[On October
18, 1851, the first edition of Herman Melville’s
epic novel Moby-Dick was
published in London (under its initial
title, The Whale). So this week
I’ve AmericanStudied Melville’s novel and other histories and stories related
to the book’s ostensible subject, the world of whaling. Leading up to this
special weekend Guest Post from a wonderful colleague at the New Bedford Whaling Museum!]
I’ll
admit, I never read Moby Dick until I started working at the museum a
little over a year ago. Before coming to the museum as the Curator of
Social History,
I was an anthropology professor who knew nothing about whales and
whaling. As with learning a language, total immersion works. I
examine every bit of whaling and seafaring history and fiction I can get
my hands on. I’ve learned the basics of whale
biology and, of course, I became (and am becoming) increasingly enamored
with the social history of whalers and a culture built on the whaling
industry. At the time the Old Dartmouth Historical Society (now the New
Bedford Whaling Museum) was established in
1903 the industry of whaling and the narrative of whaling history were
on the decline. Petroleum had been discovered as an alternative to
whale oil, whale populations were being depleted, and fewer and fewer
working class white men wanted to engage in the
dirty and dangerous work of whaling. New Bedford, the whaling capital
of the world and its wealthy whaling families steadily switched to
cotton production as their major source of income. During and briefly
after this decline, stories of whaling became somewhat
folkloric and fantastic, and devoid of the danger and brutality of the
hunt. The history and global importance of whaling and Old Dartmouth
risked being forgotten altogether. This very much troubled some of the
descendants of old whaling stock in New Bedford
and they established the Old Dartmouth Historical Society “to
create and foster an interest in the history of Old Dartmouth” (now the
City of New Bedford, Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven and Westport, MA). That
history was whaling.
Currently,
the New Bedford Whaling Museum houses all things related to the history
of whaling. When you enter the main level, large whale skeletons greet
you as
they hang from the ceiling (one of them still dripping whale oil after
decades!). The exhibits include a discussion of subsistence and
indigenous whaling among groups like the Inupiat who still engage in the
hunt (last November, I gave students from Barrow,
Alaska, an Inupiat village a tour of the museum and they recognized
family members in some of our historic photographs from the late 19th century!). We have a half-size model of the whaling vessel Lagoda, the
largest
ship model in existence, and in that same room, you can travel up to the
balcony which takes you on a whaling voyage around the world—from New
Bedford to the Azores and Cabo Verde—two locations with their own
whaling traditions and from which whaling captains
took on crew. Many from the Azores and Cabo Verde stayed in New Bedford
and established communities, making the Lusophone community the largest
immigrant community in the area. You then travel around Cape Horne and
into the Pacific. As noted in Moby Dick,
by the mid-19th century, the Pacific
became a necessary whale-hunting region. Whaling voyages now averaged
46 months! A recent exhibit of Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington’s The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round
the World captured such a voyage on a 1,275 foot painting (taller
than the Empire State Building!). One of the ports of call on the
painting is Nuku Hiva, the setting for Melville’s Typee. Although the exhibit is no longer up, The Grand Panorama
is currently visible digitally alongside the Lagoda. In the
same room, you can see all of the tools of the trade—from lances and
harpoons to try pots and strainers. You can also see the products of
the trade throughout the museum, such as whale
oil (not a pleasant smell—be forewarned!), beautiful pieces of scrimshaw
carved during all of those long, boring days at sea waiting to
encounter a whale, and strips of baleen (“fun” fact…baleen was sometimes
used to beat people—now the phrase “whaling on someone”
should make more sense…). And, of course, we have the art of Yankee
whaling. There are many more exhibits—some collaterally related to
whaling but important to Old Dartmouth History nonetheless—Thou Shalt
Knot (an exhibit on Clifford Ashely and knots), Energy
and Enterprise which captures the development of industry after whaling,
and Captain Paul Cuffe—much more than a whaler, but whaling is part of
the Paul Cuffe story. We also have The East Unlocks its Gates—the story
of Yankee trade in Asia during and after
whaling and our Manjiro exhibit, which focuses on Manjiro Nakahama who
was stranded and rescued by a whaling captain from Old Dartmouth and who
was instrumental in the story of the opening of Japan.
Since
this blog celebrates Herman Melville, it’s worth noting our biggest
event of the year—The Moby Dick Marathon. The first weekend of January
is dedicated to
the novel and includes a 25-hour reading of Moby Dick in its entirety in
which participants sign up to read sections of the book. It includes
an event where visitors can try to “Stump the [Melville] Scholars,” a
dinner, Moby Dick related artwork, and chats
and book signings. It also includes a children’s mini-marathon and a
4-hour Portuguese mini-marathon, during which an abridged version of the
novel is read in Portuguese. Please join us for the marathon—it’s an
amazing event from start to finish!
Currently, the museum is undergoing a transformation of sorts. In addition to the narrative of whaling
we’ve also begun to increasingly focus on whales
themselves—their biology, conservation, and vulnerabilities. Early next
year, we will be expanding an exhibit entitled “Whales Today” that
focuses on the vulnerabilities of whales during the heyday of whaling
that made them susceptible to hunters and how those
same vulnerabilities threaten whale populations today. Commercial
whaling, subsistence whaling, activism, and conservation are very much a
part of the narrative of whaling and whales today.
On
a personal note, in my time at the museum I’ve come to understand the
global importance of New Bedford and the whaling industry and its
relationship to my own
family. I knew my great-grandfather had come to the United States
through New Bedford from Cabo Verde in the 1920s—but he somehow ended up
in Newport, RI. New Bedford was always a peripheral (if even
remembered) part of my family’s history. Growing up I
had always heard he came over “on a banana boat,” which was a generic
term my grandmother’s and mother’s generations used to talk about the
journey from Cabo Verde to the U.S, but also a term other kids used to
tease us because we were the children of immigrants.
Because Yankee whaling had all but disappeared by that date, I assumed
he came over on a packet ship—a repurposed whaling vessel that
functioned to carry goods and people back and forth from New Bedford to
Cabo Verde. After being at the museum for four months,
I traveled to Cabo Verde for the first time (I was actually the first
person in my family to return since my great-grandfather arrived in the
U.S.) to assist the government in establishing a whaling museum on the
island of São Nicolau. When I returned, my
great aunt (grandmother’s sister) was asking about my trip and also
asked if I could try to find the name of the ship her father came in on
because she never knew. She told me all he ever said about it was that
“the only reason we [Cape Verdeans] were allowed
to stay in America is our ship was destroyed so we couldn’t go home.
Everyone scattered and found work here.” After a little bit of
searching, I found his name on the register for the bark Wanderer, which
ran aground off Cuttyhunk in 1924. This event
is often cited as the “official end of Yankee whaling.” Because it was
such a famous event—I also found his picture—a picture I had seen a
hundred times at that point, but never knew it was my own ancestor until
my aunt looked at it and said, smiling, “That
one, on the right, that’s my father.” Since that discovery, I’ve come
to think of my work at the New Bedford Whaling Museum as the descendant
of a whaling family coming full circle.
Akeia A.F. Benard, PhD
Curator of Social History
New Bedford Whaling Museum
18 Johnny Cake Hill Road
New Bedford, MA 02740
508-717-6853
[Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other whaling contexts or connections (or great museums) you’d
highlight?]
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