# A captain home after three years — dock, wife, cargo The image is right: a ship over the bar, a woman on the wharf, money changing the town. The cargo in the request needs a correction, and a **composite “the Captain”** will fight the rest of this season. Whaleships came home primarily with **casks of sperm oil and whale oil, and baleen**. Candle factories (about twenty-four on the island by the mid-1840s) bought the oil off the dock. Crew were paid on the **lay** — a share of the voyage, settled after owners took theirs — not a salary. Souvenirs and some Pacific or China-trade objects did come ashore, and Nantucket also fitted *separate* Canton voyages (oil and candles out; tea, silk, porcelain back). Do not unload a fantasy hold of jade and spice as if that were a typical whaleship. --- ## Two honest versions (pick one) ### Version A — named ship (preferred) Use a documented landing and a documented household. | Candidate | Why it works | |---|---| | *Joseph Starbuck*, Capt. Sanford Wilber, in 3 Apr 1842 with **3,321 bbl sperm** | Last ship built at Brant Point; big, clean number; wrecked on the bar that November under Charles A. Veeder — a second beat if you want loss after wealth | | *Nauticon*, Capt. Charles A. Veeder + **Susan Veeder**, Mar 1853 | Wife is not a greeter on the dock only — she was aboard. Different story, already in the cabin VR | | *Lexington*, Capt. Peter C. Brock + **Eliza Brock**, 25 Jun 1856 | Same. Journal ends “so ends my voyage in the good and faithful ship” | | A Hadwen / Barney or Starbuck owner on the wharf | The factory side: oil into the candle works that is now the Whaling Museum | Give the captain a real name, a real barrel count, a real house if you can point at it (Hadwen House is the wealth-after-oil object). ### Version B — typed dock tableau (only if labeled) A 1845-ish Straight Wharf: ship, casks, cooper, owner’s clerk, wife, child, two seamen. **No one has an AI brain except the clerk**, who answers from port records (“what is a lay,” “what is in those casks,” “why the bar”). The captain and wife are authored performances, 4–6 minutes, not chat. Splash: *A composite of Nantucket landings, 1840–50. Not a particular man.* Version A is the one that belongs next to Mitchell and Boston. Version B is a museum diorama that talks. --- ## What the visitor sees **Loop, 8–12 minutes** 1. Approach from the head of the wharf. Homeward-bound flag already down; hatches open. 2. Casks coming ashore — oil, not crates of porcelain. Cooper’s marks. Clerk with a slatesheet of barrels. 3. Captain steps down. If Version A, he is tired and specific (months, barrels, who died). If a wife is present, she is a second actor with her own sourced lines (letter, journal, or a documented “captain’s wife” voice such as Veeder/Brock — not a generic sob). 4. Owner’s man: the lay. Captain’s cut versus a green hand’s $69 for four years (museum tour figure; verify against the voyage you picked). 5. Optional object table: one China bowl, one piece of scrimshaw, one silk scrap — labeled **souvenirs and merchant-trade goods**, not the paying cargo. 6. Beat 3: Great Fire 1846 / bar / New Bedford rail — why this wealth moved off-island. **VR:** a 30-foot slice of wharf + the ship’s waist, not a full hull you can get lost in. Reuse the Ahab/Veeder deck kit, cold try-works, different dress. **AR:** Straight Wharf pin + candle-factory (museum) pin + one captain’s house if rights allow. Far-island loops stay empty. --- ## Cargo — say this out loud | In the hold | Typical? | Show it? | |---|---|---| | Sperm oil / whale oil in casks | Yes — this is the voyage | Yes, as the mass | | Baleen | Yes, later Arctic/Okhotsk voyages | Yes, as bundles | | Ambergris (rare) | Lottery | One story, not a pile | | Scrimshaw, shells, a piece of tapa | Crew work and gifts | Small table | | Porcelain, silk, tea | **China-trade ships** and some opportunistic trades; not the standard whaleship payout | Separate label; point to Jehle, *From Brant Point to the Boca Tigris* (NHA) | | Jade, bulk spice | Not the Nantucket whale economy | Do not stage | Wealth is real: Hadwen & Barney mid-century output is the museum’s own number (candles and refined oil in the hundreds of thousands of gallons). Put the money in houses, factories, and lays — not in a pier of treasure chests. --- ## Corpus - Voyage entries: whalinghistory.org / Starbuck *History of the American Whale Fishery* / ship pages (*Joseph Starbuck* AS1727, *Nantucket* AS2014, *Lexington*). - NHA candle-factory interpretation (oil sold off the dock to ~24 works). - Macy’s tables of oil and bone (1847 *Merchants’ Magazine* reprint). - Jehle, *From Brant Point to the Boca Tigris*, NHA, for the actual China line. - If the wife speaks: her journal, not a greeting-card caption. Cutoff is the landing year of the chosen ship. --- ## Partners NHA / Whaling Museum (the candle factory *is* the building). Town / wharf owners if you ever put AR on the working basin. Not MMA’s story unless a Mitchell relative is the owner. --- ## Moral and practical - Do not make the wife only a waving silhouette. Either she has lines from a source or she is silent and the clerk explains the household. - Name the Black and Wampanoag seamen on the crew list if the chosen voyage has them. A “welcome home” that is only white captains repeats the old museum. - Unloading is labor. Show it as work, not ballet. - Summer congestion: this is a kiosk or after-hours dock tableau, not a live full-body in the bike lane on Straight Wharf. --- ## Budget $70k–$160k on the shared ship/wharf kit if Version A uses two actors and the clerk-AI. Version B is cheaper. Do not build a third ship mesh; retarget the *Pequod*/cabin deck. --- ## Label copy (Version A) > [Ship], Captain [Name], returned to Nantucket on [date] with [n] barrels of oil. Crew were paid a share of the voyage, called a lay. The casks went to candle factories on this waterfront. China porcelain in island houses more often arrived on merchant voyages, not in the whale ship’s hold.