watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. enjoy "american history tv" every weekend on c-span3. you're watching "american history tv." every weekend on c-span3 explore our nation's past. "american history tv" on c-span3, created by america's cable television companies. today we're brought to you by these television companies who provide "american history tv" to viewers as a public service. during a period of the 19th century nantucket off the coast of massachusetts was a hub for whaling around the world. peggy godwin of the nantucket historical association discusses the history of whaling and the impact it had on this smul island community. the nantucket historical society

hosted the talk. >> welcome to the nan tulkt historical association web near on the male hunt. i'm excited about presenting this to you tonight. we have over 230 peoplekmtjxññ/ participating which is absolutely shocking. we're just delighted. we're going to be talking tonight about what it was like on a whale hunt. this presentation will last about 20 minutes, and after that i'd be more than happy to take any questions that i hope i can answer for you. so i think we're just about ready to begin. so welcome and delighted. take out your map and look at it. see what a real corner of the world it occupies. those are the words of herman melville in chapter 14 of "moby dick." melville was talking about nantucket, our tiny island 30 miles at sea, about 15 miles long. this little island became the whaling capital of the world. a really major accomplishment

for a little place like nantucket. so tonight we're going to go on the voyage of the edward carry. this is going to be captained by perry winslow. the voi kwaj lasted from 1854 to 1858. he's going to be accompanied on this voyage by was hief whose name is mary ann and two of their children, mary and john will be joining them on this voyage. here we a young man whose name is joseph ray. joseph kept a journal throughout this voyage. a lot of the drawings that you will be seeing came from joseph ray. he was a 21-year-old nan tulkt boy hired to go out on the edward kerry. his job will be boat steerer and harpooner. so that means that when they

lower the whale boats from the whale ship, when they're actually pursuing a whale, joseph will be in the bow of the ship. so he will first be using an ore to help row toward the whale. when they approach the whale, he's also be the person who is going to harpoon the whale. joseph joins the rest of the crew, and these are men from really all over. they're men from fall river, buffalo, boston, nantucket, of course, because the captains and the mates are most likely from nantucket. there's also a man from the azores. as the edward kerry sales all over the world, they'll pick up other sailors along the way. that will add to the diversity of the crew. diverse whaling crews created the first meritocracy in the colonies. any young man who could prove his worth could climb up a ladder and eventually achieve success on a whaling voyage.

maybe become a mate, maybe even become a captain. pictured here is boston, the first african-american captain of a whale ship with an all-black crew. so the edward carey is going to leave, as i said, in 1854. this is a really emotional time when a whaling voyage departed to nantucket. most of the town would be waving good buy saying fair winds and greasy luck. these men will be away from the town for four years. there was one voyage that lasted 11 years. on this particular voyage, the edward carey is going to go around the cape of good hope, the tip of africa, into the indian ocean and eventually into the pacific hunting whales. primarily they'll be looking for sperm whales.

why? why did they want to get sperm whales? the scientific name of sperm whales is -- which means large square headed whale. that is the secret. when you look inside the whale's head there which makes almost a third of its body, you'll see this chamber. in that chamber are anywhere from 300 to 500 gallons of sperm sit tick oil, the finest oil in the world, let alone the oil that came from the blubber of the whale, also. the qualities of sperm city oil were amazing. it has viscosity which was very stable. it was not affected by really cold temperatures or really hot temperatures. it will stay the same. the lighthouses of the world were lit with this oil, as were the street lamps in northern cities, london and france, all over. they were selling this oil all over the world. also, after all the oil was

refined, what was left is what they made candles out of. these were a remarkable product, they burned very brightly, very cleanly, lasted a long time. spefrm setity oil made such a huge difference in people's lives. before they had this wonderful product, they had to go to bed when the sun went down and get up when the sun rose. now they could extend their day. the majority of the crew will share the folk sul, the cramp tied space at the forward part of the shape. they'll be sharing this space for a long time, four years. it was the folk sul is very slimy, it's dark, danning, probably very smelly. that is where the men are going to eat, sleep, tell stories, write in their journals, play cards. it is probably full of tobacco

