Scrimshaw STUART M. FRANK

Scrimshaw is an occupational handicraft of mariners employ-ing by-products of the whale fi shery, often in combination with other found materials. Indigenous to the whaling industry, where

it was typically a pursuit of leisure time at sea, it was also adopted in other trades and was occasionally practiced ashore ( Flayderman, 1972 ). It arose among Pacifi c Ocean whalers circa 1817–1824, per-sisted throughout the classic “ hand-whaling ” era of sailing-ship days into the twentieth century, and persisted in degraded form among “ modern ” whalers on factory ships and shore stations until the indus-try shut down in the third quarter of the twentieth century ( Basseches et al., 1991 ). Since the early twentieth century, similar materials and techniques have simultaneously been employed by non-mariner arti-sans for both commercial and hobbyist purposes.

There is no consensus regarding etymology. Plausible and eccen-tric theories alike have been advanced without any creditable eviden-tiary basis, whereas academic lexicography (notoriously inconclusive respecting nautical terms) fails to present any convincing hypothesis. The term—also rendered skrimshank, skimshander, skirmshander, and skrimshonting—fi rst appeared in American shipboard usage circa 1826, when the recreational practice of scrimshaw was less than a dec-ade progressed. It originally referred not to whalers ’ private diversions, but to the fairly common practice whereby crewmen were required to make articles for ship’s work (such as tools, tool handles, thole pins, belaying pins, and tackle falls). Sperm whale BONE is ideally suited to such uses: on any “ greasy luck ” voyage it was in plentiful supply at no cost, its workability is equivalent to the best cabinetmaking hard-woods, its tensile strength is greater than oak, and for many applica-tions its self-lubricating properties were highly desirable. Such was analogously the case regarding the adaptability of cetacean bone and ivory to whales ’ recreational handicrafts, to which the term “ scrim-shaw ” (and its many variants) came to refer by the 1830s.

I. Materials and Species Materials associated most commonly with scrimshaw are the ivory

teeth and skeletal bone of the SPERM WHALE ( Physeter macro-cephalus ), the ivory tusks of the WALRUS ( Odobenus rosmarus ), and the BALEEN of various mysticete species (the toothless, baleen-bearing whales). In the nineteen century the principal prey species were, roughly in descending order of importance, sperm whale, right whales ( Eubalaena spp.), Arctic bowhead ( Balaena mysticetus ), gray whale ( Eschrichtius robustus ), and humpback ( Megaptera

novaeangliae ). These and the long-fi nned pilot whale or so-called “ blackfi sh ” ( Globicephala melas ), which was hunted primarily from shore, were taken primarily for oil, the mysticetes secondarily for baleen. [The fast-swimming blue whale ( Balaenoptera musculus ) and fi n whale ( Balaenoptera physalus ) could not be hunted effec-tively prior to the introduction of steam propulsion and heavy-cal-iber harpoon cannons in the late nineteenth century.] From the late sixteenth century, by reason of geographical proximity of Arctic habi-tats and similar uses of their meat and oil, the hunt for walruses was intimately conjoined with commercial whaling. Later, even when whalers were no longer taking walruses themselves, they charac-teristically obtained walrus tusks through barter with indigenous Northern peoples.

Commercial uses of walrus ivory were few; there was no signifi cant commercial application for cetacean skeletal bone until the twentieth century (when it was ground and desiccated into industrial-grade meal and fertilizer). The utility and market value of baleen ( “ whalebone ” ) were subject to mercurial fl uctuations of fashion, and sperm whale teeth had little or no commodity value. They thus became available for whalers ’ recreational use, as did teeth of the Antarctic elephant seal (Mirounga leonina ), the lower mandibles of various dolphins and por-poises, and tusks of the elusive NARWHAL ( Monodon monoceros ). (Narwhal ivory proved too diffi cult and brittle for anything much beyond canes and analogous shafts, such as hatracks or bedposts.)

