the 1960’s, with a good prognosis into the future. While promising, additional samples are currently being analyzed to see if this finding is
supported when using much older samples, some dating back as far as the late 1800s. This research will support conservation planning, with the goal of maintaining remaining genetic diversity by focusing on local conservation in key areas, such as global strongholds and genetically distinct populations.
Funding for this research was provided by the University of Southern Mississippi, Save Our Seas Foundation, and the Shark Conservation Fund.
Figure 1. Rostra from knifetooth ( Anoxypristis cuspidata), smalltooth (Pristis pectinata), and largetooth sawfish (Pristis pristis). New Bedford Whaling Museum, 00.238.17, 2001.100.2331, 1922.25, and 1904.101.5.
In the Eye of the Swordfish
By Richard Dey
… my fellow citizen of the sea, Xiphias gladius …
— Ernest Hemingway, “Cuban Fishing”
The ironed fish, entangled in line, resurfaced and turning toward the boat in blind revenge, swam dead ahead, its terrible eyes beautiful, intent.
In furious confusion, rolling and twisting and crazed, it had wound the lily line around its girth as the dart burned, deep by its brain.
Once struck, all swordfish sound and run, but how they deal with the event depends on where the dart invades and individual temperament.
If struck in the chest, by gill or heart, they can go belly-up in a flash; others flee as if in exile, then die, exhausted. Struck in the flesh, a fish, towing a window weight and flag attached to the lily line, can go for hours; others break free, the dart embedded harmlessly.
Can shock alone account for those who, like people heading for the hills, dive straight down to drive their broad bills into the mud, up to their gills?
This one that surfaced, tangled in line, charged the bow of our wooden boat and with its power boldly drove its sword, as if into a throat,
three inches deep. The tip broke off as the fish, stunned by the jolt, settled, went slack.
To land it, I looped a strap around its tail, cinching it like a sack.
Hung from a block at davit’s end, and hauled up to the rail and bled, the colors of its unscaled flesh turned silver and blue and green—and dead.
The lidless eyes, as big as baseballs, stared, unmoving and unmoved. Did it not know us—our wild need for freedom, food, and being loved?
Richard Dey (b. 1945) is an American poet who writes about New England and the West Indies. As a teenager he sailed in the Schooner Tabor Boy out of Marion, Massachusetts. After serving in the US Army as a journalist in Washington DC, he graduated from Harvard College in 1973, where he was poetry editor of The Harvard Advocate. After college Dey worked as an offshore lobsterman out of Westport Point, Massachusetts, and as a writer in the Windward Islands. During this time, he started publishing poems in Poetry, Harvard Magazine, and Sail, and articles in Harvard Magazine, Yachting, Sail and the Boston Globe, among others.
Excerpted from the biography of Richard Dey written by Leah Feldman (2013) for Williams-Mystic Searchable Sea Literature, https:// sites.williams.edu/searchablesealit/d/richard-dey/
BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW
“Hold the Line”
Courtney M. Leonard, artist, and Ymelda Rivera Laxton, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and Community Projects
Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard visited New Bedford in March of 2024 in preparation for her site-specific installation BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW, which opens at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in June 2024. Since 2014, Leonard has created different iterations of her BREACH series in communities and cultural organizations across the United States. The project investigates the multiple meanings of the word “breach” in relation to water (fig. 1), whales, the law, and Indigenous sovereignty. Woven into her work is the study of coastal communities’ relationships to water and how this connection to a place is changed or altered with eroding coastlines and environmental degradation due to extraction and pollution.
Her installation in New Bedford reflects on the Whaling Museum collection as it intersects with her personal and ancestral relationship to water and whaling (fig. 2). One specific experience relates to her time aboard the Charles W. Morgan on its’ 38th Voyage in 2014, following a five-year restoration at Mystic Seaport. Leonard was one of 85 individuals from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds invited aboard the whaleship. The select group included artists, historians, scientists, journalists, teachers,
Figure 1. Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock, b. 1980), BREACH #2 (part of a limited series started in 2015 marking the death of one whale), 2024. Ceramic sperm whale teeth and wooden pallet, courtesy of the artist. Installed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
This wallpaper was created by Courtney M. Leonard for her site-specific installation at NBWM. It combines items from the NBWM collection: a purple manganese Delftware tile showing a monster whale from the 1600s or 1700s, a Lewis Temple toggle harpoon, and vertical spans of hand-coiled rope. The manganese influenced the color palette that she chose for the gallery installation.
