Scuttlebutt 2019

News • Happenings • Tales Summer 2019

Scuttlebutt noun | origin early 19th century 1. open cask of drinking water aboard a ship 2. rumor, water cooler gossip

H ighlights     

Summer Events Whales & Ales Melville turns 200!

Exhibits From Narwhals To unicorns

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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE Dear Friends, When you visit a museum, you may regard the experience simply as a fun day out. What you may not realize is how much you, your family, and your community gain from your visit. A growing body of research shows how museums have the power to profoundly shape communities as unique spaces of inspiration, learning, reflection, creativity, and a connection to the world around us:

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Residents in neighborhoods with museums are healthier, better educated, and safer.

Exposure to cultural activities and artistic experiences boosts critical thinking skills.

Children who attend a field trip to an art-based museum show an increase in empathy and tolerance.

Students who visited a museum in kindergarten had higher achievement scores in reading, math, and science in 3rd grade than children who did not.

We invite you to gain the benefits of our many museum resources.

Explore our exhibits, stay for a program, browse through the online collection, volunteer, and save the date for our October 10 benefit. Summer is also the perfect time to become a member!

We look forward to seeing you soon at the museum,

Ken Pritchard, President of the Board president@cshwhalingmuseum.org

PUBLISHED BY THE WHALING MUSEUM SOCIETY, INC 279 Main Street Cold Spring Harbor, New York (631) 367-3418 info@cshwhalingmuseum.org

MISSION

The museum engages the community in exploring our whaling heritage and its impacts to enrich and inform our lives.

SPECIAL THANKS

Town of Huntington National Maritime Heritage Foundation NYSCA | Humanities NY New York Community Bank Legislator William R. Spencer Suffolk County Dept of Economic Development & Planning

BOARD

Kenneth Pritchard, President Barney Fortunato, Jr., Vice President Jason Donatelli, Secretary Anthony Sarchiapone, Treasurer Patricia Aitken, Past President Jennifer Anderson Thomas R. Cangemi Peter Flink | Seth Hemley Judy Palumbo | Stephen Stolze

STAFF

Nomi Dayan, Executive Director Cindy Grimm, Assistant Director Katie Kelly, Business Manager Elizabeth Marriott, Collections & Exhibits Manager Liz Fusco, Education Manager Educators: Maria Fischetti, Caroline Hehir, Brenna McCormick-Thompson, Samantha Ray, Amanda Vengroff Neil Brogan, Accountant Peter Schwind, Carpenter Joan Lowenthal, Store Manager Admissions: Steve DeLeo, Angela Whiteley, Farah Rexha Education Assistants: Carl Constable Jr., Matt Fiore, Imaan Siddiqui

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summer events summer events Members enjoy HALF OFF most programs.

Join the museum and receive year-long benefits! cshwhalingmuseum.org/membership

JULY Red, White & Blue Week Monday-Sunday, July 1-7  2-4 pm

Long Island’s early whalers were feisty patriots. Create patriotic crafts at our self-serve stations. (Closed July 4)

WELCOME WEDNESDAY Wednesday, July 3  11-5pm

AUGUST After Hours Trivia Night Thursday, August 1  7-9pm Topics include art, nature, science, literature, local history, geography & famous birthdays.

movie marathon Friday, August 2  12-4pm

Pay as you wish admission.

Moby Dick @ 12pm. In the Heart of the Sea @ 2pm.

BUBBLEMANIA Saturday, July 13  12-2pm

melville's 200th b-Day Saturday, August 3  11-3pm

Did you know humpback whales use bubbles to hunt? Enjoy bubbly experiments & crafts.

shark invasion Sunday, July 21  11-2pm

It’s Shark Week and we’re celebrating this apex predator with lots of hands-on activities.

More Events Online

cshwhalingmuseum.org/calendar

You are invited to enjoy lots of family-friendly activities and crafts galore, Moby Dick readings, and live music.

WELCOME WEDNESDAY Wednesday, August 7  11-5pm Pay as you wish admission.

