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Front Cover: Detail of a marbled logbook cover. Marbling was a common artistic technique that decorated books in the 1800s. Marbling is named after the rock that its patterns resemble, but it is created by swirling paint on a liquid surface and then transferring the paint to paper. Logbook of the ship Congress, of New Bedford, Mass., captained by John A. Castino, logbook kept by James H. Sherman (1864 May 31-1867 May 15), Kendall Whaling Museum Collection Transfer, KWM 55.
Back Cover: Detail, Rachel Lee, project for “Illuminating the Ocean” course at RISD. Photo by Martin Smick. See article by Martin Smick, “Illuminating the Ocean through the Arts.”
Page 1: Views of logbooks at the Digital Archivist’s scanning station and Rachel Rossi, Digital Archivist, in the process of scanning. New Bedford Whaling Museum, April 2025.
President & CEO
Amanda McMullen
Summer 2025
Managing Editor
Marina Dawn Wells
Photography
Emma Rocha
Design and Production
Editor Naomi Slipp
Brian Bierig, Graphic Designer
Pacific
Black
Foreword
We think often of our origins as the Whaling City. For decades, ships left the port of New Bedford in their search for whales. In this edition of Vistas, I was particularly struck by a hunt of a different kind: the pursuit of history.
An essay by historian Tessa Morris-Suzuki details the extraordinary story of fifteen crewmembers of the Lagoda who deserted the ship and Captain Finch off the shores of Japan in 1848. The retracing of this narrative highlights several facets and notes the meticulous records kept by the Japanese. Of the men who deserted on three small boats, eight were Hawaiians who had joined the crew a year prior in Honolulu. Morris-Suzuki observes that during the height of whaling in the mid-1800s roughly one-fifth of Hawaiian men lived outside Hawaiʻi and a significant portion of them were working on whaling ships.
After reading exceptional essays like this, one must reflect on the importance of documentation, detail, and the availability of primary sources to scholars and enthusiasts. This magnifies the work of Rachel Rossi, the Museum’s Digital Archivist, who details the advancements being made on Johnny Cake Hill to increase access to our resources. The New Bedford Whaling Museum holds the largest collection of whaling logbooks and journals in the world. More than 2,500 volumes record over 3,500 individual voyages (merchant, naval, and whaling) that stretch from 1668 to 1977. Logbooks are detailed with daily entries that include the position and course of
the vessel, the sail she was under, the wind speed and direction, any whales seen or taken, and any notable events that occurred, which range from descriptions of injury and punishments to unusual occurrences. They are a historical treasure trove. In 2024, the National Archives selected the Whaling Museum for a prestigious National Historical Publications and Records Commission award with a significant grant to support our pursuit to digitize our entire collection of logbooks.
Our commitment to an accessible and full collection is unwavering. This journal of art, history, science and culture would not be possible but for the generations who came before us and recorded their moment. That responsibility is now ours. Through this and other museum publications, and throughout our exhibitions, the Whaling Museum chronicles our past but also documents our present. Information is exchanged with record speed today. This pace coupled with an all too often careless commitment to the past is worrisome. Now more than ever, the Museum stands firm in our role to safeguard yesterday and make certain that a record of today will be available for tomorrow’s discoveries.
Amanda McMullen President & CEO New Bedford Whaling Museum
Pacific Island Whalers and the Opening of Japan
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Historian, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University
Early in June 1848, three boatloads of men found themselves adrift in the stormy seas off the island now known as Hokkaido. The fifteen men in these boats had staged a mass desertion from the New England whaleship Lagoda, escaping what they saw as harsh treatment by the captain, James Finch. They had probably hoped to reach land quickly or to be picked up by one of the numerous other whaling vessels in the area, for they had taken only four days’ supply of food with them; but by
now they had been afloat for days. They had very little notion of where they were, and no idea what awaited them if they did make landfall safely.1
At that time, Japan was a “closed country,” determined to keep out disruptive foreign influences. Although a small number of officially-sanctioned contacts with
1 Boston Cultivator, 20 January 1849, 7; also Shunzo Sakamaki, Japan and the United States 1790‒1853 (Tokyo: The Asiatic Society of Japan, 1939): 50‒59.
Figure 1. Arthur Moniz (b. 1945), Bark Lagoda, 1990. Watercolor, 30 x 40 in. NBWM 1991.44. Since 1916, the half-scale model of the Lagoda has been a spectacle at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. In the 1800s, the real ship sailed around the world.
the Dutch, Chinese, and Koreans were permitted through the port of Nagasaki and the island of Tsushima, any other ship arriving on Japanese shores would be driven away—by force if necessary.
U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853 was soon to be celebrated as the dramatic moment which marked the “opening of Japan,” but in fact a number of other uninvited outsiders had already set foot on Japanese shores before the coming of Perry—and the majority of them were (like the Lagoda deserters) whalers.
The harsh experiences of these stranded whalers at the hands of Japanese authorities provided a key motive behind Perry’s mission to force open the doors of Japan, and the first stated aim of the treaty which he negotiated with Japan was to ensure humane treatment for shipwrecked “citizens of this country.”2 Although the whalers who landed on Japanese shores before the coming of Perry generally arrived in American or European vessels, a substantial
2 See Robert S. Gallagher, “Castaways on Forbidden Shores,” in American Heritage 19, no. 4 (June 1968): 34‒37.
proportion of them were neither American nor European citizens, but rather Pacific Islanders.
Of the fifteen men in the boats adrift off Hokkaido in June 1848, eight were Hawaiians who had been recruited when the Lagoda had called at Honolulu earlier that year. Another, John Waters, was of mixed Hawaiian and American heritage and was described in the English-language Hawaiian press as a “respectable native of these islands.”3 He had been sent to the US as a youth to be trained as a seaman, and was working as second mate on the Lagoda at the time when he deserted.4
Their story is part of a much wider, but often overlooked, history of the role of Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders in forging transoceanic links
3 Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu, 15 January 1859), 2.
4 Executive Documents Printed by Order of the Senate of the United States, First Session, Thirty-Second Congress, Washington DC, 1852, section 59, 23‒24; also “Matsumae Hyōryū Ikokusen Gokyūsho,” in Kōka Zakki 113, Japanese National Archives Digital Archive, image 703334, Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu, 15 January 1859), 2; The Polynesian (Honolulu, 29 September 1849).
Figure 2. "Whaleboat approaching Bonin Island - Boat Passing Through the Breakers", from T. Beale, The Natural History of the Sperm Whale (London, UK: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1835). Image courtesy of New Bedford Whaling Museum.
in the nineteenth century. At the time of the Lagoda desertion, around one fifth of all Hawaiian men between the ages of fifteen and thirty were living outside Hawaiʻi, a large number working as the crews of whaling ships that travelled as far south as Chile and Australia and as far north as the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean.5
To the southeast of Japan, a little colony of Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders had already settled in the Bonins (now known as Ogasawara). These islands had been sighted by Portuguese seamen as far back as 1543, and had been known to Japanese authorities since at least 1670, but they remained unoccupied until the early nineteenth century. In 1830 a small band of twenty adventurers arrived from Honolulu and set up a colony on the largest of the Bonins. Although the best known of these colonists were two New Englanders, a Briton, and an Italian, the other sixteen were Pacific Islanders—mostly Hawaiian. It was they who cultivated new crops on the island and did most of the work of building a harbour settlement, Port Lloyd, which soon became a magnet for whaling ships cruising the wide and stormy stretch of sea called the “Japan Grounds.”6
Between 1830 and 1862, when the Bonins were formally claimed by Japan, the islands were occupied by a floating population including both the original settlers and short-term sojourners. Many of them were from Hawaiʻi, arrived on whale ships and stayed due to the island’s balmy climate. A visitor to the islands in 1851 found a settled population of thirty people, originating from Hawaiʻi, the Marquesas, the U.S., Tahiti, and Cape Verde, as well as “eighteen natives of Oahu who have run away from ships and will leave the Islands again at the first opportunity.”7
5 Paul Kreitman, Japan’s Ocean Borderlands: Nature and Sovereignty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 27; see also David A, Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships (Oxford, UK: Abingdon, Taylor and Francis, 1997).
6 Lionel B. Cholmondeley, The History of the Bonin Islands from the Year 1827 to the Year 1876 (London: Constable and Co., 1915) and David Chapman, The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present: Narrating Japanese Nationality (Lanham NJ: Lexington Books, 2016).
7 R. C. Collinson, “The Bonin Islands in 1851: Port Lloyd,” The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle, (March 1852), 137; see also the logbook of the Martha of Fairhaven, master Samuel B.
The arrival of these Pacific voyagers provided windows through which Japanese people were gradually gaining knowledge of the Pacific world beyond their shores. Japanese sailors cast away in the Bonins in 1839 even brought a vocabulary back to Japan that included dozens of Hawaiian words.8
Pacific Islander whalers cast away on Hokkaido (then known to the Japanese as Ezo) and other northern islands also became important sources of geographical and ethnographic knowledge for Japanese scholars and officials. At that time, Hokkaido was still largely inhabited by Indigenous Ainu people, whose language and culture were very different from those of Japan. The southwestern tip of the island, though, had numerous Japanese settlements, and was directly ruled by the Domain of Matsumae, which owed allegiance to the Japanese Shogunate. It was here the Lagoda deserters made landfall on June 7th, 1848.