smoke and also infested with rats and roaches. some of the men will certainly be very homesick in the beginning and also probably very sea sick at the beginning of the voyage. this is the quarters for the captain and his family. actually much nicer space. they also will get much better food than the men in the folk sul. so when joseph ray has free time, he is going to spend a lot of time working on his journal. he illustrates it butte. ly with sights that they see, ports that they stop in. he also writes a lot. he tells about missing home, and he tells about reflections on what life was like on a whaling voyage. we're very fortunate to have all thinks wonderful drawings that really give us a great picture of what life was like on board a whaling ship. believe me, it was not an easy life, as you will see.

up on the deck is where the men are actually literally learning the ropes. they'll be rigging the sails, sharpening the tools they use when they encounter the whales, coiling the line that's in the whale boats, attached to the harpoons and lances. they'll be practicing in the whale boats. they lower the whale boats so they can start to learn how to maneuver these boats quickly, build up their muscles and build up the callouss on their hands. they'll be doing a lot of rowing. another very important job was the lookout job. two men would climb the highest mast on the ship which was about 100 feet on the air. they're surrounded by a metal hoop. two men stand back-to-back, each one responsible for 180-degree lookout. 10 feet up in the air and one of

the mates -- they've had a long voyage, haven't seen sperm whales for a little while. all of a sudden somebody spots a sperm whale. they know it is a sperm whale because of the spout. sperm whales have a very distinct spout. it kind of blows out of the left side of their head at a 45-degree angle. now the mate up there says there she blows, she blows! and the captain, who is down on the deck will say launch the whale boats. every man runs to his assigned whale boat. the first thing they do as they get in their boat is take off their shoes. whales -- sperm whales have a very sensitive sense of hearing and they don't want to make a lot of noise in these wooden whale boats. also, they probably only owned one pair of shoes so they don't want to take chances on losing their shoes. we have joseph up in the bow. he's using his big ore to help steer. as they approach the whale, the

boat header, the officer in the stern, will tell them to put down his ore and pick up his harpoon as they are nearing the whale or, as they say, wood to leather. so now joseph has harpooned the whale -- the harpoon does not kill the whale. however, it does get his attention. the whale is going to take off swimming as fast as he can go. a whale can swim maybe 10, 15 miles an hour. joseph is urging everybody on so he can now harpoon this whale. this wild ride that they're on is called the nantucket sleigh ride. certainly the most exciting part of the whale hunt, but very dangerous. some of the men are hanging on for dear life. others are wetting down the line as it goes around the loggerhead. some are bailing water out of the boat. this is an exciting, but very dangerous time. the idea is eventually the whale will get very tired.

when the whale starts to tire, they will pull in on the line again and get close to the whale again. now we have a switch in positions. the officer, the boat header, has moved to the bow and joseph has moved to the stern. now we have the officer who is going to use a lance. he is the first who will have the honor of actually killing the whale. so the officer takes up his lance. he's going to aim for the heart and the lunges of the whale. those are the vital organs, the life of the whale. he will plunge in his lance maybe all the way up to the hit and churn it around to do as much damage as they can. this was really a horrible way for a whale to die. once the whale has been lanced, everyone just waits. they're waiting to see the whale

spouting blood, and they will yell out "fire in the chimney." they know a vital organ has been hit, and they know that whale is going to die. as soon as they know the whale is dying, they back away from the whale as fast as they can. a dying whale can go into a death flurry where they might circle the boat many times. their huge flukes could tip the boat over and all those men end up in the water. unfortunately, most of them did not know how to swim. the edward carey has been fairly fortunate to come across a good size pod of sperm whales. now, whoever has caught a whale has to get that whale back to the mother ship. the mother ship stays in one position and each whale boat that has caught a whale needs to tow their whale back. they can be three bhiels away on the nantucket sleigh ride. that would be three hours of