Mermaid Tea Party Saturday, August 17  11-2 pm

CAMP WEEKS World Adventures Camp July 8-12  9 - 1pm Early Care Available. Sail the

OCEAN SCIENCE Camp Aug 19-23, 9 - 1 pm. Early care

Superheroes Camp July 22-26  9 - 1pm Discover your own super hero

NAUTICAL journeys camp

world to different continents and discover cultures, special habitats and unusual animals tracing mariners’ global travels.

Campers investigate as they touch artifacts to explore our world, fuel their imaginations, and explore their creativity. K-5.

Early bird price until June 8.

available. Curious campers explore the incredible ocean world and meet marine critters, explore the LI Sound, have fun with hands-on experiments, games, and craft projects. Includes special trek to explore Cold Spring Harbor, fostering proactive stewards of the environment. Gr 3-5. Early bird price until Jul 19.

skills as you learn about the amazing abilities behind ocean Aug 26-30, 9 - 1 pm. Early care available. champions! Unleash your creativity and participate in a variety Step aboard and travel the seas to discover faraway ports of hands-on activities. K-5. Early bird price until June 22. and new oceans traveled by whalers. Campers enjoy activities and games in science, art, and history to build knowledge Scholarships Available of the ocean as well as maritime culture. This experience Thanks to support from the Long Island Sound Futures Fund, financial-based scholarships are available. combines the best of marine biology, maritime heritage, 3 2 It’s easy to apply: cshwhalingmuseum.org/camp and adventure! K-5. Early bird price until July 26.

14 Brewers & 1 Whaleboat: Whales, Ales & Salty Tales Saturday, June 8 • 2-6pm

By Cindy Grimm, Assistant Director What started out as a an intimate evening program has amplified into an expanded and exciting indoor & outdoor tented event.

Along with dozens of craft beer tastings, guests will enjoy musical sea shanties by Sampawam’s Creek, hourly whaleboat chats, and Ale Tales in the workshop where brewers will share some of their brewing secrets.

Participating breweries include: 1940s Brewing Company, 27A Brewing, Barrage Brewing Company, Blind Bat Brewery, Destination Unknown Brewery, Po’Boy Brewery, Oyster Bay Brewing Company, Six Harbors Brewing Company, Spider Bite Brewing Company, W.A. Meadwerks and Homebrew clubs Brewer’s East End Revival, Long Island Beer & Malt Enthusiasts, Homebrews and Handgrenades Craft Beer Club and Girls Pint Out.

smoke some of the ingredients over various woods. One of those, which I expect to have at Whales & Ales, is my Old Walt Smoked Wit (named after our own Walt Whitman). It is a Belgian inspired Wit Beer, but for this version, I smoke some of the wheat over mesquite.”

John’s Crazy Socks has signed on as the event sponsor. “We love the Whaling Museum because of the way it keeps us connected to our past and the maritime life around us,” explains co-founder Mark Cronin. “Since we have a mission to spread happiness, it wasn’t Participating Brewer Paul Dlugokencky, whose a big step to decide to sponsor the event. We Blind Bat Brewery is opening soon in want to help the Museum reach as many Centerport explains, “While I enjoy every step people as possible." of the brewing process, the smoked beers are Proceeds from the event further the even more fun — depending on the recipe, I museum’s educational programs.

TICKETS ► cshwhalingmuseum.org/ales The first 140 registrants will receive a commemorative tasting cup courtesy of our generous sponsor, Fortunato Sons Contracting.

Admission $35 • $25 Members $15 Designated Drivers • 21+ Only with ID. Door, If Available: $45

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celebrations Happy 200th Birthday, Herman Melville!

By Liz Fusco, Education Manager “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” H E R M A N M E L V I L L E

Melville’s experiences living on the islands and his five years at sea inspired him to author five books in five years. Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847) were bestsellers.

In 1841, 21-year-old Herman Melville was looking for a job. His work experience included bank clerk, teacher and land surveyor. He found himself in New Bedford, the whaling capital of The last of his the world, and landed a job on the whaleship books was Moby Acushnet.

