Whale Off!: The Story of American Shore Whaling [Revised Edition]
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Everett J. Edwards
EVERETT JOSHUA EDWARDS (August 10, 1871 - March 17, 1950) was a shore whaler of East Hampton, Long Island. He was born and raised in Amagansett, L.I., which his ancestors helped settle in the 1680’s. He married Florence W. Huntting in 1892 and the couple had a daughter, Jeannette (born 1893) and son, Clifford (born 1895). Everett J. Edwards died in East Hampton in 1950, aged 78. JEANNETTE EDWARDS RATTRAY (July 28, 1893 - May 21, 1974) was a local newspaper publisher and historian of East Hampton, Long Island. She was the daughter of shore whaler Everett J. Edwards and his wife Florence W. Huntting. After initially teaching kindergarten in her hometown of East Hampton, she decided to become a newspaperwoman and took a correspondence course. In 1925 she married Arnold Rattray and began writing regularly for the local newspaper, The East Hampton Star. She eventually bought the paper with her husband in 1935 and inherited it following his death in 1954. One of their three children, son Everett, became editor of The Star and Jeannette contributed a weekly column titled ‘Looking Them Over’ for more than 50 years: a mélange of conversationally written bits about East Hampton residents, people who once lived here, village lore, personal reminiscences, accounts of her travels, opinions on various matters and notes on the numerous social parties she attended. She was the author of several books on East Hampton history, including ‘Up and Down Main Street,’ about the village’s stately homes; ‘Ship Ashore!’ about marine wrecks off Montauk; and the ‘Perils of the Port of New York,’ which describes shipwrecks in and near the city since 1614. Jeannette died on May 21, 1974 in East Hampton, aged 80.
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Whale Off! - Everett J. Edwards
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Text originally published in 1956 under the same title.
© Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
WHALE OFF!
THE STORY OF AMERICAN SHORE WHALING
BY
EVERETT J. EDWARDS
AND
JEANNETTE EDWARDS RATTRAY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
INTRODUCTION 5
FOREWORD 6
PART I—CAP’N JOSH: 1830-1915 told by EVERETT J. EDWARDS 10
CHAPTER I—CAP’N JOSH 10
CHAPTER II—FATHER’S DEEP-SEA DAYS 12
CHAPTER III—WHALERS’ RETURN 16
CHAPTER IV—FATHER’S WEDDING TRIP WHALES 18
CHAPTER V—BORN AND BRED 20
CHAPTER VI—MY FIRST WHALE MONEY 23
CHAPTER VII—CAP’N JOSH’S CREW 24
CHAPTER VIII—WILD STRAWBERRIES 29
CHAPTER IX—THE WEFT WENT OUT 30
CHAPTER X—PROPER WHALING TOOLS 32
CHAPTER XI—A LOUSY WHALE AND A STOVE BOAT 36
CHAPTER XII—THE WEST-ENDERS GO WHALING 38
CHAPTER XIII—UNCLE GABE’S ACCIDENT 40
CHAPTER XIV—UNCLE GABE UP AND AT ‘EM 43
CHAPTER XV—WAKING A WHALE 43
CHAPTER XVI—THE SEALSKIN CAP 44
CHAPTER XVII—GREAT DOINGS AT THE TRYWORKS 46
CHAPTER XVIII—THE NEW-FANGLED DARTING GUN 50
CHAPTER XIX—DAVE’S INITIATION 51
CHAPTER XX—WHALE WEATHER 53
CHAPTER XXI—TOWNERS 54
CHAPTER XXII—GOING TO A SET 56
CHAPTER XXIII—THE SLEIGHRIDE 56
CHAPTER XXIV—CAP’NS
59
CHAPTER XXV—FATHER’S LAST CAPTURE AND ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS’ FIRST JOB 63
CHAPTER XXVI—THE SURF OFF AMAGANSETT 68
CHAPTER XXVII—BREACHING 71
CHAPTER XXVIII—WAINSCOTT DUMPLINGS 73
CHAPTER XXIX—A SMASH-UP 75
CHAPTER XXX—A PLEASURE-TRIP, 1918 76
CHAPTER XXXI—SITTING IN THE SUN 79
PART II—EARLIER NEW YORK ADVENTURERS UPON YE WHALE DESIGNE
by JEANNETTE RATTRAY 84
CHAPTER I—JAMES LOPER, A PIONEER AMERICAN WHALEMAN, 1672 84
CHAPTER II—WHALING OFF THE EMPIRE STATE 88
CHAPTER III—INDIAN WHALERS 91
CHAPTER IV—THE TOWN MEETING REGULATES WHALING 95
CHAPTER V—ROYAL FISH 97
CHAPTER VI—SAMUEL MULFORD, POLITICAL REFORMER, 1645-1725 101
CHAPTER VII—WOMEN IN WHALING 105
CHAPTER VIII—CASUALTIES 107