towing to get back to the ship. these whales could be from 40, 50, even 60 tons. you'd think this poor exhausted crew could do a little rest, but not so. they immediately start the cutting in process. they lower a platform off the side of the ship and start the cutting in. one of the men will actually stand on the back of the whale. he has cleats in his shoes so he doesn't fall into the water where sharks might be circling. his job is to put a big hole in the top of the head, attach a big blubber hook, attached to a winch, and they can start to peel away the blubber from the whale. these pieces of blubber that they're peeling away are called lica pieces. they were about 15 feet long and they were enormously heavy. they would raise them up onto the deck with a winch. these go to the mincing area

where men use two-handled knives to cut these huge pieces of blubber into smaller pieces. so now you can see them cutting them up into little bit smaller pieces, yes. those are called bible leaves. next thing they do is probe the intestine and the stomach of the whale. they're looking for something very specific. sperm whale's favorite food is squid. all squid have a who any beak, that is i understand jestable. it can get lodged into the stomach or intestines of the whale. if that happens, this scar tissue forms around that beak and that produced a substance called amber agree. amber agree had a very important use. it was a rare find, but if they found it, it was used as a fixative in fine perfumes, 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 that head right up onto the deck of the ship. they make a big hole in the top of the head. now they go after this valuable sperm setity oil and bucket it out. the youngest, smallest man on 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 every last drop of that very valuable oil. imagine how shocked he is. lastly, they cut off the lower jaw of the whale because they're going to save those teeth. sperm whale's teeth are made out of ivory. when there was downtime on a whaling voyage, when they weren't out catching whales, the captain would distribute the teeth among the crew. then the men would take a rough tooth, sand it down. then they would carve or engrave into the tooth, maybe scenes

they had seen on their voyage or some memory of home. they fill in those carved lines, those engraved lines with soot from the try works or dried ink. that was the art of scrim shaw known as the sailor's art. now it's time to clean up the deck in preparation for actually boiling down all the blubber. so the ship's carpenter will get the fire going under the tri pots in the try works. the try works are a brick fur thats nas. they put in these bible leaves, these chunks of lubber. there will be skin and tissue that will float up to the top. that will be skimmed off the skimmer and added to the fire. so they kept the trier going. trying out a whale was a long, arduous process. it could take up to two or three days and nights. no regular meals. they kept working in 12-hour ships. you can imagine the deck would be awash with blood, oil, blubber.

it would be a slippery, nasty mess and actually very dangerous. the smell was horrendous. supposedly you could smell a nantucket whale ship that was trying out a whale as much as 30 miles away. you can smell it way before you could see it. the edward carey has been quite lucky, and they now have killed 35 whales, and the captain says "set sail for nantucket." you can imagine these men a home ward bound. they're really ready to go home. the first thing they do when they know they're on their way home is they break apart the tri works. they throw itover board. they don't want the captain to be tempted to take anymore whales. they want to be sure they're on their way home. so on their way home this time, they're now seasoned!ul navigat and sailors, and they go around

the horn and arrive in nantucket in 1858. they offload all these barrels and casts of oil they've accumulated. these will all go to an oil refinery and candle factory for further processing. and finally, it is time to pay out the delay tell the men what they have earned on this voyage. a captain and certainly a ship owner could become a wealthy man after just one whaling voyage. someone like joseph, our boat steerer will probably receive approximately 1/100 of the proceeds of the voyage. a lowly seaman would see 1/160th of the proceeds. joseph has kept such a wonderful journal and told so many wonderful stories in his journal, it's really quite

