A Whale of a Time

Our last trip out with the grandparents (which makes me feel sad even as I write) was to New Bedford's Whaling Museum

 http://www.whalingmuseum.org/


It's a stunning place which begins with a cathedral-like lobby hung with massive skeletons and then opens out into gallery after gallery, and really requires more than a half day trip. We did our best to keep up.

Some of the highlights are appropriately BIG - like the replica whale ship the Lagoda, actually the largest model ship in existence anywhere. Captain Margaret and First Mate Tom spent a good while at the wheel.

Some of them are exquisitely little, like the exhibits of scrimshaw, those delicately inked scraps of ivory, bone and baleen.

Tom was also very taken by the Sailors' Valentines, the shell art sold on Barbados to passing whalemen. He started counting the number of shells in one valentine, and we had to coax him away as he reached three hundred.

And I was very taken by something that had nothing to do with whales, the collection of art glass produced in the town from the 1870s. The cobalt blue glass is the work of the Pairpoint Corporation. I thought it was stunning.

The museum of course celebrates New Bedford's industrial glory days, when it was America's whaling headquarters. It showcases the technology of the times, and some epic artworks depicting the struggle between man and beast. But it didn't shy away from the ugliness of the kill, and we saw footage showing a whale being harpooned, again and again. Tom wanted to get up and walk away. Later on I asked him how things had changed, and he said that today we watch whales instead of stabbing them.