Cape Cod Maritime Museum

The Cape Cod Maritime Museum is home to bits of wreckage, bones, schrimshaw, and a workshop where members and volunteers can spend days restoring and creating vessels. For more information, visit http://www.capecodmaritimemuseum.org/.

The ribs from the Sparrow Hawk wreckage look strangely similar to those of the whales these ships hunted.

I'm crushing JFK's head!

The Root of Nantucket's Evil

Taking the ferry from Hyannis, Ma to Nantucket is about a 2.5 hour ride. When you reach the shore of Nantucket, one of your first sites will be the small lighthouse on the edge, quickly followed by the heavily populated port.

Upon entry to the main hall of the museum, you'll find the skeleton of a small sperm whale hanging above a whaling boat used to hunt in the 19th century. This photo does not give a good sense of scale, but these creatures could average the length of 85 feet.

Guess what the think on the far right is for.

An assortment of stabbing tools of the trade.

In reality, Nantucket is a lot smaller that it looks.

More Dick

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit at thee.”

“…what landsman would have thought that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony!”

“Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling around the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate.”

“I. A fast whale fish belongs to the party fast to it.”

“II. A loose fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.”

The Dick you missed

“There is one god that is lord over the earth, and one captain that is lord over the Pequod.”

“It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening site.”

“Death to the living, long life to the killers. Success tot sailor’s wives, and greasy luck to the whalers.”

“A wild, mystical, sympathetic feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine.”

sold

“If you inventively regard almost any quadruped’s spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls.”

Dick: The Shirt

The show is over, but there is plenty of dick to put on your chest. Shirts are available in sizes small, medium, large, and x-large.

A Story of Whaling and the United Sates?

http://outofprintmag.com/2011/09/news/art/dick-a-story-of-whaling-and-the-united-sates

Dick:A Story of Whaling and the United States

It wasn’t until the X-Files’ Scully drew the comparison of Mulder’s obsessive nature to Captain Ahab’s pursuit of the white whale, did I feel the need to read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. With plenty of evenings to kill, I limited myself to two or three chapters per night to insure that I fully absorbed everything in Melville’s story. My evenings with Ahab and Ishmael became an obsession of it’s own as I began to draw parallels between the whaling industry of the 19^th century, the institutionalized slavery of Africans, and the modern day dependence on crude oil.

Moby Dick could be interpreted as America’s quest for dominance over nature, as well as inspiration for Richard Wright’s racial charged Native Son, but the strongest message to one could take away from Melville’s 1851 masterpiece is that Captain Ahab is a dick.

After many months of preparation, the illustrations of Melville's Moby Dick are ready for exhibition at Slingluff Gallery on October 1st, 2011. The Saturday night reception starts at 6pm, and will end at 9pm. Slingluff is located at 11 W. Girard Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19123. For more information about Slingluff and the show visit www.slingluffgallery.com.