ERASURE CONTINUES

     As a Gay man who covered Moby Dick in his eleventh grade high school American Literature classes, and as the question came up when I was a student and during my time teaching was brought up with varying degrees of seriousness by students, some in the hope of ridicule and an easy joke, I was as curious as most as to whether men, out to sea for weeks, months, and years with women only available on the rare occasions they were in a port and had time for going ashore, found sexual release the only way possible, beyond masturbation, for some, situational homosexuality, for others freely expressed genuine feelings toward another man, or, as the concept of gender was fuzzy at best in the days of whaling, was comfortable with and attracted to sexual partners of either sex.

     There was information on sailors in the navy and merchant marines, and pirates, but due to social mores and there being no need to record sexual encounters on board whaling ships, it seemed there was none in that area.

     As a volunteer transcriber of old manuscripts, mostly whaling ship logs from New Bedford’s whaling heydays, I was in a good position to come across such information, better, anyway, than someone without easy access to documents and people on staff to speak with as I looked for the hidden whalers.

     The small, yet growing, transcriber team had been given the task of transcribing all the crew lists of the ships leaving New Bedford on 19th Century whaling voyages that had been used for various types of protection, such as proof that a Black crew member was a Freeman, when entering a Southern port, and proof of citizenship. They were also used in postmortem identification. If a whale ship came upon the body of someone lost from another ship that had not been able to turn around to conduct a search or failed at one, by noting the physical characteristics of the retrieved corpse before a burial at sea and, upon return, matching them to the physical descriptions reported by other ships of men either lost or found at sea, a family at home might get closure.

     Sometimes a crew member’s name appeared on more than one list, and, even though it was not the assignment, just as the listing of skin tones and how they were written might have been a code to designate who was born enslaved and who free and a lead was allowed to be followed, perhaps noticing any names appearing on multiple ships together could mean more than coincidentally signing on to the same ship multiple times over many years .

     One crew list made it possible to trace the ship steward, William Smith, once he was "discovered", from his very troubled time on board the Charles Phelps to his disappearance in upstate New York some 20 years later.

     The transcribers' work had to be accurate as these lists will be consulted in the future by historians and researchers. Inaccuracies can produce false conclusions.

     Conversations with historians and museum curators, and multiple searches on the internet continued to come back with the same answer: men isolated that long on ships peopled only with other men would, of course, result in situational homosexual activity that was perfectly fine at sea where the rules had to be different than those of land to which the men would return after a voyage, and Melville certainly threw enough hints around.

     Nothing besides.

     A search done in June of 2023 still came back with the same answer, signaling it was time to present the facts.

II

     In 2017, I was assigned the log book of the Newport, a steam whaling vessel out of San Francisco owned by a New Bedford firm scheduled to spend three seasons hunting for Bowhead whales. As this type of whale had an annual North /South migration, rather than chase them, knowing their route would take them through the Bering Strait into the arctic waters and since this would bottleneck them into a smaller expanse than the open Pacific ocean, for a while whaling vessels would gather at Herschel Island, 60 miles East of Barrow, Alaska, off the northern edge of Canada in the fall, carefully winterize to sit through the winter as homes for the crews while other amenities were supplied by the company owned village, and wait for the whales to return in the spring and have them come to the whalers and not the usual way, being chased by them.

     It was a common practice for captains to bring their wives on voyages, and those wintering on Herschel Island usually brought theirs and, often, their children.

     Crew members did not have this privilege, so, if there was to be any sex for them, it was either with the Indigenous Women in the area, each other, or alone.

     In log books there are entries about the interactions of captains with their wives as these activities relate to company business and were acceptable aspects of the wintering community. An exception to the dry business accounting of the winter stay, is the log book of the Jesse H Freeman that was kept by the captain’s wife, a woman interested in the smallest detail of the voyage and included many non-business, more social details of the day in the log with the mentions of birthdays, parties, births, and deaths, which normally would not be included in an entry in any detail if at all.

      We know the captains had sexual relations not only with their wives, but with the indigenous women. Captain Leavitt, having fallen in love with and marrying an indigenous woman left whaling, remained on Herschel Island for a time, and became a very prominent person in that area of Canada off of which the Island lie. Captain Leavitt’s activities would have been noted as he was a captain and it affected his performance of company duties, but it also indicates that if there were women available to him, they were also there for any crew member.

     If the assumption was that an all male crew being alone at sea was responsible for situational Homosexuality because of isolation, any record of it on land where there were options would be important. 

     As the whaling ship Newport was wintering on Herschel Island over the winter of 1894-1895, the log keeper wrote,

“Monday Feb 11th

     A light breeze from the W.N.W. Cloudy and misty Bar. 30.10. Ther. -4 Got a load of meat put the Steward (Scott) forward for Sodomy and Onanism of Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted but was overtaken and brought back.”

     This was not because of isolation.

     That year the population of Herschel Island was the largest in the company’s history of using that island, 1,500 people, not counting the Indigenous people who came in and out of the community to trade.

     Captains were having sex with their wives, a birth is recorded, and captains, and presumably others, were having sex with Indigenous women, and, yet, even with the option, Mr. Scott was involved in Sodomy.

     His was not situational caused by isolation.

     In the log of the Jesse H Freeman the lack of isolation is clearly spelled out.

"1894, 11. 29,

    There were no outdoor sports as the wind was too cutting and all the captains who have their wives dined on their own vessels and entertained the bachelors and “grass widowers" and everyone took in the minstrel Performance in the evening. Twenty young men from the crews of different ships have organized a company and dubbed themselves the "Herschal Island Snowflakes" and this was the first entertainment given out of compliment to the ladies the invitation cards included everyone and It was given on board the Beluga and was very good in every respect music specialities and costumes I have paid $100 for a much poorer performance in San Francisco and the ladies provided a fine supper for the performers which was served on board the Thrasher."

     In other posts Sophie Porter refers to musical and theatrical productions by a theater company group of men in the manliest of trades.

     "1894 12.10.

     “Wind still fresh & Captain and Mrs Weeks gave a party on board the Thrasher to celebrate the Captain’s birthday & We had dinner at five o'clock and cards and dancing till supper and everyone had such a good time that some did not want to go home when the party broke up with the Virginia Reel at 2:30 o’clock the music was furnished by the Herschal Island Snowflakes"

     "1894. 01.01.

     Fine and pleasant weather & Calm nearly all the Captains called to wish me a Happy New Year Will was too sick to see anyone minstrel performance on board the Beluga which was pronounced very good."

     "1894 01.23.

     Fine and pleasant our party was given on board the Beluga instead of at Captain Murray’s as his steward was suddenly taken ill We had only a few hours notice to prepare the deck house of the Beluga but everyone set to work with a will and cleared the ice from the sides and roof decorated and draped the whole place with flags hung lamps and Chinese lanterns waxed the floor for dancing and arranged the five tables for “Progressive Whist" which was to be the first feature of the entertainment At : o'clock the deck room looked as bright and cozy as anyone could wish this being the first card party we have had everyone enjoyed the novelty the prizes which had been rather a source of worry to Mrs Cook and myself were 1st a ladies’ painted wall pocket, 1st gentlemen’s a very handsome cribbage board made by the mate of the Navarch, ladies’ booby wooden bean pot and beans gentlemen’s booby miniature bowhead decorated with ribbon which had the words "They're after me" painted on it Captain Weeks won this prize Mrs Green the ladies’ booby Captain Tilton the 1st gentlemen’s and little, Captain Porter who played lady or the occasion won the 1st ladies’ prize After supper we danced till = ocloc)& everyone complimented us on the success of our party and all agreed it was the prettiest we have had yet at Herschal Island"

       1894 01. 25

     Fine & Cloudy weather and light wind the captain shipped James May as first assistant engineer A theatrical performance was given on board the Beluga by Fry's Specialty Company A discussion arose among some of the Captains about the refreshments etc."

      1895 3.15

     Clear and cold with fresh winds the ladies and their husbands were invited to dinner on board the William Baylies. only Captain and Mrs Weeks Captain and Mrs Cooks Will and Dorothy Porter accepted & Mrs Sherman had a toothache Mrs Green has retired from society and I had one of my vile headaches In the evening a performance was given by the minstrels in honor of St Patrick".

     Scott, the steward, was not isolated at sea with few or any sexual options. He was living in a mixed and thriving community.

III

     There are sites on the internet that house digitized images of hundreds of log books. Prefacing each scanned log book there is information about the ship and a list of topics a person, or persons, considering reading the log book might see as topics of interest.

     However, in the case of the Newport log, previous readers of the log had mentioned whales, baseball games, hunting expeditions, and other items of interest found in the log and deserving of further research, but there was no mention of what might be considered an out of the ordinary occurrence on a whale ship, the event with the steward, Scott.

     In order for there to be this summary of topics before the digitized original log book for the Newport posted on the internet, one or more people would have had to read the log and, as I know it to be done, have the list double checked which would involve at least one additional person. This means that, in spite of multiple people coming upon the entry about the ship’s steward, Scott, it had been deemed to be of no general interest enough to be included among the topics to be encountered which could determine whether or not a researcher would read that log or move on looking for a list of topics prefacing a log book that was of interest.

     The February 1895 entry that answered the question about Homosexuality on whaling ships has been there but any reference to it was omitted and the answer to the question and the man whose name is part of the answer were erased, hidden.

     And then, along comes a Gay man by chance, and sees it for what it is and the importance it has.

     I have to assume that with what is involved in reading and taking notes on a log book and wanting to insure anything that could be a topic of research for other scholars whether or not it was of one’s own interest was listed, an entry that answers the ever present question of there being homosexuality or even the mention of a Gay whaler should have been included. Why it wasn't would seem to be because of its just being swept aside for personal, religious, or political reasons but not for scholarship, or the person combing the log for topics of interest just had no interest and so denied it to those for whom it is.

     Regardless why, knowable history was unknown.

     And here I was, a Gay man in his seventies who had fought for Gay rights for some forty plus years with a good degree of success, and, quite by accident, after having been randomly assigned a generic log book, came across not only the first log mention of “Homosexuality”, but, if one considers the whole picture, a Homosexual.

     I saw the significance of the two terms, Sodomy” and “Onanism” as they have been used consistently within the “clobber passages” in the Bible, the standard, out of context, and not in the original tongue bible verses spit at Gay people, and saw their positive place in correcting the accepted historical record.

     I did what I had done at the xerox machine in the days before convenient electronic devices and then continued in the digital age. I made multiple copies of the entry and the whole log book so that even if I went to the museum’s official copy to consult, I would have back up copies to edit and a few read-only.

