ADVICE UPON USING AMERICAN WHALING RECORDS IN NEW ZEALAND RESEARCH

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1 April 1969, Page 24

ADVICE UPON USING AMERICAN WHALING RECORDS IN NEW ZEALAND RESEARCH

Rhys Richards

It is axiomatic that the large number of research workers from a multitude of disciplines who have examined the extensive records of American whaling activities, have found them to be enjoyable, exciting and romantic source materials offering however only a very limited return of relevant information for the time spent. The following elementary guide has been prepared in order to share with New Zealand research workers some of the experience and short cuts accumulated after three years of fairly concentrated part-time search among the many historical and whaling institutions along the North East Coast of the United States.

The quantity of information available is truly amazing. Stuart C. Sherman, former Keeper of the Nicholson Collection in the Providence Public Library, has estimated in his invaluable guide to whaling source materials, The Voice of the Whalemen, that ‘if logbooks and private journals are taken as a group, records for about 3,200 voyages are known to exist, or about one fourth of the known voyages (which total !3,927). With concerted effort other records will come to light, but it is doubtful if thirty per cent of the logbooks and private journals relating to this great industry have survived.’ By this estimate, a logbook or journal exists for every third or fourth American whaleship which visited New Zealand waters. Sherman also describes at length the enormous quantity of other types of whaling records (e.g. accounts books, outfitting checklists, sea letters, crew lists, illustrations and consular and customs records) but these are rarely specifically relevant to New Zealand research.

As to the quality, or content, of whaling sources, it is worth repeating emphatically that the rewards are slight for much hard work, unless of course the focus of attention is upon the whalers and their fascinating industry. If not, it must be understood that the creators of these records were invariably seamen with pelagic and oceanic perspectives very different from those of landsmen. Generally foreign coasts were regarded as dangerous unknown places to be avoided in all but exceptional circumstances - such as the need to obtain drinkable water and fresh provisions. Thus shore visits occurred only infrequently and many were not recorded in their ships’ logbooks. Further, as few seamen of the period were well educated or scholarly inclined, it is indeed rare to discover entries which include identifiable descriptions of localities, or the individuals, life and customs ashore. As Sherman explains, logbooks were kept primarily to record a form of commercial activity and for navigational purposes. Typical logbook

entries begin and end with tedious repetitive observations of the wind and weather. Whales sighted, chased and taken are generally, though not invariably, also mentioned. Few other matters are considered worthy of inclusion, and then their treatment is concise and insignificant in comparison. It is very very rare indeed to locate a logbook entry of a descriptive nature which can be used in, for example, local historical research. Sherman not unfairly compares the monotony of logbook entries with the reading of a dictionary. Some journals, being personal rather than official records, more frequently include descriptive comments and observations, but many are no less terse and narrow than logbooks.

Notwithstanding the above dire warnings to researchers, and especially those who regrettably have to produce results by some preordained deadline, it must be admitted that relevant items have been, and may continue to be, found among whaling records, some of which are of outstanding interest to historians, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, biologists, etc. For example, no doubt meteorologists could extract extraordinarily detailed accounts of the coastal weather conditions in 1839, 1840, and 1841, and certainly historians might find value in interpreting the historical events of those and other years with some reference to the local weather, e.g. the incidence and magnitude of influenza epidemics among the Maoris.

New Zealand research workers who wish to go beyond the published sources can anticipate willing co-operation from the librarians and contemporary whalemen of New England who invariably have proved to be most helpful and generous with their time and knowledge. However it is essential, and only fair, that each enquirer exhibit a substantial element of self help and express these enquiries as specific, precisely defined, requests. This guide has been prepared to advise New Zealanders, including those without any previous acquaintance whatsoever with whaling records, how most profitably to formulate such enquiries, and to indicate and locate the basic minimum of information without which they cannot reasonably seek such assistance.

It is thus essential before passing to a description of the individual American institutions and a listing of their collections, that this guide include an extended description of the preliminary work which can and must be accomplished in New Zealand.

While even beginners are likely to be acquainted with, and to have profitably consulted, the various historical works published by Robert McNab over fifty years ago, regrettably few New Zealanders are aware of the extensive compilations contained in the unpublished Master of Arts thesis by P. G. Canham in 1959 entitled New England Whalers in New Zealand Waters, 1800-1850. Single handed, he has scoured various New England sources to produce exceptionally detailed lists of known

American whaling visitors, the length of their visits, and the approximate locations of their whaling activities. It is important to note that from Canham’s exhaustive, and practically definitive, list, New Zealand researchers may now readily identify which American whalers were about a particular section of the New Zealand coast in any desired month (e.g. at and off Otago in May 1840), and may confidently estimate from these lists of known visitors, totals of American whaling visitors to any specific area of New Zealand (e.g. East Cape, Port Nicholson, Cloudy Bay). While it is not denied that further exhaustive local studies, such as that recently completed of American whaling activities at and off the Chatham Islands, produce some whaleships not listed by Canham, nor that his terminal date of 1850 excludes almost the last two decades of the dying whaling industry, it is nevertheless held that Canham’s compilations, plus his list of logbook locations, are a major, unappreciated, contribution to our historical records of that early period. Consider next the search for a logbook or journal of a particular whaleship known from Canham or some other source to be of possible relevance. The American whaling industry was so vast that no such search can commence without most, or preferably all, of the following four essentials:

1. Ship’s Name. It is striking how often land orientated sources improperly record this obvious essential. Recourse to Canham’s lists might help even here, providing a whaler’s location can be dated exactly, though this would of course require a tedious check of every whaleship he lists.