Japanese policy was to provision any foreign ship that reached its shores, and then immediately send it on its way, but the Lagoda deserters’ small boats were barely seaworthy, so they were taken into custody by domain forces. They were confined in a makeshift lockup, while a flurry of anxious messages flew back and forth between Matsumae Domain and the Shogunal authorities. The deserters tried to win the sympathy of their captors by pretending that their whale ship had been sunk in a storm, but their treatment was made worse by the fact that three of the American whalers repeatedly tried to escape, which resulted in punishments being inflicted on the whole group.9
In August 1848, the foreign seamen were finally put on a Japanese boat which made the month-long voyage to Nagasaki, where the Dutch maintained a trading post. Here they were held in confinement for about six months, and questioned intensively (through a complex process of interpretation between English, Dutch, and Japanese) by both Japanese officials and
Meader, 1852-1852, New Bedford Whaling Museum collection, and the logbook of the Navy of New Bedford, master Andrew S. Sarvent, 1859-1864, New Bedford Whaling Museum collection.
8 Scott Kramer and Hanae Kurihama Kramer, “The Other Islands of Aloha,” The Hawaiian Journal of History 47 (2013): 1‒26.
Figure 3. Utagawa Sadahide (Japanese, 1807–1873), Portrait of a South Sea Islander, 1860. Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 10 1/4 x 14 3/4 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.49.113. This woodblock print was made in Yokohama just after its opening as a port of call for foreign ships, and reflects Japan’s gradually expanding public awareness of the Pacific Islands.
the superintendent of the Dutch community, Joseph Levyssohn.10 When foreign whalers were taken into custody in Japan, their captors generally recorded their names, ages, height, appearance and place of birth, as well as their fathers’ occupations and whether or not their parents were still alive. The Japanese also meticulously recorded all the items in the seamen’s
10 J. H. Levyssohn, Bladen over Japan (Gravenhage, Gebroeders Belinfante, 1852), 52‒55.
possession, and sometimes commissioned paintings of the foreigners.11 Their archives are therefore a mine of information on mid-nineteenth century whaling voyages.
11 For example, Hayashi Fukusai (ed. Yanai Kenji), Tsūkō Ichiran Zokushū, 4 (Tokyo, 1972): 330‒348 and 375‒384, and "Matsumae Hyōryū’," 5‒7.
Reading these records, we can observe Japanese officials struggling to decipher the complexities of the outside world. Their account of the whalers from Oahu, for example, includes the explanation:
it seems that Oahu is in the Sandwich Islands [Hawaii]. According to the map, this appears to be a territory belonging to England, or at any rate connected to it in some way. At the moment we cannot find evidence to show whether it is part of the States of America. This point must await clarification.12
The Hawaiian crew members from the Lagoda were not the only Pacific Islanders to arrive in Japan around this time. Two years earlier, the whaleship Lawrence had been wrecked off the island of Iturup in the Kuril Archipelago, where the Matsumae Domain had established fishing and trading outposts. After a brief encounter with local Ainu people, the seven surviving crew members were taken prisoner by Japanese officials and eventually brought to Nagasaki. One of them, whose name is recorded as “Tehi,” is mistakenly listed in most accounts as Canadian. The portrait of him painted for the official record by artist Yoshida Ryūzaemon is clearly labelled, not “Kanada” (Canada) but “Kanaka,” the discriminatory term used by westerners for Pacific Island peoples. Tehi is described as being “tattooed all over his body”; he may have been Māori from New Zealand or perhaps an islander from the Marquesas, since both places have rich traditions of full-body tattooing.13
The year after the Lagoda desertion, the Australian whale ship Eamont was also wrecked off the coast of Hokkaido. Two of its crew members had origins which clearly puzzled the Japanese who took them into custody. One, whose name is given as Ben Tucker, is described as coming from “Tahiti, one of the eight Sandwich Islands,” while the other, a darkskinned man nicknamed John Eamont, is even more enigmatically described as being from “Peru, a small island in Australia.”14
12 Hayashi, vol. 4, 383; it would, of course, be half a century until Hawaiʻi was formally annexed by the US.
13 See the illustration on page 36 of Gallagher, “Castaways.”
14 Hayashi, vol. 3, 1970, 170 and 208; also the illustration of ‘John Eamont’ in Noreen Jones, North to Matsumae: Australian Whalers
Although Japanese scholars were becoming familiar with the approximate location of Hawaiʻi, other Pacific Islands like Tahiti were still largely unknown, and were sometimes subsumed under the more familiar label “the Sandwich Islands.” The location of “Peru” is made clearer by an annotation in the Japanese records which reads:
On investigation we find that this island is outside of Asia and of America, and is among the islands scattered like stars in the southerly seas, which are known by the general name ‘Australia.’ It has fertile soil and many mountain peaks and thick forests in which live abundant birds.15
“Australia,” here, is used as a broad name for the Pacific islands far to the south of Japan, just as “the Sandwich Islands” could be a catch-all for the islands to the east, often Hawaiʻi. “John Eamont,” we can deduce, came from Palau, some 1400 miles north of Australia. At that time the Palau group was generally known in English as the Pellew Islands, or sometimes as the Peru Islands.
The Pacific Islander whalers held prisoner in Japan seem to have found their captivity particularly hard to endure. None of the Hawaiians from the Lagoda attempted to escape, but one (a man named Maury or Maui) died by suicide in Nagasaki, and was buried in the Dutch cemetery there. Tehi died in similarly tragic circumstances. Weakened by illness, he attempted to break out of confinement while in a state of delirium, and the rough treatment he received while being recaptured resulted in his death.16
Tales of the mistreatment of the Lagoda whalers aroused indignation in the U.S., and the naval vessel Preble was dispatched to Nagasaki to rescue them. After intense negotiations, the Preble finally sailed from Nagasaki to Hong Kong with surviving members of the Lagoda group, along with the remarkable halfChinookan explorer Ranald Macdonald (who had reached Japan on the whale ship Plymouth, and whose to Japan (Perth, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press, 2008), and Levyssohn, Bladen, 62 (this source incorrectly gives the name of the ship as ‘Edmond ’).
15 Hayashi, vol. 3, 146.
16 Levyssohn, Bladen, 47.
exploits in Japan are worthy of an adventure movie).17
Survivors from the Australian whale ship Eamont, including the Tahitian Ben Tucker and Palauan “John Eamont,” were allowed to leave Japan on a Dutch vessel which took them to Batavia (now Jakarta) in December 1850.18 While we do not know whether Tucker and Eamont ever made it home, seven of the nine Hawaiians from the Lagoda returned to Honolulu in August 1849 (one died of dysentery on the return journey).19 John Waters became captain
17 Sakamaki, 55‒59; on Ranald MacDonald, see Frederick L. Schodt, Native American in the Land of the Shogun: Ranald MacDonald and the Opening of Japan (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2003).
18 Jones, North to Matsumae, 179; Levyssohn, Bladen, 64;
19 The Polynesian (Honolulu, 29 September 1849).
of his own Honolulu-based trading vessel.20
The U.S. authorities assiduously collected testimony from the American whalers cast away in Japan. Except for a brief statement from John Waters, we have no opportunity to hear the voices of castaways from Hawaiʻi, Tahiti, Palau, and elsewhere. The fragments of their stories retrieved from the records, though, provide one small window into the dynamic role of Pacific Islanders in creating trans-oceanic links across the nineteenth-century Pacific.
20 Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu, 15 January 1859), 2.
Open Seas, Open Access: Preserving Whaling Logbooks through Digital Archives
Rachel Rossi, Digital Archivist
During the five-year maiden voyage of the whaleship Hiawatha in 1856, whaleman William R. Peckham wrote of his dreams in the margins of a journal. At 21, the ship’s cooper kept a meticulous log, recording daily entries of latitude and longitude, weather, ships seen and whales taken, as most logbooks would. Yet, scrawled in cramped handwriting beside these official entries of the voyage
are fragmented notes to himself, documenting nights—often consecutive—when Peckham “dreamt of E.” While the identity of “E” remains a mystery, it’s within this peripheral space that Peckham’s personal world begins to emerge. Whether E is a person back home, or even home itself, its subtle presence unveils one of many curious features logbooks often contain.
Figure 1. Entries from the log of William R. Peckham on the ship Hiawatha of New Bedford, captained by John Ellis (October 11, 1856 to March 15, 1861), NBWM 1229.
