The Genuine Article

Whaling logs, the inspiration for my “Bookman’s Log” idea, are among the most desirable kinds of manuscript Americana. The reasons are obvious. They combine high adventure and travel to exotic places with visual appeal and narrative depth. America’s exploration of the Pacific was accomplished in large part by whalemen, and some of our most powerful businesses were started with whaling industry capital. The life-and-death aspects of the hunt, the vastness of the oceans, and the idea of man pitching himself against the earth’s largest mammals resonate in some deep way in all of us, as Herman Melville amply demonstrated.

I’ve bought and sold hundreds of whaling logs in my career, and it amazes me that I’m still finding them in people’s attics, on the internet and on the shelves of other dealers. A great many whaling voyages were made in the 19th century, and most of them generated multiple logs, which were saved by the families of the men who brought them home. By now, however, the attics of America are pretty well cleaned out. Most of the original whaling logs have found their way into private or institutional collections. Or, alas, the dumpster. I have the strong suspicion that we may be the last generation of booksellers to be dealing in any regular way with whaling logs. They’re becoming scarcer than whales.

So, whenever one comes in I read it with especial interest, knowing I’m dealing with an endangered species.

Having said that, there is no better way to get a sense of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean than by reading a whaling log cover to cover. The daily, grinding tedium – strung out over several years of entries – is enough to drive one mad. And indeed, I’ve read several accounts in which crewmen or even captains have gone crazy out there. This endless boredom is punctuated by moments of mortal danger. Added to the usual hazards of the sea were enraged animals the size of locomotives – “Boat stove. Lost the Mate and two men” - is a not-uncommon sort of entry.

Some whaling logs were kept by captains for their own use or as a record to be consulted by the owners. Usually the “official” log was kept by one of the mates, the captain being busy with other tasks. Often however, crewmen kept their own private journals. The manuscript described below is one of that kind.

It was kept by someone named Charles Sprague and it documents the first nine months of a sixteen month voyage for sperm whales in the Atlantic Ocean. They caught a lot of whales, mostly small ones, and the journal is richly decorated with whale stamps. But there was something about Sprague, especially in the doodles and notes at the back of the journal, that got my curiosity up. He seemed puckish, whimsical, and almost ADD.

I did some research and discovered that, when his ship, the Lagrange, sailed, Charles H. Sprague was sixteen-years-old. Modern parents worry about letting a boy his age have the car for a night. This boy’s parents let him go on a whaling voyage. Shocking as it seems to us now, this was the norm for seafaring New England families in the 19th century. Children younger than Sprague were sent on Pacific voyages lasting four years or more. Clearly, different expectations – a different world view – prevailed.

Here’s how I wrote it up:

A JOURNAL KEPT ON BOARD THE GOOD BARK LAGRANGE BY CHARLES H. SPRAGUE WHEN ON A SPERM WHALE VOYAGE IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN THAT SAILED APRIL 15, 1850. Small folio, approx. 60 pp. manuscript entries. The Lagrange was a 170 ton bark under the command of Daniel Flanders. She departed Mattapoisett April 16, 1850 and returned August 25, 1851 with 510 barrels of sperm oil, mostly from small sperm whales under 30 bbl. According to the 1850 census, Sprague was sixteen-years-old at the time of this voyage. He vividly and graphically records events that took place during the first nine months of the voyage. This part is recorded in a 48 page folio gathering slightly smaller than the other pages in the book. It breaks off December 18, 1850, and was probably accompanied by another, similar gathering which covered the last half of the voyage.

In the original part of the book, with pages slightly taller than the 48 page gathering, Sprague commences another version of his journal on April 10, 1850, when he takes the steam packet Captain Cleveland from Edgartown to New Bedford, and speaks of his preparations for boarding the Lagrange. He begins to record the voyage, but ends abruptly after only a few weeks. Then he writes, “Whaling. Those who intend to follow that business had may as well dowse his colors in despair as soon as he steps his foot on-board a vessel two plough the heaving billows in pursuit of those...” He breaks off here, presumably in despair. After this come pages of doodles, drawings of the ship, practice whale stamps, a proposal of marriage between Ebenezer Walding and Ellen Mars to be made at the end of the voyage, “if his head does not crack,” an essay about Walding and his girl, and a partial (half of one page is torn away) record - in a striking arrangement of whale stamps - of the Lagrange’s catch.

