on jackie kennedy's trip to india and pakistan on reel america sunday at 4 p.m. eastern. doing a period of the 19th century, nantucket, off the coast of massachusetts, was a hub for wheeling around the world. godwin of the nantucket historical association, discusses the history of whaling and the impact it had on the small island community. the nantucket historical association hosted this talk and provided the video. >> good evening, everyone. welcome to the nantucket historical association's webinar on whaling. and i am very excited about presenting this to you tonight. we have over 230 people participating, which is absolutely shocking. we are just delighted. we are going to be talking to ignite about what it was like on the whale hunt. this presentation will last about 20 minutes.

after that, i will be more than happy to take any questions that i hope to answer for you. i think we are just about ready to begin. welcome, and delighted. take out your map and look at it, see what a real corner of the world it occupies. those were the words of hermann melville in chapter 14 of "moby dick." melville was talking about nantucket, our tiny island about 15 miles long. that this little island became the whaling capital of the world. a major accomplishment for a little place like nantucket. so tonight we are going to go on the voyage of the edward perry. this is going to be captained by perry winslow, and it lasted to 1858. he is going to be accompanied on this voyage by his wife, whose name is mary and, and two of

their children, mary and john will be joining on this voyage. here we have a young man whose name is joseph ray. joseph kept a journal throughout this voyage. so a lot of the drawings that you will be seeing came from joseph ray. he was a 21-year-old nantucket boy hired to go on the ship and his job was going to be both steerer and harpooner. that means when they are actually pursuing a whale, ofeph will be in the bough the ship. when they approached the whale, he will also be the harpooner. the present is going to harpoon the whale. joseph joins the rest of the crew. he is

-- these are men from the all over, men from buffalo, boston, nantucket, because the captains and the mates are most likely from nantucket. and there is also a man from the azores. as the edward carriage sales all over the world, they will be picking up other sailors along the way, so that will add to the diversity of the crew. diverse whaling crews created the first meritocracy in the colony. in a young man who could prove to clamber up the ladder and achieve success on the voyage or did maybe you could become a mate, maybe even a captain. pictured here we have the first african-american captain of a whale ship with an all-black crew. so the edward carriage is going to leave, as i said, in 1854, and this is an emotional time when whaling departed from nantucket.

town would be waving goodbye, because these men are going to be away from the town for four years. that's a really long time to be away from your loved ones. there was one whaling voyage that lasted 11 years. and on this particular voyage, the edward carey will hope,und the cape of good around the tip of africa and into the indian ocean and eventually into the pacific, hunting whales. primarily, they will be looking for sperm whales. why? why are they looking for sperm whales? there is a clue. sperm whales means large, square headed whales. that is the secret. when you look inside the wheels whale'sch makes -- that head, it makes up a third of the body, you will find a chamber. in that chamber is 300 to 500 gallons of oil. the finest oil in the world.

let alone the oil that came from the blubber of the whale also. sperm whaleof the oil was really amazing. it had this custody that was very stable. viscosity -- it had a that was very stable. it was not affected by cold temperatures, it would stay the same. lighthouses of the world were lit with this wonderful oil, as were the streetlamps in northern cities, london and france and all. so they were selling the oil all over the world. also, after all of the oil was refined, what was left is what they made candles out of. these were remarkable products. they burned very brightly, very cleanly, lasted a long time, and actually the oil made a difference in people's lives. before they had a wonderful product, they had to go to bed when the sun went down. now they could extend their day.

the majority of the crew will share the very cramped tight space at the forward part of the ship. are motley group of men going to be sharing this a long time, four years. the place is very slimy, it is dark. probably very smiley. that is where the men are going to -- probably very smelly. it is where the men are going to eat, sleep tell stories, right , in their journals, play cards, and it is probably full of smoke and also infested with rats and roaches. and some of the men will certainly be very homesick in the beginning and also probably very seasick at the beginning of the voyage. this is the quarters for the captain and his family. actually, a much nicer space, and they also will get much better food than the man in the foxhole.

