Fall 2008 (Vol 58, No. 4) - Nantucket Historical Association

Fall 2008 (Vol 58, No. 4) - Nantucket Historical Association

Historic Nantucket
A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association
Whaling!
Mutiny on the Potomac
Nantucket & New Zealand
Eber Bunker:
Pioneer of Australian Whaling
Fall 2008
Volume 58, No. 4
NANTUCKET
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Board of Trustees
Historic Nantucket
A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association
Fall 2008
|
Vol. 58, No. 4
E. Geoffrey Verney, PRESIDENT
Janet L. Sherlund, 1ST VICE PRESIDENT
4
Kenneth L. Beaugrand, 2ND VICE PRESIDENT
Thomas J. Anathan, TREASURER
Mutiny on the Potomac
JUSTIN A . PARISEAU
Melissa C. Philbrick, CLERK
Eleven black sailors mutiny off
Nantucket harbor
C. Marshall Beale
Robert H. Brust
Nancy A. Chase
Constance Cigarran
William R. Congdon
Nancy A. Geschke
10 “…my home is on the
deep waters.”
FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE
Georgia Gosnell, TRUSTEE EMERITA
Nina S. Hellman
Hampton S. Lynch Jr.
WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH
Mary D. Malavase
Nantucket and New Zealand in History
Sarah B. Newton
Anne S. Obrecht
Elizabeth T. Peek
Christopher C. Quick
David Ross
15 Captain Eber Bunker
FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE
Melanie R. Sabelhaus
Nancy M. Soderberg
TIM BLUE
Bette M. Spriggs
Nantucket-descended pioneer
of Australian Whaling
Isabel C. Stewart
Jay M. Wilson
William J. Tramposch
executive director
editorial committee
Mary H. Beman
3
From the Executive Director
WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH
Thomas B. Congdon Jr.
Richard L. Duncan
Peter J. Greenhalgh
Cecil Barron Jensen
Friends of the NHA Purchase
Paintings of the Whaleship Spermo 19
Robert F. Mooney
BEN SIMONS
Amy Jenness
Elizabeth Oldham
Nathaniel Philbrick
Bette M. Spriggs
COVER: Spermo Cutting In Whales On Japan, 1822
Fifty Years Later: The Crash of
Northeast Airlines Flight 258
James Sulzer
John Fisher (1789–?)
Oil on canvas, 2008.31.2
STEVE SHEPPARD
Ben Simons
GIFT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE NHA
NHA News
20
21
Editor
Elizabeth Oldham
Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research; firsthand accounts; reminiscences of island experiences; historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers.
Copy Editor
©2008 by the Nantucket Historical Association
Eileen Powers/Javatime Design
Design & Art Direction
Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket,
Massachusetts. Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554 –1016
(508) 228–1894; fax: (508) 228–5618, [email protected]
For information log on to www.nha.org
FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
He lives on the sea…
And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and
conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian
oceans. . . .There is his home; there lies his business which Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves,
he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he come to it at
last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull,
that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of
land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.
Moby-Dick, Chapter 14
A
s you read this issue of Historic Nantucket,
hands could not know what we know today: that three
please note especially the article by Ben
decades later, sister ships from our harbor would be rotSimons on page 17. Its conciseness belies the
ting in San Francisco Bay; their whaling days over, they
importance of the key
made their final voyages—delivering
acquisitions he discussboth young and older jobless yet
es: two oil paintings of the Nantucket
hopeful Nantucketers to the gold
whaleship Spermo by self-taught
fields of California.
Nantucket artist John Fisher. Thanks
Even more evocative is the other
to the generosity of the Friends of the
painting, which depicts Spermo in
Nantucket Historical Association, we
1822, far to the west, off Japan.
have recently acquired these two
Although Fisher’s focus is on the
evocative paintings, which represent
ferocity of the whaling process, the
one-third of Fisher’s known works;
painting conveys the menacing
two others hang in the Whaling
immensity of an ocean that is often
Museum, a fifth hangs in Nantucket’s
anything but pacific.
Atheneum, and the sixth is in a priThe Nantucket Historical
BILL TRAMPOSCH
vate collection. In his article, Ben
Association owns and cares for twenexplains the process of acquiring the
ty-two island sites, including the
paintings. Here, I would like to emphasize just why the
Whaling Museum; yet, ironically, none begins to depict
paintings are of such significance to us.
the home that many grew to know better than “home”
The newly built Spermo was one of forty-five whaleitself: the whaleship. Thank you, Friends of the Nantucket
ships to depart our harbor in 1820. It would be its first and
Historical Association!
only departure from Nantucket; more whaleships left
Nantucket than from any other American port that year,
most of them heading for the newly opened Japan
Grounds. One of the paintings shows Spermo in the
William J. Tramposch
Executive Director
Pacific Ocean off the coast of California in 1821. Its deckFall 2008
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
Mutiny on the Potomac:
Race &
inthe New
England
Whalefishery
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Historic Nantucket
In February 1815,
New England’s seafaring towns erupted in celebration at the news that the War of 1812 was
over. With British warships no longer a threat, New Englanders eagerly set
out again in the hunt for whales. Sixty-three whaleships sailed from ports in
Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1815 alone, with sixty additional vessels
joining the whaling fleet in the following year. Captain Alfred Alley guided
one of the whaleships out of Boston harbor on June 5, 1816, destined for the
coast of Patagonia at the southernmost tip of South America. With an able
crew and a little luck, Alley would have expected to return home in about a
year with a valuable cargo of whale oil, elephant seal oil, and sealskins
stowed away below decks. On the surface there was little to distinguish the
Potomac from the rest of the New England whaling fleet. The Potomac
received only a brief mention on June 8 in the “Shipping List” of the Boston
Columbian Centinel to mark the vessel’s departure. The fact that Captain
Alley commanded an almost entirely black crew received no mention at all.
Shipping agents and captains gladly turned to the ranks of black mariners
who called ports like Boston, Nantucket, and New Bedford home to fill empty
berths. Enough vessels were once again sailing that the racial composition of
the Potomac’s crew probably would have gone unnoticed by outsiders. This
would change barely a week later, when an account of a mutiny orchestrated
by the Potomac’s black crewmembers made its way into the newspapers.
With events unfolding in the New England press and beyond, the mutiny
brought the issue of black participation in the whaling industry to the attention of a great many people beyond New England’s shores.
The June 17, 1816, issue of the Nantucket Gazette provides the most complete narrative of what happened aboard Captain Alfred Alley’s vessel.
Arriving at Nantucket on Monday, June 10, Alley anchored the Potomac off
the sandbar that blocked the approaches to Nantucket’s harbor and town.
Intending to take on “some necessary articles needful for the voyage,” Alley
and his crew set to work preparing for an extended voyage. Captain Alley, his
first and second mates, and the cooper were the only white men aboard the
Potomac. The rest of the crew consisted of eleven blacks.
For unknown reasons, these eleven men “mutinized [sic] and peremptorily refused to do ship’s duty” on Wednesday, just two days after anchoring
off Nantucket. Although most of the crew returned to duty by nightfall,
their refusal “to do ship’s duty” so soon into the Potomac’s voyage offers one
of the few clues regarding what caused the Potomac mutiny. The Potomac’s
eleven black whalemen were clearly unhappy with how they had been
treated between June 5 and June 12. Whatever happened between the
Log of the Nantucket whaleship Fabius (1840–44)
whose crew list mentions “Colored Gents.”
AN ENDOWMENT GRANT FROM THE JOYCE AND SEWARD JOHNSON
FOUNDATION SUPPORTS PERIODIC ARTICLES IN HISTORIC NANTUCKET
ON TOPICS OF DIVERSITY.
Fall 2008
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mutiny
on
the
potomac
Potomac’s white officers and black crew during that time, tensions
between the two factions continued to escalate.
Later that Wednesday evening, one of the mates refused the crew’s
demand for rum. Conditions aboard the vessel were dire enough that
a simple work stoppage turned into open mutiny:
…three of the blacks went aft and demanded rum; which the mate
refused to give them. One of the blacks armed himself with an iron
pole, seated himself across the gangway, and prevented the officers
from coming on deck. On Thursday the second mate called upon the
crew to come on deck—four of the blacks refused. One of the mutineers held an adze over the mate’s head, and swore he would have the
boat and go ashore. To prevent which, the mate hove the boat into the
water, sprang into her, and floated from the brig.
Not long after one of the mates escaped, a carpenter working on the
Potomac “went into the cabin in order to discharge a loaded gun” to
prevent the mutineers from using the weapon. Unbeknownst to the
carpenter, two mutineers armed with knives had followed him into the
cabin and “wrested it [the gun] from him by force, after having threatened to stab him.” Documents in the archives of the Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court, including the recognizances, complaint, and
indictment, reveal that the carpenter working aboard the Potomac at
the time of the mutiny was David Andrews, a “house wright” from
Nantucket. In the complaint signed before Nantucket Justice of the Peace
Josiah Hussey on
June 15, 1816,
Andrews testified the mutineers “did then
and there with
force as aforesaid
heave at the
windlass of said
Brig, and swore
they would run
her [the Potomac] on shore.”
