January 2006

A Sailor’s Tribute

This whale’s tooth, inscribed with patriotic symbols by an unknown sailor, speaks volumes about the lives of Americans nearly 200 years ago.

Whales were an important part of the American economy from the time of the American Revolution until the Civil War. Whale oil, made from boiling whale blubber, was the essential form of lighting fluid and lubricant during this period. Whalebone, whale teeth and baleen, a hard material found in the whale’s mouth, were used in an extraordinary variety of ways as corset stays, hair combs, tool handles and jewelry, as well as inlay and ornaments for all kinds of wooden products.

In the 1770s, as many as 360 whaling vessels, each with 30 to 35 men aboard, sailed out of colonial ports. In the 1830s, more than 38 East Coast ports hosted significant whaling fleets. As many as 75 whaling ships sailed out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, alone, on voyages that took them away from home for two to five years.

These long voyages provided plenty of monotony, so whalers took up various pastimes, particularly the art of scrimshaw. Scrimshaw involves engraving or carving whale baleen, bones or teeth, and has been practiced by native peoples along the Northwest Coast of the United States for nearly two thousand years. New England’s Yankee whalers picked up the tradition in the early 1800s. (The word scrimshaw seems to have derived from Dutch and English words describing the wasting of time!) Whalers made this art distinctly their own—an occupational pastime and art form that was intimately related to the men’s shipboard work routine, tools and materials at hand, and topics of daily conversation.

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