2. Homeport. This is an essential part of identifying any American whaler because very frequently several ships of the same name whaled simultaneously from different ports. Mention should also be made here of the many French whalers with American names (and captains) who in several cases met in New Zealand waters American whalers with the same names (e.g. the Neptune of Sag Harbour met the Neptune of Havre off Otago in April 1839).

3. Captain or Master’s Name. Probably there are also instances of two whalers with the same name and the same homeport simultaneously in New Zealand waters, which could be distinguished most easily through their respective masters. Fortunately these must be rare, and the captains’ names are only occasionally essential.

4. Voyage Dates. As whaleships often made several consecutive voyages along the same routes or to the same locations, any identification should include a specific month and year, or the years spanning that particular voyage. Especially after 1840, an error of two months or more could find the ship far distant en route elsewhere or even home in the U.S.A.

With these four essentials, or in order to remedy or .verify additions and omissions, researchers at this point should always refer for full confirmation to the definitive compilations of every individual American whaling voyage by Alexander Starbuck entitled History of the American Whale Fishery from its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876. mo7\ From this invaluable treasury can also be obtained, with hard work, the necessary particulars of every American whaler of the same name so that grossly imprecise details such as ‘the “Mary”, believed to be an American whaler off New Zealand in March 1842’, may be whittled down to perhaps a dozen ships of that name absent in that year feom eight home ports. A single locality is given in Starbuck for each ship’s intended terminal destination, and occasionally it .is New Zealand or nearby. .mdaruKabi wsH ojlru

A continuation of Starbuck’s immense work, and a few corrections, entitled Return of Whaling Vessels Sailing from American Ports, 18761928, was published in 1959 by Reginald B. Hegarty, Curator of the Melville Whaling Room of the New Bedford Free Public Library. Any request for assistance which is sent to an American whaling institution should include reference to Starbuck or Hegarty which are the standard texts. (The Turnbull Library, Wellington, has a copy of Starbuck.) Hegarty’s work is less seldom of immediate relevance to New Zealand workers because few American whalers visited New Zealand waters after 1876. Even beginners are now adequately prepared to consult the disconcertingly huge individual indexes to collections, copies of which have been deposited at Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. Those institutions which have published lists of their holdings are as follows: The Nicholson Whaling Collection, Providence Public Library, Providence, R.I. Refer to The Voice of the Whalemen by Stuart C. Sherman which includes a list of 836 whaling journals, logbooks, and account books. 1965.

G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Conn. Inventory of Logbooks and Journals of Whaling, Trading and Sealing. (Total 775). 1965. 'Uiioo mlrkroirndo zlloimol ou; .nibaauQ yiaidLl - Old Dartmouth Historical Society and Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Mass. (Total list about 700 - all whaling.) May 1959. j -rtoO Melville Whaling Room of the Free Public Library, New Bedford, Mass. (Total list about 450.) 1963. In addition, this library possesses handwritten abstracts of 2,500 whaling voyages between 1831 and 1873 relating to the more important aspects of these voyages which were compiled by Mr Denis Wood, Esq about 1888. rb < rorl 3: vlknn xI jThe Kendall Whaling Museum, Sharon, Mass. (Total about 250 - all whaling.) 1965. Hid o'Anm Iliw siodiow

In addition to the above published indexes and inventories, unpublished lists and indexes prepared by the writer from thirty-six more institutions and libraries have been deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. There are seven numerically substantial additions from Massachusetts, two from Rhode Island, three from Connecticut, fifteen small collections in New York State (mostly on Long Island), two from Washington, D.C., one each from New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and Ohio, and three from California. Except with respect to the original overwhelming predominance of Massachusetts, this distribution aptly approximates the locations of the former whaling ports. Several small private collections were inspected and correspondence was exchanged on others, but without locating important information relevant to New Zealand researchers.

Howe it r, it must be stressed immediately that these lists are in many cases incomplete or undesirably concise because their accumulation began as a minor adjunct to, and remained subordinate to, a personal search for information on American whaling activities at and off the Chatham Islands. There was never sufficient time to prepare precise and uniform indexes.

An incomplete product is put forward without embarrassment since this haphazard accumulation now offered to New Zealand researchers is far larger and broader in scope and detail than any found in the United States. (A similar list was subsequently made available to several American institutions.) The pressure of time also often prevented the exclusion of nonwhaling vessels, and also prevented the compilation of a separate list of sealing logbooks which have invariably been included amongst the whalers.

Similarly, no detailed examination of newspaper and magazine sources was possible. Fortunately Canham has carefully worked through the Whalemen’s Shipping List and Merchant’s Transcript, 1843-1914, in which the contemporary whale fleet was listed regularly at their last known locations. Also, in Turnbull and the Hocken Library Dunedin, are four rolls of microfilm containing an enormous quantity of newspaper extracts and entitled ‘American Activities in the Central Pacific, 1790-1870. Data collected on the activities of New England Seamen and Whalers in the Central Pacific Ocean’. These extracts, which are listed chronologically under their respective geographic localities, are at last being published (regrettably without the rigorous editing and explanatory notes they deserve). Finally it is hoped that, while recognising that only limited rewards are available even with protracted searching, New Zealand research workers will make full use of relevant material which is available

among American whaling records.