Tag Archives: whaling

Salem, past and present

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One of the things I like to do when researching a book is visit the location where it is set. I did that with Salem when I was writing Death in Salem.

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I like getting the feel of the place and a sense of the geography.

Salem is a good place to research since they have kept a lot of their past. Not all of it but enough. And a number of reminders of Salem’s past. and the past of the United States, are still present. The Burying Point, the cemetery, is there. I like that you can still visit this place and see the headstones from the distant past.

Not the accused witches, however. Witches were not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground so  were dumped. Families, although forbidden to do so, frequently found the bodies and buried them properly. This meant a great deal in this religious past. But the burying point does have memorials to these men and women. (even two dogs were accused and executed!)

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The witch trials are well remembered and some of the houses were built in that time, 400 years ago.

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Salem still has many houses from the period of the merchantmen also. Below is the Derby house, built within sight of Derby wharf. Although there are many fine houses on the waterfront, a short walk to Chestnut Street reveals a block of beautiful houses, many from the late 1700’s.

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As the merchantmen grew wealthy, they built houses on Chestnut Street. And many of these houses are still occupied.

Although the 1790’s are not ancient compared to Europe and their long history, for these United States it represents the early part of our history and so I find it exciting.

 

Salem and New book Cover

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I can’t praise the graphics department of Minotaur (st. Martin’s) enough. Every cover has been outstanding. I love the new one, for Death in Salem, partly because it is so accurate to the look of Salem’s waterfront.  Take a look. Here is my picture, taken in May of this year.

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and here is the book cover for Death in Salem.

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See what I mean?

More about Salem

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My new Will Rees mystery will be coming out next spring. This time, he travels to Salem, Mass and, of course, is embroiled in a mystery.

I went to Salem to research the area.

I mixed real people and characters of my own invention but tried to keep the facts of the sailing industry accurate.

This is a photo of the custom house, but a few years later. During the 17902, the location switched among several buildings.

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This is the India store. I based the store run by my widow on this store.

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and this is a museum representation of a counting house. Again, I based my description on this.

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I’m sure I will get questions on the tunnels underneath Salem. Although I read about them, I did not see any. I guess it’s time for another road trip!

More about the Friendship

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In 1783 The Grand Turk, a merchant vessel not unlike the Friendship, set sail for the East When it returned with a cargo of pepper from Sumatra, Derby (the owner of The Grand Turk) made a profit of 700%.

After that, merchant ships began sailing back and forth to Turkey, India and finally China. Before the War for Independence, Great Britain had a lock on this trade, and they continued to try and maintain their hold. They stopped American vessels, impressed the seamen, blockaded the coast and otherwise made nuisances of themselves. Needless to say, all it really did was inflame passions and set the stage for the War of 1812.

By the time Will Rees visits Salem, it is sixth largest city in the US and the richest. And all that wealth rested on the backs of the sailors.

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Crews quarters. And a sailor didn’t ‘t ‘own’ your bunk either, but took whatever was available. The first mate’s quarters and captain’s quarters were marginally better. At least they had a whole room, not a large one but something to themselves.

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 The captain had windows.

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the hold was designed for cargo but it was put below – where the crew slept – as well.

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Honestly, I felt claustrophobic the first few minutes I was down there.

The Question of Titles

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I am not good at creating titles; I’ll admit that first thing. Some authors seem to choose the perfect title. snappy and appropriate. I struggle.

I think of this now since I am struggling to title the fourth book. Right now it is titled “Death in Salem”. Bland, right? I started with “Salem Slay Ride” which I think is snappier but one of my readers said it sounded like winter. Since the story takes place in June, not a good thing.

Maybe I should have a vote.

The original title for my first book was “Hands to Murder”. I took it from the Shaker saying “Hearts to God, Hands to work”. The publisher felt that too many people wouldn’t get the allusion so it became “A Simple Murder.”

I was lucky with the second book. Since the mystery concerns a dyer – as in one who dyes – the title seemed perfect. But the third book, now titled “Cradle to Grave”, I called  The Book until my daughter suggested the title.

So now I’m struggling with the title for the fourth Will Rees.  “Death at Sea”? “”Blow the Man down”? I’m still partial to “Salem Slay Ride” because I like puns. Like I said, still struggling.

More about Salem’s sailors

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In an earlier post, I blogged about the cosmopolitan nature of Salem in the 1790’s, primarily due to merchant men who traveled to the far corners of the globe.

I did not really discuss the multi-ethnicity of Salem itself. Some of that is due to the merchantmen. Salem is home to a large East Indian population, an immigrant colony that began hundreds of years ago.

But some is due to the whaling ships.

The crews of the whaling ships included men (and yes, a few women, disguised as men) from every background. Some came from seafaring families, the profession passed down from father to son. The best harpooners were drawn from the local Native American tribes and were commonly reputed to be the best. (And probably were. The colonists learned the trade from the Indians who had been practicing it for generations from the coast or from small boats). Black sailors were so common they had a special name: the Black Tars. And as immigrants arrived, not only from Europe but also from some of the ports of call, the French, Irish, Portuguese and other men joined the whaling crews.

We always talk about how small the world is now. I doubt we fully realize how much travel and cross-fertilization went on hundreds of years ago.

Whalemen and whales

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Conditions were rough. If the whalers were hunting in the Arctic, it was cold. But it was worse if the ship was in southern waters. The boiling down of whale blubber went on for days so a fire was burning in the brick fireplace on the deck. The combination of the warm seas and the fire meant that the temperature on board could be over 100 degrees F. Most of the crew slept below decks; it must have been unbearable. If the journey was a long one, the food began to spoil.

Whaling was not for the faint of heart, even before engaging a whale.

Six men set off in a small boat. If they succeeded in harpooning a whale, they could be dragged a good distance. One smack by the whale’s tale could shatter a small boat and many whale men were killed.

But plenty of sperm whales lost the battle, and very cruelly too. The harpoons didn’t usually kill the whale, that was the job of the lance, That had to be thrown accurately and twisted. Descriptions mention the bloody sea all around the dying whale.

Then the whale was towed back to the ship to be cut into pieces.

Ahoy me maties, sailor talk in ordinary speech

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Idioms are colorful parts of speech and English is full of them. They make little sense to a non-native speaker and contribute to the difficulty of learning this language.

And speaking of learning, let’s talk about learning the ropes, an expression that dates from the era of the sailing ships over 200 years ago. Ropes controlled the sails and a new sailor had to know which rope to choose from 10 or more, in the dark, and during a crisis. He had to ‘learn the ropes’.

He also had to cross the line; i.e. the Equator.

What about ‘at loggerheads’? Loggerheads were hollow spheres of iron at each end of a shaft. Once heated, they were used to melt tar in buckets. The loggerheads could never come together, hence the expression.

‘Chew the fat’? The heavy mastication required to eat the beef that had been brined for months on end.

And my personal favorite: ‘piping hot’. If you sat down to eat to as soon as the proper pipe sounded, the food was still hot.

In the 1700s, particularly the late 1700s, New England sailors were opening up trade with the East and bringing back pepper from Sumatra, spices from the Spice Islands, tea and silk from China, and cloth (madras, chintz, calico and other cottons such as seersucker and nankeen) from India. Whalers set off from Nantucket, Salem and Bedford and was a strong industry although it reached it’s peak later in the early nineteenth century.

Hard to believe but this country was already part of a global economy.