The classic image of hunting for whales usually includes whales in the distance being approached by ships reliant on the wind’s direction and smaller boats chasing a whale. We assume that, knowing the migratory patterns of various whales, the ships in the Pacific would head out after them either from Hawai’i or later San Francisco and Washington, chasing the whales around the Pacific and getting news of the best places to go from passing ships with their holds filled or close to being so.

     We assume there was the “thrill of the chase” that added a bit to the cover up of the real event, slaughtering a species close to extinction for money. We assume whalers were only practical to a certain degree when it came to their trade, but we too often ignore they also had a good deal of common sense and those who ran the business were doing quite well.

     If every year from May to September Bowhead whales headed toward the arctic feeding grounds, wouldn’t it be better, rather than get behind them and chase the whales there, if the ships waited for them to show up. All it would take was a definite place to settle in for the wait.

     The Bowhead whale was valued for its baleen which was used much the same way plastic, which replaced it, is used today, and that, along with their oil, brought these whales close to extinction. However, as long as the baleen and oil brought in money, the Bowheads were targets.

     And, so it was that in the late 19th century whalers established a base in the Beaufort Sea on Herschel Island which lies at the northern edge of Canada about 600 miles East of Barrow, Alaska.

     This community began as a place for whale ships to hug the land, have dirt and snow packed against their hulls to act as a cushion as ice shrunk, expanded, and thickened over the winter, get restructured into housing waiting for the spring thaw and the return of the whales reached its height in 1893 when the population totaled 1,500 residents, both permanent and transitory.

     By the time Sophie Porter arrived and kept copious notes about the goings on at the settlement over the 1893-1984 wintering, permanent structures had been constructed for housing and social space, but as they had become quite proficient at making their ships into housing  most crews continued to stay on their ships. 

     This was the winter that the Pacific Steam Whaling Company constructed a building called the Community House at Pauline Cove that had a recreation room, an office for the manager and storekeeper, and storage facilities. Although the Community House became the most prominent building on the island, with the crews remaining on their ships and with the arrival of Reverend Stringer to meet the needs of the Christian whalers and convert the locals, in 1896 the company offered the house to the Anglican church who used the building until 1906.

     Living on the Island had its mixed reviews as Sophie Porter recounted many happy social events among the more depressing happenings, while Reverend Stringer’s wife was not vague in the reasons for her dislike to being there.

Although referred to as Sophie Porter’s Journal, it turns out that Sophie had been the log keeper of the Jesse H Freeman of which her husband, William S., was the captain. This would explain why, unlike most log books which are dry notations of facts related to ship and company business, the log book of the JH Freeman also includes descriptions of people, mentioning names when known, and other goings on aboard ship that would not usually be included in the very often poorly written and dry entries.

     She may have fulfilled the obligation to include weather, climate, wind, ship directions and business related activities, but sitting still from October to early May eliminated the need to record this information as Latitude and Longitude would remain constant and the weather did not affect the progress of the hunt, freeing her to write of the colony’s social life.

As logs mention ships encountered, whether just in passing or joining when the whale population eliminated competition, Mrs. Porter not only listed the names of the ships wintering and their captains, but she also lists the names of the captains’ wives and children, specific members of the various ships that interacted with her husband, various crew members performing good and bad acts, and the names of the local indigenous people who brought meat and traded with the ships including births and deaths of those she had become familiar with. While other logs might describe crew members by such things as race or country of origin, one log book refers to some crew as “the Mexicans, Sophie would refer to people by name, no matter how inconsequential in the ship’s hierarchy.

     It was at the height of Pauline Cove’s existence, 1893-94, that the incident with Scott, the steward, took place aboard the Newport, and with a population that winter of whalers alone having reached 1,500 people, the odds that Mr. Scott was a one time event become unfavorable and would lead one to think that with no women but captain’s wives and their preteen daughters as well as  the few women among the indigenous people coming to the settlement, a six to seven month period of chastity would not be realistic.

