Press here  “How Do Whales Hear?” to get to the abstract for the story from the UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering blog. Within the abstract is a link for the full article. I’d be interested to know how many of you have actually heard of a Cuvier’s Beaked Whale.

“The researchers, led by Petr Kryls have developed a model that creates a 3-dimensional virtual environment in which they can simulate sounds propagated through the virtual specimen and reveal the interactions between the sound and the anatomy.”

UCSD structural engineering professor Petr Krysl has designed modern computational methods that give a 3D simulated look inside the head of a Cuvier’s beaked whale.

While at the museum make sure to visit our new exhibit, “The Hunt for Knowledge”.  This exhibition seeks to answer some common inquiries. The story of human interactions with whales would be incomplete without discussing today’s scientific work and the changes made in fishing practices to protect cetaceans.

]]> http://whalingmuseumblog.org/2010/09/01/whale-research-new-bedford-connection/feed/ 0 rochabob UCSD structural engineering professor Petr Krysl has designed modern computational methods that give a 3D simulated look inside the head of a Cuvier’s beaked whale. http://whalingmuseumblog.org/2010/08/11/save-the-dates/ http://whalingmuseumblog.org/2010/08/11/save-the-dates/#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:11:34 +0000 Arthur Motta http://whalingmuseumblog.org/?p=2408 ]]>

Pico. Russell & Purrington, A Whaling Voyage 'Round the World, 1848.

Please join us to recognize and honor the Portuguese People and to celebrate their significant contributions to the maritime heritage of New Bedford

September 10, 5:30 p.m.

AZOREAN WHALEMAN GALLERY – Unveiling and Dedication

The Azorean Whaleman Gallery is a gift of the Government of Portugal honoring the Portuguese people and their significant contribution to the maritime heritage of New Bedford.

Whaling in Faial, 1940-1984 – Exhibition of photography from the Azores

Arthur Moniz Retrospective – Celebrating 45 years of painting the South Coast, Ships and the Sea

(The evening’s events are sponsored by Bristol County Savings Bank)

September 24, 5:00 p.m.

COMMUNITIES OF WHALING EXHIBITION – New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park

October 22, 4:00 p.m.

PRESIDENTIAL RECEPTION

The Honorable Carlos Manuel Martins do Vale César, President of the Regional Government of the Azores

Signing of a Protocol between the Azores, New Bedford and San Francisco

Commemoration of the Bourne Building

Re-Launching of the Lagoda

Dedication of the Azorean Arch

Pelo sinal do Espírito Santo – Exhibition of photography from the Azores

Ribbon Cutting and Public Reception
Saturday, June 26, 3:00 PM
North Water & Centre Streets

Since its founding in 1903 the Old Dartmouth Historical Society (ODHS) has collected a broad spectrum of materials to document and preserve the history of the region.  Much activity at ODHS has focused on whaling, the primary commercial activity of the region. Yet for over 100 years the New Bedford Whaling Museum/ODHS has continued to actively collect decorative and fine arts associated with New Bedford and the surrounding towns of Fairhaven, Acushnet, Dartmouth, and Westport.

This new Old Dartmouth Historical Society Wattles Family Gallery provides the perfect venue to highlight the fine art treasures from the most prosperous period of the region.  Artwork with a variety of Old Dartmouth connections are displayed.  For example, nationally known masters such as William Bradford (1823-1892) and Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917) were born in Fairhaven and New Bedford respectively.  Albert Bierstadt (1830 – 1902) moved to New Bedford as a young boy.

Old Dartmouth artists and subjects are represented in this sampling of many of the greatest works from our collection.

Bank of Commerce, North Water Street, 1895

The first permanent home of the ODHS was the National Bank of Commerce building.  Constructed in 1883-4 it was purchased in 1906 by the founders of the Society. Typical of an early American museum, a wide variety of collections were displayed from stuffed penguins brought back by whalers to ship models, paintings, and scrimshaw.

Over many years this room evolved into collection storage and staff spaces, unseen by the public.  By peeling back years of alterations we have returned this gallery to the public and featured our Old Dartmouth collections.  Special thanks go to Museum Trustee Gurdon Wattles for recommending grant funding for this project through the New York Community Trust – Wattles Family Charitable Trust Fund.