Figure 2. Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock, b. 1980), wallpaper design for BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
musicians, and whaling descendants.
During her visit with collections in March, Leonard shared a story about her experience aboard the Morgan and the connections she discovered between ropework on a ship and her clay work as a ceramicist (fig. 3), revealing how “holding the line” can carry multiple meanings in her life and work. What follows is an excerpt from Leonard’s story.
…When I was on the leg of the Charles W. Morgan, I had a bit of imposter syndrome because I never grew up sailing because it was an expensive thing. So I didn’t know how I fit in my presence of being on the Charles W. Morgan because most of the other voyagers were seafarers or shanty singers. I just felt like they had more seafaring knowledge than I did. But then what really struck me in the hull of the ship because it was July and there was a bad storm, so they said we weren’t going to go on the lake that day but I had already arrived.
So I said, “Is it okay if I just sleep?” So we were able to sleep. I was able to sleep in the hull that night. And when I was paying attention to the ship and I knew that they had rebuilt the Charles W. Morgan from just a quarter, if at all, of that ship, then I could see all the handwork that went into carving the woodwork. And I could see the rope. You could just see all the handwork. Then when you woke up in the morning, they were getting ready to rig the ship, and everybody, would say “Hold the line!” And they would all take their hands, and just move like that.
I knew that hand movement. I was like, “Oh, that’s coiling. I recognize that.” And so, I focused on the hands and the hand movement. And I also, because I predominantly work in clay, didn’t know what I was going to do to take back to the studio with me. So I wasn’t going to be able to do anything in clay. And I was into the physicality of the deck and hands. So I took crayons and a piece of paper
Figure 3. Courtney M. Leonard visits collections at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2024.
and I literally rubbed the deck with crayon rubbings so I could get the texture of the Charles W. Morgan. And then I took video of the handwork. And then I did a video called, I think it was Memory One and Memory Two I was thinking about epigenetic studies at the time, there was more coming out about it in 2014 when I was on the ship. About DNAcoded memory and how you can have passed down generational memory within Indigenous communities. Like, “Oh, I know that, my ancestors...” That kind of stuff…and so then I
felt more that I belonged kind of on the ship because I knew hand work. And so then, when I think about Hold the Line, I think about it for this Logbook 24 Scrimshaw series and Ramona Peter’s piece and our line to Holding the Line, and then also the line work for these, for a screen like this.
Leonard’s film and ceramic works will be on view in conversation with objects from the Museum collection in BREACH: Logbook 24 | SCRIMSHAW from June 14 to November 3, 2024, in the Center Street Gallery at the New Bedford Whaling Museum (fig. 4).
So I took crayons and a piece of paper and I literally rubbed the deck with crayon rubbings so I could get the texture of the Charles W. Morgan. And then I took video of the handwork.
Figure 4. Installation view of Courtney M. Leonard, BREACH | Logbook 24, Scrimshaw, "Hold the Line," at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, June 14-November 3, 2024.
Book Talk
Jamie L. Jones, Rendered
Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2023.
Reviewed by Martha E. Anderson
In our age of global petroleum extraction and consumption, it may seem absurd to recall that we once hunted giant fish with sticks in little wooden boats to procure oil. However, as Jamie L. Jones argues in her book, Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling, the whaling industry and the culture created around it in the 1800s was instrumental to how we have come to conceptualize fossil fuels and energy today. Jones presents whaling as crucial to the transition from organic fuel sources to inorganic fossil fuel dominance. Moreover, Jones demonstrates that, although the whaling industry declined and eventually died between the 1860’s to the 1920’s, it lives on in American culture, continuing to exert an influence on ideas about whiteness, extinction, labor, and the sea.