one joseph ray has the time, he will spend a lot of time working on his journal. he illustrates it usually with sites that they see and po rts they stop in. he also writes about what life was like on a whaling voyage. we are very fortunate to have all of his wonderful drawings a great picture of what life was like on board a ship.lievwhaling and believe me, it was not an easy life, as you will see. up on the deck is where the men are literally learning the ropes. rigging the sail, checking the tools, they will because oiling the lines in the whale boats and the harpoons, and it will be practicing. they lower the whale boat to

learn how to maneuver these boats quickly, build up their muscles and the calluses on their hands, because they will be doing a lot of rolling. another very important job was the lookout job. when two men would climb the of the ships, which was around 100 feet in the air. hoop.unded by a metal back-to-back, each one responsible for a 100 degree lookout -- 180 degrees lookout. 100 feet up in the air and one of the mates, and they had a long voyage, they haven't seen while.hale for a all of a sudden somebody sees a sperm whale. and they know it is a sperm whale because of the spout. they have a very distinct spout. it goes out of the left side of their head at a 45 degree angle. the mate says, there she blows.

and the captain, who is down on the deck, will say launch the , whale boat. every man runs to their assigned boat. the first thing they do as they get in their boat is take off your shoes. sperm whales have a very sensitive sense of hearing and they don't want to make a lot of noise. also probably owned one pair of shoes so they don't want to take any chances on losing issue. so we had joseph up on the tough, using his big oar steer. as they approached the whale, he will be told to put down his oar and pick up a harpoon. woulwood to leather. now that joseph has harpooned the whale, the harpooned is not kill the whale, but it does get

his attention. so the whale will take off swimming as fast as he can go. the whale can swim maybe 10-15 miles per hour, so joseph is urging everybody on so he can now harpoon this whale. this wild ride that they are on is called the nantucket sleigh ride, certainly the most exciting part of the whale hunt, but also very dangerous. some of the men are just hanging on for dear life. others are letting down the line as it goes around the washer had, some are bailing water out of the boat -- this is a very exciting but very dangerous time. the idea is at the wheel will get very tired and as the whale starts to tire, they will pull in on the line again and get close to the whale again. now we have a switching of physicians. the officer, the boat header has moved to the bow and joseph has moved to the stern and now we have the officer who is going to use the lamp.

he is the person who will have the honor of actually killing the whale. so the officer takes up his lance. he is going to aim for the heart and the lungs of the whale. those are the vital organs, the life of the whale. he will plunge in his lance may be all the way up to the hilt and then he will turn it around to do as much damage as you can, . this was really a horrible way for a whale to die. once the whale has been lanced, everyone just waits. they are waiting to see the whale spotting blood. and they will yell out "fire in the chimney." they know that a vital organ has been hit and they know that the whale is going to die. as soon as they know the wheel is dying, they back away from the whale as fast as they can. a dying whale can go into a death flurry where they may circle the boat many times. they can tip over and all

the men may end up in the water. unfortunately, most of them did not know how to swim. c the edwardarey had been fortunate to come across a good-sized pod of sperm wales, and whoever has caught the will has to get that whale back to the mothership. the mothership stays in one position and each will boat that that whale needs to tow whale back. they could be three miles away, that would be three hours of rowing just to get back to the ship. end you can imagine -- and you can imagine, they are carrying a very heavy whale. this could be 40, even 60 tons. exhaustedhat the poor crew could do a little rest, but not so. the middle east art the cutting in process. they lower a platform off the side of the ship and start the cutting in. one of the men actually stand on the back of the whale and he has

cleats in his shoes so he does not fall into the water where the sharks maybe circling. his job is to put a big hole in the top of the head, attach a big hook which is attached to a winch and they can start to peel away the blubber from the whale. these pieces of blubber that they are peeling away are called blanket pieces, they were about 15 feet long and they were enormously heavy. so they would lay them on the deck with a winch and then these huge pieces go to the area where men used two-handled knives to blubbere huge pieces of into smaller pieces. you can see them cutting them up into smaller pieces. those are called bible leaves. next thing they do is probe the intestine and the stomach of the whale. they are looking for something very specific.