Although
the
mutineers were
persuaded
to
stop raising the
New Bedford Medley,
anchor, they were
June 9, 1797.
still in physical
control of the
Potomac.
Knowledge that a black crew had taken control of a whaleship and
its ample supply of harpoons, lances, hatchets, and other weapons
soon spread to shore. According to the Nantucket Gazette the
Potomac’s mate, who had escaped in the whaleboat, “was soon after
brought ashore [on Nantucket] by a boat from the ship South
America” and “gave the alarm” to Captain Alley and the rest of the
town. Now aware that at least some of the crew had mutinied, Alley set
a plan in motion to take back command of the Potomac. Alley first
secured a large enough vessel for himself, the mate, “and a considerable number of men” recruited from Nantucket before they all “proceeded to the brig and quelled the mutiny.” With the situation aboard
the Potomac under control, Alley left “a sufficient force on board”
before returning to shore with two of the black crewmembers identified as the mutiny’s ringleaders.
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Historic Nantucket
Not long after
of
the mates escaped,
a carpenter working on
the Potomac “went into
the cabin in order to
discharge a loaded gun”
to prevent the mutineers
from
the
weapon.
First report of the
mutiny in the
Nantucket Gazette,
June 17, 1816.
Cutline cutline cutline spermo
Cutline cutline cutline spermo
Jail window on Nantucket. P7058
A black crew member on the bark Calfornia, 1903. P14847
Jailing the two principal mutineers in Nantucket, however, failed to
bring Alley’s troubles to an end. According to an article posted on July
1 and July 8 in the Nantucket Gazette, four members of the crew
deserted in the aftermath of the mutiny:
Twenty Dollars Reward.
—
ON the 17th of June inst. in
the latter part of the night, Charles
Jones, John Ryla, John Thompson, and
Jesse Bergen, (black men,) and part of
the crew of the brig Potomac, of Boston, took a Whale-Boat belonging to the
brig, and made their escape. They
carried away with them the brig’s Compass and their cloathing. It is presumed they landed on some part of the
continent between Falmouth and Bass
river. Whoever will return the above
persons to the Island of Nantucket, so
that they can be apprehended and secured in Jail, shall receive a reward of
Twenty Dollars—and whoever finds the
Boat, shall receive a reward of Fifteen
Dollars, by returning the same to JOSIAH HUSSEY, Esq at Nantucket.
ALFRED ALLEY,
Master of brig Potomac.
Nantucket, June 20th, 1816.
In spite of the twenty-dollar reward Alley offered for their capture,
and the fifteen-dollar reward for the return of the whaleboat, the
record remains silent as to the ultimate fate of the “black men” who
deserted the Potomac. Whether Charles Jones, John Ryla, John
Thompson, and Jesse Bergen made it, as suggested, to “some part of
the continent between Falmouth and Bass river” on Cape Cod
roughly thirty miles distant, or disappeared at sea altogether, the four
whalemen never answered in court for their theft and desertion.
The two whalemen singled out as the ringleaders of the mutiny
were not so lucky. Though identified in the Boston Gazette on July 25
only by their last names and along with their fellow crewmates as
“black men,” court and prison records reveal much more about the
men at the center of the Potomac mutiny. The Charlestown,
Massachusetts, state prison commitment register for 1816 lists
Richard Taylor as a twenty-two-year-old mulatto who was born in
Boston, Massachusetts. Fellow crewmate Robert Smith, born in
Halifax, Nova Scotia, appears in the record as twenty-four years old,
with his eyes, hair, and complexion all described as black. Both men
are listed as mariners and “late resident[s] in Nantucket” in their
indictment. Removed from Nantucket to Boston for trial, Smith faced
a charge of assault “with a certain dangerous weapon, to-wit, a carpenter’s adze” with “his malice aforethought to kill and murder, and
other wrongs to the said Ruben Ray.” The Commonwealth of
Massachusetts also leveled the accusation in its indictment against
Smith and Taylor that “with force and arms” the two whalemen “did
beat wound and ill treat; and other wrongs to the said David Andrews
. . . to the great damage of the said David Andrews, against the peace
of the Commonwealth aforesaid, and the Laws of the same.” Neither
Fall 2008
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mutiny
on
the
potomac
Smith nor Taylor chose to contest the charges, and both defendants
“severally plead guilty” to assault with intent to murder. Convicted
on July 19, Smith and Taylor arrived at the state prison the next day
to begin their respective sentences of ten days’ solitary confinement
and three years’ hard labor.
The Potomac mutiny was significant for the widespread attention
it received in the press. By the first of July, newspaper accounts of the
mutiny had appeared in cities as far north as Portland, Maine; and as
far south as Baltimore, Maryland; and Alexandria, Virginia.
Widespread knowledge of the affair may have complicated matters
for the five remaining black crewmembers who had not deserted
and were not charged in the incident. Involvement in a well-known
mutiny would have made it difficult for any whaleman to find work.
The details of the case and the racial identity of the Potomac’s
remaining crew would only have made whaling agents and captains
more wary of the men.
Stories throughout the affair focused on the complexion of the
mutineers, emphasizing that “black men” had perpetrated the
mutiny. Race clearly played a part in public perceptions of the
Potomac mutiny. During the 1800s, at a time when reformers were
fighting in New England to abolish slavery, integrate schools, and
reform seamen, the issue of race played a prominent role in the dayto-day life of whaleships at sea. While the newspapers and court
records identified the Potomac mutineers as “black men” for the dual
purpose of narrating the course of events and establishing a criminal
case against the mutineers, the frequency of references to the skin
color of minorities working aboard whaleships in other documents
raises questions about white attitudes toward blacks and other
minorities who served in the whaling industry.
Log and journal keepers offer some of the best insights into the
day-to-day experiences of ordinary seamen. The journal of the
Nantucket whaleship Fabius kept by the its cooper, Joseph U.
Downing, included a separate heading for the ship’s “Colored Gents”
in the crew list. Such language is common in surviving documents,
and shows that black whalemen were viewed as distinct from the rest
of the crew. Working and living conditions aboard American whaling
vessels were notoriously bad and often led to conflict amongst
crewmembers in an already racially charged environment. An entry
in the Fabius journal dated March 24/25, 1842, described how members of the “after gang”—the officers in the rear part of the ship—
“took up arms against the crew (or rather the Darkies).” Downing
added, somewhat sarcastically, “not many lives lost nor much blood
spilt but 2 men seized up when the Capt came on board but not
floged [sic].” Even the most basic of everyday occurrences aboard
ship appear to have been influenced by race. Having been at sea for
nearly two years, Downing wrote an entry in his journal on July 2,
1842, describing how the white members of the Fabius’s crew sat
down to a celebratory Independence Day meal apart from their
black crewmates:
Today the white portion of this community have A 4th [of] July dinner it not being convenient to cook A very sumptuous dinner for all
hands at once Tomorrow the sable sons of Africa dine in honor of the
glorious anniversary and I suppose the Nobles will come out on the
4th.
Conscious of the official hierarchy aboard the Fabius—Downing
referred to the ship’s officers as “Nobles”—the unofficial but understood racial hierarchy aboard the vessel factored heavily in day-today life.
 | Historic Nantucket
Lookouts in the crosstrees, ca. 1900.
F6168
Race
played a part in
public perceptions
of the Potomac
Records of conflicts between black crewmembers provide similar
evidence of how white log and journal keepers viewed their black
crewmates. The November 6, 1842, entry in the log of the whaleship
Charles Phelps took note of an incident between the ship’s cook and
its steward:
I like to forgot to mention the Negro Squable we had at 5 AM to day
the Cook a real Guinea Descent and the Steward a Clear Blooded
African could not agree about their business it put me in mind of the
old adage pot calling Kettle Black . . . at it they went hamer and tongs
the old Cook butted the Steward aft as far as the Companion Way
the Capt and others interfering took them apart but the cook was
raving and declared he could eat the Steward up in 2 minutes But
they were parted and ordered by Capt H[all] not to wrangle again on
penalty of being seized in the rigging and take a flogging he the Capt
told the cook to go to his gally and the steward he ordered into the
cabin who hesitating a little about it the Capt raised his foot and
gave him a boost on a certain unmentionable part of his body which
seemed to quicken his pace without further hesitation.
Instances of insubordination and crew unrest such as this were not
uncommon aboard whaleships. Captains and ship’s officers recorded
ample evidence of dissent and refusal to do“ship’s duty” in the logs and
journals they kept as records of whaling voyages. What makes this
account and others like it significant is how people interpreted everyday life and conflict aboard the Fabius, Charles Phelps, Potomac, and
countless other whaleships in terms of race.
Whaling agents and ship owners were on the other hand openly
ambivalent in their attitudes toward black whalemen. While the language used at sea to describe black whalemen shows that they were
marginalized, agents and ship owners used the language of race to
issue direct appeals for black whalemen to serve aboard their ships. An
advertisement posted by Samuel Proctor of Fairhaven, Massachusetts,
in the June 9, 1797, issue of the New Bedford Medley made specific
Black crewmembers on the Wanderer, ca. 1920.