Dick, written in 1851. Moby Dick was not well-received and was Even though the experience of being on “a a commercial and critical failure. Reviews called whale-ship was my Yale College and my it an “odd book,” “absurd,” and part of “trash Harvard,” 18 months into the voyage, Melville and 10 other crew members (of 26) jumped ship belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature.” in the Marquesas Islands to escape tough conditions and conflicts with the captain.

Moby Dick was not rediscovered until the Contrary to the rumors of these Pacific Islanders 1920’s. Today, it is considered one of the being cannibals, Melville found the inhabitants greatest American novels ever written. sophisticated and peaceful.

You Are Invited

JOIN US FOR MELVILLE-INSPIRED EVENTS FOR ADULTS & KIDS ALL WEEKEND

After Hours Trivia Night  Adults Thu, Aug 1 | 7-9pm Topics include art, nature, science, literature, local history, geography & famous birthdays. Register online.

movie marathon  Adults & Teens Fri, Aug 2 | 12-4pm Moby Dick @ 12pm. In the Heart of the Sea @ 2pm. melville's 200th b-Day  Families with Kids Sat, Aug 3 | 11-3pm You are invited to enjoy lots of family-friendly activities and crafts galore, Moby Dick readings, and live music.

Sea You There!

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From Cold Spring Harbor to San Francisco

By Elizabeth Marriott, Collections & Exhibit Coordinator One of the contributing factors to the decline of the whaling industry in the 1850’s was the California Gold Rush. So many sailors jumped ship in San Francisco that whaling captains were urged to bypass California entirely and head straight to Hawaii.

Richard Conklin, the son of Judge Richard M. Conklin, a partner in the Cold Spring Whaling Company, was one of the fortune seekers who moved from Long Island to California in 1849.

In a letter in the Whaling Museum’s archives [hc.34a], Richard Conklin writes to his brother Benjamin, relating his activities in the past few months. In the letter, Conklin describes the rapidly expanding town and that the countryside is “very Mountainous, and barren without timber except on the banks of the rivers, and in summer every thing is charcoal by the sun so that the land looks like an old w[h]eat field.”

house, all the gambling houses were situated around the square and were noble buildings built at enormous expense and added greatly to the appearance of this place yet I am not sorry they are burnt, the fire occurred the fourth and now on the 11th it is about built up again.”

The May 4th fire resulted in $4,000,000 of lost property and an ordinance that required every household to keep 6 water buckets on hand to fight future fires. Less than 1 month after Conklin’s letter, another fire broke out and caused another estimated $3,500,000 in damage after being exacerbated by a windstorm.

After the 1850 fires, the resilient city passed ordinances intended to prevent fires, chartered a volunteer fire department, and repaved the roads in brick and cobblestone rather than wood. Even so, another massive fire tore through the Plaza again, exactly a year after the one described in Between 1849 and 1851, San Francisco was Conklin’s letter. On one side of the plaza, the fire almost entirely destroyed by fire seven times. was halted not by the fire department but by the Conklin described the second fire which brick Alta California building. After the May 1851 occurred on May 4, 1850 and destroyed 3/4 of fire, San Franciscans began to rebuild, this time the city. He sketched a drawing of Portsmouth with all classes using brick rather than wood.

Square known as the Plaza (see picture) and the ►SEE MORE This letter was digitized surrounding buildings that were burnt. “I will as part of a National Maritime mark the lines heavy in the burnt district, you will Heritage Grant. It is part of over see most of the buildings burnt were those 2,000 documents and objects newly appropriated to gambling. The Empire was a large viewable online to the public. cshwhalingmuseum.org/collection and beautiful building and was under a gambling After arriving in San Francisco, Conklin worked in the mines for about a month before turning his attention to tradegoods: “I left off and thought it better to work at something else.”

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exhibits "I THINK I AM QUITE A SAILOR."

