Coopers and casks in the whaling trade 1800–1850

Mariners Mirror

Volumn 82, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 436-450

  Howard, Mark ^a  

^a NONE   (Australia)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84938860245     PISSN: 00253359     EISSN: 2049680X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00253359.1996.10656617     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Francis, Daniel. The Great Chase; a History of World Whaling (Toronto, 1991), 9; Charles Boardman Hawes, Whaling (London, 1924), 16; Rev. Henry T. Cheever, The Whale and his Captors (New York, 1850), 21
2. Tuck, James A., and Grenier, Robert. Red Bay, Labrador:World Whaling Capital AD 1550–1600 52–3. (St Johns, 1989), 43–51; James A. Tuck, ‘Unearthing Red Bay's whaling history’, National Geographic, 168 (1)
3. Ross, Lester A., Sixteenth century Spanish Basque coopering technology; a report of the staved containers found in 1978–79 on the wreck of the whaling Galleon 24–39. San Juan, sunk in Red Bay, Labrador, AD 1565, Parks Canada, Manuscript Report No. 408, (Ottawa, 1980)
4. Loewen, Brad. 1992. “ ‘Change and diversity within traditional cooperage technology’ ”. In Material History Review 36 Autumn
5. Scoresby, William. 1969. An account of the Arctic regions with a history and description of the northern whale fishery; Vol 2 (Edinburgh, 1820, rpt. London, 39
6. Ross, Lester A., ‘16th-century Spanish Basque coopering’. Historical Archaeology, 1985 19 (1) 10; Ole Lindquist, ‘Comments concerning old whaling statistics; the British whale oil measures gallons and Tun, the Dutch and German Quardeelen and the ratio between them’, 42nd Report of the International Whaling Commission (Cambridge, 1992), 476
7. Barker, Richard. “ ‘Barrels at sea:water, stowage and guns on the Portuguese Ocean’, Forthcoming ”. In I Simposia de Historia Martime Academia de Maruilu, 9. The shift from wooden to iron hooped casks was gradual with both types being used together for many years; Alexander Starbuck, History of the American Whale Fishery (Waltham, Mass., 1878, rpt. Secaucus, New Jersey, 1989), 111
8. Hohman, Elmo P., The American Whaleman 4 (New York, 1928), 325; Sydney Morning Herald, 14 Feb. 1845, p
9. Kalland, Arne. 1986. ‘Pre-modern whaling in northern Kyushu’. Bonner Zeitschrift fur Japanologie, 8 (Bonn, 34
10. Mayhew, Henry. 12 Sept. 1850. “ ‘The London coopers; Letter LXIX’ ”. In The Morning Chronicle 12 Sept., 5
11. Short History of the Worshipful Company of Coopers of London 144–60. For information on British cooperage see:Sir William Foster, A (Cambridge, 1944); Kenneth Kilby, The Cooper and his Trade (London, 1971); Bob Gilding, The Journeymen Coopers of East London (Oxford, 1971); Pat Hudson and Lynette Hunter (eds), ‘The autobiography of William Hart, cooper, 1776–1857; Part I’, London Journal, 1981, 7 (2)
12. Coopers prices agreed to be paid from 17 July 1834 32 The five types of oak staves available to British coopers by 1850 were Quebec, Virginia, Hambro, Dantzic and English, with the first two being preferred for oil work. Because English oak was hard and difficult to work, British piecework coopers charged employers 30% more to use it; Anon., [a journeyman coopers piecework price list], (London?, 1834); Mayhew, 5; Anon., The cooper:his work and how it is done (London, 1843), 39; James U. Thompson, ‘Coopering—an ancient craft’, Scotland's Magazine, March 1969, p
13. Ashley, Clifford W., 1991. The Yankee Whaler (Boston, 1926; rpt. New York, 97
14. Mayhew. 5
15. Pattison, George. 1834. ‘The cooper's strike at the West India Dock, 1821’. M. M., 55 (2), 163–84; Mark Howard, ‘The Admiralty and the cooper's strike’, M.M., 80 (4), 472–4. While coopers in London served a seven-year apprenticeship, shorter periods were known elsewhere in Britain. London coopers were the best paid in Britain, but they generally worked longer hours and were expected to produce a higher standard of work
16. Loewen. “ 85. The standard work on American cooperage is Franklin E. Coyne ”. In The Development of the Cooperage Industry in the United States, 1620–1940 (Chicago, c. 1940)
17. Paun, H., Captain John ‘Account book, New Bedford, cl 826–1871’, Old Dartmouth Historical Society Whaling Museum, MSS 917, MF 154