The characteristic pigment for highlighting engraved scrimshaw was lampblack, which is essentially a viscous suspension of carbon particles in oil. (The notion that sailors used tobacco juice for this is a colorful fabrication with no basis in fact.) Lampblack, collected easily from lamps, stoves, and tryworks (shipboard oil-rendering apparatus), was in abundant supply on a whale ship. Colors were introduced almost at the outset: Edward Burdett was using sealing wax and other pigments by 1827 ( Fig. 1 ); full polychrome scrimshaw debuted within the next decade. Sealing wax had the advantages of being universally available, relatively inexpensive, brilliantly colored, and colorfast. Applied properly, it has proven resilient and tenacious, the color as vivid today as when the scrimshaw was new. Improper application—if the cuts are too smooth or insuffi ciently contoured to grab and hold the wax—results in signifi cant losses from handling and natural desiccation. Sealing wax had the disadvantage of offer-ing only a limited spectrum of colors, all strong. Ambient pigments, however, could be mixed and blended, affording greater subtlety. From the characteristic leeching of pigment into the substrata of some polychrome scrimshaw, a phenomenon that occurs with water- and alcohol-soluble colors but not with waxes or heavy oil-based pig-ments, it is clear that ambient colors were also favored. Store-bought inks, homemade dyes extracted from berries, and greens from com-mon verdigris seem to predominate; however, their composition has not been investigated comprehensively.

Inlay and other secondary materials—rare on engraved scrimshaw but often encountered on “ built ” or “ architectonic ” scrimshaw—were typically obtained at little or no cost, such as other marine byproducts (tortoise shell, mother-of-pearl, sea shells), various woods brought from home or obtained in various ports of call (including exotic tropi-cal species from Africa and Polynesia), and miscellaneous bits of metal (fastenings and fi nials were often crafted from silver- or copper-alloy coins, typically coins minted in Mexico and South America).

II. Scrimshaw Precursors Medieval European artistic productions in walrus ivory and

cetacean bone were many, but the whalers themselves had no part

SScrimshaw 993

S

Scrimshaw

S

in them beyond gathering the raw materials. Cetacean bone panels and stilettos survive from the Viking era, some incised with rope pat-terns and animal fi gures, and cetacean bones served as beams in ver-nacular buildings in Norway and the Friesian Islands, but even these do not appear to have been made by whalers and are not known to have been part of their occupational culture. Monastic artisans in Denmark and East Anglia carved walrus ivory and cetacean bone into votive art, primarily altar pieces, friezes, and crosses, whereas craftsmen at Cologne and elsewhere produced secular game pieces and chessmen from the same materials. So important was the “ Royal Fish ” to the Viking economy that a highly sophisticated body of law evolved to regulate whaling itself and the ownership, taxation, distri-bution, and export of whale products, whether acquired fortuitously (from stranded carcasses) or by hunting. Pliny the Elder (fi rst cen-tury C.E.), Olaus Magnus (1555), Conrad von Gessner (1558), and Ambroise Pare (1582) listed the uses of baleen for whips, springs, garment stays, and umbrella ribs; the emergence of pelagic Arctic whaling in the seventeenth century encouraged a search for new applications, especially in Holland. The search, however, proved fruitless and was abandoned by circa 1630, occasioning the appear-ance of sailor-made baleen objects: there was simply no longer any reason to restrain whalers from using baleen for their private diver-sions (two centuries later the same principle would make sperm whale teeth available for scrimshaw).

Ditty boxes were the fi rst manifestation of whalers ’ work. Typically, these have polished baleen sides bent to the oval shape of a wooden bottom 30–35 cm long, to which the baleen is fastened with copper nails and fi tted with a wooden top. Two made in 1631 by an anonymous Rotterdam whaling commandeur have baleen sides incised with portraits of whaleships, the wooden tops relief

carved with the Dutch lion rampant surrounded by nautical sym-bols, human fi gures, and decorative borders. A few North Friesian whalemen—artists of the next generation are known by name. Jacob Floer of Amrum engraved buildings, trees, and geometrical borders on the baleen sides of an oval box, signed and dated 1661. Peter Lorenzen of Sylt signed and dated another in 1687. The form con-tinued for the duration of Arctic whaling and was perpetuated with myriad variations by American and British scrimshaw artists in the nineteenth century.