Heroines at the Helm Closes September 2019

CHARLOTTE DEHART

Make time to visit the museum’s 2018-2019 special exhibit, Heroines at the Helm, which illuminates the fascinating experiences of whaling wives who broke social bounds in a maledefined world. Contemporary artwork by female artists who challenge traditional artistic boundaries are also featured. Our thanks to Suffolk County and Humanities NY for exhibit support. Informational elements of the exhibit will remain @ cshwhalingmuseum.org/heroines.

Mary Law rence Having seen little of her husband during the first 9 years of marriage, 29year old Mary sailed with her husband and 5-year daughter, Minnie, on the Addison in 1856. Her journal reveals her deep religious trust to see the ship past danger, and at no point does she question her decision. She filled her daughter’s doll buggy with Bibles and sent her daughter to give them out to the crew. She loved watching the ocean: “It is grand beyond

anything I ever witnessed, sublimity itself.”

Marian Smith Over the course of 10 voyages, Marian was an advanced navigator, log keeper, photographer, correspondent, and business partner of the Josephine. She even taught navigation to the boatsteerer, who grew to become a captain himself. She challenged another whaling wife, Honor Earle of the Charles W. Morgan, to see whose voyage by the difficult Crozet Islands would be most successful. Marian won.

Julia Ann Shelton Julia was the talented daughter of a leading black family in San Francisco, where she met her husband, William Shorey, the only black captain on the west coast at the time. She spent her honeymoon on his next whaling voyage, and would continue to sail with her children. She poses here with her family at the turn of the century.

Caroline Mayhew Caroline of Martha’s Vineyard first sailed with her husband as a bride in 1834. When they sailed to New Zealand in 1837, the couple settled there temporarily before returning to whaling. Their 1846 voyage was fraught with hurricanes and sickness. Caroline helped care for 8 men with smallpox and navigated the ship while her husband was ill. She cared for a pet wallaby and turned a room in her house into a museum of her collected curiosities.

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Museum Acquires 4 Artifacts

By Nomi Dayan, Executive Director The Whaling Museum recently acquired four objects into its collection, one harpoon and three boat spades, dated from the 1820’s-50’s, with a curious hinged barb with excitement. He fired up maker’s mark: “J. Conklin.” Who was he? his forge again and tried his own hand copying this design (see photo).

Jedediah Conklin was born in Amagansett in 1798. His career as a blacksmith bloomed Even as Jedediah aged, he continued adapting marvelously with the golden age of whaling. In to a world where he was not needed to build the early 19th century, Sag Harbor was thriving, tools anymore — factories were taking care of and he was the mechanical backbone of it. that. He turned his attention to the next big Whaling companies not only in Sag Harbor relied on his work, but the relatively new Cold Spring Whaling Company paid him for lances, an assortment of spades, hooks, and knives.

But even with his strong trade, the world started to change. When Sag Harbor suffered an epic fire on a windy November morning in 1845, Jedediah’s house was reduced to ashes. Shortly after, gold fever swept through Long Island, and Jedediah was no exception among the Sag Harbor men whose imaginations were hit hard. He joined a group of 60 stockholders who formed the Southampton and California Mining and Trading Company and raced to California. He returned without his fantasy fortune.

Meanwhile, the whaling world had been taken by storm when Lewis Temple, a New Bedford blacksmith, improved the toggle harpoon in 1848, dramatically increasing whalers’ success at sea. This tool quickly became the standard in the industry.

Jedediah must have studied this

thing: machine and equipment repair. He branched out by owning a hotel and joined the Sag Harbor Savings Bank as trustee.

Although he had weak eyes later in life, Jedediah seemed to outlast everyone around him, with newspapers calling him a “conspicuous example of Long Island longevity.” In 1890, he found himself the oldest person in the township.

He continued to stay active. The Newton Register noted on a 10 degree March day in 1890: “Our streets were glazed with a coating of slippery ice [but] one of our vigorous old citizens was seen making two or three trips up and down one of our thoroughfares. Mr. Jedediah Conklin is 93 years old, and yet hale and hearty and active as many men at twenty his junior.”