18. The New Bedford district alone had 60 cooperages; Ashley, 97.
19. Bly, Isaac. 1838–1846. (New Bedford cooper), ‘Day and waste book, 2 volumes’, Old Dartmouth Historical Society Whaling Museum, MSS 56, Ser B-25, MF 919. The three types of cask Bly sold were, in descending order of price, ground tier, sap drawn and sap casks. Sap wood was the soft porous outer layer of wood just under the bark and it could be either chopped out (drawn) or seasoned hard
20. 1834. Master Coopers:copies of correspondence between the master coopers and the Lords of the Admiralty British Parliamentary Papers, Li (55), 6
21. Voyages to Hudson Bay in Search of a Northwest Passage.
22. One cooper who assembled oil casks on the New Bedford docks in 1855 charged customers 22½ cents an hour for his labour; Account book of unknown New Bedford oil cooper; 2009, Old Dartmouth Historical Society Whaling Museum, MSS 1023, MF 712
23. Templeman Brown, James. 1887. “ ‘The whaleman, vessels, apparatus, and methods of the fishery’ ”. In The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States Edited by:George, Brown Goode. 238–9. in (ed.),(Washington
24. Erik, A. R. Ronnberg, Jnr. Sept. 1990. “ ‘Design and construction aspects of ship Hunter’ ”. In Nautical Research Journal Sept., 127
25. Charles Phelps The ‘barrels’ of oil carried aboard returning whalers refers to the amount of oil aboard and not the number of full oil casks. The ‘barrel’ was the standard unit of measurement in the trade, thus the returned to port in 1850 with 376 casks containing 1,766 barrels of oil; Stuart C. Sherman, The Voice of the Whaleman (Providence, 1965), 55
26. Dictionary of Tools used in the Woodworking and Allied Trades, cl700–1970 477–8. Whaling coopers used up to 50 different kinds of tools on the voyage, all of which were provided by the owner of the vessel; New Bedford whaling ship chandler's order catalogues, Kendall Whaling Museum, No. A101, A107, Al09, Al 13-A, Al 13-B; R.A. Salaman, (New York, 1976), 155–64; F.C. Morgan, ‘Some old tools in Hereford Museum’, The Engineer, Vol. CLXXIV, July-Dec. 1942, pp.; Hohman, 332
27. Stackpole, Edouard A., 1953. The Sea-hunters (New York, 157
28. Chamberlain, Susan. The Hobart Whaling Industry 1830 to 1900 91 Ph.D. thesis, La Trobe University, 1988, p
29. Incidents of a Whaling Voyage Francis Allyn Olmsted…(New York, 1841, rpt. Rutland, 1969), 181; and Ben-Ezra Stiles Ely, There She Blows:A Narrative of a Whaling Voyage (Middletown, 1971), 64
30. 1982. Whaling in Southern Waters Dunedin Whale oil expands during hot weather so an ullage space of 3 ins or so was left at the top of each cask so the oil had sufficient room to expand without overflowing; Frank Tod, (30
31. Address to the owners of ships engaged in the South Sea Fishery and to Capitalists generally on the decline of the fishery The average British sperm whaler during this period lost 10% of its oil through leakage; calculated from figures in:A Member of Lloyds, (London, 1844), 10–11; see also Harry Morton, The Whales Wake (Dunedin, 1982), 60; Briton Cooper Busch, Whaling will Never do For Me. (Lexington, Kentucky, 1994), 11
32. Melville, Herman. 1975. Moby Dick London (409
33. 9 Sept. 1866. Spartan 9 Sept., Log of the New Bedford whaling barque, The Whaling and Marine Manuscript Archive, Nantucket, Massachusetts, MSS 915, MF 154, entry for
34. The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association The whaling cooper's ‘lay’ was generally similar to that received by whaling carpenters, blacksmiths and boatsteerers; see Charles Reichman, ‘The whaling cooper’, Dec. 1988, 41 (4), 75; W.J. Dakin, Whalemen Adventurers (Sydney, 1963), 268; CR. Straubel, The Whaling Journal of Captain W.B. Rhodes (Christchurch, 1954), 114; Robert McNab, The Old Whaling Days (Auckland, 1975), 193 and 211; NSW Archives, Vice-Admiralty Court Records, Boulton v Caroline, No. 137/1844–5, 4/7598