     I also spent a lot of time investigating if this was the first acknowledged mention as I was posting the entry and source wherever I could after my discovery and did not want to make a false claim and would welcome correction if it were there as it is the information that is what is important, not who found it.

     When the log book was assigned, the Newport log was divided into five sections at random. By total chance I got the section with the entry which might have been glossed over as just more words whose meaning may be known or unknown and typed with no attention given to it other than typing words which, if it had gone to any of the other transcribers who may or may not have seen their importance might have been noticed or, again, just glossed over.

     Although I had found the entry in 2017 and had spent time searching for more, even up to the summer of 2023, my inquiries to see if this was the first entry found related to Homosexuality got the same answer about assumptions and implications expressing the required interest without actually appreciating the significance, until I received a log entry from a professor of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, a friend, who while doing research on climate based on the readings of wind and weather contained in whale ship logs since they would return annually to the same areas to hunt, and their readings, compared over the years, showed changes over time, had come across a log entry dealing with a Mr. William Smith, a steward, receiving lashes on the Charles Phelps for offering another crew member money for sex along with a number of other serious crimes.

IV

Prefacing each scanned log book on Archive.org is information about the ship and a list of topics a person, or persons, reading the log book saw as topics of interest. So it is that the Log Book for the whaling ship Charles Phelps, upon which the unfortunate William Smith was a crew member, has this as its cover page: (1)

     However, this, and a subsequent cover page of another log, illustrates that what is actually of importance, but not being on the communal radar, is omitted from the yhistorical record, or, worse, omitted because it was filtered through someone’s personal, political and/or religious beliefs. In this case there is a simple list of unremarkable topics, almost predictable, yet in this logbook was the following entry from January 30, 1843, (2)

     Besides describing his punishment for attempting to stab an officer with a knife and trying to get the cook to put poison in the captain's bread that anyone could consume, thereby threatening the lives of the whole crew, the log entry notes that the ship steward had a stricter punishment than would have been meted out because he “allso tried to hire a Portuguese [deckhand] to commit Soddomy”.

     Although the general assumption is that there had to be Homosexual acts more as a release for a crew of men sailing around in a totally male environment than, perhaps, sexual orientation, even as this recording of an actual event brings the assumption into reality, it was not deemed to be a topic of interest.

     As a result, a researcher looking for such a reference would move on to the next log, hoping its cover page points in the right direction, while passing by what could have actually been pointed out.

     Likewise, when transcribing the log of the Newport as it wintered at Herschel Island 1894-95 the topic list is also lacking. (3)

     The cover page contains the usual ship information and list of topics of interest. Yet again, we have this entry (4)

     “Monday Feb 11th

     A light breeze from the W.N.W. Cloudy and misty Bar. 30.10. Ther. -4 Got a load of meat put the Steward (Scott) forward for Sodomy and Onanism of Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted but was overtaken and brought back.” 

     I have found that, when relating this entry even to educated adults, I have had to define "Onanism" which could be a reason this entry was not noted. Onanism being just a word a clue to something else, should have been included if the reviewer had the curiosity to see what it was as it could have just as easily been a term for something nautical as a sexual act.

      By cross referencing the Charles Phelps on the collected crew lists on www.whalinghistory.org, which were supplied by the New Bedford Whaling Museum transcribers and consulting the New York census from 1855-1865, I was able to find what happened to the steward of the Charles Phelps in later life and the fact that he was married with a number of children, introduces a topic of study beyond the existence of Homosexual activity on board ship. Logs of the captains of the Newport and Charles Phelps, covering the complete voyages, related what led up to the lashes for Smith in multiple entries and what occurred after, while Mr. Scott still having a good three months of wintering before a hunt at sea for a few months then returning to the island in the fall for a second wintering was never mentioned again which could imply he may have found a less open location to meet others like himself.

     Along with filling in the gap about Homosexuality on whaling ships, there is a further area of study. Before Psychology became an established science, there was no clear delineation between Homosexual activity based on orientation or situation, which is common with long male/male isolation. The Straight/Gay binary is rather recent as sex was sex as long as somewhere along the line a person produced an heir and society continued smoothly. After a Homosexual act or a series of acts in a prolonged male-only confinement some go back to Straight upon return to mixed society, some find they are bisexual, some that they are actually Gay, but the act itself is not necessarily based on sexual orientation. Rather than a strict Binary of Gay/Straight, reality favors Kinsey.

     Non-Binary was here before Sigmund Freud had to decide what was “normal” and what was “abnormal”, of course including anything related to himself as normal. He was a married man. That is why the accepted assumption that there had to be homosexual activity, but not necessarily intimate, meaningful sex which would have involved emotion not just physical release, is has been replaced with fact.

     What needs to be done is to collect all such references, cross reference where possible, to come to a possible delineation of situational Homosexuality and Sexual orientation based intimacy after combing the log books. Victorian vocabulary had two meanings, and, although the Quakers couldn’t care less about one’s sexual orientation because of their beliefs on equality, this changed as the 19 century did, and by the 1890s what had been tacitly allowed (tolerated) became an object of religious condemnation.

     Why the steward of the Charles Phelps had to offer pay is of interest. Why did he choose the Portuguese add-on crew member? What happened after his being in chains? What led up to the attempted crimes? Were the steward Scott incident and that of Smith one time occurrences or common with him and others? Were there other instances on Herschel Island that winter alone?

     This information, although in the logs, has, up to this point, been overlooked and not having been included in the list of topics covered in the logs has been denied to researchers. I believe this area needs to be pursued beginning with the transcribing of the Charles Phelps log and expanding from there.

     Upon sending the Newport log entry to a number of professors who deal with maritime history, this response sums them all up.

     “There’s quite a lot written about homosexuality and pirates. However, I don’t know of anything published about this subject in the whaling industry.”

     We are at a point where this has changed. What we were told not to think about Billy Budd is Billy Budd. 

     I had a meeting with some people in charge of the museum and presented the idea of establishing a Gay study committee as it already had a Women’s Committee, a Cape Verdean committee and similar ones for other groups. However, as it was explained to me, being a museum, a repository of collected history and not a research institute, the museum has no internal mechanism to set up a dedicated department to this one topic as each newly discovered topic could demand a committee or advisory board, but it can evaluate what information is supplied and curate it.

     To add some legitimacy to my work and to have a central repository for any information found, I established the Quigley Institute of Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology.

                        V

     I did not want something this important to be viewed simply as a hobby so I approached the museum formally with my proposal.

     [sent] Wed, Aug 2, 2023 at 3:25 PM “I am proposing that the Old Dartmouth Historic Society as the curator of the history of the Old Dartmouth Purchase, and as the Gay Community is part of that community, establish a department or sub-department with a committee similar to the other committees dedicated to the various communities within the city. This blog explains the what, why, and wherefores of the proposal.

     [sent] Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 12:47 PM “ Why we need a committee on Gay Research. “A light breeze from the W.N.W. Cloudy and misty Bar. 30.10. Ther. -4 Got a load of meat put the Steward (Scott) forward for Sodomy and Onanism of Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted but was overtaken and brought back.”

     This is a topic, an obvious event, important enough to include in the official ship log that cannot be ignored, yet it is not listed and this log would be passed over by a researcher looking into this specific topic. We are to preserve history.

     [received] August 7, 2023, at 9:08 AM. “Thank you for your email and for sharing some of your research with us. Amanda and I are glad to meet with you to discuss Museum efforts with the LGBTQ+ community. Amanda is on vacation through next week. How about meeting on Aug 30th at 3pm? Amanda may be work from home that day; if so, I can share a zoom link as the date gets closer.”

     [sent] Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 11:13 AM thought prior to our meeting tomorrow I would supply my reason for my wanting to pursue the topic as it is an important one” (an attachment summarizing reasons was included)

     [sent] Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 8:56 AM Thanks for the meeting yesterday. I am going to make a list of all whaling information resources, encouraging people to transcribe, I will include the NBWM rules for transcribing, and will design some way to coordinate things to eliminate duplication. I am looking up a clearing house for professors and researchers looking for topics and will put together some sort of general plea for people who have the info but nothing to do with it. I am also putting something together to go to all Gay media outlets about the entry discovery and the need for follow up. I will forward whatever I come up with.I have gotten an email address. Thinking of calling it the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology. Fancy names attract results. So far we have the two log entries and what was in Sophie Porter's personal journal which I will have to reread to get the the Drag reference, and anything else I have come across.”

     Leadership was fully aware of my work and the importance of the February 11, 1895 Newport log entry.

     The museum was not only made aware of the Institute and my intention to continue research but acknowledged receipt of this information.

     Aug 31, 2023 at 1:28 PM Thank you for this follow-up to our meeting yesterday. As noted, Amanda and I are committed to making NBWM a Museum for All, to supporting research into our collections related to gender and sexual identity, and to making connections in the LGBTQIA+ community. As noted, I think there are three areas that we identified from that meeting that stand out in relation to your interests. Your personal research project, working on making the collections more accessible for researchers with an interest in gender and sexuality (including digitization and refinement of tagging), and increasing visibility in our galleries or publications related to research on these topics. I would also very much like to see us able to build bridges with the community and grow collections around modern regional queer history - but, that will take time. For now, I will connect with other museum staff on ways we can support what you have started.”

VI

     When the museum decided that, in order to get quantity when it came to the number of transcribed pages that could be done in the shortest amount of time, I and other transcribers had some concerns about important log books being crowd sourced for transcription by random people only identifiable by a chosen screen name as some logs have value for reasons the on-site transcribers might know and will be watching for as they transcribe what random people, no matter how well intentioned, may not see as such.

     Since 2017 I have been cross referencing certain transcriptions I have worked on with what had been labeled the “Sophie Porter Journal” on a research website I found through an earlier cross reference involving another log. I have used her journal to list all the ships, captains, and wives that wintered at Herschel Island from 1894-1895, and only relatively recently found that the “Sophie Porter Journal” was actually the log book of the Jesse H Freeman and she, the captain’s wife, had been the keeper of the log. At sea, she had followed the format of ship log entries by including directions, wind speeds, weather, and other information routinely kept in a ship’s log which was the business ledger for the company, but also included with some personal notes. When wintering with the ships nestled in the ice until the spring thaw, she leaves out the readings and observation since the ship isn’t moving and concentrates largely on the social scene, including the names of indigenous people and incidents in their lives like births and deaths.

     When cross referencing the Newport log that I was transcribing in 2017 with the “Journal”, I found that quite often, for his purposes, the transcriber of it would leave in enough of the entry to give its essence but often did so by reducing an event to a simply summary as was done when stating, “The captain replaced the steward,” in his “Journal” version when in the actual log book the full story was the captain’s needing to deal with the crew’s boredom.

