you're watching american history tv every weekend on c-span3 explore our national past. american history tv on c-span 3 created by america's television companies and today brought to you by these television companies who provide american history tv to viewers as a public service. during a period of are the 19th century, nantucket off the coast of massachusetts was a hub for whaling around the world. peggi godwin of the nantucket historical association discusses the history of whaling and the impact it had on this 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 the whale hunt. and i'm very excited about presenting this to you tonight.

we have over 230 people participating, which is absolutely shocking. we're just delighted. so 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 i'm 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 "mobey-dick." melville was talking about nantucket. our tiny, little island 30 miles at sea, about 15 miles long, but 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 kerrey.

this is going to be captained by perry linslow from 1854 to 1858. and he's going to be accompanied on this voyage with his, by his wife, whose name is mary ann, and two of their children, mary and john. they'll be joining you on this voyage. and here we have a young man whose name is joseph rey. and joseph kept a journal throughout this voyage. so a lot of the drawings you will be seeing came from joseph rey, and he was a 21-year-old nantucket boy hired to go out on the "edward kerrey" and his job is boat steerer and harpooner. so that means when they lower the whale boats from the whaleship, actually pursuing a whale, joseph will be in the

bow of the ship. first using an oar to row but when the they approach the whale he will also be the harpooner. the person who's going to harpoon the whale. and joseph joins the rest of the crew, and these are men from really all over. there are men from fall river, buffalo, boston, nantucket, of course, because the captains and mates are most likely from nantucket and also a man from the azores. as edward kerrey sails all over the world they will pick up other sailors along the way. so that will add to the diversity of the crew. the first whaling crews created the first meritocracy in the colonies. any young man who could prove his worth could climb up the ladder and eventually achieve success on a whaling voyage. maybe become a mate. maybe become a captain. here we have the first african-american captain of a whaleship with an all-black crew.

so the "edward kerrey" is going to leave as i said in 1854. this is a really emotional time when a whaling voyage departed from nantucket. most of the town would be down waving good-bye, say, fair winds and greasy luck, because these men will be away from the town for four years. that's a really long time to be away from your loved ones and your home. and there was one whaling voyage that lasted 11 years. and on this particular voyage, the edward kerrey is going to go around the cape of good hope. around the tip of africa into the indian ocean and eventually into the pacific hunting whales. and primarily they're going to be looking for sperm whales. why? why did they want to get sperm whales? well, there's a clue. the scientific name of sperm whales is spiciter, which means

large, square headed whale. and this is the secret. when you look inside the whale's head there, which makes almost a third of its body you see a chamber. in that chamber are anywhere from 300 to 500 gallons of spermaceti oil, the finest oil in the world, let alone the oil that came from the blubber of the whale also. the qualities of this whale were really amazing. it had viscosity, very stable. not affected by really cold temperatures or really hot temperatures. it would stay the same. so the white houses of the world were lit with this wonderful oil and were street lamps in northern cities. london and france, all over. so they were selling this oil all over the world, and also after all the oil was refined what was left is what they made spermaceti candles out of. a remarkable product that burned very brightly, stayed very clean

and lasted a long time. and it made such a huge difference in people's lives. before this wonderful product, they had to go to bed when sun went down and get up when the sun rose, but now they could extend their day. the majority of the crew will share the folksal. that was a very cramped, tight space at the forward part of the ship. so this motley group of men are going to be sharing this space for a long time. four years. it was the folksal, very slimy. it's dark. it's dank. it's probably very smelly. that is where the men are going to eat, sleep, tell stories, write in their journals, play cards. and it is probably full of tobacco 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 men in the folksals. so joseph, when joseph rey has free time, he is going to spend a lot of time working on his journal. and he illustrates it beautifully. with sights that they see. ports that they stop in. and he also writes a lot, and he tells about missing home and he tells about reflections on what life was like on a whaling voyage. and we're very fortunate to have all of his wonderful drawings, that really give a great picture what life was like onboard a whaling ship. 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 sails, sharpening