Jedediah passed away in 1891 at 93 years old.

The bank noted he was “known and honored by us all for his personal kindness, for his unfailing zeal,” and “he was the gift of the eighteenth century to the nineteenth.” He was buried in Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor. His surviving grandchildren moved around the country, including Oregon and Minneapolis.

►Read the full article about Jedediah’s life @ cshwhalingmuseum.org/blog

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news Pilot Audio Tours Coming This Summer

What’s New at The Museum Store

The museum was awarded a Vision Grant from Humanities New York to complete phase two of its research using community input to produce an informative, engaging, and user-centered audio guide pilot for its exhibits to strengthen the visitor’s museum experience and increase engagement.

By Joan Lowenthal, Store Manager

We want your feedback! Visit the museum this summer, listen to the audio clips, and share your comments with us. Your opinions will shape the content of our final guide.

New Strategic Planning The museum’s dramatic growth over the past decade has been driven by strategic planning processes every several years. As the museum nears the completion of its 20172019 Strategic Plan, the museum was selected by the Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York (DHPSNY) to participate in a funded process to create its next 3-year plan. The final document will be a roadmap with key goals to support and strengthen the museum with milestones to gauge our success.

What’s New at the

Did you know that there was a store aboard a whaling ship? Crew members could buy a range of items from the ship store, including tobacco, boots, or clothes. The purchases were charged against his lay, or his share of the profits at the end of a long voyage. It was not unheard of for a crew member to find himself in debt at the journey’s end, requiring him to immediately sign on for the next voyage.

Luckily, you do not have to go into debt to buy very well priced items at our Museum’s Store!

For your summer reading, we recommend the Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition of Moby-Dick

by Herman Melville to commemorate Melville’s 200th birthday this summer. To accompany this book we have a wonderful illustrated edition Moby-Dick: A Picture Voyage. The editors have made this great novel more accessible by adding remarkable and authentic photographs that thoroughly portray the whaling industry and culture.  Look for an upcoming offer this summer if you purchase both books together.

The Museum also has a marvelous collection of children’s books, including several for middle school readers. Our newest book is Song for a Whale by Lynn Kelly, a beautiful story of a deaf girl’s connection to a whale whose song cannot be heard by its species and the journey she takes to help it.

Left: Staff were proud to welcome a special visitor, bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick to the museum in January.

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An Interview with

Jason Donatelli A resident of Huntington, Jason currently serves as Secretary on the museum Board of Trustees.

What do you do? I am an attorney with a practice that concentrates in field estate planning, probate and administration of estates, business and real estate transactions.

Why did you become a Trustee of the Museum? I became a Trustee to be more involved in contributing to the local community.

What is something surprising that you have learned since becoming involved?

Since becoming a Trustee I have learned a lot about how a not-for-profit organization works and operates, not only from a Trustee perspective by attending meetings or other activities but also seeing how much the Museum and its staff contributes to the community by offering programs to a broad range of persons.

Best place you have traveled to? One of the favorite places I visited was on the big island of Hawaii on my honeymoon.

Best thing you learned from your parents?

I learned a lot of family values from my parents.

What could you give a 30-minute presentation on with absolutely no preparation? I don’t think I would have a problem talking for 30 minutes about the preparations for a Sunday meal including the “Sunday Sauce” (including braciola, meatballs, etc.) as well as traditional items that might be on the table.

Do you collect anything?

Although I have not been active in a hobby for a few years, I did collect baseball cards (pre-1970) for a number of years.

Two items on your bucket list: Hang gliding in Colorado, and a week long cooking class in Italy.

Best advice received: You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Last book read: Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Favorite Dessert: I don’t have a favorite dessert, however Tiramisu is high up on the list.

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staff Welcome Museum Educator, Samantha Ray “As a Cold Spring Harbor resident, I have spent my life a stone’s throw away from this extraordinary piece of Long Island history. My Grandma would walk my brothers and me to the museum any time she would visit. It holds a very special place in my heart for this reason and I am absolutely ecstatic to be a part of the team.

