Cold Spring Harbor whaling museum tells Black whalers' stories in new exhibit

When Faith Webster, a retired schoolteacher, entered the Whaling Museum & Education Center in Cold Spring Harbor, she wasn’t aware of the recently opened exhibit detailing the lives of Black mariners in the whaling industry, which flourished in the 1800s. Delighted by the display, she stopped to study a gallery of seamen who not only earned a living but thrived during an era when it was dangerous just to have dark skin.

“It’s a surprise,” said Webster, 58, her eyes widening behind a pair of red-framed glasses. “A good surprise.”

Many people have a similar reaction when they learn the role Black mariners played in what was once one of America’s most important areas of commerce.

Few outside of Nantucket, Massachusetts, for example, probably have heard of Paul Cuffe, a one-time whaler who ran supplies to the Northeast through the British blockade during the Revolutionary War, started a shipping business and died a wealthy philanthropist. The same goes for Absalom Boston, who was one of the first Black captains with an all-Black crew. Long Islanders might recognize the name of Pyrrhus Concer, a Southampton man who steered a whaling ship into closed Japanese waters in 1845 and whose visage so astounded Japanese society that they put his image on a scroll.

The museum display mentions that the first American killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770 was Crispus Attucks, a Black and Native American whaler. Also, that a young Frederick Douglass worked as a caulker sealing whaling ship joints with oakum.

“There were a lot of surprises that came out of this,” said the exhibit’s guest curator, Georgette Grier-Key, executive director of the Eastville Community Historical Society of Sag Harbor.

Grier-Key was already familiar with local Black mariners, but she said her research helped her become acquainted with others along the Eastern Seaboard who were important to both the nation’s trade and economy.

“We wanted to portray a picture of their entire lives,” she said. “That doesn’t often happen.”

Stunning history

Skip Finley, a former broadcast executive who grew up in Malverne, said he also wasn’t aware of these narratives nine years ago, when he began collecting information for a magazine article about the nation’s last wooden whaling ship, the Charles W. Morgan.

Then he found out the captain was Black.

“That stunned me,” he said.

He said he also was startled by the diversity of the crews, which could include gamblers, pirates, Native Americans, Brits, killers, cooks and crooks who sailed on nearly 16,000 whaling trips around the world, 52 of which were commanded by Black captains.

Those discoveries inspired Finley to write the book “Whaling Captains of Color: America’s First Meritocracy,” which goes into detail about this rough but remarkably egalitarian occupation that lasted for three centuries beginning in the late 1600s.

Nearly a third of all whalers were Black, said Finley. “A lot of their stories didn’t get told,” he said.

Visitors to the museum in Cold Spring Harbor quickly learn that whaling trips weren’t exactly luxury cruises.

Voyages generally lasted two to three years. Sailors spent most of that time cleaning the ship, except on those rare occasions when they were risking their lives chasing a whale. The quarters below deck were sweltering and vermin-infested. The crew didn’t mind sleeping with roaches because they ate the bedbugs. Meals usually included wormy hardtack.

Most quit after one voyage. Others deserted en route.

Webster, the retired teacher, was at the museum because she had signed up her 6-year-old grandson, Zane Marchan, for a workshop about the whaling lifestyle. While touring the facility afterward, the two, both from Valley Stream, stopped at a replica of a cramped wooden bunk where the mariners would have slept.

Zane climbed in, drew the cloth screen and pretended to sleep. “You know,” his grandmother told him through the curtain, “they wouldn’t let you have a night-light in there.”

Later, he paused at a painting that showed a seaman about to hurl a harpoon at his giant target. The painting is a representation of Concer, who would have chased his giant prey aboard a whaling boat similar to the authentic 19th century display in the center of the room.

Maybe this wasn’t a good choice for future employment, Zane decided.

“Too dangerous,” he said, shaking his head.

Actually, very dangerous.

'A million ways to die'

Crews chasing prey that might weigh 50 tons could be drowned or killed outright by the leviathan’s slapping tail. Sperm whales had teeth with which they sometimes crunched chasing whale boats, and a battering-ram head they used to smash the ship a la Moby Dick. Seven ships were recorded as being sunk this way. Over 2,000 whaling vessels never returned for reasons unknown, so that number probably is higher, said Finley.