P16565
agents and ship
owners were openly
ambivalent in their attitudes
toward
whalemen
demands regarding the crew desired for an upcoming whaling voyage:
Wanted Immediately, A COOPER, also a man capable of heading a boat,
and two or three good black men for the SLOOP NANCY, bound on a
WHALING CRUISE—To whom good encouragement will be given.
The advantages “two or three good black men” would provide over
white crewmembers remains unclear. According to an August 21,
1824, entry in the account book for the whaleship Peru, Nantucket
ship owners were also partial to black whalemen:
The Owners of the Ship Peru wish thee to apply to Stewart for Six
black men and one white man to go round Cape Horn, we wish
those that are not aged about 26 or under one of them must be a
Fiddler, they must be shipt in the schooner Enterprise by Capt
Hussey, we shall be willing to pay about ten dollars each. Further
debts with the brokerage and passage all to be deducted from their
voyage at their return; we wish them to understand what voyage
they are bound, we shall see to their outfits, the usual lay is about
1/130, if more convenient he might git 2 white men & five blacks.
Both documents advertised a clear preference in favor of black
mariners for the whaling voyages in question. By the late 1700s, both
Nantucket and New Bedford had transitioned away from Indian
labor out of necessity. Black whalemen had quickly filled the labor
gap. Presented with few better economic alternatives to the whalefishery, African Americans and other minorities were forced to carefully negotiate the racism and inequality that existed both at sea and
on land. The men who served aboard the Potomac and countless
other whaleships were accordingly treated not simply as whalemen,
but as black whalemen.
Viewed in context with the rest of the historical record, a seemingly isolated case like the Potomac mutiny takes on added significance.
Despite the professed egalitarian leanings of many of Nantucket’s
and New Bedford’s Quaker residents, whaling merchants, agents,
and captains were pragmatic about how to succeed in the dirty and
dangerous business of whaling. Some of the best whalemen were
those with few other options to pursue. White participants in the
whaling industry needed and actively sought out blacks to serve on
whaleships, but did not welcome them.Whether generated in counting houses or at sea, in newspapers or in the courts, documents show
that skin color and other differences in physical appearance led
white northerners to view and treat minorities as something “other.”
Mutinies always attracted attention in the press, but the added racial
element turned the mutiny on the Potomac into a national headline.
Nantucketers and outsiders alike understood that “black men,” not
whalemen, had committed a crime when something went wrong off
the shore of Nantucket in 1816.
justin a. pariseau earned his B.A. in history from Boston College and his
M.A. in history from the College of William and Mary. He is currently writing his
dissertation on the whaling industry’s role in the nineteenth-century reform
movements of Nantucket and New Bedford, and will be teaching this fall as an
adjunct faculty member at Prairie State College in Illinois. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Mystic Seaport’s Frank C. Munson Institute of American
Maritime History for funding the research for this article through the 2007 Paul
Cuffe Memorial Fellowship, and the Nantucket Historical Association for its support during a recent research trip to Nantucket.
Fall 2008
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“. . . my home is on the deep waters.”
Nantucket
&New Zealand
BY WILLIAM J . TRAMPOSCH
ON THESE EARLY autumn mornings, it is easy to imagine those who were here
before we were. From the bench at the Pacific Bank, looking down the cobblestones to the Pacific Club, it
becomes clearer still—the international significance of this tiny, sandy New England landscape. Like bookends, these buildings contain between them myriad memories of the comings and goings of families like the
Mitchells and the Bunkers, the Macys and the Brocks. The setting reverberates with history. The mortar of
the bank was hardly dry when Captain George Pollard Jr. set out from our harbor on the whaleship Essex in
1819, and years later he would pass by this spot, his mind crazed with images of the unmentionable.
Although only two hundred yards separate the Pacific Bank from the Pacific Club, more than a quarter of
our earth is covered by the distant ocean from which they acquired their names. Just as startling is the fact
that for many young Nantucketers, this place was often less home to them than the whaleships upon which
they sailed. Just behind the bank, for example, at 26 Liberty Street, lived Benjamin Worth . . . sometimes. He
actually spent most of his life at sea. Between the years of 1783 and 1824, he made five Pacific voyages covering more than 870,000 sea miles.
The Nantucketer, he alone resides and rests on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to
and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business. . . .
Moby-Dick, Chapter 14
 | Historic Nantucket
From this bench, it is easy to imagine a time when water connected
distant peoples, wind propelled them to and fro, and we possessed a
drastically different sense of time. Today, we complain about the length
of a plane flight to New Zealand; it takes the better part of a day and at
least two different planes. Imagine that!Yet, here one gains a perspective,
sparing a thought or two for the three-to-five-year voyages.
And thus have these naked Nantucketers,these sea hermits,issuing from
their ant-hill in the sea,overrun and conquered the watery world like so
many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and
Indian oceans. . . .
Moby-Dick, Chapter 14
Famille rose punch bowl (ca. 1750) recovered from Bounty mutineers
on Pitcairn Island by Capt. Mayhew Folger in 1808, NHA collection.
GIFT OF MARGARET FOLGER.
New Zealand,
by Way of the Pacific
Speaking of Moby-Dick, remember the interminable pages pertaining to
the cytology of the sperm whale, page upon page of notations about
folio, octavo, and duodecimo whales, etc., all to make very clear that this
is a book about “the mightiest animated mass that has survived the
flood.” Consider the Pacific Ocean in the same context, for the immensity of it cannot be understated. Nantucketers knew the Pacific, and they
knew it early.To get a fuller sense of this, let’s walk down Main Street from
the Civil War monument to the bank.
107 Main Street was the home of Reuben Joy. He was among the first
of Nantucket’s whalers to enter the Pacific Ocean. And, earlier still, Eber
Bunker of the famous Nantucket Bunkers, is generally credited by New
Zealanders as having started whaling around New Zealand itself, and
also earned the cognomen “the father of Australian whaling” (see the
article in this issue by Tim Blue). In January of 1792, Bunker sailed into
the wide inlet of Doubtless Bay near Mongonui, Northland. He took no
whales, but he was looking.
100 Main Street was the home of Captain Joseph Mitchell, who, in
August of 1847, lay off the island of Pitcairn. Fully twenty-nine years earlier, in 1808, Nantucket’s own Captain Mayhew Folger was the first to
come upon the Bounty mutineers’ hideaway on Pitcairn. A Chinese
export bowl from this encounter is now on display in the Whaling
Museum.
81 Main Street was home to Christopher Burdick, whose log of a sealing voyage was discovered by Edouard Stackpole over a century after his
1821 voyage. In it Burdick makes note of a landmass that he suspected
was a continent. He was right. It was Antarctica, and he holds the honor
of its first confirmed sighting.
Melville walked past 84 Main Street when he visited Nantucket in 1852,
a year after the publication of Moby-Dick. The home later housed
William Hussey Macy, who, years earlier, noted in his Pacific log that
three whalemen had deserted into the Marquesan bush. One of the
deserters was Melville himself, and in the intervening years he had
penned his very popular South Sea adventures, Omoo and Typee.
The Pacific is immense and often anything but pacific. At 5.5 knots, a
whaleship would take about twenty-nine days to sail from New Zealand
to the Marquesas; about twenty-five days to reach Pitcairn; and,
Antarctica is just so far away that even today it is a ten-hour flight from
Christchurch, New Zealand, on an Air Force Orion. No wonder the
Pacific needs two days to contain it!
In February of 2009, a group of adventurers will join my wife, Peggy,
View down Main Street from the Pacific Bank to the Pacific Club, ca. 1890.
F6800
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my home is on the deep waters
New Zealand
is one of the
youngest countries
on earth, having
been discovered by
Maori only a little
over a thousand
years ago.
and me on an NHA Explorations tour to New Zealand. Many on our tour
have never been there. Once in New Zealand, our tour will focus on
Nantucket connections. Yet, as we fly there I hope that our fellow travelers will do what I often do when I return: regularly lift the shades on the
plane to view the moonlight playing upon the bosom of the wide Pacific
Ocean. For twelve dark hours we will have this opportunity—twelve
hours at 500 miles an hour! Talk about a “faraway land!”
New Zealand, because of its distance from the United States, has
always seemed to be only partially understood by Americans. Just read
Mark Twain’s Following the Equator to get a sense of this. Twain tells of a
professor from New Zealand who is about to arrive at Yale University for
a term. In preparation for his arrival, hisYale professorial hosts take stock
of what they already know about the Antipodes. Quickly and confidently, they all agree upon two facts: first, that New Zealand is connected to
Australia by a land bridge; and second, that New Zealanders are accustomed to traveling around on the backs of Giant Moas. (Twain, by the
way, has his own Nantucket connections. Publisher Charles HenryWebb
lived at 77 Main Street. It wasWebb who printedTwain’s best-selling short
story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County.” Had it not
been for a falling-out between the two, he may well have published
Following the Equator as well).