tools used when encounters whales, and attaching to harpoons and lances and practicing in the whale boats. so they lower the whale boats so they can start to learn how to maneuver these boats quickly, build up their muscles and callouses on this hands because 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, about 100 feet in the air. they balanced on crosstrees and surrounded by a metal hoop. as they're pounding through the waves. two men stand back to back, each one responsible for 180-degree lookout. 100 foot up in the air and one of the mates, and they've had a long voyage. haven't seen sperm whales for a while, but all of a sudden somebody spots a sperm whale and they know that it is a sperm

whale, because of the spout. sperm whales have a devout spout and they yell, there she blows! the captain on the deck will say, launch the whale boats. every man runs to his assigned whale boat. first thing they do when they get in the boat is take off their shoes. sperm whales have a very sensitive sense of hearing and they don't want to make a lot of noise in these wooden whaleboats and probably only own one pair of shoes and don't want to take a chance losing their shoes. up in the bow, joseph, steering, as they approach the whale, the officer in the stern will tell him to put down his oar and pick up harpoon. nearing the whale, as they say,

wood to leather. now joseph has harpooned the whale. the harpoon does not kill the whale, however it does get his attention. so the whale will take off swimming as fast as he can go and a whale can swim maybe 10, 15 miles an hour. joseph is urging everybody on so he can now harpoon this whale, and this wild ride that they're 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 rigging down the line. some bailing water out of the boat. an exciting but very dangerous time. the idea is eventually the whale will get very tired and 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, moved to the bow and joseph is moved to the stern. and now we have the officer who is going to use a lance. and he is the person who will have the honor of actually killing the whale. so the officer picks up his lance. he's going to aim for the heart and the lungs of the whale. those are the vital organs. the life of the whale, and he will plunge in his lance, maybe all the way up to the hilt, and then he'll turn it around to do as much damage as he can. this was really a horrible way for a whale to die. once the whale has been lanced, everyone just waits, and they're waiting to see the whale spouting blood and will yell out, fire in the chimney. they know that a vital organ has been hit and they know that that whale is going to die.

and as soon as they know the whale is dieing, they back away from the whale as fast as they can. a dieing whale can go into a death flurry where they might circle the boat many times. they're huge flukes could tip the boat over and all of those men end up in the water and unfortunately most of them did not know how to swim. fairly fortunate to come across a good-sizes 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 think whale back. they could be three miles away on the nantucket sleigh ride. that would be three hours of rowing just to get back to the ship's you can imagine they're carrying a very heavy load. these whales could be anywhere from 40, 50, even 60 tons. and 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 and he has cleats in his shoes so he doesn't fall into the water where sharks might be circling. his job, put a big hole in the top of the head. attach a big blubber hook, which is attached to a winch and now they can start to peel away the blubber from the whale. and these pieces of blubber that they're peopling away are called blanket pieces. they were about 15 feet long. and they were enormously heavy. so they would raise them up on to the deck with a winch and then these huge pieces go to the mincing area where men used 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. so those are called biblese. next thing they do is probe the intestine and stomach of the whale looking for something very specific. whales, sperm whales' favorite food is squid and all squid have a horny beak. think about what a parrot's beak looks like. that is indigestible and can get lodged in the stomach or the intestines of the whale. if that happens, the scar tissue forms around that beak producing a substance called ambergri, a very important use. it was used, a rare find, but if they found it, it was used as a fixative in fine perfumes. had had a high monetary value. next they cut off the head of the whale. let the rest of the carcass go and bring that head right up on

to the deck of the ship. make a big hole in the top of the head and now go after this valuable spermaceti oil. bucket it out, many, many buckets. the youngest, smallest man on board, who could be joseph rey, will 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. and lastly, they cut off the lower jaw of the whale, because they're going to save those teeth. sperm whales teeth are made out of ivory and when there was down time on a whaling voyage, when they weren't out catching whales the captain would distribute the teeth among the crew. and then the men would take a rough tooth, sand it down, and then they would carve or engrave into the tooth, maybe scenes they've seen on their voyage or some memory of home. they'd fill in those carved lines, those engraved lines,