Another early form was the mangle (paddle for folding cloth). An Amsterdam whaling commandeur decorated one with carved geo-metric ornaments, signed, dated, and inscribed, “ Cornelis Floerensen Bettelem. Niet sonder Godt [Not without God]. Anno 1641. ” A century later, a North Friesian whaling master, Lødde Rachtsen of Hooge, made one for his daughter’s dowry: it has a pierced-work han-dle and carved geometric and fl oral decorations, the broadside portrait of a spouting bowhead whale, and a carved inscription dated 1745. Respecting technical aspects of execution and the iconography of their decoration, this kind of piece is the direct ancestor of the sperm whalemen’s decorated baleen corset—busks of the nineteenth century.

III. Origins and Practice Pictorial engraving on sperm whale teeth—the quintessential

manifestation of scrimshaw—resulted from changing circumstances in the fi shery in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars (of which the American theater was the so-called War of 1812). It arose collectively among British and American whalers in the 1820s in the Hawaiian Islands, where (beginning in 1819) the fl eets customarily laid over for weeks on end between seasonal cruises, providing ample oppor-tunities for fraternization and foment.

Figure 1 Pan bone plaque by Edward Burdett (1805–1833) of Nantucket, circa 1828. The earliest known scrimshaw artist, Burdett was active from 1824 until he was killed by a whale in 1833. His work is characterized by a bold, confi dent style, with deep blacks and red seal-ing-wax highlights. He was serving as a mate in the William Tell when he engraved this section of sperm whale bone, inscribed “ William Tell. of New York. homeward bound. in the latitude of. 50 13. S. long[itude] 80. W. got shipwrecked ” ; “ lost her rudder & c. ” ; “ by. E. Burdett. ”15.7 31.8 cm. Kendall Collection, New Bedford Whaling Museum.

994

Scrimshaw

S

In the late seventeenth century, British colonists on the Atlantic seacoast of New York and Massachusetts hunted right whales along shore—an ancillary day fi shery, prosecuted by fi shers and farmers in rowboats launched from sandy beaches. In the eighteenth century, expanding markets occasioned offshore cruises in small sailing ves-sels. The discovery of sperm whales in proximity to New England is ascribed by tradition to Captain Christopher Hussey of Nantucket when he was blown off course while right whaling in 1712. The colonists tuned their technology to accommodate sperm whaling, pioneered the refi ning of sperm whale oil and the manufacture of spermaceti candles (America’s fi rst industry), and developed thriving export networks. Whaling evolved into a full-time occupation, and a distinctive caste of whaler-mariners emerged with its own occupational culture. Scrimshaw would become an integral component of this cul-ture, but it took a whole century for the right circumstances to gel.

Colonial whaling cruises were seasonal, following the Atlantic trade winds on comparatively short passages to and from the grounds. Only a few whales were required to fi ll the hold before heading home, usu-ally after only a few weeks. The opening of the Pacifi c grounds in the 1790s changed shipboard dynamics dramatically. Voyages necessar-ily became longer, as much as 3 or 4 years by the 1840s. The larger catch that was required to make long voyages profi table mandated larger vessels with larger crews so that three–fi ve whaleboats could be launched for the hunt. The effective result was overmanning and an unprecedented abundance of shipboard leisure-long outward and homeward passages, and idle weeks, even months between whales, when there was little to do but maintain the ship and wait. Most sail-ors worked “ watch-on-watch ” in 4 h shifts, day and night, whenever the ship was underway, but whaleship crews had most nights off: the hunt could not be prosecuted effectively in darkness, and cutting in (fl ensing) a carcass with sharp blubber spades was dangerous enough even in daylight. Apart from rendering blubber already on hand, there was little work to do evenings. More than in any other seafaring trade, the nineteenth-century whalers had time to spare. They fi lled it with reading, journal-keeping, drawing, singing, dancing, gamming (visiting among ships at sea), and a host of other diversions.