CHAPTER IX—WHALING DURING AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION 109
CHAPTER X—DEVELOPMENT OF LONG ISLAND DEEP-SEA WHALING 114
CHAPTER XI—AMERICAN WHALING’S HEYDAY 115
NAUTICAL AND LOCAL TERMS USED 121
BOOKS CONSULTED 125
MANUSCRIPTS CONSULTED 127
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 129
INTRODUCTION
IT was in the winter of 1907 that I had my first introduction to a whale in the flesh and at the same time to Captain Josh Edwards, The American Museum of Natural History received word that a right whale had been killed off the Long Island coast at Amagansett. With James L. Clark, I was sent to obtain the skeleton and baleen for the Museum. I was a boy, just one year out of college, and it was my first expedition.
I was thrilled to the toes and would not have changed places with any man on earth.
Cap’n Josh
increased that thrill, if it were possible. I can see him today, as clearly as if it had happened an hour ago, sitting in an easy chair in his comfortable house in the fishing village. A magnificent man he was with snow-white hair and beard, speaking in a soft, pleasing voice. Then he was nearly eighty, but his great frame was unbowed by the weight of years. He remained as one of the last survivors of that splendid group of men who bore the American flag to the uttermost parts of the seven seas. Simple honesty, courage and inflexible determination showed in his face and bearing. He was a living page in a glorious chapter of American history.
The impression that he made upon me then, time can never dim. Since that day, I have met many of the great men of the world and among them I always think of Cap’n Josh.
It was fortunate for me that some kind fate directed that big right whale and her calf near shore at Amagansett. It was the largest of scientific record for the species and it laid the foundations of my own interest in the study of whales which, during the following eight years, carried me to many seas of the world. Is it surprising then that I have a real affection for the Amagansett whale and the men who killed it?
This brief introduction to Whale Off!
is being written while I am on the way to China from New York. I have not read the manuscript of the book but I know something of its contents. The vivid descriptions of whale hunts which I listened to from Cap’n Josh himself assure its readers of some delightful hours. Moreover, it tells of an important phase of American history—shore whaling—which has been neglected by other writers. The authors of the book have made a real contribution and who could be better fitted to write the story of American shore whaling than the son and granddaughter of Captain Joshua Edwards? For them it has been a labor of love and for me a real opportunity to express my appreciation of their efforts.
ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS
FOREWORD
THE story of Cap’n Josh and of his forefathers, earlier adventurers upon ye whale designe,
pictures an era in American history which, although actually just past, seems as remote as the adventures of Daniel Boone or of Christopher Columbus. Men and women were made of tougher stuff in those days. Cap’n Josh, unique because he outlasted his period, must have been in character and manner of living typical of the New England and Long Island men who officered American whaleships in the glorious days when it was said: No sea, but what is vexed with their fisheries—no climate that is not witness of their toils.
The subject of this book is American shore-whaling in general, and the small-boat whaling carried on off the eastern end of Long Island from 1640 to 1918, in particular—the first and last whaling of this sort done anywhere in America. Nothing, above a page or two in whaling histories, has ever been published on this subject, which is really an epic in itself, quite apart from the round-the-world whaling about which so many volumes have been written.