exciting to read. i will tell you about one of the adventure, when he talks about rescuing a fellow nantucketer. on thursday, april 12th at 9:00 a.m. the cry of a man overboard 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 was5o]& christian. in another entry from the journal, on sunday, august 27th, 1854, joseph describes the hard work that took place on the whale ship. working like the old harry, putting sparse over the stern, lashing boats, making gaskets, friging with stun 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? well, after this voyage, he went out on another whaling voyage out of mystic, connecticut. unfortunately he was up in the sails and he fell from the foremast yard and was lost at sea. and what happened to the ed card carey? it went out on another voyage from 1858 to 1864 and then stopped in san francisco where it was sold and resumed its whaling. but then, in 1865, it was captured and burned by the confederate raider "shenandoah." that was the end of the edward carey. whaling was completely over by the time of the civil war in nantucket. people would think that probably the 19th century was the heyday

of whaling, but actually it was more the 20th century when soviet fleets, 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 1 million whales were killed. but in the 50 or 60 years of more modern whaling where they had big factory ships and grenades and harpoon guns and so on, over 3 million -- it's estimated that over 3 million whales had 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'm so glad that so many people were able to join us. i would be more than happy to take questions at this point. >> okay. we've got a few questions here. first one is on the sperm oil bottle, was sperm oil, in effect, used as a gargle. it doesn't sound too appealing, does it? >> we have a question about the visuals for the whaling boat from the early movie and what was it and was the ship the charles morgan? >> i think it was. >> it was. >> it was the charles morgan. the movie is silent movie made in the 1920s. it's called "down to the sea in ships." part of it is an actually whale hunt, but a lot of it is hood

interpretation, too. it gives us great footage anyway. >> we have a question about the photographs, what are the dates and source of the different photographs. >> the photographs. from the journal? >> the question is what are the dates and sources of the photographs. we can talk about both. >> we do have his remarkable drawings and stories that joseph ray tells in his journal. a lot of the other foot tanl, as i said, is from the movie "down to the sea in ships." some of it is from our collection, of course, too. >> a comment from someone said they say merrick on the crew list, was this a possibly a descedant of fred merrick active in the 1930s.

>> that's an interesting question. we do have some of the -- in the collection. i'm not sure if it was the same. there are so many families that were connected in nantucket and so many that have the same first name and last name. i'm not sure. that's a great question, but i don't know. >> another question is how did joseph's journal survive and come to nantucket? >> it came back with joseph, and then i don't know. someone in his -- one of his descendants was able to donate it to the nantucket historical association. we're very fortunate to have it, along with many, many other ships' journals. the research library has an amazing collection of journals and logbooks. there's a great project going on right now at the research library to transcribe all these journals and logbooks. >> there was a question, what was it that was thrown overboard

at the voyage end, the tryworks. >> yes. at the end of the voyage they break apart the brick furnace, the try works, and they throw the bricks over ward. they don't want the captain to be tempted to take another whale. however, there's another reason for that, too. they have used that try works numerous times to try out numerous whales, the mortar can become weakened. they don't want the try works to break apart in the storm and damage the ship. >> we've got a few more. what were the maritime or educational requirements for men to set sail on these journeys besides breathing? >> right. a lot of the men, especially the green hands, the first time out, really didn't meet any requirements. they just had to be a body there. they needed a good crew and they needed to season them and learn

the job as they go. now, the captains and the first mates would have been mostly nantucket men and they would have been much more experienced. they would have -- they worked their way up the ladder, so they learned a lot about navigation and about sailing these big ships. >> who was edward carey -- who was the edward carey that the ship was named after. >> actually i didn't know that until today. we just found out. the original owner of the ship whose name was ahern named the ship after his father-in-law. and then it was sold to other people eefr the years. this particular voyage, the owners of the ship were the two coffin brothers who have a house on main street. the houses still exist 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. >> number one, they's a moratorium against hunting whales. so that started i believe in 1986. i think that was the year. anyway, there is a moratorium on hunting whales for commercial purposes, although there's still some hunting commercially that is still done. but sperm whales are not easy. they are poll lajic whales which means they're in very, very deep water. so they aren't the whales that would my great close by man tukt, although we have a sperm whale skeleton in our museum. hopefully these whales will have time to recover. it is estimated 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. >> okay. a question about the

