A reception to celebrate the release of the book will take place at the New Bedford Whaling Museum on Thursday, January 14th at 6:30 PM in conjunction with New Bedford’s monthly celebration of art, history, and architecture – AHA . The reception is free and open to the public. Photographer Mark Starr and Co-editors Kirsten Bendiksen and Laura Orleans will be on hand to talk about creating the book which will be available for purchase.

This 80-page book is based on interviews conducted over a five year period with 43 individuals from the New Bedford/Fairhaven fishing community. Their voices provide a rare first hand accounting of life and work in the port.

Those interviewed include retired and active fishermen, lumpers, auctioneers, shoreside business owners, fisheries scientists, a tug boat captain, fishing family members and others. Oral history excerpts are accompanied by black and white portraits taken by photographer Markham Starr.

Mattapoisett watercolorist Mike Mazer is currently exhibiting 33 of his watercolors of the New Bedford Harbor working waterfront in an exhibit entitled, “Mike Mazer: Waterfront Works”. Installed in the third floor San Francisco Room and the adjacent gallery of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, these images depict a variety of daily scenes of the working harbor. The third floor gallery provides the entrance to the NBWM’s observation deck, where one can observe many of the sites depicted in Mazer’s work, in both the New Bedford and Fairhaven sides of the harbor. Mazer is a master of light and color, bringing lyricism and romance to the gritty marine enterprises.

The exhibit is curated by David B. Boyce, Curatorial Consultant to the New Bedford Art Museum, who also curated a larger exhibit of Mazer’s work in 2006 at NBAM, “Mike Mazer Paints New Bedford & Other Scenes of the South Coast.” Mazer’s work is well known locally and has won numerous awards across the nation. This exhibit will remain open through May 31st,  2010.

An exhibit catalog is available for purchase in the Museum Store.

Artist Statement

No one specific reason or incident would adequately explain my excitement and invariable attraction to paint along New Bedford’s waterfront. The more I think about why this is, the more I realize that it is multifaceted. I do know that as I approach the site, my emotional juices start to flow in anticipation that there will be another scene waiting to be painted. I need this passion for my work.

I also know that from New Bedford’s past prominence during the whaling era to presently being our country’s financially most successful commercial fishing fleet and industry, that I have a strong urge to capture and portray today whatcould become tomorrow’s history.

A frequent theme in my waterfront paintings is the inclusion of the workers who maintain and repair the fleet. Although it is a different type of work, somehow, I feel a common bond between the workers and myself. Their work brings back memories of my past when I was a gravedigger maintaining a cemetery, a construction laborer building houses, an arborist and tree climber tending to the Boston Commons and surrounding area, and more recently as a physician. I interpret their hard work as well as the benefit and safety given to the crews and owners as not being too dissimilar to my past or present activities. Interestingly, when the workers and I have the chance to talk, not only do they tell you about their family and goals, a number of them also paint as artists and are awaiting better times to do more. I obviously feel comfortable being there.

Thus, it is not one aspect, but rather the waterfront in its entirety that intrigues me. The panoply of subject matter offers a wealth of material helping to bring about the essence of my maritime work, which is the creation of a compelling design. I find a fascination with all the abstract geometric man-made shapes found there that can be selectively rearranged into a realistic composition and painting.

The picture below shows a box of tools that belonged to an un-named ship caulker who doubtlessly worked in a crew of ship caulkers on the New Bedford waterfront, sometime in the late 19^th or early 20^th century.  As with most tool boxes, we can tell something of the man who owned this set of tools, and what he did for a living.

In the days of sail and Yankee whaling, ship caulkers were important shipyard workers, finishing the process of making new hulls and decks tight and leak-free; and restoring older hulls to the same the same degree of fitness prior to every extended whaling voyage.  Their job was one that required skill, but a fairly simple arsenal of tools.  These included two or three types of caulking mallets, a group of caulking “chisels” or “irons” that were really tampers, and a small array of hooks or narrow scrapers to clean the seams between the hull or deck planks prior to caulking.  The actual caulking material could be comprised of cotton yarn or string, and most importantly, oakum, which was usually the yarn from which manila or hemp cordage was made and tarred with pitch.

2001.100.3143: Leather seat with wood sides and bottom. Contains one caulking mallet, five caulking irons, one seam raker made from a race knife, one instrument (seam raker), and one spare mallet handle.

This next photograph shows men at work caulking and rigging the Bark Alice Knowles, getting her ready for an extended whaling voyage.

