[29 June 1843:] At sunrise we commenced cutting in the remains of our whale and finished before breakfast, after which we sheared the jaws and dip[p]ed the Case. The length of the jaw was eleven feet and contained fourty-two teeth. These we extracted with great dispatch and took particular care of, thinking how suitable they would be for haberdashing. We also sawed off the pans and put them over board the bow, in order to soak the blood out [of] them and whiten the bone. This circumstance gave rise to thoughts similar to those occasioned by the teeth…. [3 July:] We then began to saw up and divide the bone, scarcely any of which but was held in such high estimation as to prevent it from being wasted. The jaw and the pans [of the jawbone] were dissected to such an advantage that nearly all had a piece which would answer to make a busk, or cane, and some were fortunate enough to get both. (Journal of Joseph Bogart Hersey, third mate, schooner Esquimaux of Provincetown, 1843)²

In the burgeoning Yankee sperm whaling industry of the second quarter of the 19th century, scenes like the ones described by whaleman Joseph Bogart Hersey grew increasingly prevalent. Once a whale was captured, and the grueling process of cutting-in (flensing off the blubber) and trying-out (rendering blubber into oil in the deckside tryworks) was completed, the twenty-odd or thirty-plus men on board were free to turn their attention to cleaning and preparing the refuse ivory and bone for their own artistic creations and mechanical contrivances. Scrimshaw is the name unaccountably attached to this indigenous occupational pursuit of the whale-hunters, a creative, often ingenious art form that employed byproducts of the fishery to pass idle hours at sea. Inextricably tied to the history, economics, and shipboarddynamics of the whaling industry, it emerged contemporaneously with the most vigorous epoch of American maritime enterprise.

The sperm-whale hunt was prosecuted for spermaceti oil, a valuable illuminant for lamps and lubricant for watches and delicate instruments. Waxes and stearine byproducts extractedin the shoreside refiningprocess were converted to spermaceti candles, soap, and industrial goods. Right and bowhead whales were hunted for oil and for baleen (elongated plates of keratin, the elastic, horny matter that grows in place of teeth in the upper jaws of the mysticete or so-called baleen whales). As the 19th century wore on, baleen (known to the market as whalebone) became increasingly significant as a raw material in the manufacture of corset stays, carriage springs, umbrella ribs, buggy whips, shoelaces, collar stays, and skirt-hoops. However, neither the teeth nor the skeletal bone had any appreciable marketvalue: without cuttinginto the profits of a voyage, so they could be left to the whalemen for their leisure-hours recreation.

It had not always been so. The origins of American whaling can be traced to the last third of the 17th century, when English colonists on Long Island (New York), Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod began taking right whales along inshore migratory pathways. This was a communal day-fishery prosecuted in open boats: shore watches were posted at coastal settlements during the migration season and an alarm sounded when whales were sighted, calling farmers and villagers from their usual occupations to launch boats into the surf. The hardware derived from Dutch and English Arctic whaling, begun circa 1611, but the methods were much older, pioneered by the Vikings on the coast of Norway and Basques along the Biscay coast of France and Spain.

In each of these cases the hunted species were baleen whales. Sperm whaling, in which New Englanders would excel above all others, did not come along until a generation or two later. Around the turn of the 18th century, with coastal stocks no longer sufficient to meet increasing demands for oil, the colonists began to sling whaleboats on larger vessels and venture out onto the open sea for days and weeks at a time in search of right whales. It was in the course of such a cruise that the “discovery” of sperm whales was made — a discovery not of the whales them- selves, which were already well known from carcasses that had washed ashore occasionally in Europe from time immemorial; but, rather, the discovery of their unexpected proximity to New England’s shores, and the feasibility and desirability of going after them for oil. This innovation, ascribed by tradition to Captain Christopher Hussey of Nantucket in 1712, not only introduced to the market the superior-quality sperm oil and occasioned the development of spermaceti candle manufacture, it also introduced a steady supplyof sperm-whale teeth and high-density, extremely workable bone. However, a hundred years would pass before all the components fell into place for the florescence of scrimshaw that eventually ensued.

