The Charles W. Morgan: The World's Last Wooden Whaleship by Andrew W. German
by Andrew W. German 19 Jul 20:52 BST
The Charles W. Morgan stands aback while retrieving a whaleboat © Dennis A. Murphy (Mystic Seaport Museum, D2014-07-1064)
As America's oldest merchant ship still afloat and the only wooden survivor of the once vital whaling industry, the Charles W. Morgan has a complex story to tell.
Elaborating on earlier volumes on the ship's history at Mystic Seaport Museum, this new book offers an expanded account, chronicling the ship's construction and launch in 1841 through its Thirty-Eighth Voyage in 2014—the first time the Morgan had been sailed in more than ninety years—and its continuing role today as an historic icon and the Museum's flagship vessel. Chapters paint a picture of how whaling developed in Europe and the ways New England colonists adopted it as a profitable venture, and then, through the ship's own story, proceed to sketch the evolution of America's relationship with nature—and the whale, specifically—and with the many peoples of the world who were encountered by, or served aboard, a whaleship.
This is the story of a National Historic Landmark—one that reflects our changing relationship with the natural world and with the diverse populations of the globe through two centuries of American history.
About the author:
Andrew W. German is former director of Mystic Seaport Museum's Publications Department and coauthor of multiple Mystic/whaling-related books, including The Charles W. Morgan: A Picture History of an American Icon, Down on T Wharf: The Boston Fisheries as Seen Through the Photographs of Henry D. Fisher, and Flagships of Mystic Seaport. He lives in Mystic, Connecticut.
Mystic Seaport Museum is the nation's leading maritime museum. Founded in 1929 to gather and preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of America's seafaring past, the Museum has grown to become a national center for research and education with the mission to "inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience."
Mary K. Bercaw Edwards is Professor of English and Director of Maritime Studies, University of Connecticut.
Excerpt
Building a Ship, 1840-1841
In the fall of 1840, America was still in the middle of an economic depression resulting from the Panic of 1837. The United States of America was just a fraction of what it would become, with a population a bit over seventeen million.
With twenty-six states in the Union, Arkansas and Missouri were on the edge of the western frontier. Florida was a territory, Texas was an independent republic, and California was a state of Mexico. William Henry Harrison was about to defeat Martin Van Buren for the presidency. Cotton was the nation's most important commodity, produced in the slavery-based agricultural economy of the Southern states. Despite the weak economy, in 1839 the price of sperm-whale oil reached its highest point since the War of 1812, and the demand for "whalebone" (baleen) had increased five hundred percent since 1834. New Bedford already had about 150 ships, thirty-nine barks, and eight brigs in its whaling fleet, but the leading whaling agents like Charles W. Morgan were eager to expand their business.
The Hillman Brothers had opened their shipyard at the foot of Maxfield Street, above the bridge to Fairhaven, in 1826. Specializing in whaling vessels, they completed about one a year. By 1852 they would construct seventeen. It is likely that Morgan and the Hillmans discussed the dimensions and characteristics of the vessel Morgan desired. He wanted a fast, stable vessel with a large capacity for whale oil, so the hull would have a relatively flat bottom and "hard turn of the bilge." While broad above the waterline for buoyancy, the bow was narrow below and tapered smoothly back as the hull widened. Toward the stern, a long "run" narrowed the hull smoothly back to the rudder, making a hull that would move well through the water while carrying a lot of cargo. The hull below the waterline would be covered with thin copper sheets, an expensive addition intended to protect the hull from boring worms and marine growths. To protect the vessel from rot, salt would be packed into the spaces between frame timbers. With a length on deck of 105 feet and a beam (width) of 27 feet, the vessel would be typical in size for a whaleship.
To design the vessel for construction, the Hillmans likely carved a precise half model from which all of the dimensions would be expanded to produce full-scale patterns on the mold loft floor of the shipyard. These patterns or molds were then used to shape the vessel's structural timbers, or frames (ribs).
The Hillmans probably laid the keel of Morgan's new vessel on the sloping ways of their yard at the end of December 1840. After the oak keel was laid, the oak frames were set upon it and an interior keel, or keelson, was placed atop the bottom frame sections to sandwich them for strength. In this traditional form of construction, the frame sections overlapped each other, making a nearly solid skeleton. As the frames rose, the plankers shaped durable longleaf yellow pine from the South into bottom planks 3.75 inches thick and top planks 2.75 inches thick. The interior planking, or ceiling, added further strength to the hull. The quality of the ship was represented by Morgan's choice of expensive copper fastenings supplied by Anthony Richmond for the planks—two in each frame for a total cost of $3,240.98. Copper fastenings were not subject to the corrosion that would occur from using iron fastenings. Strong locust trunnels (tree nails) were also used as plank fastenings. To attach and support the beams for the vessel's two decks, right-angle knees cut from the root-trunk connection of the hackmatack (larch) tree were fastened at both sides and below the ends of each beam.
The workforce included the shipyard's core of ship carpenters skilled in the use of the adze and the broadax, some day laborers, and specialized tradesmen like joiners (finish carpenters), caulkers (who sealed all the seams between planks), sparmakers, and riggers, who worked by the job at various shipyards. At least thirty-one men contributed work as the vessel took shape. Samuel Damman, an experienced shipwright, put in 177.25 days at a high daily rate of as much as $2.25 a day (when $2.00 a day [about $70.00 in 2023] was a skilled man's pay). Hervey Cables worked 173.5 days, for which he received $240, paid once or twice a month depending on his work. Mendall Ellis earned $258.33 for 144.5 days, Restcome Case worked 81.25 days for $155, and Patrick Boyles put in 287.25 days and took
$5.50 of his $224 in the form of a barrel of flour. Black laborer James Scott worked for 133.75 days on the ship for $1.25 a day.
