Sailors' "Bring-Backs" From the Nineteenth Century New England Whaling Industry: A Wooden Moai From Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Two examples of artifact collections that were brought back from the South Seas by Yankee whalers are documented. Among them is a singular head of a wooden moai from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), which is analyzed here and absolutely dated. This small sculpture is associated with an early phase of the American whaling industry in the Pacific.

"Tis advertised in Boston, New York, and Buffalo, 500 brave Americans a whalin' for to go!"

During the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first six decades of the nineteenth century, until 1859 when mineral oil began to be produced at Titusville, Pennsylvania, Americans relied heavily upon whale oil lamps and spermaceti candles to light their homes. Marine mammals, especially whales like the bowhead, gray, humpback, right, and sperm, were pursued across all oceans to be cut up, rendered into oil, and transferred to casks for the voyage back to home ports. In New England and adjacent New York State, the principal ports were Newburyport, Salem, Nantucket, New Bedford (Buzzard's Bay region), Sag Harbor, and New York City. Ship chandlers did a brisk trade in these places selling provisions, sailors' gear, rope, hardware of all sorts, and logbooks to document voyages and the whales that were taken.

Logbooks are a rich trove of information for maritime historians about life aboard a whaler and the places that were visited. They are particularly important to ethnographers because sailors collected weapons, fishing tackle, and other locally manufactured articles during their stay in foreign ports, and using logbook entries, it may be possible to link crew-members to artifacts from specific cultures or societies.

Bringing back artifacts was primarily educational. They could be displayed at county fairs where large crowds gathered, passed among appreciative audiences who were eager to learn about exotic cultures, and perhaps published in illustrated accounts of voyages—after the manner of the illustrious Captain Cook and his scholar-associates who left records of exploration. In New England, artifacts were also gifted to university museums, cabinets of historical societies, and museums expressly intended for displaying such curiosities. An august example of the latter is the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, formerly the Museum of the East India Marine Society (Dodge, 1965). Its holdings of whalers' bring-backs from Polynesia, China, northwestern North America, and the Arctic have been the subject of innumerable books and catalogues (e.g., Dodge 1941).

Expeditions to the Pacific sponsored by European nations during the eighteenth century, and later by the United States government (see Wilkes in Jenkins 1852), left records of discovery and documented collections of artifacts, most of which have gravitated to public repositories. To a lesser degree, useful information also may be gleaned from whaling shiplogs. Many logs belonging to institutions, however, have yet to be published; there is much of interest within them awaiting discovery (Rhys Richards pers. comm.). Although few whaling ship-logs remain in private hands, it is hardly the case for bring-backs. Scattered, small collections are curated by descendants of seamen, captains, and whaleship owners and remain stowed within trunks and sea chests in attics and storerooms.

Little-known visits by whalers to Pacific islands lying outside normal tracks of voyaging may have had major consequences for islanders (Richards 2008). Even routine stops for watering and taking on fresh provisions—for example, a brief visit in 1836 to Easter Island that was logged by a whaling vessel from Falmouth, Massachusetts (archive of the Falmouth Historical Society)—might have had dire outcomes if diseases were aboard. Such fleeting contacts for trade (in this case, boards and nails in exchange for sweet potatoes and bananas) may have occurred frequently.

Vestiges of Captain Charles S. Taber's Pacific Voyages

Charles Spooner Taber (1809–1892, see Figure 1) was born in Fairhaven, now part of New Bedford, Massachusetts—at one time a center of New England's whaling industry. The Taber family operated a ship's chandlery, and it is no wonder that as a young man, Charles began to make a living at sea. In the annals of the American whale-fishery, Captain Taber is remembered for two things. First, he authored (Taber 1894) a forceful narrative about the loss of his ship in 1840 among the Fiji Islands (Foster 1985:24), and second, he was Master of the Shylock out of Old Rochester, Massachusetts, also known as Sippican (Wood 2004), on her 1837–1838 voyage, which by some accounts was the most profitable whaling "run" of 2 years' duration ever made. His share in profits from this single voyage must have enriched Taber; while his ship owners residing in Marion, Massachusetts (Rosbe 2002) stood to become very wealthy.

