I am remembering a research trip to the Providence Public Library in Providence, Rhode Island. Built in the style of the Venetian Renaissance, the library is an exquisitely beautiful old building. But when I ascended the Italian marble staircase and opened the door into the special collections room, I thought I had discovered Hogwarts Castle’s Room of Hidden Things from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Whaling
The Makah Museum
A memory. I am remembering a day at the Makah Museum in Neah Bay, on the Makah Indian Reservation in Washington State. The reservation occupies the remote far northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula. The museum is small and intimate, but it holds one of the most important collections of Native American artifacts in the world.
The Town Where Moby-Dick Began
On yet another trip to New Bedford, Mass., I crossed the Fish Island Bridge and explored Fairhaven. It’s a lovely town, with broad, shady avenues and a long row of shipyards and fishing wharves along the Acushnet River. In 1841 Herman Melville sailed from the old seaport on the whale ship Acushnet. He later drew on his experiences during that voyage to write his masterpiece Moby-Dick.
The Whaler & the Harpoon Maker
A memory. I am remembering another trip to New Bedford, Massachusetts. This was the second or third time that I visited the old seaport in order to give lectures on the Underground Railroad and maritime history.
The Ties that Bind– The New Bedford Whaling Museum
A memory. Today I am remembering a trip to New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It’s an extraordinary place: a spectacular collection of exhibits and artifacts dedicated to the history of whaling and New Bedford’s role as the largest whaling port in the U.S. in the 19thcentury.
Dolphins, Hatteras Island & the Arctic Sea
A memory. As part of my research on the William F. Nye Co.’s bottlenose dolphin fishery at Hatteras Island, I visited Keith Rittmaster at the old mobile home trailer that he used as the headquarters for his research on stranded sea mammals.
Brown’s Island 8- Mullet Boat, Seines & Net Spreads
Briant Gillikin leaning on a mullet boat by a dune on the ocean side of Brown’s Island.
On the Hatteras Grounds 2
Sailors on the John R. Manta, Hatteras grounds, 1925.
On the Hatteras Grounds 1
A view forward from the quarterdeck of the 2-masted whaling schooner John R. Manta, out of New Bedford, Mass., on the Hatteras grounds, 1925. The photographer, William H. Tripp, was a guest of the vessel’s master and principal owner, Antone J. Mandly.
Wonderful Labyrinth: A Great Museum’s Hidden Archives
I am at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. I’ve come to look at the field diaries of a Smithsonian biologist named Remington Kellogg. In the 1920s he visited and studied a bottlenose dolphin fishery on Hatteras Island, N.C. that I am researching.
David Cecelski 