Aotearoa: Land of the
Long White Cloud
New Zealand is one of the youngest countries on earth, having been discovered by Maori only a little over a thousand years ago.Yet, do not infer
that this country is pleasantly behind the times, for history is “fast” here,
and the country has moved from European settlement to cell phones in
less than 170 years. Captain James Cook, in the late eighteenth century,
was the first European to set foot on New Zealand. Impressively, only a
handful of years later, Eber Bunker was sailing into Northland, New
Zealand. That is how early Nantucketers arrived on the scene!
Historians believe that the Maori traveled from their original home in
the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea; that they sailed to Fiji and
then from Fiji south. The farther south one goes here, the colder it gets,
so those who landed in Aotearoa (meaning “the land of the long white
cloud” for the characteristic cloud cover on its alps), tended to settle in
 | Historic Nantucket
the more tropical northlands. They carried with them a valuable vegetable called kumara. Resembling a yam, kumara remains a staple in the
Kiwi diet today, as in “fish and (kumara) chips!”
Folklore has it that seven Maori canoes, or waka, arrived in Aotearoa,
and so seven tribes settled here. Each tribe had its own distinct identity,
and cooperation among tribes was never a hallmark of Maoridom.
Cannibalism was common, and Captain James Cook himself lost crew to
the Maori appetite. Today, of course, things have changed, though ritual
vestiges of the savagery can be seen just minutes before the All Blacks
begin play: the haka.
It is believed that this haka, or challenge, originated on the island of
Kapiti, just north ofWellington, the country’s capital. The most threatening and powerful of all Maori chiefs, Te Rauparaha, dwelled here, and to
many American whalers he was simply known as “Satan.” He played
favorites, or not, and his whims kept all on their toes. Kapiti Island itself
was a whaling station, and sacred ground for this most aggressive of New
Zealand tribes.
New Zealand whaling had it roots nearby as well, springing up in the
bays of the Marlborough Sounds on the South Island, just across the Cook
Straight fromWellington.Today, an Interislander Ferry service passes right
by these bays while also providing travelers with a vivid look at the very
last of New Zealand’s whaling stations, run by the Perano family.
In the heyday of New Zealand’s own whaling, stations dotted the country’s coast. The most colorful were under the feudal rule of a gentleman
named Johnny Jones. At one time Jones held sway over 280 employees,
and New Zealand Historic Places Trust cares for one of his properties at
Matanaka, between Christchurch and Dunedin. Even farther south, still,
the French and Norwegians built whaling stations, reminding us of the
time when it was not only the English who vied for this land.
Although our NHA Explorations will not take in Johnny Jones’s station, it will deliver us to another remarkable setting, Kaikoura. Here
sits a historic home so steeped in whaling history that its very foundation rests upon whale vertebrae. Meanwhile, offshore, today’s visitors
are treated to encounters with the giant sperm whale itself. Four miles
off the beautiful beaches and snow-covered mountains of Kaikoura
the ocean floor drops precipitously. In the near mile-deep darkness,
male rogue sperm whales search for giant squid. These natural conditions ensure that sperm whale regularly will be seen in these waters,
and the experience is unforgettable.
Nantucketers in
New Zealand
No part of New Zealand, though, is more resonant of Nantucket history
than the Bay of Islands, especially its now-picturesque town of Russell,
once known as Kororareka. In 1831, Australia lifted its ban on American
whaling, and the fields were quickly filled. In 1839, 150 American vessels
whaled off New Zealand. In that same year, sixty-two American whaleships called in at the Bay of Islands; one of them was the Nantucket,
which on a later voyage would collect the model Maori war canoe that
graces our Whaling Museum today.
One of the many Nantucket whaleships that entered the Bay of
Islands carried a remarkable Nantucketer named Eliza Brock. She
sailed with her husband, Captain Peter Brock, on the Lexington from
May 21, 1853, to June 25, 1856, leaving four children at home. Her journal is among the NHA’s most valued possessions. Now, you can find it
digitized online at www.nha.org. Let me have Eliza Brock bring you
into the Bay of Islands. Note the rise and fall of her emotions as they
approach and later leave the bay:
Tuesday noon the 13: Ship Enterprise of New Bedford here five months
from home.Deck still thronged with natives loaded down with peaches. If I could only pass a few baskets of them to my children at home, I
should like it. One Large Canoe paddled by eigh[t] ladies, they seem to
manage them as easily as our sailors do their boats. It is a matter of
great wonder to me how they do it.
Capt Nickerson of the Ganges called on Board. Mrs. Nickerson on
shore, has an infant six weeks old. Staying at Dr. Fords. This is a beautiful bay. . . . Tomorrow morning we go on shore. . . . Eggs 50 cents per
dozen. Onions 6 dollars per barrel. Board for three, Four dollars per
day.
Wednesday the 14. All ready for a start. Boat waiting. Carpenter on
board repairing the mast. Deck thronged with native visitors with
loads of Peaches, and pears, honey, fish, &c, one head of tobacco will
buy a Basket full.
[February 1855]
Joseph Chase [Joseph Chase Brock, her six-year-old son who accompanied his parents on this voyage] quite delighted running about seeing the Goats, and Dogs, which are very plenty.
Thursday the 8: Begins with light Gales . . . only about Forty miles
from the Bay of Islands, drifting about at the mercy of the waves,
dashing over the Deck, drenching all Hands . . . wind dead ahead,
and Blowing furiously.
Thursday the 15: A fine Morning, been out walking round about
viewing the scenery. This is a beautiful Climate, very healthy, but
very thinly settled, by white people, all Englishmen, very quiet here,
only now and then a Fracas with the Sailors.
Friday the 9: Begins more moderate . . . sea growing smooth . . .
barometer rising.
Saturday the 17: Rose at five O’clock, been out to take a walk round.
Crew on shore . . . some of them drunk already. Jack Jones taken up
and put in safe keeping for
stealing a dog from a
native and strikeing an old
Chief.
Sunday the 11: Light
wind . . . at Daylight
saw the land. Cape
Brett BearingWest, 15
miles. This is the
largest island I have
seen in my wanderings. High headlands
and vallies low, hills
very green.
Monday the 12: Light
aires Stearing west....
Passed Arch Rock.
This is the largest
rock I have ever seen,
a great curiosity, a
large hole through it
in the shape of an
arch, large enough
for a Whale Boat to
pass through. Pilot
reports the Planter and Ganges of Nantucket here. Mohawk . . . gone
out.
Tuesday morning the 13: Fine weather, but Cool, two boats along
side loaded with peaches, the Decks thronged with natives, men,
women and children, their faces all tatooed and for an ornament, a
whale’s tooth tied around the neck. Dresses made lose [loose] and
very short . . . all barefooted, quite amusing to hear them jabbor and
see them and go up and down the side of the Ship just like cats.
Tamati Waka Nene (1785–1871), head
chief of tribes about Bay of Islands,
ca. 1870. P19500
Left: Log of the Lexington “Bound to
the Bay of Islands,” Feb. 7, 1853
Sunday the 18: Been up to
St. Paul’s Church, Episcopalians, the native meeting at 8 O’clock and services
for the whites 11 O’clock.
This Church stands in the
graveyard, a beautiful spot
full of trees. Saw a great
many gravestones, one lately set. . . . [inscribed thus]:
“Nobly, he did his Duty here
below But now he has gone
aloft. . . .” They had smoked
the ship for Rats. This
young man was left on
board to look out.When the
Capt went on board in the
morning he was missing
and
they
supposed
drowned. The next day they
went Below and found him
Lying Dead on the Cabin
floor, they supposed he
must of gone down in his
sleep. . . . This is a hard looking church, no better than
our barn at home.
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my home is on the deep waters
The whaleships
that anchored in the
Bay of Islands were
looking for provisions,
rest, repair, strong drink
Monday 19th : I am not very well pleased with my Boarding house. I
can live much more comfortable on Board the Ship.
Jack Jones had his trial this morning was fined Twenty Five dollars.
The captain refused paying so large a sum, Jack carried back to the
Calaboose [jail].
Friday morning February the 23: Blacksmith still in irons [for refusing
duty]. This is the worst part of voyage, so much trouble with the
Sailors, deserting, Jack on shore yet in the Calaboose. Blacksmith’s
irons taken off, he returned to his Duty &c.
Monday eve February the 26: Tomorrow morning, if it is a fair wind
we leave port this Beautiful Bay of Islands, and wend our way to the
Cold Stormy Regions of the North, there to spend one more Summer
amongst the Ice and Snow.
Tuesday the 27 of February Tuesday Evening: Ship out all clear of the
Land. Pilot gone on Shore, the Planter going along in Company with
us. Strong wind and Rugged, the shades of Evening fast approaching
and the dim distant land receding from my view, causing me to feel
sad and lonely, my home is on the deep waters.
***
The whaleships that anchored in the Bay of Islands were looking for
provisions, rest, repair, strong drink, etc. So unusual was this place that
almost all who stepped on shore had something to recount of their
experiences here in this place that had become known as the “hellhole”
of the Pacific. Darwin visited here in 1835, and the Beagle’s captain,
Fitzroy, noted that several whaleships had anchored away from town in
order to avoid the spirit shops. Nelson Cole Haley of the Charles W.