From Herman Melville’s famed whaling epic, MobyDick, and its subsequent revival, to obscure and long forgotten whaling sideshow attractions that captured the nautical imagination of middle America, Rendered
Obsolete draws on a wide range of material related to whaling literature and culture. Chapter one, “Built in Obsolescence,” examines Moby-Dick as a critique of energy culture. In this reading, Ishmael becomes a critic of extractive capitalism, both accounting for the growth and limitations of the venture of whaling and energy industries as a whole. Jones presents the novel as a “[meditation] on the exhaustion and obsolescence that come for all worlds built on extraction” (22). Chapter two, “The Invention of Quaintness,” covers Nantucket’s transformation from a former industrial metropolis ravished by the downfall of the whaling industry to a quaint, preppy, tourist town. In particular, Jones analyzes the connotations of the word “quaint” and how the term has come to symbolize a “recharge” for urban workers while demeaning laborers that were made redundant by the emergence of fossil fuels. In the third chapter, “Pioneer Inland Whaling,” Jones tells the story of two artifacts of whaling culture, a rotting whale and a whaling ship, and their journeys to the American Midwest. While humorously outrageous at times, these tales examine the exaggerated endpoint of oceanic extraction and how the public came to view petroleum consumption as cleaner than the violent and archaic practice of whale hunting.
Jones travels back to New Bedford in chapter four, “Extinction Burst,” where she examines nostalgiabased memorialization and preservation in the former whaling capital of the world. However, Jones uncovers the dark side of nostalgia, as it becomes a tool for White supremacy. She asserts that the commemoration projects of so-called “Yankee Whaling” erased the presence of nonwhite whalers and laborers and elided the relationship between whaling and imperialism. Jones also brings this phenomenon into a modern context, as she examines the resurgence of this brand of energy nostalgia as it relates to the obsolescence of “clean coal” in our current political moment. The final chapter of the book, entitled “Nostalgia for the Wooden World,” delves into the Melville Revival of the 1920’s and analyzes how Moby-Dick’s themes and relevance changed alongside the event of the whaling industry’s final death. In particular, Jones looks at Rockwell Kent’s illustrations of Moby-Dick, and his complicated usage of skeuomorphism, or the way the design of an object can perform “a nostalgic type of remediation” (167).
Rendered Obsolete is large in scope, as Jones positions the 19th-century whaling industry in the realm of the burgeoning energy humanities, a field of study that aims to analyze the ways in which energy systems shape our culture. Although the book is geared towards an academic audience, anyone interested in New England history, Melville, whaling, and the formation of New England tourism will find many points of interest in Jones’ book, which illuminates the culture of whaling in fresh and, at times, urgent terms. Although whaling seems like a distant and long forgotten industry of a bygone age, Jones reminds us the nature of energy transfer is cyclical, and that we have much to learn from our extractive oceanic past. With its detailed research and salient arguments, Rendered Obsolete not only gives readers insight into the drawn-out death of 19th-century whaling, but asks us to consider what fossil fuel obsolescence might look like in our nottoo-distant future.
Skip Finley, Whaling
Captains of Color: America’s First Meritocracy
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2020.
Reviewed by Christopher Sten, Emeritus
Professor of English, George Washington University
It’s long been known that the whaling industry, in its heyday, was eager to hire sailors of many nationalities
and races when it came to providing “muscle” for the whale hunt, a view made popular in Melville’s portrayal of the brawny “squires” Tashtego, Dagoo, and Queequeg, among other minority figures in Moby-Dick. What’s not well known is that, when opportunities presented themselves, accomplished minority whalers could work their way up the ladder of employment and become “captains of color” as well, based on outstanding prior service as boat-steerers/ harpooners or the sudden need to replace a captain who had died or become incapacitated in mid-voyage. In Whaling Captains of Color, Skip Finley looks at the lives of a wide range of minority whalers—Blacks, Native Americans, Cape Verdeans, and others—who were chosen to serve as masters of whale ships in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries based on “their ability—and production,” with little or no regard to the color of their skin. In this original, illuminating study, Finley demonstrates that minority masters so changed the notion of who qualified to captain a whale ship as to turn the job into a rare example of meritocracy--“America’s First Meritocracy,” to quote the book’s subtitle.
