As one notable New Bedford Whaling scholar noted ‘If you drove a tunnel from New Bedford through the centre of the earth you would most probably come out in the southern hemisphere, somewhere near Albany in Western Australia.’

Albany, where I live, is a long way from New Bedford. Certainly today, to travel the distance, can take in excess of 30 hours.

In 2009 the New Bedford Whaling Museum kindly offered me a scholarship-in-residence to carry out research in the Museum’s archives. I was happy to accept and, in 2010, arrived on a drizzly cool April Friday morning for a three week stay. The journey was worthwhile and the weather did improve.

In 2003 I had completed, courtesy of the University of Western Australia, a masters study of the whaling industry on the Western Australian coast, a study that spanned the years from before European settlement through to the modern age.  Much of my work on the 19^th century drew on Western Australian historical records and the comprehensive collection of whaling logs contained in the Pacific Manuscript Collection held at the Alexander Library in Perth. What was missing was an examination of a more detailed record that could better explain the American point of view: personal journals and letters, consular records, whaling logs not copied into the Pacific Manuscript Collection, and the financial records and papers of agents and owners.

In particular, I was looking for evidence that would help answer a number of questions: who were the Americans who discovered the New Holland Ground; what effect or influence, if any, did they have on Western Australia’s Aboriginal peoples and the recently arrived European colonists; what roles did different groups and individuals play in this relationship; how did the pattern of whaling on the New Holland ground change over time; and, what legacy did the Americans leave for future generations, with regard to the region’s natural environment, economic development,  and social and cultural evolution? The scholar-in-residence program provided an opportunity to examine these questions and more.

The seas around Western Australia are remote and isolated. In the 19^th century they stood at the very edge of the known world.  A place where, even at the time, Gulliver’s fantasies of strange, Lilliputian lands seemed strangely possible, even probable. Only the far distant and still unknown polar realms could exceed this figurative loneliness and unknowingness.

The seas and coast around Western Australia were also a place of ambiguous sovereignty. Although the shore and land had been claimed for the British Empire much of it remained unoccupied and unexploited by British colonists.  Those areas that had been settled were sparsely populated and vast distances separated the few established communities. In this environment the ability of the Crown to enforce colonial sovereignty was difficult.

For the American whaling industry such places offered undiscovered potential and opportunity: new whaling grounds, with an abundance of previously undisturbed whale species and free of territorial claims and boundaries, provided a bonanza of easy hunting and fast profits. These discoveries would lead to a whaling rush as ships from all ports and, unrestrained by any boundaries or limits, sailed to take advantage of the new discovery.

Success would last as long as whales could be caught or, until a new and more attractive ground was found. In the event of the latter the old would be abandoned within weeks and months.

The New Holland ground offered such success. For a short while in the late 1830s and 1840s it was the focus of many an east coast whaling merchant and captains’ attention. Estimates indicate that at the height of the boom, in the period 1840-1842, possibly in excess of 150 American whaling vessels were cruising on and off the Western Australian coast or, closer inshore, engaged in bay whaling.

The discovery of the New Holland whaling ground occurred in stages and comprised a collection of distinct and separate smaller grounds, spread across a vast body of water extending from the tropical Timor Sea, between Indonesia and Northwest Australia, to the sub-Antarctic seas of the southern ocean.

By the 1820s the Timor Sea was being successfully exploited as a sperm whale ground. Subsequent voyages led to a descent on the Western Australian northwest coast. The Rosemary Islands (the off shore waters near present day Port Hedland), were found to be the winter breeding ground of the humpback whale. Whaling grounds were also found in the south. Reports from the Government Resident at Augusta, near Cape Leeuwin on the southwest tip of Western Australia, indicate that by 1834 American whaling ships were cruising between that port and Bunbury to the north. On the south coast, at Albany, American whaling ships were observed as early as 1835. These latter vessels were mostly engaged in bay whaling for southern right whales to the east of Albany during the southern hemisphere winter.

Other whaling grounds were also discovered. Further south, at latitude 46 and, beyond. Here were found the summer grounds of the southern right whale while, towards the east, deep into the Great Australian Bight, were found sperm whales. They were also found on the west coast off Cape Leeuwin and Shark Bay.

Sperm whales were generally found in the deep waters of off shore canyons and the abyssal depths. Inshore, could be found humpback and southern right whales on their annual winter migrations between their winter breeding grounds off the north west and south coasts, respectively, and their summer breeding grounds in the higher latitudes. Other whale species, both great and small also swam in these seas; minke, killer, finn, blue and others.

The American whaling boom off Western Australia was short lived. The discovery of the rich and more abundant northwest Pacific and Arctic whaling grounds led to a rapid abandonment of the New Holland ground. By 1843 possibly less than a dozen American whalers were on the coast.

The effect of whaling on the southern right population was considerable. By 1845 it was reported that the south coast southern right bay fishery had been fished out and that southern rights, found on their summer grounds, were easily gallied and increasingly difficult to catch. In comparison sperm whales, humpbacks and other species appeared to be still abundant.