with soot from the dry works or dried ink nap was the art of scrimshaw known as the sailor's art. it's now time to clean up the deck in preparation for actually boiling down all the blubber. the ship's carpenter will get it going, a dry furnace basically and put in these biblese, chunks of blubber and also skin and tissue will float up to the top and that will be skinned off the skimmer and added to the fire. so they kept the fire going. now trying out a whale was really a long, arduous process. it could take up to two to three days and nights. no regular meals, just kept working in 12-hour shifts. you can imagine, the deck awash with blood and oil and blubber and--it would just be a slippery, nasty mess and actually very dangerous. the smell was horrendous. supposedly you could smell a nantucket whale ship drying out a whale as much as 30 miles

away. so you could smell it way before you could see it. the joseph -- or the edward kerrey has been quite lucky and now have killed 35 whales, and the captain says, set sail for nantucket. now, you can imagine these are men, homeward bound. they are really ready to go home. the first thing they do when they know that they're on their way home is they break apart the triworks. they just throw it over 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 navigators and sailors and go around the horn and they arrive in nantucket in 1858. and they off-load all of these barrels and casks of oil they have accumulated.

these will all go to a royal refinery and candle factory for further processing. and finally, it is time to pay out the lay or tell the men what they have earned on this voyage. a captain certainly a ship owner, could become a wealthy man after just one whaling voyage. but someone like, like joseph, our boat steerer, will probably receive approximately 0.101 and a lowly seaman, 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. and i will tell you about one. adventures 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 fortunately happened to go over at the same time. the name of the lad was samuel christian. in another entry from the journal on sunday, august 27th, 1854, joseph describes the hard work that took place on the whaleship. working like the old harry, putting spars over the stern, lashing boats, making gaskets, and all homesick as the devil. so ends this 24 hours of trial and tribulation. so what happened to young joseph rey? well, after this voyage he went out on another whaling voyage out of mystic, connecticut and unfortunately he was up in the

sails and he fell from the foremast yard and was lost at sea. and what happened to the edward kerrey? it went out on another voyage from 1854 -- i'm sorry. 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 kerrey." and so now whaling was completely over by the time of the civil war in nantucket. people would probably think that the 18 -- or the 19th century was the heyday of whaling, but actually it was more the 20th century. when soviet fleets, european

needs, asian needs, started hunting whales for meat rather than for oil. and 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 have big factory ships and guns, grenades, it's estimated over 3 million whales have been killed, and whale populations are still quite threatened. they really are under considerable threat 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, and i would be more than happy to take questions at this point. >> okay. we've got a few questions here.

>> all right. >> first one is, the, on the sperm oil bottle, was the sperm oil in fact used as a gargle? >> it was. sounds very peculiar but it was used as a gargle. >> question officials from the whaling boat, what was it and was it the ship "the charles morgan." >> i think it was -- >> it was "the charles morgan." >> okay. it was. and the movie is -- a silent movie made in the 1920s, and called "down to the sea and ships." part of it is an actual whale hunt but a lot of it is hollywood's interpretation, too. but it gives us some great footage, anyway. >> we have a question about the, about the photographs. what are the dates and source of

the different photographs? >> the photographs. they're from, from the journal? >> it just -- the question's what are the dates and sources of the photographs? talk about both. talk about the journal and the photos we used. >> right. we do have his remarkable drawings and stories that joseph rey tells in his journal but a lot of the other footage, as i said, is from the movie "down to the sea and ships." and then some of it is from our collection, of course, too. >> okay. and -- comment from someone that says they saw a marek on the crew list. was this possibly the famous scrimshaw famous in the 1930s? >> an interesting question. because we do have some of the -- i'm not sure if it was the same. there are so many families 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. >> and another question is, how did joseph's journal survive and come to nantucket? >> it came back with joseph, and then i don't know -- certainly -- someone in his, one 67 his descendants was able to donate it to the nantucket historical association. and we're very fortunate to have that. along with many, many other ships' journals. the research library has an amazing collection of journals and log books, and there's a great project going on right now at the research library to transcribe all of these journals and log books. >> and there was a question, what was it thrown overboard to encourage the voyage again? the triworks? >> oh. yes. at the end of the voyage, they break apart this brick furnace, the triworks, and they throw all the bricks overboard, because