     Choosing two additional entries at random and finding they too were more detailed in the log as opposed to the “Journal”, I suggested that people on the Whaling Museum Women’s Committee not delay but start transcribing the log of the Jesse H Freeman immediately as the names of the captain’s wives alone are important and their daily life on the Island would present an interesting picture.

     Just placing the Jesse H Freeman log on the From the Page site for random transcribers to work on whatever part they chose when they chose to, only meant it would be gotten to eventually when it should be done now by a dedicated team as we needed to control this one and not rely on random transcribers.

     It was put on the crowd source site anyway, open to anyone at any time in any order, and I saw a problem.

     Instead of the log of the Jesse H Freeman being transcribed in an orderly manner, one person was not only jumping around through the whole log, but was leaving partial pages for someone else to finish. This made going back to a previous page to insert something increasing familiarity with the handwriting led a transcriber to decipher was very difficult as there may be randomly chosen, partially done, or not started pages scattered throughout making finding a sought after page difficult, and all those little bits of history that made the job interesting were removed making a pleasurable task a chore.

     I wrote to the transcribers I work with asking that the transcribing of the Jesse H Freeman be done in page order. As a member of a team and having worked in tandem with other transcribers on the other logs, an orderly procedure benefited all working on it.

     I asked, “If anyone here is [screen name] or knows [screen name], could you or they stop jumping around and transcribe the Freeman in order and not this haphazard jumping which is going to call for a lot of editing as the person leaves a trail of [?]s in whole paragraphs as they zip off to the next page.

     The Freeman is showing itself to be a treasure trove of information because of who kept it and where. The second thing is that as the log keeper is the captain’s wife who does not perform any ships duties but observes them, her entries are narratives that contain many details that a regular log might skip. Most logs refer to lowering the boats, Sophie not only explains the procedure in detail, but compares the Atlantic to Pacific procedure for lowering.

     Yesterday I came upon a half done page from which ChrisB ran away. The Freeman had encountered the boats of a sunken whaler and had the Captain’s wife tell her what happened and she wrote it all down. Because it was not part of the log, not being the Freeman’s business, whereas like other logs she normally stayed within margins, the story went from edge to edge of the page and the person who digitized the tale did not notice that so the first two to three words of the page long narrative were not included. Since we have the Freeman log I went to the library to consult it.

     Archive.org has volume one on its site and only mentions there is a volume two implying the second volume is missing or hinting they would like it digitized. We have volume 2 at NBWM. It just hasn’t been digitized. Major find. Needs to be transcribed (internally. You have no idea what the jumping around is doing.)

     In the sunken ship narrative, needing more space, she continued the edge to edge narrative below the regular formatted entry on the next page and is not part of the July 4 entry although it is transcribed that way on the next page where the digitizer, apparently seeing the previous error without correcting it, adjusted the scanner to get this part of the edge to edge entry complete.

     This is turning out not to be just a standard log and needs special attention to both volumes and group interaction in order to not miss the important things that are historical. At Alaska, she points out the indigenous people on the US side are filthy, uneducated, trading for things like they were desperate. On the Canadian side they were somewhat educated, cleaner, and more organized in their trading.

     Things like that which would not have been included in a standard log. So, if you are or know ChrisB, could you or they do the log in page order not in random clumps needing heavy correction.”

     I erroneously assumed that as I had been transcribing for 8 years this request would be given serious consideration as it was not a random complaint but a request based on experience and what would make the experience more enjoyable and less of a chore.

     Instead I was informed first that “I think we all agree this is a prioritized journal for transcription, we will get it right,” and then assured “Our review system and rules document are set up to control the end product. Do you have a document to share with your extended research on this journal?”

     I also received this written lecture.

     “Any transcriber may wish to work with log/journal content, of course, as a historical or cultural project. The actual transcribing is what we are all doing together, however, and is not any single transcriber’s project. So in fact, we are all reviewers, editors, as well as transcribers. Our final edited product is crowd sourced, worked on by multiple people, and because of that better than if one person “owned” a page or a whole log/journal. There is nothing in our rules document against doing partial pages. A link to the rules document, and summary transcription conventions are on every FtP page.”

     And in a rather nasty move the email contained, “Thank you [screen name] for any and all work you do in these primary sources. Feel free to come to our monthly Zoom meetings if you want to chat about the work, the process, or to share your thoughts.”

     Besides the slap in the face at the end, what needs to be noted in these emails is that in one I was assured, “Our review system and rules document are set up to control the end product,” and that “we are all reviewers, editors, as well as transcribers. Our final edited product is crowd sourced, worked on by multiple people, and because of that better than if one person “owned” a page or a whole log/journal.

     In the meantime I responded, “If we were just monkeys in a room writing Shakespeare, there is more to transcribing than just looking at handwriting and typing it out. AI can do that.

     Also, although any transcriber may wish to work with a log/journal content, and there is nothing in our rules document against doing partial pages, unless you are actually doing the transcribing you may not be aware that this makes it difficult and removes some of what makes it fascinating. As volunteers, this should not be a job and a mechanical one of simple rote copying.

     We are finding history and that needs to be acknowledged, accepted, and encouraged. Jumping is causing a problem.

     In my 8 years, starting as the sole full time transcriber volunteer beginning with the Catalpa, I have been given rules but never asked for input or being spoken to about the full transcriber experience that in my case alone has led to multiple historic discoveries such as The info on Smith of the Catalpa that was passed on to the Martha’s Vineyard museum that it did not have, the first reference to homosexuality in a ship log that the museum is blind to the importance of, the true story behind the panorama history, some bad racial business, multiple connections between captains, ships,. and events, that would have been missed if the transcription was a hopscotch crap shoot.

     If I can go through multiple pages having been familiar with the script and can type in info because I know the handwriting and previously encountered names, why should that involve reviewers, editors, as well as transcribers, crowdsourcing, being worked on by multiple people when a transcriber can just keep typing and be able to go back and replace a [?] because I know I had left a [?] somewhere and can find it.

     As far as it being “better than if one person “owned” a page or a whole log/journal”, really? I have eight years experience that belies that assertion. 

      In spite of a simple request that members of the team act together in an orderly way for the sake of fellow transcribers, I was informed that, “Put simply, our process, working as a team, is the one we do and will continue. If you are unable to work this way let me know.”

     Obviously either I am not a member of the team who made a request of the other members of the team or I am not on the same level as the others, so teamwork is a one-way street that only applies when I am expected to accept whatever anyone else wants or does but am not a part of the team that should be treated as one when teamwork helps me. 

     I chose the option to go my own way and, when I am done with a transcript not on the crowd sourcing site, I intended to submit it to the museum and to the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology where it will be protected from those “reviewers, editors, as well as transcribers” whose “final edited product is crowd sourced, worked on by multiple people, and because of that better than if one person “owned” a page or a whole log/journal.”

     I offer proof that while everyone might see, few, if any, notice the history that is right there, clearly visible but ignored and, because of limited life experiences and personal, religious, and/or political beliefs, a person might feel free to gloss over certain information, or, being unversed in the proper historic euphemisms, sees merely words and misses the concept. 

     I also offer proof that erasure still happens and is not always obvious.

     I offer proof that people are too comfortable in doing the erasing and/or accepting it.

     And I offer proof that when an action does not affect a particular person or organization, it can be dismissed as unimportant because of this tunnel vision.

     I assumed the above was happening, or at least the possibility of it happening existed and was comfortable in that assumption as I had seen it happen in other places on other issues, and am now further validated in that assumption as I have evidence of it in a very confusing turn of events.

     While transcribing the logbook for the Newport back in 2017 as it wintered on Herschel Island the winter of 1894-1895, I came across what had been listed as the “Sophie Porter Journal” which was actually the logbook of the Jesse H Freeman for which Sophie kept the log for her husband whom she accompanied on that voyage. The person whose transcription I found explained it was a “poetic” version of the log as it did not contain everything from each log entry but had been modified to emphasize those entries and their details dealing with Indigenous people, especially their medical needs, as he was a doctor who worked with the First Nations People of Canada.

     In his ‘poetic” version, Sophie is very maternal towards the Indigenous people with whom she lived on the island and took a number of photographs of her daughter, Dorothy, playing with the Indigenous children.

     However, this “poetic” transcription only included the time on the Island while the actual ship log included entries on the voyage from home port to the winter base. It is in these opening entries that we read of Sophie Porter’s first contact with the ”Natives” which revealed the attitude of the time when it came to people of other cultures.

     In the pre-island part of the log, upon first encountering Indigenous People she found them dirty, disgusting, frightening, and not the type of people she or her daughter should associate with.

     “ They were all very much interested in and friendly disposed toward Dorothy, who does not at all appreciate their advances, nor do I for they are so dreadfully filthy in their persons & clothes. I don’t want too close a contact with them.”

     She also noted that when approaching Alaska the “Natives” on the American side of the border in contrast to those on the Canadian side were less educated, haphazard in what they traded goods for, and were worse off appearance-wise than those in the Canadian ports, thereby expressing the idea that it could be a question of nature vs nurture which gave hope that her attitude was changeable upon education as it would later prove to have been the case.

     As can be seen footnote (5) there is one early entry that had been edited with a thicker pen in which she crossed out the word “Indians” and replaced it with the word “people”. It is not done as a correction as she wrote, as the pen is thicker as is the writing, which implies the change was made much later as the pen does not match the thickness of the rest of the log book except in another instance I found where she had obviously come back to make corrections as her description of the other women she met early in the voyage was similarly crossed out and changed, with what would appear the same second pen, from a complimentary description of the other captains’ wives as a nice group she would like to get to know better to “I met the other wives”.

     Considering the similarity to thickness of pen and darkness of ink, these changes may have been made after the voyage as Sophie Porter reread her log entries as any decent writer would before handing in their work, and could indicate a wider opening of mind and change of attitude in many aspects of her life as she does at one time respond to the question of a friend back home about her ability to live in such an isolated place with a rhapsodic description of the Community.

     Obviously, somewhere along the voyage her attitude toward the Indigenous People changed as in later entries she refers to individuals by name and not the blanket title, “native” and she might include what brought about her more open attitude toward the Indigenous People in her detailed and sometimes self-reflective ship’s log.

     When I began transcribing, it was to avoid the docent duty of leading school field trips that the museum thought I would be good at having spent my professional career as a teacher, but it was that very detail that had me insist on not leading tours as I had seen how docents got treated on field trips in spite of the chaperone’s best efforts, and did not want to become that target in retirement when I could be enjoying what I was doing. I, instead, emphasized that my close to 40 years in the classroom had given me the ability to read all manner of penmanship, and was handed the log for the Catalpa of Fremantle Fenian escape fame to transcribe as it was needed for an upcoming exhibit.