35. Governor Halkett NSW Archives, Vice-Admiralty Court records, v Owen, No. 20 of 1842, 4/7603 and 4/6673–4. ‘Bung up and bilge free’ was when the bung stave was uppermost and the cask rested on wooden skids or ballast beds so that the bilge or belly of the cask was free from contact with the hull or other casks; Peter Kemp (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (Oxford, 1988), 119
36. Pattison. 163
37. 1828. Rules, orders, regulations, and instructions for the governing, regulating, and managing the business of the St Katherine Dock…1828 275–6. London The Directors, ‘Instructions to the principal cooper and foreman of the cooperage’ in
38. Mayhew. 5; Pattison,passim.
39. The duties of American whale oil gaugers and inspectors of fish oil are described in Hawes, 120.
40. 1982. London Journal,:66–75. For a personal account of early nineteenth-century London dock coopering see Hudson and Hunter, ‘The autobiography of William Hart…Part IF,8(1)
41. Gilding. 33
42. 1979. British Emigration to British North America 159–60. Toronto Unscrupulous outfitters sometimes used old whale oil casks as water casks on immigrant vessels even though they knew it would taint the water; Helen I. Cowan
43. There may have been a recognized career path for journeymen coopers in the whaling trade. When young and strong they may have worked at the block, making oil casks at piecework rates, moving on to whaling ships in middle age and ending with dock work in the years before retirement.
44. 282–3. The Directors
45. Mayhew, 5.
46. The London Dock Company's permanent oil coopers received 33 shillings a week in 1812 compared with 18 shillings for the docks permanent ‘dry’ coopers; Pattison, 165.
47. Elking. 1980. “ says an eighteenth-century arctic whaler of 300 tons would carry two coopers; Henry Elking ”. In A View of the Greenland Trade and Whale Fishery (Whitby, reprinted 22
48. July 1970. Port of London Authority Journal July, 175 The South Sea Company paid £550 per annum for blubber rendering facilities at London's Howland Dock in the 1730s; Col. R.B. Oram, ‘Surrey commercial docks’, p
49. Dakin. 1837–40. 659–64. 268; Mcnab, 211; Mitchell Library, Imlay Brother's account book, MSS 3031, MF CY-265, frames
50. Fifer, D. E., 1991. 192 ‘The Sydney merchants and seaborne trade 1821–1851’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Sydney, p
51. Blyth, Thomas. 1835. The Oilman:No.l; a series of letters to a few friends, unveiling the defects and suggesting improvements in the London oil trade London (40. Searching irons were the metal gauging rods used to measure the amount of oil in a cask; the oyster shell was probably the receptacle experienced oil coopers used to hold a sample of the oil which he would then examine by sight, touch, smell and taste in order to determine its type, quality and value
52. 25 Oct. 1832. Sydney Morning Herald 25 Oct., 3 p
53. Jones, A. G.E., 1986. Ships Employed in the South Seas Trade 1775–1861 Canberra (266
54. Tonnessen, J. N., and Johnsens, A. O., 1982. The History of Modern Whaling Canberra (267
55. Information in a letter dated 1 Nov. 1993 from Mr J.H. Hamlen of Little Rock, Arkansas, who owned one of the last American cooperages to make whale oil casks. They held about 50 gallons, were made from oil-grade white or red oak and were shipped to Norway in shooks, with a matching set of heads, work finished, other than assembly.