At the critical juncture, just when things were ripe for scrimshaw, teeth were in short supply. For in the meanwhile, the China Trade, pioneered in the 1780s, had established a network of Far East destina-tions and products that involved barter with Pacifi c islanders to obtain goods for Canton. China traders soon realized that many island cul-tures placed great value on whale teeth, from which they crafted vari-ous totemic and decorative objects. Teeth could be obtained cheaply from whalers (there being no other market), so the China merchants bought them up for barter in the Pacifi c. Such scrimshaw as there was in the eighteenth century was therefore limited primarily to imple-ments made of skeletal bone-straightedges, hand tools, a few early swifts (yarn-winders), and corset husks; of these, comparatively few were made prior to the fl orescence of scrimshaw commencing in the 1820s.

Captain David Porter of the US Naval frigate Essex was the inad-vertent catalyst for the emergence of scrimshaw. Porter’s wartime purpose had been to infl ict depredations on British shipping and to disrupt British whaling in the Pacifi c. His narrative (published in 1815, reissued in an expanded edition in 1821) was valued by mari-ners for its explicit accounts of conditions in the Marquesas and Galapagos Islands and on the coast of Chile and Peru. It also inci-dentally revealed the barter value of whales ’ teeth in Polynesia and disclosed particulars of how they could be gathered cheaply—this at just around the time the vanguard of the whaling fl eet reached Hawaii (1819). There was soon a surplus of whales ’ teeth on the

Pacifi c market; as the teeth were no longer valuable as a commodity, they could be relegated to sailors for private use.

Accordingly, the earliest authentic date on any pictorial sperm whale scrimshaw is 1817—a tooth commemorating a whale taken by the ship Adam of London off the Galapagos Islands ( Fig. 2 ); the earliest provisionally identifi able whaleman-engraver of sperm whale ivory is J. S. King, whaling master of London and Liverpool, to whom two teeth are attributed, one perhaps as early as 1821. These suggest a possible British genesis of pictorial scrimshaw; however, the earliest defi nitively attributable work is by an American, Edward Burdett of Nantucket, who fi rst went whaling from his native port in 1821 and was scrimshandering by 1824. Fellow Nantucketer Frederick Myrick was the fi rst to sign and date his scrimshaw—three dozen teeth produced during 1828–1829 as a seaman aboard the Nantucket ship Susan. Two teeth by Burdett and two “ Susan’s Teeth ” by Myrick were accessioned by the East India Marine Society of Salem, Massachusetts, prior to 1831, while both artists were still liv-ing—the fi rst scrimshaw to enter a museum collection. That Myrick’s work was listed generically as “ Tooth of a Sperm Whale, curiously carved ” and “ Another, carved by the same hand, ” with no mention of the exquisitely engraved pictures on them, nor of the artist’s name (both are signed), nor of the term “ scrimshaw ” , testifi es to the new-ness of the genre, perhaps also to the low esteem in which sailors ’hobby work was held by the great merchants of Salem at the time.

In the 1830s, scrimshaw became widely generalized. On some whaling vessels virtually the entire ship’s company participated. In his journal of the New Bedford bark Abigail during 1836–1838, Captain William Hathaway Reynard remarked, “ The cooper is going ahead making tools for scrimsham. We had a fracas betwixt the cook and the stewart [sic] … All hands employed in scrimsa. ” In other ships the best ivory and bone may have been relinquished to some particularly talented member of the crew, such as Joseph Bogart Hersey of Cape Cod on the Provincetown schooner Esquimaux in 1843: “ This afternoon we commenced sawing up the large whale’s jaws … the bone proved to be pretty good and yielded several canes,

Figure 2 Genesis of scrimshaw, circa 1817. The oversize tooth is inscribed “ This is the tooth of a sperm whale that was caught near the Galapagos Islands by the crew of the ship Adam [of London], and made 100 barrels of oil in the year 1817. ” Produced in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, when the British and American whal-ing fl eets were endeavoring to recover their former prowess in the Pacifi c, it is believed to the earliest full-scale work of engraved pic-torial scrimshaw on a sperm whale footh. Length 23.5 cm. Kendall Collection, New Bedford Whaling Museum.