Finley, whose sources include archival records, published primary sources and memoirs, as well as articles and books on Black seafarers, provides sketches of 52 minority whaling captains but initially singles out a half dozen who “stand out among their peers” because of their remarkable achievements—Paul Cuffe, Sr., Thomas Wainer, Pardon C. Cook, Absalom Boston, Edward J. Pompey, and Alvan Phelps—and together constitute an “unintentional dynasty” in the early decades of American whaling. However, even in this accomplished group, the author makes it clear that one man stands out, New Bedford’s Paul Cuffe, the first whaling captain of color and the most enterprising and successful of them all. Indeed, Finley claims Cuffe became “the wealthiest Black man in the New World” while also serving as the head of an extended family of minority whaling and merchant ship captains. The son of a formerly enslaved African man and a Wampanoag woman from Aquinnah (Gay Head), Cuffe became a friend and mentor of William Rotch. Rotch was an exceptionally enterprising whaleman, Quaker abolitionist, and businessman, who helped turn New Bedford into “the whaling capital of the world.” Cuffe was a skilled navigator and shrewd businessman who
owned whale ships and trained their captains himself, including several family members and friends. When whales were scarce, he turned his ships into merchant ships and turned a profit there. Finley claims that Cuffe’s relationship with Rotch and his acceptance into the Society of Friends in Westport (near New Bedford) were instrumental in his success as a whale man and entrepreneur, for it was through his example and guidance that Cuffe acquired the Quaker values— simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship—that guided his life.
Cuffe’s example (and extensive family connections), in turn, proved useful for other aspiring Black and mixed race whalemen, including his friend and business partner, Michael Wainer (whose first wife was Cuffe’s sister), and Wainer’s sons, Thomas and Paul (Cuffe’s nephews), both of whom captained merchant and whaling ships for Cuffe and, according to Finley, embraced the “Cuffe family values.” In addition, Alvan Phelps, a free Black man who married Cuffe’s daughter and captained his whaler, and John Masten, who married Michael Wainer’s daughter and served as captain for at least part of one voyage, also gained favor. Others in this “dynasty” included Pardon C. Cook, a Black man who on his first trip replaced the captain on a year-long voyage, followed by at least six more, including one that brought in oil worth “almost $2.5 million” in today’s currency, and Peter Green, the first-known Black man to become a master following the death of his sailing master.
Finley also provides portraits of two free-born Black men from Nantucket who became whaling captains. Absalom Boston was an expert navigator who captained one of the first whalers with an all-Black crew, later invested his earnings in a Nantucket store and inn and helped to build a church and a school. Edward J. Pompey was a whale ship owner who served as master for one 1836-37 voyage, then returned to Nantucket where he opened a store and sold subscriptions for William Garrison’s The Liberator. Here, too, Finley argues that Quakers were instrumental in preparing whale men of color to participate in the whaling industry as well as in the life of their home communities. Surely it was significant too, that New Bedford and Nantucket had large populations of Quakers who were staunchly opposed to slavery.
Finley identifies several whaling captains, besides Paul Cuffe and the Wainers, who were multiracial. These included Sag Harbor brothers Ferdinand and William Garrison Lee, both Shinnecock expert harpooners who later served on American whale ships and became replacement masters. Finley maintains they initially learned about harpooning whales from their forebears but believes they may also have learned about the art of the chase through their ancestors, who were taught by Basque whalers using chalupas propelled by rowers along the Eastern seaboard in the late 1500s. Two especially successful mixed-race captains in Finley’s pantheon are Joseph Belain, who, in two voyages, brought in whale oil worth $911,850; and Amos Haskins, who served as master and owner on three voyages, and brought home almost $3 million in whale oil, before drowning. His estate included a house in New Bedford. Less successful captains like Amos Jeffers, Jr. drowned while waiting for his ship to be equipped, while William H. Haskins had two ships condemned and a third was lost at sea.