The narrative is lively throughout, in both sections, and each catch is marked with a whale stamp. For example, on April 23rd, just a little more than a week out, “raised a school of sperm whales lowered two boats the mates boat got stove and then his irons drawed the waste boat got fast one time he also drawed he went on and struck again & the whale run to the windard (a)bout 5 AM got the whale along side.”

A sprightly, artistic rendering by a teenage boy of an Atlantic sperm whaling voyage, albeit incomplete. According to Sherman, there are no journals of this voyage in any institution. Bound in worn sheep over marbled boards. Acid damage in the outer edge of the 48 page gathering, resulting in the loss of a few letters. $3500

Too Rare?

I spent the 1970s and 80s happily selling used maritime books. Then the internet came along and flooded the market with used books of all kinds. People looking for a used or out-of-print maritime book didn’t need specialists like me anymore. This left me with two choices. I could either get big and make my money on high volume internet sales, or go small and try to deal in material so scarce and arcane that there would be no competing examples – no cheaper copies - on the internet.

I chose the latter course, but in a way it wasn’t even a “choice.” I don’t have any of the skills required to run a large-scale book operation. You could say that the rise of the internet forced me to become a rare book dealer. It was the right path for me, but rare books brought problems of their own.

One example of such a problem is pictured above.

“Please put this in a conspicuous place!” is a broadside or poster advertising the sailing of a San Francisco-bound clipper ship in the 1850s. No one (since the 1850s, anyway) has ever seen one like it before. To the best of my knowledge there are no copies in any library, museum, or private collection in the world. It’s the ultimate rarity – the only one of its kind to exist. (The Peabody Essex Museum has an 1852 broadside printed on cloth advertising a sailing to Panama. Nothing else from this era comes close.)

The speedy and glamorous clipper ships serviced a branch of American maritime trade that grew up after the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill. Throughout the 1850s and 60s, hundreds of wooden sailing ships were built, and merchant lines competed to send men and materials as quickly as possible to the burgeoning California market. To attract freight to each departing vessel, colorful clipper ship sailing cards were distributed to brokers. It is generally agreed that these cards were the earliest form of color advertising in America.

We know that handbills were printed to serve a similar advertising function. Presumably larger broadsides were printed, too. But if they were used for this purpose, they were meant to be disposable, and after the ship sailed, they were left to the weather or got torn down and thrown away. Some earlier black and white posters have survived, but aside from the Panama broadside at the Peabody-Essex Museum, I know of none from this period.

Exciting? You bet! But here’s the problem. The "Fair Wind" broadside is so rare no one knows what it’s worth. What are the comparables? Clipper ship sailing cards? Railroad posters? Historic American broadsides? Your guess is as good as mine.

Furthermore, though there are institutions and individuals who collect graphic Americana, ship sailing broadsides are so rare that no one collects them – for the simple reason that, prior to this moment, there have been almost none to collect.

Though this is a problem any book dealer would love to have, it’s still a problem. In the end I’ll probably rely on my gut instinct – the accumulated knowledge of having looked at tens of thousands of images and broadsides over my career.

But while I’m waiting, I’d be happy to hear what you think.

Anyone…?

Broadside. PLEASE PUT THIS IN A CONSPICUOUS PLACE!... NOW LOADING AT PIER 9 EAST RIVER THE VERY SUPERIOR BOSTON BUILT CLIPPER SHIP FAIR WIND. Oblong folio, 20 1/2 x 14 inches printed in blue and red. The Fair Wind, 1299 tons, was built by Briggs in South Boston in 1855. According to Howe and Matthews her prime San Francisco years were 1855-1858, under captains Allen and Strout. She was sold to the British in 1866. Bruce Roberts rightly points out that broadsides advertising ship sailings pre-dated sailing cards. This hitherto unknown example is evidence that broadsides were also used simultaneously with cards, at least since 1855 when the Fair Wind was launched. They probably failed to survive because they were cheap, flimsy, and common. How many McDonald’s hamburger wrappers will survive in 2150? Certainly rare; possibly a singular example. No copies reported on Worldcat. None in LC, NYPL, AAS, Peabody-Essex, or NYHS collections. $ ?????

Beer with Justice Souter

Congratulations to promoter Garry Austin for organizing a successful “36th Annual New Hampshire Antiquarian Bookseller Association Show” this past weekend. The event was held at a new venue – the Grappone Center in Concord, NH – and a lot of work went into making sure that it took place without a hitch.