During the more than ten centuries that Europeans had been hunting right and bowhead whales prior to the rise of sperm whaling, the hard byproducts of the fishery were only rarely available to mariners for their own use. The spiral tusks of the narwhal were promoted as horns of the unicorn, highly prized in medieval and Renaissance medicine for their reputed curative powers, were simply too valuable to be consigned to sailors for their personal use. Walrus ivory was hoarded as a cheaper and more accessible substitute for elephant ivory: artisans carved it into ornamental objects and sacredicons, used it for inlays,veneers, and finishes;among some, it may actually have been the medium of preference.³ Moreover, objects that have turned up in archaeological excavations,⁴ and scholarly revisiting of some sacred carvings that were already well known,⁵ suggest that cetacean skeletal bone may have been more generalized in medieval decorative arts than hitherto supposed, owing to a persistent failure of collectors and cataloguers adequately to differentiate among species of ivory, including ivory in museum collections.⁶

Baleen, susceptible to damage from parasites, difficult to incise and color precisely, and both more fragile and less versatile than ivory or bone, seems not to have been used much by medieval and Renaissance artisans. A few commercial uses were catalogued by the great French naturalist Ambroise Paré as early as 1561, mentioning “Busks for Women, Whip-staves, and little Staves, as also to stiffengarments.”⁷ Nevertheless, the Dutch whaling cartel had a surfeitof the stuff on its hands by 1618 and was perpetually on the prowl to develop market applications for it — a quest that ultimately failed. A few surviving oval boxes and mangles made by Dutch and Frisian whaling masters in the 17th and 18th centuries reinforce the notion that senior officers, at least, could obtain baleen for their personal handiwork. Even so, probably because of the intractability of the medium, baleen never really caught on for decorative work aboard ship until the florescence of scrimshaw in the 19th century; and by that time most of it was reserved for commercial sale as part of the revenue-producing “catch.”

Once Americans began taking sperm whales, an unprecedented volume of the handsome ivory teeth appeared on the scene; but there was, as yet, no pressing need for time-killing ship- board diversions. Throughout most of the 18th century, even as the whale-hunters pointed their prows toward Angola, Brazil, and Patagonia, voyages were comparatively short. Routes to and from the whaling grounds tended to follow the prevailing trade winds, providing fast, though not necessarily trouble-free passages; and most voyages lasted only one season. Though cruising the grounds may sometimes have been weeks or months long, no scrimshawing could transpire until whales were taken (the necessary prerequisite being acquisition of the byproducts used as raw materials); and in the little ships and brigs then employed, the yield from only a few whales sufficed to fill the hold, at which point it was time to head for home on another short passage. Any extra time was easily consumed with ship’s work — holystoning, painting, making repairs, and general upkeep. Tedious intervals requiring the invention of work for idle hands were few.

Once the Pacific Ocean grounds were opened in the 1790s, months-long passages around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope became integral components of commensurately longer voyages. By the 1840s, sperm-whaling cruises typically lasted three or four years, the ships were grossly overmanned, and prolonged periods between whales and between seasons provided insufficient work to keep all hands occupied. Shipboard dynamics changed dramatically, and the time factor began to play heavily on whaling crews. Yet there was little scrimshaw of any kind in this flourishing industry prior to the 1820s, and most of what there was consisted of practical implements and hand-tools, rather than purely decorative or pictorial works, fashioned from bone or baleen, rather than ivory. Few writers on the subject have noticed the absence of pictorial sperm-whale scrimshaw in this period or paused to question it;⁸ but the explanation is readily visible in the market economics of the fishery itself.

It has not previously been reported in print [untila version of this article was published in The Magazine Antiquesin 1992] or been generally known that, just at this time, sperm-whale teeth had become quite valuable in their own right as a cash-producing component of the catch. The China Trade, pioneered about a decade earlier in the 1780s, was a complicated network of routes and destinations to the Far East that involved extensive barter with Pacific islanders to obtain goods marketable in China. By the time whalemen were plying the Pacific, China Traders had discovered that many of these island cultures placed great value on sperm-whale teeth, from which they made various totemic, ceremonial, and practical objects. As teeth could be obtained from the whale fishery fairly cheaply (there being no other market for them), the China Traders bought up all they could get for barter in Polynesia.