Morgan recalled:
The poor unfortunate policemen of Russell at times would be dancing
around . . . like performing monkeys brandishing their clubs, shouting,
“Order in the Queen’s name!” and getting tumbled heels over head by
some of the crowd when they tried to drag off one of the number who had
been laid sprawling on his back too drunk to do more.
William Colenzo, New Zealand’s first printer, commented that
Korarareka was “notorious for containing a greater number of rogues
than any other spot of equal size in the universe.”
Today, the quiet little town of Russell shows no sign of this past except
 | Historic Nantucket
in its museum labels and in quiet corners of the graveyard that Brock
mentions in her journal. Here, for example, sits a grave marked:
“To the memory of Henri H. Turner who died 23 January 1862 aged 37
years. Native of Nantucket, Mass, USA. Erected by his shipmates of the
ship Mohawk.”
Across the bay sits Waitangi, a central setting in the history of New
Zealand. It was here that a short and remarkably ambiguous three-paragraph treaty was signed by Maori and the English in 1840. This treaty
remains the cornerstone of New Zealand’s bicultural government and
continues to serve as a negotiating point between the Tangata
Whenua/People of the Land (who are here by right of first discovery), and
Tangata Tiriti/People of the Treaty (or all those who have come later, in
the wake of the treaty). In common parlance, this equates to New
Zealanders either being Maori or Pakeha, the latter designation applying
to English, Americans, Romanians, Russians, Australians, et al.
Needless to say, as the country continually becomes more multicultural and less wedded to its bicultural past, issues of national identity
abound: what is this country that sits in the South Pacific, that was first
discovered by Polynesians, later discovered (again) by Europeans, influenced by Asian markets and American popular culture? For all of these
reasons, the government of New Zealand decided in the early 1990s to
build a new national museum. Today it is known as Te Papa Tongarewa,
or—simply—Our Place. It interprets New Zealand’s distinctive natural
history, Maori culture, art, Pacific culture, and modern New Zealand history, all under one roof. And, in this, its eleventh year, 1.2 million visitors
enter each year, many of them returning. Te Papa, Our Place, will be our
gateway to New Zealand when the NHA Explorations visits in February.
History offers us the extraordinary gift of time travel. From a simple
seat in front of the Pacific Bank, one can sit, reflect, and imagine. Here,
one can be reminded that many who have lived a while here could say, as
Eliza Brock wrote, “my home is on the deep waters.” New Zealand, and
our way to and from this special place, will be a vivid reminder of how athome Nantucketers have been away off shore.
william j. “bill” tramposch is executive director of the Nantucket
Historical Association. He and his family lived in New Zealand for eleven years; he
and his wife, Peggy, are dual citizens of the United States and New Zealand. Bill
first visited as a Fulbright Scholar while working as a director at Colonial
Williamsburg. Later on, he was a director of the new national museum of New
Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. Subsequently, he was chief executive of the New
Zealand Historic Places Trust for five years. Peggy supervised the programs of the
Fulbright Foundation in New Zealand..
On a cool, clear midwinter’s morning
in August 1791, the British whaler William and Ann
dropped anchor in Sydne y Harbou r after a
fiv e-month voyage from Engl a nd.
Captain
EBER BUNKER
&
P IONEER OF A USTRALIAN
N E W Z EALAND W HALING
BY TIM BLUE
IT WAS CAPTAIN EBER BUNKER, a young man from Nantucket stock hired to to
sail the ship and its cargo of 188 convicts to the colony of New South Wales, then little more than
a decade old.
The William and Ann, of 370 tons, was part of the Third Fleet to sail to Australia from the UK, with
1,870 convicts and stores and provisions. Contractors had been engaged to supply the ships, among
which were five whalers whose broad beams and large holds were judged most suited to convict
transportation, yet whose primary design and purpose were clearly in mind.
Leaving from Plymouth, the William and Ann sailed with its human cargo in company with the
Atlantic and another whaler, Salamander, meeting up with another seven vessels from Portsmouth.
Efforts were made by the authorities to protect their human charges in what was always a grueling trip. Storms separated the vessels after a stopover at Rio de Janeiro, and first-person accounts
speak of the convicts confined below decks for security, while hatches were battened down to keep
out the sea.
Accounts compiled by a descendant of Bunker, Dr. Richard Hodgkinson, speak of the soldier guards
of the New SouthWales Corps, comprising a sergeant and twelve privates, being often content to keep
their charges below decks and if possible chained together in great privation from overcrowding.
There was trouble on board. Reports claim that Eber was charged with “assault and beating” by
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eber bunker
the soldiers of the Corps on his arrival at Sydney’s Port Jackson. “He
pleaded guilty and was fined.”
Eber had driven a fast trip, in what was an old vessel built thirty-two
years earlier. He lost seven convicts riddled with vermin and disease; yet
only five of the 181 required hospitalization on arrival.
Offloading took little more than a week, leaving Bunker free to roam the
settlement and muse on the fortunes of his life, in the aftermath of the
American War of Independence.
Within a month of the William and Ann’s arrival in Sydney, the Britannia
reached port with a cargo of 129 male convicts. It had lost twenty-one on
the voyage.
Britannia was another whaler, owned by the British firm of Sam
Enderby and Sons, under the command of Thomas Melville. He, too, was
on his first voyage to Australia.
Melville wrote enthusiastically to his owners that off the east coast of
Tasmania, “we saw a large sperm whale, but did not see anymore being
very thick weather and blowing hard to within 15 leagues to Port Jackson.
Within three leagues of the shore we saw Sperm whales in great plenty.
Tasmania in 1803, until then known as Van Dieman’s Land. In giving five
reasons for the settlement, the first to be listed by King was “to prevent the
French occupying the country.”
The occupation was initiated in July 1803, when HMS Glatton sailed
from Sydney with orders to take twenty-four convicts and a handful of
free settlers south to form the settlement. Under charter to accompany
was the Albion, commanded by Eber Bunker and carrying most of the
convicts and their guard and a collection of livestock that included three
rams, a number of fine ewes, an English black bull, twelve cows, an
English boar, swine, and a fine mare.
Bunker, spying sperm whales on the way, could not resist the temptation: He captured no fewer than three before arriving at the River
Derwent in southern Tasmania, site of the future capital, Hobart.
Although he had given approval for digressions, Governor King was not
Melville’s sightings were well received by Governor Phillip, an enthusiast for a local whaling industry. “I waited on His Excellency . . . and he
told me he would despatch every long boat in the fleet to take our convicts out and he did accordingly. . . . The Secret of seeing the whales our
sailors could not keep from the rest of the whalers here, the news put
them all astir, but we have the pleasure to say we were the first ship
ready for sea.”
The William and Ann and the Britannia sailed within ten days to try
their luck. They caught seven whales between them, but could hold only
one each. This was Sydney’s first locally based whaling adventure—the
first two of many fish and many barrels of sperm oil to be carried in the
whaling ships from Sydney’s Port Jackson to Europe and America.
After a second cruise to Australia, Eber Bunker sailed to New Zealand,
whose coast he is thought to have explored before returning to his wife and
four children in England, where, in 1786, he had married Margrett, daughter of Captain HenryThompson, personal pilot for King George III. Bunker’s
wife’s mother was Isabella Collingwood, a second cousin to Vice Admiral
Collingwood, who succeeded Nelson as Admiral of the British Fleet.
Two years later, at the age of twenty-seven, Bunker scored his first command and made two whaling voyages round Cape Horn before the voyage
to Port Jackson.
Back in England and several voyages later, he received command of a
new ship, the Albion, which he sailed to Sydney in the record time of three
months, fifteen days, its stores of 900 tierces of salt pork much welcomed.
Three months later, Bunker was out hunting whales off the eastern
Australian coast, to return within eleven months with 900 barrels of oil.
One more year and the Albion was able to clear for England with 155
tons of oil on board, or nearly 5,000 barrels. Meanwhile, he had bought
a hundred acres of land at Liverpool, on the western outskirts of Sydney,
that he proundly named “Collingwood.”
While often dubbed the father of Australian whaling, it was Eber
Bunker’s sailing skills that secured him a ringside seat in Australia’s political development. Lingering concerns about French aspirations in
Australia prompted Sydney’s Governor King to order the settlement of
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Historic Nantucket
Photo: Tim Blue
We sailed through different shoals of them from 12 o’clock in the day till
sunset, all round the horizon as far as I could see from the mast head.
In fact I saw very great prospects in making our fishery upon this coast.
. . . I was determined as soon as I got in and got clear of my live lumber,
to make all possible despatch on the fishery on this coast.
Collingwood, Bunker’s residence on the outskirts of Sydney,
now classified by the National Trust.
happy: “If boats are put off to fish, every convict must be hand-cuffed
and confined below until the boats return.”
Bunker was alert to the commercial potential of life in Australia. For his
role in helping establish Tasmania, Bunker was granted four hundred
acres at no cost, at Liverpool on the southwestern outskirts of Sydney. In
1806 he brought his wife and five children out from England, to set up
house in the Rocks area of Sydney harbor, a site near the southern footings of its present landmark harbor bridge.