By the 1850s increasing numbers of American whalers were returning to the New Holland ground in search of sperm whales. They remained, despite the interruptions caused by the American Civil War, until 1888 when declining sperm oil prices made whaling in Western Australian waters uneconomical.

During this time Albany became a de-facto homeport. Whaling captains, often accompanied by their wives and children, remained for periods of up to three years making alternate cruises along the southern and western coasts and out into the Indian and even, on occasion, the Pacific Oceans. In the 1870s one of the best whaling grounds was described as being southeast of Albany and lying within site of Breaksea Island Lighthouse in King Georges Sound.

The historical record indicates that the Americans were able to exercise considerable economic influence on the small isolated communities along the West Australian coast. They provided a range of commercial services and goods not normally, or easily, available. These included passengers services between ports, maritime employment and training for local boys and men, trade in goods and even luxuries: haberdashery, ironmongery, clothing, tobacco, clocks and other items. In return they provided a source of income for local people, in particular through the provision of victuals, minor ship repair services, medical and later, in the case of Albany and, Fremantle to the north, consular assistance.

The growth in trade benefited the European settlers and to some degree the local Aboriginal peoples. The latter benefited from the trade in curiosities that flourished at the height of the boom in the early 1840s. Its collapse, following the decline in American bay whaling, sparked social disturbance and reignited conflict with European settlers as Aboriginal people attempted to find other sources of income and sustenance. This included spearing and taking the European’s prized livestock.

Trade with Americans enabled European settlers to increase and accumulate capital. While in the 1830s local merchants had some difficulty in financing small shore whaling ventures, by 1873 an Albany syndicate was able to purchase the New Bedford whaling barque Islander, which they operated successfully until 1884.

Perhaps one of the greatest attractions for the Americans was the proximity to the whaling grounds of a ready supply of whaling crew, deserters from previous voyages who, for what ever reason, had sought better prospects ashore and, now disappointed, were prepared to take their chances and return to the sea. Moreover, with advancements in steam ship technology, telegraph services and, the establishment of Albany as a strategic coal port on the steam ship route from Europe, Africa and India to Australia, American captains were able gain ready access to a network of comparatively fast communication services that connected them and, their crews, to agents and owners on the East Coast of the United States.

The evidence from the New Bedford Whaling Museum archives has added other dimensions to this history. It now seems more than probable that whaling captains from Salem were instrumental in the mid 1830s in discovering and opening up the southern right and even the sperm whale fishery off the South Coast. This does not exclude the probability of an earlier unrecorded discovery by Australian colonial whalers and, others, and certainly suggests an area for further research. Whether the Salem captains played a similar role off the west coast is still to be determined.

Important to the discovery was the way in which the New Holland Ground formed part of a system of other whaling grounds around and across the Indian Ocean. These in turn acted as a links or waypoints to whaling grounds in other Oceans and seas. Knowledge of the ground facilitated a truly global extractive industry based on annual seasonal and biological changes in the marine environment.  Ashore, the first Governor of the Swan River colony, Sir James Stirling, promoted the benefits of whaling ships engaging in a seasonal progress, following the prevailing winds and sailing eastward around the northern rim of the Indian Ocean to Madagascar and then, south and east along the sub-Antarctic rim back to ports in Western Australia.  Once arrived, these ships could tranship their cargoes for shipment back to Britain and the United States. They could then resume their anticlockwise progress.

The New Bedford archive has also thrown up evidence of individual experiences and perspectives. Whaling captains appear as amateur anthropologists and collectors; whaling wives as avid business entrepreneurs and social observers. Interesting is the disappointment with the place itself: Albany, the so called ‘city’, but really nothing more than a tiny fishing village; the rapaciousness of the Colonial administration in its pursuit of port and custom dues; a harsh judgement of Aboriginal peoples, possibly influenced by religiosity and previous encounters with what were seen to be more advanced Indigenous peoples from other lands; and the appalling bleakness and perceived emptiness of the western and north west coasts.

On the other hand there was close social intercourse with the European colonists. One whaling captain calling at Augusta near Cape Leeuwin, tried to win the charms of a local belle and was trumped by the more successful ship’s mate. The eventual marriage established a dynasty. At Albany, romance also led to marriage. A young 19 year old girl went to sea with her whaling captain to spend the rest of her days in New Bedford. Further north, at Geographe Bay, a 14 year old girl, ‘…a fair maiden of Australia’, sailed on a whaling voyage as companion to the Captain’s wife.

Also interesting are the copies of bills and accounts submitted by local merchants, which provide details of exact services bought and sold: evidence that can be used to increase understanding of the scale of the American trade. Amongst the accounts are names of local people, details of their employment and indications of their status and role in the community. At Albany men who could build jetties also came aboard to repair tryworks and other parts of the ship as did tin smiths who repaired well worn pots and pans. At the time the income earned from a visiting American whalers was not inconsiderable, especially in the then uncertain economy of colonial Western Australia.

