One of the ships wintering at Herschel Island when the Newport was there was the Jesse H Freeman whose captain’s wife, Sophie Porter, had accompanied him on this voyage and kept the ship’s log.  While other log books are filled with dry, business related details, having much time on her hands and, as she states in the log, a desire to educate her peers at home what life on a whaling ship was like for a captain’s wife and why, although different from at home, it had its charms, she included information on everyday life.

      Among her hobbies were painting and photography, and, at times a combination as she would use a photograph as a model for a painting as can be seen by the grids on certain photos.  The photographs I have used are from the collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum and were taken by Sophie Porter while wintering. Some of the captains mentioned by her and in the other ship logs, as well as the children and the Reverend Stringer are in them.