The manifest and papers of theBoston ship Sultan,bound for Canton in 1815 commanded by Caleb Reynolds, clearly illustrates the situation. The Sultan’s outward cargo described in the lading invoice includes “1 box Cont[aining] 48 Whales Teeth36 lbs 11 oz [valuedat] $130.00.” The instructions to Captain Reynolds from Boston merchants Boardman & Pope specify that he was to gather more:

At the great Albemarle [Galapagos Islands]… we are informed that Whales Teeth may be found on the Beach, buried in the Sand, from Whales that die in the Bay, & are driven onshore.— Or, if that source fails, you will no doubt be able to obtain them from the Whale Ships you will meet about here. It will be advisable to obtain a considerable quantity of these Teeth if you can, at a price not very exorbitant, & this year would be most likely to do from the English ships, which would not be so likely to know their value to you as the Americans, for the latter since the publi- cation of Porters Journal, may estimate them at an extravagant price. They will be serviceable to you, if in the course of the voyage, you visit any of the Islands of the Pacific to procure Sandal Wood, and they will always be useful in procuring provisions there.

You have on board a box of these teeth, the two largest marked Nº 1 are very valuable for their size, and being very solid — those marked Nº 2 are very valuable for being very solid & round, & these the natives would hang roundtheir necks for ornaments without cutting, but of the first they will make a variety of ornaments — Those numbered 3 are of no great value except for the purchase of provisions…… Formerly the Whalemen considered them of little or no value, and perhaps by thetime you might visit the Islands, the supply has been such that the Natives may esteem them less.⁹

Boardman & Pope’s prophesy ultimately proved correct, for not long after this — probably by the time the advance guard of the whaling fleet reached Hawaii in 1819 — a surplus of teeth in Polynesia seriouslydiminished their value as barter. With no other markets on the horizon, they became available in increasing quantities for the whalemen’s hobbies.

This accounts for why pictorial sperm-whale scrimshaw first appeared at just around this time. The earliest authenticated date on such scrimshaw, a tooth portraying the whaleship Adam of London, is 1817;¹⁰ and no artist has been identified who is definitely known to have been active prior to 1821. The earliest attribution yet postulated is a smallish tooth signed J.K., provisionally credited to London whalingcaptain J. S. King, who may have engravedit as early as 1821.¹¹ It has long been known that the so-called Britannia Engraver was active in the mid 1820s; according to meticulously conscientious articles by Judge Paul E. Vardeman, Jr., it is possible, even likely (from the fact that some of the vessels he portrayed were extinct by circa 1821) that that artist was active as such in the Pacific a few years earlier.¹² And the work of Mary Malloy, with reference to that of New Zealand chronicler Rhys Richards,¹³ the Britannia Engraver is now believed to be Captain William Buckle (1787-1850), master of the London South Sea whaleship Daniel IV, the vessel most frequently portrayed by Britannia.¹⁴

There were a very few earlier American pointillist productions on sperm whale panbone and a couple of rudimentary contemporaneous efforts to decorate sperm whale teeth in the very late Colonial era. But it cannot be dismissed as insignificant to the national origin of pictorial sperm-whale scrimshaw that a host of unequivocally British pieces, some of very high quality, exhibiting sophisticated draftsmanship, arose in the immediate post-Napoleonic years while no substantial American work is ascribed to so early a date.

The earliest pictorial scrimshaw that can be confidently attributed to an American are teeth by Edward Burdett (1805-1833) of Nantucket, who shipped on his first whaling voyage in 1821 and was decorating sperm whale teeth by the middle 1820s. A younger contemporary, fellow- Nantucketer Frederick Myrick (1808-1862), was the author of the first pieces to be signed and dated. As a common seaman in the Nantucket ship Susan during 1826-29, Myrick engraved more than a dozen teeth with portraits of the Susan, known as the “Susan’s Teeth” (though three portray other whalers). In each case, the design adheres closelyto a single pattern, executed to a high standard, engraved on both sides: a broadside portrait of the ship whaling on the Japan or Peru grounds; a second broadside view of the same vessel homeward bound; identifying labels prominently featuringthe artist’s name and, usually, a date, surmounted by an anchor, American eagle, and crossed flags; and the motto “Death to the living, long life to the killers / Success to sailors wives & greasy luck to whalers.”¹⁵