     Until then, transcription was strictly on an as-needed basis done by whoever in the research library had the time or a docent pulled off the floor for a while. Now there was an anchor person, and, to keep me busy and available, I and another volunteer, also not interested in noisy, easily distracted children, worked on two follow up ship logs and would be joined later by new people interested in transcription until the museum had a team of volunteer transcribers working on various documents depending on the need and requests of researchers.

     A transcriber followed one log keeper from beginning to end and got used to their personalities as revealed in the log entries and this often made transcribing a log progressively easier by becoming familiar with the writer’s style, expressions, and writing idiosyncrasies. Progressing through history recorded by a participant made some events like episodic television as some complications on the voyage came to neat conclusions throughout it while others continued as an ongoing storylines through the whole voyage and might have to be continued on the next ship as those entries on the stewards and cooks who behaved badly but were transferred along with their problems to another ship show some mobility among the characters in the tale.

     In this process, transcribers had been allowed to follow leads and in so doing have found historical details that were new or might modify existing historical assumptions and “urban “legends”. I have written blogs about some of the connections discovered between things that were not seemingly connected even if those connections were as tenuous as the thread on a spider’s web.

     A transcriber could watch Sophie’s growth and would be able to compare old and new attitudes and recognize the moments that led to the change. They would see it because the whole process was in front of them.

     However, under the new system of crowdsourcing, which was introduced so more pages of transcription could be produced regularly, transcribers now do whatever page comes up on the screen. What is transcribed one day might have no connection to what had been done at the previous session’s transcriptions, so important entries are rendered routine and mundane whereas they could contain something that should have been noticed or might connect two things presently seen as unrelated. As multiple people are transcribing random pages on a central and publicly accessible web site, to one person Sophie Porter is a bigot, to another, an open minded example of what all our attitudes should be toward “the other”, while a third, who may have transcribed the moment the change began to take root, not having the book-ending sides, has no idea of the importance of what seems a routine entry. A minor act of kindness might be overlooked as it has no context to the transcriber. Instead of having the knowledge of that moment now, it might, or might not be noted by someone further in the future but denied us in the meantime when we could have had that information.

     Objections to the new approach have been expressed but have been answered with a descriptions of the assembly line approach where layers of people down the line double check the pages as they produce a true transcription for posting, but in the process all those people also see but do not understand the content as production, quantity over quality, takes over in creating a bureaucracy.

     Another transcriber found two entries in the log of a ship whose captain seemed enamored of flogging his crew at the least provocation, and was surprised, as a descendant of a whaling ship master himself who has spent much of his adult life dealing with the history of whaling on many topics including family history in the industry, that on two occasions the captain whipped “the dog”. This was a unique example of animal cruelty that he had never encountered before.

     Under the new random-page system he might never have solved this mystery of animal cruelty himself, but, as he was under the old system at the time, he was able to complete the log as one continuous account and found that “the dog”, lacking capitalization which was a common writing characteristic, was actually the nickname of a particularly rough crew member and not an animal at all. Again, had this transcription been done under the new method, he would have been left believing he had found a rare case of animal cruelty while another random transcriber would only know it was a crew member.

     Because of his curiosity about the dog, the transcriber did what we had been able to do before; he went and investigated the captain, and established that he was a consistently cruel master with crews that, over time, became more unruly in response to his brutality requiring more of it and that “the dog” was the main thorn in his side.

     A story within the log that brings humanity to it that could have been missed. His transcribing not only produced a document but his following leads revealed history and added it to the museum’s record.

     After my transcribing of the Catalpa log I, along with a new transcriber, was assigned the Arnolda. When reviewing the digitized manuscript before beginning, it became obvious that in digitizing the log, some of the pages from the Arnolda and some from the Rebecca Sims that were kept in a folder because of loose pages had been dropped and reassembled with some pages out of order. We had to reorganize the pages and, as there were two logs, each picked a one.

     I chose the Arnolda section which eventually showed up in the blog “Tangled Web” (https://www.quigleycartoon.com/?p=15357) because of the connections, real or circumstantial, that brought it all back to the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth on Cape Cod where I was a Docent.

     That was in 2016.

     When we finished this transcription, we were assigned the Newport as it wintered on Herschel Island and, again, we divided the log into two parts, and because of that arbitrary division, I came across the entry about the steward, Smith, being sent forward for Onanism and Sodomy. I obviously had a reason to notice this but have wondered if it would have been noticed had the other Transcriber gotten that section.

     So close, but no cigar.

     This log entry was the impetus for the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology (www.gaywhalers.org) which has had some success in gathering accounts of Homosexuality on whaling ships while continuing to investigate if this was the first such entry discovered. There are some mainland court cases related to sexual predation involving captains and Cabin boys but the related documents are court records and not the ship’s log where, obviously, the log would not record the captain’s offenses. Investigation involved corresponding with various archives and researchers in what has now been a 7 year process and has included meetings with the administration of the New Bedford Whaling Museum that resulted in the Institute as the museum is curatorial and not research based.

     The evidence is there and it has not been silently treated.

     Sitting at the most recent museum volunteer meeting, a transcriber who works remotely from home, as many of us do as all that is needed for transcription is a computer and a place to sit and do the work, mentioned his work on the Rebecca Sims which, as I mentioned, had been done 6 years previous. It had shown up on the crowd source page and when I consulted that site, I not only saw that he was a good way through an already transcribed log book, but out of curiosity when I looked up the Arnolda, Newport, and Mercator, the first whaling ship to enter Japan and whose records were used to prepared Commodore Perry for his official visit there, I found all four logs were on the crowdsourcing site and all of them were in some degree of completion meaning time, energy, and attention had been given by a number of people to completed work that has already been done and has been used for the last 7 years.

     I have written about these ship blogs, established a website, have met with Museum leadership, and have written about them in a book all while people were duplicating work already done and being used.

     My main concern was obviously to see how the entry about Mr. Smith, the steward, was treated by another transcriber and if, as I had had to explain Onanism to a surprising number of people, there might be some explanatory note from them.

     Instead I found the erasure.

     The “official” transcript on the crowd source site that had applied a carefully monitored process involving multiple checks and balances that I was assured guaranteed the final product was a true transcription, jumps from February 10, 1895 to February 12, 1895 totally omitting the existing entry for February 11, 1895 and as it is the longest entry compared to the others on the page and being at the very bottom of it and not mixed in the body of the page, this could not have been in error.

     For whatever reason the transcriber, who can be traced down, chose to remove this passage and, if this were to remain the final version, would have erased rediscovered history, a history we already have the record of.

     This is not omission, but erasure.

     Fewer and fewer people are learning to read cursive. In the future, only a select few will be able to read the original manuscripts while most will have to rely on what has been transcribed. Had I not transcribed this blog in 2017 and run with it, Mr. Scott would be lost to history for obvious reasons. Unless we can truly rely on some random person somewhere down the line and hope that the line is not peopled with those who find such erasure acceptable, this will repeat.

     Sadly it was removed somewhere down the line.

     This is the actual page from the transcribing website. Note the number of entries on the original as opposed to the completed work on the website. (6)

     It took six years for someone to come along and erase us again. (7)

     According to the now official Transcript of the whale ship Newport, there was no February 11 in the year of Our Lord 1895, no such person as Mr. Scott, the steward, and just the usual Heterosexuality at sea because with this erasure, the only sex we know for certain that took place on Herschel Island in 1895 was that between the Heterosexual captains and their wives, and various men with Indigenous women.

     This shows that the discovery of ourselves is very complicated and proof that we have been either simply omitted or, as this case shows, deliberately erased because of someone’s political, religious, and/or personal beliefs and not the reason of the historical record.

     We do have the full Newport log and we are in it.

     We must be returned to it.

     Although the Museum was able to access the site and re-insert the erased entry assuming from their paradigm that all is now well, the fact that, in spite of the digitized image being on the page with the corresponding transcription where the entry is missing right next to it, belies the assurances that, as “we are all reviewers, editors, as well as transcribers, and with the product being crowdsourced, worked on by multiple people……the final product is correct” that I received in response to my expressed concern about transcript manipulation.

     Odd that the only change to a transcription unnoticed by the chain of inspection is the one related to Homosexuality. Odder is that so many people are able to edit and/or erase an entry, and, even after it is posted as complete, someone is still able to get into the

transcription and edit it. I am aware that people with such access in other instances have that same control on other websites and I had already been involved in a confrontation that eventually involved another museum when an important fact was replaced with something that erased a fact worthy of research.

     In the case of a whaling captain listed on www.whalinghistory.org as “lost at sea”, in her “Journal” Sophie Porter described his death in detail, the reaction of those on the Island, and the disposition of the remains which were sent by the steamer Jeanie to San Francisco to be returned home to his family, all of which took place on Herschel Island and not at sea. Seeking to correct this, I was first rebuffed by the website for the most anti-historic reason.

     I presented the correction and the log entries upon which the correction was based and was informed, “Thanks for this added info. I’m going to leave “at sea” because it is my shorthand for during the voyage.”

     This, in effect, was this site providing misleading information in spite of having the actual facts, and I objected.

     “ Wouldn’t it be important for research precision that At Sea not imply while the ship was actually sailing around. This dealing with dying people in Herschel Island could be a study in itself, what with the frostbite, runaways, one guy just dying, Weeks falling, who got frozen for shipment and who was just buried. Also indicates where some whale crew members’ bodies could be found today especially as climate change is affecting Herschel with longer thaw periods and warmer ground. Shorthand could misdirect.”

     Instead of agreement, I got further pushback which revealed that this person did not give much attention to the log entries I had sent as support for the correction as the response was, “You make a good point. I will change it to “fell from the rigging while at Herschel Island,” to which I had to further point out., “He did not fall from rigging. He fell between below decks on the stairs hitting the keel and the skin and crushing bones.”

      An earlier project involved transcribing old whale ship crew lists where, for identification purposes and as ships went to many foreign ports and those in the Southern slave states, the skin description of the various shades of Black crew members had to be rather precise. Sometimes a term we find derogatory now did not have that connotation in the early days of whaling so, while some will be triggered by the term SAMBO, written as it is in capital letters and appearing long before the story to which it is now attached was written, indicated the Black Crew member was from South America and isn’t and never was a slave. Also found in the skin descriptions were possible clues before 1865 as to who was a self-emancipated person and who may never had been enslaved, described in such a way that their existence and final pay check could be verified and paid out upon completion of a voyage while also letting those concerned know who on the ship might need extra protection from slave recovering bounty hunters and in Southern ports.