“There were a million ways to die on a whaling ship,” he said.

The perils didn’t end even if the sailors triumphed.

After securing a dead whale to the ship, workers hanging off the side cut great sheets of blubber from their prize while sharks circled the bloody water below. The blubber was sliced up on slippery decks with razor-sharp tools, which is why cutters often were distinguished by their missing toes. The boiled-down whale oil left a stench that permeated the ship.

Pay was divided into shares by rank and position. On a successful cruise, it could amount to high wages. But whalers also could make as little as $25 for a two-year stint or even go into debt if they had to buy supplies or replace clothes on the trip.

Why would anyone sign up for a hell like this?

For Black Americans born free in the Northeast, it was a job where they were judged by their abilities. For those who had escaped from the South, it was better than being enslaved.

“The sea was an equalizer of men,” says a quote from a Black seaman on the museum’s wall. “Therefore the captain chose his crew based on who could do the best job.”

Said Finley, “If you could do the job, you were hired. And you might even get promoted.”

This inclusion wasn’t about morality. It was about money.

Careers in lucrative industry

Whale oil produced a clear, smokeless flame highly valued in early America, where lamps were the only form of lighting. It also was used in soap, candle wax, cosmetics and as a lubricant for guns and sewing machines. Corsets and hoop skirts were created from strips of baleen from a whale’s mouth.

Backers could triple their money with a successful hunt. Finley said records indicate ships with Black crews usually came back with cargo that produced a higher rate of return on investment. According to his research, Black captains generated revenue close to $74 million in today’s money during the whaling era.

Long Island whalers, including Blacks and Native Americans, played an important part in this era, often starting their careers in Sag Harbor, which once was second only to Manhattan in ship traffic.

Members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation were renowned for their seafaring abilities. It was said that not a ship left Long Island without a Shinnecock on board. The community produced five Lee brothers who became famous in the trade, the foremost being Ferdinand, who died when his ship was crushed during an Arctic voyage. His brother Notley deserted in the South Pacific. The last news the family received was that Notley had married into a Micronesian tribe and had become a king.

One of the best-known Long Island whalers was Concer, who led a life worthy of a novel. Born enslaved in 1814, he stayed on as a farmhand with the family that owned him for several years after gaining his freedom as a young man.

Eventually, he signed aboard the whaling ship Manhattan, becoming the steersman, a job that usually included harpooning duties. In 1845, the ship rescued 22 Japanese sailors shipwrecked on an island near Guam and took them home. Japan allowed no foreign vessels into its ports at the time but relented in this case, making the Manhattan the first American ship to enter Tokyo Bay. Visiting officials who had never seen a Black man before were astonished by Concer’s appearance. Artists were brought aboard to draw him.

After a stint prospecting in California, Concer returned to Southampton for good and started a ferry service on Agawam Lake, carrying families to the beach for a nickel. A genial man who wore a gold earring, he was a favorite of the town’s children.

“People considered him a second grandfather,” said Grier-Key.

Whaling had earned Concer money and he made more as an entrepreneur. When he died in 1897, Concer left an estate totaling $5,000, a small fortune in those days, and directed that a fund be set up to support education and widows after his death.

Elihu Root, President Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state, wrote the epitaph for Concer’s gravestone: “Though born a slave, he possessed those virtues, without which kings are but slaves.”

Lacking in modern appeal

The benefits of whaling may have been understandable in the 19th century, but the appeal was not so apparent for some modern visitors at the museum.

Two Lindenhurst women, Izabela Spinazzola, 45, who works for a medical software company, and her friend Jessica Peters, 41, an elementary school teacher, recently brought their offspring to the museum for workshops. Scavenger hunts lured the children around the displays, during which they became acquainted with the rugged lifestyle of a whaler.

Maybe a bit too rugged, they learned. “I think the kids were mortified by the process,” said Spinazzola.

Peters’ son, 10-year-old Brian, decided he would have been on the whale’s side in the ongoing ocean contest. He could never kill a creature like that, he said.

“They’re so big and graceful,” he said.

Spinazzola’s daughter, 6-year-old Sofia, also had reservations, but for more practical reasons.

“I hate seafood,” she said.