Bunker was continually at sea until his last voyage in 1824, when he
went on a whaling cruise to the Santa Cruz Islands. He was engaged in
cruises by Governor Macquarie, during one of which to the South Pacific
he found letters from French explorer La Perouse dated one month
before the explorer left Botany Bay and mysteriously disappeared.
Bunker was regarded by Macquarie as “a very able expert seaman and of
a most respectable character.”
Collingwood, now classified by the National Trust, has been restored
and furnished in the period of Bunker’s life. Perhaps his greatest legacy
may be his reputation as a master and employer: There’s an old whaleman’s saying: “Lay me on Captain Bunker. I’m Hell on a long dart.”
tim blue is a journalist in Sydney with a national daily newspaper. He is researching a history of American whalers off the south and west coasts of Australia, and has
visited Nantucket to conduct part of his research.
NEW ACQUISITIONS
Ben Simons
Rare Portraits
of the Nantucket
Whaleship
Spermo
Friends of the NHA
Purchase Masterpieces
of American Whaling Art
H
Spermo Cutting In Whales On Japan, 1822
Ship Spermo Trying With Boats Among Whales On California, 1821
John Fisher (1789–?)
Oil on canvas
2008.31.1–2
GIFT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE NHA
ow often does a museum have the
opportunity to add artifacts to its collection that speak to the heart of its mission and,
in addition, express the core history of the community that it represents? On Nantucket—where
the very fabric of the buildings and the lives of our forebears were
built upon the fragile basis of the oil taken from the giant bodies of
deep-sea sperm whales, cut in, tried out, and strained—few things
could tell that story better than images of men in the act of whaling
on the ocean waves. If such images were created by a Nantucketer,
depicting Nantucket whaleships, with Nantucket crews, and date
to the earliest decade of Nantucket’s Golden Age of Whaling—we
could begin to imagine their iconic importance.
Thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the Nantucket
Historical Association, the collections of the NHA recently received
such a remarkable gift: two paintings by Nantucket whaling master
John Fisher (b. 1789) depicting the Nantucket whaleship Spermo in
two dramatic settings: Ship Spermo Trying With Boats Among
Whales On California (1821), and Spermo Cutting In Whales On
Japan (1822).
Spermo sailed on its sole whaling voyage from 1820 to 1823, in
consort with two other Nantucket whaleships, the General Jackson
and the Pacific. John Fisher was master of the General Jackson, and
observed his two sister ships very closely through his looking glass.
Created with the eye for detail of a seasoned whaling officer,
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NEW ACQUISITIONS
continued
Fisher’s portrayals of the Spermo rank among the most vigorous
depictions of whaling before the invention of photography. The cutting-in scene shows the raised blanket piece of the whale twisting in
the air while the crew heaves in unison on the capstan to board it.
Meanwhile, the upturned jawbone of the whale rises amidst
swirling blood and salt-spray abeam the ship. The trying-out scene
captures the blazing fires of the rendering process with trails of
smoke and flames, a mincing station, and whaleboats dispatched
on a pod of whales. Fisher masterfully portrays the swell of the
ocean as Spermo rolls on the waves and circling seabirds swarm to
share in the frenzy of the scene. Details like lookouts aloft in the
crow’s nest and various figures positioned in the whaleboats add to
the vivid expressiveness of the scenes. Fisher’s works are not only
among the earliest known oil paintings depicting American whaling, they are by far the most dramatic.
The voyage of the General Jackson, Spermo, and Pacific was a representative venture for the time. Nantucket was recovering from the
aftermath of theWar of 1812, and in the early 1820s had regained her
exuberant spirit of exploration and profit. The Pacific was virgin soil;
ships were fitting out in droves and harvesting vast numbers of
sperm whales in its waters. In the year of their departure, 1820, the
rich Japan Grounds were discovered by Captain Joseph Allen of the
whaleship Maro. The very fact that a vessel was named Pacific tells
the story. Fisher’s ship had a moderately successful return of 860
barrels of sperm; Pacific did slightly better with 1,465 of sperm;
while Spermo had “greasy luck,” returning 1,920 barrels.
Very little documentary evidence exists to shed further light on the
life of Captain John Fisher, the mysterious Nantucket artist, evidently self-taught, who created six known canvases: two of the ship
Pacific, also in the NHA collection; a large canvas showing Spermo in
a thunder squall, in the Nantucket Atheneum collection; and another in a private collection. Fisher seems to have retired from the sea
after this voyage, and never owned property on Nantucket, although
he was married to Nantucketer Abiel Coffin (1791–1828), and had
one child by her, Mary (b. 1813). Spermo was sold off after this voyage; General Jackson left the Nantucket fleet; and Pacific went on to a
long and successful career, having the distinction of counting
Nantucket scrimshander Edward Burdett among its crew on a later
voyage. From the six extant canvases, it can be seen that the voyage
of Spermo, General Jackson, and Pacific were beset by storms, fierce
gales, Saint Elmo’s fire, and violent rolling seas.
One remarkable letter in the NHA collection—from the young officer Henry Phelon Jr., on board the 1820–23 voyage of the Spermo, to
his brother Thaddeus on Nantucket—tells the whole story of the
Nantucket whaleman. Phelon starts by apologizing for his absence,
and promises to reveal “. . . the secret of my travels”:
Your anxiety must be so great to hear whether I am dead
or alive. . . . I know very well the worryings it will give
you to hear that I have taken to the seas—The 6th of August 1820 I
shipt to the Ship Spermo of Nantucket bound round Cape Horn
into the North Pacific ocean on a whaling voyage . . . making our
passage to the Coast of Japan . . . twenty two thousand miles from
holm [home]. So you may judge that I have seen a considerable part
of the world and many has been thoughtful hours . . . I have been
tossed to and fro upon the bosom of the ocean . . . lightnings flashing
thunders roreing surging billows rowling in upon us and blowing a
tremendous tempest. . . . It’s impossible for me to tell when I shall
come holm [home].
 | Historic Nantucket
The Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association organization
is our premier collectors group, comprising seventy-five individuals who pool resources annually to build a reserve of funds dedicated to the pursuit of important art and artifacts for the collections of
the Nantucket Historical Association. Since its founding in 1986,
the Friends have donated many of the key pieces in the NHA collections, with gifts valued at over one million dollars.
The process of the Friends’ pursuit of the Spermo paintings was a perfect model of its activities, and an exciting example of quick response to
an upcoming auction. The paintings were part of the J. Welles
Henderson sale at Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
on the weekend of August 16, 2008, and were instantly spotted by many
watchful eyes in the catalog that was distributed just a few weeks prior
to the sale. As with many auctions, the catalog issue date did not leave
much time to mobilize interest, so we needed to act quickly.
A window into the process might be of some interest: As NHA
curator, my immediate responsibility was to alert Friends president
David Ross and Arie Kopelman, chair of the Friends Acquisitions
Committee. David quickly alerted the other committee members,
and the consensus was clear: pursue! Now, it was a question of
establishing values and discovering interest from other parties and
institutions. We worked the phones exhaustively over a period of
about a week. I traveled to Portsmouth to preview the paintings
and black-light them; my feeling was strongly positive in terms of
condition, using the Fishers in the NHA collection as a basis for
comparison. Given what we were learning about values and interest, we immediately enlisted conservator Lydia Vagts, formerly of
the MFA Boston, to drive to Portsmouth to give a conservation
assessment; this too came back favorably. Now, we canvassed other
institutions and dealers to ascertain their interest. What we found
only confirmed the importance of the paintings: the interest was
strong across the board, but many of the interested parties were
generously offering to hold back in order to ensure that the paintings returned to Nantucket—where they belong.
The Friends arrived at an appropriate limit, and I traveled to the
auction to undertake the live bidding. The bidding was strong, but
we were able to secure these island treasures for a final bid of
$330,000, plus $40,000 commission. Friends president David Ross
said, “It’s wonderful to have these extraordinary paintings back on
Nantucket. The Friends are pleased to be able to contribute such
important objects to the NHA permanent collection.”Arie
Kopelman added, “These early pictures would be stars in any maritime collection. This acquisition was a unique, once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity.We are so fortunate to bring them home to our island!”
At the final hammer, auctioneer Ron Bourgeault, a longtime friend
of the NHA, announced publicly that the paintings were returning
to Nantucket. He said that J. Welles Henderson, the renowned maritime collector whose collection they were in for over twenty years,
“would have been delighted that they are returning home.”
The newly acquired John Fisher paintings of the Nantucket
whaleship Spermo, historic gifts of the Friends of the NHA, now
hang in Gosnell Hall, just feet away from the whaleboat and skeleton of the forty-seven-foot sperm whale. It is gratifying to note that
among the known details of their provenance is their one-time
ownership by preeminent Nantucket whaling historian and former
NHA president Alexander Starbuck.
ben simons is Robyn and John Davis Chief Curator of the Nantucket
Historical Association.