The archives also help confirm that the there was a dynamic, vibrant yet naturally geographically distant relationship between the colonial communities of Western Australia and whaling merchants, captains and families in New Bedford and other whaling ports on the east coast of the United States. American 4^th of July celebrations were observed in Albany and the local merchants talked of the possibility of direct trade between their port and New Bedford. The departure of the last American whaling ship from Albany in 1888 marked the end of the relationship, but left the door open for renewal amongst the opportunities of the new century ahead.

This history also provides a shared legacy that resonates with the global village of today. Through the history of whaling the experiences of coastal communities in Western Australia can link to those of communities in New Bedford and others on the eastern American seaboard. These connections have no doubt a potential to provide economic, educational, social and cultural benefits to all.

Many of the questions raised during my research are only partially answered. Further study is required in particular of other archives and collections held by other institutions in the United States. Future visits and research will no doubt fill these gaps and help provide a more complete understanding of the history of the New Holland whaling ground.

In the meantime my notes, copies of letters, journals and accounts await even further examination in the pursuit of a very interesting history.

I would like to express my deep appreciation and thanks to James Russell, President of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Dr Stuart Frank, Senior Curator, Laura Pereira Librarian, Michael Dyer, Maritime Curator and Michael Lapides, Curator of Photography, for their kind assistance and support in making my visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum possible.

I would also like to express my admiration and thanks to Henry Fanning and Jan Keeler, both Museum volunteers, for their support and amazing hospitality, patience and enthusiasm.

Adam Wolfe

26 Grey Street East

Albany, 6330.

Western Australia.

Email: wolfeaah@yahoo.co.uk

When Panoramas Made the Scene

By Bill Hudgins

Almost a century before Thomas Edison received the first copyright for a motion picture film in 1894, panoramic painting enthralled Europe and America with “wide-screen” depictions of faraway lands, scenic wonders, urban vistas and thrilling battles.

Whether painted on vast stationary canvases mounted in circular rotundas or, later on, created on lengthy canvas sheets that could be unrolled scroll-like to spellbound viewers, panoramas enjoyed two substantial periods of popularity in the 19th century. Art historians have described them as the “silver screen” of the 1800s.

The advent of photography and then of motion pictures ended the interest in panoramas. Few have survived; the medium was inherently fragile and vulnerable to changes in temperature and humidity, rough handling and, in the case of the specially designed rotundas themselves, fire and weather damage.

But in their heyday, hundreds if not thousands of panoramas flourished, serving as entertainment, moral instruction, political propaganda and newsreels. Ironically enough, the credit for inventing this massive art form belongs to a self-taught artist who specialized in painting miniatures.

On June 17, 1787, Irishman Robert Barker was granted a patent for a method of painting scenes on large curved expanses of canvas; the word “panorama” was coined later. As a self-taught artist, he had developed his own system of perspective, according to Stephen Oettermann in The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium (Zone Books, 1997).

There are a number of anecdotes about how the idea came to Barker; what is certain is that it took several attempts before he figured out how to adjust perspective so the view appeared lifelike. While Robert Barker tinkered with the technique, his son, Henry, did the actual painting.

Their first successful work in 1788 showed a view of Edinburgh, Scotland, as seen from an observatory atop Calton Hill outside the city. Compared with later panoramas, it was tiny—just 25 feet in diameter. The work drew only modest interest, but encouraged the Barkers to attempt a bigger work. At a specially designed, though ultimately temporary, rotunda in London’s Leicester Square in January 1792, they opened their “Panorama of London” as seen from the Albion Steam Flour Mills near Blackfriars Bridge.

Originally painted as only a half-circle, the spectacle was a smash hit. The Barkers subsequently expanded it to a full circle, and visitors paid as much as a shilling each to marvel at it. The audience cut across economic, educational and class lines, making the panorama a true mass medium from the beginning, Oettermann wrote.

Just as Hollywood loves a sequel, the Barkers immediately began working on a bigger, bolder project. Across Leicester Square, they built a permanent, two-level rotunda that could show two panoramas at the same time—a smaller one in the upper level and a bigger one below. A large central column helped support the roof, which featured a double set of skylights to illuminate both panoramas.

On September 5, 1793, the rotunda opened to display the 10,000-square-foot “Grand Fleet at Spithead in 1791,” a view of the Russian fleet off the entrance to this harbor on the English Channel. Viewers stood upon a platform that resembled the poop deck of a frigate, further enhancing the reality of the scene. England’s King George III and Queen Charlotte inspected the panorama in May 1794; the queen was reported to have felt seasick from seeing so much water.

This triumph secured the Barkers’ position and fortune, and they went on to produce many others. The art form quickly crossed the English Channel and, after Barker’s patent lapsed in 1802, a panorama craze swept Europe.

Not Just Paint on Canvas

In The Painted Panorama (Abrams, 2000) author Bernard Comment defines the art form as “a continuous circular representation hung on the walls of a rotunda specifically constructed to contain it. Panoramas had to be so true to life that they could be confused with reality.”

The design of the building and the setting of the exhibit itself also contributed to the illusion. The artist wanted to create the sensation of being immersed in a scene that was created in an enclosed space but nonetheless conveyed the illusion of openness and broad vistas, Comment wrote. The painting, the building and the exhibit space had to work in harmony to divest the viewer of outside distractions and focus attention on the surroundings.

