NEWPORT  LOG

This is the full log of the Newport voyage from 1894-1896 twice wintering on Herschel Island.            

The log had been divided into three sections transcribed by two people. Had I not been assigned the section I had been given, the winter of 1894-1895, althought the reference to Sodomy and Onanism might have gone by unnoticed if the person, dealing with words known and unknown that one encounters in the logs, it might have passed by unnoticed even as it had been read for the words, not the meaning.

     The official description of the log that had been read and main points noted and included on the cover page of the digitized log on archive.org describes the log as being the “Partial log, kept by Hartson H. Bodfish, relating to whaling voyage to the Arctic Ocean; 1893 Aug. 21-1896 Sept. 4; Includes descriptions of types of whales (bowhead) and fur seals seen or taken, accidents and death at sea, women and children on ship, indigenous people, recapture of deserters, punishment on ship, and shipboard medicine and treatment of wounded man; and ink sketches, poems, minutes of meetings, and scores and statistics for a baseball league played at Herschel Island”. In spite of the inclusion of “punishment on ship”, the specifics of the punishments are not noted and this lack of specificity would lead one to believe any punishments were for violations with which historians, amateur and professional, are familiar evidence perhaps that it was seen but not fully understood or was was omitted because of the sensibilities of the time in which it was read and that of the reader who may have chosen to exercise improper censorship.

     While reading this and any log from the 1894-95 wintering, it must be remembered that these events did not take place under conditions most people are familiar with when it comes to the billowing sails of the three masted ships of Moby Dick, but closer to modern times, in this case three years before the Spanish American war and are closer to Teddy Roosevelt than Melville.

       The ships being used are masted steamships so there is more controlled maneuvering, and the use of coal in the boilers and other steamships being able to deliver goods more quickly than by only sail, living on the Island was made bearable by using the boilers to hit the ships. 

       This is the unvarnished log and, as will be seen beyond the usual expectations of log entries about working on a whaling ship, with no sunlight for months and with little to do, the number of runaways heading for the Yukon and its gold or assuming they could escape to a civilized place within a safe distance, fights, drunken accidents, frostbite, murder, and accidental and purposeful shootings, this one ship, at least, was an interesting one and one on which a little sodomy and Onanism might have just been part of the fabric of its interesting tapestry.

The photographs are from the collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. They were taken on glass plates by Sophie Porter, wife of Captain William S Porter of the Jesse H Freeman, on Herschel Island during the winter of 1894-1895.