The Whaling Museum & Education Center

Last updated
The Whaling Museum & Education Center
Whaling Museum Exterior.jpg
The Whaling Museum & Education Center
Former name
The Whaling Museum
Established1942
Location Cold Spring Harbor, New York
Coordinates 40°52′21″N73°27′15″W / 40.8725°N 73.454167°W / 40.8725; -73.454167
Type History museum
Accreditation American Alliance of Museums
Collection size6,000
Visitors20,000 annually
OwnerThe Whaling Museum Society
Website http://www.cshwhalingmuseum.org

The Whaling Museum & Education Center, formerly known as The Whaling Museum, is a maritime museum located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York dedicated to the local history, the maritime heritage of Long Island and its impact on the whaling industry. [1]

Contents

The Museum, which welcomes about 20,000 visitors annually, is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. The Whaling Museum Society was founded in 1936, with the Museum opening in 1942. Its exhibit space is 2,500 square feet including an educational workshop.


The museum holds about 6,000 documents and artifacts from Cold Spring Harbor and other Long Island whaling towns. Its collection includes a 19th-century whaleboat with original gear and a large collection of scrimshaw.

Additional displays include whaling implements, ship’s gear, navigational aids, ship models and maritime art. The library and archival collection contains 2,800 primary and secondary volumes and manuscript material from the Cold Spring whaling fleet, ship’s logs, journals and business correspondence of the Cold Spring Whaling Company, family documents dealing with maritime commerce on Long Island, records of the Long Island coastwise trade under sail and records from the Cold Spring Harbor Customs House (1798 until 1908).

The museum hosts educational events and exhibitions year-round, including films, lectures, performances, and special events, connecting the subject of whaling to other subjects in art, science, and culture.

Museum collection

The majority of the Museum's collections were donated over time, starting as a community repository from the Museum's founding in 1936. Totaling 6,000 pieces, most pieces speak to the 19th century whaling industry, specifically Long Island whaling, as well as the local history of Cold Spring Harbor and its growth as a maritime port. The collection includes: [2]

History of Cold Spring Harbor

In 1932, a small number of residents of Cold Spring Harbor, New York, commissioned a monument commemorating the village's earlier days as a whaling port. A boulder was dredged from the harbor and erected on the village square and lists the names of the nine vessels in the fleet. In later years the monument was moved to the museum's property, where it remains today.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whaleboat</span> Vessel for hunting whales

A whaleboat is a type of open boat that was used for catching whales, or a boat of similar design that retained the name when used for a different purpose. Some whaleboats were used from whaling ships. Other whaleboats would operate from the shore. Later whaleboats usually could operate under sail or oar - American whaling crews in particular obtained better results by making their first approach to a whale under sail, then quickly unstepping the mast and using oars thereafter.

<i>Essex</i> (whaleship) American whaleship from Nantucket, Massachusetts

Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. In 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. Thousands of miles from the coast of South America with little food and water, the 21-man crew was forced to make for land in the ship's surviving whaleboats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Diego Bay</span> Natural harbor and deepwater port in San Diego County, California, United States

San Diego Bay is a natural harbor and deepwater port located in San Diego County, California near the U.S.–Mexico border. The bay, which is 12 miles (19 km) long and 1 to 3 miles wide, is the third largest of the three large, protected natural bays on California's 840 miles (1,350 km) of coastline, after San Francisco Bay and Humboldt Bay. The highly urbanized land adjacent to the bay includes the city of San Diego and four other cities: National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach and Coronado.

<i>Charles W. Morgan</i> (ship) American whaling ship built in 1841

Charles W. Morgan is an American whaling ship built in 1841 that was active during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ships of this type were used to harvest the blubber of whales for whale oil which was commonly used in lamps. Charles W. Morgan has served as a museum ship since the 1940s and is now an exhibit at the Mystic Seaport museum in Mystic, Connecticut. She is the world's oldest surviving (non-wrecked) merchant vessel, the only surviving wooden whaling ship from the 19th century American merchant fleet, and second to the USS Constitution, the oldest seaworthy vessel in the world. The Morgan was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scrimshaw</span> Engravings and carvings done in bone or ivory, created by sailors

Scrimshaw is scrollwork, engravings, and carvings done in bone or ivory. Typically it refers to the artwork created by whalers, engraved on the byproducts of whales, such as bones or cartilage. It is most commonly made out of the bones and teeth of sperm whales, the baleen of other whales, and the tusks of walruses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Bedford Whaling Museum</span> Log Books of Whaling Ships