Early rotundas tended to be relatively small buildings, according to Oettermann, so the illusion of moving large distances at each step made some viewers dizzy. As a result, rotundas got larger, until by the 1830s, most new ones measured about 100 feet in diameter and 45 to 50 feet in height. The rotunda and the work intended for it were inextricably linked. Depending on the venue, panoramas could stretch more than 300 feet in circumference and 40 to 60 feet in height. The bare canvas could weigh 4 tons; the finished work might weigh twice that, after all the paint had been applied.

Rotundas had skylights for natural illumination and a central viewing platform positioned so the view appeared natural and in proper perspective. Visitors typically walked down a darkened hallway from the entrance to the viewing platform; this helped them to forget the outside world and adjust to the lighting.

Many consider panoramas, and especially moving panoramas, as precursors to film, notes Phil Wickham, curator of the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture at the University of Exeter in England.

“The link to cinema is, firstly, that they were often used as transforming images through movement or light,” Wickham says, “and secondly, that when looking at a panorama, the intention is that you are subsumed into the image in the same way that the cinema audience is only conscious of the world on the screen and not what is around them.”

As visitors stepped out onto the platform, they confronted a scene that appeared to vanish to a faraway horizon. The skylights and roof above them were concealed by a canopy or similarly suspended “ceiling” that extended to the top of the painting. Below the platform, the panoramist used natural objects such as soil, plants and other materials to blend with and tie into the image on the wall.

For instance, in Edourard Castres’ winter panorama of a defeated French army surrendering its arms at the Swiss border during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, artificial snow covers the space, and mannequin soldiers huddle around a small fire, just as their painted counterparts do. A real split-rail fence runs from below the platform to the wall, where it meets a painted fence that disappears into the distance.

Barker’s London panorama included platforms and other architectural embellishments to the walkways; besides the poop-deck viewing platform, his Spithead panorama showcased other nautical and seaside elements.

A Matter of Perspective

However elaborate the foreground, the painting was of paramount importance, and by far, the most difficult and complex creation. Oettermann described the laborious process of preparing and painting the canvas:

“The painting was composed of separate canvas panels sewn into a continuous strip that was then tightly rolled up and then slowly unrolled, stretched and secured at the top to a wood rail under the skylights. The bottom edge was secured, and weights hung at intervals to keep it taut. The canvas was moistened and then painted with a base coat and allowed to dry. It shrank as it dried, and as it did, it bowed out in the center to create a tight surface that was as much as 3 feet closer to the observation platform than either the top or bottom. The canvas was thus curved both vertically and horizontally.”

Barker’s genius lay in figuring out a method of transferring images on flat paper to curved surfaces. The process started with picking out a vantage point and creating detailed sketches of the scenes around it out to the horizon. The vantage point was usually elevated, which further complicated the perspective. Part of the solution was to impose a grid on the sketches and the canvas.

After application of another base coat, the entire surface was divided into a grid. Workers rolled a scaffold around the circumference of the canvas while assistants traced horizontal lines with charcoal. This was tiring, tedious and finicky work, as the curve of the canvas had to be factored in so to observers on the central platform, the lines appeared equidistant from each other. Workers made vertical lines by pressing plumb lines darkened with charcoal against the canvas.

Artists used grid coordinates on their flat sketches to transfer the design to the double-curved canvas surface. It was almost impossible to do this while standing close to the canvas. Some artists tied their pencils to long bamboo poles and sketched from the observation platform.

The artists had to coordinate scenes and colors with the kind of natural light that would shine upon them—for instance, they had to avoid placing shadowy scenes where bright sunlight would fall. And the scenes had to show well, regardless of whether it was cloudy or sunny.

It took teams of artists to paint a panorama, and the process of transferring sketches painted on flat surfaces to curved surfaces demanded continuous adjustments in perspective. The designer or lead artist and his subordinates directed the painters from the viewing platform—the only place where they could see whether the perspective actually worked. Artists specialized in details such as skies, animals, soldiers and weapons, which enabled them to create new panoramas efficiently and quickly, despite the technical challenges.

Panoramic Appeal

Panoramas became popular during a time of widespread social and political upheaval. Democratic fervor ran high: The United States had achieved independence and was in the process of creating its Constitution, while France remained in the throes of its own revolution. Science, rationalism and the early stages of the Industrial Revolution were transforming ways of thinking. Propelled by industrialization, towns became cities, and cities became sprawling giants.

Urban scenes such as those of London or Edinburgh were favorite themes. Comment asserts in his book that panoramas became popular because, with the explosive growth of cities, neither a city’s longtime residents nor its new arrivals truly knew what their city looked like.

By providing easily grasped overviews of the rapidly expanding urban landscape, panoramas restored a sense of control—a grasp of their surroundings—that the viewers felt they had lost.

Urbanites also had begun to feel closed in, and by affording them a broad vista, panoramas metaphorically let them get away from it all. Viewers also developed an appetite for war and battle scenes, especially those that showed their nation’s successes, as well as for scenes of distant lands and cities. Comment argues that both these subjects helped foster national pride during an era of military turmoil and imperial ambitions.