Captain Taber made at least three whaling voyages to Central and South Pacific waters. Two were with the Shylock (1837–1838 and 1839–1840), and one (1844–1847) was aboard the Elizabeth (see Sherman 1965:104). The 1839–1840 voyage on the Shylock ended as a total loss. This 278-ton vessel, built in 1824, was wrecked upon an unmarked reef off Turtle Island in Fiji and three of the crew were drowned (Ward & Dodge 1967:408, 448–451). The loss of the Shylock was well known to both Fijians and Christian missionaries residing 2000 miles away in the Society Islands (Williams & Calvert 1859:266). These same missionaries aided the castaways and helped Captain Taber reach New Zealand and eventually his home.

Perhaps during the 1837–1838 voyage of the Shylock or afterward when he sailed with the Elizabeth, Charles Taber assembled a small collection of bring-backs. Among them were the following: (1) a Maori model canoe; (2) a spear-club from Niue; (3) two Fijian clubs (a bowai and an ula); (4) a Vanuatu barbed spear; (5) a Gilbert Islands shark-tooth sword; (6) a Buka (Bougainville) paddle with painted details in red and black (Figure 2); (7) a Solomon Islands dance paddle; (8) pearl shell fishing tackle (Marshall Islands?); (9) an Australian club (waddy); and, most notably, (10) an Easter Island rapa carved from toromiro, broken in two but showing an old repair with hide glue (Figure 3). This rapa has been pictured by A. L. Kaeppler (2010: Figure 537; page 365). The above items may have been personally collected by Captain Taber from native inhabitants at logged destinations of the Shylock (e.g., Bougainville) or, just as likely, were furnished to him by fellow seafaring collectors.

Figure 1.

Charles Spooner Taber, Captain of the Shylock, from his 1894 book.

Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Used by permission.

The collection of bring-backs belonging to Captain Taber descended through Marietta Helen Presho whose marriage to Ammi Rufus Campbell is recorded at Christ Church in Cuba, western New York State. In 1993 at an estate auction of Helen Burt Campbell (daughter of Marietta and Ammi) who died in her 80s, the collection was offered piecemeal to bidders. According to the auctioneer, the Oceanian artifacts once belonged to Helen Campbell's "grandfather's great-uncle."

Figure 2.

Detail of a Buka Island paddle, presumed to have been collected by Captain Charles S. Taber during an 1837–1838 or 1844–1847 whaling voyage to the Pacific. N. Averie Montagu collection.

Evidence that Helen Campbell's ancestor was none other than Charles Spooner Taber is provided by a whaling register of the 1837–1838 voyage of the Shylock, which was also offered at the auction of her estate. This remarkable document, presumed to be in Taber's own hand (Figure 4), has entries from July 2, 1837, until December 6, 1838. According to S. C. Luce (Dennis Wood Abstracts, Volume 2), the Shylock returned with 2300 barrels of oil (40 were sperm whale oil) after 17 months and 4 days at sea. Among the 134 pages of entries, collecting artifacts is not mentioned although there are many details about activities aboard ship when it was underway or anchored at foreign ports.

Figure 3.

Easter Island dance paddle (rapa) fashioned of local wood (toromiro), presumed to have been collected by Captain Charles S. Taber. Mark and Carolyn Blackburn collection.

In addition to keeping Captain Taber's bring-backs and ship log, the Campbells curated a small group of Northwest Coast, Aleut, and Eskimo artifacts of another family member, Lydia, who had married a sailor—James Hart. James pursued marine mammals during the (late) nineteenth century—in this case, in northern Pacific waters. His bring-backs, too, were consigned to the 1993 auction. Among them were (1) an Aleut hunter's hat, (2) a red and black-painted atlatl (spear-thrower) for use by a kayaker, (3) a painted Tlingit dance paddle, (4) sled shoes made of walrus tusk, and (5) several wooden and horn spoons (Tlingit?).