"Coast of Grand Manan", 1890, Charles Henry Gifford

To re-inaugurate this gallery it is most fitting that our finest artworks are exhibited.  Peruse the diversity and take in the richness of the cultural Treasures of Old Dartmouth.

Gregory J. Galer, Ph.D.
Exhibit Curator, VP Collections & Exhibitions

Keith W. Kauppila
Guest Assistant Exhibit Curator

Frances F. Levin
Chairman, Collections Committee

One of the transplants to Barrow, research biologist Craig George, has spent 30 years learning from the Inupiat and from the bowhead.  Craig and his colleague, Leslie Pierce, are contributors the NBWM’s new The Hunt for Knowledge exhibit. More importantly, they’ve helped legitimize the centuries of traditional Inupiat knowledge that was typically ignored or demeaned by academics and agency scientists.

It’s my pleasure to link you to Ned Rozell’s quick-read article about Craig and Leslie, Learning from Whales and Whalers on Top of the World .  You’ll be impressed by the amount of research he’s done, and stunned by the bowhead facts listed in the story.

Craig George, left, and Leslie Pierce look for bowhead whales north of Barrow.

]]> http://whalingmuseumblog.org/2010/06/18/bowhead/feed/ 0 rochabob 061710_ak_science1 http://whalingmuseumblog.org/2010/06/02/new-exhibit-opens/ http://whalingmuseumblog.org/2010/06/02/new-exhibit-opens/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:46:06 +0000 rochabob http://whalingmuseumblog.org/?p=2140 ]]> The Whaling Museum’s new “The Hunt for Knowledge” exhibition was unveiled to the public during a ribbon cutting event held on Friday, May 28, after the Museum’s annual meeting.  Museum President James Russell,  Museum Trustee, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologist, Michael Moore, WM VP for Collections and Exhibitions, Greg Galer and WM Science Programs Manager, Robert Rocha, who developed the exhibit, all participated in the ceremony.

This exhibit focuses on a variety of cetacean conservation and research issues, and features many objects donated by a variety of sources.  The information on the exhibit panels addresses many of the questions asked by the visiting public.   The Museum is proud to expand its role  in supporting the understanding of and conservation of whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Moore, Rocha, Galer and Russell cut the ribbon for the new exhibit.

Today, the Gulf of Mexico is home to an estimated population of 1600 to 1700 sperm whales. Dr. Randall R. Reeves, a biologist with Okapi Wildlife Associates, Quebec, Canada, and an Advisory Curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, noted that sperm whales “move through the water column to great depths, and they spend long periods at the surface ‘catching their breath’. Exposure to oil is inevitable, and it is very hard to imagine that such exposure will not be harmful to both the whales directly and to their prey.”

The display, which includes several whaling logbooks and charts from 1836 to 1932, is located in the Jacobs Family Gallery, an admission-free area of the Museum complex.

It is not too late to influence what ends in the exhibit. Which images are your favorites? Join our flickr discussion or comment directly on individual flickr photo pages. One needs to have an account (standard accounts are free) to place comments within flickr. If you’d prefer simply view the photos within flickr and tell us what you think via e-mail to photoresearch@whalingmuseum.org.

Your favorites? Comments Sought.

New Bedford Whaling Museum is fortunate to hold, through gifts of The Standard-Times newspaper, Everett S. Allen, and John D. Wilson, a collection of dry-plate glass negatives that were originally used to illustrate stories in the New Bedford Standard, forerunner to the Standard-Times. The earliest of these negatives were used as part of the nascent halftone printing process, which newspapers used to bring photographs to an increasingly image hungry readership.

This exhibit will examine newsworthy people, events, and places in the New Bedford region during the transitional decades that saw the end of the horse-and-buggy era and the emergence of a modern city.

The soon to be opened “Old Dartmouth Historical Society Wattles Family Gallery” will be dedicated to the exhibition of fine and decorative arts of the Old Dartmouth region. It is located in one of the original exhibition spaces of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society (ODHS), what was once the main floor of the National Bank of Commerce building located at 35 [37] North Water Street.