The new art form appealed to, and could be grasped by, all classes. It wasn’t fine art, but more of an illustration on a grand scale, with a premium on bright, bold colors. The amount of detail alone was so staggering that it overwhelmed the senses.

The subject matter sometimes made it impossible to devote time and talent to fine details. Panoramas often served as the 19th-century equivalent of newsreels in describing distant battles or momentous events. Panorama painters had to keep up with current events, so exhibits changed regularly. Some artists even painted over old panoramas hung in circular studios while their most recent work hung in a rotunda.

Finally, Wickham notes that most everyone loves a spectacle, and panoramas were spectacular. “Viewers were surrounded by these huge images. Panoramas also were a way of bringing the world to the audience—many depicted places that people would never have seen or current events they wished to learn about.”

Moving Panoramas

Although stationary panoramas required specially built exhibit spaces and were difficult to move, it was not uncommon for artists to sell their work to another exhibitor after the initial run ended. The Barkers, for instance, sold their London and Spithead panoramas, which were exhibited on the Continent in temporary display rotundas.

But the sheer size of panoramas and the difficulty of preventing damage to the canvases limited the ability to take these shows on the road. The moving panorama provided a solution to this problem.

Moving panoramas did not require specially built buildings or display halls, and because the surface was flat, the artist didn’t need to create unusual perspectives. Though bulky, they were also far easier to transport and stage than traditional panoramas, wrote Tom Hardiman, former curator at the Saco Museum in Saco, Maine, in an essay for the catalogue “The Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress,” which accompanied a 1999 exhibition of the same title at the Montclair, N.J., Art Museum.

Moving panoramas were particularly popular in America, starting with John Banvard’s moving panorama of a voyage down the Mississippi River that toured in America starting in 1846, and then in England in 1848, Hardiman wrote. His success launched a flood of moving panorama shows.

Although many were produced, only a few survive today in museums, and those are far too fragile to show as originally designed. Two of the best examples are the “The Grand Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress,” also known as the “Bunyan Tableaux,” in the Saco Museum, and “Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World” at the New Bedford, Mass., Whaling Museum.

According to the Saco Museum’s Web site, the 800-foot-long Pilgrim’s Progress panorama was thought lost for 100 years. It was the brainchild of two members of the National Academy of Design, Edward Harrison May and Joseph Kyle, who in 1848 decided to capitalize on the immense popularity of moving panoramas and John Bunyan’s allegory.

“In the religious revival of the time, John Bunyan’s 1678 allegory of a spiritual pilgrimage experienced its own revival. In the fine arts circles familiar to May and Kyle, Pilgrim’s Progress became a popular subject for formal academic paintings,” according to the Web site.

Written in 1678, Pilgrim’s Progress became enormously popular in the 19th century. The story of Christian and Christina’s flight from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City contains vivid imagery, ideal for translating from the page to canvas. May and Kyle recruited fellow National Academicians to assist in drawing or designing some of the scenes, which adds considerably to its value to art historians.

When displayed before an audience, it was unwound from one enormous wooden spool across the stage to the other spool, while a narrator described the action, and music played in the background.

The original work comprised 54 scenes on a 1,200-foot-long, 8-foot-high length of canvas. It opened at Washington Hall in New York in November 1850 to critical and popular acclaim, and grossed nearly $100,000 in its first six months.

Realizing they had a hit on their hands, May and Kyle immediately began work on a second version that was completed in April 1851. It was about 400 feet shorter than the original and contained some revised scenes. It was exhibited around the country for the next 45 years until being donated to the Saco Museum in 1896.

Incredible as it may seem, the huge “scroll” was misplaced at some point in the early 20th century. Museum officials rediscovered it in 1996 in a storage vault and began a partial conservation and exhibition before returning it to storage.

In December 2009, the museum received one of 44 Save America’s Treasures grants awarded by the National Park Service. The $51,940 grant will be used to create a full-size functional replica suitable for performance, says Leslie Rounds, executive director of the Dyer Library and Saco Museum. A video will also be produced, complete with a voice narration and music, to be used as an interactive program in the galleries and also on the museum’s Web site.

The Pilgrim’s Progress panorama is valuable not only because of the caliber of artists who contributed to its creation, but also, the museum’s site says, because it is “a missing link to one of the rare moments in American history when the divergent worlds of formal academic art, popular commercial entertainment, religious thought and literature came together in a single object.”

Whale of a Work

“Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World” was created by Benjamin Russell, who had served as cooper on the whaleship Kutusoff and had compiled a sketchbook full of scenes from his voyage, and Caleb Purrington, a sign painter in New Bedford. Starting in 1845, they created a moving panorama 1,300 feet long and 8-and-a-half feet high.

The voyage started from New Bedford, then the preeminent American whaling port. It took viewers to the tip of South America and around Cape Horn to the Pacific, and to exotic ports of call such as Honolulu, before returning. It played to packed houses in New Bedford, of course, and also had a hugely successful road tour.