a sperm whales favorite food is squid, and all squid have a horny beak. think about what a parent's beak looks like. that is industr indigestible. you can get logged in the stomach or intestines of a whale and if that happens, the scar tissue forms around that began that produces ambergris. ambergris, it has a very special use. it was used as a ingredient in fine perfumes, so i have a high monetary value. desk so it had a high monetary value. next, they cut off the head of the whale, they let the rest of the carcass go and they bring the head onto the deck of the ship. they make a big hole in the top of the head and now they go after this valuable oil, bucket it out. many, many brackets. the youngest, smallest man on the board, who could be joseph

ray, is going to be ordered to strip down and lower himself with a bucket into the head of the whale to get the very last drop of that very valuable oil. imagine how shocked he is. lastly, they cut off the lower jaw of the whale, because they are going to save those teeth. sperm whale's teeth are made out of ivory. when they have some downtime on the whaling voyage, when they were not out catching whales, the captain would distribute the teeth to the crew. the men would take a tooth, send it down, and they would carve our ingrained into the tooth things they had seen on the voyage or some memory of home and they would fill in those carved, engraved lines, with soot from the tower or dried ink , and that was the art of scrimshaw, which was known as the sailor's art. now it is time to clean up the deck in preparation of boiling down all the blubber.

that ship's carpenter will get the fire going under the tripod, in the tri-works. and they put in these chunks of blubber. there will also be skin and tissue that will float up to the top and that would be skimmed off with a skimmer and added to the fire for they kept the fire going. it was really a long and arduous process, it could take up to 2-3 days in length. no regular bills, they just kept -- no regular meals, they just kept working 12 hour shifts. you can imagine that would be a wash with oil and blubber in a slippery mess. actually very dangerous, the smell was horrendous. supposedly, you could smell in nantucket whale ship that was drying out a whale miles away, so you could smell it way before you see it. quiteward carey has been lucky, and they now have killed

35 whales. the captain says, set sail for nantucket. you can imagine these men are homeward bound. they are ready to go home. the first thing they do when they know they are on their way home is they break apart the --. they just throw it overboard. they don't want the cap thing to be tempted to get any more oi whale, they want to be sure they're on their way home. on their way home this time, they are now seasoned navigators and they go around the horn and arrive in an target in 1858. the barrels and casks of oil that they have accumulated. these will go to a refinery and candle factory for further processing. and finally, it is time to pay tell them andr

what they have earned on this voyage. a captain, and certainly a ship owner, could become a wealthy man after just one whaling voyage. so someone like joseph, our boat steerer, will probably receive of the of the first is thafy man would receive 1/160 of the proceeds of the voyage. -- of the voyage, and our lowly th ofan would receive 1/160 the proceeds of the voyage. joseph has kept such a wonderful journal and told so many wonderful stories, it is really quite exciting to read. i will tell you about one of the adventures, when he talks about lecturing a fellow nantucket or -- rescuing a fellow nantucketer. a cry resounded throughout the ship, the wind blowing heavy, succeeded in reaching him as he was about to give up. he had a bucket under him which fortunately happened to go over at the same time. the name of the lad was samuel

christian. and in another entry from the on sunday, august 27, 1854, joseph describes the hard work that took place on the whaleship. working like the old hairy putting spars over the stern, caskets, boats, making trimming sails, and all of us homesick as the devil. so ends this 24 hours of trial and tribulation. so what happened to young joseph ray? after this voyage, he went out on another whaling voyage out of connecticut. and unfortunately, he was up in the sails and he fell from the foremast yard and was lost at sea. happened to the edward carey?

