NEW BEDFORD WHALING MUSEUM

New Bedford, Massachusetts
July 2009 travels

In January 1841, a 21-year-old seaman named Herman Melville set sail aboard a whaling ship on one of the most important sea voyages in American literature.  The book MOBY DICK was inspired by that voyage, and it was NEW BEDFORD that Melville sailed from on that voyage.  This town was the Whaling Capital of the World.  The whaling industry continued growing another 15 years.  The legacy of the whaling history has been retained along with the historicity of the town itself.

New Bedford was known as the "City that Lit the World".  Whale oil lit city streets and lubricated the machines of the Industrial Revolution.  When petroleum replaced whale oil, the industry turned its attention to baleen for ladies' corsets. The story continues below with meeting the Eskimo people in Barrow Alaska.

   

In the main lobby, a spectacular and rare 66 foot long, 4 year old male BLUE WHALE named Kobo - standing for King Of the Blue Ocean (one of 500 in the North Atlantic struck by a tanker in 1998 near Nova Scotia and pushed on the bow all the way to Rhode Island); only one of THREE on display in the WORLD.  A 33 foot humpback whale with an unborn calf keeps it company in the lobby.  The website link below gives more fascinating information on the prep of the skeleton.

www.whalingmuseum.org

Sperm whale skeleton, 48 feet long; jaw alone is 12 feet long.  It would have yielded 60 barrels of oil.

Ear bone of sperm whale

Vial of krill (Euphosia superba) on L, Parasitic Isopod (whale barnacle) coronula diadema, common to baleen whales (middle)

The Eskimo people (Inupiat tribe) in Barrow Alaska have long hunted whales to use all of it as part of their culture.  (See the famous whale bone arch in Barrow above).

The New Bedford whalers had reason to be grateful to these people, as they took the whalers in, saved their lives and gave them shelter & food until spring, after their ship ran aground on Point Barrow. 

The Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow, Alaska has a world class exhibit showing their history and culture.  You can view a Virtual Tour of the Heritage Center on 

Alaska Page 2

Shaman's ceremonial ladle made of whale baleen & ivory, mid 19th century

The commercial whalers from New  Bedford, Massachusetts hunted further from home each year due to whale depletion, until Captain Thomas Roys stumbled upon the bowhead whaling grounds in Bering Strait (Alaska).  The Inupiat people were generous to strangers in need.  But as the whalers depleted the whales and walrus populations, the Inupiat began to go hungry, and therefore went to work for the whalers on the commercial ships. 

By the 1880's, the whalers began to set up semi-permanent stations in and near Barrow.  The whalers adapted the Inupiat techniques such as using Inupiat crews to set out from the ice edge in skin boats (called Umiat), but using their own innovations like bomb guns to more quickly harvest a whale.

Some commercial whalers decided to stay in the Arctic and build lives there.  Charles Brower and Fred Hopson were two whalers who married Inupiaq women and founded new dynasties in Barrow.  Their descendents continue the whaling tradition of their forefathers (both Yankee and Inupiat) to this day.  We met numerous honorable Native people with the last name of Brower in our 3 visits to Barrow.

(the largest ship model in the world, 89 feet long from flying jib boom to the end of the spanker boom), built in 1916 by New Bedford shipwrights.  It symbolizes the zenith of the American whaling industry.

SCRIMSHAW is a whaler's art of engraving and decorating sperm-whale teeth, and making things from the byproducts of whaling - baleen, whale bone, walrus tusks and whale bone ribs.  Scrimshandering or scrimshonting was a shipboard pastime during the idle hours on the whaling grounds in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  They used lampblack or colored inks and dyes to highlight the etching/engravings.  They also made hand tools, yarn winders, sewing & knitting accessories, kitchen implements such as rolling pins & pie crimpers, canes & walking sticks, jewelry boxes, chests of drawers, birdcages or inlaid furniture.

Pair of sperm whale teeth in high relief carving of a man and woman

Whale ivory "picket fence" style work basket with wood marquetry platform, 19th century

Mermaid pie crimper (jagging wheel) of sperm whale ivory, made by a crew member of the ship Europa, circa 1871-1876; other decorative pie crimpers beside it

Walrus ivory Pie crimper made by Robert Jones, afterwards captain of the bark Concordia when she was lost in the Arctic 1871.  This crimper is an example of "Neptune's Steed" (hippocanthus) - the mythical sea monster that pulls "Neptune's Car", a seagoing chariot.  It has a two tined fork and a double fluted jagging wheel with a pierced work hub that has six spokes shaped like oarlocks.

With their husbands away at sea for extended lengths of time, New Bedford's women were expected to maintain their families and the community ashore.  They relied on each other, developed an independence that was exceptional for women of the time.  While some were financially independent, others relied on families or ship owners, others earned money by sewing, taking in boarders, or operating small shops.

Scrimshaw pair of sperm whale teeth with theme of whalemen's beloved women back home, anchor between them (anchor a symbol of hope in the nautical world), circa 1830-1860

Shot flask of walrus tusk ivory, relief carved scenes of traditional Native Alaskan walrus hunt.  Note walrus head carved in the wide end.

From Pond's Inlet, Baffin Island

Azoreans have been mariners & fishers since time immemorial, involved with the great Portuguese explorations to Africa and the New World in the 16th century, and European voyages to the Brazil Banks and Atlantic whaling grounds as early as the 17th century.  There were regular and frequent calls by 19th century American whalers who recruited crews and provisions there en route to teh whaling grounds.  By the 1870's Azorean veterans of Yankee whale ships settled with their families in New England and California.  Others returned to the Islands and set up shore-based whaling on their own and a few deep-sea voyages.  Ships were modeled after Yankee prototypes, using methods and tools learned in New England ships, but with a variety of significant local adaptations.

Pair of sperm whale teeth with strong browed women, the tip of another showing a Christian cross

Cane with ivory top

Another fist carved in ivory

Pair of sperm whale teeth, likely a husband and wife

Sperm whale teeth, 1 whole (L), split (2nd from L); whale ear bone (lower R)

Walrus head mount & tusks

Mammoth tooth above, (mislabeled mastodon tooth), hippo tooth below; T-Rex tooth upper R, Megalodon tooth, lower R (mislabeled Monodon tooth); we did notify a docent at the museum of the errors.

A large display case showing scrimshawed plaques of sperm whale pan bone, rib bones, baleen and teeth, walrus ivory pie crimper, and ivory bead necklace, ivory inlaid wooden box, corset busks, also a scrimshawed ostrich egg.

A tooth in the left-hand photo shows a British flag; 3rd photo is a closer photo of the ostrich egg scrimshawed with a whaling ship (whalers would acquire these as souvenirs from African ports-of-call); Far right photo is a lightly etched sperm whale tooth showing St. Paul's Cathedral.

A raised relief ancient Pictish woman semi-nude in full battle regalia with tattoos, an exquisite braided pattern on the rope mat beneath her feet.  2nd photo is a close-up of the ivory bead necklace, inlaid ivory in the wood box, etc.

Boxes cut from whale pan (skull) bone, what a versatile material.