F I F T Y Y E A R S L AT E R
Steve Sheppard
The Crash of Northeast
Airlines Flight 258
On August 15, 1958 a twin-engine Convair CV-240 fell short
of the runway on Nantucket in heavy fog
T
he summer of 1958 on Nantucket unfolded much
like any other—one of the biggest stories of August was
the opening of the nation’s first bicycle path along the
Milestone Road. Famed heart specialist and bicycling enthusiast Dr. Paul Dudley White was present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony that August 13. A day earlier, representatives from Northeast
Airlines met with Nantucket’s airport commission to discuss a new,
three-year contract with the airport.
Three days later, however, a tragedy of unimaginable proportions
struck the island when a Northeast Airlines flight
from New York crashed in heavy fog. At the time
it was the worst airline disaster in New England
history, but its immediate aftermath served as an example of
Nantucket’s compassion for
others as islanders acted
heroically in the face of
tragedy.
Now, fifty years later,
the Northeast Airlines
crash of a twinengine Convair CV240 with thirtyfour individuals
aboard is
remembered
still for the selflessness of the many who rushed to the scene with one
concern—to help in any way they could.
Twenty-three people perished when the flight from New York’s
LaGuardia Airport missed runway 24 by 1,450 feet, cutting a 500-foot
swath through the dense scrub oak and pines. The force of the landing broke the airplane apart, and while some passengers were
thrown from the plane, others were trapped in the wreckage.
One of the eleven survivors was nineteen-month-old Cindy Lou
Young, a Nantucket native whose mother, eighteen-year-old
Jacqueline DuceYoung, was flying home to the island to visit her parents. Unable to move, she handed Cindy Lou into the arms of survivor John J. B. Shea with the admonition, “Take the baby”;
Jacqueline would be the youngest victim in the tragedy. Shea placed
the baby out of harm’s way before going back to help in the rescue
mission.
The regularly scheduled flight was two hours late leaving New York
because of weather and ramp delays. The plane left LaGuardia
around 10:30 P.M. for the one-hour flight to Nantucket.
It was cloudy on the island that night, and at 10:58 P.M. visibility at
the airport was still four miles, with a ceiling of 12,000 feet. But fog
rolled in quickly. At 11:12 P.M. visibility was reduced to three-quarters of a mile, and by 11:27 P.M., as the plane approached
Nantucket, visibility dropped to a half mile. Four minutes
later, visibility was down to one eighth of a mile.
The U. S. Weather Bureau agent at the
Battered empennage and rear fuselage after the crash.
PAUL KOZINN COLLECTION
Fall 2008
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F I F T Y Y E A R S L AT E R
continued
airport reported the situation to Northeast station manager Tom
Giffin, who radioed the information—but the crew of Flight 258
never acknowledged the transmission.
As taxi driver James Allen told the New Bedford Standard-Times
that night: “[The plane] circled the field. I looked up and it was so
clear that I could see the stars. The plane started coming in. Then all
of a sudden, the weather socked in.”
When word of the crash spread, Nantucketers and vacationers
alike rushed to the scene. Like many other islanders, Frank Marks
was alerted to the disaster by the insistent call of the fire horn. The
next day’s Standard-Times related his story:
I heard the fire engines going out Union Street and a moment or two
later I heard the State Police siren and the car shot by me. I ran home
and got into my car and went out to the airport. I could see the reflection of the fire coming from the woodland on the northeast side of
the airport. I drove about a mile beyond along Old South Road and
came up behind the State Police car. The firemen were already in the
woods. I got out and started in. I got about 100 feet and I saw
Sergeant (Robert) Haley walking through the bushes with a baby in
his arms. Then a man came behind him with a woman in his arms.
I kept walking and as I got near the plane I could hear someone
shouting in the bushes. I saw a man sitting near the ship. The flames
were all around the wreck. I dragged him away.
The scene of the wreckage.
PAUL KOZINN COLLECTION
At the newly built Nantucket Cottage Hospital on Prospect Street,
island doctors and nurses were aided by visiting physicians as the
same scenario of hope and caring amid chaos played out. Physicians
were praised for their “superb emergency treatment . . . that may
have saved the lives of the Nantucket air crash victims transferred to
Massachusetts General Hospital.”
Nineteen-month-old Cindy Lou Young, however, required little care
and remained on the island. All she received from the accident was a
 | Historic Nantucket
scratch, prompting newspapers to call her survival “miraculous.”
Another survivor, Paul Kozinn, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was also lucky: he
was one of the least seriously injured. Although he was thrown from
the plane, his first thought was to help others. From his hospital bed
in Nantucket, he told of his experience:
The plane made a left bank, then leveled off. It seemed just like normal procedure. Then I felt something scraping on the bottom of the
plane. It felt like a rough landing strip that should be fixed. Next
thing I knew I was on the ground ten feet from the plane. I don’t
know whether I had been unconscious one minute, ten minutes or
one hour. When I came to, my seat was gone. I don’t know what
became of it. I heard people moaning and women’s voices calling for
help. I turned around and I saw my friend Don close to the flames
and unconscious. He was still strapped into his seat; it came out with
him. I got to my feet and reached him and pulled him away. I don’t
remember much after that, but I think I went back to pull out a
woman. I don’t know for sure.
The friend he pulled to safety, Don Breswick of NewYork, died from
his injuries the next day at Massachusetts General Hospital.
After the tragedy, improvements to Nantucket Memorial Airport
came: an air-traffic-control tower was built; runway lighting was
improved. At the time of the crash, Nantucket averaged 13,000 landings a year. Now, it is the second busiest airport in New England,
boasting sophisticated radar and instrument-landing-system capabilities.
This August 15, on the fiftieth anniversary of the disaster, a stone
marker on Bunker Road (at the present site of Toscana Construction)
commemorated the site of the crash, serving not only as a memorial
to those who died, but as a reminder of those who rushed to the
scene to help. At the ceremony, Cindy Lou Young and Paul Kozinn,
the two remaining crash survivors, met for the first time.
Kozinn has recently donated his comprehensive files concerning
the disaster—newspaper clippings, Northeast Airlines interoffice
correspondence, and records of the public hearings and witness
examinations related to the crash—to the Nantucket Historical
Association archives.
Earlier this year, Young published a compelling account of the
tragedy and of her ensuing life on Nantucket: Out of the Fog: Tragedy
on Nantucket. As Young states in the conclusion of her book: “It has
been fifty years since these events took place, and time has changed
the face of the community and the landscape. I no longer reside on
the lovely isle of Nantucket, but it will always be a part of me and a
part of my heart. I still make regular trips back there. For me, there
has never been, and probably never will be, the same sense of ‘community’ that I experienced living on this small island.”
Throughout its storied history, the tales of Nantucketers coming to
the aid of those in peril, whether on land or sea, are the stuff of legend. The response to Northeast flight 258 stands among all those
episodes of heroism. When asked recently if he thought islanders
today would respond to a similar tragedy with the same fervor, Frank
Marks said without hesitation, “Sure.”
But then he quickly added, “Let’s hope no one ever has to.”
steve sheppard, former editor of Nantucket Magazine, is a free-lance writer
and musician who has lived on Nantucket since 1980.
News Notes & Highlights
31st August Antiques Show
The 31st Annual August Antiques Show was held August 1–3, 2008, at the Nantucket New
School. The August Antiques Show is the major fund-raising event for the NHA’s preservation
and education programs, and was chaired by Vicki Livingstone; the honorary chair was
Marcia Welch.
The prestigious Antiques Council, an organization dedicated to ensuring the quality of
antiques and historical works of art at many of the leading national antiques shows, once
again managed the August show. Visitors from across the country traveled to Nantucket to
view American and English furniture, fine art, Oriental rugs, books, maritime antiques, folk
art, and Nantucket memorabilia.
Antiques Show week began on Tuesday, July 29, with a lecture sponsored by the Friends of
the Nantucket Historical Association, featuring Elliot Bostwick Davis, John Moors Cabot
Chair, Art of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
For the fifth consecutive year, the preview party was sponsored by Eaton Vance Investment
Counsel, with Trianon/Seaman Schepps underwriting the popular dinner auction, held in
honor of Shelton Ellis.
Honorary Antiques Show chair, Marcia Welch
with husband Joe.
Above center: John Espy, Shelton Ellis,
and Polly Espy.
Above left: AAS chair Vicki Livingstone;
NHA executive director Bill Tramposch;
Liz Verney and board president Geoff Verney.
Family Whale Festival
Memorial Concert by Bill Schustik
On Thursday and Friday, July
17 and 18, the NHA hosted
its first Family Whale Festival
in the Whaling Museum.
This hands-on festival, led by
the Education Department
for visitors of all ages, included drawing whales with artist
and chanteyman Don Sineti,
an overview of the history of
whaling and whale biology,
making origami whales and
imitation scrimshaw, singing
songs of the sea, and telling
the tale of the tragedy of the
whaleship Essex. The festival
was a joint endeavor of the
Nantucket Historical
Association, the
International Fund for
Animal Welfare (IFAW), and
the Water Education for
Teachers Project (WET).
American troubadour and island favorite Bill Schustik performed
traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music, dedicated to
the memory of his
longtime publicist
Doris Fellerman,
to a full house in the
Whaling Museum
on the evening of
July 26.
