The Charles W. Morgan, the “last wooden whaleship in the world,” spent the weekend in Boston, tied up in Charlestown in the shadow of the USS Constitution. The beautifully-restored Morgan set sail from Mystic Seaport this summer for the first time in nearly 100 years on a three-month cruise along the New England coast.
Even before boarding the Morgan this weekend, I was struck by its size. The whaleship has a length of 113 feet, with a 27-foot 6-inch beam. That sounds like a big ship — until you imagine being aboard as she struggled around the notoriously brutal Cape Horn, weathered storms in the wide-open Pacific, or navigated Arctic ice. All of which men did a century ago aboard this 113-foot vessel.
Whaling has a rich history in New England, dating as far back as the early 18th century. I became interested in early New England whaling while researching my new book, At the Point of a Cutlass, since a number of young men who worked the whaleboats from Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket were captured by pirate crews and forced aboard. Many of these whalemen were young Wampanoag men like Thomas Mumford, who I wrote about in a recent post here.
At the Point of a Cutlass was released in June 2014 and is on sale now.
