True to my word, I hit the road last Thursday. Three calls along the Maine coast, then across the top of the state to Vermont, then down. Fresh, sparkling snow in the early Sunday morning sun all the way from the Canadian border to the White Mountains. Spent a few grand and had a hell of a lot more fun than I would have if I’d spent three days trolling through screens full of images at some lame virtual book fair.
One of the things I bought was remarkable – not necessarily for what it was, though it was a fairly interesting manuscript – but because of the nature of the purchase. I bought an item from a dealer that I’d sold him a year before. I said, “What’s this?” He replied “It’s that little whaling log you sold me in 2020.” I said, “I’d like to buy it back, if the price is right.” It was, so I paid him. I made a little money on it, then he made a little money on it, and now I’m going to try again.
This happens occasionally in our trade. There’s even a joke about a book that several dealers sell back and forth between themselves. One day one of the dealers sells the book to a retail customer and the other dealers flip out. “Why did you have to go and sell that damned book? We were all making money on it!”
Thus it was with the Arctic whaling log for the bark Camilla, 1866-1867. I probably bought it for very little and was able to sell it cheap the first time. This time, I’ll try to squeeze a few more bucks out of it. The log is somewhat unusual in that the navigator used the book to do all his computations for position, so we get a real sense of how tough things were before the advent of the GPS. Also, there’s some variation between standard reference sources such as Starbuck and Lund, as to where Camilla went on this voyage, and how much she brought back. In all, a neat little piece of whaling history at an affordable price. Here’s how I described it:
Manuscript. Sea Journal of the Bark Camilla, Captain Reuben Thomas, South Pacific, Arctic Seas, San Francisco, New Bedford. 1866 – 1867. 8v0. 20.5 cm. Unpaginated, about 75 pages of manuscript entries.
“Camilla” was a 328 ton bark built in Fairhaven, MA in 1857. This journal begins with months of computations of longitude and brief notes of position. In January, 1866, “Camilla” was sailing “the Line,” heading along the equator west toward the Christmas Islands. By the end of the month they’re off the east coast of New Zealand. From that point they bear northeast. By the end of March they’ve reached Guam, headed north, and by June they’re off Cape Lisburne in the Chukchi Sea. In October the anonymous journal keeper compares chronometers with the whale ship “Eagle,” and finds “Eagle slow sec. 50.” After this entry they head south, the Fox Islands, off the Alaskan coast, coming into view on Oct 11. By December 1866, they’ve landed at San Francisco and are departing for New Bedford. Their captain is now R.N. Smith. The navigational computations continue, but now are supplemented by brief journal entries reporting weather, location, distance traveled, and vessels sighted. The computations disappear and the entries become somewhat more detailed as they reach Cape Horn at the end of January 1867. They pick up the northeast trade winds in March, encounter fierce gales off Bermuda which last into early April, and pass Montauk April 10, at which point the journal; ends. Though the journal keeper’s maths can be daunting, they demonstrate the difficulty of accurately determining position at sea, with pages of cramped figures and frequent chronometer checks. Also, all this position-figuring exposes something of a puzzle. Starbuck says she sailed in the North Pacific, sending home 75 sperm, 3625 whale, and 41,500 bone. Lund has her Arctic whaling, returning 118 sperm, 3956 whale, and 68,200 bone. Starbuck shows her captain as Thomas, while Lund adds Capt. Rufus Smith, recorded in this journal as bringing the “Camilla” home from San Francisco. What she was doing off New Zealand is unexplained – except for the fact that she was at sea from December 1862 to April 1867, certainly enough time for a side-trip or two. A minuscule but interesting bit of whaling history. Bound in worn quarter calf over marbled boards, binding weak but holding. Text legible. $850
By the way, despite all my complaining, I’m still doing the occasional Virtual Book Fair. In fact, you’re all invited to the ABAA Virtual Boston Book Fair. It begins at noon on Thursday November 18, and runs until November 20.
You can gain admittance by clicking HERE. But don’t try to get in until noon on the 18th!
Marc Selvaggio says
You have to put Winooski Vt on this trip map sometime. You can at least get cheap gas up by the highway.
Marc Selvaggio
(sometimes at home in Winooski)