One scene showed a scandalous episode in U.S. whaling history: the November 1842 mutiny aboard the whaleship Sharon. In her history of that ill-fated voyage, In the Wake of Madness (Algonquin, 2003), Joan Druett notes the panorama prominently features the actions of the Sharon’s third mate, Benjamin Clough. The artists drew upon a newspaper article based on Clough’s account of the mutiny and his self-described role in ultimately recapturing the ship. It’s unknown whether Clough and other crew members saw the exhibition when it was in New Bedford, though it’s possible. It’s also possible, but unknown, that Herman Melville saw the show because he was in New Bedford during its run.

Unlike the Pilgrim’s Progress panorama, the whaling saga enjoyed only a few years of success. After opening in December 1848, it toured until 1851, when Russell put it into storage. It was briefly shown again after he died in 1885, then sold. It was donated in 1918 to the Old Dartmouth Historical Society and later acquired by the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Circle’s End

Panoramas enjoyed great popularity in the early 19th century, and then declined before enjoying a second round later on, helped in part by the advent of moving panoramas. But the development of photography, magic lantern shows and ultimately movies turned the once-popular medium into a quaint novelty.

The United States has a few static panoramas, including the Gettysburg Cyclorama (www.gettysburg foundation.org) in Pennsylvania and the Atlanta Cyclorama (www.atlantacyclorama.org), depicting the Civil War’s Battle of Atlanta, in Georgia. The Velaslavasay Panorama in Los Angeles presents contemporary 360-degree works in a renovated theater in homage to the older art form. Its Web site, www.panoramaonview.org, includes a list of extant panoramas around the world.

Two other moving panoramas also survive in the United States. One, the “Garibaldi Panorama” at Brown University, depicts the life of the Italian hero and is being digitized for future generations to enjoy. The other, known as the “Mormon Panorama,” is housed at Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art in Utah. Its panels have been separated and framed.

The whale is perhaps the most mysterious animal known to man.  For centuries it inspired awe and fear, and was hunted for its oil, blubber and whalebone.  Now it is seen as a symbol of an ecological threat, a barometer for a world out of kilter.  It is even more remarkable that the transition from an age of whale-hunting to an era of whale-watching has happened within living memory.

Humpback off Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania

Ancient myth regarded the whale as an uncanny monster, a creature beyond comprehension.  A whale might swallow a single human being, such as Jonah, or an entire city, as one Greek myth imagined.  The poet William Blake wrote of a terrifying vision, ‘the head of Leviathan, his forehead was divided into streaks of green and purple like those on a tyger’s forehead…advancing towards us with all the fury of a spiritual existence’.

But ever since the early Basque fishermen travelled as far as the north-east coast of America to hunt whales, humans also saw these animals as a source of wealth.  When the Pilgrim Fathers sailed into Provincetown harbour in 1620, they saw  hundreds of whales ‘playing hard by us, of which in that place, if we had instruments and means to take them, we might have made a rich return’.  By the early 1800s, Provincetown was a profitable whaling port with a fleet of 70 ships, almost rivalling New Bedford – then the richest city in America, wealthy on whale oil – in what was, in effect, a New England version of a Texan oil boom.

Feeding humpback and shearwater, Stellwagen Bank, October 2009

Initially the hunt concentrated on coastal right whales and Greenland or common whale (bowheads) that supplied not only oil from their blubber, but huge pieces of baleen or whalebone that, in the days before plastic, were used for everyday objects from corset stays to carriage suspension, umbrellas and even Venetian blinds.  But the development of onboard tryworks – largely an American innovation – enabled ships to go further afield in the hunt for the sperm whale, whose pugnacious head contained spermaceti oil – the purest known to man, and prized for its light-creating and lubricating properties.  Whale oil, rather than mineral oil, lit and lubricated the Industrial Revolution.  The result for the whale was disaster.

Yet the 19th century culls paled in comparison with those of the 20^th century.  With the invention of steam ships and grenade harpoons, even the faster, rorqual whales – such as the blue and fin whales, the largest animals ever to live on Earth – came within range.  By now, America had turned to another oil in the fuelling of its empire, leaving British, Norwegian, and Russian factory ships to harvest this unsustainable resource.  By the 1960s, they were taking more whales in one year than the American whalers had taken in a century and a half of whaling.  The declaration of an international moratorium on whaling in 1986 came only just in time for the blue whale, now reduced to just 15,000 animals.

The sprawling, idiosyncratic work of genius that is Moby-Dick, published in 1851, was extraordinarily prophetic.  Not only did Melville foresee the threat to the whale in chapters such as ‘Does The Whale’s Magnitude Diminish? – Will He Perish?’, but he  also used the whaling industry as an allegory of American imperial power.  Melville configured the crazed Captain Ahab – who goes in pursuit of the eerie White Whale which scythed off his leg, determined to wreak his revenge – as a symbol of obsessive evil.

If you had any doubt about its prescience, just read the last page of the first chapter of Moby-Dick, in which the writer satirises his own narrator’s self-importance in mock newspaper headlines:

‘Grand contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.’