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 triworks numerous times, to dry out 30 or 40 whales. the mortar between the bricks could become weakened and they're going to be going around cape horn, notoriously stormy and don't want that triworks to break apart in a storm and damage the ship. >> okay. furthermore, what were the maritime requirements 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 need any requirements. they just had to be a body there. needed a good crew, 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

and probably worked their way up the ladder so learned a lot about navigation and about sailing these big ships. >> and who was edward kerrey, who was the edward kerrey the ship was named after? >> the original owner, just found out today, name was ahern, named the ship after his father-in-law, and then it was sold to other people over the years. this particular voyage, the owners of the ship were the two coffin brothers who have a house on main street right, still, the houses still exist today and after the coffin brothers owned the ship, then it went to the starbuck family, and then eventually it was sold in san francisco. >> okay. we have a question about, why don't people hunt sperm whales today? >> well, number one, they're, there's a moratorium against

hunting whales. so that started i believe in 1986? i think that was the year. but, anyway, there is a moratorium of hunting whales for commercial purposes, although there is still some hunting commercially that is still done. but sperm whales are not easy. they are polatchic whales, means in very, very deep water. so they aren't the whales that migrate close by nantucket, although we have a sperm whale skeleton that did migrate by nantucket but it was a rare occasion. hopefully these whales will have time to recover. it's estimated there are around 300,000 sperm whales left in the world. which isn't a great number, but hopefully enough they will be able to survive. >> okay. and a question about the presentation itself. question is, is this story the same one that george branch would tell as first custodian of the whaling museum? >> a great question.

content changed over the years. done a lot of presentations and this is the first year we've used the edward kerrey journal to el straights the whale hunt, but, yes. it's very similar to the one that george grant would have started all of those years ago. >> and he was a whaler. >> he was a whaler, yes, yes. right. >> okay. question is, when was photographer first available for recording whaling? that's a good question. >> whoa. that, i do not know. hmm -- when did photography? i don't know. i really don't know. sorry. >> yeah. probably look at our own photography collection. i think the earliest things around early 1840s. >> okay. >> but they're mostly portraits at that time. i think probably difficult to take things on the ship. very good question. we should look into that. >> right. yeah. a great question. >> okay. was it unusual to go around both capes on a single voyage?

>> i think it was fairly unusual. once nantucketers discovered the rich whaling grounds in the pacific, quickest route would be 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. and they did a lot of their hunting along the equator and so they were really way out in the middle of the pacific ocean. so i think it is fairly unusual. but this particular voyage of the "edward kerrey" did go around the cape, but other ships did it, too. 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? >> hmm. even on whaling voyages in the

early, in the 1830s, thereabouts, they were going into the pacific, but they also would follow the whales. they'd follow 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 south, far south, to the antarctica to feed. those were the richer feeding grounds for them. so i think it just depended on the time of year. >> okay. and a little question. how were the whale teeth apportioned to the crew? >> well, i suppose whales have, 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 as carving whales teeth. also used whale bone to carve different implements. they carved busts, which were stays in women's corsets usually made out of whale bone, and they

made swifts, which were used for winding yarn. jagan wheels. if you've been in the scrimshaw room you see all the different items that were made, all under the art of scrimshaw, but i assume that the teeth were more prized. so they 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? >> they did not eat the whale meat. first of all, we have to think about the horrible smell when you're drying out a whale. and so this was very unappealing. and in particular, sperm whales have, in order to dive so deeply to go way down, whales who can dive so deeply. they can actually go down a mile or two deep. they have to some something called a lot of myoglobin in their blood giving them nor oxygen to do that but tends to make their meat a very dark

color, purply almost black color. it was pretty unappealing. this was all about oil. not about meat for the nantucket sailors. >> coming back to the sperm oil question again, what was the difference from the oil from the blubber and the oil from the head? >> oil from the blubber had to be boiled down. the blubber is basically fat and had to be boiled down. oil in the head was pure oil. and 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, why biologically does the whale have all of this oil in its head? the answer is, no one really knows exactly for sure, but the supposition is that it acts as a, a buoyancy control so that allows the whale to dive so deeply and cup up quickly, but we're really not sure. it's rather hard for scientists to study whales because they're under water most of the time.