voyage out on another from 1858-1864, and then stopped in san francisco where it was sold, and then resumed its whaling. then, in 1865, it was captured and burned by the confederate raider, shenandoah, and that was the end of the edward carey. so now, whaling was completed over in the town of nantucket. people would think that probably the 19th century was the heyday of whaling, but actually it was whenof the 20th century, soviet fleet, european fleets, asian fleets started hunting whales for meat rather than for oil. surprisingly, in the 200 years of whaling that nantucket was doing, approximately one million whales were killed.

but in the 50 to 60 years of more modern whaling where they have big factory ships and grenades and harpoon guns and so on, it is estimated that over 3 million whales have been killed. whale populations are still quite threatened, they really are under considerable threat from noise levels, loud drilling in the sea, from pollution and garbage, entanglement with fishing gear and collisions with other ships. so that is the end of our whale hunt for the evening. i am so glad that so many people were able to join us. i would be happy to take questions at this point. >> ok, we've got a few questions here. the sperm oilon used as as sperm oil

gargle? peggi: it was, we have that bottle in the whaling museum and it was used as a gargle, does not sound too appealing. >> we have a question about the visuals for the whaling boats from the early movie and what was it and was the ship the charles morgan? peggi: i think it was. >> it was the charles morgan. peggi: it was a charles morgan, ok, and the movie is the silent movie made in the 1920's and it is called "down to the sea in ships." part of it is an actual whale hunt, but part of it is a hollywood interpretation, too. it gives us some great footage. >> we have a question about the photographs. what are the dates and sources of the different photographs? peggi: the photographs, from the journal? >> the question is what are the dates and sources of the

photographs. you could talk about both, talk about the journal and the photos were used. peggi: right. we have these remarkable drawings and stories that joseph ray tells in his journal, but a lot of the other footage as i said is from the movie, "down to the sea in ships." in some of it is from our collection, of course. >> comments from some that say ck on the crew list. was this the same merrick from the 1830's? peggi: that is an interesting question. i am not sure if it was the same. there were so many families that were connected in nantucket, and saw many that dust and so many that have the same first and last name. that is aure, but great question. >> another question is, how did joseph's journal survive and

come to nantucket? peggi: it came back with joseph. one of his descendents was able to donate it to the nantucket historical association. we are very fortunate to have it . along with many, many other ship's journals. the library has an amazing collection of journals and logbooks. there is a great project going on right now at the research library to transcribe all these journals and logbooks. >> next question is what was it that was thrown overboard to make the voyage end? peggi: at the end of the voyage, they break apart this brick furnace and they threw all the bricks overboard because they don't want the captain to be tempted to take another whale. there is another reason, too, they have used that numerous times to dry out 30-40 whales , and so the mortar between the

bricks could weaken. and it will be going around cape horn, which is notoriously stormy, and they don't want it to break apart in the storm and damage the ship. >> we have got a few more here. what were the maritime or educational requirements for men to set sail on these journeys besides breathing? [laughter] peggi: right, a lot of the men, especially the green hands really did not need any requirements, they just had to be a body. they needed a good crew and they needed to season them and learn the job as they go. now, the captains and the first mate would have been mostly nantucket men and would have been much more experienced and probably -- and they would have worked their way of the ladder so they learned a lot about navigation and sailing of these big ships. >> who was the edward carey that the ship was named after.

not knowactually did that until today, we just found out. the original owner of the ship, namedname was ahearn, the ship after his father. that it was sold to others over the years. in this particular voyage, the owners were two brothers who had a house on main street. the house still exists today. after the coffin brothers owned the ship, then it went to the starbuck family and eventually it was sold in san francisco. >> we have a question about, why don't people hunt sperm whales today? peggi: number one, there is a moratorium against hunting whales. that started, i believe, in 1986. there is a moratorium on hunting whales for commercial purposes, although there is still some hunting commercially that is still done.