Turning to examples of whaling captains from Cabo Verde, Finley argues that “Cape Verdeans came late to whaling, and were paid less than Black and Native American whalers of similar rank.” (67) Mostly Finley describes Cape Verdeans as a source of fill-in labor for American whale ships working the Atlantic Ocean near Africa. Without a whaling tradition of their own, they were “easy targets” for exploitation—“refugees who were subjected to discrimination based on their color and their differing ways and language.”(68) Still, Theophilas M. Freitas, who was born in 1878 on the island of São Nicolau, came to the United States on a whaler at 17, then worked his way up to be master on ships sailing out of Fall River, Massachusetts. Similarly, Valentine Rosa, who was born in 1874 on Maio, was hired in Cabo Verde at 18 years old to serve on the New Bedford whale ship Platina. He, too, worked his way up to serve as a captain—four times on two ships—and oversaw the killing of more than 130 whales. Another Capo Verdean, Frank M. Lopes, was captain of the Pedro Varela three times, though just one voyage was successful. Lopes and his ship disappeared in an Atlantic hurricane in 1919. By contrast, Anthony P. Benton, also from Maio, captained whaling ships for more than two decades, and killed 45 whales worth $2.7 million in today’s currency.
Although Finley provides brief additional examples of “captains of color” in several of the remaining chapters, he shifts gears midway through the book to explore a number of related topics that help to make this a valuable, if brief, history of the US whaling industry and the challenges faced by whalers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One chapter addresses the question, “How Hard Was Whaling?” by citing several examples of “bad luck voyages” involving epidemics, desertions, racial animosity, leaking vessels, mutiny, and even cannibalism, as in the famous case of the whaleship Essex. Another chapter (“Sometimes the Whale Won”) gathers examples of whaling captains of color who were killed by whales (or, in one case, by shipmates!). Another chapter, “The Whale’s Story,” reports basic information about barrels and sperm whales, whale culture, and such mysteries as ambergris and baleen. “Whaling Versus Slavery” explores instances where whale ships were used in the lucrative slave trade and describes the consequences of the South’s “Negro Seaman Acts” requiring the arrest or detention of Black seamen and ship passengers arriving in southern ports, where it was often assumed that any Black person traveling without his “owner” was a run-away slave. Other chapters look at “Identity” and the challenges of determining the racial makeup of minority whaling captains and their crews; the assorted responsibilities of “The Whaling Captain” as businessman, manager, doctor and surgeon, judge, and father figure; and examples of minority “Innovators” (most prominently, Lewis Temple, the Black inventor of the revolutionary “Lewis Toggle” harpoon); and the special, ongoing contributions of “The Cape Verdeans” to American culture—the “only Africans who came to America by choice.” (173) There are two concluding chapters. “Whaling Moves to San Francisco” notes the shift from East to West coast for US whaling following the discovery of gold in California and petroleum in Pennsylvania, while “So Ends” briefly address the decline of the New England whaling industry in the 1850s and its legacy.
Looking Back
In this photograph (fig. 1), a man in standard diving dress looks directly at the camera. Behind him, three laborers confront the photographer. One holds a long gaff. The diver wears a winter cap, full body diving suit, and weighted boots. A rope connects him to the ship, while a white coil of hosing would likely attach to the suit and provide a steady flow of air while he was underwater. The wheel at the left of the photograph controls the manual air pump used for standard diving equipment.
Standard diving dress included a metal diving helmet and corselet or breastplate. The breastplate was bolted to a gasket on a waterproofed canvas or rubberized suit, an air hose attached to a pump on the surface,
and weights were added to the chest on the chest and shoes (fig. 2). This kind of gear was used for deep underwater work like marine salvage, civil engineering, and naval diving. During this period, navy divers began increasing the depths they could to go from about 60 feet up to 274 feet. In Swift’s undated photograph, likely taken around 1910 in the vicinity of New Bedford, MA, the diver wears a 12 bolt corselet and stares out at the viewer. The decking underneath him is visibly wet. Has he just come up from the water? What work was he doing under the sea?
Facing Page: Figure 1. Clement Nye Swift (American, 18461918), “man in a diving suit,” ca. 1910. Glass dry plate negative, New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2000.100.3303.89
Figure 2. Diver in standard diving dress at the Ožbalt hydroelectric power plant construction site, 1958. Wikimedia commons.