Both groups of bring-backs are made of durable materials that could have survived rough treatment while at sea, and not unexpectedly, weapons are well represented. They are the sort of things that sailors preferred to collect, and could have been obtained by dealing freely with men of foreign lands or their fellow ship-mates. Articles of dress, ornaments, and women's objects are not represented.

We are told that the Campbell family displayed their collection at Allegheny County fairs and local historic societies. It is assumed that generations of Campbell (and Presho) children also shared these objects with fellow schoolmates. In short, they were used to educate and expand the horizons of farmers, woodsmen, and merchants who resided in rural Cuba, upstate New York—land-locked and hundreds of miles from the nearest salt sea.

Figure 4.

N. Averie Montagu examining the ship-log of the 1837–1838 voyage of the Shylock. It is opened to entries for October, 1837. Note many whale-stamps along the margins, which testify to the "fat luck" the whalers were enjoying.

Vestige of an Early Whaling Voyage to the South Seas by the New England Cobb Family

Not every bring-back owned by a sailor's lineage was exhibited and used to educate the public; the fate of some artifacts was to disappear into storage. A forgotten object with an interesting story to tell, which only recently was brought out of storage and spared possible destruction, is the head of an Easter Island wooden statue (moai) shown in Figure 5. It was discovered at a household sale in Tenafly, New Jersey.

Tenafly is a residential community of metropolitan New York City. Ithasmany ranch-style homes that were erected shortly after World War II. One residence—36 Foster Road, built in 1950—was occupied by Sheldon Best (b. 1930) and his wife, Imogene Cobb Best (b. 1934).

The couple became hoarders and lived in only one or two rooms; the others were used for storage. According to antique dealers who attended an estate sale on the premises after the death of Sheldon Best during 2016, these storerooms were filled from floor to ceiling with furniture, newspapers dating to the 1960s, and sundry accumulations. A thick layer of pulverized debris covered their floors. The house had to be "totally sifted through and items cleared away in order to make an estate sale even possible" (G. Lucente 2016 pers. comm).

One storeroom was devoted to the inheritance of Imogene Cobb Best. It contained boxes of family mementos, clothing, and antique New England furniture including a seventeenth century "Brewster" (Carver?) chair. Buried among this odd lot was the small wooden sculpture from Easter Island.

Figure 5.

Head of an Easter Island moai sculpted from toromiro, formerly owned by Imogene Cobb Best. Height=4.5 inches (114.5 mm). Photographs by Pete Bostrom, Lithic Casting Laboratory.

The Cobb family in North America has several lines (lineages) in Massachusetts and Virginia. The Barnstable line dates from the 1630s and spread to towns south of Boston—among them, Scituate, Falmouth (on Cape Cod), and Middleboro. During the eighteenth century belonging to this line were shipbuilders, naval officers, and sea captains. By the early nineteenth century, some family members had moved off the mainland to Nantucket, which had become a center for whale-fishery.

Possibly Imogene Cobb is descended from the Barnstable line; however, the exact linkage to her forebears remains unknown. Her genealogy may be traced through her grandfather, Augustus A. Cobb (1880–1951), back to his father—Seth A. Cobb (b.?). Augustus A. Cobb, it is known, resided in Wrentham, Massachusetts, and at the age of 23 he shipped as a green-hand on the whaling schooner Era. This ship, built in 1847, fished the North Atlantic grounds until 1906 when she foundered at St. Pierre, Miquelon. Doubtless, Imogene knew about her whaling heritage, and like most New Englanders, took pride in it.

Among Imogene Cobb's earlier presumed ancestors are two shipbuilders. The first is Samuel Cobb who was active in his trade during 1750–1760. The second is Ebenezer, his son, who lived in New England until 1823. Ebenezer, who also was a Captain, built a number of vessels at Eastham, Cape Cod, for whaling and fishing the Grand Banks. Perhaps the best known of his vessels was the Belvidere, which was in service from 1801 until 1822. It was commanded on its last voyage (1822) by Ebenezer's son, "Master Cobb" whose first name is unknown.