Logbooks and journals like Peckham’s offer a unique glimpse into the lives of those who took to the sea, speaking largely to the human experience and endurance defined by the whaling industry and the broader maritime world. Many of these records are, at first glance, tedious and may even suggest the quieter, more monotonous side of whaling life through their omissions. Behind routine entries were long, uneventful stretches spent waiting for a whale to surface; the weariness of returning to port with fewer barrels of oil than expected, hoping for better luck next time; or, as in Peckham’s case, a persistent longing—voiced through his own dreams—for home. And yet, amid this tedium, these same records recount dramatic events aboard ships—mutinies, desertions, shipwrecks, stowaways, scurvy, and lime juice made compulsory. They chronicle the gorier details of the whale hunt and harvest—from the initial chase to the process of removing blubber, a practice known as flensing, and the rendering of oil, the commodity that underpinned the industry. Taken together, each logbook, whether mundane or extraordinary, offers something valuable: they contribute to our understanding of the material realities of maritime labor, and, just as crucially, reveal how whalers imagined and recorded their place within it.
To fill those idle hours, crew members turned to creative outlets. Alongside activities such as scrimshaw, some kept a journal with sketches of ship life, hand-drawn maps, and other personal annotations ranging from poetry and prayers to recipes and scrapbooking. This variety of content underscores the individual, often intimate, nature of the records crewmates kept—documents of labor, certainly, but also of reflection, routine, and imagination—offering a human-centered perspective of their lived experiences at sea.
At the New Bedford Whaling Museum (NBWM), we house the largest and most comprehensive collection of whaling logbooks and journals in the world. Spanning over four centuries, this collection of over 2,500 volumes documents more than 3,500 individual whaling, merchant, and naval voyages from 1668 to 1977. These logbooks and journals are more than just records of sea voyages; they are
vital primary sources that capture the wide-ranging histories of the whaling industry, offering scholars and the public a view into the complexities of early American history, global maritime culture, and the intersection of industry, environment, and society.
In response to the growing demand for access, the need to preserve fragile historic materials, and as part of a broader effort to increase the visibility of museum collections, NBWM is undertaking the digitization of its logbook and journal collection. With support from the National Archives’ National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), this ambitious two-year initiative aims to digitize at least 1,200 logbooks and journals, making more than 348,000 pages available as part of the digitized collection. This effort is being carried out both in-house and in collaboration with our digitization partners at the Boston Public Library
Figure 2. Page of whale stamps from the log of Captain Warren Reed on the bark Lewis of Boston (July 8, 135 to March 17, 1837), KWM 0129.
(BPL). Together, NBWM and BPL are creating high-quality digital versions of collection items and making them publicly and freely readable online through the museum’s online collections portal and on the Internet Archive, an open-access digital library dedicated to providing universal access to all. Once logbooks are digitized, they are ready to be discovered online.
This initiative supports greater access to the collection. Many research inquiries to the museum relate to the logbook and journal collection. Until recently, however, most were available exclusively in physical form. While anyone can schedule appointments to view collections at the museum, access is limited to those able to visit the museum in person. This creates barriers for a wide range of potential users. Given the significant public interest in these records, broader access is not just a convenience but a necessity. The digitization of the collection addresses a fundamental need to meet user demand and ensure materials are readily available to a wide audience.
It also reinforces the museum’s commitment to long-term preservation—a core responsibility of collections stewardship. Over time, physical materials are vulnerable to environmental factors such as physical decay, mold, and wear from heavy handling. Digital access helps mitigate wear and degradation ensuring that these irreplaceable
artifacts are preserved in a format that will help protect them, extend their lifespan, and broaden their use to anyone, anywhere, at any time. This shift to broader access is crucial, especially as research interests surrounding whaling continue to evolve and adapt.
Logbooks and journals stay relevant due to their interdisciplinary nature: they contain unique historical, cultural, and scientific data within each volume. Literary scholars explore journals for their connections to works like Herman Melville’s MobyDick, or for the vernacular storytelling of whaling culture, providing a framework for examining how maritime labor was recorded, imagined, and ultimately transformed into literary form. Scientists study logbook entries to uncover important ecological data, including observations of marine mammal populations, wind, temperature, and weather patterns. This information is increasingly valuable to be able to study the historical atmospheric conditions of the oceans, serving as an early form of environmental documentation that links maritime history with contemporary issues. Most commonly, historians turn to the collection for insights into maritime labor and American expansion through the whaling industry, a major economic driver for the United States from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Researchers with genealogical interests find significance in what these documents reveal about the experiences of their ancestors.
Figure 3. Illustration from a log by Angles Snell on the Bark Coral of New Bedford, captained by Humphrey W. Seabury (November 16, 1842 to May 21, 1844), KWM 17.
The historical significance of these records goes far beyond their economic context. Whaling logbooks provide critical information on the complex relationships between the U.S. and other global actors, helping to contextualize the impact the industry had on the world. Each log in our collection depicts how whaling history—and US history at large—is extraordinarily multifaceted, revealing the complex social and cultural dynamics of US whaling crews, people aboard, and the communities they interacted with along the way.
The collection documents voyages to the most remote corners of the globe, sailing from the East and West coasts of the United States all the way north to the Arctic and as far south as Antarctica, often chronicling the first interactions between whalers and Indigenous communities. Not only did whalers engage with a variety of communities during their travels, but vessels themselves were made up of crews from many backgrounds and languages, with Black, Indigenous, and immigrant shipmates and captains playing key roles within the industry. As the industry grew, women were even present on voyages, as “whaling wives,” children of ship captains, or disguised crew members. Some kept journals of their own, contributing perspectives on their social roles and domestic aspects of maritime life.
In all these ways, the NBWM’s collection serves as an intersection for users engaged in various areas of
study—social history, environmental science, and literary studies alike.
Digitizing the logbook and journal collection at NBWM is a major step in the preservation of our shared history and reflects the Museum’s commitment to deepening its engagement with collections and research. Digitization opens up new possibilities for how users can engage with whaling history, offering fresh opportunities for research, learning, and collaboration. Whatever your research interest is, there’s something waiting to be discovered in these pages. What might you find in the margins?
We encourage readers to explore the digitized Logbooks and Journal Collection available on the Internet Archive and via the NBWM collections portal: https:// newbedford.emuseum.com/collections.
Figure 4. Illustration of Tristan de Achuna in the south Atlantic. Log containing two voyages: Ship Monticello of Nantucket. John M. Folger, master. William A. Folger, keeper. September 19, 1850 to September 7, 1853; Bark Sea Queen of Westport. Charles C. Mooers, captain. William A. Folger, keeper. June 18, 1869 to September 5, 1869, KWM 822.
Research and Conservation
Rice’s Whale: A Story of Species Designation Along the Gulf Coast
Tommy Tucker, Marine Scientist and Artist; Marine Fisheries Research Assistant, Center for Coastal Studies
Declared a new species in 2021, the Rice’s whale is critically endangered with a population of fewer than 100 individuals. Its recent history has been marked by human impacts ranging from habitat degradation and plastic ingestion to oil spills and ship strikes. The path to protecting the Rice’s whales must be a combination of conservation and celebration that invites everyone to care for this Gulf species.
Rice’s whales have lived in the Gulf of Mexico since before the rise of the oil industry. This begs the question: how has this species of whale lived in such an industrialized home and not been recognized as a species until now? Part of the challenge surrounding designating Rice’s whales as unique is that they have been confused for, or identified as, other species for hundreds of years.
The Gulf has two resident large whale species: Rice’s whales and sperm whales. Like other sperm
Figure 1. Tommy Tucker, Balaenoptera Linoleum print, courtesy of the artist.
whale populations across the globe, in the 1800s sperm whales in the Gulf were targeted by whalers. These whalers maintained detailed logbooks about species, location, and whether an animal had been successfully hunted. By recording what they saw, whalers also marked the presence and distribution of what they thought to be “finback” whales. On the tenth of May, 1838, the whaleship Imogene out of Provincetown recorded “plenty of finbacks” just south of Louisiana.1 However, finback whales aren’t known to spend time in Gulf waters. In 2011, researchers determined these finbacks were actually a different species: the Bryde’s whales of the Gulf of Mexico (which are now considered to be Rice’s whales).2
In addition to finbacks, Rice’s whales were also confused with Bryde’s whales until 2021. In 1965, a live baleen whale washed up on a beach in the
1 Imogene 1838. Logbook kept by Ebenezer Cook aboard the brig Imogene of Provincetown, MA; James Smalley, Master; 9 Jan. 1838 to 24 July 1838. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
2 Randall Reeves, Judith N. Lund, Tim D. Smith and Elizabeth A. Josephson, “Insights from Whaling Logbooks on Whales, Dolphins, and Whaling in the Gulf of Mexico,” Gulf of Mexico Science 29, no. 1 (2011): 41-67, https://doi.org/10.18785/goms.2901.04.
Florida panhandle. It attracted the attention of beachgoers and scientists alike. While people posed for photos atop the stranded whale, marine mammal researcher Dr. Dale Rice arrived on the scene and recorded length, sex, and species. Rice identified the near-forty-foot long male whale with a streamlined body, falcate dorsal fin, and three long ridges that rose up at the tip of its mouth and ran across the top of its head (also known as its rostrum) to its blowholes as a Bryde’s whale.3 In the decades following this stranding, marine mammal researchers studied the Bryde’s whales and the oil industry expanded in the Gulf. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill decimated the whale’s habitat, a series of research papers found that the Bryde’s whales in the Gulf were acoustically unique and genetically distinct.4 They were a unique species.