Having graduated from Stony Brook University with a B.A. in Anthropology and Art History my interests focus on how we express our culture through the material world. During my time at Stony Brook I worked in the Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery. It was there that I discovered that I enjoyed helping people engage with artwork and artifacts that they may not have initially been drawn to. I am so excited to share my love not only for history but for Cold Spring Harbor with students young and old alike.

Despite choosing a path of study in the humanities, I have always been fascinated with marine environments and conservation, going as far as Costa Rica to participate in sea turtle conservation efforts. The Whaling Museum is a wonderful space in which maritime history, science, and conservation overlap, making it the perfect space in which to start my voyage as a Museum Educator.

On nice days you can catch me out in the harbor kayaking or sailing the Lazy Suzy with my husband and best Pomeranian buddy, Igloo.”

What Staff Are Up To...

Amanda tries on a headdress craft for size.

Maria receives a thankyou letter from students who recently visited.

Elizabeth photographs harpoons for our digital collection.

Katie multitasks with a smile on a busy day!

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From Narwhals to Unicorns

By Brenna McCormick-Thompson, Museum Educator Every year, the Whaling Museum conducts outreach programs in schools and libraries across Long Island. Of the many artifacts we bring, few are as popular as a narwhal tusk.

This tusk is actually a tooth, which male (and rarely female) narwhals grow out of the front of their heads. The purpose of these teeth is still debated but is believed to be a sensory tool.

Historically, this tooth has fed the myth of the unicorn. How did the enlarged canine of an isolated species of arctic whale come to be so fundamentally associated with a magical horse?

To uncover the origins of the unicorn myth, we must travel back to the 4th Century BCE. Greek physician Ctesias, while traveling through Persia, heard tales of an exotic land beyond the Indus River. Captivated by the accounts he heard, Ctesias recorded these wonders in a document, Indica, a compilation of Indian customs and portraits of astonishing creatures— including an unusual horse-like animal with “a horn in the middle of their brow one and a half cubits in length. The bottom part of the horn for as much as two palms towards the brow is bright white. The tip of the horn is sharp and crimson in color while the rest in the middle is black. They say that whoever drinks from the horn (which they fashion into cups) is immune to seizures and the holy sickness and suffers no effects from poison.”

The creature described by Ctesias, which the Greeks came to know as monoceros (onehorned) and which later the Romans called unicornus, was most likely an Indian rhinoceros. Having no exposure to such an animal, and with only words like “horses” to serve as a guide, medieval scholars struggled to

describe this seemingly fantastical beast.

Consequently, the unicorns depicted in early bestiaries are patchwork creatures - curious combinations of lions, goats, and deer - always vaguely equine in nature. The most striking difference between ancient and modern unicorns is the horn itself. Early unicorns were often given smooth, curved horns, surprisingly reminiscent of rhinoceros tusks.

This image of the unicorn changed as narwhal tusks were gradually introduced into the European market. Appearing first in northern regions, these tusks were possibly distributed by the Viking sailors who were among the only people to venture into the arctic realms of these whales. These elegant, pale horns captured the medieval imagination, and the concept of the unicorn transformed from beastly hybrid monsters to graceful beings.

Artwork featuring the new, refined unicorn exploded across the continent. By the time Marco Polo embarked on his travels through Asia towards the end of the 13th C, the notion of the gleaming, white unicorn was so absolute that it was with great disappointment that he wrote, “Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon, and is not in the least like that which our stories tell of... 'tis altogether different from what we fancied.”

Though it’s clear that narwhals were not the original inspiration for the unicorn myth, we certainly have their stunning tusks to thank for transforming unicorns into the magnificent creatures we know today.

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snapshots

Clockwise, top left: A full house enjoyed a puppet show at our Toothpalooza event connecting our collection to Dental Health Month. Our annual Halloween Haunted Booseum transformed our exhibits into family-friendly, spooky fun. Museum campers delve into artifact-based discoveries during circle time. Our grant-funded Salty Tuesdays program continues at The Senior Center in Huntington, and the little ones get crafty at our Rubber Ducky Party!