but sperm whales are not easy. they are in very, very deep water. so they are the whales that would migrate close by nantucket , although we do have a sperm whale skeleton in our museum that did not migrate by nantucket, but that was a rare occasion. so hopefully these whales will have time to recover. it is estimated that there are around 300,000 sperm whales left in the world, which isn't a great number, but hopefully enough that they will be able to survive. >> and a question about the presentation itself, is this story the same one that george grant would tell? as first custodian of the whaling museum? peggi: that is a great question. the process has changed over the years. we have done a lot of different presentations and this is the first year we have used the edward carey journal to illustrate the whale hunt. it is very similar to the one that george grant would have

started all those years ago. >> and he was a whaler? peggi: he was a whaler, yes. >> when was photography first available for recording whaling? that is a good question. peggi: whoa. that, i do not know. when did photography become -- i don't know. i really don't know. >> in 1800? >> we would have to probably look at our own photography collection, i think the earliest earlye our around the 1840's. but they are mostly portraits of that time, probably difficult to take things on the ship. it is a very good question. we should look into that. peggi: yes. great question. >> was it unusual to go around both capes on a single voyage? peggi: i think it was very unusual. once nantucket discovered the rich whaling grounds in the routec, the quickest would be to go generally across the atlantic, maybe make stops

islands,ores, kit 30 and then along the eastern coast of south america and around the horn and up into the whaling grounds of the south pacific. they did a lot of their hunting along the equator so they would -- they were really way out in the middle of the pacific ocean. it is fairly unusual that this particular voyage did go around the cape of good hope, other ships did that, too, but it was more, to go a more direct route to the pacific. >> another navigation question, when did nantucket whalers first venture into the southern ocean around antarctica? peggi: even on whaling voyages in the thereabouts, they were 1830's going in the pacific, but they would also follow the whales. they followed the migration of the whales. so whales have their young in warm water, so around the

equator. but then, depending on the season, they will either go very far north to the arctic, or very far south to the antarctica to feed because those were the richer feeding grounds for them. so i think it just depended on the time of the year. >> how were the whale teeth proportioned to the crew? -- apportioned to the crew. peggi: it depends on the size of the whales? but they could have 30 or more teeth. some of the men were proficient at carving we'll teeth. they also used whalebone. -- at carving whale teeth. whale they carved bone. they carved busts and women's corsets which are usually made out of whalebone and they made jagging wheels. if you have been in the screenshot room, you would see all the different items that were made under the art of

scrimshaw. i assume that the teeth were more prized, and it would be distributed to the men who had time and inclination to carve and do designs in the teeth. >> did they eat the whale meat or discard it? peggi: they did not eat the whale meat, first of all, we have to think about the horrible smell when you are drying out the whale. [laughter] so this was very unappealing. in particular, sperm whales, in deeply, dive down so they can actually go down a mile or two deep. they have something called myoglobin in their blood which tends to give them more oxygen, in order to be it would to do that, but it tends to make their meet a very dark color, most a almost black color , which was pretty unappealing. this was not about meat for the nantucket whalers. >> coming back to the oil question, what was the difference between oil from the blubber and the oil from the

head? peggi: the oil from the blubber had to be boiled down. the oil from the blubber was basically fat and it had to be boiled down. the oil from the head was pure oil and it is the only creature in the world that has oil and in its head like this. there have been a lot of questions about why biologically does the whale have all its oil in its head. and the answer is no one really knows exactly for sure, but the supposition is that it acts as a buoyancy control that allows the whale to dive so deeply and come up quickly. but we are really not sure. it is rather hard for scientists to study whales because they are .nderwater most of the time >> how competitive was nantucket and other whaling centers? peggi: certainly for a good period of time starting in the mid-1700s to the mid-1800's,