Two points of interest to New York State history are brought out: one, that a New York Colony man was invited to Nantucket to teach the Nantucketers how to whale—in 1672, before New England knew anything about the business; another, that taxation without representation
was a battle cry of Long Island people one hundred years before the Boston Tea Party, and that a Long Island whaleman, Samuel Mulford of East Hampton, went to court in London to plead against an unjust tax on whale oil.
Every name and every statement made in the book was a true one—as far as we knew. The first part is reminiscence—memories of shore-whaling’s last days as told by my father, Captain E. J. Edwards, in his own seafaring language; the latter part is history, telling how the earliest American ancestors of Cap’n Josh, my grandfather, and his neighbors chased whales off the same Long Island beach in the 1600’s.
My father assisted in fifteen whaling expeditions off the beach here. His father, Cap’n Josh, was a retired round-Cape-Horn whaleman who led the local expeditions for nearly fifty years up to his death in 1915. Cap’n Josh’s last large whale has been described in two books by Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews, who assembled that right whale skeleton for the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Father died in 1950. Our book, then long out of print, had by that time become a collectors’ item bringing fancy prices. He would have been so pleased, as I am, that this story will become available once more.
We had no idea of writing a book, when it began. Whaling, in my childhood, was no longer lucrative but just a dangerous form of sport in which my father indulged occasionally and which worried my mother. Father never talked about it. He had no time to sit around reminiscing. One day in the summer of 1931 he was wanted in a hurry. I think some motorist had knocked over a Main Street hydrant (he was president of the local water company among other things) and Mother couldn’t locate him. I drove over to Amagansett on the chance of finding him. There he was—with two ladies who had wanted to look at some family property, sitting in a car at the site of the old whale try-works on Bluff Road. "Oh, go away—don’t stop him! they begged. Later I asked what in the world they were talking about.
Oh, nothing but whaling. I showed them where we used to try out whale and that reminded me of the time we got stove in, when I was fifteen." That was back in the spring of 1887.
That began it. Paper and pencil in hand I persuaded him to go on, so his grandchildren would hear the stories I had never heard until then. He dictated, I read back to him, and if I put in one word that was mine and not his, it had to come out.
We had fun writing it. And Father had fun after the book came out. He had rescued Grandfather’s old whaleboat from a field where it was gradually falling apart, calked it up, assembled its gear, and built a tight new barn to house it. On February 17, 1938, the whaleboat made a trip to New York and was hauled up the side of the then Hotel Pennsylvania (now Statler) to the ballroom for a dinner of the Camp Fire Club of America. On the program that night, Babe Ruth and Father were among the speakers. All four Edwards brothers were there—Captain Bert, E. J. (Father), Dr. Dave and Captain Sam. Father, standing in the stern of the boat as boat-header, and Uncle Sam, in the bow as boatsteerer, gave an accurate demonstration of hand-harpooning. They showed just what happened when the thrilling cry of "Whale Off!" sounded through the village streets.
In 1933, when Suffolk County celebrated its 250th Anniversary, East Hampton had a parade and the old whaleboat, manned with experienced whalemen, took part. They were out again in 1936 for the Long Island Tercentenary celebration. The last public appearance of the whaleboat and crew was in 1948, in a pageant celebrating the 300th anniversary of East Hampton’s settlement. Today, a crew of six men with offshore whaling experience could not be assembled. They are all gone, or no longer physically able. Only the old whaleboat remains—fully rigged and ready to set sail.
In 1939, a small model of the Amagansett whaleboat, made to scale and fully equipped, was lent by Father to the Long Island exhibit at the New York World’s Fair.
A story about Father and the eastern Long Island whaling is now included in an English textbook used in colleges, so an instructor at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis has written me. It is Berton Roueche’s Profile which appeared in the New Yorker on September 24, 1949. It is captioned Shore Whaler.