     In doing the crew lists and noting the combination of skin color variations and what seemed to be a specific use of empty spaces for places of origin and present residence, and after consulting an historian working on a book about the self-emancipation of the formerly enslaved by sea, I sent my idea to the transcription team members as we often do so among ourselves when we discover something or might accidentally come across the answer to another’s question.

     “So far on the lists I have done, “Blk” is the skin designation for crew members who either have no place of origin, have no place of origin and no listed present residence, or have a slave state or city listed as place of origin but no present residence. Crew members who have both a place of origin in a Northern state or city, and a Northern city as present residence are listed as “Black”. Both designations are used on the same crew list by the same agent, and the voyages I have done so far are after the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, but before the Mass General laws: Part 1:Title XV: Section 102, after which the number of Black men on whale voyages plunged in number. In 1850 the second and broader Fugitive Slave Law was passed, and researchers might want to know if the number went back up and may be helped by the two different designations if they continued to be used. This could be useful to future researchers so it may need to be strictly considered.”

     This was a response to a suggestion that for uniformity all variations of Black skin terms be reduced to only Black, thereby, in my mind anyway, omitting yet another road to research as what could have been found under the original terms would not even be sought to begin with as no variations would be in the historical record.

     Although the uniformity approach was eventually abandoned after at least one in-person explanatory ride in the museum’s elevator, even in that there was an indication that history is first presented through a filter of someone else’s opinion and not left to pure discovery, thereby, controlling research.

     I was informed in one of those “splaining” emails, “That is one possibility. Having no place of origin only suggests they are not US citizens. Black also can refer to Cape Verdeans, some Azoreans, occasional Native Americans, and Polynesians as well as slaves or American Blacks. The crew lists, when completed, will make one more tool to explore the topic of escaping american slaves. Whether the designation is blk or black usually depends on who is entering the information. You might see if you can coordinate the use of blk with handwriting.”

     This person is involved with the website that posts the lists, but does not transcribe any and is unaware and grossly uninformed in her response beginning with the glaring assumption in the opening line that totally dismissed what I had been seeing consistently on crew lists.

     Only, shuts the door to research.

     It was found necessary to first explain to me the various applications of the word Black and then, although patronizingly agreeing my theory could be true, while showing there was no examination of my theory by having what was outwardly obvious about blank spaces that could dispelled by examination, letting me know in the writer’s opinion it most likely wasn’t.

     The reluctance to correct how the Captain died and the suggestion to erase facts for the sake of uniformity of crew lists, and, perhaps removing some words that might make people uncomfortable about history in contrast to all the comfortable events in it, seemed oddly unhistorical in nature.

     Obviously this transcription system is faulty and needs to put something in place to prevent this in the future.

     We were its first discovered victim, and the re-insertion of the erased entry cannot be the end of things with people happy a bandage was applied.

     It is proof the erasure continues. Obviously the safeguards do not work.

     The museum could either address this and have FromthePage come up with safeguards or withdraw from the program if, after being presented with such a blatant erasure, the platform makes no changes.

     I expressed my concern to the Museum leadership. “As has been my complaint, this crowd sourcing besides having logs transcribed twice, has also allowed for editing. When I saw that the Newport, transcribed in 2017 and which has been used in publications and inter-entity research, was on FTP, I went and checked for faithfulness.

     PLEASE NOTE.

The entry for Feb 11 1895 is missing from the FTP transcription but not the 2017 one. It omits the extremely important entry. Why? Political. personal. or religious beliefs?

     This is a total white washing of the truth. This erasure was done in the name of the museum as the person transcribing did so on the museum’s dashboard.

     What If I had not caught this? What if I had not sat next to Gordon at the volunteer meeting?

     The official version of the museum would have included erasure and re-buried history.

There may be the claim it would have been replaced down the line.

     Really?

     If it was done now what guarantee that it would be put back in later?

     NONE

     Since the system has had four important logs, Newport, Rebecca Sims, Arnolda, and Mercator Cooper that have already been transcribed years ago on FTP, included with one glaring erasure, there is little faith someone down the line will reinsert.

     We are to preserve history, not abet its erasure.

     The Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology is not pleased and will add this to its files and publications as proof it still happens (Here I had attached relevant screen shots)This is deliberate censorship that would have been left on the record denying real history. The entry is too large to be missed.

     This must be addressed by the Museum as it is being addressed by the Institute. Censorship is no longer a possibility, it is history now.”

     The response was one would expect from people quick to defend but slow to consider the larger picture.

     It is not just about this one entry which is my wheelhouse and which I am sensitive to as a Gay man, a transcriber, and someone who knows how revisions omit, add, substitute, or invent false histories that deny the future the truth. Even in my own case I had to save my story.

     After the reflexive denial of any responsibility, alternative explanations for the erasure were offered including that I may have accidentally erased the entry in the original final transcription through cutting and pasting as opposed to copying and pasting. But as the February 11, 1895 entry was that important to me, in order not to lose any part of it, I have the original I had sent to the museum upon task completion on the museum’s drive that I will consult only to read in order to avoid any mistaken erasure, while I have other copies on multiple devices and thumb drives, one being a collection of read only files of which the Newport transcription is one of many.

     “just did a forensic investigation of your charge that we purposely omitted something from a transcription. I can assure you this is not the case.

     We looked at the version history in Google that was uploaded by me on Dec 21, 2016. That was the only date I was in the document. [reviewer] was in the document on May 15th, 2017 after you completed the transcription to review it. The Feb 11th entry was in her reviewed version. After her review, according to Google, you were the only person in this Google document, three times: May 2,2018, Sept 26th, 2018, July 19th, 2019.

     We will add the missing Feb 11th into From the Page. Do you think you may have cut and pasted instead of copy and pasted? You were the only person in the doc.

     To your other charge in your earlier email, that we are duplicating work. Nothing could be further from the truth. We migrated two unfinished logbooks from Google to From the Page when we adopted the new platform. If you have other issues please let me know before you circulate your observations.”

      In attempting to plead innocent of any “charges”, the use of the term revealing how this was going to be approached, listing the times the Newport transcription was accessed, verified both the assignment of the log book in 2016 and its review done by 2017 acknowledging it did exist and the entry had been seen by the reviewer which brings up the question that if the transcription had been merely migrated, all this would have been on the crowd sourcing site and would have been left as is being completed, accepted, and approved.

     The defenses from this point on were to suggest the erasure was mine, it had been lost in migration with no one connected to the museum involved, that the omission had just been a scrivener's error missed, while no one was asking how a reviewer missed just reading the dates to see if any were missed and how, unlike all the preceding and following pages, this one had a space at the bottom. A quick examination would have shown it was because an entry was missing.

     The Arnolda had a few dates out of place for unexplained reasons that would call for a footnote pointing out the dates are as written in the log, and not a typo.

     As the Newport log had been so important to me, I downloaded it on multiple devices and on a number of thumb drives, one which contains many files and is read-only, in order to visit the log without the chance of losing all or any part of it as removing it from one thumb drive or device still left it on the others. The attempt to shift blame to me does not stand up to the fact that the review took place in 2017 with an email acknowledging the entry had been there, the log was posted to the crowd sourcing site within the last year, and it was completely re-transcribed in 2023 erasing the entry. If it was simply migrated, its contents should have been obviously there to anyone looking, and this would be further proof the erasure was deliberately remove somewhere along all those steps that should have seen an entry was missing even if the process had been reading the dates of every entry seeing if any date had been missed and if so, why, and inserted.

     The part about migrating only two incomplete log books was contradicted by going to the site and seeing the names of four ships that had been completed in past years but were being redone now.

     The process of migration involves moving previous transcriptions over from Google Docs where they were originally filed waiting for inclusion on he repository web site used up to that point to the new platform and, as one person or group of people goes over the original and the migrated to make sure that not only did the body of the work get moved but also any side notes left on the original by a transcriber. This group is not transcribing, merely inspecting, unless they choose to make an edit. While the migrated complete works are being dealt with, the incomplete transcripts that are migrated would have certain pages on the site with one half of the screen being the digitized manuscript while the other side would be blank, while on a migrated complete page, there would the original on one half and transcription on the other. If from the first to last page a migrated work is all blanks on the right typing side, it is open to full transcription.

     The explanation offered implies that either the Newport was one such incomplete transcription with some blank pages that needed transcribing, which is clearly not the case, or the original was not migrated leaving only open pages and the log book merely a link to a book to be completely done.

     If what is on the site reflects the final product after the original 2017 review and the chain of checks and balances employed by the site, deliberate and accepted erasure is evident.

     When a transcript is being worked on, there are tabs on the upper right of the page for transcription, edit, needs review etc during the process which are replaced by “complete” at the end of the process, and the pages of the Newport were designated “complete”. (8)(9)

     Anticipating responses to my emails to the museum president and the head of curation, what responses I received on this point having come from “middle management”, I went to my computer expecting an email but upon opening various files, documents, and pages in case I needed to answer a question with a fact, file, or document, I logged onto the crowdsource site to have the relevant links ready, but received this message on the screen. (10) 

     I sincerely hoped this was just a highly suspect coincidental glitch and wrote to the site administrators and to the museum asking how this can be corrected as the “website” link only redirects to the museum’s public website. This certainly was in error and not a deliberate blockage that is intended to silence a person who has the screen shots already and vociferously objected to the erasure.

     The blockage has also eliminated my ability to go to the transcription to verify that the missing entry had, indeed, been replaced. So far, all I have is the word of people who had originally explained to me this would never happen, but the museum has blocked my ability to verify that.

     The emails were sent on Friday when the museum was open. I am still blocked with no response from the website or the museum.

     At the February 2024 New Bedford Whaling Museum Volunteer monthly meeting the museum president reiterated the museum’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). This is a lesson in that.

     The situation with the erased log entry was simply routinely handled by replacing the erased entry and all was good again in the minds of the cisgender, heterosexual people with whom I registered my objection to erasure, who saw this as only a clerical error easily rectified while resisting any offered information to show that was not a mere clerical error but one more erasure of anything “Homosexual” in an age of Trans oppression, Drag Queens being made illegal in certain states, and general calls for banning “Homosexually themed” books regardless the attempts to hide what the book banners are doing behind euphemisms. Ask any teacher of any gender variance, “the  safety of the children" is applied to any politically motivated action by someone seeking, or already in elected office.

     The situation was handled and we should be grateful for this crumb while the totality of the picture which has been the past, present, and future of anyone who does not fit the Heterosexual paradigm is ignored. The solution eased their discomfort. It neither dispelled mine nor guaranteed there would no future occurrences.

     There is an opportunity for the museum to learn why this is not a matter of simple editing. The refusal to even hear the view from the other side, the assaulted side, goes against DEI.