995

Scrimshaw

S

fi ds, and busks. I employed a part of my time in engrav[ing] or fl ow-ering two busks. Being slightly skilled in the art of fl owering; that is drawing and painting upon bone; steam boats, fl ower pots, monu-ments, balloons, landscapes; I have many demands made upon my generosity, and I do not wish to slight any; I of course work for all. ”

The whaleship labor force was very young on average, with green hands often in their early teens; common seamen and even seasoned harpooners were rarely over 30. Among the greatest scrimshaw art-ists, Frederick Myrick retired from whaling and from scrimshaw at age 21, Edward Burdett was barely 28 when he was killed by a whale, and Welsh ship’s surgeon W. L. Roderick left the fi shery at 29. Nevertheless, although in the minority, older hands contributed mightily. Seaman Silas Davenport may have been in his forties when he constructed a fi ne swift of bone and ebony. Former whaleman N. S. Finney was still engraving walrus ivory on commission in San Francisco in his sixties. Ship’s carpenters and coopers-trained crafts-men with skills well adapted to scrimshaw, especially architectural pieces were normally older than the average crewman. So, too, whal-ing captains, many of whom were devoted scrimshaw artists: Manuel Enos cut brilliant polychrome portraits into whale ivory right up to the time he was lost at sea at age 55; Frederick Howland Smith was scrimshandering from age 14 until he retired at 61; and the grand old man, Captain Ben Cleveland, was still making napkin rings, man-tle ornaments, gadgets in the 1920s, at age 80.

Scrimshaw was quintessentially a diversion of the whalemen’s ample leisure hours, to fi ll time, and produce mementos, as gifts for loved ones at home. It was occupationally rooted in and wholly indig-enous to the deepwater whaling trade, but was eventually also adopted by merchant sailors, navy tars, and occasionally the seafaring wives and children of whaling masters.

Unfortunately, practitioners in whatever trade rarely signed or dated their work, and family provenance has seldom preserved details of the origins of legacy pieces. Thus, scrimshaw has hitherto been mostly anonymous, the names of only a handful of practition-ers known. However, systematic forensic studies commencing in the 1980s have made stylistic and iconographical attributions increas-ingly possible, and the names and works of a few hundred individual artists are now documented with varying degrees of specifi city.

IV. Taxonomy Scrimshaw took many forms. Henry Cheever mentions whalers

“ working up sperm whales ’ jaws and teeth and right whale [baleen] into boxes, swifts, reels, canes, whips, folders, stamps, and all sorts of things, according to their ingenuity ” (The Whale and His Captors, 1850), and Herman Melville alludes to “ lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fi shermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies ’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough mate-rial in the hours of ocean leisure ” (Moby-Dick, 1851). Various tools were used for cutting and polishing, but forensic scrutiny corroborates Melville’s observation that the ordinary knife predominated: “ Some of them [the whaleman-artisans] have little boxes of dentistical-look-ing implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out any thing you please, in the way of a mariner’s fancy. ”

Scrimshaw objects intended for practical use included hand tools, kitchen gadgets, sewing implements, toys, and even full-sized furni-ture. Some, such as fi ds, straightedges, tool handles, seam-rubbers,

napkin rings, and even some canes, could be carved or turned from a single piece of ivory or bone. Although they had a specifi c func-tion, corset busks (made of bone, walrus ivory, or baleen) were often elaborately engraved; even apart from being products of painstaking labor, as intimate undergarments they were not bestowed casually. Other implements were constructed from two or more pieces joined or hinged together—pie crimpers with rotating jagging wheels and fold-out forks ( Fig. 3 ), canes with shafts of one material, pummels of another, and inlay of a third. The most elaborate forms were truly “ built ” and may properly be called architectural or architectonic. Swifts (yarn winders) have numerous moving parts, with metal pin-ions and ribbon fastenings ( Fig. 4 ). Bird cages, a labor-intensive technical challenge, could run the gamut of Victorian complexity. Sewing boxes, ditty boxes, chests of drawers, lap secretaries, pocket-watch stands, mantle ornaments, and other composite constructions typically employed combinations of wood, ivory, and bone and may have, hinged lids, internal compartments, legs, fi nials, handles, draw-ers, drawer pulls, inlay, and all kinds of ornamentation.