While their pay was standard in the field, the shipwrights had grievances. In April 1841, the port's shipwrights went on strike to further their demand for a ten-hour workday, an aim of the nation's new trade-union movement, at a time when the workday lasted from sunup to sundown, six days a week. Charles Morgan led the opposition to a shortened workday, but, after two weeks of negotiating, the two sides settled on a 10.5-hour day, and the men went back to work. With this delay, it took about seven months to build the vessel. In the end, Morgan spent $6,015.71 for labor on his ship, in addition to another $2,001.85 to the Hillman brothers for their labor and management, use of their yard, and some of the ship's timber.
In addition, caulkers James Drew, Isaiah Potter, Isaac Benjamin, George Clark, and George Wadsworth spent thirty-seven to forty-four days each, driving oakum (tarred hemp fibers) into all the seams between the planks and sealing them with pitch for a total of $424.50. Housewrights David Field and Lewis Hathaway did the finish carpentry in the living quarters throughout the ship for
$588.02, and Thomas Tobey and William Maxfield painted the ship for $697.84. Despite the seafaring tradition of representing the vessel's name with a carved figurehead at the bow, Quaker practice called for unostentatious decoration so, like most whaleships, Morgan's ship was fitted with a simple billethead scroll carved by Henry Smith for about $18.00.
Whaleships were commonly owned by shareholders, and so was Morgan's new ship, with its value divided into sixteen shares. Charles W. Morgan took eight shares, or half the value, and acted as managing owner. Morgan's father-in-law, merchant Samuel W. Rodman, took two shares, as did the ship's planned captain, Thomas A. Norton. Morgan's nephew Samuel Griffitts Morgan and Samuel's business partner William G. E. Pope also took two shares, because they had supplied sailcloth, copper, iron, cordage, and oil casks and their hoops through their commission merchants' business. As the ship's builders, the Hillman brothers retained a sole share, and merchant and whale-oil gauger David Brayton took the remaining single share.
On July 21, 1841, Charles Morgan celebrated the vessel's launch in his diary: "This morning at 10 o'clock my elegant new ship was launched beautifully from Messr Hillman yard—and in the presence of about half the town and a great show of ladies. She looks beautifully on the water—she was coppered on the stocks." When it came time to rig the ship as a three-masted square-rigger, William Beetle shaped the masts and yards and set them up for $929.02. Joseph and Thomas Taber carved the many blocks (pulleys) for the lines that operated the sails for $730.66. Rigger Nathaniel Cannon set up both the heavy, tarred standing rigging
that supported the masts and the running rigging that would operate the sails for $390.10. As a full-rigged ship, the vessel carried four square sails—from bottom up, the course, topsail, topgallant, and royal—on each of its three masts. For sail- ing to windward, and to assist in steering, as many as four triangular jibs could be set on the stays (standing rigging) between the bowsprit and foremast, with additional fore-and-aft sails on the stays between the masts. The mizzen (aftermost) mast also carried a fore-and-aft spanker set with a gaff and boom. To increase the area of the square sails for downwind speed, studding sails could be set from light booms outboard of the square sails. Sailmaker Charles Haffords stitched up and roped the edges of the sails by hand for $561.56.
Morgan paid Joseph Delano $1,202.67 for 14,900 pounds of anchor chain plus the fluke chain that would be used in whaling. Jacob Parker supplied the anchors and the two iron trpots for rendering the whale oil for $737.30, and Gibbs Taber and Frederick Underwood set the try-pots into the brick tryworks they built on the ship's deck near the foremast. Morgan calculated the finished cost of his new ship as $26,877.78 (about $940,000.00 in 2023).
To outfit the ship for sea, Morgan purchased barrels of salt-preserved beef and salt pork, bushels of potatoes, bunches of onions, barrels of flour, gallons of molasses, and four hundred barrels of drinking water as well as an iron camboose (galley stove) for cooking. For navigating the vessel, he purchased maps, charts, compasses, a sextant for celestial navigation, an extremely accurate chronometer or ship's clock, and a copy of James Espys's new book on meteorology, The Philosophy of Storms. To maintain the crew's health at sea, he obtained a well-stocked medicine chest from Benjamin Coombs and William Wells for $75.04. Since the crew would need to purchase new clothes, tobacco, and other items at sea (for which they would be assessed interest until the items were paid off at the end of the voyage), Morgan purchased $570.41 worth of these "slops" from Joshua Richmond, Captain Thomas Norton, and the "ladies clothing store" operated by the women of the Port Society for the Moral Improvement of Seamen.
Since casks or barrels, large and small, would hold the ship's water and supplies, as well as the whale oil it would take, Morgan paid $3,281.03 to various suppliers for these oak containers. Many were fully coopered (set up), but the smaller oil casks might be purchased in the form of "shooks," or sets of staves and hoops that would be set up by the ship's cooper during the voyage. For whaling itself, Morgan pur- chased five cedar whaleboats for $467.24 and a supply of harpoons and lances from Howard Nichols for $185.00. He calculated the outfitting cost at $25,908.89. This makes the estimated total cost of the ship, when ready for sea, $52,786.67 (roughly $1,840,000.00 in 2023).
No name had been chosen for the new ship at the time of its launch, but, when Charles Morgan departed town as the ship was rigged and fitted out, Samuel Griffits Morgan gave it his uncle's name. "I don't altogether like it," remarked the unostentatious owner, but he did not change it.