As I’ve written before, the Marion and Mattapoisett sections of Rochester were involved in shipbuilding. Many of these ships were whalers beginning in 1771 with the “Defiance” and ending in 1878 with the “Wanderer.” Most were built in the years prior to Mattapoisett and Marion separating from Rochester.
While many of the whalers built in this area were destined to sail from other ports, others set sail from Marion and Mattapoisett harbors. For the most part, these voyages didn’t bring in a lot of profit for their owners. The trips tended to be shorter than those of other whalers and a “good catch” for these vessels was 300 -400 barrels, rather than the thousands brought home from longer trips.
Mary Hall Leonard in her book, “Mattapoisett and Old Rochester”, suggests that a reason for the lower numbers was that the ships were “outfitted too well.” The crews for these voyages were local men and boys of the village. The owners may have spent more on stocking meals for the crew because they would have to face them once they returned home. The people of Nantucket and New Bedford were said to refer to these whaling expeditions as “Plum Pudding Voyages.”
In our files at the museum, I found an interesting paper that detailed signals that were sent from the bark, John A. Parker. The John A. Parker was a 342 ton bark built by W. Barstow in 1852.
Out on the ocean, once the whaleboats were launched, the only way for the mother ship to communicate with them was with her sails.
Here are the details of that communication:
One of the head sails down- whales ahead of the ship
Colors at masthead forward-whales 4 points on weather bow
Colors half mast -whales 4 points on weather lee
Colors at masthead to the main-whales on the weather beam
Colors at half mast-whales on the lee weather beam
Colors at masthead to the mizzen – whales on weather quarter
Colors at half mast-whales on lee – weather quarter
One of the sails down-whales to stern of ship
Colors: up and down to main – boats heave up
at masthead – one boat stove
to the fore and main – one boat fast
to the main and mizzen – one boat go to the fast boat
to the mizzen and peak – boats come on board ship
to the mizzen and forward – one boat come on board
I definitely think I might need a cheat sheet to remember all of that, but the importance and life and death aspects of the signals probably made them easy for the crew assigned to the boats to remember.
By Connie Eshbach