Cape Cod Activites, Events & Things to Do: Golf, Fishing, Whale Watches, Beaches, Shopping: The Nantucket Whaling Museum
Positioning the ribs of a whale skeleton; The Nantucket Historical Association’s Whaling Museum at 13 Broad Street.
The Nantucket Whaling Museum reopened this past June after nearly two years of extensive remodeling and renovation. The new museum is filled with light and glass and compelling contrasts between the old and new. One of the most exciting attractions is a skeleton of a sperm whale suspended from the ceiling of Gosnell Hall, seemingly swimming in the air. It is an awesome sight, worth the price of admission alone. The history of that skeleton is worth telling. It is, literally, a whale of a story.
On New Year’s Eve Day, 1997, a sperm whale, named for its valuable spermaceti oil (a semi-liquid waxy substance), was spotted off the eastern end of Nantucket Island. On January 1, 1998, the 46-foot whale died on the shoreline of Siasconset Beach. Heavy machinery dragged the whale from the surf onto the beach, and the New England Aquarium performed the necropsy. Whales usually die in the water and wash up, but because this one died on land, it presented a great specimen attracting marine-mammal experts from all over the area.
Scientists and volunteers then began the messy process of stripping the whale of its blubber and draining the oil from its huge headcase. It was buried for several months to allow the flesh to decompose, and then sections were placed in huge cages and sunk in the harbor where crabs and fish cleaned the remaining flesh. Oil seeping from the whalebones created a minor oil slick in the harbor. After being meticulously cleaned and pieced together with an internal steel structure, the skeleton was installed in the museum.
Almost as interesting as the skeleton is the 17-minute audiovisual presentation titled The Bones of History, recapturing the story of this newly articulated sperm whale paralleled with a realistic account of the danger and risk of whaling in the late 18th and early 19th century. It is fitting that visitors see a sperm whale when they visit because it was this whale, more valuable than others for its size and oil, that was responsible for Nantucket’s economic boom, deeming it the whaling capital of the world between 1800 and 1840.
Adjacent to Gosnell Hall is the restored 1847 candle factory built after Nantucket’s Great Fire. It is the only candleworks factory in the world with its original beam press in place. The beam press was used to extract oil from the spermaceti. The remaining waxy substance was made into candles. In addition, the museum contains an impressive collection of scrimshaw, portraits of whaling captains, and a fully rigged whaleboat. Artifacts from the South Seas remind us that Nantucket whalers were among the first to explore the Pacific Ocean. Parents will be happy to know there is a Children’s Discovery Room where children can engage in hands-on interactive learning, including dressing up in a sailor outfit! Finally, do not leave the building without visiting the rooftop observation deck, which offers a panoramic view of Nantucket Harbor.