Sailing from Nantucket, the Belvidere made voyages to the Pacific in 1802–1804 and again in 1804–1806 (Lund et al. 2010; records of the National Maritime Digital Library). The first vessels from Nantucket and New Bedford to round Cape Horn and head for onshore whaling grounds along the Peruvian coast shipped out in 1791, returning to port in 1793 with cargos of oil. The Juan Fernandez Islands near the latitude of Santiago, Chile, were also frequented by New Englanders. Far to the west of them but only a few degrees to the north lay Easter Island.

According to Richards, the trade for Easter Island wooden sculptures by New Englanders may have begun as early as 1809 (2008:30), although an earlier date seems likely if we judge by the history of known contacts, for example, the notorious kidnapping of Easter Islanders in 1806 by the Captain and men of the Nancy. The first record of an Easter Island wooden artifact brought back to New England, however, is 1823 (Richards 2008:128).

Imogene Cobb's inherited head of an Easter Island wooden moai may have been collected by a whaling forebear who had shipped on the Belvidere during one of two voyages to the Pacific, which were captained by Hezekiah Barnard (1802–1804) and Richard G. Swain (1804–1806) Were it so, it is one of the first bring-backs from that remote place to reach Massachusetts in the hands of a Yankee whaler.

Analysis of Imogene Cobb's Bring-back from Easter Island

An offer to acquire this artifact, which its seller mistakenly assumed was Native American in origin, was seized because of its obvious age and close resemblance to toromiro (Sophora toromiro)—an understory tree endemic to Easter Island but now extinct there. Since very few radiocarbon determinations have been obtained on artifacts made from toromiro (see Forment et al. 2001; Kaeppler 2003:39), the opportunity of securing another determination was persuasive.

The head had been snapped at the junction of the neck and shoulders, apparently by brute force, as there are no clear kerfs made by an axe or saw. The fracture is polished and worn (Figure 6), suggesting that the break had occurred years before it was traded to a whaler. Later in the laboratory, a sample for radiocarbon-dating weighing .4 g was removed using a carving chisel. The sampling site is located along what was judged to be the central axis of the carving—likewise, the tree from which it was taken (Figure 6). Wood at this place would have formed during the earliest years of growth and should yield the oldest absolute age.

Apart from the break and the wood used to make it, details of the little sculpture are, as follows:

1. (1). The crown above the statue's left eye bears an incised design, likely representing a tern or sea swallow. The bird's tail, body, and wings are more surely and deeply incised than the neck, head, and beak (Figure 7), suggesting that the two groups of design elements were cut at different times and not with the same instrument.

2. (2). Three parallel lines have been lightly incised upon the chin and lower lip (Figure 8). They may have been executed by the same hand who sketched the tern's neck, head, and beak. Male and female images from Easter Island made of tapa illustrated by Heyerdahl (1975: Plate 17, 19) and Kaeppler (2003: Figures 64 and 65; see also Figure 40a) bear three lines painted upon the chin. Similarly, some female wooden moai exhibit this detail (Heyerdahl, 1975: Plates 67, 68).

3. (3). The edges of each eye cavity are polished (Figure 9)—an indication that the pupils and irises had been missing for some while before the artifact was traded away. It has been argued that removal of one or both eyes (iris and pupil) rendered a statue "inactive" (Richards 2008:26).

4. (4). The basic configuration of the face with its arrow-shaped nose, the wide, sharp-edged line of jaw and chin, closed mouth, and small ears (lobes are not distended) conforms to a wooden moai pictured by Heyerdahl (1975: Plate 80). This specimen is now in the collection of the Auckland Museum, and formerly belonged to H. D. Skinner of the Otago Museum. Were it intact and proportioned identically to the Auckland statue (height 61 cm), the Imogene Cobb moai would have been shorter—perhaps only 40 cm tall. Two statues with heads of the same basic configuration were collected in 1886 at Easter Island by Paymaster W. J. Thomson of the U. S. ship Mohican (Thomson 1891: Plate L).