this was the only industry on e this island, and nantucketers were really premier whalemen. they were very successful theing sperm whales, and innovation of having it -- on board. s,en in the mid-1800' certainly new bedford began to take over. they were a number of things that happened on nantucket that ended the whaling business, one of those being the great fire of 1846, the discovery of gold in california that took so many men away from here. the discovery of oil in pennsylvania which produced kerosene, again, to replace war. oil in the civil a number of things happened in a very short period of time that ended whaling on nantucket and new bedford was really the next big whaling center. and after that, san francisco also got into whaling, so it was

over by the time of the civil war. >> why was it so uncommon for the crewmembers to not know how to swim? peggi: [laughs] that is a good question. i think that is true, i have heard that is true. we think about it now, i mean, all the virtual bingo in pools and oceans and take swimming lessons and so on -- all of our children go in pools and oceans and take swimming lessons, but people were not using the ocean around us as a resort or recreation, this was business. so i think probably the thought of learning to swim never occurred to them. >> some of them came from farms. [laughter] ev right. did women ever travel on whaling ships? peggi: yes. sailors'often, only wives, no other women were allowed to go on whale ships. it was not not frequent, but a

number of wives did go along, we have a wonderful story from the museum about women who accompanied their husbands on whaling voyages. there is a wonderful new book called "flowers in the leagues that tells a story of a woman who went on a voyage with her husband, and kept a journal which we have and that is a wonderful story of what it was like for a woman to go out. -- itrom home with quite was quite an adventure for women in those days. but the women who were left behind in nantucket were very powerful women if you think about it. the men were gone and the women had to run this town and they did so in remarkable ways. we have remarkable stories of the nantucket women who were so ahead of their time, it really. >> interesting comment and question. he says, i was in norway and sampled smoked whale at the fish market. what type of whale would they have at that market?

peggi: it could be any kind of whale. certainly norway and iceland i know offer whale, and japan also offers whale meat as a delicacy, . it could be a humpback whale -- i don't know, it could be any kind of a whale. >> we have a correction hear from one of our old friends, jim. jim.jim -- good old he said it appears that the george morgan was used for static scenes and a different ship, the wanderer was re-rigged for some of the whaling scenes. that isitpicky, but great information to clean up our act a little bit. hi, jim. peggi: thank you. left special >> the great thing about this presentation is it is recorded. will it be posted somewhere for

replay or to share with others? ev yes, i am not sure when and where, but yes, we did record this. we will post it on our website when the time comes. >> ok. to then our proximity banks and whales, was their there local hunting here in new england? peggi: yes, certainly. the early whaling on nantucket was right around nantucket. there were whales migrating particular in the north atlantic and that whale migrates up and down the east coast, but yeah , the early whaling, before they had -- on board, they didn't have the option of going three or four years on the whaling voyage. , theyy caught a whale had to get back to nantucket before the blubber was rancid. >> we have a comment about antarctic whaling. the comment is if there were in the georgia

islands, on the harbor close to , the antarctic peninsula. >> right, right. >> greenland's north, i'm confused. anyway. peggi: yes. [laughter] again, we have some dramatic stories in journals and logbooks and the paintings in the museum that all tell us how difficult it was when they were really in the arctic area, because often the ships were stuck in the ice and that could be very fatal , ituse if the ice closes in could collapse the ship. it was very dangerous. but they had a lot of oil, so theya lot of whales -- but have a lot of whales up there so you can see where they would go. >> is it possible to purchase those candles today? no.i: it is illegal to hunt those whales, it is illegal to hunt whales. >> our last question, i think we will end on a high note. with the men away, did women rule?

peggi: yes. [laughter] most definitely. >> a question on the whaling station. is the whaling station manned by greenland? that is the end of our list. thanks. this is terrific. peggi: ok. thank you all for joining us. we look forward to doing this again sometime. >> thank you, everyone. peggi: thank you. bye-bye. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy, visit ncicap.org] ♪

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