However, one piece of the puzzle was still missing:
3 Bryde’s whales are named after Johan Bryde, the Norwegian whaler who established the first whaling station in South Africa.
4 Ana Sirovic, Hannah R. Bassett, Sarah C. Johnson, Sean M. Wiggins and John A. Hildebrand, “Bryde’s Whale Calls Recorded in the Gulf of Mexico,” Marine Mammal Science 30, no. 1 (2014): 399-409; Patricia E. Rosel and Lynsey A. Wilcox, “Genetic Evidence Reveals a Unique Lineage of Bryde’s Whales in the Northern Gulf of Mexico,” Endangered Species Research 25 (2014): 19-34.
Figure 2. Tommy Tucker, Save the Rice’s Whale. Linoleum print, courtesy of the artist.
researchers needed to study the skull of an adult whale. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducts periodic vessel surveys throughout the Gulf to better understand the quantity and distribution of the species found in those waters. Over twenty different species of marine mammals live in the Gulf, and many have external features that allow researchers to recognize individuals, like a human fingerprint. Scientists can identify individual sperm whales by tail shape when they dive, and the shape of the Bryde’s whale’s dorsal fin when it surfaces to breathe.5 During a November 2018 NOAA cruise in the Gulf, marine mammal researchers took a photo of an individual Bryde’s whale. By comparing the shape of its dorsal fin (two missing pieces on the back edge of the dorsal fin) with others, researchers recognized this as Witchhazel, an adult male Bryde’s whale.
In January 2019, Witchhazel washed up dead in the Everglades. Marine mammal researchers arrived to record the length, sex, and species and perform a necropsy to determine cause of death. At the time, scientists also had no idea what these whales ate. Witchhazel represented both an opportunity to learn about the hazards these whales faced as well as which prey species are important to them. However, as the scientists cut through the whale’s three stomach chambers, they discovered the first chamber was empty. The second was also empty. The third only contained a two-and-a-half-inch piece of thin plastic. This plastic had likely lacerated Witchhazel’s stomach to the point that he had starved. Witchhazel was buried in a compost pile so his bones could be cleaned before being transported to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. There, his skull was meticulously photographed, measured, and compared to the skulls of Bryde’s whales and similar species. After comparing the skulls, researchers determined that the Bryde’s whales of the Gulf of Mexico were a unique species.6 They named the
5 Dorsal fins can be uniquely recognizable from markings such as nicks, notches, spots, and scars. Some dorsal fins are uniquely recognizable from their shape or coloration.
6 Patricia E. Rosel, Lynsey A. Wilcox, Tadasu K. Yamada and Keith D. Mullin, “A New Species of Baleen Whale (Balaenoptera) from the Gulf of Mexico, with a Review of its Geographic Distribution,” Marine Mammal Science 37 (January 2021): 577-610, https://doi. org/10.1111/mms.12776.
species the Rice’s whale, Balaenoptera ricei, after Dr. Dale Rice who responded to the 1965 stranding.
Rice’s whales are the “newest” whale species yet may already be on their way to extinction. If a marine mammal species that has lived in the Gulf for millions of years can no longer survive there, what does that say about the health of the ecosystem? The future of these unique Gulf locals is in our hands, and we need to shift our relationship from one of contamination to one of conservation (and celebration). People and organizations along the Gulf coast have rallied around the story of the Rice’s whale to celebrate the species. “Healthy Gulf” hosts an annual Gulf Coast Whale Festival to build a community of celebration around Rice’s whales, and the University of Central Florida’s Gulf Scholars Program created a podcast that takes listeners on a journey to learn about Rice’s whales. Visual artists have created comics, carved prints, and pored over illustrations that share the beauty of Rice’s whales, and musicians and composers have created music using recordings from the Gulf and of the species to connect the listener to the whales. By continuing to tell the stories of endangered species like Rice’s whales, we can invite more people into the growing community who cares for our oceans.
Figure 3. Tommy Tucker, Rice's Whale, Gulf of Mexico. Linoleum print, courtesy of the artist.
Local Connections
Black Presence & Absence in a New Bedford Interior
By Emelie Gevalt, Deputy Director and Chief Curatorial & Program Officer, American Folk Art Museum, New York, and Sadé Ayorinde, Curator, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina
This intimate watercolor from the New Bedford Whaling Museum collection (fig. 1) records the stately Union Street home of the artist’s father. Known for his jewel-like interiors, Joseph Shoemaker Russell (1795–1860) possessed a special skill for capturing the simple details of daily life, frequently featuring scenes and people from his personal experience. In a recent exhibition at the
American Folk Art Museum, Unnamed Figures: Black Presence & Absence in the Early American North, curators employed this work on loan from NBWM to refocus visitors’ attention on what might otherwise be considered a peripheral element of the scene.
Despite the composition’s centering of the dining table and seated family members, the exhibition’s
Figure 1. Joseph Shoemaker Russell (American, 1795–1860), Dining Room of Abm. Russell, New Bedford, c. 1812, c. 1848–1854. Watercolor on paper, 6 ½ x 9 in. NBWM, gift of Mrs. Edward K. Sampson, 1962.4.13.
interpretation oriented visitors’ eyes to the Black domestic servant standing in the lefthand corner of the room—a figure perhaps based on a familiar member of the household. The art of colonial to antebellum New England was often used to document and celebrate the identities of well-off Anglo-American families. In counterpoint, the American Folk Art Museum’s exhibition Unnamed Figures emphasized the power of works like this one to nonetheless prompt reflections on Black experiences in the region, which have been frequently overlooked as a site of early African American history.
Working for the Quaker Russell family in an abolitionist city, the unnamed woman in the New Bedford watercolor may have had employers who were more sympathetic than some other white New England families to the challenges of everyday life as a Black woman. However, the Russells seem to have kept no record of her identity. Could she be the unidentified young girl of color documented as living in the household in the 1820 census? Together with a second depiction of the same residence (fig. 2), these interior watercolors portray the simultaneous invisibility and visibility of Black domestic servants in nineteenth-century households. Despite the familial
atmosphere of the two scenes, the Black woman is treated as a figure apart, entirely absent from one image and standing in the corner of another, her undifferentiated complexion obscuring her individuality.
Outside the Russell house, on bustling Union Street, early nineteenth-century New Bedford was becoming a destination for free African Americans and freedom seekers from Southern states. As a center of a thriving whaling industry as well as abolitionist activism, the city offered work opportunities and a sense of community and possibility for people of color. It was also on Union Street that a young Frederick Douglass would find his first paying job on his arrival in the city in 1838. Using works like Russell’s interior to attend to Black narratives both celebrated and lesser known, the Unnamed Figures exhibition encouraged visitors to make new connections between art and history.
Read more in Gevalt and Ayorinde’s catalog Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North (New York, NY: American Folk Art Museum, 2024).
Figure 2. Joseph Shoemaker Russell (1795–1860), South Parlor of Abm. Russell, New Bedford, c. 1812, c. 1848–1854. Watercolor on paper, 6 x 9 3/8 in. NBWM, gift of Mrs. Edward K. Sampson, 1962.4.10.
Seth Russell & Sons Papers: Documenting an Early New Bedford Whaling Firm
By Michael P. Dyer, Curator of Maritime History, Mystic Seaport Museum
The ultimate disposition of Seth and Charles Russell’s business records has long challenged historians of New Bedford whaling. Seth Russell (1766-1837) and Charles Russell (17681837) were the sons of Abraham Russell (1705-1770) and Dinah Allen (1703-1784) and nephews of Joseph Russell (1719-1804) and Judith Howland (17231803). Joseph founded Bedford Village along the banks of the Acushnet River in 1765 with the intent
to build a whaling port. The family lineage dates to the 1600s in Old Dartmouth. From around 1800 until the mid-1830s, the Russell brothers (and later their sons) held interest in thirty-eight whale ships, coastal vessels, and overseas carriers in the merchant trade.1 Seth and Charles Russell’s business records
1 For an overview of the shipping interests of Seth and Charles Russell see Christina Connett, ed., A Spectacle in Motion: The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World (New Bedford,
Figure 1. View of the ship Catherine of New Bedford. Watercolor on paper, circa 1812. NBWM 1944.18.1. This ship was built to the order of Seth Russell & Co. in 1810. This rare view of a New Bedford-built ship of the early nineteenth-century is one of the few surviving pieces of documentary evidence relating to the firm. NBWM 1944.18.1.
Figure 2. Receipt for oil received from the sloop Franklin of New London, Smith, master, signed by Benjamin Russell on behalf of the firm Seth Russell & Sons, August 12, 1833. This receipt is the earliest known manuscript documenting Benjamin Russell’s merchant career. MSM Manuscript Collection 233, Records of N. &. W. W. Billings, Box 13, Folder 10, “Sales,” 1833-34.
would clarify aspects of local history and inform important aspects of the structure and organization of American whaling at the turn of the nineteenthcentury.2 These records could also illuminate the life of artist Benjamin Russell (1804-1885), who became of great interest during the exhibition of Purrington and Russell’s Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World in 2018.3 Benjamin was Seth’s son, and was involved in the family business in the 1830s. When Benjamin’s life came to the fore during this research, the absence of these records was notable.