The story of Samuel Mulford (1644-1735), member of New York Colony’s first Assembly—who dared to go over the head of the Colonial Governor straight to London to plead for justice in the matter of a tax on whale oil and earned the nickname of Fishhook
Mulford because he sewed fishhooks in his pockets to ward off pickpockets—was dramatized in a broadcast titled Whale Off!
on March 6, 1951, with Louis Calhern as Mulford, on Du Pont’s Cavalcade of America
program, with due credit to this book. This program was rebroadcast later to American troops overseas, and an Amagansett boy in a dreary Korean dugout heard it. He almost fainted with homesickness.
It always happens when any bit of history is published that hitherto hidden information immediately comes to light. Also over the years some conditions have changed. This new edition of "Whale Off!" holds to the original text; but some of the footnotes now need a little explanation and so do a few points in the text itself.
For instance, the veteran whaleship Charles W. Morgan (see page 4) was then at Round Hills, Massachusetts; it is now in the marine museum at Mystic, Connecticut. On page 5, mention is made of the 1907 Amagansett right whale skeleton that New York boys and girls will go to see
at the American Museum of Natural History. In December 1934 the skeleton was finally uncrated and put on view in the great Hall of Ocean Life at the Museum. A few days later Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews, then Vice-Director of the Museum, became its Director.
Father took his grandchildren to see the Amagansett whale in the Museum. Once, with a small boy on each side, he stood showing them just where his father in the Amagansett whaleboat had planted the harpoon, and just how he had come up on the other side in the East Hampton boat and darted the finishing lance, when a New York schoolteacher with a class edged nearer and nearer until before he knew it Father had a class in whaling.
This book was written in Prohibition times when Rum Row lay off eastern Long Island. That accounts for the statement on page 33 that many Long Island men were engaged in work along the beach after dark, and they were not after fish or whales.
There is an unintentional misstatement on page 109. Cap’n Nat Dominy may not have been a very good whaleman, or he may have been unduly cautious, and certainly he and Cap’n Josh did not see eye to eye on most matters, but he really did make one deep-sea voyage, as I discovered in going over Dominy family journals a few years ago. That voyage was in 1844-1848, long before Father’s time. I also found in the Dominy diaries that an East Hampton crew actually did kill a whale in the 1860’s. There is a spot between the ocean and Hook Pond that is to this day called Pots ‘n Kittles
because it was there that the East Hampton men tried out whale blubber.
The East Hampton Riding Club is mentioned on page 275. That has now gone out of existence and the knitting chair with its whale-oil lamp has vanished.
Since Father dictated his offshore whaling memories to me and I added the early history of small-boat whaling, I have assembled oceans of notes, enough to fill another book on offshore whaling. But the voice of experience is silenced. I could never speak with the authority that was my father’s.
"Whale Off!" The Story of American Shore Whaling describes not only the thrills of the whale chase, but the everyday work and play of these shore-whalemen who were farmers and fishermen in the intervals between whales. They led a simple, rugged sort of life known no longer in their neighborhood—the summer-resort Hamptons, which the great city is slowly but surely overflowing with its excess population like lava from a volcano.
JEANNETTE EDWARDS RATTRAY
East Hampton, Long Island, New York June, 1956
PART I—CAP’N JOSH: 1830-1915 told by EVERETT J. EDWARDS
CHAPTER I—CAP’N JOSH
I FIRST saw New York at the age of fourteen. Father took me along when he went to call on commission merchants on Front Street, who bought and sold whalebone and whale oil. Father carried samples of bone from two whales that he had killed off Amagansett, Long Island; he took a long, a medium and a short slab of bone out of each whale’s mouth, lashed up the pieces in a snug bundle with hay-yarn. In his pockets were four-ounce bottles of oil from each whale. We must have looked funny going along the city streets: I an overgrown boy in homemade country clothes; Father with his long hair and long beard—they were snow-white even then—carrying his bundle of hairy black whalebone taller than himself. People looked.
We stayed at the United States Hotel at the corner of Fulton and Front Streets, and had our meals at Sweet’s Restaurant that is still running on lower Fulton Street, near the fish markets.
Father went the rounds of the commission merchants to get the best price