The first scrimshaw to enter any institutional collection were a tooth by the Britannia Engraver and another by Frederick Myrick, accessioned circa 1830 by the East India Marine Society (founded in 1799; now PEM) while both artists were still living. The museum’s 1831 catalogue lists Myrick’s work generically as “Tooth of a Sperm Whale, curiously carved” and “Another, carved by the same hand.”¹⁶ The Britannia tooth portrays the New York merchant brigs Chinchilla and Tamaahmaah, in the Pacific trade in the 1820s under the command of brothers from Marblehead; merchant captain William Osgood of Salem brought it back from a Cape Horn voyage as a souvenir and donated it to the Society. The Myrick tooth portraying the Susan of Nantucket was undoubtedly also a mariner’s memento. Which all suggests that engraved sperm-whale’s teeth were still something of a curiosity in 1831 even among master mariners in thePacific trades; that there was no special name for the medium in common enough usage to have been used in the Society’s catalogue; and, most significantly, that even at this early stage pictorial scrimshaw was regarded essentially in the character of souvenirs. Before long, mariners of every stamp were making and collecting and swapping scrimshaw, but nowhere did the genre become so thoroughly integrated into the daily routine of shipboard life as in the whale fishery where it originated; and nowhere did pictorial engraving on whale teeth or walrus ivory achieve a higher aesthetic or technical standard than in the hands of the American whaleman- artists N.S. Finney,Manuel Enos, and the Iupiaqcalled Happy Jack, ortheir British counterparts, George LeCluse, the so-called Argus Artisan, and ship’s surgeon William Lewis Roderick.

The inventoryof tools and precise sequence of procedures employed to produce engraved scrimshaw are nowhere specified by the whalementhemselves, but can be interpolated from the general descriptions of scrimshaw in whalemen’s narratives, from the visible characteristics of the scrimshaw itself, and by analogy from other forms of occupational art.

It is not known by what principle the raw ivory and bone may have been distributed among the officers and crew, or whether such practices were generalized in the fishery or differed from ship to ship. By rights, the officers and crew of the boat that had taken the whale might be expected to have been rewarded with the best teeth and most desirable bone, but the yield may have been divided according to some other scheme mirroring the elaborate whaleship hierarchy that Melville describes so articulately in Moby-Dick. Olmsted’s colorful account of extracting teeth from a sperm-whale jawbone, which he calls “dentistry on a grand scale,” is accompanied by a helpful lithographic illustration, but fails to mention what happens to the teeth when the operation is completed.¹⁷ Self-proclaimed scrimshaw expert Joseph Bogart Hersey, who later commanded whaling voyages out of Provincetown, Massachusetts, was no more specific when, as a third mate in 1843, he wrote in his journal, “In the morning we divided our share of the teeth from the last whale. Some of our men were fortunate enough to get them which were nearly round; as for mine I did not consider it worth cleaning therefore threw it away.”

Marine-mammal ivory and bone tend to dry out over time, becoming brittle; scrimshawing is much more easily accomplished while the material is fresh and still permeated with its natural moisture and oils. It was well known among sailors that the superior tensile strength of skeletal whale bone and its resistance to splintering make it preferable to wood as a medium for tools and tool handles. Whale men’s journals mention soaking teeth in brine to soften them further, or to preserve their suppleness if scrimshawing could not commence immediately. To prepare the surface for engraving, the natural ridges and imperfections were removed by scraping with a knife. Often, the rough, irregular root-end of a tooth or tusk was sawn off square to form a base on which the finished scrimshaw could be stood upright. The surface was then smoothed with sharkskin, pumice, or any of several other precursors of modern sandpaper, and given a high polish, perhaps by rubbing between bare hands and burnishing with cotton, linen, or wool cloth.

Judging from Hersey’s remarks, some of the more accomplished shipboard artists must have been inundated with requests to scrimshaw souvenirs for less-gifted shipmates: “Being slightly skilled in the art of flowering; that is drawing and painting upon bone; steam boats, flower pots, monuments, balloons, landscapes &c &c &c; I have many demands made upon my generosity, and I do not wish to slightany; I of course work for all.” The artist might requirethat his patron scrape and polish the surface before he would engrave for them. This would account for how some scrimshanders were able to maintain such high levels of productivity , and why Frederick Myrick cranked out so many redundant, nearly identical “Susan’s Teeth” which, a hundred-plus years later, have been found scattered to the four winds on three continents.