Garry and I go way back. I first met him in the 1980s in book shop up in Wells, Maine. I was standing around talking to the proprietor when a noisy trash truck interrupted our conversation. Then a burly, unshaven guy in coveralls came in and started discoursing knowledgeably about the antiquarian trade. That knocked me out. Even the trash men in this place knew more about rare books than I! The trash truck soon departed, my new friend stayed on, and I discovered that he wasn’t a trash man at all. He was Gary. (As colleague Peter Stern jokes, back then Garry could only afford one “r.”)

Given the depressing decline of provincial book fairs chronicled in this blog, the Concord show was something of a surprise. The aforementioned “success” consisted of a gate of three hundred paying customers – a landslide compared with some recent shows. Amazingly they kept coming in all day. Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a local resident and confirmed bibliophile, showed up early in the afternoon and stayed until closing. Those dealers whose business model includes selling books to retail customers at book fairs had a chance to practice their trade.

Garry claims his secret was vigorous advertising on the local NPR outlet, and that makes sense to me. The network has a bookish demographic. However, it didn’t hurt that this event is one of the longest-running antiquarian book fairs in the country. It has a base of attendees that has been built up over three decades. Sure, a lot of them are dying off, but somehow they are being replaced by a younger crowd. I saw a good number of tattoos, piercings and even young families. Concord, New Hampshire! Who’d a thunk it?

My only complaint concerns the lack of a bar and TV within walking distance. I know Justice Souter would’ve liked to have thrown back a few cold ones with me while watching the New England Patriots spank the Cincinnati Bengals, and it’s a shame we didn't get to do that.

Since I never sell books at these events, there was nothing left to do that afternoon but buy them. Here’s the best one I got…

Collinson, Captain Richard. JOURNAL OF H.M.S. ENTERPRISE, ON THE EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN’S SHIPS BY BEHRING STRAIT, 1850-55.... WITH A MEMOIR OF HIS OTHER SERVICES. EDITED BY HIS BROTHER, MAJOR-GENERAL T.B. COLLINSON. Lon. 1889. Color lithographed frontis, folding maps, photogravure portrait. xi, (1), 531 pp. plus 32 terminal pages publisher’s ads. First edition of a rare book documenting part of the Franklin Search expedition. Collinson and the Enterprise sailed up the Bering Strait, explored Banks Island, and wintered in Prince of Wales Strait. The next year they reached Dease Strait and wintered in Cambridge Bay, exploring Victoria Island. In their final year, 1853-4, they sailed west to Camden Bay, Alaska, then returned home. “Journal entries throughout record... appearance and customs of the Eskimos; include descriptions of Walker Bay in Prince of Wales Strait, and Cambridge Bay, Victoria Island; a brief list of Eskimo names for places... and summaries of the Franklin Search as a whole... (also) details of sledges and sledge traveling; arctic winter aboard ship; health (scurvy)...” - Arctic Bib. 3351. It is not often noted that Collinson also participated in the first Opium War in China, about which he writes in some detail in the “Memoir” section of this book. Worldcat shows copies only in the British Library and the National Maritime Museum. Bound in original blue cloth with gilt decoration. Light cover wear. Edge of one map slightly chipped, but contents in excellent condition. This copy is inscribed, “To Wm. E. Collinson from his father as a token of appreciation of the winning of a scholarship at Dulwich College. 17th Aug. 1901.” $4000

Carpet Bombed

(this item is described below)

Sometime in the late 1980s my buddy John Thomson of Bartleby’s Books talked me into doing a rather unusual book fair down in Baltimore. “It’s attached to an antique show,” he told me. “You’ll meet new customers and find a lot of interesting stuff to buy.”

As I recall, some of that came to pass, but mostly what happened was that I developed a fondness for Baltimore - in particular, the Locust Point neighborhood, through which I’d take my jog every morning. Narrow row houses on Fort Ave. overlooked the Domino Sugar plant and the harbor below it. A restaurant or bar graced every corner, the Chesapeake Box factory stood proud and rackety across the street, and gnarly neighbors shot the breeze day and night on their stone stoops. It looked like blue collar paradise to me, and those buildings were selling for $60 or $70 thousand. Unfortunately, my wife doesn’t care for the heat. I never got my Baltimore hideaway.

But I kept doing the show, and I watched it evolve from a fairly funky, slightly junky operation under its former promoters, Sha-Dor, to a slick high-end production managed by the Palm Beach Group. The show now boasts 240,000 square feet of exhibit space, fancy white carpets, high-quality dealers from Europe, Asia and the Americas and - as always - a book ghetto, now well positioned on the floor and prominent in the promoters’ aggressive advertising campaign.

