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PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
WHALING – DENHAM, Benjamin F. (fl. 1850s). Manuscript journal. Aboard the Harmony, North Pacific Ocean, 2 March-30 October 1858.
細節
WHALING – DENHAM, Benjamin F. (fl. 1850s). Manuscript journal. Aboard the Harmony, North Pacific Ocean, 2 March-30 October 1858.
Quarto notebook (310 x 188mm). 124 pages. 4 hand-drawn maps, various diagrams and calculations (a few leaves with discreet repairs, 3 leaves of diagrams strengthened). Modern navy half morocco with original wrappers bound in; slipcase.
“The appearance of things around us this morning is very little like May Day at home: vast fields of ice and snow-clad hills presenting quite a contrast to the vegetation and warmth now so abundant in good old Pennsylvania.” –May 1st, 1858
An early manuscript account of a voyage from Hawaii to the Bering and Chukchi seas and back at a pivotal point in the history of Arctic exploration and trade. By the 1850s, the American whaling industry was at its peak, venturing into the Russian Arctic for both the hunting of whales and, increasingly, the booming trade in products such as whalebone, walrus ivory, and furs. Hawaii, discovered a century earlier by the expeditions of James Cook, had become a vital port of call for such voyages across the North Pacific. Benjamin Denham here records the journey of the bark Harmony from Honolulu to the coast of Kamchatka, providing a valuable snapshot of the second decade of the presence of whalers in Bering Strait, just as the Western Arctic fur trade was beginning to eclipse the whaling industry in importance. Written at the request of a literary-minded friend, Denham’s journal describes daily life aboard the ship in a handsome and legible hand, indicating whale sightings and captures by neat whale tails drawn in the margins. The Harmony traded frequently with native people (and was itself partially staffed by native Hawaiian sailors), of whom Denham furnishes detailed accounts, including an Inuit-English vocabulary. He recounts in clear prose the visceral realities of whaling, as well as the cultures and landscapes of the Arctic, the various superstitions of seamen including the rumored presence of the ghost of a drowned sailor aboard the ship, and the optical phenomenon known as the fata morgana. Upon his return, Denham—a native of Pennsylvania—settled in San Francisco. See Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers in the Far North, pp. 274-95. Provenance: Sotheby's New York, 11 December 2006, lot 176.
Quarto notebook (310 x 188mm). 124 pages. 4 hand-drawn maps, various diagrams and calculations (a few leaves with discreet repairs, 3 leaves of diagrams strengthened). Modern navy half morocco with original wrappers bound in; slipcase.
“The appearance of things around us this morning is very little like May Day at home: vast fields of ice and snow-clad hills presenting quite a contrast to the vegetation and warmth now so abundant in good old Pennsylvania.” –May 1st, 1858
An early manuscript account of a voyage from Hawaii to the Bering and Chukchi seas and back at a pivotal point in the history of Arctic exploration and trade. By the 1850s, the American whaling industry was at its peak, venturing into the Russian Arctic for both the hunting of whales and, increasingly, the booming trade in products such as whalebone, walrus ivory, and furs. Hawaii, discovered a century earlier by the expeditions of James Cook, had become a vital port of call for such voyages across the North Pacific. Benjamin Denham here records the journey of the bark Harmony from Honolulu to the coast of Kamchatka, providing a valuable snapshot of the second decade of the presence of whalers in Bering Strait, just as the Western Arctic fur trade was beginning to eclipse the whaling industry in importance. Written at the request of a literary-minded friend, Denham’s journal describes daily life aboard the ship in a handsome and legible hand, indicating whale sightings and captures by neat whale tails drawn in the margins. The Harmony traded frequently with native people (and was itself partially staffed by native Hawaiian sailors), of whom Denham furnishes detailed accounts, including an Inuit-English vocabulary. He recounts in clear prose the visceral realities of whaling, as well as the cultures and landscapes of the Arctic, the various superstitions of seamen including the rumored presence of the ghost of a drowned sailor aboard the ship, and the optical phenomenon known as the fata morgana. Upon his return, Denham—a native of Pennsylvania—settled in San Francisco. See Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers in the Far North, pp. 274-95. Provenance: Sotheby's New York, 11 December 2006, lot 176.