presentation itself. the question is, is this story the same one that george brant would tell as first custodian of the whaling museum. >> actually, that's a great question. the hunt has changed over the years. we've done a lot of different presentations, and this is the first year that we've used the edward carey journal to illustrate the whale hunt. but, yes, it's very similar to the one that george brant would have started all those years ago. >> and he was a whaler. >> and he was a whaler, yes, yes. >> a question, when was photography first available for recording whaling. that's a good question. >> whoa. that i do not know. when did photography -- i don't know. i really don't know, sorry. >> we'd have to probably look at our own photography collection. i think the earliest things we have are around early 1840s. >> okay. >> their ear mostly portraits at that time.

i think it's probably difficult to take things on the ship. it's a very good question. we should probably look into that. >> right. great question. >> was it unusual to go around both capes on a single voyage? >> i think it was fairly unusual. i think once nantucketers discovered the rich whaling grounds in the pa siflk, the quickest route would be to go generally kind of across the atlantic, maybe make stops in the azores, cape verde islands and then along the eastern coast of south america and down around the horn and then up into the whaling grounds of the south pacific. they did a lot of their hunting along the equator. so they're really way out in the middle of the pacific ocean. i think it is fairly unusual that this particular voyage of the edward carey did go around the cape of good hope. but other ships did that, too. i think it was more common to go a more direct route to the pacific. >> another navigation-related question. when did nantucket whalers first

venture into the southern ocean around antarctica? >> even on whaling voyages in the 1830s, thereabouts, they were going into the pacific, but they also would follow the whales. they fol lead the migration of the whales. so whales have their young in warm waters, so around the equator. then depending on the season, they'll either go far very north to the arctic, or very var south to antarctica to feed, because those are the richer feeding grounds for them. i think it just depended on the time of year. >> a little question. how were the whale teeth apportioned to the crew? >> well, it depends on the size of the whale's jaw, but they can have 30 or more teeth, and some of the men were very proficient at carving whale's teeth. they also used whale bone to

carve different implements. they carved busts which were stays in women's corsets. those were usually made out of whale bone, and they made swifts which were used for winding yarn. they made jagging -- you see all of the things made under the art of scrim shaw. i would assume the teeth were more prized. they would be distributed to men who had time and inclination to carve and do designs in the teeth. >> did they eat the whale meat or discard it? >> they did not eat the whale meat. first of all, we have to think about the horrible smell when you're trying to cut whale. this was very unappealing. in particular, sperm whales have -- in order to dive so deeply to go down way, dive so deeply, they can go a mile or two deep, they have to have

something called a lot of my oh globe inin their blood which tends to give them more oxygen in order to do that. it tends to make their meat a very dark color, almost a black color. it was pretty unappealing. this was all about oil. this was not about meat for the nantucket whalers. >> coming back to the sperm oil question again. what was the difference between the oil from the blubber and the oil from the head? >> the oil from the blubber had to be boiled down. the blubber is basically fat, so it had to be boiled down. the oil in the head was pure oil. it's the only creature in the world that has oil in its head like this. there's been a lot of questions about why biologically does the whale have all this oil in its head? the answer is no one really knows exactly for sure, but the supposition is that it acts as a buoyancy control, so it allows

the whale to dive so deeply and then come up quickly. we're really not sure. it's rather hard for scientists to study whales because they're under water most of the time. >> how competitive was nantucket, i guess, with -- the question is how competitive was nantucket and other whaling centers? >> certainly for the -- a good period of time, starting in the mid 1700s through the mid 1800s, this was the only industry on this island. nantucketers were really premier whalemen. they really were very, very successful, hunting sperm whales and the innovation of having triworks on board. then in the mid 180s, certainly new bedford began to take over. there were a number of things that happened on nantucket that really ended the whaling business, one of those being the great fire of 1846, the discovery of gold in california that took so many young men away

from here, the discovery of oil in pennsylvania which produced kerosene, began to replace whale oil and the civil war. so a number of things happened in a fairly short period of time that ended whaling on nantucket and new bedford was really the next big whaling center. after that, san francisco, also, got into whaling. it was over by the time of the civil war. >> why was it so uncommon for the crew members to not know how to swim? >> that's a good question, and i'm not -- i think that's true. i heard that that's true. we think about it now. all our children go in pools and oceans and take swimming lessons and so on. people weren't using the ocean around us as a resort or recreation. that was business. i think they probably -- the thought of learning to swim just never occurred to them.

