by Renny Stackpole

T h e W h a lin g Mu se u m

by Renny A. Stackpole

1980 MARKS THE Golden Anniversary of Nantucket's Whaling Museum. Founded through the efforts and vision of William F. Macy, President of the Nantucket Historical Association from 1923-1935, the exhibit has come to represent one of the finest collections of whaling materials in the world.

Macy himself traced the evolution of the museum to his friendship with Edward F. Sanderson who maintained a summer home at Moors End (being Jared Coffin's first brick home on Nantucket). Sanderson had invested a considerable amount of money and time into a personal collection of whaling materials and at Macy's urging, offered to give it to the Historical Association, if the Council could secure a place to house the exhibit.

At the Association's Annual Meeting in 1927, William Macy stated:

"I want to pay tribute to Mr. Sanderson for his patience and forbearance in waiting two years and a half for us to take up his one year option, and for the generous terms of the final purchase."

Fortunately, at the time that the Sanderson collection became available, an invaluable site appeared on the real estate market, the former Spermaceti Candle factory of Hadwen and Barney at the head of Steamboat or New North Wharf. Built as a brick commercial whaling establishment, the building, a 40 x 90 two-story slate roof affair, was erected in 1847 by Richard Mitchell and Sons. Two years later it was sold to William Hadwen and Nathaniel Barney for $6,200. As abstracted from the Registry of Deeds in Nantucket, the sale included:

"the brick oil and candle factory, store, bleaching establishment and oil shed, and all other buildings thereon, with all the fixtures and tools belonging to the said factory".

The candle factory eventually passed into the hands of the son of Nathaniel Barney. Joseph Barney used the structure as his office and storage space when he was the Agent from Nantucket for the Steamship Company.

£ <3

3 -3

1 1 53 §

5 a, <u =5 5 <o .a. 3 c

153 3 o •~ •*- aj Vj « "3 £• ~ ^ v>

c KJ $ £ S -5 .c .3 e

I£ t r'S* CO ^ «->

"q .c

3 V. Vj 'c ~o r*2

8 HISTORIC NANTUCKET

Joseph Barney. In 1923 it was purchased by Herbert G. Worth, Byron E. Pease, and Harry A. Tobey, and subsequently sold again two years later to Henry P. Schauffler. Finally, in 1929, the Historical Association acquired the present Whaling Museum. The terms were especially reasonable, and Mr. Schauffler was elected a Vice President of the Association that same year.

Being one of less than one-half dozen buildings left from the whaling era, the Whaling Museum boasts the only remaining beam press constructed of oaken timbers. Throughout the years, this important exhibit has been nurtured by the constant guidance of persons who were willing to follow the lead of the first Curator, George A. Grant.

The collection of whaling gear, incorporated in the original exhibits of the Museum, was acquired on equally generous terms from Edward F. Sanderson, as previously noted.

It was George Grant, the son of Captain Charles Grant, and himself a veteran of whaling, who set up the wonderful array of whaling gear in Sanderson Hall. As a centerpiece, a Beetle built whaleboat attracts the visitor. This boat was recently featured in Willits D. Ansel's definitive study The Whaleboat. As Ansel relates, "the boat has seen considerable service and has shipboard patches and repairs".

Captain Grant was a Curator who often was asked to expound about his career as a whaleman. Historian Edouard A. Stackpole remembers one occasion when Grant was asked to recreate the whaleman's cry of "Thar Blows", from the masthead. The elderly gentleman let out such an eerie c.iid boisterous bellow that one woman in the audience slumped in her seat nearly in a faint.

Of the sixty thousand visitors who annually visit the Museum, few fail to wonder at the seventeen and one half foot lower jaw of the sperm whale. Brought home by Captain William Cash on the Nantucket whaleship Islander, in 1863, this came from a whale 89 feet long.

Gazing about the room, many visitors who first came to the Museum as small children delight in relating how they once sat in the barrel-shaped gamming chair or tried to turn the "shin cracker" or "deck chaser" wheel mounted on a tiller. Others remember peeking into the try pots.

Harpoons from every era of whaling are exhibited on the walls: lances, single flue irons, toggle irons, bomb guns, blubber spades and various implements for "cutting in". All the peculiar items specifically hand-tooled for the whaling trade are carefully identified for the visitor.

THE WHALING MUSEUM

9

Perhaps the. most exciting new addition to the Museum was presented to the Association ten years ago by the Nantucket Historical Trust. The Whale Room, which houses the skeleton of a 44 foot finback whale washed up on Dionis beach in 1967, was expertly re-assembled for this special exhibit by Andrew Konnerth of the Woods Hole Oceanographic staff. This exhibit now serves as a monument to what Historian Edouard A. Stackpole calls the early whaling industry.

"Like the whale of old, this finback whale came to these shores and became stranded, as if to symbolically seek us out to remind us of the humble beginnings of what was to become Nantucket's greatest industry".

During the past winter, a new lighting system was installed in the "Portrait Room". Here the captains, ship owners and wives are nicely displayed. Many of these portraits were executed by the well-known Nantucket artist William Swain.

Across the hall one can peruse a variety of items in the "South Seas" room. These relics, from various Polynesian, Micronesian, and Melanesian Islands, remind one of the adventures of Herman Melville after he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands in 1842. George Grant, the first Curator, was born in Samoa, sailed on his first voyage at the age of three weeks, and spent thirty-five years of his life on whalers.

Since the major logs and manuscripts, once resident in the Library of the Museum, are now safely cared for in the Peter Foulger Museum, the former library serves as a reading and browsing room.

On the ground floor of the building one still finds the replicas, in part, of the boat shop, rigger's loft, cooper's shop, and sail-maker's shop, the result of the planning of W. Ripley Nelson during his tenure as the Museum's chairman.

Of course, the fine scrimshaw exhibit remains as one of the finest single collections to be found anywhere.

In early August, the Association plans to have an open house to commemorate the first fifty years of this now venerable museum.