Trying to get a graduate degree in history requires doing some research. My primary subject is Early Modern Europe, i.e. Europe from about 1450-1812 or so. (Those dates are approximate, as arguing about periodization is what academic historians do when we've got nothing more important to argue about.)

Despite its being outside my primary interest, I've started a Master's project on the national origins of nineteenth century whalers. It's sort of building off the term paper from one of my "core" classes. To summarize that paper, most histories of whaling are very nation-based: American whaling, Norwegian whaling, Argentine whaling, etc. But whaling crews were a trans-national bunch.

New Bedford, Massachusetts was the home of the American whaling industry for most of the industry's existence. This was a good example of economic specialization– there were many larger ports, but the concentration of whalers in New Bedford meant that was where whaling hardware makers sold their goods, where the deepest market for whale oil was, and where experienced whalers could be found between voyages. Whaling was a lucrative trade, too– the local newspaper calculated that in 1840, New Bedford had the highest per-capita income in the United States.  Those days are long gone. Today, New Bedford is half fishing town, half tourist town. The fishing half harvests scallops, and according to the town's Chamber of Commerce, it has the highest cash-value fishing harvest of any American port. The tourist half services people like me, who want to see the historic district.

At any rate, New Bedford is where the New Bedford Whaling Museum is located. Attached to the museum is a large archive of whaling-related texts. It is to that archive that I wanted to go, in search of data.

I packed up on Saturday, bought an E-ZPass on Sunday, and left on Monday, only an hour after I had intended to get on the road. But I know myself well enough to add an hour of slack into my schedule.

I had my bike rack on the back of my car, with my good Jamis commuter bike attached. I had reservations for a hotel about six miles away from the archive, but the directions from hotel to archive seemed simple enough to bike: just follow State Street most of the way. Cycling would provide me with valuable exercise and allow me to avoid paying the parking fees of the downtown lots.

The weatherman on the radio said it would be overcast and cool all day, getting windy in the evening. Unfortunately, the weatherman was making a projection for the weather around Buffalo. About when I rolled past Syracuse, the heavens opened up with a series of ferocious thunderstorms. I nevertheless made it to my friend Paul's house, south of Albany, almost on time. After a "hello" to his mother, Paul and I hopped in his Prius for a jaunt over to his regular Monday evening game.

I'd played with these people in the past, albeit briefly. My presence was enough to largely derail the planned game, as it turned into a party/BS session. It was a good time. The hosts were scheduled to move out of their apartment the following weekend, but I didn't see evidence of a lot of packing. I figured that wasn't my problem, though.

After the game wrapped up, we headed back to Paul's place, and we stayed up later than perhaps was wise, chatting. Good times!

Morning came, and I left with the sun. Well, to be honest, the sun got a substantial head start on me. But at least it wasn't all that high in the sky yet. Back onto the interstate, and soon across the Massachusetts border.

The drive to New Bedford was mostly uninteresting, although I went through the heart of Providence, Rhode Island. That got slightly exciting because there's an Interstate highway realignment project going on, so both my GPS and my paper map were inaccurate. After some weaving between lanes, doubtless reinforcing the predjudices of those that saw my New York license plates, I manage to stay on-track. Part of the route was along a road that clearly sees lots of traffic on good weekends for people heading to Cape Cod. Driving along on a Tuesday morning, the hordes of gas stations and cheap motels looked somehow lonely.

Once I reached New Bedford, I checked in at my hotel, dropped off my bags, and headed for the archive, which opens at noon. The original plan was to ride my bike, see above. But the first day, time was wearing on, and I wanted to scout the route first. So off I drove.

Getting around downtown New Bedford is a nightmare. It's a warren of tiny streets, along a steep hillside, laid out in such a way as to make me believe they were intended for pedestrians only, not even horse-drawn wagons. The streets are mostly one-way, and not in a sensible alternating pattern. Streets also all change names right in the center of town, as a result of a political hissy-fight held two hundred years ago.

I finally found a parking garage, and even that took longer than expected, as the middle two floors of it were reserved for a couple of downtown businesses. Once parked, I had to ask for directions to the archive, as the helpful little tourist map I picked up at the garage's lobby was utterly useless.

I'd been warned what to expect at the archive itself. They don't want people wandering in, looking for a user-friendly museum. Most of the people that show up fall into two categories: scholars at Massachusetts universities, well-known to the staff; and retired folks looking for genealogy information, as New Bedford was Massachusetts's second-largest port of entry for immigrants in the 19th century.

So I rang the doorbell, which is disguised to keep out the riff-raff. I'm not kidding about that. After a few moments, the door was opened by a rather elderly volunteer, and I had to spend some effort convincing her that I was (a) expected, and (b) a serious researcher.