     They need to learn the seriousness of this and not just push it aside, looking at this as merely an oversight, an error, my fault, it is just a question of editing a document.

     But this erasure was found on the website that the museum has defended, and continues to, as accurate and better than if one person transcribed a complete document, so it appears acceptable to the museum.

     The museum may be content that all is well, but that is only by looking from the Heterosexual perspective while ignoring how this affects us and what it means in the history of Gay people.

     It is also being handled as if one side has total control and complete understanding of all aspects relying on its having spoken, its view being the only one, and we should just go to our rooms and know our place.

     The notion that I may have accidentally erased them myself should be seen for what it is if this and my reaction to the erasure were looked at as they relate to my reality and not from the point of view of how it affects them. If they took the time to actually know me as more than a retired teacher who joined the ranks of the old, cute, easily replaceable volunteers they would know that when it comes to issues like this I know the value of documents and know how to preserve certain ones because they are related to specific issues and are respected for that.

     This is not a one off.

     It might be a first for the Museum but not to Gay history where erasure has been the standard operational procedure.

    The museum will only get away from this if it stops looking at it from a Heterosexual privileged position, taking administrative actions that make them feel good while being totally impotent in reality, and starts to look at what it means to those who were targeted.

     In this case, Heterosexuals assumed that if they explain the situation it is my burden to either accept the explanation or face some kind of repercussion such as being silenced. They ignore the homosexual in the room who could explain the depth of the erasure so the museum will see the seriousness of it and be vigilant and less reflexive in defending a website.

     Having my access to the crowd source web site’s Whaling Museum section blocked could also indicate that as I accidentally came across this erasure, the fear is there that I might find others, and that must be avoided.

     At no time in any exchange was anything said about looking into the offending transcriber. Rather it was suggested I had accidentally done the erasing before I was blocked.

     At no time in any exchange has regret that this happened been expressed in sincere terms not followed by a “but”.

     At no time in any exchange have I been asked why this is such a concern. It isn’t theirs, so it can’t be a legitimate one.

     And at no time has consideration been given to finding out how bad this is and how bad it looks for the museum that already is under scrutiny for poor security.

     The museum knows I am working to restore our history in whaling’s history, have published blogs, have established a website for this purpose, and have notified the museum of my intention and the existence of my institute. There are emails.

      After my meeting with the museum president and head curator about a possible Gay committee like the Museum has for other groups in the community which they advised would be limited by museum by-laws and other constraints, I informed them of my follow up action.

     “I am going to make a list of all whaling information resources, encouraging people to transcribe, I will include the NBWM rules for transcribing, and will design some way to coordinate things to eliminate duplication.

     I am looking up a clearing house for professors and researchers looking for topics and will put together some sort of general plea for people who have the info but nothing to do with it. I am also putting something together to go to all Gay media outlets about the entry discovery and the need for follow up.

     (The museum) had me go to Providence one time to help transcribe some documents, and they had a transcription party where people showed up, began the process, and unfinished work was completed at home. There were certain steps that we could duplicate and these sessions could be organized here somewhere in NB if not the museum itself, the meeting room table filled with transcribers on their laptops one day a week.

     I will forward whatever I come up with. I have gotten an email address as a place to send finds and contributions for which I will require the info that was in the ODHS minutes so everyone who contributes is acknowledged and credited whenever their research is used. I have an account with an archive site that notifies me anytime my name is used in a paper and whenever I produce something such as my contribution to the book that accompanied the Catalpa exhibit gets archived. I am a footnote in a report on educating Gay students and the resistance met.

     Thinking of calling it the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology. Fancy names attract results. So far we have the two log entries and what was in Sophie Porter’s personal journal which I will have to reread to get the Drag reference, and anything else I have come across.”

     I followed this with two later updates, “This is what I have come up with so far. I mention the Museum toward the end and want to make sure it is acceptable” including the link to the website so the museum could inspect it, and, “As follow up to our earlier conversation, I have put together this website. I am hoping that once seen, people will want to help and perhaps in the process benefit the museum. So far I have posted the Newport log book that contains the first found reference to Homosexuality and am working on the full log of the Charles Phelps in which was an earlier entry but found after the Newport entry. I might post the Phelps in serial form once I get to a point where it is leading up to something. I have credited the museum where appropriate.”

     The museum is definitely aware of my interests, so when I objected to the erasure there should have been more than the defense of random anonymous people, boilerplate brushings off, and our concerns as Gay people so easily swept aside or distracted with patronizing explanations that are dead at the first word.

     Every Gay person is expected to arrive at their graves as the person society gave them permission to be, but we object to that and do so in manners consistent with our life experiences. As I am attempting to restore us to history inspired to do so from working at a museum, I found erasure of it and was met with the effort to excuse it away as unimportant without being listened to.

     Blockage from the involved website where the offense was committed and allowed to continue in spite of or because the people in charge of preserving history chose to erase that were defended in that by a museum, and the person who objected to erasure silenced and blocked out of the discourse.

     I committed myself to historic restoration and have the moral obligation to follow through. I stated my goal publicly so I cannot deny it, and I will not play the meek role of the person who will acquiesce to what will surely be a form of bullying.

     They should not have blocked me out as the issue is the erasure of Gay history being objected to by a Gay man.

     What makes it worse is that the entry was erased and I saw it removed from MY transcribed blog. This was not someone else’s work, so the erasure is personal to me as a Gay man and me as a professional whose work was tampered with to misrepresent the truth and erasing me in the process.

     After having sent my emails to the transcription platform and the museum about my not being allowed to access the museum’s pages, I waited four days for a response. In the meantime, I went to the site and registered as a random anonymous transcription volunteer making sure I put nothing in the form that could have me rejected as already registered, and had no problem accessing the museums section on the site. So I cannot access the pages with my museum connection but can as a random person who, like the person who erased the February 11, 1895 log entry, can control the historical record by erasing those entries or details within them because of personal, political, and/or religious beliefs.

     This is not reassuring.

     I then went to the page in the log that contained the entry and was able to verify that the entry has been reinserted, and this log is now untouchable. (9)

     Attempting to see if I would be able to further edit the Newport log, I attempted to access the “help Transcribe” link and was informed the Newport is now untouchable as it should have been since 2017. (10)

     On the fifth day after I had been denied access, during which I got no response from either the platform or museum, I received an email from the volunteer transcriber supervisor. Major intra-departmental emails are sent via our list-serve, and as the erasure came up suddenly and something had to be done, apparently, not having been removed, I received the email that deftly danced around the issue.

     “All transcriptions on Google docs are not currently accessible as no one is actively working on transcriptions in that platform. Transcriptions on From the Page for logbooks that are not completed continue to be accessible. Also, if you encounter “Collaboration is restricted” on any log, it is still viable for transcription; the site owners are working on the issue.”

     Another treatment of this erasure as just a simple glitch not delivered by staff of the museum, but another volunteer leaving the other volunteer transcribers whose work could also be subject to post-completion editing uninformed because, if nothing else, it is not her place to do that but the obligation of the platform and museum leadership.

     It is still being seen as a simple clerical error, I believe because we have not reached the level of acceptance that would see this assault for what it really was.

     They are comfortable because of what was done, so all is right for everyone.

    I got locked out in an attempt to end or at least control the discourse and was told in no uncertain terms to “talk to the hand”.

     It was also clear from an email from the president of the museum that had reframed the issue by simply ignoring that I was concerned about erasure and renamed it to something more comfortable and innocent and so easily brushed aside.

     I wrote to the president after the disappointing responses from staff:

“At the February 5, 2024 Volunteer meeting the museum stressed its commitment to DEI. For the following five days after discovering that the Newport Log entry for Feb 11, 1895 had been removed from the finalized copy of the log on From the Page the lack of DEI in practice was more than evident and made an initial assault that much worse. There was too much to this to have been a simple error, and for the last few days the only response from the museum was the standard defense of a program the museum paid for and, so, must defend the expenditure of regardless of reality and that as it was a mere oversight, it was easily rectified by being re-inserted.

     In attempting to supply the reasons why this was a greater offense than the cisgender, heterosexual people might be aware and need to be informed about, I was blocked from accessing the museum's section on FtP.

     In attempting to deal with erasure, the museum removed my access and basically put me in the closet because what I was saying was uncomfortable.

     You do not block a 73 years old Gay man who lived through the past who saw an example of the past in the present log book situation without first ascertaining if he took screenshots while brushing off what a Gay man is attempting to point out because it is not your paradigm.

     This retired teacher who has joined the ranks of the cute old volunteers also learned how to survive and change that past for a better future successfully.

     We have had meetings on this log entry, we spoke of a committee which resulted on the web page for Gay Whalers, and I sent notices of this and updates.

     The importance of that entry has been thoroughly explained but has been brushed aside as a simple clerical error without asking what I would base my concern on.

     If the museum were truly committed to DEI all the straight people who explained it away so easily would have expressed interest in how this is offensive to the Gay Community.

     One of our own finds a reference to us in the log book, runs with it for 6 years by doing further research, corresponding with researchers in the process, and demonstrated the commitment to finding us by starting a website (that costs time and money) only to find that the entry has been removed from the official and final version that is under the NBWM heading.

     Discovery and erasure of it at the same museum.

     As the blockage to access shows that I am to talk to the hand, as of Sunday, February 11,  the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology will talk to the hand."

     All the supposed safeguards to protect the truthfulness of our Transcriptions resulted in the Feb 11, 1895 entry removal with it going unnoticed for the four months it was available as the museum’s official version as its status on the site is complete and the explanation is to defend the safeguards that so obviously failed.

     At no time in any dealing with this has the question I asked about what will be done to prevent this in the future and get redress now been answered beyond being informed they put the entry back, any interest in tracing down the random transcriber (if it is not someone connected to the museum), or any proposal to meet and discuss.

     We are simply to accept that what was done was the only thing so everything is okay now. You are dismissed.

     We refuse to be victims any more, and we are tired of waiting for something down the road. This 73 year old, cisgender, white, Gay male who finally got his civil, Constitutional, human, and, creator given rights at the age of 61 after over 40 years fighting to get them and has only had them for 12 years does not have the time or patience to see how this turns out.

     DEI would have informed you that we no longer just go to the attic when the guests come, but sit at the table and order from the menu.

     Rather than us handling it, the offenders will have to.

     I may have volunteered at the museum but I did not give up my humanity to do so. The Institute is willing to help with your DEI education and when the topic of us comes up would request to see who is covering that topic and what are their credentials to do so.”

     The response indicated that this would not be seriously examined and there was no interest on the part of the museum to actually grasp the importance of the entry and/or and how wrong the erasure was. The erasure would only be seen as an error of omission in spite of evidence of purposeful or coincidental selective erasure.