The engraving was seldom accomplished by means so elaborate as those implied in Olmsted’s comments about “a great variety of small tools expressly intended for ‘scimshawing’” or Melville’s often-quoted epithet “dentistical-looking implements.” Forensic examination reveals that the prevailing tool was the ordinary sailors’ knife — as Melville’s remarks clearly indicate when taken in context:

Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like skrim- shander articles, as the whalemencall the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material in the hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner’s fancy.(Moby-Dick, Ch. 57)

The pictures on scrimshaw could be original portraits or scenes of the artist’s own devising, drawn freehand; frequently, they were copied or even traced directly from images published as illustrations in books and the popular press. There were no rules and few precedents to govern the choice of subject matter, but genre conventions inevitably arose favoring portraits, patriotic subjects, ship-portraits, whaling scenes, naval engagements, and domestic vignettes. Corset busks were usually intended for presentation to ladies of closer-than-casual acquaintance who were expected to wear them in association with undergarments of an intimate nature; thus, they were often given decorations signifying undying love, sometimes accompanied with sentimental “remember me” inscriptions. Contrary to popular supposition and the unrelenting optimism of forgers, authentic scrimshaw of a lascivious or pornographic nature is rare, if for no other reason than most scrimshaw was created primarily as gifts for loved ones back home, most of it during the so-called Victorian era. Only a small minorityof pictorial scrimshaw is inscribed in any way with mottoes, identifying labels, or dedications (another favorite of forgers), and the percentage of works signed by the artist is miniscule. However, where these phenomena occur and can be verified they impart substantial additional interest to the piece, as they tend to establish a fine, palpable context for its creation and can often definitively ascribe authorship.

In instances of copywork, the scrimshander wouldcommonly cut out the illustration to be reproduced (or in some cases, would trace the intended image onto paper),then might lay it over thesurface of the ivory or bone, perhapsmoistening the paper to makeit more pliant, enabling it to conform to the curved surface of the medium.Using a sailmaker’s needle, the lines of the picture could be pierced through in a series of dots. When the paper was removed, the dots on the polished surface could be connected with a blade to form a facsimile of the printed original.

Once a design was engraved onto the polished surface, it had to be brought out by applying a coloring agent to fill the grooves or incisions, wiping off the excess. Forensic evidence to date indicates that monochrome scrimshaw was usually colored with what is essentially oil paint: a suspensionof particle matter in oil — in this instance, sperm oil, gathered from ample supplies in the lampblack residue of oil lamps and tryworks. India ink (China ink) were also occasionally used. On polychrome work, a variety of oil-soluble and water-soluble inks and dyes could be employed. As there were no rules or academic strictures to govern scrimshaw production, the genre is characterized by a wide spectrum of variation and innovation.

The 1830s through the ’60s was a heyday of pictorial scrimshaw, when many of the finest works were produced. But the genre continued throughout the life of the whaling industry, even during its precipitous decline towards the end of the 19th century, at which time two of the all- time greatest masters of the genre were creating some of their best work. Manuel Enos did his stellar polychrome female portraiture in the 1860s. N.S. Finney, a native of Massachusetts who had been a prodigious maker of superb monochrome scrimshaw during a whaling career that stretched from the 1830s into the ’50s, landed in California around 1858, set himself up in San Francisco, and took the unprecedented step of makinga career out of engraving walrus-ivory and whale teeth on commission. And Happy Jack was not even born until circa 1870.

N.S. Finney is the only known instance in whichthe genre took onprofessional dimensions of a sometime whaleman making his living from scrimshaw. For most, it remained a shipboard pastime for the production of “sailors’ fancies.” And be there any doubt that, like any genuine art form, scrimshaw could exert a calming influence on practitioners, providing welcome relief from the alternating hard labor and abject boredomthat characterized a whaling voyage,consider Ambrose Bates’s journal entry aboard the whaling brig Isabella of New London, Connecticut, in 1868: “While I am at this table writing there is another man at the opposite end of said table making pictures upon walrus tusks. Now this man seems completely satisfied that the world is just right and was got up just to his own idea.”