5. (5). On the back of the statue there are two interesting details, namely, (1) a narrow fillet (of hair?) extending from the crown down the occiput, and (2) a swelling or protuberance on the neck, which is in line with the chin. Such a lump may have resulted from use of a pole headrest, as described by Jenkins (1852:351) for Fijians.

6. (6). There are several divots with fine parallel striae on the left side of the head above the ear. They appear to be whittle marks of a flaked stone tool, which were not effaced during the final stages of finishing.

Figure 6.

Fracture at the junction of neck and shoulders of the Imogene Cobb moai from Easter Island. Sampling site for absolute dating is indicated by the dotted ellipse. Maximum width of fracture=48mm.

Stylistically, the Imogene Cobb sculpture and Heyerdahl's Plate 80b are similar. Heyerdahl suggested (1975:280) that the sculpture was reminiscent of the more recent work of Juan Tepano, the father of Jorge Tepano, who Heryerdahl met in 1955 (Heyerdahl 1961). Juan Tepano was thought to be 40 years old in 1914–1915 when he served as an informant to anthropologist Katherine Scoresby Routledge (1919:214, Figure 83). He worked with A. Métraux a generation later in the 1930s (Métraux 1957), and with Father Sebastián Englert as well. Juan Tepano was not prominently acknowledged in Englert's 1948 writings, although photographs of him and his family were published (1948:58, 60). According to Englert, the lineage name Tepano is used by members of the Tupahotu group ("tribe") on Easter Island.

Figure 7.

Incised design of a tern upon the head of the Imogene Cobb sculpture. The very lightly incised neck, head, and beak have been shaded for clarity. Photograph by Pete Bostrom.

Given the Tepano lineage's continuing involvement with wooden sculptures and oral historical traditions, we may wonder how many years artistic sub-traditions could endure among a confined, insular society who, during infrequent visits by alien cultures, suffered slave raids and exposure to diseases. For a preliterate population seven or eight generations, at most 200 years, seems a reasonable guess; however, Rapanui people were not illiterate. They were equipped with mnemonic devices (rongorongo tablets) and a caste of trained readers to interpret them. Therefore, an artistic sub-tradition among them may have endured a longer time. A test of this proposition would be to date absolutely the Imogene Cobb sculpture, which is similar in style to the Auckland carving and (according to Thor Heyerdahl) to the woodcarvings of Juan Tepano. Using our dating evidence we might establish the duration of a sculptural sub-tradition among the Tepano lineage of the Tupahotu group.

Figure 8.

Parallel incised lines upon the chin of the Imogene Cobb sculpture. This embellishment is found upon several figures from Rapa Nui known to have been collected during the early nineteenth century.

A Radiocarbon Determination of the Imogene Cobb Moai

Reckoning from 1950 A.D., the temporal base-point for radiocarbon-dating, the age of the wood sample removed from the central axis of the wooden statue-head, was computed as 230±30 years by Beta Analytic Laboratory, Coral Gables, Florida, using the standard accelerator-mass spectroscopy method.

Only a small amount (.4 g) of wood was needed for a determination, which proceeded normally without complications. The raw result (Beta-463273) was 1720±30 radiocarbon years, which provides a most probable calendar range of 1724–1808 A.D. and a less probable range of 1644–1698 A.D. These results can be taken to mean that the toromiro tree, from which the Imogene Cobb figure was sculpted, began to grow during the first quarter of the eighteenth century.

Figure 9.

Facial detail of Imogene Cobb sculpture. Arrow indicates wear within edge of right eye socket.