The quintessential form of purely decorative scrimshaw is engraved ivory and bone, usually rendered in a single medium—a tooth or pair of teeth; a tusk or pair; or a plaque, strip, or section of sperm whale panbone (jawbone). Finished teeth were sometimes set into wooden, silver, or coin-silver mounts; plaques might be framed by the artist; engraved strips of baleen could become oval boxes. Alternately, teeth and tusks could be carved into stand-alone sculp-tural forms, such as human or animal fi gures, or could become the components of complex ship models.

There were no rules and few precedents governing the choice of subject matter for pictures on scrimshaw. The earliest work by the anonymous Adam engraver, J. S. King, Edward Burdett, and Frederick Myrick was almost exclusively devoted to ship portraiture and whaling scenes. Figures of Columbia, Liberty, and Britannia appeared by around 1830. The ensuing generation enlarged the vocabulary to include patriotic portraiture (notably of Washington

Figure 3 Pie crimper in the form of a mermaid, New Bedford, circa 1875. Practical in origin, these classic kitchen implements inspired some of the scrimshaw’s most creative forms and elaborate ornamentation. The jagging wheel was used for crimping pie crusts; they often also had ivory forks to puncture the top of the crust. This one was made aboard the New Bedford ship Europa, Captain James H. McKenzie, during 1871–1876. Length 18 cm. Kendall Collection, New Bedford Whaling Museum.

996

Scrimshaw

S

and Lafayette), inanimate patriotic devices, female portraiture, land-scape, naval engagements, sentimental family scenes, and mortuary motifs ( Fig. 5 ). Gradually, these were canonized as standard genre conventions. Some individual artists developed distinctive styles and themes. George Hilliott’s polychrome teeth dialectically juxta-pose a Polynesian wahinee in a grass skirt on one side and a New England lady in a fashionable gown on the other. The anonymous “ Banknote engraver ” did meticulous portraits with banknote-like borders (hence the pseudonym). The “ Eagle Artisan ” engraved red-and-black American eagles and bold portraits. The “ Lambeth Busk Engraver ” made busks with London vignettes; a prime example features Lambeth Palace. Much naval scrimshaw is adorned with patriotic devices and naval engagements. Like whalemen’s scrim-shaw, some examples refer to specifi c vessels and events. A notable British example is credited to HMS Beagle on the same voyage on which Darwin evolved his theory of natural selection. Edward Yorke McCauley—later an admiral and noted Egyptologist—when he was a young midshipman aboard the U.S. Frigate Powhattan on Perry’s

historic Japan expedition in the 1850s, engraved two walrus tusks with portraits of the Powhattan and Susquehanna, exotic Oriental watercraft, and glimpses of Japan, Hong Kong, and Brunei. Even a Confederate infantryman tried his hand: Hampton Wilson, Irish immigrant, North Carolina sharecropper, Confederate draftee, and Union prisoner of war, while recuperating in a military hospital in Kentucky successfully “ fl owered ” a pair of walrus tusks with military and naval vignettes, using materials and methods presumably sup-plied by a Yankee whaling veteran among his fellow patients.

Most scrimshaw pictures were inspired by or adapted from illus-trations in contemporaneous books and periodicals; copying and even direct tracing were standard scrimshaw conventions. Because of their specifi c functional objectives, scrimshaw implements and architectonic forms were also mostly derivative. However, some of the best pieces—and many of the worst—were truly original crea-tions, drawn from the maker’s experience or imagination. A few have authentic stature as signifi cant art, whereas others are little more than mere valentines. In the aggregate, anonymity and quality aside, as an indigenous occupational genre scrimshaw comprises some of the most characteristic and revealing documents of any occupational group, capable of providing profound insights into the life, work, and intentionality of the mariners who made them.

