Katherine Williams

Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program, Mystic, Connecticut

This summer, I conducted independent research on the Hurricane of 1938 at Mystic Seaport through the Williams-Mystic Program. Williams-Mystic is a semester-long intensive program in Maritime Studies, where students complete independent research in history, literature, policy and science while living at an amazing museum that brings a seaport town of 1876 to life every day.
My internship responsibilities were diverse. Most of my time was spent doing independent history research on the 1938 Hurricane, with focusing on the events as they unfolded at Watch Hill. While I had initially hoped to do scientific research on Napatree Point, the section of Watch Hill most affected by the Hurricane, it was not feasible due to time constraints. In addition to my individual research, I assisted Nicole Dobroski, a graduate student studying the distribution of the Asian Shore Crab, Hemigrapsus sanguineous. I also volunteered at several events at Mystic Seaport, including the Sea Music Festival, which included many examples of whaling ballads and an opportunity to understand the ways in which whaling ballads connect to environmentalist views of cetaceans. Finally, one day a week was spent working on wooden boat construction to help make a new research vessel for the Williams-Mystic program.
While I was able to do more preparatory research on Moby-Dick than I had originally planned, my research on the Hurricane of 1938 was not extremely successful. Without the scientific data that I had hoped to gather, my historical research was unable to uncover any new information that had not been discussed in R.A. Scotti’s new book Sudden Sea. However, my research served to help me realize how difficult and taxing independent research can be, and how important it is to have adequate time for reflection before attempting to write an effective research paper.
My ancillary research, which I had only envisioned being a small portion of my summer responsibilities, became more important and time-consuming as the summer wore on. I was able to read and examine several logs from whaling voyages of the Charles W. Morgan, the only surviving wooden whale ship, which was built in New Bedford at the same time as the Acushnet, the vessel on which Melville made his whaling voyage. These logs enabled me to examine a whaling voyage from many different perspectives, and to begin to define the differences between the voyage of the Pequod, the whaling ship in Moby-Dick, and a typical whaling voyage.
Finally, I was able to participate in several special events at the Seaport that allowed me a greater comprehension of the complexities of maritime life. The Small Boat Festival gave me an opportunity to row a whaleboat for two miles, not an uncommon distance for whalers to row a captured whale back to the ship. While we did not tow a whale at this event, it still gave me an appreciation of the magnitude of a whaling sailor’s responsibilities. The Sea Music Festival allowed me an opportunity to examine part of the breadth and depth of sea music, including the ballads of whalers from many different communities. I was able to continue the research begun at Sea Music Festival by attending Dog Watch, a part of the Seaports’ demonstration schedule. On board whaling ships, the crew was divided into watches, and each watch was responsible for running the ship in alternating four-hour shifts, under the command of a mate. In order to vary the schedule so that the same sailors did not always have the midnight-4am watch, a generous captain would “dog” the watches, and by dividing the 4pm-8pm watch into two two-hour watches, the sailors who had been on the midnight-4am shift were now on the 4-8am shift. During dogwatch, few sailors would sleep, as they would have to be at work in two hours, so the steward would often prepare a special meal while the sailors indulged in crafts, storytelling, and music. It was during these times that the sailors would write in their logs, which is a main source of information about not only whaling ballads, but also the life of a whaler. I was also able to gain a better understanding of Moby-Dick by attending the annual reading of Moby-Dick, where for twenty-four hours volunteers read the work on board the Charles W. Morgan. This event gave me a unique opportunity to engage with the work on an aural level, as well as a period for reflection on the complexities and diverse nature of the work.
This internship has been invaluable for preparing me for my senior thesis research. After experiencing several difficulties in completing this summer research, I have been able to identify several problem areas that I will be able to avoid in completing my senior thesis research. In addition, I have gained important experience in tracking down rare sources, which will be invaluable as I attempt to find copies of several 19th Century naturalist works. But perhaps most importantly, my ancillary experiences at the Seaport have enabled me to personalize the experience of Moby-Dick by better understanding the context of whaling.
My senior thesis research is to examine Moby-Dick as a proto-environmentalist work. By proto-environmentalist, I mean that the work displays many characteristics in common with later environmental works, both literary and otherwise, but is not of itself advocating an environmental perspective. Many critics have noted the several passages of natural history that are in the work, and indicated that they do not appear to fit with the rest of the work. In addition, many of these passages would be classified by today’s standards as plagiarism, but there are subtle changes between the original sources and what Melville writes in his work. By examining these changes, and the interaction of the natural history passages with the rest of the work, I hope to demonstrate that Melville was advocating a particular environmentalist philosophy that has since been echoed in many poems, songs, stories and other works that explicitly deal with protecting whales. While I am not sure that I can accurately claim that Melville’s writing is environmentalist in its own right, I do believe that there is significant material to prove that it has influenced later environmentalist writings and is therefore, proto-environmentalist.