The New Bedford Whaling Museum is a museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts, United States that focuses on the history, science, art, and culture of the international whaling industry, and the "Old Dartmouth" region in the South Coast of Massachusetts. The museum is governed by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society (ODHS), which was established in 1903 "to create and foster an interest in the history of Old Dartmouth." Since then, the museum has expanded its scope to include programming that addresses global issues "including the consequences of natural resource exhaustion, the diversification of industry, and tolerance in a multicultural society." Its collections include over 750,000 items, including 3,000 pieces of scrimshaw and 2,500 logbooks from whaling ships, both of which are the largest collections in the world, as well as five complete whale skeletons. The museum's complex consists of several contiguous buildings housing 20 exhibit galleries and occupying an entire city block within the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, although operated independently.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whaling in Australia</span> Industry

Whaling in Australian waters began in 1791 when five of the 11 ships in the Third Fleet landed their passengers and freight at Sydney Cove and then left Port Jackson to engage in whaling and seal hunting off the coast of Australia and New Zealand. The two main species hunted by such vessels in the early years were right and sperm whales. Humpback, bowhead and other whale species would later be taken.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hull Maritime Museum</span> Maritime museum in Kingston upon Hull, England

The Hull Maritime Museum is a museum in Kingston upon Hull, England, that explores the seafaring heritage of the city and its environs. The museum's stated mission is "To preserve and make available the maritime history of Hull and east Yorkshire through artefacts and documents".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nedorazumeniya Island</span>

Nedorazumeniya Island is an island on the north coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. It lies on the north side of Taui Bay, between Amakhton Bay to the west and Nagaev Bay to the east. It is about 20 kilometres (12 mi) west of the city of Magadan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whaling in the United States</span> Industry

Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The Whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti oil, and whalebone. Whale oil was the result of "trying-out" whale blubber by heating in water. It was a primary lubricant for machinery, whose expansion through the Industrial Revolution depended upon before the development of petroleum-based lubricants in the second half of the 19th century. Once the prized blubber and spermaceti had been extracted from the whale, the remaining majority of the carcass was discarded.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sperm whaling</span> Human hunting of sperm whales

Sperm whaling is the human practice of hunting sperm whales, the largest toothed whale and the deepest-diving marine mammal species, for the oil, meat and bone that can be extracted from the cetaceans' bodies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Baker Leavitt Sr.</span>

Capt. George Baker Leavitt Sr. was a Maine-born mariner who captained several whaling vessels out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The steam whalers captained by Leavitt were active in the whaling fishery off the Alaska North Slope, where Leavitt met and married an Inupiaq woman. The mariner befriended many early Arctic explorers, whom he replenished with supplies and provided transportation to, as well as assisted in Arctic exploration. Leavitt Island in the Beaufort Sea's Harrison Bay is named for the early New England whaling captain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nantucket Whaling Museum</span> Museum in Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States

The Nantucket Whaling Museum is a museum located in Nantucket, Massachusetts. It is run by the Nantucket Historical Association. The Whaling Museum is the flagship site of the Nantucket Historical Association’s fleet of properties.

Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum is dedicated to the port town's past within the American whaling industry. It houses the largest collection of whaling equipment in the state of New York.

<i>Two Brothers</i> (ship)

Two Brothers was a Nantucket whaleship that sank on the night of February 11, 1823, off the French Frigate Shoals. The ship's captain was George Pollard, Jr., former captain of the famous whaleship Essex. The wreck was discovered in 2008 by a team of marine archaeologists working on an expedition for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. She is thought to have been built in 1804 by Joseph Glidden in Hallowell, Maine.

The Basques were among the first people to catch whales commercially, as opposed to aboriginal whaling, and dominated the trade for five centuries, spreading to the far corners of the North Atlantic and even reaching the South Atlantic. The French explorer Samuel de Champlain, when writing about Basque whaling in Terranova, described them as "the cleverest men at this fishing". By the early 17th century, other nations entered the trade in earnest, seeking the Basques as tutors, "for [they] were then the only people who understand whaling", lamented the English explorer Jonas Poole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maly Shantar Island</span> Island in Far Eastern Federal District, Russian Federation

Maly Shantar Island is a small, narrow island in the northwestern Sea of Okhotsk, one of the Shantar Islands.

Thomas Welcome Roys was an American whaleman. He was significant in the history of whaling in that he discovered the Western Arctic bowhead whale population and developed and patented whaling rockets in order to hunt the faster, more powerful species that had until then eluded European whalers.

Glinyanyy Island is a small island on the east side of Gizhigin Bay, in the northeastern Sea of Okhotsk. It is cone shaped.

References

  1. "Whaling Museum and Education Center | New York Heritage". nyheritage.org. Retrieved 2022-07-26.
  2. "Collection". The Whaling Museum. Retrieved 2022-06-02.