     A Captain Levitt arrived at Herschel Island and never left, having married an indigenous women. He became a prominent person and has things named after him, so there is evidence of less advertised sexual activity beyond what the Captains and their wives obviously were able to engaged in.

     In the Jesse H Freeman (nee Sophie Porter’s Journal) ship’s interactions and the activities of which she was aware are included directly while other activities are mentioned without detail as she knew they happened but not much else. There is an theatrical group, the Herschel Island Snowflakes who had to gather on a regular basis for choir and drama rehearsals, so, although not being able to relate the details of these gatherings as she was not a member, Sophie Porter does let us know the activities of the crew members paralleled the lives of the captains and their wives.

     In simple references to baseball games, teams, the Snowflakes, the log of the JH Freeman lets us know there was a lot of activity that went unrecorded unless individuals at the settlement kept personal journals yet to be discovered or, if discovered, digitized and transcribed.

      The list of ships wintering at Herschel Island the winter of 1894-1895 were:

Newport

Beluga

Narvarch

Jesse H Freeman 

Mary D Hume

Orca

Thrasher

William Bailies

Belvedere

Alexander

Fearless

And

Northern Light.

She lists the Captains:

Porter

Norwood

Tilton

Vincent

Levitt

Smith

Ashley

Cook

Green

Sherman

Cogan

McKenna

MacInnes 

And, although she does not connect him to a specific ship, a Mr. Whitmore, the “Mr.” implying some position of authority on a ship.

     Of the relevant log books, the Transcription Team at the New Bedford Whaling Museum is working on the log of the Jesse H Freeman as it has become clear that it is relevant not only to its own history and that of whaling, but to Gender and Women’s studies,  concerning which there is an advisory committee,and the existence of Homosexual activity on whale ships.

     The Newport has also been transcribed.

     As far as the remaining logs, some are easy to find as some ships, although stationed in the Pacific, were still owned by the Knowles Brothers of New Bedford and made their way home.

Many, however, are of ships of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company and may be archive on the West Coast, but I have not found them on either 

https://www.academia.edu

or 

https://archive.org

which could mean they do not exist, are squirreled away among family items passed down from a captain, or simply have not been digitized yet as this can be a long and cumbersome process. 

Three ship logs are available on these links:

https://archive.org/details/williambayliesst00will_0

https://archive.org/details/logbookofbelugas00belu

https://archive.org/details/logbookofthrashe00thra

     Tracking down the other ships will take time.

     But the project is there.

     We know what ships were present that winter. We know of at least one specific reference to Homosexual activity  worded in such a way as to imply it was not the only one, and we have four extant logs in which others might be included regardless how described or couched, and a fifth which hints of more as well.

     Combined with the transcription of the Jesse H Freeman being done by the volunteers at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the already completed Newport log, if nothing else, we will have taken part in making the complete chronicle of events during the colony’s most populated year, 1894-1859.

     Those wishing to join should enter the group page and first claim the log book and pages to be worked on, no one has to do a whole log although it is more interesting when you get the complete story from first log entry to last, and periodically post what of any log is transcribed remembering to ensure your name is there to receive credit when the completed log and anything we find of interest is passed on to the Whaling Museum.

     It would be sadly ironic if those who are working to bring people from the past to light end up unknown and in the shadows themselves.

     I use Google Docs because I am familiar with it and you can leave side notes if something catches your interest or you come upon something you think others would like to learn.

     This is in its early stages and subject to change if it is discovered that because of some obscure legal point, this becomes just another good intention that needs to be abandoned as it is simply another paving stone on the road to hell.

     As is to be expected, even though a transcriber may begin looking for the common object or topic, they might find they have opened a door to a whole new area and should feel free going in that direction just making note that the pages intended to be transcribed are up for grabs.

     And, if you can’t read cursive, there may be transcriptions already out there on library websites to be discovered and reread with knowing eyes.