Sag Harbor Museum
by Carlin Yu
Our class went to Sag Harbor Museum to learn more about the whaling industry in the 19th century. Whaling started in the 17th and 18th century when communities would hunt for whales that swim close to shore. By the 19th century, the whale population by the shore dropped dramatically. In order to continue obtaining whale oil and bones for economical purposes, bigger ships were built with 3 small row boats (used during the 17th and 18th century whaling) equipped onto the side of the ship in order to go on a voyage to the deep sea to hunt for whales. A ship would have a crew of 30 people and a voyage could takes months or years depending on how lucky the crew is on finding whales to fill the ship up completely with oil. The longest voyage in Sag Harbor is 11 years. Because voyages take so long, men usually went on a voyage once just so they can see the outside world. Upon their return, they will go become either farmers or be supporters of the whaling industry such as help making ship equips and harpoons.
Whaling is a dangerous job. Some voyages last for a long time and within those time, men can get sick on the ship or die while in the act of whaling. An average of 1-3 men dying per crew mainly from disease. The conditions the men live in was not that great. Many men are cramped up in a small room so disease can spread easily. Their water supply was disgusting since the water has been on the ship for a while. Sometimes the captains would make the water taste a little better by adding some rum into the water. When a whale is spotted, the crew will quickly lower the 3 row boats into the water and chase after the whale. There are 6 men on each of these boats where 4 men would row, 1 man will harpoon and last person is in charge of that boat. Once the row boat is close enough, the harpooner will harpoon the whale and the whale will swim rapidly away, dragging the small boat behind it. This act of a whale dragging the boat is called the Nantucket sleigh ride. Once the whale is exhausted, the harpooner will stab more lances at the whale until it dies. One way to check if the whale is dead, is to stab it in the eye to see if it reacts. If it does not react, the whale is completely dead. Sometimes the whale can attack the boat by smashing its fin or fluke at the boat. Some men can die by heavy weight of the fin/tail or even from broken pieces of the boat falling on top of the men. Even after the death of the whale, the process of hulling the whale onto the boat is dangerous. Since the whale is bleeding into the water, sharks are being attracted to the area. Men can die from this as well.
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| Deep sea whaling during the 19th century. This picture portrays a whale destroying a row boat just before it dies. Another row boat goes over to kill the whale and save the men that was knocked off the boat. |
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| This is a model of what deep sea whaling looked like from the 19thcentury. This model show how the men are hulling up the dead whale onto the ship. This is a dangerous part of whaling because sharks are swimming around the whale and ship. |
Sag Harbor
by Mykaela Copeland
On Friday, October 10, 2014, the Coastal Cultural Experience class ventured over to explore the maritime history of Sag Harbor. Sag Harbor gets its name from its close proximity to the Sagaponack. It was literally the harbor of Sagaponack, which was later shortened to Sag. One of the first stops on our trip was to the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. Sag Harbor was a major deep sea harbor during the 19th century and was actually one of the top three whaling ports in the United States at the time.
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| Figure 1. The Sag Harbor Whaling Museum also referred to as the Huntting house. The home was built in 1845 for Benjamin Huntting, a major investor of the whaling industry. The structure of the museum was modeled after Grecian architecture, demonstrated by the triangular pediment and the traditional Grecian columns. This style of home was the height of fashion during the 1840-1850s and was part of a Greek architectural revival period occurring in the Americas. The outside of the house looks very much like a bank, as if to say that this house was the bank of Sag Harbor. This construction appears to convey a message of stability and successfulness of the family that resided there. |
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| Figure 2. A column of the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. The original wood columns were replaced with tin columns during the 1950s-1960s. Only the top portion of the column remains from the original Huntting home. |
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| Figure 3. Fixtures from the original detail work on the outside of the Huntting House. The architect of the Huntting house,Minard LaFever, made sure to incorporate symbols of the whaling industry in his designs of the home, since it was very important to the Huntting livelihood. That included having wooden outcarvings of whale teeth (on the right and left sides of the photograph) and harpoons (in the middle of the phtotograph) detailing the home. |
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| Figure 4. Ceiling detail work on the inside of the Hunting House. The whaling references that La Fever incorporated into the character of the outside of the Huntting home, is strongly continued on the inside as well. The trim of the doorway was done in the shape of harpoons and the design inside the half circle on the ceiling is cut in the shape of ocean waves. |
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| Figure 5. This is a picture of Benjamin Huntting II, the son of Benjamin Huntitng , who lived from 1845-1890. He was the original owner of the Huntting house, which later became the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. He came from an affluent family whose wealth came from the Sag Harbor deep sea whaling industry. Huntting and his family owned a fleet of whaling ships and he made his fortune from the selling of the whale oil brought back from voyages. |
Sag Harbor
by Brianna Lusher
Sag Harbor, a cosmopolitan city! Today in Coastal Cultural Experiences, we went to the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, Custom House, the “Whaling Church,” and the cemetery! However, my favorite part was definitely the Sag Harbor Custom House. Although we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the inside, it was really interesting. The Custom House is the house of the first Custom’s Officer of Sag Harbor, and actually the entire state, named Henry Packer Dering. He essentially charged small taxes on the imported goods, collected his salary from them, and sent the rest to the colony’s government. He was one of the most well off men in the town, and therefore had a pretty big house filled with various expensive items. Their house actually consisted of two houses joined together in the middle, which was something I’d never seen before. But it was more fascinating how many possessions they had on the inside, which leads to the importance of Sag Harbor as a port town.
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A picture of the Sag Harbor Custom House.
Photo Credit to Meaghan Coyne. |
Because of the location of Sag Harbor, it was a good place for boats to stop and take a rest before continuing on their way to Manhattan. That allowed for many goods from various countries to be a major part of Sag Harbor. For example, the Custom House had wall papers from France, floor mats from India, and dishes from China. This also allowed the town to have a high intake of money, and various people and cultures integrated into this one town. Sadly, there were also quite a few slaves that lived in this town, and they were around longer than most slaves in New York State, which included the Dering family. However, slavery here was still abolished before the Civil War, which was a good step forward. This was a very engaging trip; we even got to eat lunch near the port! I hope to come back to see more of the town sometime.
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The section of the Sag Harbor Port where we ate lunch.
Photo credit to myself.
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Sag Harbor
by Libby Howlett
Before the time of photography, portraits were really the only way of recording events and people in picture. It could also be and advertisement of wealth or how well off a family was. The picture below is a portrait labled Mary Tinker, featured in the Huntting house. One of the striking things about this portrait are the strange proportions–a large and adult looking head on a child-like body. It was not uncommon for traveling artists to have pre-painted bodies, and when they were asked to do a portrait they would add hands, a head, and some kind of personal item. A similar portrait with even stranger proportions was featured in the customs house across the street.
The picture below is a case display in the Huntting house featuring scrimshaw and various other types of bone from marine mammals. Also pictured, is a photograph of whale bone cane handles and a photograph of a carved whale tooth.When most of the whale meat was cut away from the carcass, whalers would be left with the bones and teeth, which were valuable for several reason. Whalebone could be utilized for corsets, swifts, dominoes, cane handles and other small knick-knacks. One of the most popular uses was as an artistic medium. Beautiful carvings would be done on the teeth and bone, but it would often have to be polished for many hours first to get the surfaces smooth enough to work with.