Caulkers at side of Bark Alice Knowles

The first five men from the left of the picture are caulkers working on planks above the waterline on the bark.  The two men to the right appear to be riggers who are working at anchoring what are known as “chain plates”.  Chain plates are iron rods doubled back on each other that are fastened to multiple port and starboard stays that support the various masts on the vessel.  These riggers are working on the chain plates that will anchor the port stays supporting the main mast.  There is a lot going on in this picture, but first, let’s go back to that caulker’s tool box.

An obvious feature of this tool box is that it is fashioned as a seat, having a contoured leather top, with an opening that allows the tools to be accessed or stored as they are needed.  The opening also serves as a handle, so the caulker could easily carry the box from location to location on the job.  Ostensibly, the caulker could use his tool box as a seat while eating his lunch—but more importantly, he would use it when working on the bottom of a hull that had been hauled out of water, and was too close to the ground to allow him to stand comfortably (sometimes caulkers fixed “rocker bottoms” to their seat boxes, allowing them to rock backward when working overhead).  This feature suggests that the owner of this box likely worked on smaller vessels than the large whalers.  The larger vessels were generally careened or “hove down” while afloat at the wharves so that their bottoms could be exposed for maintenance work.  The caulkers then worked from rafts alongside the vessels, and did not need to work from under the bottom.

A second feature of this box is that the tools arrayed in front of it, are in nice condition.  The owner took good care of them.  Many caulking tools, exposed as they are to salt water and the elements while working outside, are often rusted, pitted, with the ends of the irons peened from hard use.  These are not in that condition, because their owner cleaned and oiled them regularly.  The tools include five “caulking irons” of only two types.  Four of these (the pointed ones) are known as “clearing” or “reefing” irons, though there is little uniformity in the names of caulking irons, as regional and local names can dominate.  For instance, these reefing irons are also known as “jerry” or “cape” irons.  Whatever they may be called, they are seldom used as tampers to pound oakum into a seam, but rather are pounded with a mallet along the seam; with the point end forward, in order to clear the old caulking out of a seam before recaulking it.  The fifth caulking iron is known as a “double crease straight iron.”  It is the iron with the broad symmetrical foot.  This is a principal caulking iron—one that is used a lot.  “Double crease” means that the blunt edge of the iron is double the thickness of a “single crease” iron, and it usually is cupped in cross section.  This iron would be used on wider seams, or at the wide top of the seam at the surface.

Another tool in this group, called a reefing hook or raker, also is used to clean out a seam, removing the loosened old caulking, freed up by the reefing iron.  This particular raker is really a different tool, called a “race” knife.  A race knife is a special knife that cuts a groove or “race” in a plank—either to delineate the waterline on a hull, or more usually to cut identifying marks in planks or barrel staves, so their relationship to their neighbors can be told when the hull or a barrel is assembled..  At any rate, a race knife makes a nice raker for a caulker.  Its presence here tells us that the owner of this kit of tools was not only fastidious about their condition, but he was also frugal, using a tool cast off from a former purpose, and converting it to his particular use.

The final tool of interest in this kit is a standard caulking mallet (and a spare handle for that mallet).  Caulking mallets are quite specialized hammers.  The head is made of wood, and usually is from 10 to 16 inches long, strengthened by iron bands that gird the head on either side of the eye for the handle, and again, near the ends or “faces” of the head.  The wood used for caulking mallets has to be extremely hard and durable.  The fanciest ones may be made of rosewood or ebony, but the usual working caulking mallets use live oak, or especially, mesquite, as the wood of choice.  A particular feature, especially of many American caulking mallets, is a slot with blind ends, cut vertically through the head, between the iron bands on each side of the handle.  These slots, usually about 1/8 inch wide, can be 3 or 4 inches long, and sometimes are “stopped” at each end, with slightly larger holes bored by a drill or brace.  All of these features can be seen in the mallet belonging to the caulking kit.

The array of caulking irons in this kit, with the majority being jerry irons, suggests that this caulker probably worked in a team of from 5 to 30 men, and his particular specialty was clearing the old caulking from a seam, and cleaning it out (with the seam rakers), so that the caulkers working behind him could concentrate on pounding new oakum into the cleaned seams.  Those workers would have used a greater variety of caulking irons, including single and double crease straight irons, “bent” irons for working on seams at some reach away, narrow “spike” and “trunnel” irons for caulking around the spike and trunnels that fastened the planks to the ship’s frame.  Also, instead of using a cast-off race knife to serve as a seam raker, specialized irons called “reefing hooks” were used for this purpose.

Pictures of tool boxes and the workers that use them do have stories to tell!