The question arises: How long does it require the tree Sophora toromiro to attain a thickness of trunk for carving a statue with a maximum diameter of 10–15 cm—the range into which the Auckland and Imogene Cobb pieces fall? Observations of toromiro trees kept by herbaria in Chile indicate it is a fast grower, attaining a diameter of 20cm in 15–20 years (Oswaldo Walderrama pers. comm.). With this fact in mind, the Imogene Cobb moai could have been carved as early as the mid-eighteenth century. Were it so, there was sufficient time for the Imogene Cobb statue to have been broken and to have sustained wear upon the break prior to being collected by a crew member of ship Belvidere out of Nantucket.

It follows that the Tepano lineage's sculptural sub-tradition had existed a full 200 years, and perhaps more, before Thor Heyerdahl and the Norwegian Expedition arrived at Easter Island in 1955. It would be interesting to know if this tradition still continues in a meaningful way.

A Possible Use of the Imogene Cobb Moai

One of many visits by eighteenth century explorers of the Pacific to Easter Island occurred in April, 1786, when Jean-Francois de Galaup La Perouse made a detailed map of the island. Later, an atlas incorporating information collected by La Perouse was prepared by Jean Francois de la Harpe (1801). An illustration of an Easter Island woman for the atlas apparently was copied from an engraving of the original sketch by William Hodges (Kaeppler, 2010:187), who had accompanied Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific (1772–1775).

The Easter Islander shown in both the French and English engravings wears a curious soft hat and a large inverted, tear drop-shaped pendant around her neck (Figure 10). The hat appears to be made of a gauzy, open-mesh tapa (see Figure 11 for an example) of a sort known for Polynesia (O'Brien 1919:187, 354); while the pendant may be a shell. This very pendant, it is thought, survives in the Mark and Carolyn Blackburn collection of Polynesian artifacts (Kaeppler, 2010:364). Stylistically, pendants of this shape, but made of wood, are still crafted by Easter Island sculptors. The general style of pendant is called tahonga, which was normally reserved for the use of women (Heyerdahl, 1975:198-199).

If it were not drilled to receive a neck cord, a tahonga might be suspended from a wrapping that was affixed to a bird head or human head effigy at the upper end (Figure 12, right).

The small projecting segment of a shoulder on Imogene Cobb's moai (see Figure 12, left) recalls a bird beak and would have served admirably for attaching the statue head (in an inverted position) to a necklace. In effect, the head may have been recycled as a tahonga after it was broken from a statue's body.

An inverted figure is a way of representing a person who died. Such a practice belongs to a worldwide grammar of design that is rooted in Upper Palaeolithic sculpture (Schuster & Carpenter 1996:270–277). It achieved fullest form among Polynesian and especially Arctic cultures (Carpenter 2008:24–41). The person, likely a woman, who wore the Imogene Cobb head as a tahonga in an inverted position around her neck may have been commemorating a dead kinsman. What this sculpture meant to her, and its significance to Easter Island society in general, were not transferable—perhaps could not be transferred—to its new owner who sailed upon the Belvidere.

In Conclusion

The desire of New England seamen to collect artifacts in their travels and bring them back in order to educate and "to impress their wondering, land-bound friends and relatives" (Dodge, 1965:184) generated a trove of information about Polynesian culture that still awaits discovery and analysis. The best place to seek sailor bring-backs is among seafaring families (lineages) whose members voyaged repeatedly to the Pacific in search of marine mammals and other commodities. We have elucidated portions of what two families brought back and curated. It may be assumed that much more lies within trunks and storage chests awaiting our enjoyment and understanding.

Figure 10.

Early nineteenth century engraving of an Easter Island woman wearing a hat made of fabric and a pendant. After an original engraving by J. Caldwell and illustration by William Hodges (Kaeppler 2010).

Figure 11.

Easter Island hat made of open-mesh tapa. The fabric can stretch, providing a snug fit—like a knitted watch cap. Height=37.5 cm. R. M. Gramly collection.

Figure 12.

Right, Easter Island tahonga collected during the 1940s or 1950s, from the collection of D. Martone, Fountain Valley, California. Left, head of Imogene Cobb wooden statue—perhaps re-purposed as a tahonga. Photograph by Pete Bostrom.