Any business records relating to the Russell family’s activities appear to have been completely lost after the firms of both Seth Russell & Sons and Charles Russell & Sons went bankrupt during the attempted consolidation of the National Bank during the Andrew Jackson administration. Jackson’s actions sowed uncertainty in the American banking system
MA: Old Dartmouth Historical Society/New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2018): 21-24.
2 For a brief but solid overview of this history see Christine A. Arato and Patrick L. Eleey, Safely Moored at Last: Cultural Landscape Report for the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, Cultural Landscape Publication 16 (Boston, MA: National Park Service, 1998), 5-9.
3 Russell’s famous panorama is on display as part of the exhibition A Spectacle in Motion: The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum from March 2025 to March 2026.
and helped to precipitate the national Panic of 1837. It’s no coincidence that at this time nervous New Bedford merchants like Samuel Rodman, George Howland, Sr., and John Avery Parker all demanded payment of outstanding debts accrued by the brothers Russell. It may also be no coincidence that both brothers died that same year after all their assets were sold off.
For all these reasons, it was very exciting to discover a trove of outgoing business correspondence from the 1820s-30s sent from Seth Russell to Noyes Billings (1800-1865) of Stonington, Connecticut, in the collection at Mystic Seaport Museum.4
In the early 1820s, New London and Stonington merchants, particularly Thomas W. Williams (17891874), became interested in sperm whaling. Long involved in right whaling on the Brazil Banks and sealing in the Southern Ocean, many Connecticut mariners encountered Nantucketers who were also hunting seals and whales around the islands of Kerguelen (Desolation Island), the Falklands, the South Orkneys and the South Shetland Islands.
4 The letters can be found in Mystic Seaport Museum Manuscripts Collection 233, Records of N. & W. W. Billings. They consist of twenty-seven folders of material dating between 1824-1834 and covering many aspects of the trade including oil production and outfitting.
Nantucket whaling masters were the first to command sperm whalers to the Pacific. Williams owned one of these first vessels, the ship Stonington that sailed for the Japan Grounds in 1821 under the command of Nantucket captain, Isaiah Ray (1772-1861). Ray was a seasoned Nantucket sperm-whaler, freshly home from a June 1818 to June 1821 voyage to the Pacific in the ship Ganges of Nantucket. His voyage in the Stonington returned over 1200 barrels of sperm oil and the New London sperm whale fishery was under way.5
This early foray into sperm whaling presented some challenges, including finding the animals in the first place, processing them on shipboard, and the final production of a marketable product at home. New York commission merchants cautioned the fledgling New London spermaceti candle producers to only send the best products, as anything less would gain them a poor reputation.6 New London merchants like Williams then had to determine what to do with the product once it returned from sea. The letters and other papers from Seth Russell inform historians about what and how New London merchants learned as they built their business.
5 In his book For Oil and Buggy Whips, historian Bernard Colby described the growth and development of New London whaling: “[by 1837…] The city ate, drank and breathed whaling.” Colby, For Oil and Buggy Whips (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc., 1990), 9.
6 Commission merchant Henry Coit in New York advised Billings in March 1825: “Be careful about your candles. Let the first that get to market be equal to New Bedford. If not good do not send them here as the first to give them a character ought to the best.” MSM Manuscript Collection 233, Records of N. & W.W. Billings, Box 1, Folder 4.
In 1824, Thomas W. Williams’ nephew, whaling merchant Noyes Billings, contacted Seth Russell when first attempting to engage in spermaceti candle manufacturing. Russell was an old-school spermwhaler with great knowledge of the business. Billings was interested in building his own candle works in Stonington, and was negotiating the purchase of sperm oil from New Bedford merchants at the market cost. Russell chided him that he would not be able to get oil any cheaper, as oil from “the ships worked for here are owned by the manufacturers,” a piece of wisdom quintessential to the commercial strategy of Nantucket and New Bedford whaling merchants dating back to the colonial era.7 It was this very strategy that enabled the Nantucket (and later New Bedford) whaling merchant William Rotch, Sr. (1734-1828) to obtain, process, and market his sperm oil and candles in the face of stiff competition from merchants in other seaports, known as the famed “Spermaceti Trust” of the 1760s, who did not themselves possess all of the requisite skills and hardware.
Evidently, Billings and Williams took this advice to heart as New London did begin to produce candles some time in the early 1830s. Much work remains to be done on this chapter in New London’s whaling history. However, what is obvious is that the surviving papers of Seth Russell & Sons of New Bedford provide important insights into the business of whaling and the relationships between the merchants of the most successful American whaling ports.
7 MSM Manuscript coll. 233, N. & W.W. Billings Papers, box 1, folder 4, February 5, 1825.
The ultimate disposition of Seth and Charles Russell’s business records has long challenged historians of New Bedford whaling.
Figure 3. Selection of letters from Seth Russell and Sons, New Bedford, to Noyes Billings, New London, November–December 1824, concerning the market for sperm oil, head matter (spermaceti), candles, and cooperage. Mystic Seaport Museum Manuscript Collection 233, Records of N. &. W. W. Billings, Box 1, Folder 3, 1824.
1. Our Lady of the Assumption church, Washington, D.C. Procession and Retreat, 1989. Photograph courtesy of Our Lady of the Assumption Church.
Figure
Exhibition Highlight
Cape Verdean Contemporary
Morabeza: Cape Verdean Community in the SouthCoast
Upper Level Galleries
May 24, 2025 – February 24, 2026
Claridade: Cape Verdean Identity in Contemporary Art
Wattles Family Gallery
June 13, 2025 – December 7, 2025
In 2025, communities across the world are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Cape Verdean independence from Portugal. New Bedford and the greater SouthCoast area of New England are home to one of the largest and longeststanding Cape Verdean communities outside of Cabo Verde. In marking this occasion, the New Bedford Whaling Museum presents the Cape Verdean Contemporary project, which explores the Cape Verdean American and Cape Verdean experience through the lens of contemporary art and community storytelling. This includes two simultaneous exhibitions entitled Morabeza: Cape Verdean Community in the SouthCoast and Claridade: Cape Verdean Identity in Contemporary Art.
Over one hundred advisors, donors, lenders, and artists contributed to make this a true community project. Organized in partnership with the Museum’s Cape Verdean Advisory Committee, these twinned exhibitions celebrate Cape Verdean heritage, resilience, and creativity in the region and around the world and feature artwork by over a dozen Cape-Verdean descended artists and hundreds of loans of important personal and regional artifacts, photographs, and materials from dozens of community members and organizations. Don’t miss your chance to see these temporary exhibitions before they close!
Figure 2. Wanda C. Medina (b. 1956), Ancestral Flow, ca. 2016. Oil on burlap and mixed media collage, 30 x 30 in. (76.2 x 76.2 cm.) Image courtesy of artist.
Figure 3. Visitors during the exhibition opening for Claridade: Cape Verdean Identity in Contemporary Art, near artworks by Ellen Gallagher (b. 1965) and Christian Gonçalves (b.1964).
Figure 4. Visitors during the exhibition opening for Claridade: Cape Verdean Identity in Contemporary Art, near artworks by Isabel “Bela” Duarte (1940-2023), Christian Gonçalves (b.1964), and Janilda Bartolomeu (b. 1992).
A Spectacle in Motion at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum
A Spectacle in Motion: The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World
On view March 18, 2025 – March 1, 2026
Minnesota Marine Art Museum, 800 Riverview Drive, Winona, MN
Visitors to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum (MMAM) have been delighted to see the Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World, a 1,275-foot long painting owned and preserved by the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Panoramas were early “moving picture” entertainment in the 1800s that rotated on large spools. There are only eight known to survive in
American museum collections. This Grand Panorama follows a typical whaling journey out of New Bedford, and it depicts places such as the Azores, Cape Verde, Brazil, Tahiti, Hawaiʻi, and the Arctic. MMAM advances the painting every 10 to 12 days to display 40–foot sections of the people, animals, and activities that populate this unique and longest painting in the world.
Figure 1. Benjamin Russell (1804-1885) and Caleb Purrington (1812-1886), Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World [detail], 1848. Distemper on sheeting, 8 ½ x 1,275 ft. New Bedford Whaling Museum, Gift of Benjamin Cummings, 1918.27.1. Pictured on display at MMAM.
Figure 2. The Grand Panorama pictured during a scene rotation at MMAM.
Learning with Science and the Arts
Learning through Doing: Apprentices at the Marine Biological Laboratory
Erika Fernandes, Manager of Young Adult Programs
The New Bedford Whaling Museum Apprenticeship Program provides local high school students in New Bedford with access to resources and experiences that deepen community engagement, advance personal and professional development, and promote college and career success. In February of 2025 our Apprentices had the incredible opportunity to travel to Woods Hole to participate in the Marine Biological Laboratory’s (MBL) High School Science Discovery Program.