V. Museum Collections The famous Kendall Collection (the former Kendall Whaling

Museum), which includes what is by far the world’s largest and most

Figure 4 Swift of sperm whale ivory and skeletal bone by Captain James M. Clark of Rochester, Massachusetts, circa 1835–1850. Made by a Yankee whaling captain, this exquisite piece typifi es the best of the scrimshaw genre. It is inlaid with abalone shell and baleen, fas-tened with copper, tied with silk ribbons, fi tted with two turnscrews in the form of clenched fi sts, and has a silver presentation plaque inscribed “ R W Vose from Jas Clark. ” Height 40.7 cm. Swifts were a distinctly American form, used for winding the yarn employed in knitting and occasionally other domestic handicrafts and cottage industries. Kendall Collection, New Bedford Whaling Museum .

Figure 5 Family album wall hanging, New England, circa 1850. This unusual, elaborate construction features 12 tintype photo-graphic portraits mounted in a triangular framework of walrus ivory and bone. The polychrome engraving on the walrus tusks is particu-larly interesting, as the woman-and-child portrait pair on the right is no doubt copied from a magazine fashion plate (in typical whalers ’fashion), whereas the woman with-telescope on the left appears to be an original image. Height 50 cm. Kendall Collection, New Bedford Whaling Museum.

997

Sea Lions: Overview

S

comprehensive array of scrimshaw, has since 2001 been incorporated into the New Bedford Whaling Museum (Old Dartmouth Historical Society) in New Bedford, Massachusetts. With the two enormous collections now combined, the New Bedford Whaling Museum is the home of the national Scrimshaw Collectors’ Guild, houses the world’s only Scrimshaw Forensics Laboratory® (to authenticate scrimshaw from institutional and private owners), hosts the annual Scrimshaw Collectors’ Weekend, and has taken over the Kendall inventory of scrimshaw publications.

The Nantucket Whaling Museum (Nantucket Historical Association) on Nantucket—the birthplace of sperm whaling and the hometown of scrimshaw pioneers Edward Burdett and Frederick Myrick—holds an eminent collection that was newly installed in a rejuvenated gallery opened in 2006.

Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Connecticut, has a large and comprehensive collection that includes important loan deposits from other private and institutional collection, notable for an informative catalogue and various scrimshaw-related publications.

The Peabody Essex Museum of Salem, Massachusetts, founded in 1799 as the East India Marine Society, was the fi rst institution to include scrimshaw among its nautical relics (circa 1830) and today holds an outstanding collection of American scrimshaw.

The superb collection of the Dietrich American Foundation in Philadelphia is primarily intended for loan exhibitions to qualifi ed institutions.

The Hull Maritime Museum (formerly the Town Docks Museum) in Kingston on Hull, East Yorkshire, a municipal museum in one of England’s most historic Arctic whaling ports, holds the most signifi -cant scrimshaw collection outside the USA and Australia.

In addition, there are modest but worthwhile collections at the Christensen Whaling Museum (Sandefjord, Norway), the Penobscot Marine Museum (Searsport, Maine), the Providence (Rhode Island) Public Library, the Scott Polar Research Institute (University of Cambridge, England), South Street Seaport Museum (New York City), Whaler’s Village (Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii), the Whaling Museum at Cold Spring Harbor (New York), and several state, mari-time and municipal museums and libraries in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, and Launceston, Tasmania).

See Also the Following Articles Folklore and Legends ■ Museums and Collections ■ Popular Culture and Literature ■ Whaling ■ Traditional

References Basseches , J. , and Frank, S. M. ( 1991 ). “ Edward Burdett (1805–1833):

America’s First Master Scrimshaw Artist . ” Kendall Whaling Museum Monograph No. 5 , Sharon, MA .

Carpenter , C. H. , Jr. , and Carpenter , M. G. ( 1987 ). “ The Decorative Arts and Crafts of Nantucket . ” Dodd Mead and Co , NY .

Flayderman , E. N. ( 1972 ). In “ Scrimshaw and Scrimshanders, Whales and Whaleman ” ( R. L. Wilson , ed. ) , pp. 24 – 25 . N. Flayderman and Co , New Milford, CT .

Frank , S. M. ( 1991 ). “ Dictionary of Scrimshaw Artists . ” Mystic Seaport Museum , Mystic, CT .