Schustik was first
introduced to
Fellerman by Kim
Corkran when she
was NHA president
in the early 1990s.
“Doris volunteered
Richard Lauer, Rebecca Fellerman Lauer, their
at one of my concerts,
daughter
Meg, and Bill Schustik
and almost before I
realized what was happening, she took over
the management of my performances,” said Schustik. The concert
featured many of her favorite songs, and was followed by a wine and
cheese reception hosted by Fellerman’s family.
Kaitlin Lloyd welcomes visitors to
the Family Whale Festival.
Fall 2008
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News Notes & Highlights
New NHA Staff Members
New NHA staff members Christopher Mason,
Mark Avery, Tracy Murray.
Christopher Mason was hired as Public Programs Coordinator in January. Mason has a B. A.
in History and Secondary Education from Castleton State College in Vermont, State College
in Vermont, and in 2008 he received a Master of Arts in Public History from the University at
Albany.
Longtime Nantucket resident Mark Avery stepped aboard as Manager, Historic Properties,
in March. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, with a major in mechanical engineering and industrial design, Avery also studied building technology and civil engineering at
Greenfield Community College. On Nantucket, he has been deeply involved in town government and historic-preservation agencies, serving as a board member of the Nantucket
Preservation Trust, an elected member of the Nantucket Historic District Commission, and a
founding member of the HDC’s Historic Structures Advisory Council.
In May, Tracy Murray was hired to assist the Director of Finance & Administration, Johanna
Richard. Murray holds a B.A. in Science with a second major in English from Stephen F. Austin
State University in Texas. For many years, Murray worked in the administrative and finance
offices for the Town of Nantucket, and had a prior stint at the NHA in the 1990s.
Yale Whiffenpoof
Alumni Benefit
Concert
Tea for Life
Members
In a working partnership with the
NHA and the Maria Mitchell
Association (MMA), the Whiffenpoof
alumni performed to a sold-out
crowd on Saturday, August 16, in the
Whaling Museum. Established in
1909, the Yale Whiffenpoofs are the
oldest collegiate a cappella group in
the United States, and active alumni
members continue to raise their voices in song according to the celebrated
Whiffenpoof tradition.
In appreciation for their support, NHA
Life Members were invited for tea in the
garden at the Thomas Macy House, 99
Main Street, on Thursday, September 4,
at teatime. The sun-filled afternoon featured assorted finger sandwiches, cherry
scones, lemon squares, shortbread, and
strawberries, resplendent in silver platters and bowls. Guests enjoyed an assortment of teas while commenting on the
lovely setting during informal tours of
the house.
Julie A. Hensler and Susie Robinson
Walden Chamber Players
in Concert
A favorite of islanders, the players return to play at four island venues
Walden Players at Nantucket
Elementary School
 | Historic Nantucket
To the delight of numerous island residents—young and old alike—the Walden Chamber
Players gave a number of concerts around the island during the weekend of September 26.
Free performances were enjoyed at the Nantucket Elementary School, the Nantucket New
School, and the Homestead, culminating in a magical concert Friday evening in the Whaling
Museum. Founded in 1997, and comprising twelve dynamic artists in various combinations
of string, piano, and wind ensembles, the players showcased rarely heard works by
composers of the past as well as music by contemporary composers. The Friday concert
included pieces by Boccherini, Augusta Read Thomas, Haydn, Handel/Halvorsen, and
Schedl. Each concert was underwritten by an anonymous donor.
NANTUCKET
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
HAS EMBARKED ON TWO KEY INITIATIVES
The NHA is grateful for the many members and friends who have already provided generous support for these two
projects. Fund-raising continues for both initiatives, with the goal to complete them in 2011.
Your continued generosity is greatly appreciated.
RESTORATION OF GREATER LIGHT
Photo: Jack Weinhold
Opening a Window into the Nantucket Art Colony
Greater Light—its very name
elicits the spirit of the colony
of artists that arose on
Nantucket in the 1920s.
Among them were Quaker
sisters Gertrude and Hanna
Monaghan, who lovingly
converted a barn at 8 Howard
Street into an eclectic summer home and studio.
The NHA is now beginning
the timely and necessary
restoration of this historic
property to bring to life
Nantucket’s emergence as an
Embroidered narrative of Greater
art
colony and resort. In
Light by Susan Boardman.
bequeathing the property
and its furnishings to the
NHA, it was the Monaghans’ intent that Greater Light would be used
“in all ways possible to benefit the public.”
With its restoration, the house and its charming garden will
become a venue for lifelong learning in the arts and for small gatherings that extol the arts and culture—exhibitions, poetry readings,
plays, musical performances, and garden parties—much in the way
the Monaghans engaged the community.
The $2.4 million Greater Light project is being undertaken in two
phases. Later this year, the NHA will begin the Phase I restoration
work needed to make the building structurally sound and useable as
well as to create a much-needed basement apartment for staff housing. In 2007, the NHA received the community’s endorsement of the
restoration with receipt of a $400,000 matching grant from the
Nantucket Community Preservation Committee. Through the generosity of its supporters, the NHA has already met the CPC match.
Naming opportunities remain available, and further donations of
all sizes are welcome and will help the NHA raise the $330,000 needed to complete Phase I by spring 2010. At that point, the NHA will
focus on raising the additional funding for Phase II—restoration
and conservation of the interior, furnishings, and the garden; and
development of interpretive and educational programs, tours, and
exhibitions. Completion of the Greater Light project is anticipated
in 2011.
For more information about Greater Light, to schedule a tour of the
property, or to make a contribution, please contact Judith Wodynski,
director of external relations, at (508) 228–1894, ext. 111,
or [email protected].
A “GATEWAY” FILM
An Orientation to Nantucket History
Following the Nantucket Historical Association’s key interpretive themes,
the orientation film will create an overarching and compelling narrative
that captures the essence of Nantucket, connecting this “elbow of sand,”
as Melville called it, to national and world history. In filmmaker Ric
Burns’s unique style, the production will use primary-source quotations
and historic images coupled with a memorable musical accompaniment. Nathaniel Philbrick, author/historian and NHA research fellow,
and William Tramposch, NHA executive director, will work closely with
Burns. When it premiers in 2011, the NHA’s “gateway” orientation film
will become a must-see for residents and visitors alike.
Over the past two years, Burns has been a frequent visitor to
Nantucket, both to speak at the museum and to conduct research at
the NHA Research Library for a major PBS documentary on the history of American whaling, premiering at the Whaling Museum in 2011.
The NHA is just $60,000 away
from meeting its $398,000 goal
for the orientation film. The NHA
is grateful for the generous support it has already received from
members and friends; additional
Whaleship Atlas by
gifts in any amount are welcome,
Alexander H. Seaverns
and will help the NHA reach its
goal this year. Donation levels from
$500 to $50,000 and above will be included in the film’s credits.
To learn more about the film or to make a donation, please contact
Judith Wodynski, director of external relations, at (508) 228–1894, ext.
111, or [email protected].
Fall 2008
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Warren Jagger
Make the Gift of a Lifetime
in 2008 & 2009 with a tax-free charitable ira
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of
2008 allows you to make a tax-free transfer of
your excess retirement assets to the Nantucket
Historical Association—only in 2008 and 2009.
If you are age 70 ½ or older, you can rollover
up to $100,000 from a traditional or Roth IRA
directly to the Nantucket Historical Association.
This amount would be excluded from your
income and taxes and count toward your
mandatory IRA withdrawals. In addition, your
heirs would not be burdened later by the substantial taxes associated with inheriting an IRA.
Making a gift to the NHA during your
lifetime lets you see the results of your
philanthropy. Gifts may be directed to the
permanent endowment, the Annual Fund,
or a specific area of interest, such as Greater
Light, the orientation film, the Whaling
Museum, Research Library, 1800 House, or
educational programs.
For further information, consult your financial professional or contact Judith Wodynski.
508 228 1894, ext. 111 email: [email protected]
Historic Nantucket
P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554-1016
www.nha.org
Periodical
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at Nantucket, MA
and Additional
Entry Offices
India Company, and later a third wife, Ann, widow of William Minchin.
Captain Eber Bunker is often dubbed the Father of Australian whaling,
Australia's first export industry. He was also a pioneer of the country's pastoral expansion, sending stock and servants to the south and west of New
South Wales around the town of Bargo, and north near the town of Keepit
on the Namoi River. He died in 1836 at his home, Collingwood, at the head
of navigation of the Georges River, about twenty kilometres upstream from
Sydney Harbour. His grave lies in St. Luke's Cemetery at Liverpool in
Sydney’s southwestern suburbs.
Collingwood, now classified by the National Trust, has been restored
and furnished in the period of Bunker’s life. Local historians suggest it originally resembled a traditional Nantucket building in its proportions, while
its interior echoes the decor of the times. Perhaps his greatest legacy may
be his reputation as a master and employer:There’s an old whaleman’s saying: “Lay me on Captain Bunker. I’m Hell on a long dart.”
tim blue is the bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio bio biobio bio
bio bio bio bio bio
Eber overset
please cut
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Historic Nantucket