Ten Apprentices engaged in a course on the anatomy of aquatic animals over a three-day, two-night trip. We also had an Apprentice Program alumna join as our second chaperone. As part of this course students
set up their own water tanks, monitored water quality parameters, performed two dissections, and engaged with live animals. Our Apprentices viewed the MBL’s rare book collection, which includes the signature of Charles Darwin and a workbook by Isaac Newton printed during his lifetime. They learned about the amazing scientists who have worked at MBL since its opening in 1888, including Cornelia Clapp, one of the first American women to have been granted a Ph.D. in the sciences; Thomas Hunt Morgan, a geneticist whose Nobel medal Apprentices held in their hands; and Ernest Everett Just, the first African American scientist to work at MBL, beginning in 1909 and who pioneered the study of cells.
Figure 1. NBWM Apprentices and an alum and staff member participating in the Marine Biological Lab’s High School Science Discovery Program.
As Manager of Young Adult Programs at the Museum, witnessing the Apprentices engage in active scientific research at such a vital local institution—among scientists they can see themselves represented by— was genuinely awe-inspiring. The Marine Biological Lab provided this experience for ten of our high schoolers as an in-kind donation. The experience has had and will continue to have impacts on our Apprentices in the present and future tenses.
Don’t just take my word on this incredible experience. Read our Apprentices’ own words below:
“I loved getting to hold the horseshoe crabs. I’ve never been up close to one before, and it was such a weird, interesting, sensory experience. By the end of our horseshoe crab session, I found them cute. This was a really neat experience.”
“My absolute favorite moments from the MBL trip were the dissections. We first did a fish dissection with a fish species called a scup. We also did a cuttlefish, which was neat because we have helped out with squid dissections at the Something Fishy camp in New Bedford. We could see how their bodies were similar and different to squid! I was really, really interested in the dissections, more than anything else we did on the trip! I was so fascinated and loved seeing how the animal’s body parts worked. I told the course instructor that I want to find a way to do something like this for the rest of my life—it is just so COOL! She and I actually spoke
about the different jobs that could include dissection and body systems exploration. I really think this changed my life.”
“Every morning was full of different smells, like salty and fishy, and different textures, like squishy. Observing animals I didn’t know existed was pretty crazy. We had a brittle sea star and an animal called a sea squirt in our tank. It was wild getting to learn about their nervous systems and getting to observe their behaviors.”
“My favorite parts of the trip were using the high-quality microscopes and the animal body diagrams. My career plan is to become a medical illustrator, and I got to speak directly with our instructor about how that work is used in science at places like the MBL.”
“I loved the chance to stay in a dorm room. My friend and I shared a room, we all got together to have a movie night on our second night there… it felt like what I imagine college will feel like.”
“I truly loved looking at the artwork in the MBL’s rare books library. We have talked about primary sources at the Whaling Museum, and these primary sources had beautiful, hand-painted artwork.”
“As an Apprentice alumni, I am just so grateful that we all got to experience this program together. What a special opportunity.”
Figure 2. NBWM Apprentices participating in the Marine Biological Lab’s High School Science Discovery Program.
Figure 3. NBWM Apprentices participating in the Marine Biological Lab’s High School Science Discovery Program.
Magic Fabric: The Bridge between Sailors at Sea and Wives at Home
Lauren Wessel, Undergraduate student, Northern Kentucky University
Undergraduate college student Lauren Wessel crafted a unique blanket, inspired by the women in whaling communities, in the course “Moby-Dick and the Arts in the 21st Century” with Professor Robert Wallace at Northern Kentucky University.
In academic discussions regarding whaling, Herman Melville, and maritime culture, I have found there is a focus on the experiences of the men who were directly involved in this lucrative business. Meanwhile, we often fail to mention the individuals whose absence would lead to the downfall of whaling: the sailors’ wives and mothers who
remained on land. While the sacrifice and strength of the whalers’ decision to leave their families and risk their lives is celebrated, the equal, if not greater, sacrifice of whalers’ wives is undervalued.
According to historian Lisa Norling in her book Captain Ahab had a Wife, the shift from Quakerism to Victorian domesticity transformed the way sailors’ wives were seen and expected to act.1 Instead of being recognized for their strength and hard work as in the 1700s, sea wives in the 1800s were seen as
1 Lisa Norling, Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women & the Whalefishery, 1720-1870 (University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
Figure 1. The skin layer of The Magic Fabric is made of a thin gray yarn knit with a rib stitch. Photo by the author.
frail and solely reliant on their husbands. On the contrary, women were vital for the success of families in the absence of their husbands. Wives packed their husbands’ clothes and bedding and made comfort items. While sailors were at sea, wives managed the family’s income, maintained social relations, and when necessary, supplemented the family income with sewing or farming. On top of that, these women faced loneliness and a lack of recognition. Often, they faced the fear of the unknown as well.
In Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick, there are very few mentions of women. Yet the few moments dedicated to the whaling wives are the most poignant scenes. This inspired me to craft a blanket to honor these unremembered women, both real and fictional. During this process, I considered women’s lived experiences and dove into the physical process of knitting a blanket. It was through the physicality of this project that I was able to craft a more specific story that came quite naturally.
I used details from “The Blanket” chapter of MobyDick to create a strip of skin from a presumedly deceased whale. During this chapter, Ishmael contemplates the blubber and skin of the whale, wanting to know whether the thick protective blubber or the thin and fragile outer layer is truly considered the “skin” of the whale. I assembled a thin, gray yarn using a knitting technique called a rib stitch to create the surface skin of the whale (figures 1 and 2). Melville describes the outer layer of sperm whale skin as paper thin and covered with scars from previous attacks. I represented these scars with various types of dark gray yarn. I weaved this yarn into the outer skin layer using a technique called surface crochet.
After working on this layer for approximately a month, it was complete, and it was time to begin work on the blubber layer. The blubber layer of the whale skin is the protective layer, which provides the whale with warmth in the harshest of environments. I crafted this layer using a knit stitch with off-white
Figure 2. A slightly thicker, darker gray yarn was woven into the skin layer to represent scars. The scars were woven in using surface crochet. Photo by the author.
and pale-yellow yarn (figure 3). For this layer, I used a rather chunky type of yarn to represent the blubber’s thickness and density. Once this layer was complete, I sewed them together with one side kept open to create a sleeping bag-like design.
It was during this quite long and domestic process of knitting when I was able to fully immerse myself into the experiences of the whalers’ wives. I often would think about the fear they must have felt as their husbands embarked on the life-threatening journey. I also thought about the isolation they felt as they desperately tried to cling onto hope. Most importantly, I thought about how they coped with this fear and isolation while also managing the home, including caring for children, completing domestic duties, and performing a husband’s routine tasks.
I also gathered inspiration from the magic glass trope from “The Symphony” chapter of Moby-Dick. In the novel, as Ahab is having a contemplative moment of crisis, he looks into Starbuck's eyes and says, “This is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child
in thine eye.”2 While looking into each other’s eyes, they each see the other's vulnerabilities and wishes and their own haunting desires. Starbuck reflects on the love he has for his wife and child and pleads with Ahab to relinquish his monomaniacal quest for Moby Dick so that he can return to them. We see this rare expression of Starbuck's love and appreciation for his wife, Mary, when he says, “Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father’s sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket.”3 During Starbuck’s cries, we see how desperate he is to return to Mary and his son and how haunted he is by the idea of never coming home to them—ultimately deciding that the best thing would be to return to them immediately.
Inspiration from this component of the story allowed me to explore my own speculative fiction surrounding how I imagined Starbuck’s wife. Mary
2 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 3rd Norton Critical Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017), 389.
3 Melville, 390.
Figure 3. Alternating chunky white and yellow yarn formed the blubber layer, created with a knit stitch. Photo by the author.
was a regular sailor's wife, preparing for her husband's departure for his life-threatening whaling journey. The fear and anxiety she felt for her husband's life seeped into her domestic duties. As Mary worked on knitting a blanket to keep her husband warm aboard the whaling ship, it began to resemble a strip of deceased whale skin. Her longing for her husband’s survival manifested in a blanket that represented his success in slaughtering the whale. By the end of her knitting project, the blanket had given her the strength to hold onto the hope that her husband would survive this journey. This blanket would then be given to Starbuck in the hope that her creation would transfer the ideas of luck and survival onto her husband. Mary’s vision of Starbuck’s survival was woven into the mystical fabric of the blanket, which mirrors the magic glass trope from “The Symphony.”
After many months of lamenting and maintaining her household alone, Mary used the strength she gained creating the mystical blanket to survive after Starbuck’s death.
In all, the lack of female characters and womanhood in Herman Melville’s novel inspired my inquiry into the history of maritime wives and their experiences. Based on this, a story along with a physical project emerged. While knitting a blanket that would represent the blubber and outer skin of a sperm whale, I was able to immerse myself in the experiences of maritime women and imagine the tragic story of Starbuck’s wife Mary. This project is a symbol of the hope and strength that Mary and so many real women in the past and present possess in the face of loneliness and tragedy.