     “I appreciate you reaching out with regards to the transcription of the Newport log. Thanks for noting the omission. It’s important that we were made aware and I am glad we got this corrected. This work is critical. We value the importance of our primary sources and how they inform scholarship and shed light on the past.

      We are here to transcribe, not edit - ever. I am certain you would agree that our shared responsibility is to presenting accurate and complete history. As you and I have discussed many times, the Museum’s archives serve as powerful tools for under told or untold truths of our community. I see this as one of our single most important functions.

     In light of this, we will be reviewing the protocols and best practice for the transcription team to ensure that all have a full understanding of the use of technology. Your own participation will be important.

     You should direct any additional concerns to me.”

     I got this response after I had been blocked from the crowdsourcing page the museum used and upon which the erasure was committed without explanation and after four days of dealing with the defensive responses of those at the museum, and I was not too happy with the attempt to control at the end. I will handle it as a Gay man whose work was erased and the erasure defended and its impact minimized, and not be controlled by those defending the offense.

     It was not a mere omission and “reviewing the protocols and best practice for the transcription team to ensure that all have a full understanding of the use of technology” was to be shown to be the usual promise of progress with none actually intended.

VII

The erased log entry was reinserted, I was no longer a volunteer having been drummed out of the corps, and I received most of my subsequent information from the museum’s attorney who obviously was not told all the details, just a version of events that would produce a shot across the bow.

     The first correspondence came from the attorney was an email with PDF attachment containing a copy of a letter on official letterhead that began with a compliment and then a description of the museum's purpose and desire to preserve history with a description of my job, like it was my first day reporting not my eighth year, and then pivoted into the suggestion that the mistake could have easily been mine, so its replacement made all things right and my being blocked was due to my having bad mouthed the museum and being ostracized was to be expected.

     In truth I would fully accept his conclusion that it was a simple error with no significant effect had it not been based on his only receiving favorable details to have him perform as required with as little discomfort to the client as possible, assuming the target was the person they assumed he was and not the one who, upon having a shot across his bow opens all the gun ports if he has the receipts.

VIII

The monthly meeting of the New Bedford Whaling Museum's volunteer council is held on the morning of the first Monday of each month except for July and August. On the preceding Fridays we are emailed a copy of Spoutings, the in-house volunteer newsletter that is also available in print at the meeting with copies available in the volunteer room for the rest of the month, and is, therefore, an official museum publication. 

     At the meeting of Monday of February 5, as a result of a casual conversation with one of the other three transcribers present and some follow up emails about transcription duplication that I accidentally found the erasure of the February 11, 1895 Newport log entry.

     In my conversation with the museum’s attorney, whom I had called upon reception of his letter, I did my best to fill in blanks that I believed would have influenced his conclusion and we ended the conversation with the attorney willing to view any additional information I had to show this was not a simple omission, pointing out the timeline, and also the need to look at the person who finalized the erasure to see if this person had done this before and might again on other topics. All we had at the time in identifying this person was the screen name at the end of each Newport page, and I thought since the museum ran the page, it would have been the one to find the actual name and supply it to the attorney instead of him having to ask me. I expressed my surprise that as the museum seemed to be vehemently defending this person, the lawyer had to see if I could get the name the museum should have.

     The consistent defense had been that the museum had no responsibility as the erasure was committed by someone connected to the crowdsource platform, not the museum, or accidentally by me.

      As is the practice, just as before the February 5, 2024 meeting, on the Friday before the March monthly Volunteer Council meeting, I received my copy of Spoutings as I was still on the email list as my being drummed out of the corps had been so recent and most likely unknown as to have my name included by default.

     I had been erased for objecting to the erasure and informed that this was because my statements about the erasure violated the volunteer code of conduct as I had presented the museum in a negative light and against its mission which I had assumed was to preserve history not support the erasing of it with that being the Museum's first response.

     As I flipped through my copy of Spoutings, I came upon the description of the Newport from the original source page, archive.org, with which I was very familiar and had published on the Institute's web site, printed above a poem that had been included by Captain Tilton at the end of the Newport log.

     The poem had to have been submitted for a March publication while the whole discussion about the Newport log was going on, with permission granted to publish it in an official museum publication.

     I first thought this had to be some sort of unbelievable coincidence or a childish action on the part of the museum to include it in a mean spirited manner. Either way, this was wrong as the discussion with the lawyer was still ongoing and while I was asked by him to find the name the museum already had, was ready to, and did print.

     It was clear proof that, as far as the museum is concerned, the problem has been solved to its comfort, regardless of its effect on the erased.

     Not knowing who the person who submitted the poem for publication was, a second consideration was that someone had come upon the poem while reading the Newport log and thought it good enough to submit to the editor of Spoutings who would have no idea of the bad timing of including it and may have been granted permission actively, by having gotten approval from a staff person, or passively, by the museum being as interested in what was about to be printed as it had been when it came to making sure the Newport log was intact when rated "complete" so no one in authority bothered to proof read.

     The latter consideration would imply that others also may have also looked at the Newport and had read the redacted version putting Mr. Scott back in the shadows to remain hidden from history when he could have been known.

     Erasure

     The faulty source was cited in a museum publication while the log is the center of a controversy that goes far beyond a simple omission. The museum sanctioned the erasure as the March Spoutings would have been set up during February and as the poem, a love poem to whales in March, is a little late for Valentines day.

     And, as it was contributed by a volunteer, credit is given to that person with her full name, which, it turns out, is only two letters more than the screen name that approved the final version of the log. The museum could have told the lawyer who the person was from the very beginning from the list of registered screen names and, as an email address is needed to sign up, could have contacted her especially because of her link to the museum.

     The museum knew who was responsible for the erasure.

     It just was not important in the museum's mind.

     From the moment I filed my first complaint, they not only defended the erasure by dismissal but included a poem from the log submitted by the person who, while erasing the Gay man, kept the love poem to whales.

     In total innocence, the editor gets dragged into this because the museum did not pay attention and this involves the person who erased Mr. Scott.

                       IX

     Ironically on the day I was about to find out about both Mr. Scott’s erasure and that of my discovery, the museum president, flanked by two other staffers, stressed the museum’s commitment to Diversity, equity, and Inclusion to the volunteers at the monthly meeting. For the following five days after discovering that the Newport Log entry for February 11, 1895 had been removed from the finalized copy of the log on From the Page, the lack of DEI in practice was more than evident and made an initial assault that much worse. There was too much to this to have been a simple error, and for the last few days the only response from the museum had been the standard defense of a program the museum paid for and, so, must defend the expenditure regardless of reality and that, as it was a mere oversight, it was easily rectified by being re-inserted.

     They threw their pebble into the pond and, somehow there were no ripples?

     In attempting to supply the reasons why this was a greater offense than the cisgender, heterosexual people might be aware and need to be informed about, I was blocked from access.

     In attempting to supply the reasons why this was a greater offense than the cisgender, heterosexual people might be aware and need to be informed about, I was blocked from access.

      In attempting to deal with erasure, the museum removed my access and basically put me in the closet because what I was saying was uncomfortable.

     You do not block a 73 years old Gay man who lived through the past who saw an example of the past in the present log book situation without first ascertaining if he took screenshots while brushing off what a Gay man is attempting to point out because it is not in your paradigm.

     This retired teacher who has joined the ranks of the cute old volunteers also learned how to survive, and change that past for a better future successfully.

     The Museum and I had had meetings on this log entry, we spoke of a committee which resulted on the webpage for Gay Whalers, and I sent notices of this and updates. The importance of that entry has been thoroughly explained but has been brushed aside as a simple clerical error without asking what I would base my concern on.

     If the museum were truly committed to DEI all the straight people who explained it away so easily would have expressed interest in how this is offensive to the Gay Community.

      One of our own finds a reference to us a the log book, runs with it for 6 years by doing further research, corresponding with researchers in the process, and demonstrating the commitment to finding us by starting a website (that costs money) only to find that the entry had been removed from the official and final version that is under the NBWM heading.

     Discovery and erasure of it at the same museum.

     All the supposed safeguards to protect the truthfulness of our Transcriptions resulted in the February 11, 1895 entry’s removal with it going unnoticed for the four months it was available as the museum’s official version as its status on the site is “complete” and the explanation is to defend the safeguards that so obviously failed.

     At no time in any dealings with this had the question about preventing it in the future and getting redress now come up, nor any interest in tracing down the random transcriber (if it is not someone connected to the museum), or any proposal to meet and discuss.

     We are simply to accept that what was done was the only thing possible so everything is okay now. You are dismissed.

    We refuse to be victims any more, and we are tired of waiting for something down the road. This 73 year old, cisgender, white Gay male who finally got his civil, Constitutional, human, and creator given rights at the age of 61 after over 40 years fighting to get them and has only had them for 12 years does not have the time or patience to see how this turns out.

     DEI would have informed them that we no longer just go to the attic when the guests come, but sit at the table and order from the menu.

     Rather than us handling it, the offenders will have to.

X

     This oddness with the name, and seemingly pretending the eraser was anonymous did not sit well with me so I wrote to the attorney pointing out that the faulty source was cited in a museum publication while the log is the center of a controversy that goes far beyond a simple omission. The printing of a poem from a transcript with the museum sanctioned erasure would have been set up during February and as the poem, a love poem to whales, is a little late for Valentines day, and, as it was contributed by a volunteer, credit is given to that person with her full name. The museum could have told the lawyer who the person was from the very beginning from the list of registered screen names. I reminded him by including copies of all related emails, that the Museum was aware of the Institute and its purpose.

     From these emails it is not only clear that I had no problem defending the historic record as with the skin color designations on crew lists and faced push back, but that the Museum was well aware of the Quigley Institute.

     Within a month of museum leadership being informed about the formation of the institute and its website, the log with the erasure was posted on the crowdsource page as "complete".

     After recounting what is being brushed off as a mere error so easily undone with no ramifications, I informed the attorney that “When I saw the amount of historical erasure in the places from my past that I visited as I traveled across the country, I conceived of the idea for the Institute. In emails, in-person visits, and other correspondence I constantly referred to the Newport log as its being in the NBWM Collection and suggesting people look it up. I referenced it in emails to researchers and museums, receiving, in response, a recently found entry from a college professor doing research in another area who came upon this second reference to Homosexuality on whaling ships.

     When I discovered the erasure on February 5, 2024 I also discovered that the log of the Newport had been on the site with the erasure for four months beginning October 2023. One of the purposes of transcribing these log books that are still readable in their original form is that as cursive is no longer taught they will become inaccessible to the majority and casual researcher who will be dependent on true and faithful transcriptions unless typed out. This being the case, anyone relying on block alone would have found themselves being directed by the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology to a missing typed entry that could only be read by someone able to read bad handwriting.

