Image courtesy of Mystic Seaport. I was setting sail on the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. I thought that the right iconography would present itself to me at some point, and that it would likely come from the oceanic history that is the object of both my academic research and my general enthusiasm. Images I had considered and rejected include a ship or a whale β but these symbols were too obvious, I thought.
I preferred something more specialized or esoteric, like the terrific whale stamps used by sailors in C19 logbooks, representing particular kills. The chance to be among the very few chosen to voyage on the only whaleship left from the age of spermaceti candles and Moby-Dick β my obsession!
And the Temple toggle was perfect. Like a tattoo, a harpoon is designed to embed itself into flesh. The inventor of this particular harpoon barb was Lewis Temple, a free African-American blacksmith who owned a smithy in New Bedford, that same whaling port where the Morgan was built and from which Herman Melville had sailed. New Bedford was also the city in which Frederick Douglass had found port work β whaling industry labor β after his escape from enslavement.
I teach 19th-century American literature and therefore this connection was powerful to me, too. But the final surprise was learning that Lewis Temple had adapted his harpoon head design from one used for centuries by the Inuit in the Arctic, the region on which my current studies and imagination are fixated.
My research into weaponry was done: this was the sign I was waiting for. My journey on the Morgan is now finished. Soon, the ship will pull into port for what is likely the final time.