Figure 4. The Magic Fabric, 53 x 36 x 1.5 in. Each layer is composed of contrasting yarns that were then sewn together to create a sleeping bag structure. This blanket was a final project for a course on Moby-Dick and the Arts and was exhibited at the NKU Honors College in May 2024.
Illuminating the Ocean through the Arts
Martin Smick, Senior Critic, Painting Department, Rhode Island School of Design
For the past decade, students from the Rhode Island School of Design have embarked on a unique journey through history and art in the Wintersession course, “Illuminating the Ocean.”
Offered in collaboration with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the class invites students to delve into the museum’s archives and create artwork inspired by their research. This dynamic partnership has fostered a wealth of imaginative responses to maritime history, culminating in an array of thoughtprovoking projects in diverse media.
In 2025, we had another inspired cohort from across RISD. One particularly striking student project
was a large fabric piece representing the head of a sea monster (figure 1). Drawing inspiration from sixteenth-century woodcuts by Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner (1516–1565), illustration student Khalan McGuire explored how early Europeans visualized whales—often as fantastical creatures based on secondhand descriptions rather than direct observation. The resulting artwork was an intricate textile rendering, bringing to life these hybridized interpretations of marine life through meticulous fabric manipulation and stitching.
Another compelling project was by student Hailey Hagen, called “Sea Monsters in Irish Folklore”
Figure 1. Khalan McGuire, project for “Illuminating the Ocean” course at RISD. Photo by Martin Smick.
(figure2). For this project, Hailey made three woodblock prints, each outlining a different sea monster in Irish folklore. The first one named the Muirdris, the second one named the Dubhar Chú, and the third one named the Cathatch. The results were rich black and white relief prints that take mythical wonders found in Irish folktales and make them relevant to a contemporary audience.
A further notable project was by student Phil Avilov, a RISD sculpture student. Phil’s project, “Striking the Whale,” (figure3) focused on the harpoon as a symbolic connection between the hunter and the whale. For this piece, Phil crafted a harpoon using
scavenged materials, emphasizing the historical and material significance of whaling tools. This project explored the tension between tradition and sustainability, highlighting the harpoon as both a functional object and a representation of human interaction and often fraught relationship with the ocean.
Student Margot Sanders created a project that combined scientific illustration with material experimentation (figure4). Margot made detailed ink drawings on acetate depicting cross-sections of a right whale’s eye, rendered in the tradition of scientific drawings. These acetate illustrations were
Figure 2. Hailey Hagen, “Sea Monsters in Irish Folklore,” project for “Illuminating the Ocean” course at RISD. Photo by Martin Smick.
Figure 3. Phil Avilov, “Striking the Whale,” project for “Illuminating the Ocean” course at RISD. Photo by Martin Smick.
then embedded in gelatin, which was designed to mimic the appearance of whale oil with its amber hue. Encased in a jar, the project served as a meditation on the intersection of scientific observation and historical whaling practices, raising questions about knowledge, exploitation, and preservation.
Illustration student Annie Ramsey (figure5) used a process called “dye sublimation” to print images of lesser-known figures in the history of whaling, such as women and people of color, onto carefully selected lace and sheer fabric. Her work aimed to bring visibility to these overlooked individuals, using the delicate and translucent materials to evoke the fragility of memory and historical narratives. The project highlighted the often-unseen labor and contributions of marginalized communities in the whaling industry.
Graphic Design student Rachel Lee (figure6) created an ink-based pattern on canvas for her
project. Inspired by imaginative elements from early nineteenth-century scientific illustration, she developed a unique design centered on the eye of a whale. This diamond-shaped pattern incorporated intricate detailing, blending historical references with a dreamlike artistic interpretation.
Illustration student Nadia Alzoubi (figure7) focused her project on documenting contemporary fishermen and harbor workers through interviews and plein-air sketches. Working in the tradition of field journalism before photography, Nadia captured their stories and experiences, using her artwork to explore the intersection of personal narrative and the working maritime environment. Her project emphasized the continuity of maritime culture, documenting a living, breathing history that remains essential to coastal communities today.
Each year, “Illuminating the Ocean” provides students with an opportunity to engage deeply with
Figure 4. Margot Sanders, project for “Illuminating the Ocean” course at RISD. Photo by Martin Smick.
Figure 5. Annie Ramsey, project for “Illuminating the Ocean” course at RISD. Photo by Martin Smick.
maritime history, reimagining it through diverse artistic mediums. The New Bedford Whaling Museum’s vast collection serves as both a resource and a catalyst for these creative explorations, fostering a dialogue between past and present. Through this ongoing collaboration, the course illuminates new perspectives on the ocean and its enduring cultural significance.
Figure 6. Rachel Lee, project for “Illuminating the Ocean” course at RISD. Photo by Martin Smick.
Figure 7. Nadia Alzoubi, project for “Illuminating the Ocean” course at RISD. Photo by Martin Smick.
Book Talk
Captain Paul Cuffe, Yeoman: A Biography
Jeffrey A. Fortin
Amherst & Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2024
Reviewed
by
Julia Carroll, Senior Researcher, Amherst College
For anyone keeping a list of remarkable people who came of age in the revolutionary-era Atlantic World, I hope you have situated Paul Cuffe somewhere near the top. If you remain unconvinced of his compelling life and legacy, consider giving the latest book about him, Captain Paul Cuffe, Yeoman: A Biography, a thorough read. Historian Jeffrey A. Fortin has written a page-turner of a history about one of America’s most ambitious, adventurous, and complicated figures, a person who is perhaps best known among historians of the Atlantic world for his support for the emigration of African Americans to Sierra Leone in the early 1800s.1 Anyone well-versed in early Black Atlantic
1 My use of the term “African American” in this essay is a repetition of its use in Fortin’s text.
literature, maritime history, or the study of race and religion in New England will already be familiar with Cuffe’s story, as will historians of abolition and the nineteenth-century colonization movement. But for those who are new to any of these topics, Fortin’s highly accessible text is rich in historical context and provides a great point of entry to someone curious to learn more about the racial and sociopolitical dynamics of the early United States.
Paul Cuffe (1759-1817) was born on the south coast of Massachusetts to a Wampanoag Quaker mother named Ruth Moses, and a formerly enslaved African man named Kofi (he later changed it to “Cuffe”) Slocum. Fortin traces Paul Cuffe’s journey from selfdescribed “musta” — an eighteenth-century term indicating mixed-race ancestry — to self-identified African, noting that while many of his relatives “chose to identify with their Native American heritage,” Cuffe asserted a Black identity early on in life (38). Following his somewhat humble beginnings as a wartime blockade runner, farmer, whaler, and ship builder, he eventually became a well-known ship captain and trader. This African American businessman sailed up and down the eastern seaboard with an all-Black crew, often into southern ports to deal in products reliant upon the labor of Africandescended people. It was an irony (and injustice) not lost on him, and Fortin explores the tension that eventually led Cuffe to experience a religious awakening, join the Westport Quaker Meeting, and turn his attention toward seeking an end to slavery.
From his business acumen to his religious beliefs, his
notoriety to his ever-expanding commercial network, Cuffe’s life story is presented by way of Fortin’s extensive archival research. The personal encounters Cuffe had with American racism are interwoven throughout, often relayed through his own words, and Fortin conveys how specific experiences may have shaped Cuffe’s resolve for promoting emigration and ending slavery altogether. Over the course of eleven succinct chapters, Fortin considers the many elements that contributed to Cuffe’s convictions driving his support for the emigration of Black people to Africa, an organized effort that later came to be known as the so-called “Back to Africa” movement. Thomas Jefferson and other former enslaversturned-emigration-advocates saw the problem of emancipated Black people as threatening, and they found a solution to this perceived threat in their removal to Africa. Fortin notes that Cuffe adopted a similar view, but with very different motives. For him, Black people freely relocating themselves to Africa presented them with an opportunity to reclaim their lives as African Americans in Africa; his was a notion rooted not in fear, but empowerment.
Cuffe made three trips to Sierra Leone: the first two in 1810 and 1811, and then a third in 1816. His initial impression of the colony, by then an ongoing work-in-progress for over two decades, convinced him that it was too disorganized, chaotic, and immoral to warrant relocating himself and his family there, which he had considered. Still, the possibility of Black people “finding freedom from racist America in West Africa trumped the potential negative impact these trailblazing African Americans may experience,” so Cuffe’s devotion to the project did not wane (135). In 1811, he co-created with other Black businessmen a group called the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone to promote trade, industry, and economic growth, and it became a hugely important Black-led organization in the colony. Fortin observes that, following Cuffe’s return to America in 1812, he “began to turn from an emigrationist to a colonizationist with a benevolent imperialistic agenda” (139). By 1815, he was actively recruiting individuals and families to voluntarily relocate. In all, just 38 people — 18 men, 20 women and children — boarded his ship for the colony, landing there in early 1816; of this group, Fortin provides us with a few profiles. He
also includes a census taken by Cuffe during one of his visits, useful to historians not only for its data points but because it illuminates “how an elite Black man envisioned differences of class within the Black Atlantic community” (94).