In 1906 the ODHS bought the “imposing bank building of brick and brownstone” built in 1883/84 with the generous assistance of Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840-1909), one of the original Board of Trustees members, and under the  auspices of one of the original founders of the ODHS, WilliamWallace Crapo.

The National Bank of Commerce, which went out of business in 1898, was the first bank in New Bedford. It stood at this same location. Its original name was the Bedford Bank (1803-1812) with merchant Thomas Hazard its first president and was originally organized to support the Bedford Marine Insurance Company. The bank was liquidated during the War of 1812 and in 1816 was resurrected under the name of the Bedford Commercial Bank (1816-1864), with George Howland acting as president until his death in 1851. In 1864 it was re-organized as the National Bank of Commerce, Thomas Nye, Jr. president.

In January of 1908 as the ODHS took full possession of the rooms and hung its sign, still there today, over the Water Street entrance. By the 1930’s the room was dedicated to the exhibition of nautical objects including ship models, paintings, prints, scrimshaw and curiosities. By the 1960’s the space had been converted to offices for curator Philip Purrington and whaling/biology scholar David Henderson. At that time library collections were also housed in the space. By the 1990s it had been converted to storage and other behind-the-scenes functionalities necessary for the growing museum. Today the museum is recapturing the elegant space to highlight its local history collections.

The one-third scale model was built by Tom Borges, a local artist, sculptor and ship’s carpenter, in his New Bedford studio over the course of seven years. Begun early in 2003, Borges constructed the model from scratch using Concordia plans together with his own meticulous drawings and measurements, taken at the Concordia Boatyard, located in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

In announcing the special exhibit, James Russell, museum president, said, “The Whaling Museum is famous as the home of the world’s largest ship model, Lagoda, so it is fitting that the world’s largest model of an equally famous and locally built boat, the Concordia Yawl, also be displayed here.”

With the mast stepped the boat stands 22-feet tall (keel to masthead) in its custom cradle. With miniature bronze fittings and its 200-pound lead keel, the hull measures 15 feet, 2 inches long; its beam, 44″ across.

The metal and bronze fittings were hand-made in a multistep process by cutting the major elements on a table saw, TIG welding components together, then grinding, filing and polishing each fitting. To fabricate cylindrical parts, Borges utilized a metal lathe in the mechanical department of Burr Brothers Boatyard in Marion, where he works as a ship’s carpenter during the spring and summer months. Most of the progress on the model took place in the off-season, he said.

By his reckoning, Borges has worked in the repair and carpentry department at Burr Brothers for the past 13 or 14 years, and never as a boat builder. A Mattapoisett native and 1995 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Borges studied Fine Arts, majoring in Sculpture. His Cove Street studio, located deep within the former Berkshire-Hathaway Mill complex is as remarkable as the 22-foot high Concordia, which stands landlocked within his cramped but well-lighted atelier. The walls and floors are papered with myriad works of Borges’ art. Numerous portraits and figure studies in charcoal and Conté crayon cover the periphery of a studio crammed with sculpture, paintings, and countless objects of natural study and nautical interest. Heaps of books on fine art lie stacked about on the floor and serve as much for reference as they do for tables to hold palettes, brushes and tools.

“I’ve always been interested in models,” Borges said, pointing to a glass case containing his first attempt, a flawless scale model of a Brownell Bass Boat, which he also built from scratch in 2003.

With his first model completed, Borges decided he wanted to build something bigger, and just big enough to actually sail. This required the model be constructed with all working parts. “In theory, all the parts are meant to work,” Borges said. A snug pilot seat built into the miniature cabin at the bottom of the companionway allows for the model to be skippered by a set of controls from below decks, with a head-and-shoulders view of the exterior. Two jammers on the starboard side control the main and jib sheets. The single portside jammer controls the mizzen sheet. A lever and cable on the starboard side controls the tiller. Smiling, the reticent artist added, “I would consider myself far from a sailor; I know how to sail but I wouldn’t call myself a sailor. I’ve always liked boats and I like to build things.” None of his models have ever been made on commission. “I get an idea in my head and I just keep going; I make them and they end up staying here,” he said.