     What I have accomplished in my life was based on being truthful and completely open. For four months the veracity of the Institute and my personal work was questionable according to the approved and final version of the Newport log. There was nothing where the Institute claimed there was, and I just looked like a person who just made something up to make a point that really wasn't there.

     I was made to look like someone who invents history, not preserves and brings it back. This made the Institute look bad as it, while attempting to be a legitimate contributor to Gay History and me, personally, as it appeared I was making assertions that were false. In their attempt to protect their own interests, the museum ignores the potential damage to my Institute and my personal reputation.

     So, as you can see now with the Spouting edition, lack of seeing from the other side introduces complications.”

XII

     It didn’t end there.

     I did not attend the volunteer transcribers' monthly Zoom meeting in March as I am no longer a volunteer. However, just as with the general volunteer listserv, I am apparently still on the transcription team list until that is rectified, so I received the notes from the most recent meeting a few days after.

     I am not so naive as to assume no gossip was exchanged especially if someone mentioned my absence, and I assumed anything said about me or the situation would not be included in meeting notes, but I read them anyway with a little curiosity.

    The first thing to strike me was that transcription is all business and lifeless now as the number of pages is what counts, not finding new things, and the new platform requires production only. They created a job where there had once been adventure but now is just typing words, not enjoying the experience of following leads and learning. The monks did not need to know how to read to copy books in the Middle Ages, they just had to copy the images on the page. They did not write, they drew. I once produced a poster for a fellow teacher to bring with her group to Hiroshima. I had no idea what I was putting on paper, but it was loved by the Japanese with lots of compliments on my flowing lines. I did not write, I drew.

     But there were three things that stood out, two logical, one insulting.

     The inclusion of Conduct and Ethics (from the Volunteer Handbook) and Transcription Process steps was a logical move at this time. Pointed, but logical. It was also noted in the meeting minutes that there are many more logs to digitize with a list of those responsible for reviewing the transcriptions before they are rated complete, and among the names of the major reviewers was the one who submitted the poem for publication and whose name is just two letters longer than the offending screen name. She is apparently free to continue.

        Because, in spite of initial assurances that the crowdsourcing would not be problematic, it resulted in the erasure and the discussion of and complications produced by what should not have happened, the “accidental omission”, huge and poorly handled, combined with the assurance after the fact that the museum is “reviewing the protocols and best practice for the transcription team to ensure that all have a full understanding of the use of technology”, further assurances do not seem genuine because beyond the erasure, the review of protocols and best practices has the person responsible in the position to continue reviewing transcriptions in spite of the obvious problem.

     The museum does not care, and this carelessness could call into question what the museum is posting as faithful transcriptions and what influence this has on preserving or editing history.

     I point out an erasure and it is labeled by others an “omission”. They renamed it for their comfort and moved on.

     While I get blocked for insisting it was erasure, a poem from the faulty and questionably faithful log is published in an official museum publication with the name of the person responsible for the erasure given credit for the poem’s submission.

     After all the fuss about faulty reviewing that resulted in a very questionable erasure, the person responsible is listed as a major reviewer of transcribed documents for the museum.

     There is no effort into even giving the appearance of caring, just a string of thumbed noses.

     It was an erasure and they want it to go away without their having to take responsibility for it.

                  XIII

     Without the entry there is a hole in history and the continuation of invisibility. With it, there is research.The Newport was a steam whaling vessel out of San Francisco owned by a New Bedford firm scheduled to spend three seasons hunting for Bowhead whales in the North Pacific whaling field. As this type of whale had an annual North/South migration, rather than chase them, knowing their route would take them through the Bering Strait into the arctic waters and since this would bottleneck them into a smaller expanse than the open Pacific ocean, for a while whaling vessels would gather at Herschel Island, 60 miles East of Barrow, Alaska, off the northern edge of Canada in the Fall, carefully winterized in the forming ice to sit through the winter as homes for the crews while other amenities were supplied by the company owned village, and wait for the whales to return in the spring and have them come to the whalers and not the usual way, being chased by them.

     It was a common practice for captains to bring their wives on voyages, and spending the winter on Herschel Island as a couple was a good practice for them either because their wives were welcome additions or they had insisted on being there as the Indigenous women might be seen as too great a temptation. They knew their husbands, and those wintering on Herschel Island usually brought theirs and, often, their children too.

     Crew members did not have this privilege, so if there was to be any sex for them, it was either with the few Indigenous Women in the area or each other.

     In log books there are entries about the interactions of captains with their wives as these activities relate to the public, acceptable aspects of the wintering community and are usually ship related business, except in the case of the log book of the Jesse H Freeman that was kept by the captain’s wife, a woman interested in the smallest detail of he voyage and including many non-business details of the day in the log with the mentions of birthdays, parties, births, and deaths, which normally would not be included in an entry in any detail if at all.

     We know the captains had sexual relations not only with their wives, but with the indigenous women. Captain Leavitt, having fallen in love with and marrying an indigenous woman, left whaling, remained on Herschel Island for a time, and became a very prominent person in that area of Canada off of which the Island lay. Captain Leavitt’s activities would have been noted as he was a captain, but if there were women available to him, they were also there for any crew member as well.

     Before I found the Newport entry of February 11, 1895 it was a logical conclusion to assume there was Homosexual activity on whaling ships just because the men were human beings with needs and they were isolated at sea for months and years with only an occasional stay in a port that would make heterosexual sex available, but not all ships were in port long enough for shore leave. This combined with hints throughout Moby Dick also promoted the unproven, yet comfortable, assumption.

     If the assumption was that an all male crew being alone at sea was responsible for situational Homosexuality because of circumstances, any record of it on land where there were options would be important.

     As the whaling ship Newport was wintering on Herschel Island over the winter of 1894-1895, the log keeper wrote,

“Monday Feb 11th

    A light breeze from the W.N.W. Cloudy and misty Bar. 30.10. Ther. -4 Got a load of meat put the Steward (Scott) forward for Sodomy and Onanism of Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted but was overtaken and brought back.”

     This was not isolated. Scott was not out on a ship isolated with a stag crew.

     That year the population of Herschel Island was the largest in the company’s history of using that island, 1,500 people, not counting the Indigenous people who came in and out of the community to trade.

     Captains were having sex with their wives, a birth is recorded, and captains, and presumably others, were having sex with Indigenous women, and, yet, even with the option, Mr. Scott was involved in Sodomy.

     His was not situational Homosexuality as it was not the only option caused by isolation.

     I had taken for granted that this entry was an example of an instance that attested in a log book that men were having sex with each other on whale ships and left the realm of accepted assumption to a fact. In further discovered entries and court papers where things on board had spilled over on to the land and entered the legalities of society’s laws and not those looser ones on board a ship.

     The common feature of the additional examples of Homosexuality was isolation on an all man ship for long periods of time.

     By the time the captain had come upon Mr. Scott, the Newport had been sitting at Herschel Island for at least 6 months during which time there were captains and their wives doing what any husband and wife could do and mentions of interactions with the Indigenous people with one Captain marrying one and giving up his profession for a life in the North of Canada with her. There is mention of multiple social events in the Jesse H Freeman log, referred to often as Sophie Porter’s Journal, and the entertainment at these gatherings were often supplied by a greater group and/or the chorus formed among members of the various crews which would require practice and rehearsals which obviously could not be done with the men scattered on ships throughout the Pacific.

     There are multiple mentions of baseball games played on the tundra, hunting trips with the indigenous people, small and large gatherings, and men who ran away in pairs and groups, some to be captured and brought back others to die in the wilderness or to actually get away safely.

     There was no forced isolation that would have resulted in the only sex being Homosexuality. On Herschel Island there were options from September to late April. There were no conditions that would call for Situational Homosexuality. To the contrary, Herschel Island was a community of 1,500 of the best and worst people and all between, and an ever changing Indigenous population that came and went for trade.

     Mr. Scott does not fit the accepted reason for Homosexual activity on a whaling ship as he was not isolated, was living in a large community with a great amount of interaction, and could address his natural needs accordingly.

     He was found in the act of Sodomy not forced into it by circumstances, but apparently by will.

     What I originally saw as proof of an assumption related to all whalers might be, in reality, the discovery of an individual Gay man.

     All of this could have been hidden when it should have been there for historical research.

     The Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology has been using the Newport log and has been finding interesting hidden history. The Institute was fortunate to have found the entry, preserved it, and used it.

     Had the log as sanctioned and included on the crowdsourcing site by the museum been the only available source for a future population not learning cursive, this history would have remained erased and, therefore, hidden.

     This is not a mere and inconsequential omission.

     This was a potentially devastating erasure.

     It was a major assault on a people and history.

     And, yet, the museum shows little interest. Rather, it seems to want to make sure their lack of actual interest is acceptable.

     Finding two whaling crew members on two separate ships, decades apart, one in an all male isolated environment and one in a populous community, has brought the assumption of Homosexuality into the realm of reality, and for over 180 years in one instance and over 128 in the other, this information existed and remained unseen.

     The answer to the Question is now, “Yes. There was Homosexuality on board whaling ships. We have log entries on that topic,” and that history should not be erased.

XIV

     Initial concerns, and not just mine, about crowdsourcing certain log books, like that of the Jesse H Freeman, being as valuable as it is, were brushed aside with assurances that “Our review system and rules document are set up to control the end product,” and that “we are all reviewers, editors, as well as transcribers. Our final edited product is crowd sourced, worked on by multiple people, and because of that better than if one person “owned” a page or a whole log/journal.” These assurances were proven wrong and in a glaring way.

     In similar fashion, when I pointed out the removal of the February 11, 1895 log entry,referring to it as an “Erasure” the museum unilaterally decided to refer to it as an accidental omission immediately dismissing any concern how it affected those affected.

     Dealing with a “scrivener’s error” is so much easier than dealing with erasure and if you have to, reframe the issue for convenience.

     Worse, in spite of the museum’s expressed concern for the erasure that it renamed for comfort and declaring the issue conveniently dealt with, the person responsible is still a lead transcript reviewer for the museum, and, although the museum president wrote in an email that “ In light of this, we will be reviewing the protocols and best practice for the transcription team to ensure that all have a full understanding of the use of technology. Your own participation will be important,” all this did was promise something would be done later with no hint of immediacy. Further,while promising best practices, the museum has not shown an openness to input. The hope of my participation came across as disingenuous as, by looking at the record of the museum on this issue alone, as well as to the two other examples cited, skin color and place of death, it is clear they do not accept input. And, we are here.

     The erasure was bad enough, the way the museum handled it was insulting.