i don't know. >> some of them came from farms. >> right, that's true. >> question. did women over travel on whaling ships? >> yes, not very often, but only the sailor's wives were allowed to go on a whaling voyage. it wasn't really frequent. but a number of whaling wives did go along. we have some wonderful stories in the whaling museum about women who accompanied their husbands on whaling voyages. there's a wonderful new book called "thousand lesion of blue" by betsy tyler. it tells the story of susan beater who went on a voyage with her husband and kept a journal that we have. it was a wonderful forry for a woman to go out away from home. quite an adventure for women in those days. the women that were left behind on nantucket were very powerful women. think about it. the men were gone, and the women

had to run this down and they did so in remarkable ways. we have a really wonderful stories of the nantucket women who were so ahead of their time really. >> interesting comment, question here from a gentleman. i was in norway and sampled smoked whale at the bergin fish market. what type of whale would they have at that market most likely? >> it could be any kind of whale. norway and iceland i know offer whale, and japan, offer whale meet as a delicacy. it could be a humpback whale. i don't know. it could have been different kinds of whale. >> we have a little correction here from one of our old friends. >> okay. >> jim borzalari. he said it appears that the morgan was used for static

scenes and a different ship, wanderer was rigged for some of the actual whaling scenes. he said nitpicky, but great information. hi, jim. >> exactly. thank you. >> a question here about the presentation, they see it's being recorded. will it be posted somewhere for replay or to share with others? >> yes. i'm not sure when and where, but, yes, we did record this. we'll post it on our website when the time comes. >> another one is given our proximity, was there local hunting here in new england? >> oh, yes, yes. certainly the early whaling on nantucket was right around nantucket. there were whales migrating by here, particularly the north atlantic write whale and that whale migrates up and down the east coast. yes, the early whaling, before

they had triworks on board, they didn't have the option of going out three or four years on a wheeling voyage. if they caught a whale, they had to get back to nantucket to process the blubber before it was rancid. there was a lot of wheeling around here. >> we have a comment that there were green land dick whaling stations on south georgia island, strong necessary harbor, probably the closest harbor to the antarctic peninsula. >> greenland is north. i'm confused. >> yes. again, we had dramatic stories in journals and logbooks and a painting in the museum, that all tell how difficult it was when they were really in the arctic area because often the ships would get stuck in the iegs. that can be very fatal.

if the ice closes in, it can collapse the ship. very, very dangerous. but there were a lot of whales up there. you can see why they would go. >> is it possible to purchase sperm set tick dandales today? >> no. it is illegal to hunt sperm whales, illegal to hunt whales, so no. >> our last question, i think we'll end on the high note. with the men away, did women rule? >> yes. most definitely. >> a correction on the whaling station, it was a whaling station manned by green glanders. >> oh, okay. >> that's the end of our list. >> good questions. >> this is terrific. >> okay. thank you all for joining us. we'll look forward to doing this again some time. >> thank you everyone. >> thank you. bye-bye. weeknights this month we're featuring "american history tv"

programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight from thomas jefr's book to "saturday night live's" parody of joe biden, how, in turn, presidents leave theirism print on the culture. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy "american history tv" every weekend on c-span3. you're watching "american history tv" every weekend on c-span3 explore our nation's past. "american history tv" on c-span3 created by america's cable television companies. today we're brought to you by these television companies who provide "american history tv" to viewers as a public service. "moby dick" was written by herman melville and published in 1851. up next,