Past the gatekeeper, I put my backpack and cell phone into a locker, divested myself of every writing implement save a pencil, signed a contract specifying what I was and wasn't allowed to do, signed a logbook that will get filed somewhere and perhaps be used by researchers in the 22nd century, and was ushered into the sanctum itself.

The archive building was built as a bank, with a thirty-foot ceiling, huge windows (filmed to protect documents), and an open plan. Three-quarters of the space was the stacks and off-limits to folks like me. Somewhere in the back there are the original four vaults, still in use for the most prized documents. In the front, there were four large nicely-lit tables for visitors to work at. The archivist I'd been corresponding with came out to welcome me, assuaging the worries of the elderly volunteer who had opened the door and was still hovering, apparently worried that I was going to do something irrationally youthful at any moment.

The first day I started off with some microfilm records. Which was all good, except the last time I used a microfilm reader was 1994, in high school. It's easy to see where the film reel goes on the spindles, but the subtleties of the control scheme took me a little while to recollect and/or discover. I spent a couple of hours, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, squinting at a screen that really needed a shade from the sunlight shining on it, trying to read a charity's logbooks, written in a crabbed hand by someone that has undoubtedly been dead for a century. It was fun!

All to soon, though, the archive was closing. I'm not exaggerating about it being soon, because the archive's hours were Tuesday through Friday, noon to four PM. Budgets are tight, these days.

I found my way back to the parking garage, and was ruefully preparing to pay their exorbitant rate, when the attendant noticed my university parking hangtag. He asked to see my student ID, then charged me a single dollar. Woo hoo! I later found out that the student rate is only for students at the nearby community college and UMass Dartmouth campus. So the attendant was doing me an even bigger favor than I'd thought.

Despite dragging my bike across three states, I decided not to ride to the archive the next day. The hotel was on "State Street" which sounded nice and looked OK when I had scouted it from home via Google Maps. But "State Street" was also US-6, with traffic ripping past at 55 mph and zero shoulder. It was bikable in a certain sense, but only at substantial risk. There weren't any parallel streets I could use, either, as this is the part of New England carved out of ancient mountains, where there's no good reason to live except to avoid religious prosecution by setting up one's own system of religious prosecution.

Wednesday was more slogging in the microfilm mines. I was getting a bit dispirited, and mentioned to the archivist that I didn't think I was going to have enough time to take sufficient data down in longhand from the film. She said "You know, I think there's someone that's doing a book with the info in those. A while ago she had a big project to transcribe it all into a database. It's still embargoed, of course, but I could see if she might be willing to help you." So she sent an email off. I was torn between the hope that I was going to be saved endless hours of soul-destroying data entry, and the despair that perhaps my project had already been scooped.

Thursday I gave up on the microfilm and moved on to some original documents, these ones from Sag Harbor, NY. Late in the afternoon, the author that had supervised the transcription of all those pages I'd been looking at showed up. She was emeritus and possessed of that particular crusty personality found in those women who have survived New England for many decades. She started off by interrogating me about my project, then spent twenty minutes haranguing me about the readings I hadn't yet done, and then gave me her data upon the promise that I'd give her credit, and also not have it published before the data embargo ran out. Which, as it turns out, was the end of September. Not much of an inconvenience there.

Friday was the last day of research. I was thinking I'd dig in the records of Hawaiian crew, partially because I'm a masochist. Most of the Hawaiian sailors signed on as "John Kanaka", "George Kanaka," et cetera. "Kanaka", in a variety of different Polynesian languages, just means "man" or "person". So as you can imagine, there were a lot of John Kanakas.

But my visit was cut short. Apparently some high muckety-mucks in the foundation had decided they were going to hold some important meeting at the archive that day, because the main museum's meeting room was already booked. With fulsome apologies, the archivist threw me out. Perhaps it was for the best, as I spent the rest of the day touring the museum, seeing the Seaman's Bethel, visiting bookstores, etcetera. As I'd checked out from the hotel, my bike was on my car, and I cycled a bit around town. The biking was terrible: the streets were hilly and frequently one-way, as I've mentioned. But also, in the 1960s the city ripped out all it's nice pavement in the downtown historic district, and installed granite setts, which are stone pavers with big gaps between them. I probably did all sorts of damage to my wheels by bouncing my road tires over those nasty rocks. Growing tired of the annoying wheels, and having seen the museums,  I made an early start for home.

The plan had been for me to stop by Paul's place and spend the night again. But with an early departure from New Bedford, I converted that to a one-hour rest break and pushed on. I made it back to Buffalo just before midnight, three days before the first day of classes.

Total distance added to my car's odometer: 1386.5 miles. Also, those crummy setts broke the brake hold-down clamps on my car's rear end, which necessitated a visit to a mechanic after I decided to stop ignoring the nasty noises. The good news is that the bike didn't seem to reduce my fuel economy much, so I don't feel as bad about schlepping it around for only a two hours of riding.

Posted by: Boviate at 06:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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