Frank , S. M. ( 1992 ). The origins of engraved pictorial scrimshaw . Mag.Antiq. 142 ( 4 ) , 510 – 521 .

Frank , S. M. ( 1998 ). “ More Scrimshaw Artists . ” Mystic Seaport Museum , Mystic, CT .

Frank , S. M. ( 2000 ). Scrimshaw: occupational art of the whale-hunters .Marit. Life Trad. 7 ( March ) , 42 – 57 .

Frank, S. M. (2006). The whalemen’s life. Ear. Am. Life 37, 8–19.

Hellman , N. , and Brouwer , N. ( 1992 ). “ A Mariner’s Fancy: The Whaleman’s Art of Scrimshaw . ” South Street Seaport in association with Balsam Press, New York and University of Washington Press , Seattle .

Malley , R. C. ( 1983 ). “ Graven by the fi shermen themselves: Scrimshaw in Mystic Seaport Museum . ” Mystic Seaport Museum , Mystic, CT .

McManus , M. ( 1997 ). “ A Treasury of American Scrimshaw: A Collection of the Useful and Decorative . ” Penguin Books , NY .

Penniman, T. K. [1952] (1984). “ Pictures of Ivory and other Animal Teeth, Bone and Antler; With a Brief Commentary on their Use in Identifi cation. ” Pitt Rivers Museum, Occasional Paper on Technology No. 5, University of Oxford.

Ridley , D. E. , et al . ( 2000 ). “ The Scrimshaw of Frederick Myrick (1808–1862): A Catalogue Raisonne and Forensic Survey . ” The Kendall Whaling Museum , Sharon, MA .

West , J. , and Credland , A. G. ( 1995 ). “ Scrimshaw: The Art of the Whalers . ” Hull City Museums and Art Galleries and Hutton Press .

Sea Lions: Overview DARYL J. BONESS

Sea lions, like the fur seals, are members of the family Otariidae. There are presently seven sea lion species in fi ve genera, with one genus exclusive to the Northern Hemisphere (Steller sea

lion, Eumetopias jubatus ), one that occurs in both hemispheres [in the north, the California ( Zalophus californianus ) and Japanese (Z. japonicus ) sea lions, and in the south, the Galapagos sea lion (Z. wollebaeki )] and three that are solely in the Southern Hemisphere (southern sea lion, Otaria fl avescens ; Australian sea lion, Neophocacinerea ; New Zealand sea lion, Phocarctos hookeri ).

I. Origins, Classifi cation, and Size Sea lions originated in the Northeast Pacifi c region, sharing a com-

mon ancestor with fur seals. Although the fossil record for sea lions is poor, it appears they crossed into the Southern Hemisphere about three million years ago ( Berta and Sumich, 1999 ). For many years, sea lions were thought to be a separate subfamily, the Otariinae, within the family Otariidae. However, genetic analyses now conclusively show a basal split between the Phocidae and the Otaroidea (Otariidae and Odobenidae families) and that the northern fur seal ( Callorhinus ursi-nus ) is sister to all other sea lions and fur seals ( Arnason et al., 2006 ; Wynen et al., 2001 ). The fossil record suggests this group splitting off about 6 million years ago. Beyond this level of detail, genetics and fos-sil record can only show us that there are four sea lion groups (known as clades) and fi ve fur seal ones that evolved rapidly in time. The rela-tionship among these groups, however, is yet to be determined.

The only substantial diagnostic morphological distinction between sea lions and fur seals is the presence of an underhair in fur seals but not in sea lions. Sea lions do tend to be larger than fur seals, with both groups exhibiting substantial differences in body mass, and smaller dif-ferences in body length, between males and females, a phenomenon known as sexual dimorphism. Male sea lions are between two and four times heavier than females and up to one and a half times the length. The body mass of males in the different sea lion species ranges from about 250 to 1000 kg and in females from about 75 to 325 kg. In con-trast, the heaviest fur seal male is about 300 kg and the heaviest female is about 75 kg. Lengths of male and female sea lions range from 205 to 330 and 180 to 270 cm, respectively.

998