‘WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL’

‘BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN’

Indeed, modern political commentators have compared the ‘war on terror’ to Ahab’s impossible mission.  Only days after the 9/11 attacks, Edward Said wrote, ‘Collective passions are being funnelled into a drive for war that uncannily resembles Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick, rather than what is going on, an imperial power injured at home for the first time…’  Such madness is seen as one which endangers the hunter more than it does his prey.  After all, as anyone who had made it to the end of Melville’s long and digressive novel knows, it is the whale that wins.

Humpback off Cape Cod

Yet this is not a story with a happy ending.  This past December, in Hobart harbour, I watched as Sea Shepherd’s ‘Ady Gil’, eco-warrior Paul Watson’s latest weapon in his war against Japanese whaling readied itself for departure.  The black-painted and futuristic trimaran – a former racing vessel looking more like a watery version of the Batmobile– was about to do battle with a whaling fleet that persistently breaches Australian waters to hunt for whales under the guise of ‘scientific research’.

As I looked on from the quayside, the dreadlocked and tattooed crew – who would have looked more at home at rock festival than on an ocean-going vessel – got ready for the fight.  It occurred to me, even then, that for all its apparent power, their craft would prove flimsy in the face of ocean waves – let alone Japanese resistance.  Yet its crew are undoubtedly committed.  Later, fresh from watching humpback whales off the Tasman Peninsula, I met one shaven-headed former Sea Shepherd acolyte, who spoke with a passionate devotion to Paul Watson – a modern Ahab if there ever was one – that was almost cultish in its intensity.  Last month, his friends met their foe in the freezing waters of the Southern Ocean – and suffered a collision, the rights and wrongs of which are still unclear.

Perhaps what’s needed here is dialogue, not violence in return for violence.  More pragmatic whale conservationists even envisage allowing Japan a local quota for whaling – thereby curtailing their unregulated pelagic fleet – in return for some kind of control.  They reason that if the Japanese are pushed to anger any further, they may abandon all pretence of abiding by the IWC, and thus we (the largely Western nations devoted to anti-whaling) will lose all semblance of control over the issue.

There is political context to remember, too.  Post-war Japan, defeated and starving, was encouraged by Allied powers to convert their decommissioned naval fleet into a whaling fleet, in order to feed their nation.  Given this history, we might start to understand the greater political picture.  It is intriguing to note that American literary critics of Moby-Dick compared the atom bomb tests in the Pacific – itself the arena in which the novel’s dramatic narrative reaches its violent denouement – to the White Whale.  In The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick, published in 1949, Howard P. Vincent considered that Moby Dick was ‘ubiquitous in time and place.  Yesterday he sank the Pequod; within the past two years he has breached five times; from a New Mexico desert, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and most recently, at Bikini atoll.’

Japan also points out that IWC-sanctioned aboriginal whale hunts take place in American waters every year – what is the difference between that and their own claim to cultural precedence in coastal towns?  And since the Japanese were encouraged and even assisted in post-war whaling by the West, it irks to be lectured on the subject.  ‘It’s not because Japanese want to eat whale meat,’ Ayako Okubo told the New York Times in 2007.  ‘It’s because they don’t like being told not to eat it by foreigners.’

Indeed, some contest that it was America’s over-use of pressure on the Japanese – and the moral weight of the environmental lobby – which pushed Japan into its current and apparently intransigent position.  Although America was highly vocal in the anti-whaling campaign of the 1970s (presenting a proposal to a 1972 United Nations conference on the environment to ban all whaling for ten years), things might have been very different if, like Russia, Norway and Japan, the US had maintained a whaling presence in the post-war years.  If its industry had not withered in the late 19th century, there may not have been the political impetus to ban international whaling.  Perhaps this is the true legacy of Moby-Dick.

The Pacific bears an ironical name; for more than two centuries it has been an arena for imperial and economic appropriation, a truly fatal impact for its native peoples and animals.  The Australian government, under Kevin Rudd, is determined to end Japanese whaling in their waters.  But as more than one whale conservationist in Australia confided to me, Sea Shepherd’s antics may, for all their popular support in Australia and America (the Red Hot Chili Peppers are just one of the donors to their cause), be actively shackling the Australian government’s diplomatic efforts to end the slaughter.  One is left to wonder: is Paul Watson’s project a mere act of vanity?  Maybe – but the rebel in me still applauds his Ahabian madness.

Herman Melville was playing on ancient fears and myths of the whale.  My own mission was to discover the truth behind our relationship with the whale.  In the process, I came closer to the object of my pursuit than I had ever thought possible.  The encounter which provides the climax to my book was the single most exciting, terrifying moment of my life.  What I learned that day was that the vexed shared history between human and whale has yet to run its course.  Even now, in an age of science and domination, these creatures remain deeply mysterious animals, beyond our reach.  We still have a lot to learn about each other.

I am pleased to report that we are making good progress on this project. So far I have the results of three completed years and parts of another that have been coming to me as they are completed. That total of entries is 369. It may seem small yet, but I know that many of you are waiting to complete the year assigned to you before sending it to me. That’s fine, too. The important thing is that so many have volunteered and are going full steam, or full sail, ahead.