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Remembering Walter K. Earle, Museum Curator and Author—as told by his Daughter Louise Earle Loomis, a resident of Bloomfield, Connecticut and longtime supporter of the museum, remembers: At last I am sitting down to write about the Whaling Museum.

played a major role in establishing the Museum.

My family spent summer and some winter weekends in the white house on a hill directly Today Cold Spring Harbor is a “go to” spot. opposite the Whaling Museum in Cold Spring Back then it was a real town, with a drug store, grocery store, seafood shop, and a delightful Harbor. museum. School was a brick building where At the time when the Museum was established, Main Street forks for Huntington. the town still had a community of original School buddies visited me in Cold Spring Harbor families living in town. and we often walked to and from the Cold I was a teenager when the museum was built Spring Harbor Drug Store that served ice cream and I remember hearing discussions about it, as and soda. It was an ongoing temptation to stop well as talk of the work involved and my father’s there for an ice cream cone on our bicycle trip cohort from the Lab [Dr. Davenport]. home from the CSH Beach Club.

First there was the empty building and dinner With no more family living in Cold Spring table talk of acquiring display cabinets .. then Harbor, I no longer visit the town. I do visit my the whaleboat arrived, and the need to coat the son Alfred who resides in NYC. It is good to see boat with linseed oil. I volunteered to do the job your materials and website and see how the and was quickly accepted. I must have been museum is thriving. about 14 or 15. Every day for I don’t know how long, I crossed Main Street to paint the Lou Loomis recalls a good sleight of hand ... boat. It was a big job…

Gradually the show cases were filled. Getting the cannon that was fired when returning ships were sited was quite an accomplishment. It had graced Clam Town for many years. Gradually other artifacts were acquired from the descendants of the sailors who still lived there.

My father wrote a book about scrimshaw [Scrimshaw: Folk Art of the Whalers], and

“A Walter Earle Trick” Holding a container of whale oil, Walter announces how delicious whale oil is. “I’ll taste it first,” he says. So he dips a finger in and then tastes it— but it’s a different finger.

He wipes his finger with a napkin he holds, so the sucker tastes the oil and says, “Yuck!”

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last word Cynthia Barrett’s great grandfather, George Barrett, was a whaler who lived on Main Street in Cold Spring Harbor and sailed around Cape Horn three times. The Barrett Family’s connection with the sea continues in Cynthia’s new book, Three Sheets to the Wind: The Nautical Origins of Everyday Expressions, which explores the maritime roots of expressions.

Cynthia, a resident of New York City, recently visited the Whaling Museum, which she shared was “a rich and moving experience for me… Thank you so much for keeping this amazing maritime history alive!”

Below are excerpts from her book:

Sailors caulked the seams of the deck with hot tar pine, called pitch. The crew had to pitch in to complete the task quickly while the pitch was malleable.

“pitch in” “hit rock bottom” “happy hour” “get cracking” “coast is clear” “chew the fat” “rummage sale” A ship in shallow water foundering on the seabed.

In 1913, the crew of the USS Arkansas held afternoon gatherings that included boxing, smoking, and music. By the 1920s, much of the Navy was throwing these morale-boosting parties.

To avoid late delivery penalties, mail ships often set the rigging so tautly that the sails made a cracking noise under the tension.

Vessel is safely past a hazardous shore.

For smugglers, this indicated no risk of detection by law enforcement agents.

While chewing on salt-cured meat, sailors exchanged stories.

“Arrimage” is French for cargo in a ship’s hold. Unclaimed cargo was peddled dockside to locals.

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“This place is great. Such a treasure in a cute town. So educational!” Online Review, Matt Klein

cshwhalingmuseum.org

Summer Hours: Daily, 11-5pm | Closed July 4 $6 Adults, $5 Seniors & Kids | Members Free

279 Main Street Cold Spring Harbor New York, 11724

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