It's been very cold and dry where I live -- and very quiet as well. Early in the morning last week I saw a coyote walking down the middle of my street. A few days before, a red fox preceded me on my walk. Every hundred feet or so, he'd stop and look back as if to make sure that I was paying attention to him. His coat was beautiful and glowed in the sunlight. After a quarter mile or so, he took a right turn and I took my usual leftward way home. It was a nice and peaceful experience.
Although it's been unusually cold (after an unusually warm stretch), we haven't had any snow to speak of. Nature seems to be a bit turned on its head this year. I've been up North to spend time together with the family while the younger of the clan skied and we wiser ones awaited their return in the warmth of the lodge. But around my home the ground is bare. Not even enough for a sleigh ride through the woods.
The thought of sleigh rides got me to thinking of another New England industry during the early 1800's -- whaling. The term "Nantucket Sleigh Ride" refers to what happens after a whale is harpooned. The whaleboat, a little over twenty feet in length was dragged behind the whale, sometimes for miles, out of sight of the mother ship. It was wild and extremely dangerous work that was repeated a hundred or more times during each voyage. Since many of the whale-men were from coastal New England towns, the name of this breathtaking ride was ironic, yet familiar.
So, I spent some time this weekend in New Bedford, Massachusetts, prowling through a few antique stores and spending time at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. What a great set of exhibits! My favorite was the Lagoda. This is the largest ship model in the world, built in 1915-1916 and is lovingly cared for by the museum. It is built to one half scale and is authentic down to the deck planking nails. I also "discovered" that the height of the deck "skids" where whaleboats were stored overhead, helmsman shelter, and Captain's quarters were also to accurate scale by regularly bumping them with my head. Nevertheless, it was very interesting and well worth the visit if you are in the area. It's only a little over an hour from Boston. At its peak in the mid-1800's, New Bedford was the fourth largest port city in the U.S. and a very wealthy town -- all because of the whaling industry.
It was also a sad day in the museum. Later that day, the New Bedford fishing community was scheduled to hold a reception after the memorial service for the fishing crewmen recently lost at sea. Across the street from the museum at the Seaman's Bethel, one is reminded of these tragedies that have reoccurred with regularity for the past two hundred years or more in this town (among others) whose livelihood has been so closely linked to the fruits of the sea.
This is the same Bethel made famous by Herman Melville in Moby Dick. It is generally accepted that the story of the great white whale ramming and sinking the Pequod was inspired by the true story of the "Essex." This whaler was indeed rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1920 leaving the crew stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in whaleboats. The whale repeatedly raced into the side of the ship and then the bow with its huge head, driving the ship backward as seawater poured over the stern and filled the hold. The story of the Essex was well told in In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. A very simplified version is here.
Whales were hunted (almost to extinction) in the early-to-mid 1800's for three primary by-products: whale oil, baleen, and spermaceti. Ambergris was another more rare by-product primarily used in the manufacture of perfume.
Whale oil was valued as smokeless fuel for lanterns and was far better than tallow candles for indoor lighting purposes in those pre-petroleum days. As the industrial age was kicking into high gear, spermaceti from sperm whales was used as a very fine lubricant for clocks, watches and factory machinery. Baleen from right whales was the plastic of its day, used primarily in corsets, parasols, and buggy whips.
Whaleships were constructed with keen awareness of the ships' primary purpose: to bring back as many barrels of whale oil as possible. The decks are less obstructed than other sailing ships in order to be most efficient when doing the messy work of flensing the whale and boiling the blubber into oil. Here are photographs of the "Charles W. Morgan" at Mystic Seaport Museum, a fabulous recreation of a New England sailing town during the 1800's showing the deck relatively free of clutter.
This was dangerous work indeed. The walls of the Seamans Bethel are lined with memorial plaques dedicated to the memory of men lost at sea. Many men were poor with no other options, runaway slaves, or fugitives from the law. Still others had sea-faring in their blood, having come from long lines of sea-going men. Signing up for a whaling voyage meant that you were at sea from three to four years. Common sailors lived crammed into quarters with a ceiling height too low to stand fully erect.
An individual whale might yield a hundred barrels of oil. Returning with two thousand barrels was considered a good voyage. On one of its last voyages, the "Sharon" produced over 5,000 barrels with a market value greater than $100,000. The owners took 50%, the captain 25% and the rest was allocated by seniority and value of the man's work. The common seaman would earn perhaps 1/100 share or less. On the Sharon's voyage, this would have been serious money in 1851. However, the typical voyage yielded far less results, earning only a couple hundred dollars for the seaman after all that time at sea. From these earnings were deducted food rations, clothing, and any advances that the seaman had negotiated in order to feed his wife and children while he was away. And, these advances were often lent at usurious rates of 25% to 100%. In some cases, the life was one of virtual indentured servitude. The only escape for many common sailors was desertion on a South Pacific port of call -- or death. Typical of many men, Captain Nathan Smith went to sea as a teenager, spent 35 of his 51 years alive at sea and, during his sailing career, was only with his family for a total of five years.
Provisioning in those days was a serious business requiring detailed allocation of space, balanced against the storage requirements for the full barrels. On the outward leg of the voyage, the ship's hold was filled with necessary goods for the anticipated three to four years at sea when the ship would have to be almost completely self-sufficient. The hold would have been filled with spare parts: spars, lines, sails, food, as well as barrel staves and hoops. The barrels for storing the oil weren't actually assembled by the ship's cooper until the whales were captured.
As the hold filled with barrels of whale oil, the ship would call at various ports in the Pacific -- Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific Islands -- to bargain for fresh food, more spare parts, and to replace the occasional deserted seaman.
Until the ship and every man (plus the occasional captain's wife) on it were fully equipped for the voyage, the ship couldn't leave harbor and wasn't earning revenue for its owners. Ships were unloaded, repaired, and re-provisioned in a matter of weeks so that they could return to sea as quickly as possible.
It's interesting to me how words evolve in their meanings as time passes. When I searched on the term "user provisioning" just now, I was very pleased to see this as the first return.
Today, the objectives are still the same as they were two hundred years ago: make the investment in personnel and equipment yield financial return more quickly. Compete in our markets more efficiently. Make our people more productive the day they show up for work because they have the (software) tools needed to do the job. Be more self-reliant by having planned for contingencies. Identity Management technologies are essential elements of a successful business strategy today.
By doing this, we can explore new markets, go farther into new territories, establish new trading relationships, and create entry barriers for potential competitors.