Captain Antone T. Edwards and some of his crew aboard the Wanderer

In March the history majors taking Maritime History at UMass Dartmouth will join in, thanks to Len Travers, who teaches the course and read the blog about the project. It will be a chance for his students to get their hands on some real history, and in doing so, complete a project that will be of lasting value. I have tentatively assigned three years to them.

Our youngest participant is Tevin Honohan, a student at New Bedford High School, who plugs away at the information during his community service period in his schedule.

The Whaling Museum and I thank you for all you are doing.

Mr. Barthelmess organizes a tri-annual whaling history symposium in Cologne, and for the 2009 event, he wrote about and exhibited whaling memorabilia connected with the fleet of Aristotle Onassis. This piece, entitled “The Arts and Crafts of OLYMPIC CHALLENGER: Souvenirs, company gifts, and whaler folk art from the Onassis whaling venture, 1950 – 1956″ describes the exhibit curated by Mr. Barthelmess.

Tooth by the Onassis flag painter: Dedecke Whaling Collection

Call me upstart.

When I show up every year to read in the annual Moby-Dick Marathon, I’m listed as a “Melville Aficionado,” for lack of anything more concrete, I guess. Not that I mind: it’s a classy moniker. Full disclosure? I’m a transplanted New Bedford-er, living in Manhattan (Melville’s adopted home), also a writer (often as dispirited as himself), bouncing back and forth as often as I can to my home in South Dartmouth. Even as a kid I was a frequent visitor to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, back in the 1950s when it was little more than a local rainy-day stop, and not a spectacular, world-class educational destination. I have made the four-hundred mile journey each year for the honor of having ten minutes to read from America’s greatest novel. This Saturday I’ll be wearing my scrimshaw whistle and my watchman’s cap, as usual, but I won’t be perusing my 22 different editions in my Moby-Dick collection beforehand, making the tortured decision of which one will get the nod to accompany me to the podium.

This year I’m going electronic. Call me nook.

For those of you who have missed the numerous Holiday Must-Have Lists, the Ellen DeGeneres Show, the ads and the publishing industry scuttlebutt, the e-reader – a device that downloads books electronically – has got a hot new contender in the category, and its name is nook. The remainder of my above full disclosure is that I work part-time as a Barnes & Noble bookseller – or, for the last couple of months, primarily, a nookseller. And I am a true believer.

I’ve spent more than three decades around the publishing industry. I’ve authored nearly twenty volumes myself. One way or another, I’ve spent my life making books. I thought that I would be the last holdout, e-readerwise. But I’m tired of lugging three tomes on the bus to New Bedford. I don’t want to carry a bigger backpack on the subway. I can’t afford to check in an extra bag at the airport. So I gave nook a try. And I love it.

Of course, not everyone is onboard. Scores of people have said to me, with much disdain, “Not me. I love my books.” Listen, everybody in a bookstore loves their books. The customers, the booksellers, and — I’m sure not just in my store — also the security guards and the maintenance crew. Moby-Dick is free to download on nook. So are Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and hundreds of thousands of other books in the public domain. Does it mean that I won’t cuddle up in front of a fire or hop into bed with a hardcover book? Of course not. A book is a book is a book, no matter how you hold it.

You’ll ask: “What Would Melville Do?” Are you kidding? Herman Melville, one of the greatest writers in our nation’s history, died a clerk, underappreciated, underread, underpaid. Any author will tell you that money is nice (and the majority of us don’t make a lot), but knowing that someone, somewhere, right now is out there reading your book? Oh, now that’s the stuff dreams are made of. I think Melville would approve of any “delivery system” that puts a book in a reader’s hands. Imagine if he could have enjoyed, in his lifetime, the place Moby-Dick has earned in America’s literary firmament. It’s all about availability. It’s nook, it’s Random House’s gorgeous Rockwell Kent edition, it’s my original $0.95 Collier edition (Skidmore, junior year), it’s Sterling Publishing’s beautiful pop-up version, it’s every permutation of the white whale out there. Melville would say, I’m sure, “As long as it’s read.”

Every time someone walks into Dartmouth’s wonderful Baker Books or up to the nook counter at my Barnes & Noble on 86^th Street, or any other store in between, and buys a book instead of a video game, we win. Melville wins.

So, I realize I may be blackballed in the chowder line at the Whaling Museum on Saturday because I’m going rogue. But the truth is, the very best way to enjoy and breathe in Moby-Dick – and all its verbal nooks and crannies – is to hear it read aloud, where it takes on a whole new vivid, lovely, rich life of its own. And at the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Moby-Dick Marathon, it comes complete with a real, live Ishmael, the tolling of the ship’s bell, the johnnycakes, the creaky organ in the Seaman’s Bethel, and all the wonderful surprises that the Museum adds every year.

So, I’m setting aside my beautiful Moby-Dick collection this year, and reading from my nook – and you’ll still be listening to Herman Melville. Call me what you want. But I’m just a “Melville Aficionado.”