One Lap

Date: 10/27/2013

Day: 31

Location: Princeton, NJ 

Miles Today: 285

Total Miles:  6877

The New Bedford Whaling Museum, Martian Machines, A Pisgah view, Seen on the Road

 The New Bedford Whaling Museum

Anyone taking the time to read this blog has visited many small, single focus museums.  They are usually somewhat sad institutions, beating a drum to which few choose to listen.  The New Bedford Whaling Museum is certainly not that museum.  It is obviously well endowed, the collections are well lit and well signed.  Two hours is not nearly long enough.  It and the town of New Bedford are well worth another  visit.

Moby Dick or The Whale, first edition, 1851.

 

The reason the Colonel is at all interested in this subject.

 

 

There are several whale boats in the museum.  Two are colorful.  They are examples of boats made by sailors form the Azores.  Both Melville and this museum describe whaling as a color blind institution with most crews predominately non-white.

 

A right whale skeleton.

Lower jaw of a sperm whale.

 This whale would have been about 65' long.

 

 

 

 

Insouciant Homo Sapiens

 

This is the fully articulated skeleton of a sperm whale that washed up on Nantucket in 2002.  It was 48 feet long and weighed about 90,000 pounds.

A more utilitarian whale boat.

Tool of the trade.

 

 

 

 

Try Pots!!  Real ones.

 

Sperm whale oil

 

It is amazing that this stuff still exists.  The oil in the upper left corner, spermaceti oil, is "sweet and handsome."  It has a straw color, is nearly clear and has a distinctive pleasant odor.  The good oil, blubber oil, has those qualities, but less so.  The poor quality oil, "brown and stinking," was burnt during trying or stored with unprocessed blood or flesh.  Nasty.

The Colonel now knows what spermaceti oil smells like!

Half scale model of the whaling ship Lagoda.

This is described as the biggest model ship in the world.  It was built in place when the Museum building was constructed in 1916.  At that time there were men still alive who knew how to build and, more importantly, rig the sails on a whaling vessel.  This model of the bark Lagoda is 59' long with a 50' main mast.

 

 

  

It was possible to have bad press in a pre-Facebook world.

The museum has (of course) an excellent ship model collection.

Also expected and also really excellent, the scrimshaw display.

 

 

The Colonel will award a prize to the first person who identifies what these odd devices are used for.

Swifts

 

 Swifts were used to wind yarn, that is to turn a skein of yarn into a ball of yarn.  The skein was wrapped around the drum shaped part, the ball formed at the top.  The Colonel would never have guessed what this gadget was used for; perhaps drying pasta?

 

Decorated whalebone stays for corsets.

 

 

Elegant lower jaw of a sperm whale

 This whale would have been about 30' long

 

 

The Colonel knows someone who encountered a whale while swimming in the ocean.  A grey whale, not a sperm whale, but still...

 

 

 Martian Machines in New Jersey!

 

 

 They appear to be feeding!

A Pisgah view of New York City

This is as close as the Colonel allowed himself to get to the big city.  View from the Geo. Washington bridge.

Seen on the Road

America wants to know.

 

The Colonel read this as Finnegans Lake and spent half an hour looking for same.  Dyslexia has its costs.  Finnegans Lake would have been really cool.  Finnegans Lane is merely amusing.


Tomorrow: Finally, Grover's Mill New Jersey, then on to the seaboard and south, always south

Wellington Boot, Col.