The Cahoon Museum of American Art on Cape Cod has been diving into the history of scrimshaw. Don’t know what that is? Well, you’re not alone. This largely forgotten folk art form — created by whalemen at sea in the 1800s — is filled with stories about a finite period in American history.
Whaling was a major money-making industry in 19th-century New England. The oil extracted from whale blubber lit homes across the U.S. and lubricated all manner of machinery.
The hunt for whales has been dramatized and romanticized in books and films, including Herman Melville’s classic “Moby-Dick.” Yes, there was adventure, but Cahoon Museum director Sarah Johnson said toiling away on whale ships was mostly grueling — physically and emotionally.
“It was a life of long moments of boredom punctuated by moments of terror, and there were long periods of downtime in between the whale hunts,” she…
