"A Dead Whale or a Stove Boat"

This will be the last blog on our East Coast Adventure. One of the Mrs' various positions here is as Chairperson of Whale Fest Kodiak, a 10-day long celebration of the return of Eastern Pacific Gray Whales to Alaskan waters. In order to learn more about these great giants of the ocean we took a trip to the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

This is KOBO a 65' rare juvenile Blue Whale that the museum received back in 1998. Ironically in my previous life with the Marine Patrol I had the pleasure of spending several days with KOBO as he lay rotting on the beach in Rhode Island.

This is a a 33' Humpback Whale

The Mrs. up on a full scale replica of the bow of a whaling ship barking out orders. As usual no one was listening, especially when she was barking out for someone to shiver her timbers.

And this little (45 ton) Sperm Whale is what put New Bedford on the map as the whaling capital of the world and one of America’s wealthiest cities in the 1800s. Fortunes were made and the city was built around the profits from the huge stores of whale oil and the spermaceti that was found in the large heads, of sperm whales. The oil was used for lighting lamps and the spermaceti for candles in the era before electricity.

The Museum has an outstanding collection of scrimshaw, alot of it coming from the whalers from New Bedford. Because of the dangers of whaling it could only be done during the day which left a lot of time at night for the whalers to design and create pieces. The next few pictures are of some of the Sperm Whale bones and teeth and the finished products.

The Mrs. was especially excited to see this unbrella swift that is used for winding yarn and she informed me that hers is made of plastic, and she would like one made from whale bone.

Another example of a knitting work basket and whalebone knitting needles. While these might be priceless items nowadays, I had to explain to the Mrs. that the whalers were to cheap to go buy these items for their wives so they made them using something they had plenty of. The same holds true for a lot of common tools used on whaling ships.