In Chapter Five, perhaps the book’s strongest section, Fortin summarizes Cuffe’s motives: “In Cuffe’s mind, making Sierra Leone commercially and morally successful by engaging in legitimate trade and spreading Christianity could build a strong community that would strike at the heart of the slave trade” (84). Cuffe viewed free trade as the avenue by which citizens could labor honestly, support themselves, and build an economy. He hoped to unite “oppressed free Africans, as well as those in bondage” and sought “freedom for his brethren in building a free Black nation in West Africa”; ultimately, he believed the citizens of Sierra Leone could mimic his own story of success (189, 85).
Fortin’s analysis of Cuffe is convincing and compelling. While this book could benefit from a closer engagement with West African religious history, and it is somewhat lacking in its analysis of the role played by Black Loyalists and Black Protestants in the initial founding of the Sierra Leone colonization project, it is nevertheless a remarkable work that belongs on the shelves of many.
Maritime Animals: Ships, Species, Stories
Edited by Kaori Nagai
University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2023
Reviewed by Chelsea Cohen, Ph.D.
Candidate in Anthropology, University
of Pennsylvania
The ontological turn toward oceanic thought as a mechanism to complicate the entanglements between watery worlds and the global movement of people, ideas, and materials is, by necessity, multispecies.1 Human engagement with watery spaces is often animal-driven, from coastal fishing to deep-sea whaling. Still, oceanic thinking bears a tendency for some scholars to overtly evoke what philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call a more-than-human, rhizomatic agencement, or a network-like assemblage of material and non-material things, while tacitly centering the amphibious human.2 Maritime Animals: Ships,
1 Elizabeth DeLoughrey, “The Oceanic Turn: Submarine Futures of the Anthropocene,” in The Oceanic Turn: Submarine Futures of the Anthropocene, 1st Edition (Milton Park: Routledge, 2016), 17.
2 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Bloomsbury, 2004).
Species, Stories meets the oceanic turn at its call, taking a multi-species approach that places humans, turtles, whales, and snails in true unranked, interdependent relation.
The volume, introduced by its editor Kaori Nagai as an exercise in what theorist Astrida Neimanis has called “more-than-human-hydrocommons,” foregrounds animal-centric oceanic storytelling.3 Using the ship HMS Challenger expedition as a touchstone, Nagai invites authors to explore the relationship between animal, human, ocean, ship, and movement as both action and state of being. The call is answered by a suite of scholars drawing in different disciplinary perspectives, including historians, legal scholars, environmental researchers, social scientists, librarians, and literary scholars. David Haworth and Lynette Russell begin engaging with watery human-animal relationships in Chapter 1 through a critical study of the mythologized Galápagos tortoises and the tangible environmental impact of tortoise-taking by nineteenth-century whalers in those islands. Starting with a perhaps apocryphal example of a three-hundred-year-old, one thousand pound tortoise supposedly encountered by Moby-Dick author Herman Melville during his time as a whaler, the chapter merges the mythical and the real to explore how sailors, naturalists including Charles Darwin, and modern conservationists are all involved in destroying, saving, and mythologizing these famed island inhabitants. Chapter 2 considers the role of shipworms in the construction of wooden vessels, with Derek Lee Nelson and Adam Sundberg recognizing marine borers as technological innovators of vessel form. The following two chapters both evoke maritime mobility for terrestrial animals: Nancy
Cushing’s discussion of sheep shipped from Europe to Australia in Chapter 3, and Donna Landry’s analysis of European military horses moved on ships during the long nineteenth century in Chapter 4. Each argues that the process of shipping the animals recontextualizes them, making them permanently mobile even when resettled terrestrially.
A speculative turn takes place in the volume with Anna Boswell’s reconstruction of the Aotearoa/New Zealand tuatara’s travels to museum collections in Europe.4 Boswell employs against-the-grain readings of limited archival sources and faunal collections to recreate this unexamined maritime animal migration. In Chapter 6, Nagai reframes rats as an unpleasant but necessary part of shipboard life. In an example of unfortunate co-species dependance, Nagai details an archival account of an officer on a British naval vessel being awoken by a rat licking his lips for water before pointing out that, in cases of maritime disaster, the rat in turn became valuable food for stranded sailors. Immediately following, in Chapter 7, Lea Edgar offers an opposing take on the co-construction of onboard human-animal relationships, recounting sled dogs’ lives on Royal Canadian Mounted Police vessels in the Northwest Passage. While Nagai’s rats are opportunistic stowaways that become conspicuous signalers for sailors, Edgar’s sled dogs are intentional and sometimes beloved members of the crew, outfitted with their own canvas booties and given hot servings of porridge. Jimmy Packman and Lauren Publicover use whales as a heuristic for the limitations of human understandings of maritime spaces in Chapter 8, always filtered through the socio-cultural constructs and technoscapes, or global flow and distribution of technological mechanics and information.5 Killian Quigley advances this critique of anthropocentric understandings in Chapter 9, using sponge-encrusted shipwrecks to explore the precarity between the destruction and preservation of creature, culture, and habitat. The book closes in Chapter 10 with Thom van Dooren’s speculative
4 The tuatara is a small, lizard-like reptile once widespread on Aotearoa’s main North and South Islands, but which are now mostly observed only on small, offshore islands around the North Island. However, successful efforts have been made to reintroduce the species into protected and monitored areas on the North Island.
5 Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
meditation on the non-human migration of snails between Hawaiian islands, wedding contemporary concerns over population depletion with multispecies considerations of how even slack terrestrial animals might shape their proliferation across oceanic space.
There are some areas in which Maritime Animals could expand. Increased invocation of Indigenous ontologies like those Boswell cites in Chapter 5 could help bridge the speculative gap created by traditional archival sources. Likewise, while the book is expressly oceanic, contrasting examples of freshwater mobility could further discussions about animal-water relationships. Even so, Maritime Animals is an incisive volume that seamlessly weaves method and theory to make a series of salient interventions about the more-than-human assemblage of animals at sea. Each essay is individually compelling, but the volume is smartly arranged to move through what reads as a cohesive argument for considering animals as powerful actors shaping and shaped by the maritime. At a moment when the scholarly oceanic turn is still thoroughly situated in human relationships with the sea, the authors repeatedly establish that we as a species were not the only or even the most significant agents shaping oceanic thought.
Looking Back
Salvage
Sybil F. Joslyn, PhD Candidate, Boston University
The evolution of language results from cultural, social, and ideological changes and the need to accurately describe them. Fittingly, the term “salvage” emerged Anglo-lexically in the seventeenth century primarily as a legal definition in the maritime context. Originally referring to the compensation owed to those who saved a ship or its cargo from wreck or capture, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the term broadened to include the general rescue of property from danger and the recycling or reuse of waste materials. Traditionally defined modes of salvage loomed large in the nineteenth-century maritime world, tied intimately to the rise of the private insurance industry and the codification of American salvage law. However, practices of material reuse and relic collecting joined with this conception to form a greater salvage culture in demographics ranging from the working-class in
seaside communities to wealthy patrons of the arts. Perhaps nowhere is evidence of this salvage culture, with its nuanced definitions and practices, more evident than in the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s collection of art objects and material culture.
When a wooden sailing vessel met destruction by wreck or decommission, its cargo, construction materials, decorative elements, and the ideals they symbolized were all ripe for salvage. While artists like William Bradford (1823–1892) gestured to property salvage amid the dramatics of shipwreck scenes in paintings and drawings, craftspeople and artisans working in the medium of shipwrecked timbers demonstrated the ways in which a reuse of materials can preserve memory and carry the legacy of a wrecked vessel into its afterlife. For example, William Evenden (1828–1896) constructed three
Figure 1. William Evenden (1828-1896), Resolute Desk, 1880. Oak, silver, and leather, 41 ¼ x 48 x 26 ¾ in. NBWM, Gift of Sarah Minturn Grinnell, 1983.58.1.
Resolute Desks using materials salvaged from the wreck of the HMS Resolute, one of which resides in the collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum (figure 1). The lady’s writing desk, diminutive in size and proportion, features a delicate balustrade and carved elements of a heraldic lion and fouled anchor, which gesture to its previous life as a fleet vessel of the Royal British Navy. A ship’s decorative elements, including figureheads, similarly became objects of salvage when rescued from wreck or scrap by collectors who placed them in public spaces, homes, and gardens. A figurehead attributed to William Rush (1756–1833) depicting Pocahontas (figure 2) exemplifies the impulses of such early collectors to preserve these relics for their aesthetic value and connection to nineteenth-century ideals of power, nationhood, and popular culture.
Salvage, as object, process, material, and culture, permeated the maritime world of America’s long nineteenth century; extant works preserved in collections like the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s remind us how wooden sailing vessels, in their disparate elements, were given second lives even after their destruction.
Figure 2. Attributed to William Rush (1756-1833), Pocahontas figurehead, ca. 1823. Wood, 65 in. NBWM, Kendall Whaling Museum Collection Transfer, 2001.100.2373.
