Russell Lights - Vol 10 Issue 11 - May 2007

Scrimshaw

Russell was a port of call for visiting whalers for over a hundred years. Russell Museum has a collection of whaling related items – harpoons, whalebones, a record of ships visits in the 1870s.

Whalers had a lot of spare hours at sea and turned their hands to hobbies to fill the time. They used whatever was at hand and made items they could use or to take home as gifts to family.

These examples are a ladle for a water cask made with half a carved coconut shell with a whalebone handle and a whalebone pipe rack. The small knife has a whalebone handle and the blade edged implement is a seam rubber to flatten newly sewn seams. The final two items are fid - used in splicing rope.

We don't have a whalebone corset stiffener which whalers often made for a sweet heart back home. One whaler wrote this poem.

Accept, dear girl, this busk from me carved by my humble hand.
I took it from a sperm whale's jaw, a thousand miles from land.
In many a gale has been the whale, in which this bone did rest.
His time is past; his bone at last, must now support thy breast.

 

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