Somehow, probably due to increased booth rents and no sharing privilages, the quality of bookfair exhibitors has upgraded over the years. Gone are the dealers with piles of $5 books and cheesy paperbacks. Most of the booths now feature better books, and a good portion of the exhibitors are members of the ABAA – the trade organization at the high end of our business.

During the show the promoters kept up a steady drumbeat of publicity and rumor – supposedly a $5 million painting was for sale somewhere on the floor. An entire booth (containing a Rodin sculpture), it was said, had sold en bloc. Daily email blasts boasted of “large crowds and brisk sales” and dealers were encouraged to report their big ticket items. Seduced by the classy white carpets and the sexy glow of halogen lighting on diamond studded jewelry and China Trade antiques, I began wondering why, instead of trying to pioneer new book fairs in New York, Atlanta or Chicago, the ABAA isn’t seeking partnerships with promoters like Palm Beach, who already have a schedule of successful shows in interesting venues such as Dallas, Palm Beach, and Fort Lauderdale?

However, as the week crawled along (setup was Wednesday and the show ran until 6 p.m. Sunday – these antique people are animals) the scales began to fall from my eyes. The crowds weren’t as huge or voracious as the Palm Beach people kept insisting they were. For all the glitz, most booksellers reported only mediocre sales. And there was a constant, annoying atmosphere of over-hype. The advertised “70 book dealers” turned out to be more like 55; the “500 antiques dealers” closer to 400.

Then there were the carpets.

At cocktail hour (3 p.m. for me) I discovered there was no red wine being served. Someone told me that the promoters didn’t want their fine white carpets spoiled. I thought this was a joke until Sunday afternoon just before closing, when one of the Palm Beach people came on the loudspeaker and informed us that this was a “Carpeted Show.” No one, under any conditions, would be allowed to leave the floor until every last shred of white carpet had been removed.

To this end, Palm Beach placed squads of goons at every exit to prevent anyone from doing anything until all the carpet was gone. Of course, I’d packed up my paltry belongings within 20 minutes. After another half hour I found a passage of bare floor. Somehow, I made my exit unobserved, loaded my car, and came back in to return the dolly I’d borrowed from my booth mate.

I was halted at the door by a Palm Beach twerp with a Napoleon complex who told me that no carts would be allowed on the floor until all the carpet was up. I pointed out to him that I’d already gotten my cart over bare portions of the floor and was simply trying to return it. He steadfastly blocked my entrance.

By this time a riot was brewing at the other end of the hall, as a small crowd of book dealers sought passage through the cafeteria area, which had gray, rather than white carpet. Another gang of Palm Beach thugs happily blocked their exit.

There were a lot of things the Palm Beach Group could have done to alleviate this stupid and frustrating snafu, but they didn’t.

After appealing to a higher authority, I was finally allowed to carry my cart over bare floors and return it to its owner. I have no idea what happened to the rest of my colleagues but I’m betting a lot of them were stuck there for hours.

Clearly, the rigid “one size fits all” approach taken by the Palm Beach group is not appropriate for book fairs. I still think it would be a good idea to seek alliances with such promoters, but we’d better go in with eyes wide open, and a readiness to negotiate for bookseller-friendly alternatives.

For the record, this fair (carpets excepted) met expectations. I sold three items, all to the trade, and bought one wonderful book:

Colnett, Captain James. A VOYAGE TO THE SOUTH ATLANTIC AND ROUND CAPE HORN INTO THE PACIFIC OCEAN FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXTENDING THE SPERMACETI WHALE FISHERIES. Lon. 1798. b/w plates and folding maps. 4to. iv, ( portrait plate), (iii)-vi, (i)-xviii, 179 pp. This is one of the more desirable early whaling titles, particularly for its accounts of Hawaii and the Pacific and because of Colnett’s part in the Nootka Controversy – a prolonged territorial dispute between England and Spain. See Hill 338, Forbes I, 280, Sabin 14546. Howes C 604 (a “b” item). This is a clean and wide margined copy of a book usually found heavily foxed. There is some offsetting from plates in this copy, but almost none of the usual foxing. The six folding maps, including charts of the California coast and the Galapagos Islands, are in excellent condition. Bound in full speckled calf, rebacked to match, with original label laid down. The sperm whale plate has been trimmed close at the top, with loss of the top half of the printed title. Otherwise this is an excellent copy of a rare whaling voyage. $13,500