As the Concordia model began to dominate his small studio, Borges wondered what it might be worth. He contacted a ship model dealer in Marblehead, who responded that he could not appraise a model as large as this one, but referred the artist to several experts on large ship models as well as on Concordia history, including Llewellyn Howland III, a Trustee of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society (ODHS) and Whaling Museum. A writer and historian, Howland reviewed photos of the model then called Borges and contacted James Russell, Whaling Museum President. Russell, former head of the International Yacht Restoration Society (IRYS), visited Borges’ studio with John Garfield, ODHS Chair, and Calvin Siegal, Museum Advisory Committee Chair. “We were blown away by the remarkable workmanship and level of detail. We determined that this extraordinary work should be made available for the public to see,” Russell said. Dr. Gregory Galer, V.P. Collections & Exhibitions, and Frances Levin, Collections Committee Chair, also visited the artist.

The story of the Concordia Company and its legendary yawl runs deep in the history of American sailing. Established in Boston in 1926 by retired oil company executive Llewellyn Howland, Concordia Company was named after a Howland family whaling vessel.  In the 1930s, the company  entered the yacht design and brokerage business under the direction of Howland’s son Waldo.

Two talented naval architects, C. Raymond Hunt and Wilder B. Harris, were associated with Concordia Company in the late l930s.  Though differing in their approaches to yacht design, the two men worked closely and successfully with Waldo Howland on a variety of projects.

Shortly after Concordia Company moved its offices to Fairhaven in 1938, a major hurricane swept the area causing much loss of life and property, including the destruction of countless yachts in South Coast harbors.  One of the casualties was the boat owned by the company founder, Llewellyn Howland, who soon placed an order with Concordia Company and Ray Hunt for a 39-foot cruising/racing yawl that would  perform well in the fresh afternoon breezes and choppy seas that prevail on Buzzards Bay.

The result was Concordia Company’s design number 14, which became the classic Concordia Yawl, one of the most successful and long-lived stock wooden cruiser/racers ever built.  When the name Concordia is mentioned in sailing circles, it is this class of yawls (and some sloops) that comes to mind.

Between 1938 and 1947, four Concordia yawls were built, three (including Llewellyn Howland’s) by Casey Boatbuilding Company in Fairhaven, a fourth by George Lawley and Son Corp in Neponset, Mass.  Then in 1950 a longtime patron of Concordia company decided to take advantage of Europe’s ravaged post-war economy to have one of the yawls built by the famous German yacht-building firm of Abeking & Rasmussen in Lemwerder near Bremerhaven.  The result was so satisfactory, and the cost so reasonable, that an additional 98 Concordia yawls and sloops were built by the German firm before the final boat, Irene, hull #103, was shipped from Bremerhaven in 1966.  All 103 Concordia yawls ever built are still in existence today.

Waldo Howland purchased South Wharf in South Dartmouth in 1941, which allowed Concordia Company to become a full-service yacht yard.  Soon after the war it acquired the exclusive right to build wooden Beetle Cats.  In the late 1950s, in association with the designer R. D. Culler, Waldo Howland and Concordia Company began building traditional wooden yachts at a facility on the Smith Neck Road in Dartmouth. The company was sold to Bill Pinney in 1969, and by Pinney to Brodie MacGregor in 1981, who continues to operate Concordia Company today.

Brodie and son Stuart moved Concordia to 300 Gulf Road in 2007 where they continue the tradition of storing, repairing, and restoring, and selling Concordia yawls. “Fourteen of the 150 boats we maintain are Concordias,” said Stuart.  “They are at the same time our heritage and a critical, current aspect of our business. Most rewarding are the opportunities we at Concordia get to deliver or sail on owner’s boats.  For all the good looks, nothing compares to level of function and the beauty of Concordias underway.  It is why the class endures so well,” he said.

Transport of the model to the whaling museum is courtesy of N.C. Hudon, Inc., a family-owned and operated company based in New Bedford, MA, providing crane hoisting and rigging services for over 60 years.

The model will be on public display for the next several weeks, with its debut on Friday, March 12, as part of the whaling museum’s festive spring fundraiser, “Bermuda Shorts & Knobbly Knees.”

The New Bedford Whaling Museum expresses special thanks to N.C. Hudon, Inc. Crane & Rigging for assisting with the installation of this exhibit.

To see photos form the installation of the model, visit our flickr set.