>> and how competitive was nantucket, i guess, with -- or, question is how competitive was nantucket and other whaling centers? >> well, 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 and nantucketers were premiere whalers. they really, really were very, very successful hunting sperm whales and the innovation of having triworks onboard. but then in the mid-1800s, 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. 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. and after that, san francisco also got into whaling. so it was over by the time of the civil war here. >> why was it so uncommon for crew members to not know how to swim? >> that's a good question. and i'm not -- i think that's true. i've heard that that's true. think about it now. all of our children go in pools and oceans and take swimming lessons and be so on, but people weren't using the ocean around us as a resort or a recreation. this was business. so i think they probably learning to swim never occurred to them. i don't know. >> whoever came from farms. >> that's good. right. right. >> question, did women ever travel on whaling ships? >> yes. not very often, but only the

sailors wives were allowed to go on a whaling voyage. no other women were allowed, and 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. a wonderful new book called "alison leagues of blue" by betsy tyler. tells of susan went on a voyage with her husband and kept a journal, which we have. that is a wonderful source what it was like as a woman to go out away from home. was quite an adventure for women in those days, but the women that were left behind on nantucket were very powerful women, because think about it. the men were gone. and the women had to run this town and they did so in remarkable ways. so we have a really wonderful stories of the nantucket women who were so, so ahead of their time, really.

>> interesting comment. question here, from a gentleman that says i was in norway and sampled smoked whale at the bergen fish market. what kind of whale would they have at that market most likely? >> could be any kind of whale. certainly, yes. the norwegian, norway and island i know offer whale and japan offers whale meat. as a delicacy. it could be a humpback whale. could be a mini whale. i don't know. i mean it could have been different kinds a of whale. >> we have also correction here from one of our old friends. >> okay. >> jim borzalary. he says that it appears in seeing ships the morgan was used for static scenes and different ship, wanderer rerigged for some of the actual whaling seens said nick, nicky -- great information to clean up our act a little

bit. >> yes. exactly. >> hi, jim. >> thank you. >> and a question about the presentation that i 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. so we'll post ton our website. when the time comes. >> okay. another one is given our proximity to the wagon banks in whales, 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 whale and that whale migrates up and down the east coast, but, yes. early whaling before triworks were onboard, they didn't have the option of going out for three or four years on a whaling voyage. they had to, if they caught a whale they had to get back to nantucket to process the whale before the blubber was rancid.

yes, there was a lot of whaling in the early days right around here. >> we have a comment about antarctic whaling, comment is, also greenlandic whaling stations on south georgia island. stromness harbor. probably closest point to the an arctic peninsula. >> right, right. go ahead. >> freelance north. i'm confused. anyway. >> yes. but -- yes. but we -- again, we have some dramatic stories in journals and log books, 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 ice, and that could be very fatal, because if the ice closes in, it can collapse the ship. so very, very dangerous. but there were a lot of whales up there. you can see why they would go. >> i have a question. is it possible to perm

spermacetic candles today? >> no, no. it is illegal to hunt sperm whales. it's illegal to hunt whales, so, no. >> and last question. i think we're going to end on a high note. >> okay. >> with the men away, did women rule? >> yes. [ laughter ] most definitely. >> i see a correction on the whaling station. whaling station manned by -- it wasn't a whale station. >> okay. >> that's the end of our list here. lots of thanks. lots of good comments. >> yes. thank you. >> and this is terrific. >> okay. well, thank you all for joining us, and we'll look forward to doing this again sometime. >> 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 jefferson's book to "saturday night live" parody of joe biden how pop char

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